'He was standing over there.' I pointed. 'Two nights. I saw him.'
'Swell. Ankle deep in water. So no prints for the killer. What else you want to show me, son?'
'Someone called me an hour ago, woke me up, told me to come along the beach. That someone knew her house was empty or soon going to be.'
'Phone call, huh? Swell again. Now you're ankle deep in water and no prints.
That the whole story?'
My cheeks must have reddened. He saw that I had been telling a half-truth. I didn't want to admit I hadn't answered the phone the last time, but ran down the beach on a terrible hunch.
'At least you got integrity, scribe.' Crumley looked at the white waves combing in, then at the footprints, then at the house, white, cold, and empty in the middle of the night. 'You know what integrity means? Based on the word integers. Numbers. Integrity means to add up. Has nothing to do with virtue. Hitler had integrity. Zero plus zero plus zero makes zero, no score.
Phone calls and footprints underwater and blind hunches and dopey faith.
These late-night shootings are beginning to tell on me. That about do it?'
'No, damn it. I've got a real, live suspect. Constance recognized him. I did, too, went to see him. Find out where he was tonight, you got the killer! You…'
I lost control of my voice. I had to take my glasses off and wipe the tiny wet salt-marks off so I could see.
Crumley patted my cheek and said, 'Hey, don't. How do you know this guy, whoever he is, didn't take her in the water and…'
'Drown her!'
'Swim with her, talk nice, and they swam north one hundred yards and walked back to his place. For all you know, she'll be dragging home at dawn with a funny smile on her face.'
'No,' I said.
'What, am I spoiling the mysterious romance of all this for you?'
'No.'
But he could tell I was uncertain.
He touched my elbow. 'What else haven't you said?'
'Constance mentioned she had some real estate not far from here, down the coast.'
'You sure she didn't just go there tonight? If what you say's true, what if she got spooked, pulled up stakes?'
'Her limousine's still here.'
'People walk, you know. You do it all the time. Lady could walk a mile south, spooked, in an inch of water, and us no wiser.'
I looked south to see if I could see a beautiful lady, escaped along the strand.
'Thing is,' said Crumley, 'we got nothing to go on. Empty house. Old records playing. No suicide note. No sign of violence. We got to wait for her to come back. And if she doesn't, there's still no case, no corpus delicti. I bet you a bucket of beer she'll…'
'Let me take you to the upstairs apartment at the carousel tomorrow. When you see that strange man's face…'
'God. Do you mean who I think you mean?'
I nodded.
'The airy-fairy?' said Crumley. 'The fag?'
There was a tremendous flop in the water just then.
We both jumped.
'Jesus, what was that?' cried Crumley, peering out over the midnight waters.
Constance, I thought, coming back.
I stared and at last said, 'Seals. They do come and play out there.'
There was a series of small flops and splashes which faded as some sea creature departed in darkness.
'Hell,' said Crumley.
'The projector's still running there in the parlor,' I said. 'Phonograph's still playing. Oven's on in the kitchen, something baking. And all the lights in all the rooms.'
'Let's shut some off before the damn place burns down.'
We followed Constance Rattigan's footprints back up to her fortress of white light.
'Hey,' whispered Crumley. He stared at the eastern horizon. 'What's that?'
There was a faint band of cold light there.
'Dawn,' I said. 'I thought it would never come.'
Constance Rattigan's footprints blew away off the sand in the dawn wind. And Mr. Shapeshade came along the shore, looking back over his shoulder, cans of film under his arms. Far off there, at this very moment, his movie house was being trashed by huge steel-toothed monsters that had risen, summoned by real estate speculators, out of the sea.
When Shapeshade saw me and Crumley standing on Constance Rattigan's front porch, he blinked at our faces and then at the sand and then at the ocean. We didn't have to tell him anything, our faces were that pale.'She'll be back,' he said again and again, 'she'll be back. Constance wouldn't go away. My God, who would I run films with, who? She'll be back, sure!' His eyes spilled over.
We left him in charge of the empty fort and drove back toward my place. On the way, Detective Lieutenant Crumley, in a burst of invective, using harsh epithets like cow-chappatis, Bull Durham, bushwah, and watch-out-you'll-step-in-it, refused my offer to go ride on that damn carousel questioning Field Marshal Erwin Rommel or his pretty pal, dressed up in rose petals, Nijinsky.
'In one or two days, maybe. If that goony old woman doesn't swim back from Catalina, sure. Then I start asking questions. But now? I will not shovel horse-flops to find the horse.'
'Are you angry with me?' I asked.
'Angry, angry, why would I be angry? Angry? Christ, you drive me out of my skull. But angry? Here's a buck, go buy ten rides on that calliope racetrack.'
He dropped me, running, at my door, and roared off.
Inside, I looked at Cal's old piano. The sheet had fallen off the big white ivory teeth.
'Don't laugh,' I said.
Three things happened that afternoon. Two were fine. One was terrible.
A letter arrived from Mexico. In it was a photo of Peg. She had colored her eyes with a blend of brown and green ink, to help me remember what they looked like.
Then there was a postcard from Cal, postmarked Gila Bend.
'Son,' it said, 'you keeping my piano tuned? I'm torturing folks part-time in the local beer joint. This town is full of bald men. Me being here, they don't know how lucky they are. Cut the sheriffs hair yesterday. He gave me twenty-four hours to leave town. Will gas up for Sedalia tomorrow. Be happy. Yours, Cal.'
I turned the card over. There was a photo of a gila monster with black and white patterns on its back. Cal had drawn a bad portrait of himself seated there as if the creature were a musical instrument and him playing only the dark keys.
I laughed and walked north toward the Santa Monica pier, wondering what I might say to that odd man who lived a double life above the moaning carousel.
'Field Marshal Rommel,' I shouted, 'how and why did you set out to kill Constance Rattigan?'
But no one was there to hear.
The carousel ran in silence.
The calliope was turned on, but the music was at the end of its roll and the slots flapped around and around.w The carousel owner was not dead in his ticket booth, only dead drunk. He was awake, but seemed
