A Graveyard for Lunatics

there goes the neighborhood! Got to be something under the carpet somewhere, something buried?? Crumley laughed. ?Buried is right. Arbuthnot? You think someone dug up some old really dirty scandal that nobody ever even heard of, and is threatening the studio, not very subtly, with releasing the dirt??

?What kind of scandal, twenty years old, could make a studio think it was going to be destroyed if it was revealed??

?If we wade in the sewer long enough we?ll know. Trouble is, sewer-hopping was never my hobby. Was Arbuthnot, alive, clean??

?Compared to other studio heads? Sure. He was single and had girlfriends, but you expect that of any bachelor, and they were all nice Santa Barbara horsewomen, Town and Country types, handsome and bright, showered twice a day. No dirt.?

Crumley sighed again, as if someone had dealt him the wrong cards and he was ready to fold his hand and fade. ?What about that car crash Arbuthnot was in? Was it an accident??

?I saw the news photos.?

?Photos, hell!? Crumley looked out at his homemade jungle and checked the shadows. ?What if the accident wasn?t an accident? What if it was, well, manslaughter. What if everyone was dead drunk and then dead??

?They had just come from a big liquor bash at the studio. That much got in the papers.?

?Try this,? mused Crumley. ?Studio bigwig, rich as Croesus, with all-time grosses for Maximus, out of his mind with hooch, playing chicken with the other car, driven by Sloane, ricochets off him and everyone hits the telephone pole. That?s not the kind of news you want front-paged. Stock markets dive. Investors vanish. Films die. The silver-haired boy falls off his pedestal, et cetera, et cetera, so there?s a coverup. Now, late in time, someone who was there, or uncovered the facts this year, is shaking down the studio, threatening to tell more than photos and skid-marks. Or what if???

?What if??

?It wasn?t an accident and it wasn?t horse-around drunkenness that slammed them to hell. What if someone did it to them on purpose??

?Murder!?? I said.

?Why not? Studio heads that tall, that big, that wide, make lots of enemies. All the yes-men around them eventually think rat crap and malice. Who was next in line for power at Maximus that year??

?Manny Leiber? But he wouldn?t kill a fly. He?s all hot air!?

?Give him the benefit of one fly and one hot air balloon. He?s the studio head now, right? Well! A couple of slashed tires, some loosened bolts, and bang! the whole studio falls in your lap for a lifetime!?

?That all sounds logical.?

?But if we could find the guy that did it, he?d prove it for us. Okay, buster, what next??

?I suppose we check the old local newspapers from twenty years ago to see what?s missing. And if you could kind of prowl around the studio. Unobtrusively, that is.?

?With these flat feet? I think I know the studio gate guard. Worked at Metro years ago. He?d let me in and zip his lip. What else??

I gave him a list. The carpenters? shop. The graveyard wall. And the Green Town house where Roy and I had planned to work, and where Roy might be now.

?Roy?s still there, waiting to steal back his beasts. And, Crum, if what you say is true, night chicken rides, manslaughter, murder, we got to blow Roy out of there now. If the studio people go in Stage 13 tonight and find the box in which Roy hid that papier-mache body after he stole it, what won?t they do to him?!?

Crumley grunted. ?You?re asking me to not only get Roy re-hired but help him stay alive, right??

?Don?t say that!?

?Why not? You?re all over the ball field, playing pitcher and running to bat flies and fumble balls. How in hell do I catch Roy? Wander around the sets with a butterfly net and some cat food! Your studio friends know Roy, I don?t. They can stomp him long before I get out of the bull pen. Give me just one fact to start with!?

?The Beast. If we found out who he is, we might find why Roy was fired for making that clay bust.?

?Yeah, yeah. What else? About the Beast??

?We saw him go into the graveyard. Roy followed him, but wouldn?t tell me what he saw, what the Beast was up to. Maybe, maybe it was the Beast put that papier-mache duplicate of Arbuthnot up on the graveyard wall?and sent notes to blackmail people!?

?Now you?re cooking!? Crumley rubbed his bald head with both hands, rapidly. ?Identify the Beast, ask where he borrowed the ladder and how he made the look-alike Arbuthnot papier-mache corpse! Well! well!? Crumley beamed.

He ran to the kitchen for more beer.

We drank and he gazed at me with paternal affection. ?I was just thinking? how great it is to have you home.?

I said, ?Hell, I haven?t even asked you about your novel??

?Downwind from Death??

?That?s not the title I gave you!?