Dead Clown Blues

by R. Daniel Lester

  “I saw you talking to a lecherous looking creature named Mr. Moyer, who, it seems, doesn’t talk to too many women.”

  “He sang like a canary, did he? Remind me not to tell Moyer that I’m a Commie spy.”

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  “But now you know.”

  She winked. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “So, Carmichael?” I said, taking a seat. “Like the circus that Jim once worked for?”

  “Carmichael’s Travelling Circus of Cacophony, yes. Buckles was a carpet clown who did a suitcase gag walkaround with a confetti bucket blow off that killed every time.”

  The words sounded like ones I knew but I had no idea what they meant strung together like that. “You have a circus-to-English dictionary?”

  Adora apologized. Told me that “Buckles” was Jim’s clown name, a “carpet clown” was one that went into the audience and interacted with them directly, and Jim’s best gag was this working man bit where he dressed up in a suit and carried around a briefcase that, when opened, sprayed confetti. Adora said that when she was a kid it was always the one bit she had to see, every show.

  “See, Mr. Fitch, Jim was like an uncle to me when I was growing up. My mother died of tuberculosis so it was only me and my father. I travelled with the circus and daddy hired a tutor when I was old enough for school. That was my life: town to town to town. Not a lot of kids around, so the circus performers and employees became my family.”

  “Must’ve been an interesting childhood.”

  “You could call it that if you want. I guess I was around fifteen or so when Jim quit the circus and hit the bottle. Then he got mixed up with some townies from some godforsaken little hole in the wall. Little men with big city dreams. And to get to the big city they needed money, so they robbed a bank and a clerk got killed. They say Jim killed him, but I can’t believe it. Not the man I knew. Anyway, Jim ran and went underground, ending up here in Vancouver. They never caught any of the others, but they eventually got Jim. Sentenced him to twenty-five years in prison.”

  Adora took a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. I hadn’t seen any tears but maybe she cried the invisible kind. After all, it was quite the sob story.

  “And he never ratted out the others?” I asked. “That might’ve saved him a few years hard time.”

  “He never did. That’s the kind of friend he was.”

  Ouch. Gut shot. Right then I decided to never pour another person a drink without first checking the gleam in their eyes when I offered it. If it was the kind of gleam like they might get in the desert when they saw water for the first time in days, well, I figured they could pour it themselves. Save me the guilt.

  “And what about your father?” I asked.

  Adora shifted in her seat. “He died,” she said. “Around the same time that Jim quit. It was a terrible accident. My daddy always loved guns and, well, he was cleaning one and it went off. The police told me he didn’t suffer.” She dabbed at her eyes again. “He and Jim were close so I suspect that’s why Jim quit the circus and started drinking—it was too much for him.” Adora then explained how she would’ve asked Jim more about it, but she never saw him again. How she always meant to visit him in prison but the circus was on the road all the time. And then she grew up. And then he became another responsibility to feel bad for not attending to. “Then,” she said, “when I went back a few months ago, he was gone. The warden at the prison told me he’d been released early for good behaviour and had gone back west, where his family was from. The next time I saw Jim he was in that casket, Mr. Fitch.”

  “So you came to Vancouver for the funeral?”

  “No, that’s the strange thing. We’re here on tour. The Circus of Cacophony hit a rough patch for a while there, but lately the bookings have been picking up.”

  I didn’t doubt that the circus was a draw. If the cast of characters I saw at the funeral yesterday was any example, it was no wonder. People liked to gawk at odd things.

  “One of the workers that’s been with us since Jim’s time just happened to see his name in the obituary column. After I saw that, I rounded up a group to go to the funeral and pay our respects.”

  “So what brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “I want you to find out what happened to Jim, Mr. Fitch. Especially the days leading up to his death.”

  “What happened to him?” I said. “I think that’s pretty obvious.”

  “If you believe the police.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “You tell me.”

  I nodded like this happened all the time, like it was just another case in a filing cabinet full of them, and then made a mental note to get a filing cabinet. “Any hot tips? All I know is Jim worked here and met up with some other janitors now and then at a bar ’round the corner. But that’s about it.”

  She took a small notepad from her purse and flipped open the top. “Actually, I do remember him talking about a friend from here once and I wrote the name down. ‘William’ was the first name and back then, at least, he owned a boat called ‘The Saucy Lass.’ The way Jim told it, they shared a few adventures on the high seas.”

  I said that could be a good place to start and thanked her for the info. Adora produced five twenty-dollar bills from a fancy leather wallet.

  “Enough to retain your services?” she asked.

  “Want my soul, too?”

  “That’d be pretty cheap for a soul.”

  “It’s selling at a discount. There’re a few stains that won’t come out.”

  “I’ll satisfy myself with your services,” she said. “For now.” And the look she gave me could’ve melted ice at the North Pole, but I blinked and it was gone, just like that. And so was Adora: out the door, heels clicking against the wood floor until there were no more clicks and then there was only myself and the silence, old friends from long ago.

  6

  Gastown. Chinatown. Hogan’s Alley. Strathcona. That was the Carnegie Fitch walking tour on a fine summer morning. The tour had everything: two twenty-four-hour diners, three slumming socialites, seventeen neon signs just waiting for dusk, one dusty beer parlour, three seedy gin joints, two pool halls, ten barrels of strange spices I’d never seen nor smelled, one old Chinese gentleman, bent over like a paperclip but smiling, still smiling, eight barbequed ducks hanging in a window, three noodle houses, two laundries, one more gin joint, and this one swinging behind papered up windows at two in the afternoon.

  And then, Strathcona. Strathcona was a working class neighbourhood chock-a-block with small, well-kept houses, many with picket fences and all the fixings. I sized up Bartell’s house again, but it seemed shut up tight, same as before. I knocked on the door, figuring I’d try the direct approach. But there was no answer, so no need to dust off the ol’ traveling salesman routine yet.

  Next door to Bartell’s place, an old guy was watering the garden. I must’ve looked suspicious, the way he kept glancing at me. I waved. He waved back. I could tell he was unsure why, even as he was doing it. They sure were friendly around these parts.

  I walked over, stapling on my best smile as I did so. Changed plans last minute and went with religious man, spreading the good word. Just another messenger with a cheap suit and holes in his shoes doing the Lord’s work. Rah-rah-cis-boom-bah and all that. He seemed to buy it so I figured it was worth selling. I asked if he’d seen his neighbour recently. He said his wife would know better and went to get her, if I didn’t mind waiting a minute? I told him I could wait two. After all, the big man upstairs was patient, wasn’t he? The old guy disappeared into his house.

  A few minutes later, he pushed his wife out in a wheelchair, onto the top step of the staircase. Her foot was in a cast, broken, she said, when she stepped off the curb wrong. I shook my head in dismay. There were two knitting needles and half a misshapen sweater in her lap. Knitting clothes to kill time, I supposed. But unless the grandkid
had a hunchback and one arm was longer than the other there was going to be a problem. She gazed at me with eyes happy for any distraction, even if it did look like a door-to-door salesman. I explained what I explained to her husband, that I was looking for their neighbour Bartell Rightly because he’d expressed an interest in the Holy Scripture. She looked at me, then at the house, then back to me.

  “He hasn’t been around, has he, dear? In what, a few weeks?” She leaned in. “Besides, you can do better than him. He’s a horrible man, a disgrace.”

  “Oh, darn,” I said, mimicking disappointment. “He was quite keen. Asked about all ten of the disciples.”

  Her eyes went squinty. “You mean, twelve. There were twelve disciples.”

  “Of course, just our little roadside test. We like to find the devoted.”

  She beamed with pride and directed her husband to go inside and fetch me a cup of coffee. There was also talk of a piece of banana bread, but I said I was watching my figure. She looked up at me, unsure of exactly what species of animal I was. Throw curveballs now and then and people really listened. When the old guy came back with a “Jesus is love” mug I smiled accordingly and sipped the coffee. Water filtered through the earth in their garden would’ve tasted better.

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  Her own mug in hand, she told me that Bartell Rightly was pretty much a good-for-nothing kid that grew up into a good-for-nothing adult. “With only a glance you could tell he was a man with the serpent in his soul. We thought his time in the military would make a man out of him but it only seemed to make matters worse. Ever since Francine, his mother, died, he’s been acting stranger and stranger. Hasn’t he, dear?”

  The old guy considered his wife’s question, but clearly didn’t have the head for gossip and voyeurism that his wife did. He shrugged and went back to watering the plants, his true love.

  “Don’t look now,” I said, “but do you see that black Ford behind me, parked down the block?” I had spotted the car from the corner of my eye a few minutes ago, waiting, under a tree. And I was pretty sure I’d seen it both earlier today, when I left the rooming house, and the other day, after the funeral, on my way to the diner.

  “No,” she said, looking right away. What an amateur.

  “No?”

  “There is no car there.”

  I turned around. She was right. The Ford was gone. Or maybe it was never there in the first place and I needed more rest. Or more coffee. Probably the latter. The dirt coffee was getting cold and that wasn’t helping the taste. Besides, I was fairly sure I’d squeezed all the juice out of this bitter old lemon. Time to make an exit. I quickly handed back the coffee mug, thanked the couple for their hospitality and did the Catholic sign of the cross over the old gal’s broken foot.

  If you gotta throw, throw ’em curveballs.

  “What kind of missionary did you say he was, Bert?” I heard her ask her husband as I walked away.

  At the diner, no Glenda, so I ordered a cherry Coke instead. Better safe than sorry. Greek Benny could not be trusted with something as sacred and precious as the coffee bean. Yes, the heavenly brew was all Glenda’s doing and before she’d been hired the coffee tasted like mule piss. Greek Benny always got mad when I told him that. We had a good script going. He’d say, “How you know what mule piss tastes like anyway, Fitch?” to which I’d say, wearily, “Believe me, Benny, I know. Don’t ask, but I know.” After which Benny would mutter under his breath something in Polish because, despite the nickname, he wasn’t Greek at all. Frankly, I didn’t care how he got the nickname. A man’s business was his own.

  I took my Coke to the payphone in the back and plugged a few nickels in. Shelley was surprised to hear from me.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. We’d been an item for a hot minute a few months back, but it didn’t take long for her to run cold. “Pretty early in the morning for you, isn’t it? Still up from last night?”

  “Shelley, is that any way to talk to a former flame?”

  She laughed. “When they stiff me on our last meal together it is. I broke up with you, Fitch. I was the one that was supposed to leave the restaurant.”

  That night was coming back to me. I knew I didn’t have the scratch to pay for dinner and the cat was out of the breakup bag, so I excused myself to use the bathroom and then jimmied the window open and crawled out. “I was just so heartbroken, baby.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I played a pause where I thought it would work nice and it did. “Still friends?” I said.

  Shelley sighed. “I suppose, Fitch. It was a cheap restaurant you chose anyway.”

  Hatchet buried, or at least lowered for the moment, I swooped in for the kill. There was more than reminiscing on my mind. “You still work for the city, Shell?”

  She answered yes like a castle drawbridge lowers for unexpected guests that might be assassins—slow and suspicious. I explained the situation, saying I needed the skinny on any other properties owned by one Bartell Rightly. Shelley was hesitant at first, but she eventually came around and said she’d see what she could dig up. I gave her the number for the rooming house and the diner payphone.

  Shelley chuckled. “Sounds familiar. Still frequenting those dumps, huh?”

  “Old habits die hard.”

  “Yeah, I know a bit about that,” said Shelley. Then she told me she’d get back to me when she had some information, but not to hold my breath.

  “Only when you walk in the room, my sweet,” I said, laying it on thick. Apparently, a little too thick, for some. Shelley groaned and slammed the phone down.

  I pressed the lever down but didn’t hang up. There were a few more calls to make. I opened the phonebook to “M” for “Marina” and started dialing. I hit paydirt three calls in, the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. After some cajoling and a little deception as to my exact intentions, the desk clerk admitted that there was a boat called “The Saucy Lass” tied at the docks, though he would not confirm the owner’s name. Against the rules and all.

  Next, I found the number of the funeral home that buried Jim in the custom box. That was no pauper’s coffin. That was bought and paid for by someone and I thought it might be interesting to know who the benefactor was. And then there were the funeral suit and shoes. No thrift store purchases there. Quality items.

  When the receptionist answered, I played the part of the grieving son. Just got back from overseas. Terrible news. What a tragedy. My father was not a rich man. Poor but proud. He would want me to take care of this. And so whom do I need to thank for the wonderful gift of my dead father’s eternal comfort? The receptionist said to hold on. I listened to static silence for half a minute. She clicked back on the line.

  “Mr. Baxter, is it?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but it was an anonymous donation. She was quite insistent.”

  “She?”

  “Yes, it was a woman, Mr. Baxter. But that’s all I know. She said she didn’t want to be identified. Paid cash.”

  “Dressed nice?” I asked. “Tall, brunette?”

  “I really don’t remember her hair colour, Mr. Baxter. But she was quite tall, yes.”

  I poked and prodded for some more information but the receptionist had nothing else to say. I hung up proper this time, receiver in the cradle. No more calls to make, so I sat down in my usual booth and watched through the window, the Four Corners Human Parade. And quite a parade it was. All types and all sorts. The mad and the sad. The working and the worked over. As always, Hastings and Main put on a good show.

  When that was turning into reruns, I skimmed the front page of the Vancouver Sun that someone left on the seat the next booth over. Below the fold was a story on local philanthropist, nightclub owner and “known criminal associate,” Salvatore Puccio, who’d been struck and killed on Granville Street by a laundry truck in the early A.M. hours while out walking his dog. No witnesses, but the driver of the truck
reported that Mr. Puccio “came out of nowhere.” The dog, a standard poodle named Fluffy, survived.

  I sighed. Dangerous world.

  When I got to the office, Moyer was holding the front door open for a few guys in overalls and tool belts. Their truck said “Schmidt Brothers Restoration Services” on the side and they seemed as reputable as anyone else in the neighbourhood, which meant they’d probably do a decent enough job but you’d want to check your valuables later. I walked past Moyer, into the lobby.

  “Problems?” I asked.

  “Nah,” said Moyer, letting the front door close behind him. “Just a little leftover work from when a water pipe burst a few months ago. Flooded the whole damn basement.”

  “Sounds like a mess.”

  “It was.” Moyer gave me a look that asked why I was still hanging around the lobby. I told him it was because I wanted Jim’s address and was hoping he could provide it. He shook his head and said it was a waste of time.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “It’s an empty lot,” said Moyer. “Went there myself when he didn’t show up for work, before I learned what happened. But I’ll get you the address and you can see for yourself.”

  I nodded okay, thanks. Moyer came back a moment later, handed me a scrap of paper with the address scrawled on it and then excused himself to check up on the workers in the basement.

  I decided to visit the address anyway. It was only a ten-minute walk away and what else was I going to do? Adora had paid me to trace Jim’s last steps so I figured I should give it a shot. But Moyer was right: nothing there but an empty lot and a banner crop of dandelions. I kicked the head off of a big one and felt a little better.

  On the way back to my neck of the woods, I stopped by the Cambie bar on the corner of Cambie and Cordova and asked about Jim and the janitors. “Sounds like the name of a barbershop quartet group, don’t you think?” I said to the barman, a super-serious type with a knife scar on his left cheek and a chin that looked more like a bum than any chin ought to.