by David Khalaf
He pulled her up to her feet.
“Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“To my place. You’re going to stay there until you tell me how this thing works.”
“But I don’t know!”
He dragged her across the floor by the hair.
“You’ve got plenty of fingers and toes. I’m sure you’ll remember.”
CHAPTER
T HIRTY
GRAY WAS THROUGH with people for the night, but it seemed people weren’t yet through with him. When he reached the base of Chaplin’s winding driveway, he noticed the gates were open and he saw the outline of cars parked in the roundabout at the top. Lots of them.
He saw lights and heard the murmur of voices. A party. At least Chaplin hadn’t been worried about where he had gone.
The long walk back to the mansion seemed to ease the swelling in his hand, and it gave Gray time to think. He had decided he would tell Chaplin where the Eye was, and then he’d leave. There was nothing else he could do to help Pickford, and he’d be better off alone. Better to leave before Chaplin or one of the others let him down too.
When he reached the top of the driveway, he saw that there was a gathering of sorts, but not like any he’d want to attend. The front yard and house were full of cops and squad cars. They milled about, talking in sullen tones as if they had been invited to a petting party only to discover there were no frails to pet.
He walked to the front door but hit a wall of flatfoots in their dark uniforms. Their backs were to him. In the spaces between the men, he saw a flash and heard the crackle of a photographer’s camera.
Gray muscled his way through and found himself in a ring of officers circled up as if they were placing bets in a cockfighting ring. There was something at the center, lying on the bottom steps of the staircase. It was small and hairy—an animal maybe? If there had been a fight this thing had lost; a streak of red stained Chaplin’s white carpet. Gray took a step toward it. That’s when he saw what it was: a human head.
It was Nina Beauregard—or what remained of her.
Gray turned his head in disgust but his eyes refused to follow. A sniffling sob finally snapped his attention away. Off to the side, Chief Barry Stoker struggled to compose himself.
“That English girl was right. I should have listened to her. But how would I know?”
The man was blubbering as if he were at his own mother’s funeral. A subordinate officer patted him on the shoulder.
“It’s OK, chief,” the cop said. “No one could have known. A man intent on this type of violence, you can’t stop him.”
“Any sign of the others?”
“No, the rest of the house is clean. He must be keeping them somewhere else.”
“She was the best actress the movie screen ever saw,” Stoker said. “I will avenge her death, if it’s the last thing I do.”
Gray forced himself to look at her again. Her face looked shriveled and old. Whatever beauty Newton’s Eye had imparted on her had left when she died. Atlas must have planted the head there. But why?
To take Chaplin out of the picture.
Gray stepped forward.
“Can’t you see this is a setup?”
Stoker sniffed hard.
“Who’re you?”
“Charlie Chaplin didn’t do this. Why would he leave evidence on his own staircase?”
Stoker walked over to him and furrowed his brow, which presumably meant he was thinking.
“Why do you look familiar?”
He tapped his own forehead with his finger until finally his face lit up.
“You were here that night I dropped the girl off. She said you knew about the missing women too.”
“Maybe he’s the Star Stalker’s accomplice,” an officer said. “You know, maybe he lured the broads down a dark alley by acting lost. We should take him in and question him.”
Now I know why Chaplin never wanted to involve the police.
“Where’s Mr. Chaplin?” Gray asked.
“At the Hollywood station, rotting in a cell,” Stoker said. “Not fast enough.”
Gray needed to see Chaplin. That was all that mattered.
“Fine. Take me in for questioning.”
Gray’s gamble paid off—they cuffed him and threw him in the back of a squad car, as rough-and-tumble as cops in the movies.
Down at the station, Chief Stoker couldn’t think of half a dozen questions to ask him. Stoker had no evidence Gray was in on any kidnapping conspiracy. In fact, he had no evidence against Chaplin aside from the head and a conveniently anonymous tip they had received.
“He’s an actor,” Stoker had said when Gray insisted on defending him. “Of course he seems innocent. He’s acting.”
Stoker pulled out a piece of gum and began to chew on it angrily.
“It’ll all come out soon enough. He was cagey the night I was over there, trying to send me away without so much as a night cap.”
Gray sat opposite Stoker, a big desk in-between them. He was like a man who had decided the Earth was flat, and no amount of evidence to the contrary was going to change his mind.
“Worst part is, he’ll get away with it,” Stoker said. “Bigwigs like him always do. Well, I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to let Nina Beauregard’s murderer go free.”
He clenched his teeth and shook, a child on the verge of a tantrum.
This guy is completely nerts.
The phone rang. Stoker huffed out a few breaths and then answered it.
“Put him through,” he said.
He listened for a moment. The nasal voice of Farrell Partridge on the other end was impossible to mistake.
“We have him here,” Stoker said, looking at Gray. “We’re not a taxi service. Come get him yourself if he’s so important to you.”
Gray could only imagine what Farrell would do if he got a hold of him again. Farrell collected grudges the way other people collected stamps. He stored them away in the picture book in his mind, carefully preserved until the day he needed to pull it out and point at the offense. Gray’s leaving would be the crown jewel of his collection.
“You stay here,” Stoker said. “I gotta fill out some paperwork.”
The police chief slipped a flask in his side pocket and left his office, closing the door behind him. Gray tried the door. It was locked from the outside.
Gray would have loved to have Panchito’s talent so he could turn the lock. Or even Elsie’s talent to soften up Chief Stoker. But he didn’t. All he had was a head full of street smarts; surely they were worth something.
He looked out of the office window and saw a junior cop with a Mount Everest of paperwork. His name tag glinted off the overhead lights: Potts. Gray picked up the phone and waited for the operator. He asked to be patched through to the police station. It worked. He waited for an answer, then asked to be transferred to Officer Potts. He heard the cop’s phone ring at his desk.
“Potts here.”
“Um, hi. I was just in the station and my brother wandered off. You seen him anywhere? Dirty blond hair, fifteen years old, in a tuxedo.”
“I ain’t a babysitter. There’s no one—”
Potts looked up toward Stoker’s office. Gray had the receiver on the opposite side of his face, with his head resting on his closed hand as if he were bored.
“I see him.”
Potts slammed the phone down and Gray quickly hung up his own receiver. The officer opened the door.
“Your brother’s outside. Scram.”
Gray smiled deferentially and darted out of the office. The building was a maze. Hallways were narrow and doors were unmarked. Finally, three floors and two long hallways later, Gray managed to find the detention area, which he slipped into while two guards flipped through a new calendar of pin-up girls for the upcoming year.
Chaplin was sitting on a bench in a small clean cell, flipping a coin. He spotted Gray.
“Ninety-two tails out of a
hundred flips. Not bad.”
“Mr. Chaplin! You’re OK.”
“I am most certainly not OK. I’m missing Amos n’ Andy!”
His suit was ruffled but he sat languidly as if in a waiting room at the dentist.
“How did they arrest you?”
“The police were waiting for me when I got home. I barely got a glance at the…remains.”
Chaplin closed his eyes, but the way he shuddered suggested the image of the head wasn’t so easily forgotten.
“Did you know Nina Beauregard?” Gray asked.
“We weren’t close,” Chaplin said. “And yet now I’ll never get her out of the carpet.”
He smiled apologetically.
“Sorry, it’s how I cope. What happened to you?”
Chaplin reached through the bars and gently touched bump on Gray’s forehead.
“We found the Eye!”
“What?”
“And Mr. Fairbanks tried to steal it from me.”
“WHAT?”
Gray told Chaplin the whole story. Chaplin sat silently, but Gray watched as the man’s hands closed around the jail bars, flexing tighter and tighter until the skin looked as if it would tear off his knuckles.
“Take the Eye, and get on the first train out of here,” Chaplin said. “Ask Paulette for some money so you can buy a ticket. If he’s willing, take Panchito with you. Tell no one else.”
“But what about you? You’re in jail for murder!”
Chaplin brushed away the thought.
“That’s nothing,” he said. “Every celebrity ends up in jail for murder at some point. It’s a rite of passage.”
“Don’t be so sure. Chief Stoker has it out for you.”
“Stumbling Stoker? He couldn’t solve a one-piece puzzle. Besides, I have truth on my side. Truth, and luck.”
Gray looked at the coin in Chaplin’s hand.
Ninety-two flips out of a hundred.
“Even luck runs out, Mr. Chaplin.”
Chaplin grabbed Gray by the arm firmly.
“Just promise me you’ll leave town.”
“I promise.”
Gray offered a hopeful smile and then left Chaplin alone in his cell.
I hate lying to people I like.
CHAPTER
T HIRTY-ONE
PANCHITO GLOWERED AT the procession of small children walking by. Someone probably found them cute. Not him. They passed the restaurant, dressed as little shepherds, angels, and lambs, but all he saw in his mind were Chaplins, Elsies and Grays.
The candlelight procession shuffled down Olvera Street’s cobblestone walkway, singing the same Mexican hymns they did every Christmas. Panchito flicked his finger as the little children passed, extinguishing their candles one by one. Then, feeling guilty, he called them over and had them relight their candles in the restaurant.
He tried to bury his fury in a frothy cup of champurrado, but even the warm, chocolatey drink didn’t soothe him.
“Hermoso desfile,” his grandmother said as she stood frying buñuelos. She was selling the sweet fritter with a cup of champurrado for ten cents to Las Posadas spectators.
“It’s the same thing every night for nine nights.”
“Nos trae plata.”
It brings in money.
“You need a vacation, Abuelita.”
Panchito chomped down on his fifth or sixth buñuelo, gnashing it to bits with his teeth. No matter where he tried to send his thoughts, they kept turning back to Gray and Elsie, and what they were doing. Had they found the Eye? Were they off to rescue Pickford already? Was anyone going to tell him anything?
They were locking him out because, he figured, they wanted the credit for finding the Eye.
Everyone wants to be the hero.
If any of them was suited to be a hero, it was the one with the greatest courage. Why didn’t people see that? Superman would never be replaced halfway through an adventure by some girl with feelings.
As the procession trickled to an end, three men lingered behind. They stopped in front of the restaurant. Panchito recognized the two pachucos from the other day: Flynn Mustache and Grant Hair. They had bottles in their hands as if they had been drinking.
The third man was dressed in a purple suit and matching hat. He was tall, in his late forties with a thick but neat mustache. He might have looked debonair had his face not been severely pock-marked. From Abuelita’s old photo albums Panchito recognized the man.
Jesús Herrera.
This was the last remaining member of the Herrera clan, the family that had once been close to Pancho Villa but turned on him during the Revolution.
“My men tell me that you have failed to pay your fee for our protection services,” Herrera said. “An oversight, I’m sure.”
He stepped into the tiny restaurant and looked around.
“You’ll pay double, for this month and every month thereafter. And there will be no unpleasantness.”
“I’ll pay you double alright,” Panchito said, balling his hands into fists. “First my right, then my left.”
Herrera took notice of the oil paintings on the wall—the only mementos Abuelita had taken as they escaped Mexico. He cocked his head at the portrait of Panchito’s half-siblings, painted before he was born.
“I know these people,” he said.
“You betrayed these people,” Panchito said.
Herrera looked at the portrait on the other wall, the one of Pancho Villa himself. It was subtle, but Panchito saw the man take half a step back.
“Who are you?” Herrera asked.
Panchito stepped right up to him, his face only at the height of the man’s chest.
“I am José Doroteo Arango Alameda. Heir of José Doroteo Arango Arámbula—the man you knew as Pancho Villa. The man you killed.”
Herrera glanced at his men and nodded slightly.
“Pancho Villa killed my entire family,” Herrera said. “He deserved to die.”
Grant pulled out something from his pocket. Matches. He lit a piece of cloth stuck in Flynn’s bottle. They weren’t drinks; they were gasoline bombs. He was about to light his own bottle as well. Panchito had to act, fast.
He stepped in-between Grant and Herrera. He thrust Grant as hard as he could, recoiling hard against Herrera and knocking himself and the ringleader to the ground. Grant smashed against the stove and the unlit gas bomb shattered, spraying gas everywhere. The stove, which had a pot of champurrado warming on it, burst into flames. Grant’s suit lit up like a Chinese firework.
“Dios mío!” his grandmother shrieked. “Cuidado!”
Flynn had Abuelita by the arm, but his grip loosened when he saw his friend in flames.
Panchito braced himself against a wall; he thrust Flynn into a fountain in the center of the walkway behind him. The man tripped on the edge of the fountain and dropped his gas bomb. The flame sizzled out in the pool of water.
“Ve por ayuda!” Panchito shouted to his grandmother. She hobbled off to find help.
In the kitchen, the flames licked up Grant’s jacket until it reached his greasy hair, which exploded into flames so that he looked like a human matchstick. He stumbled out into the dining room, head ablaze; Panchito thrust him into the fountain where the water doused his flames. His hair was almost completely gone.
Guess you’ll save money on pomade.
Herrera stood and reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a fancy gun with an ivory pistol grip.
“You’re definitely your father’s son,” he said. “He could do strange things too. Things that made him dangerous.”
Panchito braced himself against a wall and thrust Herrera toward the far end of the restaurant. The man flew into the portrait of Pancho Villa, suspended a foot above the ground.
“Tell me how you did it,” Panchito said, holding him there. “How you got my father’s own men to betray him.”
Herrera struggled to breathe under the pressure of Panchito’s push.
“I remember you
now,” Herrera said. “Bouncing on your father’s knee at my sister’s wedding.”
A flash of memory struck Panchito, sudden as a lightning bolt. He saw an adobe courtyard with bright pink bougainvillea. He heard laughter and the tinkling of ice cubes in glasses. Tables. Music. A woman in white. He felt strong hands enveloping his body, and an up-and-down motion, like riding on a horse. He saw big, calloused hands holding him.
I remember my father.
Could it really be a memory? Panchito would have only been a baby, not much more than a year old. And yet it seemed so real. In his memory he tried to crane his head, to turn and see his father’s face, but he couldn’t.
“You’re just like him,” Herrera wheezed. “Too powerful.”
Fury shot through Panchito. It was unfair that Herrera should have memories of his father when the man had robbed Panchito of them. There were so many questions Panchito had for his father, so many answers that had been extinguished by Herrera’s bullet.
He focused pressure on Herrera’s heart. The man yelped in agony.
“You may have killed my father, but you’ll die knowing you were killed by a Villa,” Panchito said.
He thrust. Herrera cried out.
“Chito, no!”
Arms encircled Panchito and tackled him to the ground. Across the room Herrera fell to the floor and gasped for breath.
Panchito looked up. Gray.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret,” Gray said.
“I won’t regret it,” Panchito said.
“But maybe you’ll regret letting your grandmother’s restaurant burn down.”
Panchito looked up at the kitchen, which was halfway consumed by the flames. He hadn’t realized how dark with smoke the air had become.
“You got an extinguisher?” Gray asked.
Panchito shook his head.
“Over here!”
He bounded out to the fountain in the center of the walkway. Gray dragged the pachucos out of it. The water was so formless Panchito didn’t think he’d be able to move it. He had to!
Panchito held out both hands wide and thrust toward a single point in the pool. At first the water erupted into a fine mist, but Panchito adjusted his stance until he got a solid funnel of water. It sprayed wildly into the restaurant. Panchito tried to control and focus it, angling it as best he could though the small service window going into the kitchen. The fire hissed and sizzled and finally went out.