?What?? said Roy.
?She?s blind. She can?t see him. No wonder they?re friends! He takes her out for dinners and never tells her what he?s really like!?
Roy leaned forward and studied the woman.
?My God,? he said, ?you?re right. Blind.?
And the man laughing and the woman picking up and imitating the laughter, like a stunned parrot.
At which moment, Clarence, his back turned, having listened to the laughter and the onrush of words, turned slowly to regard the pair. Eyes half shut, he listened again, intently, and then a look of incredible surprise crossed his face. A word exploded from his mouth.
The Beast stopped his laughter.
Clarence took a step forward and said something to the man. The woman stopped laughing, too. Clarence asked something else. Whereupon the Beast closed his hands into fists, cried out, and lifted his arms into the air as if he might pound Clarence, pile-drive him, into the pavement.
Clarence fell to one knee, bleating.
The Beast towered over him, his fists trembling, his body rocking back and forth, in and out of control.
Clarence cried out and the blind woman, reaching out on the air, wondering, said something, and the Beast shut his eyes and let his arms drop. Instantly, Clarence leaped up and ran off in the dark. I almost jumped to go after him, though for what reason I did not know. The next instant, the Beast helped his blind friend into the taxi, and the taxi roared off.
Roy jumped the starter and we roared after.
The taxi turned right at Hollywood Boulevard, and the red light and some pedestrians stopped us. Roy gunned the engine as if to clear a path, cursed, and finally, when the crosswalk was empty, ran the red light.
?Roy!?
?Stop calling my name. Nobody saw us. We
Up ahead, we saw the taxi making a right at Gower. Up ahead, also, Clarence was still running but did not see us as we passed.
His hands were empty. He had dropped and left his portfolio behind outside the Derby. How long before he misses it, I wondered.
?Poor Clarence.?
?Why ?poor??? said Roy.
?He?s in this, too. Otherwise, why was he outside the Brown Derby? Coincidence? Hell, no. Someone told him to come. God, now he?s lost all those great portraits. Roy, we got to go back and save them.?
?We,? said Roy, ?got to go straight on ahead.?
?I wonder,? I said, ?what kind of note Clarence got? What did it say to
?What did
Roy ran another red light at Sunset in order to catch up with the taxi, which was halfway to Santa Monica Boulevard.
?They?re headed for the studio!? said Roy. ?No.?
For the taxicab, when at Santa Monica, had turned left past the graveyard.
Until we reached St. Sebastian?s, just about the least-significant Catholic church in L.A. Suddenly, the taxi swung left down a side street just beyond the church.
The taxicab stopped about a hundred yards down the side street. Roy braked and curbed. We saw the Beast take the woman in toward a small white building obscured by night. He was gone only a moment. A door opened and closed somewhere, and the Beast returned to the taxi, which then glided to the next corner, made a swift U- turn and came back at us. Luckily, our lights were out. The taxi flashed by. Roy cursed, banged the ignition, revved the car, made a calamitous U-turn of his own, with me yelling, and we were back at Santa Monica Boulevard, in time to see the taxi pull up in front of St. Sebastian?s and dislodge its passenger, who then fled up the walk into the lit entry of the church, not looking back. The taxi drove away.
Roy glided our car, lights out, into another dark place under a tree. ?Roy, what?re you???
?Silence!? hissed Roy. ?Hunch. Hunch is everything. That guy no more belongs in a church at midnight than I belong in the burlesque chorus??
Minutes passed. The church lights did not go out.
?Go
?Go
?Okay,
Roy was out of the car, shucking his shoes.
?Come
But Roy was gone, in his stocking feet. I jumped out, got rid of my shoes, and followed. Roy made it to the church door in ten seconds, me after, to flatten ourselves against an outside wall. We listened. We heard a voice, rising, falling, rising.
