The Sixteen Burdens

by David Khalaf

  Gray didn’t wait; he pulled the sheet off the body’s top half. It was Chaplin’s body, his face pale and cold, a blank expression on it.

  The body gasped.

  Elsie screamed. Terror ripped through everyone and Chaplin’s eyes shot wide open. He sat up and screamed too. Everyone screamed then.

  “Mr. Chaplin!” Gray said. “You’re alive!”

  Chaplin gasped a number of times, taking in his surroundings.

  “Blanket,” he whispered. “And water.”

  Gray searched for something warm while Panchito looked for water. Elsie rubbed Chaplin’s arms to warm him up. They found no blanket, but took a frilly pink robe off a dead woman who looked like she’d had a heart attack halfway through doing her makeup. Panchito and Gray helped him into it as Elsie looked away.

  Chaplin shivered for a number of minutes, then managed to get some water down, spilling half onto himself. Eventually his breathing normalized and he seemed to gain control of himself.

  “This has got to be the worst hotel room I’ve ever stayed in.”

  Gray laughed. He laughed so hard, tears began streaming down his eyes and his stomach hurt.

  “You’ve been in here nearly two days!” Panchito said.

  Chaplin rubbed his eyes as if the bright light hurt them.

  “I think I was passed out for most of it, fortunately. I yelled for help until my mouth went dry. The past ten hours or so I just tried to sleep and forget the fact that I was stuck in a drawer, sandwiched between dead bodies.”

  “But how did you survive the chair?” Gray asked.

  Chaplin shrugged.

  “Lucky, I suppose. The chair seemed to be working. It’s hard to miss two thousand volts going through your body. But the last thing I remember was feeling the current drop out, as if there were a sudden loss in power.”

  Gray remembered the jolly guard at the front, and how the warden had warned him that his zeal for Christmas lights would blow a fuse.

  “I think you was saved by a prison guard’s twinkle lights.”

  “Talk about a Christmas miracle,” Chaplin said. “But how did you know I was still alive?”

  “Stoker,” Gray said. “He was the one who killed you, and yet he had no sense of humor. I knew then you might still be alive.”

  Chaplin’s expression became grim.

  “Then you know what happens if someone murders one of us?”

  They all nodded.

  “It’s our most carefully guarded secret,” he said. “It would be an endless slaughter if word got out.”

  Chaplin tried to stand but wobbled as if walking a tightrope. Gray and Panchito jumped in to help hold him up.

  “Do you still have Newton’s Eye?”

  “We lost it,” Elsie said.

  “But then we recovered it,” Panchito said.

  “And now we want to destroy it,” Gray said. “But not before we use it to rescue Mrs. Pickford.”

  Chaplin smiled.

  “Isn’t it about time you started calling her your mother?”

  Gray found himself looking down and giving his head a small shake.

  Not yet.

  “Very well,” Chaplin said. “Do you at least have a plan?”

  “Sort of, but it’s going to be dangerous.”

  “Sounds great. I’ll drive.”

  Chaplin took a few steps and then stumbled before Panchito caught him.

  “Just not quite yet,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  F ORTY-FOUR

  “I WANT THE diamond necklace.”

  “Fine, you’ll get a diamond necklace.”

  “Not a diamond necklace, the diamond necklace.”

  “I’ll get you a thousand diamond necklaces if that’s what you want!”

  Gray and the others stood just inside the front door of Chaplin’s mansion as negotiations unfolded in the foyer between Chaplin and Paulette. Clearly she knew how to drive a hard bargain.

  “I want the Harry Winston necklace that Bette Davis bought in New York. She knew I was eyeing it and bought it from right under my nose.”

  She stomped her heel on the marble floor, as if challenging Chaplin to say no. Chaplin rolled his eyes. He was trying hard to look strong, but Gray saw him grasping the staircase banister for support. Despite the two days he had slept on Abuelita’s bed, Chaplin was still very weak.

  Gray’s eyes kept drifting to the white carpet on the first few steps of the stairs. It had been vigorously cleaned, but the faint outline of blood remained. A stain. A blotch. A reminder of what Atlas could do.

  “The Harry Winston necklace, then,” Chaplin said. “Bette and I are good friends. I’m sure she would be more than happy to sell it to me at a severe profit.”

  Paulette’s whole demeanor changed. She closed the distance between them with a little skip and hugged Chaplin tight. She gave him a peck on the cheek.

  “I’m so glad you’re safe. How ever did you get released from jail?”

  “A lucky break,” he said. “Always a lucky break. Now for the favor that will earn you your diamond necklace.”

  “Anything, darling.”

  “I need you to kidnap Shirley Temple.”

  Paulette gave him an unamused smile.

  “I’m not joking.”

  She let go of him.

  “Why would you have me kidnap Hollywood’s most beloved little girl?”

  “She’ll be serving as the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade the day after tomorrow. We need her seat. She won’t be harmed, and it will only be for a few hours.”

  She took a step away, distancing herself from Chaplin.

  “What if I’m caught? I’d get arrested. It could ruin my career.”

  “Honestly, Paulette. Any publicity at this point would only help your career.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She put her hand to her chest, feeling the necklace that would soon occupy that spot.

  “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  “Marvelous!” Chaplin said. “And I’ll need the tickets to those box seats they always send us.”

  Paulette held up her hand to silence him.

  “For one more thing.”

  “Greedy girl,” Chaplin said. “Well, no one would call you inconsistent. What else do you want?”

  Paulette pointed a long, manicured finger at Gray.

  “I want him gone. I want all of them gone. They can never return to this house again.”

  Chaplin looked at Gray. There was a pained expression in his eyes, as if this were some kind of personal betrayal. Gray set his face to stone and nodded.

  “Very well,” Chaplin said. “You help us on New Year’s Day. Come January Second, they’ll never step foot in here again.”

  Paulette gave Gray a vicious smile, but he didn’t care. If his plan worked, Pickford would be safe and hopefully he could live with her. And if the plan went sour, it wouldn’t be an issue.

  The next morning, Gray wrote Darko Atlas a letter. When he gave it to Lulu to deliver, she struggled to read his sloppy penmanship.

  “Mary Pickford for the Eye,” she read aloud. “New Year’s Day. Rose Parade. Look for the Grand Marshal.”

  Lulu jammed the note in an envelope that held the tickets.

  “If he doesn’t agree to meet, it’s probably because he can’t read your awful writing,” Lulu said.

  Gray turned red.

  “You’re lucky I can’t catch you.”

  She flew out the door. They knew from Fairbanks that Atlas was hiding somewhere in the orange groves in the valley north of them, and if anyone could cover hundreds of acres of land quickly, it was Lulu. Gray instructed her to leave the letter in Atlas’s tent, but not to try to free Pickford if she saw her; unlike Lulu, Pickford wouldn’t be fast enough to escape.

  Gray spent all day going over the parade route from an article in the newspaper. The plan was set, but he tried to convince himself it was important to review the details. What he was really doing was trying to distract himself.

 
; There was a knock at the door. Panchito answered it and saw Farrell standing there wrapped in a ridiculous fur coat he finally had occasion to use.

  “You,” Farrell said.

  “You,” Panchito said.

  Gray walked to the door. Farrell held out a shoe box. Gray took it and opened it. In it was the Eye and its duplicate.

  “Which one is which?” Panchito asked.

  Gray picked up both. The real one buzzed with energy in his hand, but otherwise they seemed exactly the same.

  “It’s good,” he said. “Very good.”

  “I do good work when my fingers aren’t arthritic knots,” Farrell snapped.

  He rubbed at a streak of gray hair that had popped up in the past two days.

  “Now where is the…sauce?”

  From the kitchen table Gray retrieved a ketchup bottle that he had emptied and refilled with his blood. He handed it to Farrell.

  “You used to be good to me,” Gray said.

  “I used to be a lot of things,” Farrell said. “You’d be surprised what a second youth can do. It’s the ultimate drug. You come to resent the one you’re taking advantage of, the one you’re dependent on. Every scar becomes a reminder of what you’re capable of. You become young outside, but ugly inside.”

  Like a magician, Farrell made the bottle disappear into the folds of his coat.

  “What happens when I run out?”

  Gray shrugged.

  “I hear Palmolive does wonders.”

  He slammed the door. And just like that, Farrell was out of his life.

  Gray put the shoe box on the kitchen table.

  “I still don’t understand why we can’t just ambush their camp,” Panchito said.

  “And do what? None of us can hurt him. He’d lop off our heads with one swipe. And if Fairbanks is there we’d all be under his control with one word.”

  Gray pointed to an old Life magazine, which had a photo essay of last year’s Tournament of Roses.

  “The parade is public and crowded, so Atlas can’t muscle his way through and grab the Eye without thousands of people seeing. And it will be loud, so if Fairbanks is with him, it will be nearly impossible for him to control us with his words. All of our business will be conducted from a distance.”

  “Then what?”

  “Once Atlas sees the Eye and I see Mrs. Pickford, we’ll make the exchange. He’ll release Mrs. Pickford and I’ll have you push the Eye over to him.”

  “The fake one, right?”

  Gray shook his head. This was where his plan got tricky.

  “He’s sure to inspect it the moment he gets it,” Gray said. “He’ll probably even try it out. We have to give him the real one at first. Once he’s satisfied, Lulu is gonna steal it back and swap it out with the fake. Atlas will be long gone before he notices. And so will we.”

  “What do we do with the Eye, then?”

  “I’ve talked to Mr. Hughes. He’s agreed to fly far out over the Pacific and drop it deep in the ocean.”

  “How do we know Atlas won’t attack us right there?”

  “Thousands of cameras will be trained on us,” Gray said. “I doubt a man as large as Atlas wants to live life as a fugitive. He’s too conspicuous. He’d be too easy to track down.”

  Panchito set down his drink, an horchata mustache on his upper lip.

  “Wait. Why will we have thousands of cameras trained on us?”

  Gray gave his eyebrows a wiggle.

  “We’ll be on a float.”

  “On a float? I thought only Lulu—”

  Gray went to the closet and pulled out two caveman-style loincloths. Chaplin had snuck into United Artists late last night and snagged them from the costume department.

  “You and I will be on the promotional float for One Million B.C.”

  He handed Panchito one of the costumes.

  “Let’s see how well you act like a caveman.”

  Elsie poked her head in from the kitchen and looked at the loincloth.

  “Where’s the rest of it?”

  Panchito held it up.

  “This is worse than wearing a bathing suit.”

  “But you’re courageous,” Elsie said.

  “I may be courageous, but I still have a sense of modesty.”

  “Elsie, you’re all set with Lulu?” Gray asked.

  She nodded and pulled from her pocket a handful of hairpins.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Her curls,” she said.

  Smoke began to waft from the kitchen and Elsie yelped. She ran in and pulled out a burning lump from the oven. She dropped the whole charred mess in the sink.

  “Oh!”

  Gray and Panchito opened up the windows to air the apartment out. Elsie grabbed a dish towel and furiously fanned the smoke coming out of the oven, and in the process knocked over a skillet full of green beans she had been sautéing.

  Elsie let out something between a shriek and a sob. The boys looked over at the mess. Using a wooden spoon, Gray scraped the beans from the floor back into the skillet.

  “They’ll be fine. We’ll just rinse them off real quick.”

  Elsie sunk down to the floor and sat with her legs splayed on the linoleum.

  “I wanted this meal to be perfect. And it’s ruined!”

  “Don’t worry,” Panchito said. “I’ve eaten way worse than this.”

  Elsie shot him a glare; she didn’t find that encouraging.

  “What were you making?” Gray asked.

  “Venison pie,” Elsie said. “I’ve never made it before, but my mother used to make it every New Year’s Eve. It was a tradition. I just wanted us all to…”

  She groaned without finishing her thought.

  The front door flew open and Lulu ran in. She was red-faced, sweaty and covered in light scratches. Her hair was wild and knotty.

  “Did you find them?” Gray asked.

  Lulu nodded, still catching her breath. Elsie fussed over her, patting her dirty face with a wet cloth and forcing a glass of water upon her.

  “They’re in a clearing a couple miles north of a dirt road. I put the letter in his hand before he even realized it. He smells like all sorts of dead animals.”

  “Lulu!” Elsie said. “He could have killed you in one swipe!”

  “Nuts! He couldn’t touch me with those big mitts. I was gone before he had the chance to look surprised.”

  Chaplin entered from the bedroom, where he was napping. He wanted to stay with them until this was over.

  “Something smells positively delightful!”

  “Stop teasing!” Elsie said.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean you,” he said. “Whatever you’ve been working on smells like a coal factory.”

  He pointed toward the front door.

  “I mean that.”

  In the doorway was a young man with a greasy paper bag. It smelled of garlic, onions, peppers, fennel, and anise.

  “Chinese takeout.”

  He handed the man a few bills and sent him on his way.

  “You ordered Chinese?” Elsie asked.

  It was both an accusation and an expression of relief.

  “No offense,” Chaplin said, “but when I saw you turn the oven to five hundred degrees I decided we should have a backup plan.”

  He gave Elsie a wink.

  Everyone was grateful for the takeout food. Gray and Panchito set the table while the others unboxed the food. The little table was only made to seat four, but they squeezed in two extra chairs. Abuelita arrived home from errands and eyed the strange food warily, but she seemed grateful she didn’t have to cook.

  There were egg noodles, fried rice with pork, and a spicy chicken in a reddish brown sauce Gray had never eaten before. Chaplin insisted they also serve the venison pie which, after scraping off the charred crust, wasn’t half bad. Panchito’s grandmother had bought churros, and they set those aside for dessert. It was a strange assortment, and yet somehow it was perfect. Like them.

  Elsie tal
ked about her upbringing in Downe, southeast of London, and described the big grassy fields she and Lulu would play in when they were children. Panchito and his grandmother told stories about Pancho Villa’s great battles. Abuelita recalled the time Hollywood filmmakers came to capture an important battle on film, only to arrive too late. Villa and his men had to re-enact the conflict for the cameras.

  Gray didn’t say much; he didn’t have interesting stories to tell or faraway places to describe. But just listening, just belonging to the conversation—that was enough. It was the most wonderful meal Gray could remember having.

  As they cleaned up from dinner, Abuelita made a thick hot chocolate on the stove to go with the churros.

  “Are we going to stay up until midnight?” Lulu asked. “I want to see if anyone lights any fireworks!”

  Gray had never stayed up to ring in the new year. They needed their sleep for tomorrow, but he wanted to celebrate with his friends while he could. It was the first time that word felt as if it fit: friends.

  “Let’s do it,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of hours yet before midnight. We’ll take a short nap and then wake in time for New Year’s.”

  Chaplin, still feeling weak, opted to turn in. The same went for Abuelita, who always went to bed early. She was staying with the neighbors next door.

  Elsie and Lulu shared the couch, and Panchito and Gray each grabbed a blanket and claimed a piece of floor. They turned out the lights so that only the orange glow of street lamps lit the room.

  “Do you think it’ll work tomorrow?” Panchito whispered to Gray.

  “I honestly don’t know. We just gotta try is all.”

  Gray stared at the ceiling for some time, thinking about the variables out of his control. There was a backup plan he hadn’t shared with the others, but it was one he didn’t want to think about just then.

  He rolled over to ask Panchito something, but he was already asleep. Gray wanted to nap also, but couldn’t. There were too many thoughts running through his head. As soon as Lulu began to snore, he knew it would be a long night.

  He went to the open window by the kitchen table and stared down at Olvera Street. Despite what he might have to do tomorrow, he was content in his decision. It was easier to sacrifice for people you cared about.

  Although he couldn’t remember dozing, he became quickly alert at a popping sound in the distance. He looked up and saw the green sparks of a firework a few streets down. Then there was a red one, and a white one.