We stepped into Manny Leibers office.
Manny Leiber stood with the back of his neck watching us.
He stood in the middle of a large, all-white room, white walls, white rug, white furniture, and a huge all-white desk with nothing on it but a white telephone. A sheer blizzard of inspiration from the hand of some snow-blind artist over in Set Design.
Behind the desk was a four-by-six mirror so that if you glanced over your shoulder you could see yourself working. There was only one window in the room. It looked down on the back studio wall, not thirty feet off, and a panoramic view of the graveyard. I could not take my eyes away.
But Manny Leiber cleared his throat. With his back still turned he said: Is he gone?
I nodded quietly at his stiff shoulders.
Manny sensed my nod and exhaled. His name will not be mentioned
here again. He never was.
I waited for Manny to turn and circle me, working off a passion he could not explode. His face was a mass of tics. His eyes did not move with his eyebrows or his eyebrows with his mouth or his head twisting on his neck. He looked dangerously off-balance as he paced; at any moment he might fly apart. Then he noticed Fritz Wong watching us both, and went to stand by Fritz as if to provoke him to a rage.
Fritz wisely did the one thing I noticed often when his world became too real. He removed his monocle and slipped it into his breast pocket. It was like a fine dismantling of attention, a subtle rejection. He shoved Manny in his pocket with the monocle.
Manny Leiber talked and paced. I half whispered, Yeah, but what do we do with Meteor Crater!
Fritz warned me with a jerk of his head: Shut up.
So! Manny pretended not to hear, Our next problem, our main problem is we have no ending for Christ and Galilee.
Say that again? asked Fritz, with deadly politeness. No ending! I cried. Have you tried the Bible?
We got Bibles! But our screenwriter couldnt read the small print on a Dixie cup. I saw that Esquire story of yours. It was like Ecclesiastes.
Job, I muttered.
Shut up. What we need is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and me!
Manny Leiber snorted. Since when do beginning writers reject the greatest job of the century? We need it yesterday, so Fritz can start shooting again. Write good and someday youll own all this!
He waved.
I looked out over the graveyard. It was a bright day, but invisible rain
washed the tombstones.
God, I whispered. I hope not.
That did it. Manny Leiber paled. He was back on Stage 13, in the dark, with me, Roy, and the clay Beast.
Silently, he ran to the restroom. The door slammed.
Fritz and I traded glances. Manny was sick behind the door. Gott, exhaled Fritz. I should have listened to Goering!
Manny Leiber staggered back out a moment later, looked around as if surprised the place was still afloat, made it to the telephone, dialed, said, Get in here! and headed out.
I stopped him at the door. About Stage 13
Manny had his hand over his mouth as if he might be sick again. His eyes widened.
I know youre going to clean it out, I said, quickly. But I got a lot of stuff on that stage. And I want to spend the rest of the day talking with Fritz here about Galilee and Herod. Could you leave all the junk so I can come tomorrow morning and claim my stuff? Then you can clean out.
Mannys eyes swiveled, thinking. Then, hand over his mouth, he jerked his head once, yes, and turned to find a tall thin pale man coming in. They whispered, then with no goodbyes, Manny left. The tall pale man was I. W. W. Hope, one of the production estimators.
He looked at me, paused, and then with some embarrassment said, It seems, ah, we have no ending for your film.
Have vou tried the Bible? Fritz and I said.
The menagerie was gone, the curb was empty in front of the studio. Charlotte, Ma, and the rest had gone on to other studios, other restaurants. There must have been three dozen of them scattered across Hollywood. One would surely know Clarences last name.
Fritz drove me home.
Along the way he said, Reach in the glove compartment. That glass case. Open.
I opened the small black case. There were six bright crystal monocles in six neat red velvet cups nested there.
My luggage, said Fritz. All that I saved and took to bring to America when I got the hell out with my ravenous groin and my talent.
Which was huge.
Stop. Fritz dutch-rubbed my skull. Give only insults, bastard child. I show you these he nudged the monoclesto prove all is not lost. All cats, and Roy, land on their feet. What else is in the glove compartment?
I found a thick mimeographed script.
Read that without throwing up and youll be a man, my son. Kipling. Go. Come back, tomorrow, two-thirty, the commissary. We talk. Then, later, we show you the rough cut of Jesus on the Dole or Father, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me. Ja?
I got out of his car in front of my house. Sieg Heil, I said.
Thats more like it! Fritz drove away, leaving me to a house so empty and quiet I thought: Crumley.
Soon after sunset, I rode out to Venice on my bike.
I hate bikes at night, but I wanted to be sure no one followed. Besides, I wanted time to think just what I would say to my detective
friend. Something like: Help! Save Roy! Get him re-hired. Solve the riddle of the Beast.
That made me almost turn back.
I could hear Crumley now, heaving great sighs as I spun my impossible tale, throwing up his hands, slugging back the beer to drown his contempt for my lack of real hammered-out Swedish-steel-spiked facts.
I parked my bike out in front of his small thornbush-hidden safari bungalow a mile from the ocean and walked up through a grove of African lilacs, along a path dusted, you felt, by okapi beasts just yesterday.
As I raised my hand to knock, the door blew open.
A fist came out of the darkness with a foaming beer can in it. I could not see the man who held it. I snatched it away. The hand vanished. I heard footsteps fade through the house.
I took three sips to get strength to enter. The house was empty.
The garden was not.
Elmo Crumley sat under a thornbush tree, wearing his banana traders hat, eying the beer that he held in his sunburnt hand, and drinking silently.
There was an extension telephone on a rattan table at his elbow. Looking steadily, wearily at me from under his white hunters topee, Crumley dialed a number.
Someone answered. Crumley said: One more migraine. Putting in for sick leave. See you in three days, okay? Okay. And hung up.
I guess, I said, that headache is me.
Any time you show up seventy-two hours leave.
He nodded. I sat. He went to stand at the rim of his own private jungle, where the elephants trumpeted and unseen flights of giant bumblebees, hummingbirds, and flamingos died long before any future ecologists declared them dead.
Where, said Crumley, the hell have you been? Married, I said.
Crumley thought it over, snorted, strolled over, put his arm around my shoulder, and kissed me on the top of my head.
Accepted!
And laughing, he went to drag out a whole case of beer.
We sat eating hotdogs in the little rattan gazebo at the back of his garden.
Okay, son, he said, finally. Your old dad has missed you. But a young man between blankets has no ears. Old Japanese proverb. I knew youd come back someday.
Do you forgive me? I said, welling over.
Friends dont forgive, they forget. Swab your throat out with this. Is Peg a great wife?
Been married a year and yet to have our first fight over money. I blushed. She makes most of it. But my studio salary is upone hundred fifty a week.
Hell! Thats ten bucks more than I make!
Only for six weeks. Ill soon be back writing for Dime Mystery. And writing beauts. Ive kept up in spite of the silence
You get the Fathers Day card I sent? I said quickly.
He ducked his head and beamed. Yeah. Hell. He straightened up. But
more than familial emotions brought you here, right? People are dying, Crumley.
Not again! he cried.
Well, almost dying, I said. Or have come back from the grave not really alive, but papier-mache dummies Hold er, Newt! Crumley darted into the house and ran back with a flask of gin, which he poured into his beer as I talked faster. The sprinkler system came on in his Kenya tropical backyard, along with the cries of veldt animals and deep-jungle birds. At last I was finished with all the hours from Halloween to now. I fell silent.
Crumley let out a grievous sigh. So Roy Holdstroms fired for making a clay bust. Was the Beasts face that awful?
Yes!
Aesthetics. This old gumshoe cant help with that!
You got to. Right now Roy is still in the studio, waiting for a chance to sneak all of his prehistoric models out. Theyre worth thousands. But Roys there illegally. Can you help me figure out what in hell this all means? Help Roy get his job back?
Jesus, sighed Crumley.
Yeah, I said. If they catch Roy trying to move things out, lord God! Damn, said Crumley. He added more gin to his beer. You know who
that guy was in the Brown Derby? No.
You got any notions about anyone who might know? The priest at St. Sebastians.
I told
