Elder followed me into the little space with a desk in the middle and a cot in the corner and motioned me to one of the three wooden chairs. I sat, and so did Kelly. Elder didn’t. He leaned against the steel wall of the office wagon, touched his fine mustaches to be sure they were still there and not drooping, folded his arms and glared at me.
“Murder,” I repeated.
I could sense Kelly sagging next to me. Elder said nothing. I looked into his eyes and saw something I hadn’t seen before and knew what he was going to say before he said it. I felt like speaking along with him, but the thought was just enough behind to keep it from happening.
“Know how old I am, Peters?” he said. “Sixty-two. I’ve seen ’em torn up, and I’ve seen a few murders. Not with this circus, but others. I’ve even helped cover them up. The circus is its own world. It’s a moving world that only stops a few days in the world of someone else. You understand what I’m saying? Even if there was a murder, there wasn’t any murder.”
The walls of the office were covered with old posters with faded pictures of clowns and girls in tights. The word “circus” stood out in every one, gaudy, proud. Mills, Sells and Floto; Mix; Cole. I looked at the posters and heard Elder out.
“Maybe that’s something the management has to decide,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said, arms still folded and looking at Kelly, who had brought this Los Angeles outsider into the circus. “But I have no evidence of a murder, and I have no intention of …”
“I believe him,” said Kelly softly.
“Look, Emmett,” said Elder, pushing himself away from the wall and pointing a finger at Kelly.
“Tom,” said Kelly with a sad smile, “you believe it too.”
Elder’s accusing, attacking finger stopped in midair, and his hand moved to his face. Elder’s eyes closed and looked tired and wrinkled. He rubbed them.
“The elephants, Tom,” said Kelly softly.
One more drop in the decibel level, and I wouldn’t be able to hear either one of them. I had the feeling they could communicate without words anyway. I had the feeling that I didn’t belong in this world, couldn’t wisecrack my way through it like the bars, cracked streets, movie studios, and damp office buildings I was familiar with. I wanted to get up and leave.
“Someone tried to do me, Tom,” Kelly said. “I told you. Peters is just …”
Elder’s free hand came up with palm out to stop Kelly. His other hand covered weary eyes that didn’t want to see, but they had to. He put both hands at his sides and looked at me, having some difficulty focusing.
“Not saying you’re right or wrong, what do we do next?”
“You saw the Mirador police,” I said. “I’ve seen them trying to nail a killer. They nab the closest foreigner and call it a day. With the people you have here, Nelson will have the case wrapped up in an hour. Of course, he’ll have the wrong killer, probably someone who can’t speak English well enough to defend himself. Suggestion. Call Nelson back. Let him come to his own conclusion which, without our shoving the truth under his nose, will be that it was an accident. Meanwhile, we try to find the killer and turn him over to Nelson with something real to go on.”
Something warm and sweet-smelling passed the wagon and came in under the door, reminding me how much alive I was and making me suddenly and insanely hungry.
“Well?” I pushed.
“How?”
“I go through everyone in that tent,” I explained. “I find out how many have something against the circus, how many … like that. If we’re lucky, I get it down to one or two or three, and we turn them over. Go through their things, try to find some evidence. Hell, maybe we push them around or tell them lies.”
Elder sighed and looked out the window. “OK, let’s give it a day or two and hope the killer, if there is one, has had enough. But keep it quiet.”
“With everything that goes on here, that might just be possible,” I said.
Elder laughed, one of those it’s-not-funny-but-what-else-can-you-do-to-me laughs. “You don’t understand the circus, Peters. You piss behind the calliope at three A.M. on a moonless night, and by morning you’ll have five questions at breakfast about your kidneys. Give it a try, give it a try. What do you need?”
“Breakfast,” I said, and breakfast it was.
Five minutes later, Kelly and I were seated together in a mess tent. The death of Tanucci had circled Kelly in a cone of silence which he had trouble breaking out of. It didn’t, however, affect his appetite. We were breakfast stragglers, sitting as far away from the kitchen as we could get. Our eggs, ham, and coffee were accompanied by the music of clanging spoons, metal plates, running water, and chattering cooks. I didn’t need to hear the words. They were talking about death. There is a tone of it that doesn’t need words.
“What happens to the circus when there’s an accident like this?” I said, trying to ignore the coffee I had just spilt on my shirt. Maybe I could button my top jacket button and hide it.
Kelly shrugged, stopped eating, and tried to look through the wall in the general direction of Tanucci’s body.
“We do the show,” he said. “Even the Flying Tanuccis. They just do less of an act. Maybe they even mention what happened. Maybe they don’t. We don’t close up shop. Can’t. A circus, especially a shoestring one like this, can’t take too many nights down.”
He went back to his eggs, and I tried drinking my coffee carefully in a thick white porcelain cup that felt good against my palms.
“And you have to be funny,” I said more than asked.
Something like a chuckle came out of Kelly. “You know,” he said. “I usually am funnier when I’m down. The towners can’t tell. You know the story about Joey Grimaldi? First big circus clown about a hundred years ago. We’re still called Joeys because of him. One day his circus is playing Vienna, and Joey is so down he’s thinking of quitting. So he goes to a doctor’s office he spots on the way to his hotel and tells the doc that he’s so depressed that he’s thinking of taking his life.
“‘Don’t worry,’ says the doctor. ‘I know just the thing to make you feel better, better enough to keep going. The circus is in town. Just go down there tonight and keep your eyes on Grimaldi the clown, and you’ll find yourself laughing.’”
“Nice story,” I said, looking across the tent to watch the woman named Peg hurrying toward us.
“Maybe,” said Kelly, reaching for another pancake, “but I don’t believe it, a Jackpot for clowns. There aren’t many suicides in circuses. Circus people seldom give up hope. We learn to live on hope. That’s what we talk about most of the time: next year, the next job, things getting better, homes we’re going to buy, places we’re going to visit, things we’re going to be.”
“What are you going to be when you grow up?” I said with my crooked smile.
“I used to think I was going to be a cartoonist. I was pretty good. The clown I do, Willie, I really drew him first for an ad agency I worked for back in Kansas City. Then I thought for a while I’d be a trapeze star, center-ring stuff. Was too for a while, did a teeth-hanging act. Damned hard on the jaws. Until a few months back I thought I might like to be in movies, but … If I ever grow up, I think I’ll just be a clown.”
Peg was standing next to us with something in her hand. Her hair was gradually escaping from the hairpins, which tried to hold it against the wind. She was the kind of woman who left a trail of hairpins you could follow to the far reaches of Alaska.
“Hi, Peg,” said Kelly. “Want some coffee?”
“No … yes … I think no,” she said, patting back some hair. “Tom said I should give this to you.”
I took the sheet of paper from her hand and looked down at the list. It had the names of everyone in the tent when the harness was removed. It included the name of Emmett Leo Kelly and was, as for each person on the list except for me and the final name, followed by a place of birth and a date. Kelly’s was Sedan, Kansas, December 9, 1898.
Peg couldn’t make up her mind about staying or sitting. I pointed to the bench next to me, and she sat.
“Sheriff is here,” she said.
“And …” I prodded.
“I think he’s convinced it’s an accident,” she said, reaching for a piece of toast on my plate, realizing what she was doing and pulling her hand back. I took the toast and placed it on the table in front of her.
“I haven’t had a chance to eat,” she explained, picking up the toast with a guilty hand.
