"Yeah."
"Don't wind up like this old mad hen that lays eggs any color you place me on. Red scarf. Red eggs. Blue rug. Blue. Purple camisole. Purple. That's me. Notice the plaid sheet here?"
It was all white and I told him so.
"You got bad eyes." He surveyed me. "You sure talk a lot. I'm pooped. Bye." And he slammed his eyes shut. "Sir," I said.
"I'm busy," he murmured. "What's my name?" "Fagin, Othello, Lear, O'Casey, Booth, Scrooge." "Oh, yeah." And then he snored.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I TAXIED out to the sea, back to my little place. I needed to think.
And then: there was a blow against my oceanfront door like a sledgehammer. Wham!
I jumped to get it before it fell in.
A flash of light blinded me from a single bright round crystal tucked in a mean eye.
"Hello, Edgar Wallace, you stupid goddamn son of a bitch, you!" a voice cried.
I fell back, aghast that he would call me Edgar Wallace, that dime-a-dance el cheapo hack!
"Hello, Fritz," I yelled, "you stupid goddamn son of a bitch, you! Come in!"
"I am!"
As if wearing heavy military boots, Fritz Wong clubbed the carpet. His heels cracked as he seized his monocle to hold it in the air and focus on me. "You're getting old!" he cried with relish.
"You already are!" I cried.
"Insults?"
"You get what you give!"
"Voice down, please."
"You first!" I yelled. "You hear what you called me?"
"Is Mickey Spillane better?"
"Out!"
"John Steinbeck?"
"Okay! Lower your voice."
"Is this okay?" he whispered.
"I can still hear you."
Fritz Wong barked a great laugh.
"That's my good bastard son."
"That's my two-timing illegitimate pa!"
We embraced with arms of steel in paroxysms of laughter.
Fritz Wong wiped his eyes. "Now that we've done the formalities," he rumbled. "How are you.?"
"Alive. You?"
"Barely. Why the delay in delivering provender?"
I brought out Crumley's beer.
"Pig swill," said Fritz. "No wine? But…" He drank deep and grimaced. "Now." He sat down heavily in my only chair. "How can I help?"
"What makes you think I need help?"
"You always will! Wait! I can't stand this." He stomped out into the rain and lunged back with a bottle of Le Gorton, which, silently, he opened with a fancy bright silver corkscrew that he pulled from his pocket.
I brought out two old but clean jelly jars. Fritz eyed them with scorn as he poured.
"1949!" he said. "A great year. I expect loud exclamations!"
I drank.
"Don't chugalug!" Fritz shouted. "For Christ's sake, inhale! Breathe!"
I inhaled. I swirled the wine. "Pretty good."
"Jesus Christ! Good?"
"Let me think."
"Goddammit. Don't think! Drink with your nose! Exhale through your ears!"
He showed me how, eyes shut.
I did the same. "Excellent."
"Now sit down and shut up."
"This is my place, Fritz."
"Not now it isn't."
I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, and he stood over me like Caesar astride an ant farm.
"Now," he said, "spill the beans."
I lined them up and spilled them.
When I finished, Fritz refilled my jelly glass reluctantly.
"You don't deserve this," he muttered, "but yours was a fair performance drinking the vintage. Shut up. Sip."
"If anyone can solve Rattigan," he said, sipping, "it's me. Or should I say, I? Quiet."
He opened the front door on the lovely endless rain. "You like this?"
"Love it."
"Sap!" Fritz screwed his monocle in for a long glance up-shore.
"Rattigan's place up there, eh? Not home for seven days? Maybe dead? Empress of the killing ground, yes, but she will never be caught dead. One day she will simply disappear and no one will know what happened. Now, shall I spill my beans?"
He poured the last of the Le Gorton, hating the jelly glass, loving the wine.
He was at liberty, he said, unemployed. No films for two years. Too old, they said.
"I'm the youngest acrobat in any bed on three continents!" he protested. "Now I have got my hands on Bernard Shaw's play Saint Joan. But how do you cast that incredible play? So, meanwhile I have a Jules Verne novel in the public domain, free and clear, with a dumb-cluck fly-by-night producer who says nothing and steals much, so I need a second-rate science-fiction writer-you-to work for scale on this half-ass masterwork. Say yes."
Before I could speak…
There was a huge deluge of rain and a crack of fire and thunder, during which Fritz barked: "You're hired! Now. Do you have more to show and tell?"
I showed and told.
The photos clipped from the ancient newspapers and Scotch-taped on the wall over my bed. Fritz had to half lie down, cursing, to look at the damned things.
"With one eye, the other destroyed in a duel-"
"A duel?" I exclaimed. "You never said-"
"Shut up and read the names under the pictures to the Cyclops German director."
I read the names.
Fritz repeated them.
"Yes, I remember her." He reached to touch. "And that one. And, yes, this one. My God, what a rogues' gallery."
"Did you work with all or some?"
"Some I did two falls out of three in a Santa Barbara motel. I do not brag. A thing is either true or not."
"You've never lied to me, Fritz."
"I have, but you were too stupid to see. Polly. Molly. Dolly. Sounds like a cheap Swiss bell ringers' act. Hold on. Can't be. Maybe. Yes!"
He was leaning up, adjusting his monocle, squinting hard. "Why didn't I see? Dummkopf. But there was time between. Years. That one and that one, and that. Good God!"
"What, Fritz?"
"They're all the same actress, the same woman. Different hair, different hairdo, different color, different makeup. Thick eyebrows, thin eyebrows, no eyebrows. Small lips, large lips. Eyelashes, no eyelashes. Women's tricks. Woman came up to me last week on Hollywood Boulevard and said, 'Do you know me?' 'No,' I said. 'I'm so-and-so,' she said. I studied her nose. Nose job. Looked at her mouth. Mouth job. Eyebrows? New eyebrows. Plus, she had lost thirty pounds and turned blond. How in hell was I supposed to know who she was?
"These pictures, where did you get them?"
"Up on Mount Lowe-"
"That dumb newspaper librarian. I went up there once to do research. Quit. Couldn't breathe in all those goddamn news stacks. Call me, I yelled, when you have a clearance! Constance's dimwit first husband, married when she rebounded off a manslaughter bomb scare. How I managed to direct her in at least three films and never guessed at her changes! Christ! An imp inside a devil inside Lucifer's flesh-eating wife."
"Maybe because," I said, "you were courting Marlene Dietrich one of those years?"
"Courting? Is that what they call it?" Fritz barked a laugh and rocked off the edge of the bed. "Take those damn things down. If I can help, I'll need the junk."
"There's more like this," I said. "Grauman's Chinese, the old projection booth, the old-"
"That crummy lunatic?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"Why not! He had a missing reel of my UFA film Atlantica. I went to see. He tried to tie me to a chair and force-feed me old Rin Tin Tin serials. I threatened to jump off the balcony, so he let me go with Atlantica. So."
He spread the pictures out on the bed and gave them the fiery stare of his monocle.
"You say there are more pictures like these upstairs at Grauman's?"
"Yes," I said.
"Would you mind traveling ninety-five miles an hour in an Alfa-Romeo to get to Grauman's Chinese in less than five minutes?"
The b
lood drained from my face.
"You would not mind," said Fritz.
He blundered swiftly out into the rain. His Alfa-Romeo was in full space-rocket throttle when I fell in.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
"FLASHLIGHT, matches, pad and pencil should we need to leave a note." I checked my pockets.
"Wine," Fritz added, "in case the damn dogs up there on the cliff don't carry brandy."
We passed a bottle of wine between us as we scanned the avalanche of dark stairs leading to the old projection booth.
Fritz smiled. "Me first. If you fall I don't want to catch."
"Some friendship."
Fritz plowed the dark. I plowed after, swiveling the flashlight beam.
"Why are you helping me?" I gasped.
"I called Crumley. He said he's hiding all day in bed. Me, being around half-ass dimwits like you clears my blood and restarts my heart. Watch that flashlight, I might fall."
"Don't tempt me." I bobbed the light.
"I hate to say," Fritz said, "but you give as good as you get. You're my tenth bastard, out of Marie Dressier!"
We were higher now, in nosebleed territory.
We reached the top of the second balcony, Fritz raging at the altitude but happy to hear himself rage.
"Explain again," Fritz said as we continued climbing. "Up here. Then what?"
"Then we go as far down as we've come up. Basement mirror names. A glass catacomb."
"Knock," said Fritz, at last.
I knocked and the projection room door swung inward on dim lights from two projectors, one lit and working.
I swung my flash beam along the wall and sucked air.
"What?" said Fritz.
"They're gone!" I said. "The pictures. The walls have been stripped."
I played my flashlight beam along the empty spaces in dismay. All the dark-room "ghosts" had indeed vanished.
"Goddamn! Jesus! Christ!" I stopped and swore. "My God, I sound like you!"
"My son, my son," Fritz said, pleased. "Move the light!"
"Quiet." I inched forward, holding the beam unsteadily on what sat between the projectors.
It was Constance's father, of course, erect and cold, one hand touching a machine switch.
One projector was running full spin with a reel that looped through the projector lens and down, around, a spiral that repeated images again and again every ten seconds. The small door that could open to let the images shoot down to fill the theater screen was shut, so the images were trapped on the inside of the door, small, but if you bent close and squinted, you could see-
Sally, Dolly, Molly, Holly, Gaily, Nellie, Roby, Sally, Dolly, Molly-around about, on and on.
I studied old man Rattigan, frozen in place, and whether his grimace showed triumph or need, I could not say.
I glanced beyond to those walls now empty of Sally, Dolly, Molly, but whoever had seized them hadn't figured that the old man, seeing his "family" snatched, had switched on this loop to save the past. Or-
My mind sank.
I heard Betty Kelly's voice shrieking what Constance had shrieked, Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. And Quickly recalling, How do I get it back, back, back? Get what back? Her other self?
Did someone do this to you? I thought, standing over the old dead man. Or did you do it to yourself?
The dead man's white marble eyes were still.
I cut the projector.
All the faces still flowed on my retina, the dancing daughter, the butterfly, the Chinese vamp, the tomboy clown.
"Poor lost soul," I whispered.
"You know him?" said Fritz.
"No."
"Then he's no poor lost soul." "Fritz! Did you ever have a heart?" "Simple bypass. I had it removed." "How do you live without it?"
"Because…" Fritz handed me his monocle. I fit the cold glass to my eye and stared.
"Because," he said, "I'm a-"
"Stupid goddamn son of a bitch?"
"Bull's— eye!" Fritz said.
"Let's go," he added. "This place is a morgue."
"Always was," I said.
I called Henry, and told him to take a taxi to Grauman's. Pronto.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
BLIND Henry was waiting for us in an aisle leading down to the orchestra pit and from there to the hidden basement dressing rooms.
"Don't tell," Henry said.
"About what, Henry?"
"The pictures up in that projection booth. Kaput? That's Fritz Wong's lingo."
"The same to you," said Fritz.
"Henry, how'd you guess?"
"I knew." Henry fixed his sightless eyes down at the pit. "I just visited the mirrors. I don't need a cane, and sure as heck no flashlight. Just reached when I was there and touched the glass. That's how I knew the pictures upstairs had to be gone. Felt all along forty feet of glass. Clean. All scraped away. So…" He stared again at the sightless uphill seats. "Upstairs. All gone. Right?"
"Right." I exhaled, somewhat stunned.
"Let me show you." Henry turned to the pit.
"Wait, I've got my flash."
"When you going to learn?" Henry mocked, and stepped down into the pit in one silent motion.
I followed. Fritz glared at our parade.
"Well," I said, "what are you waiting for?"
Fritz moved.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"THERE." Henry pointed his nose at the long line of mirrors. "What did I say?"
I moved along the aisle of glass, touching with my flash and then my fingers.
"So?" Fritz growled.
"There were names and now no names, just like there were pictures and now no pictures."
"Told you," said Henry.
"How come the sightless are never the wordless?" said Fritz.
"Got to do something to fill the time. Shall I recite the names?"
I said the names from memory.
"You left out Carmen Carlotta," said Henry.
"Oh, yeah. Carlotta."
Fritz glanced up.
"And whoever swiped the pictures upstairs?"
"Cleaned and scraped the mirrors."
"So all those ladies are like they never was," said Henry.
He leaned in along the line of mirrors and gave a last brush with his blind fingertips to the glass here, there, and farther on down. "Yeah. Empty. Damn. Those names were caked on. Took lots to scrub it off. Who?"
"Henrietta, Mabel, Gloria, Lydia, Alice…"
"They all came down to clean up?"
"They did and they didn't. We've already said it, Henry, that all of those women came and went, were born and died, and wrote their names, like grave markers."
"So?"
"And those names were not written all at once. So starting back in the twenties, those women, ladies, whatever, came down here for their obsequies, a funeral of one. When they looked in their first mirror, they saw one face, and when they moved to the next, the face was changed."
"Now you're cooking."
"So, Henry, what's here is a grand parade of funerals, births, and burials, all done with the same two hands and one spade."
"But the scribbles"-Henry reached out to emptiness— "were different."
"People change. She couldn't make up her mind to one life or how to live it. So she stood in front of the mirror and wiped off her lipstick and painted another mouth, and washed off her eyebrows and painted better ones, or widened her eyes and raised her hairline and tilted her hat like a lampshade or took it off and threw it, or took off her dress and stood here starkers."
"Starkers." Henry smiled. "Now you got it."
"Hush," I said.
"That's work," Henry continued. "Scribbling those mirrors, looking to see how she changed."
"Didn't happen overnight. Once a year, maybe two years, and she'd show up with a smaller mouth or a thinner shape and liked what she saw and went away to become that person for half a year or just one summer. How's that, Henry?"
Henry moved h
is lips, whispering, "Constance.
"Sure," he murmured, "she never smelled the same way twice." Henry shuffled, touching the mirrors until he reached the open manhole. "I'm near, right?"
"One more step would do it, Henry."
We looked down at the round hole in the cement. From below came sounds of winds blowing in from San Fernando, Glendale, and who knows where else-Far Rock-away? The light rain runoff was sliding below, a mere trickle, hardly enough to cool your ankles.
"Dead end," said Henry. "Nothing upstairs, nothing down. Clues to somebody gone. But where?"
As if in answer, a most ungodly cry came from the dark hole in the cold floor. We all jumped.
"Jesus!" Fritz cried.
"Christ!" I yelled.
"Lord!" said Henry. "That can't be Molly, Dolly, Holly, can it?"
I repeated that rosary in silence.
Fritz read my lips and cursed.
The cry came again, farther away, being carried downstream. Tears exploded from my eyes. I jumped forward to sway over the manhole. Fritz grabbed my elbow.
"Did you hear?" I cried.
"Nothing!" said Fritz.
"That scream!"
"That's just the water," Fritz said.
"Fritz!" "You calling me a liar?"
"Fritz!"
"The way you say Fritz, I lie. No lie. You don't really want to, hell, go down there! Godammit!"
"Let me go!"
"If your wife was here, she'd push you in, dummkopf!"
I stared at the open manhole. Far away there was another cry. Fritz cursed.
"You come with me," I said.
"No, no."
"You afraid?"
"Afraid?" Fritz plucked the monocle from his eye. It was like pulling the spigot on his blood. His suntan paled. His eye watered. "Afraid? Of a damn dark stupid underground cave, Fritz Wong?"
"Sorry," I said.
"Don't be sorry for the greatest UFA director in cinema history." He planted his fiery monocle back in its groove.
"Well, what now?" he demanded. "I find a phone and call Crumley to drag you out of this black hole? You goddamn teenage death-wisher!"
"I'm no teenager."
"No? Then why do I see crouched by that damn hole an Olympic chump high-diving into a tide half an inch deep? Go on, break your neck, drown in garbage!"
Let's All Kill Constance Page 9