"I saw the movies. Paris. Gimme."
"I'll just keep these until you take waltz lessons from blind Henry." Crumley shoved my glasses in his pocket.
As we pulled our jalopy up on the shore in front of the white chateau, we saw two dark shapes by her oceanside pool, under the umbrella, to keep off the moonlight.
Crumley and I trudged up the dune and peered in at Blind Henry and angry Fritz Wong. There were martinis laid out on a tray.
"I knew," Henry said, "after that storm drain you'd seek refreshment. Grab. Drink."
We grabbed and drank.
Fritz soaked his monocle in vodka, thrust it in his stare, and said, "That's better!" And then he finished the drink.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I WENT 'round, placing camp chairs by the pool.
Crumley watched with a dour eye and said, "Let me guess. This is the finale of an Agatha Christie murder mystery, and Poirot's got all the usual suspects stashed poolside."
"Bull s— eye."
"Proceed."
I proceeded.
"This chair here is for the Mount Lowe collector of old newspapers."
"Who will testify in absentia?"
"In absentia. This next chair is for Queen Califia, long gone, with her palmistry and head bumps."
I kept moving. "Third chair: Father Rattigan. Fourth chair: Grauman's Chinese mile-high projectionist. Fifth chair: J. W. Bradford, a.k.a. Tallulah, Garbo, Swanson, Colbert. Sixth: Professor Quickly, a.k.a. Scrooge, Nicholas Nickleby, Richard the Third. Seventh chair: me. Eighth chair: Constance."
"Hold on."
Crumley got up and pinned his badge on my shirt.
"We going to sit here," said Fritz, "and listen to a fourth-rate Nancy Drew-"
"Stash your monocle," said Crumley.
Fritz stashed his monocle.
"Now," said Crumley, "junior?"
Junior moved behind the chairs.
"For starters, I'm Rattigan running in the rain with two Books of the Dead. Some already dead, some about to die."
I laid the two books on the glass-top table.
"We all know now that Quickly, in a spurt of nostalgic madness, sent the one book, with all the dead people, to frighten Constance. She came running from her past, her memories of a fast, furious, and destructive life."
"You can say that again," said Crumley.
I waited.
"Sorry," said Crumley.
I picked up the second book, Constance's more personal, recent phone lists.
"But what if Constance, hit by the old Book of the Dead, got wired back into her griefs, her losses in that past, and decided, in order to make do with it, she had to destroy it, person by person, one by one. What if she red-lined the names and forgot she had done it?"
"What if?" Crumley sighed.
"Let the idiot express his delight." Fritz Wong tucked his monocle back in his eye and leaned forward. "So the Ratti-gan goes to kill, maim, or at least threaten her own past, ja?" he said with heavy Germanic concern.
"Is that the way the next scene plays?" I asked.
"Action," said Fritz, amused.
I swayed behind the first empty chair.
"Here we are at the dead end of the old trolley-tram line on Mount Lowe."
Fritz and Crumley nodded, seeing the mummy there, wrapped in headlines.
"Wait." Blind Henry squinted. "Okay, I'm there."
"Her first husband is there, her first big mistake. So she goes up to swipe the newspapers with all her old selves filed away. She grabs the papers, like I did, and gives a final yell. Whether she pushed the landslide of newsprint, or gave one last shriek, who knows? Regardless, the Mount Lowe trolley master drowned in a bad-news avalanche. Okay?"
I looked over at Crumley, whose mouth gaped with his "okay." He nodded, as did Fritz. Henry sensed this and gave the go-ahead.
"Chair number two. Bunker Hill. Queen Califia. Predictor of futures, insurer of fates."
I held on to the chair as if I pushed that massive elephant on roller skates.
"Constance shouted outside her door. Califia wasn't murdered any more than that Mount Lowe Egyptian relic was. Yelled at, sure, by Rattigan, telling Califia to take back all her lousy predictions that insured the future. Califia had unrolled a papyrus road map, Constance followed, blind as a bat-sorry, Henry-all enthusiasm. Would Califia lie? No! Was the future wondrous? You betcha! Now, late in the game, Constance wanted retractions. Califia would have retracted, told new lies, and gone on living, but alarmed, fell downstairs into her grave. Not murder, but panic."
"So much for Califia," said Crumley, trying to hide his approval.
"Scene three, take one," said Fritz.
"Scene three, take one, chair number three." I moved. "This here is the confessional booth, St. Vibiana's."
Fritz scooched his chair closer, his monocle a lighthouse flash, searching my small private stage. He chopped his head at me to continue.
"And here's Rattigan's bighearted brother, trying to lead her along the straight and narrow. When Califia said 'left,' he yelled 'right,' and maybe after years of storms of brutal sin, he threw up his hands, tossed her out of the church. But she came back, raving, demanding absolution, screaming her demands, purify me, forgive me, your own flesh, give way, give in, but he clapped his hands over his ears and yelled against her yell, and his yells, not hers, struck him dead."
"So you say," said Fritz, one eye shut, the fire from his monocle stabbing. "Prove it. If we're going to shoot this like a goddamn film, write me the moment of truth. Tell how you know the priest killed himself with his own rage, yes?"
"Who the hell's the detective here?" Crumley cut in.
"The boy wonder is," drawled Fritz, not looking at him, still shooting lightning bolts of optical glass at me. "He gets hired or fired by what he next claims."
"I'm not applying for a job," I said.
"You've already got it," said Fritz. "Or get thrown out on your ass. I'm the studio head and you're plea-bargaining. How do you know the priest was self-murdered?"
I exhaled.
"Because I heard him breathe, watched his face, saw him run. He couldn't stand Constance diving in the surf one way, to come out another. She was hot desert air, he was fog. Collision. Lightning. Bodies."
"All from one priest and one bad sister?"
"Saint. Sinner," I said.
Fritz Wong stiffened with a glow in his face and a most ungodly smile.
"You got the job. Crumley?"
Crumley reared back from Fritz but at last nodded. "As proof? It'll do. Next?"
I moved on to the next chair.
"Here we are at Grauman's Chinese, up high, late night, film running, figures on the screen, pictures on the wall. All of Rattigan's former selves nailed, ready to be nabbed. And the one man who really knows her, bum to belly button, her dad, keeper of the unholy flame, but he doesn't want her either, so she busts in and swipes the pictures that prove her past. She's got to burn those, too, because she doesn't like all her former selves. The final bust-in puts her pa in shock, like all the rest. Torn both ways-after all, it is his daughter-he lets the pictures go but runs the film on a continuous roundabout reel, Molly, Dolly, Sally, Holly, Gala, Willa, Sue… The reel's still running and the faces lit when we arrive too late to save him or the swiped photos. Unmurder number four…"
"So J. Wellington Bradford a.k.a. Tallulah Bankhead cum Crawford cum Colbert is still alive, and he's not a victim?" said Crumley. "The same goes for quick-change artist Quickly?"
"Alive but not for long. They're as flimsy as kites in a long storm. Constance ranted at them-"
"Because?" said Crumley.
"They taught her all the ways to not be herself," said Fritz, proud of his insight. "Don't do this, do that, don't do that, do this. Richard the Third tells you how to be Lear's daughter, Lady Macbeth, Medea. One size fits all. So she became Electra, Juliet, Lady Godiva, Ophelia, Cleopatra. Bradford said. Rattigan did. Same with Quickly. See Connie run! She had t
o show up on both their doorsteps to disrobe, junk her lines, burn her notices. Can teachers unteach? Constance demanded. 'Who is Constance, what is she?' was the essence of her declaration. Being only forward teachers, they didn't know how to teach backward. So, Constance was driven to-"
"The basement dressing rooms," I said. "Snatch the pictures from upstairs, sure, but then wipe out the evidence of her former selves on the mirrors. Scrape, erase, eliminate, name by name, year by year."
I finished and sipped my drink and shut up.
"Is the train in Murder on the Orient Express pulling into the station?" said Fritz, lying back full-length like Caesar in his bath.
"Yes."
"Furthermore," said Fritz Wong in his fine Germanic guttural, "are you free to accept work on a screenplay titled The Many Deaths of Rattigan, starting Monday, five hundred a week, ten weeks, twenty thousand bonus if we finally shoot the goddamn film?"
"Take the money and run," said Henry.
"Crumley, you want me to take his offer?" I said.
"It's dumb thinking but a great film," said Crumley.
"You don't believe me?" I cried.
"Nobody could be as nuts as you just said," said Crumley.
"Good God, why have I stood here upchucking my guts?" I sank in my chair.
"I don't want to live," I said.
"Yes, you do." Fritz leaned forward, scribbling on a pad.
Five hundred a week was there.
He threw a five-dollar bill on top.
"Your first ten minutes' salary!"
"Then you almost believe? No." I pushed the paper away. "Got to be one of you here gets my idea."
"Me," a voice said.
We all looked at Blind Henry.
"Sign the contract," he said, "but make him sign saying he really believes every word you say!"
I hesitated, then scribbled my own manifesto.
Rumbling, Fritz signed.
"That Constance," he growled. "Damn! She shows up at your door, flings herself on you like a goddamn snake. Hell! Who cares if she kills herself? Why should she run scared of her own phone books and look up all the stupid people who led her down the garden path? Would phone books scare you? Christ, no! There had to be a reason for her setting out to run, to seek. Motivation. Why, goddammit, why all that work, to get what? Hold on."
Fritz stopped, his face suddenly pale, then slowly suffusing with color. "No. Yes. No, couldn't be. No. Yes. Is!"
"Is what, Fritz?"
"I'm glad I talk to myself," said Fritz. "I'm glad I listen. Did anyone hear?"
"You haven't said, Fritz."
"I'll talk to myself, and you eavesdrop, ja?"
"Ja," I said.
Fritz shot me through the heart with one glare. He doused his irritation with a swallow of his martini and said, "A month ago, two months, she threw herself across my desk, with heavy breaths. Was it true, she cried, I was starting some new film? A movie yet nameless? 'Ja,' I said. 'Yes, maybe.' And is there a part for me?' she said, on my shoulder, in my lap. 'No, no,' I said. 'Yes, there must be. There has to be. Tell me, Fritz, what is it?' I should have never told her. But I did, God help me!"
"What was the film, Fritz?"
"'What I'm planning is beyond you,' I said."
"Yes, but for God's sake, Fritz. Name the film!"
Fritz ignored me, staring through that monocle into the starry sky, still talking to himself while we eavesdropped.
"'You can't do it,' I said. She wept. 'Please,' she begged. ' Try me.' I said, 'Constance, it's something you can never be, something you never were.'" Fritz took another swig from his glass. "The Maid of Orleans."
"Joan of Arc!"
"'Oh, my God,' she cried. 'Joan! If it's the only thing I ever do, I must do that!'"
Must do that! came the echo.
Joan!
A voice cried in my ears. Rain fell. Water ran.
A dozen lighters took fire and were thrust out toward the sad, weeping woman.
"Only for my voices, I would lose all heart! The bells came down from heaven and their echoes linger in the fields. Through the quiet of the countryside, my voices!"
The subterranean audience gasped with: Joan.
Joan of Arc.
"Ohmigod, Fritz," I cried. "Say that again!"
"Saint Joan?"
I leaped back, my chair fell.
Fritz went on: "I said, 'Constance, it's too late.' She said, 'It's never too late.' And I said, 'Listen, I'll give you a test. If you pass, if you can do the scene from Shaw's Saint Joan… impossible, but if you can, you get the job.' She fell apart. She cried, 'Wait! I'm dying! Wait, I'll be back.' And she ran away."
I said, "Fritz, do you know what you've just said?"
"Gottdammit, yes! Saint Joan!"
"Oh, Christ, Fritz, don't you see? We've been thrown off by what she said to Father Rattigan. 'I've killed, I've murdered! Help me bury them,' she cried. We thought she meant old Rattigan up on Mount Lowe, Queen Califia on Bunker Hill, but no, dammit, she didn't murder them, she was out to get help to murder Constance!"
"How's that again?" said Crumley.
'"Help me kill Constance,' said Constance. Why? For Joan of Arc! That's the answer. She has to have that role. All this month she's been preparing for it. Isn't that it, Fritz?"
"Just a moment while I take my monocle out and put it back in." Fritz stared at me.
"Fritz, look! She's not right for the part. But there is one way she can be Saint Joan!"
"Dammit to hell, say it!"
"Dammit, Fritz, she had to get away from you, fall back, take a long, hard look at her life. She had to, one by one, kill all her selves, lay all the ghosts, so that when all those Constances were dead, she could come for her test, and maybe, just maybe, land the part. She hasn't had a role like that ever in her life. This was her big chance. And the only way she could do it was to kill the past. Don't you see, Fritz? That must be the answer to what's been going on during the last week, with all these people, with Constance appearing, disappearing, and reappearing again."
Fritz said, "No, no!"
I said, "Yes, yes. The answer's been lying right in front of us, but it's only when you said the name. Saint Joan is the motive for every woman who ever lived. Impossible dream. Can't be attained."
"I'll be gottdammed."
"Oh, no, Fritz!" I said. "Blessed! You've solved it! Now, if we find Constance and say to her, maybe, just maybe, she has a chance. Maybe, maybe-" I broke off. "Fritz," I said. "Answer me."
"What?"
"If Constance should suddenly appear as the Maid of Orleans, if she were incredibly young, changed in some strange way, would you give her the job?"
Fritz scowled. "Don't push me, dammit!"
I said, "I'm not. Look. Was there ever a time when she could have played the Maid?"
"Yes," he said after a moment. "But that was then and this is now!"
"Hear me out. What if, by some miracle, she should show up? When you think of her, just standing there, don't think of her past at all. When you remember the woman you once knew, if she asked, would you give her the role?"
Fritz pondered, took his glass, downed it, refilled it from a frosted crystal pitcher, and then said, "God help me, I think I might. Don't press me, don't press!"
"Fritz," I said, "if we could find that Constance and she asked you, would you at least consider taking a chance on her?"
"Oh, God," Fritz rumbled. "Jesus! Yes! No! I don't know!"
"Fritz!"
"Don't yell, goddammit! Yes! A qualified yes!"
"Okay! All right! Wonderful! Now, if only-"
My eyes strayed, scanning the length of shore to the distant storm-drain entrance. Too late, I glanced away.
Both Crumley and Fritz had caught the look.
"Junior knows where Medea is, right now," said Crumley.
Yes, God, I thought, I know! But my yell had scared her away!
Fritz focused his monocle on that storm-drain entrance.
"I
s that where you came out?" he said.
"No thanks to junior here," said Crumley.
"I rode shotgun," I said guiltily.
"Like hell! Shouldn't have been in that sinkhole to start with. Probably found Rattigan, then lost her again."
Probably! I thought. Oh, God, probably!
"That storm drain," Fritz Wong mused. "Maybe, just maybe, you ran the wrong way?"
"I what?" I said, stunned.
"Here in crazy Hollywood," said Fritz, "is there not more than one way to go? The storm drains, they head in all directions?"
"South, north, west, and-" I slowed down. "East," I said slowly. It's not easy to say "east" slowly, but I did.
"East!" Fritz cried. "Ja, east, east!"
We let our thoughts roam over the hills and down toward Glendale. No one ever went to Glendale, except…
If someone was dead.
Fritz Wong twisted his monocle in his fierce right eye and probed the eastern skyline, smiling a wonderfully vicious smile.
"Gottdamn!" he said. "This will make the great finale. No script needed. Shall I tell you where Rattigan is? East! Gone to earth!"
"Gone to what*. " said Crumley.
"Sly fox, swift cat. Rattigan. Gone to earth. Tired, ashamed of all her lives! Hide them all in one final Cleopatra's carpet, roll them up, deposit them in Eternity's bank. Fade out. Darkness. Plenty of earth there to go to."
He made us wait.
"Forest Lawn," he said.
"Fritz, that's where they bury people!"
"Who's directing this?" Fritz said. "You took the wrong turn toward open air, the sea, life. Rattigan headed east. Death called her by all two dozen names. She answered with one voice."
"BS!" said Crumley.
"You're fired," said Fritz.
"I was never hired," said Crumley. "What's next?"
"Go and prove I am right!" said Fritz.
"So," said Crumley. "Rattigan climbed down into that storm drain and walked east, or drove, or was driven east?"
"That," said Fritz, "is how I would shoot it. Film! Delii" cious!
"But why would she go to Forest Lawn?" I protested weakly, thinking perhaps I had sent her there.
"To die!" said Fritz triumphantly. "Go read Ludwig Bemelmans' tale of the old man, dead, put a lit candle on his head, hung flowers around his neck, and walked, a one-man funeral, to his own grave! Constance, she does the same. She's gone to die a last time, yes? Now, do I put my car in gear? Will someone follow? And do we go aboveground or take the storm drain direct?"
Let's All Kill Constance Page 11