And that, declared Henry, taking off his dark glasses for finale, is why we called you, mad lady from Venice, to come save. Constance glanced nervously in her rear-view mirror. Hell, were going too slow!
She put the car in whiplash. Our heads obeyed. Crumley unlocked his front door.
Okay. Spread out! he growled. What time is it?
Late, said Henry. Night-blooming jasmine gets outa hand round about now.
Is that true? yelled Crumley.
No, but it sure sounds nice. Henry beamed at an unseen audience. Fetch the beer.
Crumley handed the beers around.
Thered better be gin in this, said Constance. Hell. There is!
I plugged in my projector, sprocketed Roy Holdstroms film, and we turned out the lights.
Okay? I clicked the projector switch. Now. The film began.
Images flickered on Crumleys wall. There were only thirty seconds worth of film, and fairly jumpy, as if Roy had animated his clay bust in only a few hours instead of the many days it usually took to position a creature, take its picture, reposition it, and snap another frame, one at a time.
Holy Jesus, whispered Crumley.
We all sat stunned by what jumped across Crumleys wall. It was Beautys friend, the thing from the Brown Derby.
I cant look, said Constance. But she looked.
I glanced at Crumley and felt as I had felt as a child, with my brother, seated in the dark theatre as the Phantom or the Hunchback or the Bat loomed on the screen. Crumleys face was my brothers face, back thirty years, fascinated and horrified in one, curious and repelled, the sort of look people have when they see but do not want to see a traffic accident.
For up on the wall, real and immediate, was the Man Beast. Every contortion of the face, every move of the eyebrows, every flare of the nostrils, every motion of the lips, was there, as perfect as the sketches that Doré made when he came home from a long nights prowl in the cinder-dark smokestack lanes of London, with all the grotesques stashed behind his eyelids, his empty fingers itching to grab pen, ink, paper, and begin! Even as Doré had, with total recall, scribbled faces, so Roys inner mind had photographed the Beast to remember the slightest hair moving in the nostrils, the merest eyelash in a blink, the flexed ear, and the eternally salivating infernal mouth. And when the Beast stared out of the screen, Crumley and I pulled back. It saw us. It dared us to shriek. It was coming to kill.
The parlor wall went dark.
I heard a sound bubble through my lips. The eyes, I whispered.
I fumbled in the dark, rewound the reel, restarted it.
Look, look, oh, look! I cried.
The camera image closed in on the face.
The wild eyes were fixed in a convulsive madness. That isnt a clay bust!
No? said Crumley. Its Roy!
Roy!?
In makeup, pretending to be the Beast! No!
The face leered, the live eyes rolled. Roy
And the wall darkened a final time.
Even as the Beast, met in the heights of Notre Dame, with the same eyes, pulled back away and fled
Jesus, said Crumley at last, looking at that wall. So thats whats running loose in graveyards these nights!
Or Roy, running loose.
Thats nuts! Why would he do that?!
The Beast got him in all this trouble, got him fired, got him almost killed, what better to do than imitate him, be him, in case anyone saw. Roy Holdstrom doesnt exist if he puts on the makeup and hides.
Its still nuts!
Nuts all his life, sure, I said. But now? For real! Whats he gain from it?
Revenge. Revenge?!
Let the Beast kill the Beast, I said.
No, no. Crumley shook his head. To hell with that. Run the film again!
I ran it. The images streamed up and down our faces. Thats not Roy! said Crumley. Thats a clay bust, animated! No. I shut off the film.
We sat in darkness.
Constance made strange sounds.
Why, said Henry, know what that is? Crying.
Im afraid to go home, said Constance.
Who said you had to? said Crumley. Grab a cot, any room, or the jungle compound.
No, murmured Constance. Thats his place.
We all looked at the blank wall where only a lingering retinal image of the Beast faded.
He didnt follow us, said Crumley.
He might. Constance blew her nose. I wont be alone in some damned empty house by a damned ocean full of monsters tonight. Im getting old. Next thing you know Ill ask some jerk to marry me, God help him.
She looked out at Crumleys jungle and the night wind stirring the palm leaves and the high grass. Hes there.
Cut it, said Crumley. We dont know if we were followed through that graveyard tunnel to that office. Or who slammed the tomb door. Couldve been the wind.
It always is Constance shivered like someone coming down with a long winters illness. Now what? She sank back in her chair, shuddering, clutching her elbows.
Here.
Crumley laid out a series of photocopies of newspapers on the kitchen table. Three dozen items, large and small, from the last day in October and the first week in November 1934.
ARBUTHNOT, STUDIO MAGNATE, KILLED IN CAR CRASH was the first one. C. Peck Sloane, associate producer at Maximus studio, and his wife, Emily, killed in same accident.
Crumley tapped the third article. The Sloanes were buried the same day as Arbuthnot. Services in the same church across from the graveyard. All buried in the same graveyard, over the wall.
Whered the accident happen?
Three in the morning. Gower and Santa Monica!
My God! The corner of the graveyard! And around the block from the studio!
Awfully convenient, right?
Saved travel. Die outside a mortuary, all they do is cart you in.
Crumley scowled at another column. Seems there was a wild Halloween party.
And Sloane and Arbuthnot were there?
Doc Phillips, it says here, offered to drive them home, theyd been drinking and refused. The doc drove his own car ahead of the other two cars, to clear the way, and went through a yellow light. Arbuthnot and Sloane followed, against the red. An unknown car almost hit them. The only car on the street at 3 A.M.! Arbuthnots and Sloanes cars swerved, lost control, hit a telephone pole. Doc Phillips was there with his medical kit. No use. All dead. They took the bodies to the mortuary one hundred yards away.
Dear God, I said. Its too damn neat!
Yeah, mused Crumley. A helluva responsibility for the pill-pushing dopester Doc. Coincidence, him at the scene. Him in charge of studio medicine and studio police! Him delivering the bodies to the mortuary. Him preparing the bodies for burial as funeral director? Sure? He had stock in the graveyard. Helped dig the first graves in the early twenties. Got em coming, going, and in between.
Flesh really does crawl, I thought, feeling my upper arms. Did Doc Phillips sign the death certificates?
I thought youd never ask. Crumley nodded.
Constance, who had sat frozen to one side, staring at the news clippings, spoke at last, from lips that barely moved: Wheres that bed?
I led her into the next room and sat her on the bed. She held my hands as if they were an open Bible and took a deep breath.
Kid, anyone ever tell you your body smells like cornflakes and your breath like honey?
That was H. G. Wells. Drove women mad.
Too late for madness. God, your wifes lucky, going to bed nights with health food.
She laid herself down with a sigh. I sat on the floor, waiting for her to close her eyes.
How come, she murmured, you havent aged in three years, and me? a thousand. She laughed quietly. One large tear moved from her right eye and dissolved into the pillow.
Aw, shit, she mourned.
Tell me, I prompted. Say it. What?
I was there, Constance murmured. Twenty years ago. At the studio. Halloween night.
I held my breath. Behind me, a shadow moved into the doorway, Crumley was there, quiet and listening.
Constance stared out past me at another year and another night. It was the wildest party Id ever seen. Everyone in masks, nobody knowing who or what was drinking which or why. There was hooch on every sound stage and barking in the alleys, and if Tara and Atlanta had been built that night they would have burned. There must have been two hundred dress and three hundred undress extras, running booze back and forth through that graveyard tunnel as if Prohibition was in full swing. Even with hooch legal, I guess its hard to give up the fun, yes? Secret passages between the tombs and the turkeys, like the flop films rotting in the vaults? Little did they know theyd brick the damn tunnel up, a week later, after the accident.
The accident of the year, I thought. Arbuthnot dead, and the studio gun-shot and dropping like a herd of elephants.
It was no accident, whispered Constance
Constance gathered a private darkness behind her pale face. Murder, she said. Suicide.
The pulse jumped in my hand. She held it, tight.
Yeah, she nodded, suicide and murder. We never found out how, why, or what. You saw the papers. Two cars at Gower and Santa Monica, late,
