Dead Clown Blues

by R. Daniel Lester

  And lucky was how a house across the street and two doors down from Bartell’s rancher was a shell of its former self, abandoned and scheduled for destruction. Unlucky for me was that I spent the better part of two days there, hunched down behind the living room window with a telephoto lens, eating deli take-out, drinking lukewarm coffee and pissing into a milk jug. I waited. I watched. I earned my dough. Patience was both expected and rewarded in this line of work. I stared at the clouds. I contemplated a caterpillar’s journey across a leaf. I shot artsy pics just to tick off Taffy. And the reward for my struggle—bubkus. Bartell was a no-show. If he was out, he didn’t come home. If he was home, he didn’t leave the house. Capital “F” for Frustrating.

  So, coffee-deprived and work wired, I checked back in at my office. It was anti-climactic. There was nobody waiting and no messages. But since I had no secretary and the phone didn’t have a cord, I wasn’t all that surprised.

  On my way out, I met Moyer. He pulled into the parking lot in a brand new sled, a shiny ’57 Cadillac that looked very fresh off the lot. We traded semi-pleasantries. Then I asked after Jim. The old guy had me worried, the way he left my office the other night, drunk and raging.

  Moyer spit out a brown, sludgy goop of wet tobacco on the sidewalk because he was classy like that. “What,” he said, “you didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That ol’ alkie jailbird stole a car and then busted up the circus.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about and said the same, so Moyer explained that a few nights back Jim fell off the wagon, hotwired a car and crashed through a circus big top in the middle of the night, causing all sorts of commotion. Then, a couple of hours later, he took a curve too fast outside Stanley Park and lost control.

  “Yeah,” Moyer said, stuffing another hunk of chew in his cheek, “they found the poor son-of-a-bitch drowned in Lost Lagoon, car all smashed up.”

  I kicked the rear right sidewall on Moyer’s Caddy.

  “What gives?” said Moyer, like I’d peed in his corn flakes.

  “Just checking your air pressure. Road safety is very important. So how’d you find out all this?”

  “Because I take an interest in my fellow man, Mr. Fitch, that’s why.” But I could tell that wasn’t the reason at all and gave him my guppy stare. And it worked. People liked to fill silences, especially born gossips like Cleveland Moyer. He spit out another brown ribbon of wet tobacco. “Okay, I got a friend at the morgue. Frankie works the night shift and fed me some dirt on it. You know since I knew him and all.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Get this: last week Frankie tells me about this guy whose wife found him dead in their attic.”

  “Doesn’t sound very exciting.”

  Moyer’s eyes opened wide. “That’s what you’d think.” He kept talking, going on about a married man in his wife’s dress, a plastic sheep doll and a poisonous brown recluse spider, but I sort of stopped paying attention. I was thinking about former jailbirds that fell off the wagon and then stole cars and accidentally drove them into manmade lakes at the entrances of big urban parks after crashing through a circus. To be honest I didn’t think much about Jim’s drunken rant at the time, thinking it was just a guy blowing off some steam. But now I had to wonder if there wasn’t something more to it than that.

  “Quite the story, right?” said Moyer when he’d explained all the salacious details.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Awkward time to get bit. So when’s the funeral?”

  “What, the guy slippin’ it to the plastic sheep?”

  “No, Jim.”

  “Oh. Tomorrow.”

  Then Moyer gave me the rest of the details on the funeral, after which I split, careful not to step in the puddles of chew goop.

  When I got home I was dog-tired. I eyed the bed. The bed eyed me back. Time to rumble. The crowd was electric. As the announcer made the introductions, I looked for the ring girl in the skimpy bathing suit and the high heels but didn’t see her. I guess she had the night off. Too bad. I stepped into the ring, stretched. Hands above my head. A twist. A few shadow punches. The bell rang. Right away, sleep took a shot, a swing-for-the-fences haymaker. And I could have dodged it, danced around a bit—duck, weave, shuffle—but why? I walked into the punch, full surrender. Didn’t even raise my hands. My head snapped back and my legs gave out. I hit the canvas, splayed out like road kill.

  The referee knelt down beside me. The referee was Jim. I stared up at him sideways. He looked sad as he counted down, “Ten, nine, eight…”

  Jim only got to five before he called it.

  Sleep won in a knockout.

  4

  Standing there in the cemetery, on top of dead people, waiting for a funeral to begin for a dead guy, and I felt plain ol’ guilty. I shifted slightly on my feet to shoulder the load, to even it out, but still I felt myself sink into the grass from the weight. When it was my turn, I stepped up to the body to say my peace. And he was dead alright. It was the way he was laying there and not breathing that tipped me off.

  Looking around, the funeral scene introduced quite the collection of humanity. The most interesting sight was the gaggle of clowns standing together, off to the side. They all had full clown makeup on and wore black suits with black shoes. An odd look but they were odd people. Three were on crutches, one had an arm in a sling and the smallest one, this scowling little dwarf, had his head completely swathed in bandages. He looked like he might tip over. Overall, they were pretty beat up. Seemed Jim and his stolen car had cut quite a swathe of destruction.

  And then I knew it was time to get my eyes checked. I’d missed the main attraction. Brunette. Statuesque. Built like a Coke bottle. Stood out amongst the mopes and the misfits like a quarter hanging out in the same jar with a bunch of pennies. I eyed her until she eyed me back. Her lips curled in a small, quick smile, like she might give a creepy second cousin she hasn’t seen in awhile, the one with the sweaty demeanor and bad moustache.

  The brunette wasn’t the only one watching me. To a man, the clowns were all staring daggers right at me. I stared swords back.

  The service was quick and to the point. The minister clearly didn’t know Jim so he read his notes and kept it general. Jim lived. Jim died. Jim had some unmentioned hard times in-between but the big man in the sky was sure to offer his brand of eternal peace and forgiveness so everything was hunky-dory. As far as funerals went, it wasn’t half bad. In and out in twenty minutes.

  Before I left, I walked over to the group of men in rumpled suits and overcoats I didn’t figure as circus folk. They were playing pass the flask and had that look about them, like they existed outside of life, the flow, instead lurking in deserted hallways and empty rooms. Not performers these ones, no, they were the men who watched, who nodded, who cleaned, whose show began when all the other human beings had gone home.

  “Too bad about Jim, eh?” I said to the closest one, a grizzled old hound. He took a swig from the flask and passed it on to the next man. “I’m Fitch,” I said, putting out my hand.

  “Earl,” he said, not putting out his.

  I put my hand back where it came from. It was a long, awkward journey. “Otherwise, a nice day. Rain stopped.”

  “I suppose. Also suppose the Reds got nukes aimed at us right now, so it could all end any minute. Nothin’ left of us but ash, what I hear. Skin melts, you know that? Like candle wax over a flame. That’s if we’re lucky. Not so lucky and we rot from the insides out for a few years and then croak. Yeah, nice day.”

  Some people. You could build a nice heated swimming pool next to a cold mud pit and they’d still stick up their nose at progress and choose to wallow in the mire. And those types didn’t want a hand to lift them out either because that meant you weren’t one of them, you didn’t understand, you weren’t as tuned in to the realities as they were. Earl gave me a look that wondered why I was still around but I soldiered on. “You in the union toget
her, Earl?”

  “Huh?”

  “You and Jim. Both janitors, right?”

  “I push a broom, yeah. What’s it to you?”

  “No need to get touchy. It’s a noble profession.”

  “We were friends, if that’s what you mean.” The flask had come back around. Earl took another swig.

  “You pull up a bar stool next to each other after a hard day’s slog and catch up. Maybe have a refreshment or two.”

  “Hey, no man is an island, stretch. Except Jim. I only knew him a short while, but I never knew him to drink. Not a drop. Every night, at the Cambie, and he was sipping club soda. You could tell he wanted something stronger but he knew that if he did there was no going back.”

  Earl was more right than he knew. “But say he did start drinking again, you ever know him to want to steal a car and run over some clowns?”

  The janitor considered that for a moment. “I don’t know about no clowns or hot sleds, but what he lacked in a taste for booze, he sure made up for with an appetite for fast money. Kept going on about a big score he had coming to him and how he wouldn’t need to keep sweeping floors once it finally arrived. Seemed like a bunch of hooey to me.”

  My scalp tingled. My nose twitched. Jim might’ve been onto a pile of cash and I liked a pile of cash as much as the next man, maybe more. I asked if Jim ever said what the “big score” was, but Earl shook his head.

  “Nah, he played his cards close in all things. But he kept calling it his pirate treasure and the way he talked about it he didn’t have to do nothin’ to get it. It’d be waitin’ for him. Why, you think it was for real?”

  I barely heard Earl. I was in dreamland. Pirate treasure. The folded, crinkled, yellowing map. Landmarks and a few hastily scrawled notes. X marks the spot. Roll up the sleeves. A shovel and some sweat. The hole gets bigger. Almost like digging your own grave but that’s okay because what’s at the bottom just might be worth dying for. Shovel after shovel of soft black dirt. The moon is a spotlight. The sound of sweet music when metal meets solid object. Shovel on the ground. Bend over. Brush the dirt away. The wooden chest. The buried gold. The—

  “Hey, fella!”

  I snapped out of my fantasy.

  The janitors were staring at me.

  “You should walk away now, bud,” said Earl.

  I decided to heed the advice and was almost past the cemetery gates when I passed by a big bearded fellow. He was crying a river into a handkerchief and sobbing like a housewife when the bakery was sold out of lemon Danish.

  “There, there,” I said, patting him on the back. “It’ll be okay, you’ll see. Family?”

  He shook his head and blew two nose clearing toots into the handkerchief. “No, I never met Jim. He was a circus clown before my time. But it’s still sad, you know?”

  I agreed and then introduced myself.

  “Pleased to meet you, Fitch, I’m Annie.”

  I looked again.

  Go figure.

  The big bearded fellow was a big bearded lady.

  Later, at the diner, time ticked off the wall clock just how I liked it: slow and steady.

  “You okay, Fitch?” Glenda asked. “Barely touched your coffee.”

  I looked down at the mug. She was right. That never happened. Once upon a time, but not that long ago, when I was less city dweller and more traveling man, some hobo friends started calling me “Coffee” because I drank so much of it, campfire style. The nickname stuck for a while and I never tried too hard to get it unstuck. Figured it was easier that way. Plus, at the time, I sort of liked the ring to it. “Hey, there’s Coffee” or “What’s doin’, Coffee?” they’d say. All things being equal, it was a hell of a lot better than “Hey, there’s dipshit” or “What’s doin’, shithead?” which was what they sometimes said. Eventually, I stopped spending time with that lousy bunch. Friends like that and a guy didn’t need enemies. I drifted away, stayed solo. Walked the tracks and hopped the trains on my own, sleeping with one eye open and a flick knife in my boot.

  Glenda put a new mug down on the counter and poured me a fresh cup. “On the house,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You seem a bit down.”

  “I was at a funeral. Guy I knew.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. You’ll miss him, eh?”

  I nodded. “That clown could mop a floor like nobody’s business.”

  Glenda furrowed her brow. My remark didn’t make sense. I had to agree, though we probably weren’t thinking about the same thing. My mind was elsewhere. Annie, the bearded lady, had been quite a fountain of information. She told me that Jim used to be a circus clown in the thirties before he ended up in jail. Annie didn’t know what for, but said she’d keep her eyes and ears open. And I was welcome to look her up anytime. She stretched “anytime” over several syllables and added in a wink and an air kiss to top off the flirt sundae.

  What didn’t reason out to me was an ex-con janitor getting liquored up after a long dry spell and busting up a circus with a stolen car without a good reason. Maybe his fellow clowns used to put itching powder in his jockstrap. Or, as Earl said, since Jim was all a flutter about a sum of money, maybe they owed him his percentage of a payday and suddenly forgot how to do the math. There were a lot of possible angles. Too bad I flunked high school geometry.

  The diner coffee was a pleasant distraction and steamed a heavenly aroma. I took a big sip and asked Glenda if anyone ever told her she made the best java in town. Glenda smiled. My heart pounded.

  “Only you,” she said.

  And I almost said them right there, those three little words. But the timing wasn’t right: Glenda was a smart cookie and I didn’t have enough dough. Best to play the long game and wait until there was more than lint and a lucky rabbit’s foot in my pocket. Whisk her off to Paris, the one in France even, that’s how serious I was. First-class tickets, transatlantic flight. We’d sip un double café in little cups in little cafés and walk arm-in-arm through little cobblestoned streets. We’d gaze out from the heights of the Eiffel tower in wonder of the vast city at our feet. We’d be lovers in love. We’d eat fresh-baked croissants with ample dollops of French butter. Word on the street was the French were doing things with butter we here on the other side of the pond could only dream.

  And speaking of dreams, I’d got lost in one. The funeral had spun me off kilter, death reminding me of how fleeting life could be, to live it now while I had the chance. But since it was too soon to tell Glenda how I really felt, I’d have to find another way to have some fun.

  “Fitch, you sure you’re okay?” Glenda asked.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Anything else I can get you?”

  “I don’t suppose you have any French butter?”

  “Gee, I don’t think so. But let me check. Hey, Benny,” she shouted, “we got any French butter?”

  Benny came to the pickup window, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips. “Any what?”

  “French butter,” said Glenda.

  “French butter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Fitch is asking.”

  “French butter?”

  “Yeah, French butter.”

  “Why does he want French butter?”

  “Because I heard it’s good,” I said to Glenda.

  “Because he heard it’s good,” said Glenda to Benny.

  “Ask Fitch this look like France to him?”

  I looked around. “Not really, no.”

  “Not really, no,” said Glenda.

  “So tell him he can go fuck himself.” And with that Benny disappeared from the pickup window.

  “That seems harsh,” I said.

  “No French butter, I guess,” said Glenda.

  “Not today, no. But someday.”

  “It’s that good?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Yeah?”<
br />
  “Change your life good.”

  “Hmm. French butter. I’ll have to try it myself sometime,” said Glenda, winking.

  Score one for Mr. Fitch.

  5

  Up close, the brunette from the funeral wasn’t a total knockout but she’d put a guy on the mat and he’d stay down for the count. Call it a teaspoon too much character in her face to be magazine pretty—a nose that was ever-so-slightly crooked, a forehead with a little too much real estate—but it all came together fairly well and she oozed class and style.

  I’d come to the office to talk to Moyer but he wasn’t in. So instead I’d enjoyed a little afternoon catnap, hat down over my eyes, feet up on my desk. And that was when I heard the telltale clicks on the hallway floor. I got to the door before she could knock and the way she walked in the room made me wish I had a bigger office, one about the size of an airport runway. And me on the other end with a pair of binoculars and a bowl of popcorn. She was something, that’s for sure. The sway in her hips made me the good kind of seasick.

  “Don’t mind that,” I said, meaning the piece of pastrami sandwich on the floor I must’ve missed when I tidied up after Jim’s farewell drunk. She stepped carefully over it. “The last guy here was a bit of a desperate case.”

  “You should get a better class of clientele then, Mr. Fitch.”

  I decided not to tell her that Carnegie Fitch Investigations had never really had any clientele other than Taffy Pook, classy or otherwise. “You have me at a loss, miss. You know my name.”

  She took off her gloves and reached out her hand. “Adora Carmichael, Mr. Fitch.”

  “You were at the funeral yesterday,” I said as we shook hands.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “How’d you find me?”