A Graveyard for Lunatics

head.

?Someday,? he said, ?you?ll blunder into something that makes sense. There?s no body, so what can I do? How do we know he hasn?t gone on vacation??

?He?ll never come back.?

?Who says? You want to go to the nearest station and file a complaint? They?ll come look at the torn stuff in the files, shrug, say one less nut off the old Hollywood tree, tell the landlord and??

?The landlord?? said a voice behind us.

An old man stood in the door.

?Where?s Clarence?? he said.

I talked fast. I raved, maundered, and described all of 1934 and 1935 and me rambling on my roller skates, pursued by a maniac cane-wielding W. C. Fields and kissed on the cheek by Jean Harlow in front of the Vendome restaurant. With the kiss, the ball bearings popped from my skates. I limped home, blind to traffic, deaf to my school chums.

?All right, all right, I get the picture!? The old man glared around the room. ?You don?t look like sneaks. But Clarence lives as if a mob of photo snatchers might rape him. So??

Crumley handed over his card. The old man blinked at it and gripped his false teeth with his gums.

?I don?t want no trouble here!? he whined. ?Don?t worry. Clarence called us, afraid. So we came.? Crumley glanced around. ?Have Sopwith call me. Okay??

The old man squinted at the card. ?Venice police? When will they clean ?em up??

?What??

?The canals! Garbage. The canals!? Crumley steered me out. ?I?ll look into it.?

?Into what?? the old man wondered. ?The canals,? said Crumley. ?Garbage.?

?Oh, yeah,? said the old man. And we were gone.

46

We stood on the sidewalk watching the apartment house as if it might suddenly roll down a runway, like a ship sliding into the sea.

Crumley didn?t look at me. ?Same old lopsided relationship. You?re a wreck because you saw a body. I?m one because I didn?t. Crud. I suppose we could wait around for Clarence to come back??

?Dead??

?You want to file a missing-person report? What you got to go on??

?Two things. Someone stomped Roy?s miniature animals and destroyed his clay sculpture. Someone else cleaned the mess. Someone scared or strangled Clarence to death. Someone else cleaned up. So two groups, or two individuals: The one who destroys; the one who brings the trunks, brooms, and vacuum cleaners. Right now all I can figure is the Beast came over the wall, kicked Roy?s stuff to death on his own, and ran off, leaving things to be found, cleaned away, or hid. Same thing here. The Beast climbed down off Notre Dame??

?Climbed down??

?I saw him face to face.?

For the first time, Crumley looked a little pale.

?You?re going to get yourself killed, god damn it. Stay off high places. For that matter, should we be standing here in broad daylight, gabbing? What if those mop-up guys come back??

?Right.? I began to move.

?You want a lift??

?It?s only a block to the studio.?

?I?m heading downtown to the newspaper morgue. There must be something there on Arbuthnot and 1934 we don?t know. You want me to search for Clarence, on the way??

?Oh, Crum,? I said, turning. ?You know and I know, by now they?ve burned him to ashes and burned the ashes. And how do we get in to shake down the clinkers in the backlot incinerator? I?m on my way to the Garden of Gethsemane.?

?Is that safe??

?Safer than Calvary.?

?Stay there. Call me.?

?You?ll hear me, across town,? I said, ?without a phone.?

47

But first, I stopped at Calvary.

The three crosses were empty.

?J. C.,? I whispered, touching his picture folded in my pocket, and realized suddenly that a rich presence had been following me for some time.

I looked around at Manny?s mob of fog, his gray-shadow Chinese-funeral Rolls-Royce, crept up behind me. I