"Tell Crumley to drive into the storm drain and meet me halfway from the sea. If he sees Constance, grab her. If he finds me, grab even quicker."
Fritz shut one eye to target me with fire from the other, contempt under glass.
"You will take direction from an Academy Award-winning director?"
"What?"
"Drop quick. When you hit, don't stop. Whatever's down there can't grab you if you run! If you see her, tell her to try to catch up. 'Stood?"
" 'Stood!"
"Now die like a dog. Or…"he added, scowling, "live like a stoop who got the hell through."
"Meet you at the ocean?"
"I won't be there!"
"Oh yes you will!"
He lurched toward the basement door, and Henry.
"You want to follow that idiot?" he roared.
"No."
"You afraid of the dark?" "I am the dark!" said Henry. They were gone.
Cursing Germanic curses, I climbed down into mists, fogs, and rains of night.
CHAPTER FORTY
QUITE suddenly I was in Mexico, 1945. Rome, 1950.
Catacombs.
The thing about darkness is you can imagine, in one direction, wall-to-wall mummies torn from their graves because they couldn't pay the funeral rent.
Or kindling by the thousand-bone-piles, polo heads of skulls to be hammered downfield.
Darkness.
And me caught between ways that led to eternal twilights in Mexico, eternity beneath the Vatican.
Darkness.
I stared at the ladder leading up to safety-Blind Henry and angry Fritz. But they were long gone toward the light and the crazies out front of Grauman's.
I heard the surf pounding like a great heart, ten miles downstream in Venice. There, hell, was safety. But twenty thousand yards of dim concrete floor stood between me and the salty night wind.
I gasped air because…
A pale man shambled out of the dark.
I don't mean he walked crazy-legs, but there was something about his whole frame, his knees and elbows, the way his head toppled or his hands flopped like shot birds. His stare froze me.
"I know you," he cried.
I dropped the flashlight.
He grabbed it and exclaimed, "What're you doing down here?" His voice knocked off the concrete walls. "Didn't you used to be—?" He said my name. "Sure! Jesus, you hiding? You down here to stay? Welcome, I guess." His pale shadow arm waved my flashlight. "Some place, eh? Been here horses' years. Came down to see. Never went back. Lotsa friends. Want to meet 'em?"
I shook my head.
He snorted. "Hell! Why would you want to meet these lost underground jerks?"
"How do you know my name?" I said. "Did we go to school together?"
"You don't remember? Hell and damn!"
"Harold?" I said. "Ross?"
There was just the drip of a lone faucet somewhere.
I added more names. Tears leaped to my eyes. Ralph, Sammy, Arnold, school chums. Gary, Philip, off to war, for God's sake.
"Who are you? When did I know you?" "Nobody ever knows anyone," he said, backing off. "Were you my best pal?"
"I always knew you'd get on. Always knew I'd get lost," he said, a mile away.
"The war."
"I died before the war. Died after it. I was never born, so how come?" Fading.
"Eddie! Ed. Edward. Eduardo, it's got to be!" My heart beat swiftly, my voice rose.
"When did you last call? Did you get around to my funeral? Did you even know?"
"I never knew," I said, inching closer.
"Come again. Don't knock. I'll always be here. Wait! You searching for someone?" he cried. "What's she look like? You hear that? What's she look like? Am I right? Yes, no?"
"Yes!" I blurted.
"She went that way." He waved my flash.
"When— ?"
"Just now. What's she doing here in Dante's Inferno?"
"What did she look like?" I burst out.
"Chanel No. 5!"
"What?"
"Chanel! That'll bring the rats running. She'll be lucky if she makes it to the surf. 'Stay off Muscle Beach!' I yelled."
"What?"
"'Stay!' I yelled. She's here somewhere. Chanel No. 5!"
I seized my flash from his hands, turned it back on his ghost face.
"Where?"
"Why?" He laughed wildly.
"God, I don't know."
"This way, yeah, this way."
His laugh caromed in all directions.
"Hold on! I can't see!"
"You don't have to. Chanel!"
More laughter.
I swiveled my flash.
Now, as he babbled, I heard something like weather, a seasonal change, a distant rainfall. Dry wash, I thought, but not dry, a flash flood, this damned place ankle-deep, knee-deep, then drowned all the way to the sea!
I whipped my flashlight beam up, around, back. Nothing. The sound grew. More whispers coming, yes, not a change of season, dry weather becoming wet, but whispers of people, not rain on the channel floor but the slap of bare feet on cement, and the shuffled murmur of quiet discovery, arguments, curiosity.
People, I thought, my God, more shadows like this one, more voices, the whole damn clan, shadows and shadows of shadows, like the silent ghosts on Rattigan's ceiling, specters that flowed up, around, and vanished like rainfall.
But what if her film ghosts had blown free of her projector, and the pale screens up above in Grauman's, and the wind blew and the phantoms caught cobwebs and light and found voices, what if, dear God, what if?
Stupid! I cut the light, for the rain-channel-crazed man was still mumbling and yammering close. I felt his hot breath on my cheek and I lurched back, afraid to light his face, afraid to sluice the channel a second time to freeze the floodwater of ghost voices, for they were louder now, closer. The dark flowed, the unseen crowd gathered, as this crazed fool grew taller, nearer, and I felt a plucking at my sleeves to seize, hold, bind, and the rainfall voices far off blew nearer and I knew that I should get, go, run like hell and hope they were all legless wonders!
"I— " I bleated.
"What's wrong?" my friend cried.
"I-"
"Why are you afraid? Look. Look! Look there!"
And I was thrust and bumped through darkness to a greater mass of darkness, which was a cluster of shadows and then flesh. A crowd gathered around a shape that wept and lamented and yearned and it was the sound of a woman drowning in darkness.
As the woman moaned and cried and wept and grew silent to mourn again, I edged near.
And then someone thought to hold out a cigarette lighter, clicking it so that the small blue flame extended toward a shawled and unkempt creature, that fretting soul.
Inspired, another lighter drifted out of the night, hissing, and breathed light to hold steady. And then another and another, small flame after flame, like so many fireflies gathered in a circle until there was illumination circling steadily. And floating within to reveal that misery, that exaltation, that whispering, that sobbing, that voice of sudden pronouncements, were six, twelve, twenty more small blue fires, thrust and held to ignite the voice, to give it a shape, to shine the mystery. The more firefly lights, the higher the voice shrilled, asking for some unseen gift, recognition, asking for attention, demanding to live, asking to solve that form, face, and presence.
"Only from my voices, I would lose all heart!" she lamented.
What? I thought. What's that? Familiar! I almost guessed. Almost knew. What?
"The bells came down from heaven and their echoes linger in the fields. Through the quiet of the countryside, my voices!" she cried.
What? Almost! Familiar, I thought. Oh God, what?
Then a thunderous flood of storm wind flashed from the far sea, drenched with salt odor and a smash of thunder.
"You!" I cried. "You!"
And all the fires blew out to screams in utter darkness.
I called her
name, but the only answer was a torrent of shouts in an avalanche of feet in full stampede.
In the roar and rush and ranting, some soft flesh struck my arm, my face, my knee, and then it was gone as I cried, "You!" and "You!" again.
There was an immense roundabout, a thousand millraces of darkness from which a single flame ignited near my mouth and one of the strange beasts cursed, seeing me, and shouted, "You, you scared her away! You!"
And hands were thrust to snatch at me until I fell back.
"No!" I turned and leaped, hoping to hell it was toward the sea and not the ghosts.
I stumbled and fell. My flashlight skittered. Christ, I thought, if I can't get it back-!
I scrambled on hands and knees. "Oh, please, please!"
And my fingers closed on the flashlight, which resurrected my flesh, got me upright, swaying with the black flood behind, and I broke into a drunken run. Don't fall, I thought, hold" the light like a rope to pull you, don't fall, don't look back! Are they close, are they near, are there others waiting? Great God!
At which moment the most glorious sound cracked the channel. There was an illumination ahead like the sunrise at heaven's door, a loud chant of car horn, an avalanche of thunder! A car.
People like me think in film-bit flashes, over in an instant, dumb in retrospect, but a lightning bolt of exhilaration. John Ford, I thought, Monument Valley! Indians! But now, the damn cavalry!
For ahead, in full plunge from the sea… My salvation, an old wreck. And half standing up front… Crumley. Yelling the worst curses he had ever yelled, cursing me with the foulest curses ever, but glad he had found me and then cursing this damn fool again. "Don't kill me!" I cried. The car braked near my feet. "Not till we get outta here!" Crumley shrieked. The darkness, lit by headlights, reared back. I was frozen with Crumley blaring the horn, waving arms, spitting teeth, going blind.
"You're lucky this damn buggy made it in! What gives?"
I stared back into the darkness.
"Nothing."
"Then you won't be needing a lift!" Crumley gunned the gas.
I jumped in and landed so hard the jalopy shook.
Crumley grabbed my chin. "You okay?"
"Now, yes!"
"We gotta back out!"
"Back out!" I cried. The shadows loomed. "At fifty miles an hour?"
"Sixty!"
Crumley glared at the night.
"Satchel Paige said don't look back. Something may be gaining on you."
A dozen figures lurched into the light.
"Now!" I yelled.
We left…
At seventy miles an hour, backward.
Crumley yelled, "Henry called, said where the damn dumb stupid Martian was!"
"Henry," I gasped.
"Fritz called! Said you were twice as stupid as Henry said!"
"I am! Faster!"
Faster.
I could hear the surf.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
we motored out of the storm drain and I looked south one hundred yards and gasped. "Ohmigod, look!"
Crumley looked.
"There's Rattigan's place, two hundred feet away. How come we never noticed the storm drain came out so close?"
"We never used the storm drain before as Route 66."
"So if we could take it from Grauman's Chinese all the way here, Constance could have gone from here to Grauman's."
"Only if she was nuts. Hell. She was a Brazilian nut factory. Look."
There were a dozen narrow swerving marks in the sand. "Bicycle tracks. Bike it in one hour, tops."
"God, no, I don't see her on a bike."
I stood up in the jalopy to peer back at the tunnel.
"She's there. I doubt she's moved. She's still in there, going somewhere else, not here. Poor Constance."
"Poor?" Crumley erupted. "Tough as a rhino. Keep bellyaching about that five-and-dime floozy, I'll phone your wife to come crack your dog biscuits!"
"I haven't done anything wrong."
"No?" Crumley gunned the car the rest of the way out on the shore. "Three days of maniac running in and out of lousy L.A. palmistry parlors, upstairs Chinese balconies, climbing Mount Lowe! A parade of losers, all because of an A-l skirt who gets the Oscar for loss-leading. Wrong? Rip the roll from my pianola if I've played the wrong tune!"
"Crumley! In that storm drain, I think I saw her. Could I just say 'go to hell'?"
"Sure!"
"Liar," I said. "You drink vodka, pee apple juice. I've got your number."
Crumley gunned the motor. "What're you getting at?"
"You're an altar boy."
"Christ, let me move this wreck out front of that damn fool sailor's delight!"
He drove fast, then slow, eyes half-shut, teeth gritted. "Well?"
I swallowed hard and said, "You're a boy soprano. You made your dad and mom proud at midnight mass. Hell, I've seen the ghost under your skin, in movies where you pretended your eyes weren't wet. A Catholic camel with a broken back. Great sinners, Crum, make great saints. No one's so bad they don't deserve a second chance."
"Rattigan's had ninety!"
"Would Jesus have kept count?"
"Damn, yes!"
"No, because some far-off late night, you'll call a priest to bless you and he'll carry you back to some Christmas night when your dad was proud and your ma cried and as you shut your eyes you'll be so damned glad to be home again you won't have to go pee to hide your tears. You still haven't given up hope. Know why?"
"Why, dammit?"
"Because I want it for you, Crum. Want you to be happy, want you to come home to something, anything, before it's too late. Let me tell you a story-"
"Why are you blabbing at a time like this? You just barely got away from a tribe of lunatics. What did. you see in that flood channel?"
"I don't know, I'm not sure."
"Ohmigod, wait!" Crumley rummaged in the glove compartment and with a cry of relief uncorked a small flask and drank. "If I have to sit here with the tide going out and your hot air rising-speak."
I spoke: "When I was twelve a carnival magician, Mr. Electrico, came to my hometown. He touched me with his flaming sword and yelled, 'Live forever!' Why did he tell me that, Crumley? Was there something in my face, the way I acted, stood, sat, talked, what? All I know is somehow, burning me with his great eyes, he gave me my future. Leaving the carnival, I stood by the carousel, heard the calliope playing 'Beautiful Ohio,' and I wept. I knew something incredible had happened, something wonderful and nameless. Within three weeks, twelve years old, I started to write. I have written every day since. How come, Crumley, how come?"
"Here," said Crumley. "Finish this."
I drank the rest of the vodka.
"How come?" I said quietly again.
Now it was Crumley's turn: "Because he saw you were a romantic sap, a Dumpster for magic, a cloud-walker who found shadows on ceilings and said they were real. Christ, I don't know. You always look like you've just showered even if you rolled in dog doo. I can't stand all your innocence. Maybe that's what Electrico saw. Where's that vodka? Oh yeah, gone. You done?"
"No," I said. "Since Mr. Electrico pointed me in the right direction, shouldn't I pay back? Do I keep Mr. Electrico to myself, or let him help me save her?"
"Psychic crap!"
"Hunches. I don't know any other way to live. When I got married friends warned Maggie I wasn't going anywhere. I said, 'I'm going to the Moon and Mars, want to come along?' And she said yes. So far, it hasn't been so bad, has it? And on your way to a 'bless me, Father,' and a happy death, can't you find it in your heart to bring Rattigan?"
Crumley stared straight ahead.
"You mean all that?"
He reached over and touched under my eyes and brought his fingers back to his tongue.
"The real stuff," he murmured. "Salt. Your wife said you cry at phone books," he said quietly.
"Phone books full of people lost in graveyards, maybe. If I quit now, I'd never forgive mys
elf. Or you, if you made me stop."
After a long moment Crumley shifted out of the car. "Wait," he said, not looking at me. "I got to go pee."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
he came back after a long while.
"You sure know how to hurt a guy," he said as he climbed back into the jalopy.
"Just stir, don't shake."
Crumley cocked his head at me. "You're a queer egg."
"You're another."
We drove slowly along the shore toward Rattigan's. I was silent.
"You got another hairball?" Crumley said.
"Why is it," I said, "someone like Constance is a lightning bolt, performing seal, high-wire frolicker, wild laughing human, and at the same time she's the devil incarnate, an evil cheater at life's loaded deck?"
"Go ask Alexander the Great," said Crumley. "Look at Attila the Hun, who loved dogs; Hitler, too. Bone up on Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Mao, hell's Anvil Chorus. Rommel, good family man. How do you cradle cats and cut throats, bake cookies and people? How come we love Richard the Third, who dumped kids in wine casks? How come TV is all Al Capone reruns? God won't say."
"I don't ask. He turned us loose. It's up to us, once He took off the leash. Who wrote, 'Malt does more than Milton can, to justify God's way towards Man?' I rewrote it and added, And Freud spoils kids and spares the rod, to justify Man's ways toward God.'"
Crumley snorted. "Freud was a nut loose in a fruit patch. I always believed smart-ass punks need their teeth punched."
"My dad never broke my teeth."
"That's because you're a half-stale Christmas fruitcake, the kind no one eats."
"But Constance is beautiful?
"You mistake energy for beauty. Overseas, French girls knocked me flat. They blink, wave, dance, stand on their heads to prove they're alive. Hell, Constance is all battery acid and short circuit. If she ever slows down she'll get-"
"Ugly? No!"
"Gimme those!" He seized the glasses off my nose and peered through them.
"Rose— colored! How do things look without them?"
"Nothing's there."
"Great! There's not much worth seeing!"
"There's Paris in the spring. Paris in the rain. Paris on New Year's Eve."
"You been there?"
Let's All Kill Constance Page 10