The Rib From Which I Remake the World

by Ed Kurtz

“At the moment I feel safer here than at home. But that doesn’t account for much.”

  “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”

  “Still . . .”

  “Still.”

  Behind them, at the open doors to the auditorium, Jake droned, “Tickets?”

  “Indeed,” came a much closer voice, low and breathy. “Where are your tickets?”

  Jojo half-smiled and craned his neck to see the nurse hovering over them from the ninth row. She was not smiling at all.

  “Your boy at the door has them,” he told her.

  “Doubtful, Mr. Walker. You see, this show is by invitation only. And I don’t recall inviting you. Either of you.”

  “Must’ve been somebody else, then.”

  “More doubtful, still.” The nurse pressed her long, slender fingers into Jojo’s left shoulder and Theodora’s right. Theodora gave a little yelp. “I believe Mr. Davis will see you now.”

  “Well, it’s about goddamn time,” Jojo said.

  He rose from his seat and Theodora rose beside him, but the nurse wagged a scolding finger at her. “Not you, Mrs. Cavanaugh. Just him.”

  “Is my husband with this Davis person?” Theodora asked derisively.

  “I don’t tend to keep track of other women’s husbands, Mrs. Cavanaugh,” the nurse hissed back. Then, with a sneer: “Enjoy the show.”

  “What about the tickets?” Jojo asked.

  “This is her husband’s theatre, after all. She doesn’t need a ticket.”

  With that, the nurse inched down the row toward the aisle, her rump moving seductively from side to side. Jojo noticed.

  “Reckon I’d better follow,” he said to Theodora. “Take the truck if you need to. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”

  Jojo looked at her and didn’t say anything, even when she amended, “And Jojo? Be careful.”

  He went. And on his way back out to the lobby, Jake called after him, “Tickets?”

  “I’m Jojo,” he said by way of introduction as he followed her across the now vacant lobby.

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I’m the nurse.”

  “Is that your Christian name?”

  “This way, Mr. Walker.”

  She minced past the unattended concession stand to the manager’s office at the opposite end of the building. When she reached the door, she waited for Jojo to catch up. She then smiled and said, “Mr. Davis will see you now.”

  “Is Cavanaugh in there with him?”

  “Enjoy the show.”

  “Enjoy the show,” he repeated. “Right.”

  The nurse took her leave of him and he raised his fist to knock on the door, but before he could he heard a clear, authoritative voice call out: “Come in, Mr. Walker.”

  He went in.

  A man with slight shoulders sat behind a desk Jojo presumed belonged to Russell Cavanaugh, who was nowhere in sight. The man made a steeple with his laced fingers, the tip of which he tapped against his chin. A cigar burned in the ashtray; its ash was a few inches long, having gone unsmoked for a while. It burned very evenly, so much so that it impressed Jojo; he rarely smoked cigars, but when he did they always ended up burning fast down one side and slow on the other. The fellow continued to tap his chin rhythmically as he said, “Close the door, Mr. Walker.”

  The man behind the desk glared out from a stony, heavily-pitted face with steel grey eyes. His pomaded hair, parted dead centre, looked like a piece but Jojo could tell it wasn’t. One thing that struck him particularly was the fellow’s fingernails—they were frayed, chewed up. Practically mauled. For some reason it occurred to him that they looked like the fingernails of a man who had clawed his way out of a premature grave.

  Jojo did as he was instructed and went directly to the nearest chair in front of the desk. He sat down and took one of Russ’s cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He’d snatched several of them.

  “I didn’t ask you to have a seat.”

  Jojo crossed his legs and lit the cigarette. “You prefer I’d stand?”

  “Tell me, Mr. Walker,” the man said, knocking the ash from the cigar but not bringing it to his mouth. “What do you do for a living?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Indulge me.”

  “All right. I’m a house dick.”

  “You mean detective.”

  Jojo nodded.

  “For a hotel?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which one?”

  Jojo knitted his brow, wondering where this was going. “The Litchfield Valley,” he said.

  “Ah, yes—just up the street, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe some of my crew are staying there for the duration of our engagement here.”

  “They are, yes.”

  “Nasty business there last night, I hear.”

  “Nasty as it gets,” Jojo agreed. “I see you’ve got a new doctor, though.”

  “Oh, of course. Our Jake was your colleague, was he not?”

  “He worked for the same hotel, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But not anymore.”

  “I guess not. Where’s all this leading, Mr. . . . Davis, isn’t it?”

  The man smiled. “You are not a patient man, are you, Mr. Walker?”

  “Life’s too damn short. And I’m late for work.”

  “Ah, but that’s my point exactly—don’t you see?”

  Jojo drew a long drag on the cigarette and blew out a slow column of smoke.

  “Can’t say as I do, Mr. Davis.”

  “Your work, at the hotel. The hotel up the street. That’s your business. That’s your—well, I don’t know that jurisdiction is quite the word, but for the lack of a better one . . .”

  “Oh, I see now. You’re telling me to quit playing policeman and to know my place, is that it?”

  “Not in so many words, but more or less, yes.”

  Jojo said, “Hmn.” He smoked quietly for a full minute and kept his eyes trained on Davis. If they were having a staring contest, they were due for a tie. Jojo thought he’d been in good shape if he’d bet for a quinella.

  “So, are we in agreement then?” Davis said after a while.

  “In agreement about what, exactly?”

  “That a man ought to mind what’s his and—well, let’s say render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, yes?”

  “Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be able to agree more to that, Davis,” Jojo drawled as he leaned over the desk to put out his smoke. He smashed the ember against the cigar, effectively ruining the latter. “Thing is, I’m still working out what happened to a guest at my hotel, which happens to be mine to mind. I need to know the other guests are safe, which I can’t guarantee if I don’t know what happened to the poor bastard in the first place.”

  “I believe I can assure you that your guests are perfectly safe.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Hell, with that and a nickel I can cross the street for a cup of coffee, Mr. Davis.”

  Davis frowned.

  “Here’s the facts,” Jojo went on. “Roadshow comes to town, all but one of whom stay at my hotel—that one would be you, Mr. Davis. One member of the aforementioned entourage dies in his room under very suspicious circumstances. Sheriff’s Department investigates, but one Barker Davis isn’t around to make a statement. Hotel dick—that would be me—investigates one Barker Davis, finds him to be suspiciously casual about the whole affair.

  “Any argument so far?”

  Davis slowly shook his head.

  “Then there’s one Russell Cavanaugh, owner and operator of the Palace Theater, in whose off
ice we are currently seated.”

  “I do wish you would get to the point,” Davis complained.

  “It’s a delicate issue,” Jojo countered. “If it’s tedious, then the tedium is absolutely necessary.”

  “Get on with it, then.”

  “Do you know anything about dolls, Mr. Davis?”

  “Dolls.”

  “You do know what a doll is?”

  “Naturally I do. But I do not understand what they have to do with me.”

  “Maybe nothing. But I think something. Let me tell you a strange story.”

  Davis sighed dramatically and leaned back in Russ’s chair. The chair’s groan seemed to echo Davis’s own.

  “Late last night, Peter Chappell was in his room—Room 214, for the record—with a young lady. At about that same time, Mrs. Russell Cavanaugh was at home, where she discovered an unusual item in her husband’s coat pocket. She describes the item as a sort of doll, crudely made, sort of like a voodoo doll. You’re a picture man, Mr. Barker; you ever seen The Circus Queen Murder?”

  “I have not.”

  “Not a bad picture, really. It’s got Adolphe Menjou in it. You don’t see him as much as you used to . . . I wonder if it’s harder for a fellow to get work these days if he happens to be called Adolphe.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Davis barked impatiently.

  “Oh, just that there was a voodoo doll in that picture, that’s all. I thought if you’d seen it . . .”

  “I know what a voodoo doll is.”

  “Well, that’s about what it was, this doll Mrs. Cavanaugh found in her husband’s pocket, I mean. Now, I know what you’re thinking: what makes the difference between a regular doll and a voodoo doll? Not much, as it happens. Just that it was full of spices and bones, and that when the damn thing came apart, so did Pete Chappell. Now how d’you like them apples, Mr. Davis?”

  “I think that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s pretty damn crazy, I’ll give you that. But then so was the murder—no, it hasn’t been officially classified as a murder, but that’s what it is—and so is a nice kid like Jake turning into a zombie after coming into contact with you people. It’s a big damn crazy fruit salad, you ask me, and that’s how come I don’t seem to know my place so well lately.”

  “I see.”

  “Particularly when ‘my place’ gets so blurred. That bloody room back at the hotel is my responsibility, you know. And the bloody footprints, so to speak, all seem to lead right here.”

  For the first time, Davis took the cigar from the ashtray and sucked a mouthful of smoke from it, despite the damage inflicted by Jojo’s cigarette. He held it in while he mulled things over, his eyes narrowing and rolling around blindly in their sockets. When at last he exhaled, there was no smoke.

  “You were at the men’s show last night, were you not?” he asked.

  “I was,” Jojo agreed.

  “Are you an aficionado of motion pictures, Mr. Walker?”

  “I used to be. I don’t seem to take them in much anymore.”

  “How about the stage? I fear you haven’t got a playhouse in your humble little hamlet.”

  “Spit it out, Davis.”

  The pockmarked man grinned, cigar still in hand.

  “What, courage man!” he shouted abruptly, giving Jojo a start. “What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.”

  “Believe me,” Jojo said, “I care plenty.”

  “Not in this sense, Mr. Walker. Our Bard means curiosity when he says care.”

  “Oh, I’m hip. Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Cute. Got any others like that one?”

  Barker Davis returned the cigar to the ashtray and stood up from Russ’s chair. He stared deeply at Jojo’s face, taking in every scar.

  “Helter skelter, hang sorrow,” he intoned, “care will kill a cat, up-tails all, and a pox on the hangman!”

  “More Billy Shakespeare?”

  “Ben Jonson, actually. My preference, as it happens, when it comes to English Renaissance dramatists. What is yours, Mr. Walker?”

  Again with the smarmy grin. Jojo pulled another cigarette from his pocket and fired it up.

  “I’m a John Fletcher man, myself,” he said matter-of-factly. “Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes—”

  “Brother to Death,” Davis cut in, “sweetly thyself dispose.”

  “Do you always got to have the last word?”

  “I’m a showman,” Davis said, shrugging apologetically. “I can’t help myself.”

  “Then you can understand how I feel about being a detective.”

  “A hotel detective.”

  Jojo did not argue.

  “I’ve always been in show business, Mr. Walker,” Davis said expansively as he began to pace behind the desk. “All my life. Before I was in the picture business, I was on the sawdust trail—do you know what that means?”

  “Sure. You were a carny.”

  “At first, yes. Picking up peanut shells and elephant leavings; one must pay his dues. But I made friends in the Ten-in-One, a magician, particularly. Taught me many things, that sorcerer. A great many tricks. In a way, I took his place. In another way, he took mine.”

  “You’re losing me, Davis.”

  “It is an entirely different world, the life of the travelling circus. A whole other universe with its own rules, its own laws and etiquette. I once knew a fellow who was probably the most handsome man I’d ever seen, and he was hopelessly in love with a woman we called Big Bertha. She weighed nearly six hundred pounds. Children laughed at her. But this fellow loved her more than life itself. Only in the circus, Walker. But I suppose you know that just as well as I do. After all, you are of the same . . . pedigree, might I say? Or is that touching too close to home?”

  Jojo grimaced. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your coat is beginning to show, Jojo Walker.”

  “My coat . . . ?”

  “You’re in bad need of a shave.”

  “Listen—”

  “I was never much of a comedian—that much I left to the clowns—but do you want to know what really strikes me as funny? That I’m the one called ‘Barker’ when you, Mr. Walker, are the dog-faced boy.”

  Jojo launched himself to his feet and slammed his fist against the top of the desk. The cigar leapt from the ashtray, rolled across the desk and fell down to the carpet.

  “Now you listen to me, you son of a bitch,” he growled, his fists clenched and shoulders trembling with rage. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about me, hear? And if you call me that again, I swear to Christ I’ll lay you out.”

  “It’s only what was painted on the canvas, Jojo—or don’t you remember?”

  Jojo opened his mouth to retort, but no words escaped his throat. Instead, he froze in an angry pose, a statue of fury stopped in time. Barker Davis threw his head back and laughed as the office door creaked open and two members of his roadshow entourage came in. Jojo twisted at the waist to see them—the tall guy in the tweed jacket he’d seen at the hotel was one of them, but he was less sure about the little fireplug with the red beard beside him. He may have been there, too, but Jojo was reeling from the shock of what Barker Davis had said.

  Painted on the canvas.

  At the Ten-in-One. The sideshow.

  The freakshow.

  Davis reached down behind the desk and came back with a long, shiny black cane. He twirled it expertly and spread his legs in a dramatic fashion. Jojo braced for a beating, but instead the showman spread his arms and proclaimed:

  “Laaaaaaadies and gentlemen—from the dense, wild forests that bank Russia’s Volga River comes an untamed, uncivilized beast the likes of which you have
never seen. It was hunters from Kostroma that found the little beast, tracked him and his father to their cave where they were captured for your astonishment.”

  Jojo’s head swam. He staggered backwards and would have fallen over had the two heavies not steadied him. The room grew hot very rapidly. The reek of sweat and popcorn and animal shit filled his nostrils.

  “He is a savage who cannot be tamed! He is locked behind iron bars for your safety!”

  The bars materialized all around him. He could not recall if they had been there the whole time. At his feet was a bed of hay and he had a strong sense of déjà vu he couldn’t quite place.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this specimen is not for the faint of heart. Do not be ashamed if you must look away from . . . Jojo the Dog-Faced Boy!”

  A heavy velvet curtain came away, taking the office walls with it. Hot late summer sun beat down through the bars of the cage and Jojo instinctively put his hand to his brow. He seized a fistful of long, course hair. A chorus of cries and gasps was followed by a spate of laughter. One of the men behind him, the fireplug, jabbed him in the ribs with a wooden pole. Jojo scrambled away from it to the opposite corner of the cage.

  The man snarled, “Bark, you damn monster! Growl, goddamn you!”

  “Bark, dog-boy,” someone in the crowd cajoled.

  “How come he don’t bark?” cried someone else.

  Again the pole flew at him, stabbing into the small of his back. Jojo let out a pitiful moan. He was surprised at the smallness of his own voice. It was the voice of a young boy.

  “That’s it,” the fireplug seethed. “Growl, boy. Growwwwwl.”

  The man bared his teeth cruelly and rattled the bars with the pole. Jojo whimpered, flattened himself against the bars and let out a shrill howl. The fireplug laughed. The crowd roared with applause and shouts of delight.

  Jojo tried to say, This is a trick. None of it’s real. But it all came out a series of rumbling barks, like a dog imitating human speech.

  He threw his hands to his face and grabbed handfuls of the hair his Ambras Syndrome caused to sprout from his face and neck and every place else on the body he loathed. He ripped the hair out by the roots, but there was too much to tear out. It was like hacking through a primeval jungle with a butter knife—wherever he tore away a handful, the hair seemed just as thick as ever. Thicker.