J. C. bowed his head, then added: “Go rewrite the books, but especially John! Not mine to give, only yours to take! Out, before I rescind my blessing!”
“Have you blessed me?”
“All the while we talked, son. All the while. Go.”
31
I stuck my head in Projection Room 4 and said, “Where’s Judas?”
“That’s the password!” cried Fritz Wong. “Here are three martinis! Drink!”
“I hate martinis. And anyway, first, I got to get this out of my system. Miss Botwin,” I said.
“Maggie,” she said, quietly amused, her camera in her lap.
“I’ve heard about you for years, admired you a lifetime. I just have to say I’m glad for this chance to work—”
“Yes, yes,” she said, kindly. “But you’re wrong. I’m no genius. I’m … what do you call those things skate across ponds looking for insects?”
“Water striders?”
“Water striders! You’d think the damn bugs would sink, but they move on a thin film on top of the water. Surface tension. They distribute their weight, stretch out their arms and legs so they never break the film. Well, if that isn’t me, what is? I just distribute my weight, stretch out all fours, so I don’t break the film I skate on. I haven’t sunk from sight yet. But I’m not the best and it’s no miracle, just plain dumb early-on luck. Now thanks for the compliment, young man, put your chin back up, and do as Fritz commands. The martinis. You’ll soon see, I’ve worked no wonders on what comes next.” She turned her slender profile to call quietly toward the projection room. “Jimmy? Now.”
The lights dimmed, the screen hummed, the curtains parted. The rough cut flashed on the screen, with a partially finished musical score by Miklos Rozsa. That I liked.
As the film advanced, I snuck glances at Fritz and Maggie. They looked as if they were bucking on a wild horse. I did the same, pushed back in my seat by a tidal wave of images.
My hand stole one of the martinis.
“Thatsa boy,” whispered Fritz.
When the film finished, we sat silently as the lights came up.
“How come,” I said at last, “you shot so much of the new footage at twilight or night?”
“I can’t stand reality.” Fritz’s monocle blinked as he glared at the blank screen. “Half this film’s schedule now is sunset. Then, the day’s spine is cracked. At sundown, I heave great sighs: survived another day! I work until two each night, without facing real people, real light. I had some contact lenses made two years ago. Threw them out the window! Why? I saw pores in people’s faces, my face. Moon craters. Pockmarks. Hell! look at my recent films. No sunlit people. Midnight Lady. The Long Dark. Three A.M. Murders. Death Before Dawn. Now, child, what about this goddamn Galilean turkey Christ in the Garden, Caesar up a Tree!?”
Maggie Botwin stirred despondently in the shadows and unpacked her hand camera.
I cleared my throat. “Must my narration paper over all the holes in this script?”
“Cover Caesar’s ass? Yes!” Fritz Wong laughed and poured more drinks.
Maggie Botwin added, “And we’re sending you to discuss Judas with Manny Leiber.”
“Why!!?”
“The Jewish Lion,” said Fritz, “might enjoy eating an Illinois Baptist. He might listen while he pulls off your legs.”
I slugged down my second drink.
“Say,” I gasped, “this isn’t half bad.”
I heard a whirring sound.
Maggie Botwin’s camera was focused to catch my moment of incipient inebriation.
“You carry your camera everywhere?”
“Yep,” she said. “No day has passed in forty years that I have not trapped the mice among the mighty. They don’t dare fire me. I’d cut together nine hours of damn fools on parade and première it at Grauman’s Chinese. Curious? Come see.”
Fritz filled my glass.
“Ready for my closeup.” I drank.
The camera whirred.
32
Manny Leiber was sitting on the edge of his desk, guillotining a big cigar with one of those one-hundred-dollar gold Dunhill cigar cutters. He scowled as I walked in and around the office, studying the various low sofas.
“What’s wrong?”
“These sofas,” I said. “So low you can’t get up.” I sat. I was about a foot from the floor, staring up at Manny Leiber, who loomed like Caesar, astride the world.
I grunted myself up and went to collect cushions. I placed three of them on top of each other and sat.
“What the hell you doing?” Manny scuttled off his desk.
“I want to look you in the eye when I talk. I hate breaking my neck down there in the pits.”
Manny Leiber fumed, bit his cigar, and climbed back up on the desk rim. “Well?” he snapped.
I said, “Fritz just showed me a rough cut of his film. Judas Iscariot’s missing. Who killed him?”
“What!?”
“You can’t have Christ without Judas. Why is Judas suddenly the invisible disciple?”
For the first time I saw Manny Leiber’s small bottom squirm on the glass-top desk. He sucked his unlit cigar, glared at me, and let it blow.
“I gave orders to cut Judas! I didn’t want to make an anti-Semitic film!”
“What!” I exploded, jumping up. “This film is being released next Easter, right? That week, one million Baptists will see it. Two million Lutherans?”
“Sure.”
“Ten million Catholics?”
“Yes!”
“Two Unitarians?”
“Two—?”
“And when they all stagger forth on Easter Sunday and ask, ‘Who cut Judas Iscariot out of the film?’ how come the answer is: Manny Leiber!”
There was a long silence. Manny Leiber threw down his unlit cigar. Freezing me in place, he let his hand crawl to the white telephone.
He dialed three studio digits, waited, said, “Bill?”
He took a deep breath. “—rehire Judas Iscariot.”
With hatred, he watched me replace the three cushions on the three easy chairs. “Is that all you came to talk about?”
“For now.” I turned the doorknob.
“Whatta you heard from your friend Roy Holdstrom?” he said, suddenly.
“I thought you knew!” I said, then stopped.
Careful, I thought.
“The fool just ran off,” I said, quickly. “Took everything from his apartment, left town. Stupid idiot. No friend of mine, now. Him and that damn clay Beast he made!”
Manny Leiber studied me carefully. “Good riddance. You’ll like working with Wong better.”
“Sure. Fritz and Jesus.”
“What?”
“Jesus and Fritz.”
And I went out.
33
I walked slowly back to my grandparents’ house somewhere in the past.
“You sure it was Roy running by an hour ago?” asked Crumley.
“Hell, I dunno. Yes, no, maybe. I’m not coherent. Martinis, middle of the day, that’s not for me. And—” I hefted the script— “I got to cut two pounds off this and add three ounces. Help!”
I glanced at a pad Crumley was holding.
“What?”
“Called three autograph agencies. They all knew Clarence—”
“Great!”
“Not so. All said the same. Paranoid. No last name, phone number, or address. Told them all he was terrified. Not of being burgled, no, but murdered. Then burgled. Five thousand photos, six thousand autographs, his nest eggs. So maybe he didn’t recognize the Beast the other night, but was afraid the Beast knew him, knew where he lived, and might come get him.”
“No, no, that doesn’t fit.”
“Clarence, whatever-his-name is, the agency people said, always took cash, gave cash. No checks, no way to trace him that way. Never did things by mail. Showed up, regular, to make deals, then disappeared for months. Dead end. Dead end, too, the Brown Derby. I walked nice and sof
t, but the maître d’ hung up on me. Sorry, kid. Hey—”
Just then, on schedule, the Roman phalanx reappeared, far off, double-timing. With jovial shouts and curses they approached.
I leaned wildly out, holding my breath.
Crumley said: “Is that the bunch you mentioned, and Roy with them?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he with them now?”
“I can’t see—”
Crumley exploded.
“Goddamn, what the hell is that stupid jerk doing running around the studio anyway? Why doesn’t he get the hell out, escape, dammit?! What’s he sticking around for? To get himself killed?! He’s had his chance to run, but he’s putting you, and me, through the wringer. Why!?”
“Revenge,” I said. “For all the murders.”
“What murders!?”
“Of all of his creatures, all his most dear friends.”
“Crap.”
“Listen, Crum. How long you been in your house in Venice? Twenty, twenty-five years. Planted every hedge, every bush, seeded the lawn, built the rattan hut out back, put in the sound equipment, the rain makers, added the bamboo and the orchids, and the peach trees, the lemon, the apricot. What if I broke in one night soon and tore up everything, cut down the trees, trampled the roses, burned the hut, threw the sound deck out in the street, what would you do?”
Crumley thought about it and his face burned red.
“Exactly,” I said, quietly. “I don’t know if Roy will ever get married. Right now, his children, his whole life has been stomped down in the dust. Everything he ever loved was murdered. Maybe he’s in here now, solving these deaths, trying, just as we are, to find the Beast, and kill him. Maybe Roy’s gone forever. But if I were Roy, yeah, I’d stay on, hide, and keep searching until I buried the killer with the killed.”
“My lemon trees, huh?” said Crumley, looking off toward the sea. “My orchids, my rain forest? Done in by someone? Well.”
The phalanx ran by below in the late sunlight and away into the blue shadows.
There was no great gawky whooping-crane warrior with them.
The footsteps and yells faded.
“Let’s go home,” said Crumley.
At midnight, a sudden wind blew through Crumley’s African garden. All the trees in the neighborhood turned over in their sleep.
Crumley studied me. “I can feel something coming.”
It came.
“The Brown Derby,” I said, stunned. “My God, why didn’t I think sooner!? The night Clarence ran off in a panic. He dropped his portfolio, left it lying on the walk by the Brown Derby entrance! Someone must’ve picked it up. It might still be there, waiting for Clarence to calm down and dare to sneak back for it. His address would have to be in it.”
“Good lead.” Crumley nodded. “I’ll follow up.”
The night wind blew again, a very melancholy sigh through the lemon and orange trees.
“And—”
“And?”
“The Brown Derby again. The maître d’ might not talk to us, but I know someone who ate there every week for years, when I was a kid—”
“Oh, God,” Crumley sighed. “Rattigan. She’ll eat you alive.”
“My love will protect me!”
“God, put that in a sack and we’ll fertilize the San Fernando Valley.”
“Friendship protects. You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?”
“Don’t count on it.”
“We got to do something. Roy’s hiding. If they, whoever they are, find him, he’s dead.”
“You, too,” said Crumley, “if you play amateur detective. It’s late. Midnight.”
“Constance’s wake-up hour.”
“Transylvania time? Hell.” Crumley took a deep breath. “Do I drive you?”
A single peach fell from a hidden garden tree. It thumped.
“Yes!” I said.
34
“At dawn,” said Crumley, “if you’re singing soprano, don’t call.”
And he drove off.
Constance’s house was, as before, a perfection, a white shrine set to glow on the shoreline. All of its doors and windows stood wide. Music played inside the huge stark white living room: some old Benny Goodman.
I walked the shore as I had walked a thousand nights back, checking the ocean. She was there somewhere racing porpoises, echoing seals.
I looked in at the parlor floor, littered with four dozen circus-bright pillows, and the bare white walls where, late nights until dawn, the shadow shows passed, her old films projected from the years before I was born.
I turned because a wave, heavier than the rest, had slammed on the shore ….
To deliver forth, as from the rug tossed at Caesar’s feet …
Constance Rattigan.
She came out of the wave like a loping seal, with hair almost the same color, slick brown and water combed, and her small body powdered with nutmeg and doused in cinnamon oil. Every autumn tint was hers in nimble legs and wild arms, wrists, and hands. Her eyes were a wicked wise merry small creature’s brown. Her laughing mouth looked stained by walnut juice. She was a frisking November surf creature rinsed out of a cold sea but hot as burnt chestnuts to touch.
“Son of a bitch,” she cried. “You!”
“Daughter of the Nile! You!”
She flung herself against me like a dog, to get all the wetness off on someone else, grabbed my ears, kissed my brow, nose, and mouth, then turned in a circle to show all sides.
“I’m naked, as usual.”
“I noticed, Constance.”
“You haven’t changed: you’re looking at my eyebrows instead of my boobs.”
“You haven’t changed. The boobs look firm.”
“Not bad for a night-swimming fifty-six-year-old former movie queen, huh? C’mon!”
She ran up the sand. By the time I reached her outdoor pool she had brought out cheese, crackers, and champagne.
“My God.” She uncorked the bottle. “It’s been a hundred years. But I knew someday you’d come back. Got marriage out of your blood? Ready for a mistress?”
“Nope. Thanks.”
We drank.
“You seen Crumley in the last eight hours?”
“Crumley?”
“Shows in your face. Who died?”
“Someone twenty years ago, at Maximus Films.”
“Arbuthnot!” cried Constance in a burst of intuition.
A shadow crossed her face. She reached for a bathrobe and clothed herself, suddenly very small, a girl child who turned to look down along the coast, as if it were not sand and tide, but the years themselves.
“Arbuthnot,” she murmured. “Christ, what a beauty! What a creator.” She paused. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she added.
“Not quite,” I stopped.
For Constance had whirled, as if shot.
“No!” she cried.
“No, a thing like him. A thing propped up on a wall to scare me, and now, you!”
Tears of relief burst from her eyes. She gasped as if struck in the stomach.
“Damn you! Go inside,” she said. “Get the vodka.”
I brought the vodka and a glass. I watched her throw back two slugs. I was suddenly sober forever, tired of seeing people drink, tired of being afraid when night came.
I could think of nothing to say so I went to the edge of her pool, took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants, and soaked my feet in the water, looking down, waiting.
At last Constance came and sat beside me.
“You’re back,” I said.
“Sorry,” she said. “Old memories die hard.”
“They sure as hell do,” I said, looking along the coastline now myself. “At the studio this week, panic attacks. Why would everyone fly apart at a wax dummy in the rain that looked like Arbuthnot?”
“Is that what happened?”
I told her the rest, as I had told it to Crumley, ending with the Brown Derby and my need for her to go there with me. When I
finished, Constance, paler, finished one more vodka.
“I wish I knew what I’m supposed to be scared about!” I said. “Who wrote that note to get me to the graveyard, so I’d introduce a fake Arbuthnot to a waiting world. But I didn’t tell the studio I found the dummy, so they found and tried to hide it, almost wild with fear. Is the memory of Arbuthnot that terrible so long after his death?”
“Yes.” Constance put her trembling hand on my wrist. “Oh, yes.”
“Now what? Blackmail? Does someone write Manny Leiber and demand money or more notes will reveal the studio’s past, Arbuthnot’s life? Reveal what? A lost reel of film maybe from twenty years ago, on the night Arbuthnot died. Film at the scene of the accident, maybe, which, if shown, would burn Constantinople, Tokyo, Berlin, and the whole backlot?”
“Yes!” Constance’s voice was far back in some other year. “Get out now. Run. Did you ever dream a big black two-ton bulldog comes in the night and eats you up? A friend of mine had that dream. The big black bulldog ate him. We called it World War II. He’s gone forever. I don’t want you gone.”
“Constance, I can’t quit. If Roy’s alive—”
“You don’t know that.”
“—and I get him out of there and help him get his job back because it’s the only right thing to do. I got to. It’s all so unfair.”
“Go out in the water, argue with the sharks, you’ll get a better deal. You really want to go back to Maximus studios after what you just told me? God. Do you know the last day I was ever there? The afternoon of Arbuthnot’s funeral.”
She let that sink me. Then she threw the anchor after it.
“It was the end of the world. I never saw so many sick and dying people in one place. It was like watching the Statue of Liberty crack and fall. Hell. He was Mount Rushmore after an earth-quake. Forty times bigger, stronger, greater than Cohn, Zanuck, Warner, and Thalberg rolled in one knish. When they slammed his casket lid in that tomb across the wall, cracks ran all the way uphill to where the Hollywoodland sign fell. It was Roosevelt, dying long before his death.”
Constance stopped for she could hear my uneasy breathing.
Then she said: “Look, is there a brain in my head? Did you know Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day? Think! It’s all the redwoods in the world cut so the thunder never stops. Antarctica melts down in tears. Christ gapes his wounds. God holds his breath. Caesar’s legions, ghosts, ten million, rise, with bleeding Amazons for eyes. I wrote that when I was sixteen and a sap, when I found out that Juliet and Don Quixote fell dead on the same day, and I cried all night. You’re the only one ever heard those silly lines. Well, that’s how it was when Arbuthnot died. I was sixteen again and couldn’t stop crying or writing junk. There went the moon, the planets, Sancho Panza, Rosinante, and Ophelia. Half the women at his funeral were old mistresses. A between-the-sheets fan club, plus nieces, girl cousins, and crazy aunts. When we opened our eyes that day it was the second Johnstown flood. Jesus, I do run on. I hear they still got Arbuthnot’s chair in his old office? Anyone sat in it since with a big enough butt and a brain to fit?”