“Lived a lot of years being cautious,” he replied.
“Can’t argue with that,” I said, looking around.
The room was lighted with three fancy, turn-of-the century lamps. Two plush couches faced each other in the center of the room. Behind them was a massive four-poster bed. The walls were draped with tapestries-one a scene of men in feathered hats about to shoot a deer, another a scene of two men with feathered hats whispering while two young women stood giggling at a fountain. A violin lay on one of the couches. A phonograph, an old wind-up thing with a megaphone speaker, sat on an ornate table. The chest of drawers in the corner looked as if it had been designed for a giant with a taste for fancy wedding cakes.
“Props,” he said. “Pulled ’em up here years ago. Gonna turn me in?”
“No,” I said. “You play the violin.”
“Play every damned instrument man invented,” he said proudly. “Even the lyre. Nothing else to do. One instrument a year, night after night. Plenty of music. Plenty of instruments. And I can repair them all. Can play any tune. You name it. Name the instrument and I’ll play the song on it. Even do ragtime on a French horn.”
“‘Sheik of Araby’ on a tuba,” I said.
“Hell, I can do that,” he said. “Do it sitting on a toilet.”
“Projectors,” I said as he looked around the room for either a toilet or a tuba or both. He stopped looking.
“Projectors,” he repeated, turning to me.
“Movie projectors,” I said. “One of them almost killed Miss Bartholomew.”
“Couple of old Edison projectors in the balcony,” he said, picking up his violin. “Can play this thing like a guitar. Listen.”
He started to plunk, and I put my hand out to stop him.
“Where were you fifteen minutes ago?” I asked.
“Where? Here practicing.”
“No one can be as eccentric as you pretend to be.” I looked him directly in the eye.
“Son,” he said, “it is not easy. I’m the harmless old coot. The character every good theater needs. If I didn’t exist, they’d have to go out and cast me.”
“I thought so,” I said.
“Thought so, hell,” Raymond said. “I’m the genuine article. Been playing this role so long I am it. Don’t know where my act begins and ends. Danger of playing any role too long. You want my secret? I was an actor. When this place was a theater, I was an actor in the last show. Quake came and went and I stayed. Didn’t have much money. Didn’t plan to stay. Went out for some roles. Didn’t get them. It just happened.”
“Someone who knows this place has killed a man, tried to kill me and Miss Bartholomew,” I said. “You’re the only one who knows this place that well.”
“Miss Bartholomew,” he said. “Tell my old Granny. I was with the fat guy when she came screaming. Ask him.”
He was right. He had come down the hall with Lundeen seconds after Lorna had come up the stairs after the Phantom … or someone … had tried to strangle her.
“Coming to you, son?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t give up easy.”
“No man worth a brass turd would,” he said.
“Cut it out, Raymond,” I said.
“Told you, I can’t. Lots of people have been nosing around this place since they decided to open it up again,” Raymond said. “That fat guy.”
“He was with you when Miss Bartholomew was attacked, remember?” I said. “Lose him and you lose your alibi.”
“I see what you mean,” he acknowledged, reaching a bony finger to touch an itch just under his nose. “I’ve spent too damn much time alone to make sense. Want a sandwich? I got Prem and stuff in an icebox.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “We’ll be talking again.”
“I’ll practice up for it,” said Raymond with a snaggle-toothed grin.
I was down the second step of the tower when the violin began to play ragtime behind me. I was on the way to the third step when I saw Jesus Ortiz standing in front of me.
“Lost?” I asked pleasantry.
I would have liked an answer, something to bounce off of, but the Deacon Jesus Ortiz did the one thing I would have preferred not to see. He grinned, and the grin was not pretty. His teeth were large and close to white and he looked happy. The bridge of his nose was raw from where it had met the hood of my Crosley the night before. I backed up a step. He didn’t follow.
Behind me Raymond Griffith was playing a Scott Joplin version of “Anything Goes,” no mean trick on a fiddle, but I really couldn’t appreciate it at the time.
Ortiz was wearing a new light gray suit.
“Nice suit,” I tried.
The closest sound I could equate to what Ortiz gave out was the snort of a pregnant seal I once saw in the Griffith Park Zoo.
I backed up. I was running out of back-up room. My back was to Raymond’s door. I reached behind me and knocked as Jesus Ortiz, who had all the time in the world, moved-or rather, hulked-toward me, getting happier with each step. Raymond’s playing grew a little less frenzied.
“What you want?” he called.
“I forgot something,” I said.
“Can’t stop,” Raymond shouted. “The muse has got me.”
There was about five feet of space between Ortiz and me, and through, above, or beyond Raymond’s playing, I could have sworn Ortiz was humming.
There was no room to get past Ortiz, and Raymond was taken by the muse.
“I don’t think Reverend Souvaine would want you …” I began, but Ortiz was shaking his head.
“He would want you to …” I went on.
When Ortiz was close enough to kiss my chin and for me to smell Adam’s Clove on his breath, I threw a right cross to his stomach. He didn’t even bother to block it. My fist hit solid concrete just above the kidney.
I threw a left toward his already tender nose. His shoulder came up and caught the blow. I came up with my right knee. He turned so the kneecap hit his thigh. I was running out of ideas.
Ortiz’s right hand came up and grasped my arm. It did more than hurt.
“You got a mother?” I asked.
He shook his head no.
Raymond stopped playing and complained, “Stop the noise out there, will you? Thirty years I hear nothing but creaking and mice, and wouldn’t you know it, the day I get inspired, a bunch of hooligans set up a circus on my doorstep.”
“Raymond,” I called to him as Ortiz’s left hand came up toward my throat. “Call for help, now.”
“Got no phone,” Raymond bleated. “Got no phone. Got no phone. Told you that. I got nothing in here but what I got in here, and now I don’t have my inspiration.”
Jesus Ortiz’s thick fingers now had a firm grip on my neck, and I was getting a headache. He was definitely humming, but I didn’t know the tune. He pulled my head down to him and put his mouth to my ear.
“I’m gonna pop your eyeballs,” he whispered in a surprisingly high voice.
I took little comfort in the knowledge that he could talk. My head was throbbing.
“Murder,” I gasped.
“Yeah,” he said. “Murder puta.”
“God will …” I groaned.
“God’s will, si,” he said.
I’ll be truthful here. I’m not sure if Deacon Ortiz would have killed me if Jeremy hadn’t appeared on the landing behind him. Maybe he was just planning to cause me great pain and murder Raymond’s inspiration. But there, over the deacon’s shoulder, I saw Jeremy Butler. I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs.
I did hear the door behind me open and Raymond shout, “Begone!”
Ortiz did not see Jeremy, but he did see something in my eyes-hope of salvation-and he saw that my eyes were looking over his shoulder. Without letting me go, he turned. Raymond saw a bald giant moving forward, noticed that a marble slab of a man was about to strangle me, and hastily closed his door.
“I know you,” Ortiz said to Jeremy.
“Wichita, 1934,
” said Jeremy. “Baseball park. You wrestled Man Mountain Dean in the headline.”
Ortiz considered. I began to pass out.
“Butler,” he said. “You wrestled my brother, Jaime. You broke Jaime’s shoulder.”
Jeremy ambled slowly forward and reached up toward Ortiz’s left hand, which was now only vaguely visible to me as I started to pass out.
“Your brother lost control,” Jeremy said. “He tried to kill me.”
“He wasn’t as good as me,” said Jesus with a smile, giving me a little love squeeze so I’d groan and let him know I was still alive.
“No,” said Jeremy, putting his hand on Ortiz’s wrist. “He wasn’t.”
“And you was old then,” Ortiz said, looking at Jeremy’s hand as it began to squeeze his wrist.
“I was old then,” Jeremy admitted. “But I was not at peace, as I am now.”
Ortiz was grinning widely. Raymond began to play again. Only this time the playing was madness. No tune. Just noise. Screeching noise and anger.
I knew Jeremy was getting somewhere in spite of Jesus Ortiz’s grin because I felt the deacon’s fingers loosen. Not much, but enough so I thought I might be approaching a breath.
“Let him go,” Jeremy said softly.
Jesus shook his head no.
Jeremy’s free hand came up, open-palmed and fast. It caught Ortiz on the side of the head. Ortiz didn’t stagger. He did let me go. He did hiss. But he didn’t step back.
“I think I’ll break your shoulder, old man,” he said as I slid back against Raymond’s door.
My hand caught the handle. I turned it and the damned thing opened. I fell into Raymond’s room and heard him shout, “Where the hell is a human being’s right to priv-a-see?”
My head was a mass of pain. I looked up from the floor where I was sitting and saw Jeremy and Ortiz holding hands. They were facing each other, Jeremy’s right grasping Ortiz’s left and his left Ortiz’s right.
“The hell with charity,” cried Raymond, and started a new tune on his fiddle. It sounded a little too much like “After You’ve Gone.”
Jeremy and Ortiz, their fingers locked, began to dance to the music. At least it looked as if they were dancing to the music. My plan was to leap to my feet find something heavy, and crack Ortiz’s skull. That was my plan, but when I tried to get up I slumped back to the floor, my head waming me of certain disaster if I dared to move.
Jeremy and Ortiz waltzed past the door, grunting, trying to keep their faces from turning red. Ortiz continued to grin. Jeremy showed nothing. Mid-tune Raymond changed to a Strauss waltz to make life easier for the dancing bears. On their next pass they fell through the door and tumbled to the floor, almost crushing me.
“I suppose,” said Raymond, continuing to play, “there would be no point in asking you to leave my abode.”
Jeremy hurtled across the room, crushed a fragile-looking, dirty-pink chair. He was rising slowly as Ortiz got to one knee and then lunged, landing on him and sending him tumbling backward into the old Victrola on a rickety table. The Victrola swayed. Ortiz’s fingers found the flower-shaped speaker and ripped it from the machine.
“Oh, oh,” groaned Raymond. “That’ll do it. No more music. No more hospitality. Out you all go.”
Ortiz was about to clobber Jeremy with the speaker when Raymond hit him on the neck with his fiddle. The fiddle shattered; a piece of it came twanging past my head as I got to one knee. It didn’t really stop Ortiz, who was humming again, but it did distract him for a heartbeat. The heartbeat was enough for Jeremy to bring his head up sharply into Ortiz’s nose.
Ortiz dropped the Victrola speaker and stepped back. His hand moved up to his nose. Blood streamed from between his fingers, but I’ll be damned if he wasn’t still humming. He took his hand down and looked at each of us, his face a bloody mask, his grinning teeth smeared red. Jeremy stepped forward on pieces of crushed furniture. He staggered slightly. Ortiz lunged forward again, arms out. Jeremy went down on one knee and caught the flying barrel of flesh on his shoulder.
“No point asking you not to break anything more, is there?” asked Raymond.
Jeremy had Ortiz on his shoulders now. Ortiz, who couldn’t have weighed less than 240 pounds, was grasping at his opponent’s bald head in search of a forgotten hair. He threw a fist at Jeremy’s back, but Jeremy slowly stood erect. Ortiz’s head went down and his teeth dug into Jeremy’s shoulder. A tic crossed Jeremy’s mouth but he didn’t pause. He hoisted Ortiz over his head and began to spin, slowly at first and then faster.
As he spun, Ortiz stopped biting and began to growl. I couldn’t tell where Ortiz’s blood stopped and Jeremy’s began, and as they spun I couldn’t tell where one man began and the other ended. They were a dizzying blur. My stomach heaved, did more than threaten. I looked around for a vase, a bucket. Nothing. The two men spun and Raymond reached down to help me up, saying, “I’m gonna take this real philosophical. New company’s moving in. New company’ll clean it up. Always be new shows. New sets.”
Suddenly Jeremy stopped. Ortiz flew toward me and Raymond. I pulled Raymond down. Ortiz landed upside down on Raymond’s sofa. The legs crunched and Ortiz lay silent.
“Jeremy,” I said. “You all right?”
“I endure,” Jeremy said softly, catching his breath. “Is he alive?”
I made my way to Ortiz, whose feet were dangling over the top of the sofa, his head tilted downward. His lips were moving and a humming sound was coming out. I touched him. He smiled through red teeth.
“I think his shoulder’s broken,” I said.
Jeremy moved forward and looked down at Ortiz.
“An irony,” he said. Little beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. His clothes and cheek were covered with blood.
“Paddy wagon, funny farm cart, or ambulance?” asked Raymond, moving toward the door.
“Ambulance,” I said.
“I have decided to move to quieter climes,” Raymond said. And he was gone.
“Lucky you came,” I said as Jeremy and I turned Ortiz so that he was in something close to a lying-down position.
“I had a message for you,” he said. “You are …” and then he paused and stared at the wall.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“A breeze just touched the fine hairs on the back of my hand and a voice whispered ‘mortality,’” he said, softly.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It was both frightening and restful,” he said.
I looked at his bloody face and bulldog neck. Jeremy Butler didn’t always make a hell of a lot of sense to me.
“The message for me?” I asked.
He sighed, opened Ortiz’s right eye with his thumb, examined him for further signs of life, and replied, “Miss Bartholomew asked that you come to her apartment. She says she has information you should have. She gave me her address and number.”
Jeremy reached a hand into his shirt pocket. One of his fingers had been bitten by Ortiz. I could see the indentations from the deacon’s teeth. I took the piece of paper.
“I think you’d best go before the police arrive,” Jeremy said.
“You want to know what this was all about?” I asked, rubbing my sore neck.
“Perhaps later,” he said, moving to the window. “If you think it essential that I know.”
“Thanks, Jeremy,” I said. “Sure you’re okay?”
He turned to look at me and smiled sadly.
“Every time I have wrestled or been engaged in combat,” he said, “I have been lost within the space and time of the encounter. I have been within and outside of myself. My concentration has always been complete with no sense of ego, but in this roorn I did not merge with my movements. I was aware that I would soon be a father. It was then that mortality touched me. I felt very much alive.”
“Great,” I said with enthusiasm, hoping that was the right comment.
“Go,” he said. And I went.
On the way out, I found Gunther wai
ting for Stokowski in the lobby.
“You are injured?” he asked with concern.
“I’m all right,” I said, and gave him directions up to Raymond’s tower in case Raymond didn’t get back. He said that the rehearsal had been cut short by Stokowski and that everyone had left except for Stokowski and Vera Tenatti. Shelly, he said, was watching outside Vera’s door.
I thanked him and hurried for Vera’s dressing room. Shelly was nowhere in sight. I knocked and Vera called, “Come in.”
I came in and Shelly came hurtling at me from a corner, one hand holding his glasses on, the other out like a stiff-arming half-back. He missed me by a good two feet and tumbled into an open closet filled with Vera’s costumes.
Vera gasped.
“Shelly,” I said, helping him up. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We heard a voice,” Vera said. She was standing next to her dressing table.
“A voice,” Shelly agreed. “Man. Right out of the wall.”
“He said,” Vera began, and then shuddered. “He said, ‘She will die before she sings for the Lion. I will strike within the hour.’”
“I’ve been hiding behind the door,” said Shelly, on his feet now.
“He plans to kill me,” said Vera, her eyes wide.
I moved to comfort her. She felt warm and smelled great.
“I don’t think he meant you,” I said. “I think he meant Lorna. I think he meant he would get her before she sings to me.”
“You?” There was disbelief in her voice.
“You’re no lion,” said Shelly. “Besides, he’s nuts. Why would he tell us he was going to kill Lorna what’s-her-name? What lion?”
“My middle name is Leo,” I said.
“Pretty flimsy,” said Shelly, finding a piece of cigar in his pocket and lighting it.
I gave the note from Lorna to Vera.
“Call the police. Those two cops who were here, Preston and Nighttime …”
“… Sunset,” she corrected.
“Call them and send them to Lorna’s. I’ll meet them there.”
I didn’t think about it. I just gave Vera a kiss. It seemed the right thing to do and the right time to do it. She kissed back. Middle of Act Two. Knight off to war-Wish me luck, babe. And I was off.
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