Whats your name?
I refuse to identify myself. You want me to wait?
You go on. The sooner you walk around the studio and check things out, the better. We shouldnt be seen together, anyway. You got my list of checkpoints and the map?
Right here. Crumley tapped his brow.
Be there in an hour. My grandmas house. Upstairs. Good old grandma.
Crumley? Yeah?
I love you.
It wont get you into heaven.
No, I said. But it got me through the night. B.S., said Crumley, and drove away.
I went inside.
My hunch last night had been right.
If Roys miniature cities had been devastated, and his Beast pounded back to bloody clay
There was a smell of the doctors cologne in the hall The door to Roys apartment was ajar.
His apartment was eviscerated.
My God, I whispered, standing in the middle of his rooms looking
around. Soviet Russia. History rewritten.
For Roy had become an unperson. In libraries, tonight, books would be torn and sewn back together, so that the name of Roy Holdstrom would vanish forever, a sad rumor lost, a figment of the imagination. No more.
No books remained, no pictures, no desk, no paper in the trash can. Even the toilet roll in the bathroom had been stripped. The medicine cabinet was Mother Hubbardbare. No shoes under the bed. No bed. No typewriter. Empty closets. No dinosaurs. No dinosaur drawings.
Hours before, the apartment had been vacuumed, scrubbed, then polished with a high-quality wax.
A fury of rage had fired the sound stage to bring down his Babylon, Assyria, Abu Simbel.
A fury of cleanliness here had snorted up the last dust of memory, the merest breath of life.
My God, its awful, isnt it? The voice spoke behind me.
A young man stood in the door. He was wearing a painters smock, much used, and his fingers were smudged with color, as was the left side of his face. His hair looked uncombed and his eyes had a kind of animal wildness, like a creature who works in the dark and only on occasion comes out at dawn.
You better not stay here. They might come back. Hold on, I said. I know you, yes? Roys friend Tom Shipway. Better get out. They were crazy. Come on. I followed Tom Shipway out of the empty apartment.
He unlocked his own door with two sets of keys. Ready? Set! Go! I jumped in.
He slammed the door and lay against it. The landlady! I cant let her see! See?! I looked around.
We were in Captain Nemos undersea apartments, his submarine cabins and engine rooms.
Good God! I cried.
Tom Shipway beamed. Nice, huh? Nice, hell, its incredible!
I knew youd like it. Roy gave me your stories. Mars. Atlantis. And that thing you wrote on Jules Verne. Great, huh?
He waved and I walked and saw and touched. The great red-velvet-covered Victorian chairs, brass-studded and locked to the ships floor. The brass periscope shining down out of the ceiling. The huge fluted pipe organ, center stage. And just beyond, a window that had been converted into an oval submarine porthole, beyond which swam tropical fish of various sizes and colors.
Look! said Tom Shipway. Go on! I bent to peer into the periscope.
It works! I said. Were under water! Or it seems! Did you do all this? Youre a genius.
Yeah.
Does does your landlady know youve done this to her apartment? If she did, shed kill me. Ive never let her in.
Shipway touched a button on the wall. Shadows stirred beyond in the green sea.
A projection of a giant spider loomed, gesticulating. The Squid! Nemos antagonist! Im stunned!
Well, sure! Sit down. Whats going on? Wheres Roy? Why did those bums come in like dingos and leave like hyenas?
Roy? Oh, yeah. The weight of it knocked me back. I sat down, heavily. Jesus, yes. Roy. What happened here last night?
Shipway moved around the room quietly, imitating what he remembered.
You ever see Rick Orsatti sneaking around L.A. years ago? The racketeer?
He ran with a gang
Yeah. Once, years ago, at twilight, downtown, coming out of an alley, I saw six guys dressed in black, one guy leading them, and they moved like fancy rats dressed in leather or silk, all funeral-colored, and their hair oiled back, and their faces pasty white. No, otters is more like it, black weasels. Silent, slithering, snakelike, dangerous, hostile, like black clouds smoking out a chimney. Well, that was last night. I smelled a perfume so strong it came under the door.
Doc Phillips!
and I looked out and these big black sewer rats were easing down the hall carrying files, dinosaurs, pictures, busts, statues, photographs. They stared at me from the sides of their little eyes. I shut the door and watched through the peekhole as they ran by on black rubber sneakers. I could hear them prowling for half an hour. Then the whispers stopped. I opened the door to an empty hall and a big tidal wave of that damn cologne. Did those guys kill Roy?
I twitched. What made you say that?
They looked like undertakers, is all. And if they killed off Roys apartment, well, why not undertake Roy? Hey, Shipway stopped, looking in my face. I didnt meanbut, well, is Roy?
Dead? Yes. No. Maybe. Someone as alive as Roy just cant die! I told him about Stage 13, the ruined cities, the hanged body. Roy wouldnt do that.
Maybe someone did it to him.
Roy wouldnt hold still for any sons-of-bitches. Hell. And a tear rolled out of one of Tom Shipways eyes. I know Roy! He helped me build my first sub. There!
On the wall was a miniature Nautilus, some thirty inches long, a high school art students dream.
Roy cant be dead, can he?!
Then a telephone rang somewhere in Nemos undersea cabins. Shipway picked up a large mollusc shell. I laughed, then stopped
laughing.
Yes? he said into the phone, and then, Who is this?
I all but knocked the phone from his hand. I yelled into it; a shout to life. I listened to someone breathing, far away.
Roy!
Click. Silence. Hummmmm.
I jiggled the receiver wildly, gasping. Roy? said Shipway.
His breathing.
Damn! You cant tell breathing! Where from?
I banged the phone down and stood over it, eyes shut. Then I grabbed it again and tried to dial the wrong end of the mollusc. How does this damn thing work? I yelled.
Who you calling? A taxi.
To go where? Ill take you! Illinois, dammit, Green Town! Thats two thousand miles away!
Then, I said, dazed, putting the seashell down, wed better get going.
Tom Shipway dropped me at the studio.
I ran down through Green Town just after two. The whole town was freshly painted white, waiting for me to come knocking at doors or peering through lace-curtained windows. Flower pollen sifted on the wind as I turned up the sidewalk of my long-gone grandparents home. Birds flew off the roof as I mounted the stairs.
Tears welled in my eyes as I knocked on the stained-glass front door. There was a long silence. I realized that I had done the wrong thing.
Boys, when they call boys to play, dont knock on doors. I backed off down in the yard, found a small pebble, and threw it hard up against the side of the house.
Silence. The house stood quietly in the November sunlight. What? I asked the high window. Really dead?
And then the front door opened. A shadow stood there, looking out. Is it! I yelled. I stumbled across the porch as the screen door opened. I
yelled again, Is it? and fell into Elmo Crumleys arms. Yeah, he said, holding on. If its me youre looking for.
I made inarticulate sounds as he pulled me in and shut the door. Hey, take it easy. He shook my elbows.
I could hardly see him through the steam on my glasses. Whatre you doing here?
You told me. Stroll around, look, then meet you here, right? No, you dont remember. Christ, what in hell you got in this place thats decent?
Crumley rummaged the fridge and brought me a peanut butter cookie and a glass of milk. I sat there, chewing and swallowing and saying, over and
over, Thanks for coming.
Shut up, said Crumley. I can see youre a wreck. What in hell do we do next? Pretend everythings okay. Nobody knows you saw Roys body, or what you thought was his body, right? Whats your schedule?
Im supposed to report in on a new project right now. Ive been transferred. No more Beast film. Im working with Fritz and Jesus.
Crumley laughed. Thats what they ought to title the film. You want me to prowl some more like a damn tourist?
Find him, Crumley. If I let myself really believe Roy was gone Id go nuts! If Roys not dead, hes hiding out, scared. You got to scare him even more, to get him out of hiding before hes really damn well killed for good.
Or, orhes really dead right now, so someone killed him, yes? He wouldnt hang himself, ever. So his murderer is here, also. So find the murderer. The guy who destroyed the clay head of the Beast, smashed the red clay skull, then stumbled on Roy and hoisted him up to die. Either way, Crumley, find Roy before hes killed. Or, if Roys dead, find his damned murderer.
Thats some helluva choice.
Try some autograph-collector agencies, yes? Maybe one of them would know Clarence, his last name, his address. Clarence. And then try the Brown Derby. That maitre d wont talk to guys like me. He must know who the Beast is. Between him and Clarence we can solve the murder, or the murder that might happen any minute!
At least these are leads. Crumley lowered his voice, hoping to get me to
