Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  He was right. My grip on the flag was giving way, and he was holding me in a death grip.

  “Swing up,” I said. “Swing up, damn you, you lunatic.”

  “Join me,” he said, looking down at the stunned crowd below. He bounced up and down, laughing. The socket of my left arm went sore and numb, and I let go of the flag, but we didn’t plunge through the hole. We slid forward, and Paul, convinced that I was following him into the bright air of the big top, let go of my hand. My leg hooked onto the rope holding the flag, and my head and shoulders went through the hole. I watched Paul, dressed all in green, spin over and over and land with a thud in the silence. It was all upside down and slow, and I felt sleepy. I hung for a second or two and realized that there was still silence, a silence of people expecting me to come plunging through the hole. I disappointed them, eased my way back up to the outside with my good hand, and sat for a long time clinging to the flag. The trip down was slow. My arm was sore, my back was sore again, and the chance of slipping in the wind great, but no one was chasing me with an elephant prod. I waved at the moon, and maybe he waved back.

  I made it to the point where I had leaped from the wagon to the tent but didn’t have it in me to make the leap back. I hung down by one good arm and dropped to the ground.

  There was still a lot to do. No one had heard Paul confess. As far as Nelson was concerned, I was still a killer. He might have some trouble figuring out why Paul was dressed like that and what he was doing on top of the tent, but that wouldn’t stop him. No, I had to give him a wrapped killer if I was going to get out of this, and luckily, there was still a killer left. Paul hadn’t confirmed much, but he had confirmed something about the second killer. My only fear was that there might be three killers or four or five. How many members of Paul’s family had survived that plunge from the high wire? I was pretty sure of one, but it was getting to the point where I would have to gather the suspects.

  I slunk around the tents, moving away from the big top and the noise, toward someplace where I could rest for a few minutes before putting things together.

  I could hear people running toward me in the darkness, and I spotted a familiar tent. I plunged into it. It was dark and warm. I could feel the animals rustling in their cages.

  “I think he went in there,” came a voice.

  I ran behind the nearest cage, and the cat inside bellowed. In the entrance stood someone with a flashlight. The light beamed into corners, and I hovered behind the wheel of the wagon. The figure took a step into the tent and was stopped by the darkness and a loud animal snarl. The figure was small and looked to me like Nelson. The figure backed out.

  “Not in there,” he said, and I knew it was Nelson.

  There was time to catch my breath. I sat on the cool ground, telling myself that it had really happened, that Paul had really plunged through that hole. I knew I’d see him in my dreams.

  Something rustled outside a cage in the darkness.

  “Who is it?” I said, getting to my feet. No answer.

  My eyes were getting used to the dark, and I could see the green-yellow eyes of animals following me as I crouched and moved toward the rustling sound.

  “I’ve got a gun,” I lied. “Step out into the middle of the tent or I’ll shoot.”

  No one stepped into the middle of the tent.

  “Your gun is in the hands of the police,” came a voice from the dark.

  I wasn’t sure where the voice came from, but I took a chance and leaped around the lion wagon, ready to throw a punch with my good remaining arm. There was no one there, but someone was suddenly behind me, someone who had moved quickly and hit me now with the weight of the world before my sore back would let me turn.

  My skull is worn thin by nearly half a century of my using it to ward off attacks instead of as protection for my brain, which should have been thinking.

  As the blue darkness with little stars skittered in my head like the beginning of life or time, a voice said, “For my brother.”

  Koko, the clown of my dreams, reached out for me, and I tried to pull my hand away. I have a brother too, I wanted to say. But Koko wanted to play, and there was, as I now knew, no turning down a determined clown. I took his hand and went into the inkwell.

  And that is how I came to be encaged with a snoring gorilla.

  My choices were now clear. I could stand perfectly still when he woke up and pretend I wasn’t alive. I didn’t know how long I could keep that up or how much I could expect a gorilla to believe. I could also simply go about my business, pretend that I frequently found myself in cages with bad-tempered apes and act as if I were washing out my clown costume or cleaning my nails on my knee. A third choice was to start jumping up and down and making as much noise as I could in the hope that Gargantua would be too surprised to act. Even if it worked, which was as far from likely as Herbert Hoover making a comeback, I didn’t think I could keep it up.

  Enter Henry. He came through the opening in the tent and looked directly at me. His finger went up and his mouth fell open. I tried to motion to the cage door, but Henry had other plans. He fell over on his face and lay there as if he had been laid out by Joe Louis.

  He was either my killer’s victim number three, the object of a heart attack, or dead drunk. I was giving myself a lot of options for a lot of things. I guess that’s what you do when you lose control over a situation.

  “Franklin D. Roosevelt,” came the words from Henry. He was drunk. The words were said without Henry bothering to move his head. Gargantua stirred and scratched his right leg with his long fingers.

  “Franklin D. Roosevelt said tonight,” Henry went on, turning his head and starting to sit up, “that we were living in violin times. I don’t understand. Who understands? Maybe he meant violent times. No. That is no better. I had that map of the world out, just like Franklin D. said. Franklin D. coughed a lot tonight. If he’s getting sick, we are lost. ‘Flying high and striking high,’ he said. ‘American eagle isn’t going to imitate an ostrich or a turtle.’”

  I considered whispering to Henry and even let out a controlled “Psssssst.”

  But he wasn’t buying any. He was too busy analyzing the President’s latest fireside chat. His head swayed as he sat on the ground and tried to find Gargantua in the dark. “I think,” he said emphatically, “that Franklin D. is a man of the people. Yes, a man of the people, but what have violins or violets got for Chrissake to do with it?”

  “Violence,” I whispered.

  “Thank you,” said Henry sincerely. He got off the ground slowly, using a nearby cage for support. “Violence,” he mused. “Now that makes sense.”

  The issue settled, he turned his back and took one tentative step toward the outside. I had to risk it.

  “Henry,” I whispered. Nothing. “Henry,” I whispered louder. Gargantua definitely stirred. Henry stopped and looked back at the cage.

  “I am drunk,” said Henry. “I ain’t very much in the way of smart, but I know when I am drunk, for I am a drinking man. Gor-yellas don’t talk. They can’t. Can’t even teach ’em.”

  “It’s me,” I said, almost breaking the whisper, “Peters, Toby Peters. I’m locked in the cage.”

  Uncertainty clouded Henry’s brow. I could see it in the half-light of the approaching dawn. He took a few steps toward the cage, and I expected him to fall on his face again.

  “In the cage?” he asked.

  “Get me out,” I said, glancing at Gargantua, whose eyelids were fluttering. “Fast.”

  Henry walked to the cage a few feet from me and grabbed the bars to keep from falling over. “You are not supposed to be in there,” he said with all the authority he could get together. “You are supposed to be out here.”

  In case I didn’t know where “out here” might be, he pointed at it. “Out here” proved to be a few inches above the ground in front of him.

  “Get me out of here,” I whispered. Gargantua was definitely coming awake now. I tried not to move, but it was
hard to watch both the gorilla and Henry without at least turning my head.

  “I’m sure as hell getting you out of there,” said Henry resolutely, without moving. “Out of there and over here.”

  Gargantua picked his nose dreamily and ran a finger down the side of the cage. He didn’t seem to notice me.

  “If you don’t open the cage,” I sang, near hysteria, “I’m going to get torn apart.”

  Henry considered this possibility for a moment by looking down at his feet. My impulse was reasonable and sane. I wanted to reach through the bars and kill Henry. Gargantua definitely looked in my direction.

  “Henry,” I said softly, smiling at the gorilla, “if you don’t get me out of here now, please, I’ll beat the hell out of you.”

  Henry laughed and shook his head. “Can’t beat the hell out of anything if GooGoo tears you up.”

  He was right. Sometimes even drunken fools or private detectives are right.

  “I’ll curse you,” I said as Gargantua stood and cocked his head to one side to be sure that what he thought he saw was actually in the cage with him.

  “Curse?” asked Henry, lifting his head. I had his attention. “You mean like the evil eye?”

  “Right,” said I, turning my back to him to face Gargantua, who cocked his head to the other side. “I have the evil eye. Got it from my aunt. I’ll give you a blast from it if you don’t get me out of here.”

  Henry began to move. He pushed himself away from the bar and I lost sight of him, though I could hear him moving. I couldn’t take my eyes off Gargantua, who took two steps toward me.

  “Hurry,” I said, not knowing whether Henry was opening the cage or running in drunken madness from my evil eye. A second or two later I knew he hadn’t gone. I heard his voice.

  “Goes around throwing people through tents and does who knows what else and then says he’ll give me the evil eye,” he mumbled. “Me, Henry Yew, who has almost never done bad … except maybe the time with my cousin Parmale.”

  Gargantua was now definitely interested in whoever was in his cage and was standing in front of me, looking down. I thought I heard other sounds, footsteps, maybe even words in the tent, but they couldn’t get through to me. Nothing could get through to me but that dark face over mine, looking curious and benevolent. I thought I heard the cage door opening, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think of moving. I couldn’t even think when Gargantua decided to start pounding on his chest. It sounded like a half-empty oil drum echoing to eternity.

  I nodded my head in appreciation at the skill and artistry of his chest pounding. He pranced around the cage a few times, still pounding his chest.

  “Really nice,” I said to him with an admiring and idiotic shake of my head. “Henry,” I shouted and glanced at the door of the cage. It was definitely open. A voice beyond it whispered, “Come on.” I slid a few inches toward it, and Gargantua stopped and roared.

  “Just go on pounding,” I said to him softly. “Go on.”

  But there was to be no going on. He showed his teeth and took a step toward me I didn’t like. The door to the cage flew open and banged, metal against metal. Gargantua turned to the sound, and I crawled toward the door on hands and knees.

  While a great warm hand grabbed at my slithering back, leaving a print which would probably stay for weeks, something else leaped into the cage. I tumbled through the cage door to the ground and turned to see Jeremy Butler facing Gargantua. The ape definitely looked puzzled. There had probably never been anyone in his cage before, and now he had a changing of the guard of mad humans. His hand went up slowly toward Jeremy while a low growl came from deep in his dark stomach.

  Jeremy’s right fist came up quickly, catching the gorilla in the nose and right eye. Gargantua staggered back in surprise. He was the one who was supposed to slap creatures around. Hadn’t we read the posters?

  In the instant it took him to recover and lunge for Jeremy, the former wrestler and present poet had dived out of the cage door. Several hands, not mine, pushed the door shut behind him, and Jeremy turned and rammed the lock shut. The cage shook as Gargantua battered the door in rage and bellowed in anger.

  Gunther, Shelly, and Jeremy stood looking at me. Henry was seated on the rung of the two-bar ladder that led up to the cage.

  “He liked you,” said Henry toward my general direction. I had propped myself up against the nearby lion cage. “All that beating on the chest. Liked you. Or maybe he wanted to tear you up. Hard to tell with gor-yellas. Like people.”

  Gargantua was going on with the ferocity of one who has been cheated out of dessert or lost his high school sweetheart. I wasn’t sure of how he viewed me. We hadn’t had much time to talk.

  “Toby,” said Gunther, “the police are looking for you. We suggest you make a departure.”

  “We gotta get the hell out of here, Tobe,” Shelly whined.

  I looked at Jeremy, who nodded his head in agreement. Jeremy put an arm under mine and started me toward the door.

  Behind us, Henry was getting the world confused even further.

  “Franklin D. said something about gor-yellas and not getting into cages tonight,” he mused. “Franklin D., every time he is on the radio says I am his friend. Friend to the President of the United States, Henry Yew.”

  We made it to the outside, and I stood on my feet, breathing in as much air as I could. “Thanks,” I said.

  “I wonder,” said Jeremy in response, “if I could have downed him. He has strength but no real sense of leverage. Ultimately it would have been unfair. He made no contract with me to fight, and I had, in his eyes, invaded what little private space he has.”

  “You make him sound reasonable,” I said. “Maybe you should be Secretary of State.”

  Jeremy’s shoulders went up in a shrug.

  We ambled forward with Gunther, for no reason I could see, in the lead. There were a few voices from wagons, some faint animal sounds, and us hurrying toward what I assumed was Shelly’s car.

  “I think I know who the killer is,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” said Gunther, “but it will provide you no service if no one chooses to listen to you.”

  It was once again, as Gunther always was, reasonable. I had the vague idea that I would go somewhere, sleep, think for a few hours, and make Mirador and the Rose and Elder circus what they were before, while Franklin D. did the same with the rest of the world.

  We made it to Kelly’s. He was there and looking none too happy.

  “Are you all right?” he said while I got out of what remained of my clown costume and into my last pair of trousers, a shirt, and my gray sweater with the brown reindeer on it.

  “Let’s go,” urged Shelly.

  “I’m fine,” I told Kelly.

  “Sorry I got you into this,” he said, looking somewhat like Willie even without the makeup.

  “It goes with the job,” I said.

  “I want you to get out of this,” he said. “Just take care of yourself and send me a bill.”

  “I’ll send you that bill,” I said, “after I catch a killer. I’ll be in touch.” And out the door I went, followed by my faithful band of merry men from Los Angeles forest. “This handcuff has to come off,” I said as we hurried in the general direction of Shelly’s car.

  “Easy enough,” said the Sheriff of Nottingham, stepping out from behind a tent with a very large shotgun in his hands. We stopped. Behind us stepped Alex, also holding a shotgun.

  “You shoot from there,” I said, “and you’ll kill each other.”

  “And you in the cross fire,” said Nelson evenly, his white hat over his eyes.

  “That hat doesn’t make you a good guy,” I said.

  “Shut up, Toby,” whispered Shelly. “Do what they say.”

  “I know who killed the Tanuccis,” I went on with more confidence than I felt.

  Alex took a step up behind us, and Nelson stood his ground.

  “So do we,” said Nelson. “Just put up your hands,
all of you. You too, big fella and little fella, or maybe you won’t have any hands to put up.”

  “I think,” said Jeremy, lifting his hands and whispering to me, “we try to take them now. If they get you back to …”

  “No,” I said to him and then to Nelson, “OK. Let’s go. You’ve got me.”

  “Indeed, indeed,” said Nelson, rocking on his heels. “I have a whole menagerie, a regular conspiracy of freaks.”

  “You,” said Gunther indignantly, stepping forward, “are a semiliterate dunderkopf.”

  “Sez you, peewee,” Nelson answered. “All of you just move along slow and sweet, like the little girls at the Catholic school in Palm Hills, and we will be friends.”

  We moved in a single line with our hands up through the circus grounds and to a truck on the dirt road.

  “Into the back of the truck,” said Nelson. “I’m going to drive, and Alex is going to be in the car right behind. We are going to go very slowly, and if one of you happens to fall out of the truck on the way back, there is a very great chance of an accident involving you and Alex’s car. We no longer have a police car. It met with a slight accident, the nature of which we will demonstrate on the person of Mr. Peters.”

  “You have a way with words, Nelson,” I said, getting into the back of the truck.

  Gunther had to suffer the indignity of being put up on the truck by Jeremy. Shelly needed the same help, but he didn’t see it as indignity. He was too busy blaming me for his troubles.

  “I’m sorry, Gunther,” I said.

  “You did not bring this to pass,” said Gunther, trying to keep himself and his wardrobe clean as he stood holding onto a piece of rope. Jeremy made himself confortable and kept his eyes on Alex as we drove.

  “I don’t know how you talk me into these things,” said Shelly, cleaning his glasses on his dirty jacket. “Mildred is not a fool. She told me something would happen if I came here. Mildred went to college like me. She had courses in things like philosophy. I should have listened to her. I’m a dentist.”

  I found nothing coherent in Shelly’s rambling, so I tried not to listen.

  “Do you really know who the killer is?” Gunther asked as we bounced around. It came out, “Do … uh, uh … you … uh, uh … really … uh, uh …” Hardly the conditions for a prolonged conference.