Its here, said the lady, 1788 Beachwood? Yeah, I said. Ill be right over
to get it.
Crumley! Youre a genius!
Not quite. Im talking from the Brown Derby phone booth now. And? I felt my heart jump.
The portfolios gone. Someone else got the same bright idea. Someone else got here ahead of me. The lady gave a description. It wasnt Clarence, the way you said. When the lady asked for identification, the guy just walked out with the portfolio. The lady was upset, but no big deal.
Ohmigod, I said. That means they know Clarences address. You want me to go and tell him all this?
No, no. Hed have a heart attack. Hes scared of me, but Ill go. Warn him to hide. Christ, anything could happen. 1788 Beachwood?
You got it.
Crum, youre the cats pajamas.
Always was, he said, always was. Strange to report the folks down at the Venice station expect me back to work an hour ago. The coroner phoned to say a customer wont keep. While Im working, you help. Who else in the studio might know what we need to know? I mean, someone you might trust? Someone whos lived the studios history?
Botwin, I said instantly, and blinked, amazed at my response.
Maggie and her miniature whirring camera, trapping the world day after day, year after year, as it reeled by.
Botwin? said Crumley. Go ask. Meanwhile, Buster? Yeah?
Guard your ass. Its guarded.
I hung up and said, Rattigan?
Ive started the car, she said. Its waiting at the curb.
We rioted toward the studio late in the afternoon. With three bottles of champagne stashed in her roadster, Constance swore happily at every intersection, leaning over the steering wheel like those dogs that love the wind.
Gangway! she cried.
We roared down the middle of Larchmont Boulevard, straddling the dividing line.
What, I yelled, are you doing?!
Once there were trolley tracks on each side of the street. Down the middle was a long line of power poles. Harold Lloyd drove in and out, cat-cradling the poles, like this!
Constance swerved the car left. And this! and this!
We swerved around half a dozen ghosts of long-gone poles, as if pursued by a phantom trolley car.
Rattigan, I said.
She saw my solemn face. Beachwood Avenue? she said.
It was four in the afternoon. The last mail of the day was heading north on the avenue. I nodded to Constance. She parked just ahead of the mailman, who trudged along in the still warm sun. He greeted me like a fellow Iowa tourist, plenty cheerful considering the junk mail he unloaded at every door.
All I wanted was to check Clarences name and address before I knocked at his door. But the postman couldnt stop babbling. He told how Clarence walked and ran, what he looked like around the mouth: quivering. Nervous
ears that itched up and down on his skull. Eyes mostly white.
The mailman punched my elbow with the mail, laughing. A Christmas fruitcake, ten years stale! Comes to his bungalow door in a big wrap-around camels-hair coat like Adolphe Menjou wore in 1927, when we boys ran up the aisles to pee, away from the mush scenes. Sure. Old Clarence. I said Boo! once and he slammed the door. I bet he showers in that coat, afraid to see himself naked. Scaredy Clarence? Dont knock too loud
But I was gone. I turned in quickly at the Villa Vista Courts and walked up to number 1788.
I did not knock on the door. I scratched with my fingernail on the small glass panes. There were nine of them. I did not try them all. The shade was pulled down behind so I couldnt see in. When there was no answer I tapped my forefinger, a bit louder.
I imagined I heard Clarences rabbit heart pounding inside, behind the glass.
Clarence! I called. And waited. I know youre in there! Again, I thought I heard his pulse racing.
Call me, dammit! I cried, at last, before its too late! You know who this is. The studio, dammit! Clarence, if I can find you, they can, too!
They? Who did I mean by they?
I pounded the door with both fists. One of the glass panes cracked. Clarence! Your portfolio! It was at the Brown Derby!
That did it. I stopped pounding for I heard a sound that might have been a bleat or a muffled cry. The lock rattled. Another lock rattled after that, and a third.
At last the door cracked open, held by an inside brass chain.
Clarences haunted face looked down a long tunnel of years at me, close by but so far away I almost thought his voice echoed. Where? he pleaded.
Where?
The Brown Derby, I said, ashamed. And someone stole it.
Stole? Tears burst from his eyes. My portfolio!? Oh God, he mourned. Youve done this to me.
No, no, listen
If they try to break in, Ill kill myself. They cant have them!
And he glanced tearfully over his shoulder at all the files I could see crowded beyond, and the bookcases, and the walls full of signed portraits.
My Beasts, Roy had said at his own funeral, my lovelies, my dears. My beauties, Clarence was saying, my soul, my life!
I dont want to die, mourned Clarence, and shut the door.
Clarence! I tried a last time. Whos they? If I knew, I might save you! Clarence!
A shade banged up across the court.
A door half opened in another bungalow.
All I could say then, exhausted, was, in a half whisper: Goodbye
I went back to the roadster. Constance was sitting there looking at the Hollywood Hills, trying to enjoy the weather.
What was that all about? she said.
One nut, Clarence. Another one, Roy. I slumped into the seat beside her. Okay, take me to the nut factory.
Constance gunned us to the studio gate.
God, gasped Constance, staring up, I hate hospitals. Hospitals?!
Those rooms are full of undiagnosed cases. A thousand babies have been conceived, or born, in that joint. Its a snug home where the bloodless get transfusions of greed. That coat of arms above the gate? A lion rampant with a broken back. Next: a blind goat with no balls. Then: Solomon chopping a
live baby in half. Welcome to Green Glades mortuary! Which sent a stream of icewater down my neck.
My pass motored us through the front gate. No confetti. No brass bands. You should have told that cop who you were!
You see his face? Born the day I fled the studio for my nunnery. Say Rattigan and the sound track dies. Look!
She pointed at the film vaults as we swerved by. My tomb! Twenty cans in one crypt! Films that died in Pasadena, shipped back with tags on their toes. So!
We braked in the middle of Green Town, Illinois.
I jumped up the front steps and put out my hand. My grandparents place. Welcome!
Constance let me pull her up the steps to sit in the porch swing, feeling the motion.
My God, she breathed, I havent ridden one of these in years! You son of a bitch, she whispered, what are you doing to the old lady?
Heck. I didnt know crocodiles cried.
She looked at me steadily. Youre a real case. You believe all this crap you write? Mars in 2001. Illinois in 28?
Yep.
Christ. How lucky to be inside your skin, so goddamned naive. Dont ever change. Constance gripped my hand. We stupid damn doomsayers, cynics, monsters laugh, but we need you. Otherwise, Merlin dies, or a carpenter fixing the Round Table saws it crooked, or the guy who oils the armor substitutes cat pee. Live forever. Promise?
Inside, the phone rang.
Constance and I jumped. I ran in to grab the receiver. Yes? I waited. Hello?!
But there was only a sound of wind blowing from what seemed like a high place. The flesh on the back of my neck, like a caterpillar, crawled up and then down.
Roy?
Inside the phone, wind blew and, somewhere, timbers creaked. My gaze lifted by instinct to the sky.
One hundred yards away. Notre Dame. With its twin towers, its statue saints, its gargoyles.
There was wind up on the cathedral towers. Dust blowing high, and a red workmens flag.
Is this a studio line? I said. Are you where I think you are?
Way up at the very top, I thought I saw one of the gargoyles move. Oh, Roy, I thought, if that is you, forget revenge. Come away.
But the wind stopped and the breathing stopped and the line went dead. I dropped the phone and stared out and up at the towers.
Constance glanced and searched those same towers, where a new wind sifted flurries of dust devils down and away.
Okay, no more bull!
Constance strode back out on the porch and lifted her face toward Notre Dame.
What the hell goes on here! she yelled. Shh! I said.
Fritz was way out in the midst of a turmoil of extras, yelling, pointing, stomping the dust. He actually had a riding crop under his arm, but I never saw him use it. The cameras, there were three of them, were just about ready, and the assistant directors were rearranging the extras along the narrow street leading into a square where Christ might appear sometime between now and dawn. In the middle of the uproar Fritz saw me and Constance, just arrived, and gestured to his secretary. He came running, I handed over the five script pages, and the secretary scuttled back through the crowd.
I watched as Fritz leafed through my scene, his back to me. I saw his head suddenly hunch down on his neck. There was a long moment before Fritz turned and, without catching my eye, picked up a bullhorn. He shouted. There was instant silence.
You will all settle. Those who can sit, sit. Others, stand
