Manny hurled the phone and I caught it.
Wrap me in a wet sheet, someone, this is a madhouse! Where was I? You!
He pointed at both of us.
Two days, not three. You damn well get the Beast out of the catbox and into the light or
At which point the outer door opened. A runt of a guy in a black suit, one of the studio chauffeurs, stood in a glare of light.
Now what? Manny shouted.
We got it here but the motor died. We just got it fixed. Move out, then, for Christs sake!
Manny charged at him with one fist raised, but the door slammed, the runt was gone, so Manny had to turn and direct his explosion at us.
Im having your final checks made up, ready for Friday afternoon. Deliver, or youll never work again, either of you.
Roy said quietly, Do we get to keep it? Our Green Town, Illinois, offices? Now that you see these results you got from us fruitcakes?
Manny paused long enough to look back at the strange lost country like
a kid in a fireworks factory.
Christ, he breathed, forgetting his problems for a moment, I got to admit you really did it. He stopped, angry at his own praise, and shifted gears. Now cut the cackle and move your buns!
Andbam! He was gone, too.
Standing in the midst of our ancient landscape, lost in time, Roy and I stared at one another.
Curiouser and curiouser, said Roy. Then, You really going to do it? Write two versions of the script? One for him, one for us?
Yep! Sure.
How can you do that?
Heck, I said, I been in training for fifteen years, wrote one hundred pulp stories, one a week, in one hundred weeks, two script outlines in two days? Both brilliant? Trust me.
Okay, I do, I do. There was a long pause, then he said, Do we go look? Look? At what?
That funeral you saw. In the rain. Last night. Over the wall. Wait. Roy walked over to the big airlock door. I followed. He opened the
door. We looked out.
An ornately carved black hearse with crystal windows was just pulling away down the studio alley, making a big racket with a bad engine.
I bet I know where its going, said Roy.
We drove around on Gower Street in Roys old beat-up 1927 tin lizzie. We didnt see the black funeral hearse go into the graveyard, but as we
pulled up out front and parked, the hearse came rolling out among the stones. It passed us, carrying a casket into the full sunlight of the street.
We turned to watch the black limousine whisper out the gate with no more sound than a polar exhalation from off the northern floes.
Thats the first time I ever saw a casket in a funeral car go out of a cemetery. Were too late!
I spun about to see the last of the limo heading east, back toward the studio.
Too late for what?
Your dead man, dummy! Come on!
We were almost to the cemetery back wall when Roy stopped. Well, by God, theres his tomb.
I looked at what Roy was looking at, about ten feet above us, in marble:
J. C. ARBUTHNOT, 1884-1934 R.I.P.
It was one of those Greek-temple huts in which they bury fabulous people, with an iron lattice gate locked over a heavy wood-and-bronze inner door.
He couldnt have come out of there, could he?
No, but something got on that ladder and I knew his face. And someone else knew I would recognize that face so I was invited to come see.
Shut up. Come on.
We advanced along the path.
Watch it. We dont want to be seen playing this stupid game. We arrived at the wall. There was nothing there, of course.
Like I said, if the body was ever here, were too late. Roy exhaled and glanced.
No, look. There.
I pointed at the top of the wall.
There were the marks, two of them, of some object that had leaned against the upper rim.
The ladder? And down here.
The grass at the base of the wall, about five feet out, a proper angle, had two half-inch ladder indentations in it.
And here. See?
I showed him a long depression where the grass had been crushed by something falling.
Well, well, murmured Roy. Looks like Halloweens starting over. Roy knelt on the grass and put his long bony fingers out to trace the
print of the heavy flesh that had lain there in the cold rain only twelve hours ago.
I knelt with Roy staring down at the long indentation, and shivered. I I said, and stopped.
For a shadow moved between us. Morning!
The graveyard day watchman stood over us.
I glanced at Roy, quickly. Is this the right gravestone? Its been years. Is The next flat tombstone was covered with leaves. I scrabbled the dust
away. There was a half-seen name beneath. SMYTHE. BORN 1875-DIED 1928.
Sure! Old grandpa! cried Roy. Poor guy. Died of pneumonia. Roy helped me brush away the dust. I sure loved him. He
Wherere your flowers? said the heavy voice, above us. Roy and I stiffened.
Mas bringing em, said Roy. We came ahead, to find the stone. Roy glanced over his shoulder. Shes out there now.
The graveyard day watchman, a man long in years and deep in suspicion, with a face not unlike a weathered tombstone, glanced toward the gate.
A woman, bearing flowers, was coming up the road, far out, near Santa Monica Boulevard.
Thank God, I thought.
The watchman snorted, chewed his gums, wheeled about, and strode off among the graves. Just in time, for the woman had stopped and headed off, away from us.
We jumped up. Roy grabbed some flowers off a nearby mound. Dont!
Like hell! Roy stashed the flowers on Grandpa Smythes stone. Just in case that guy comes back and wonders why therere no flowers after all our gab. Come on!
We moved out about fifty yards and waited, pretending to talk, but saying little. Finally, Roy touched my elbow. Careful, he whispered. Side glances. Dont look straight on. Hes back.
And indeed the old watchman had arrived at the place near the wall where the long impressions of the fallen body still remained.
He looked up and saw us. Quickly, I put my arm around Roys shoulder to ease his sadness.
Now the old man bent. With raking fingers, he combed the grass. Soon
there was no trace of anything heavy that might have fallen from the sky last night, in a terrible rain.
You believe now? I said.
I wonder, said Roy, where that hearse went to.
As we were driving back in through the main gate of the studio, the hearse whispered out. Empty. Like a long autumn wind it drifted off, around, and back to Deaths country.
Jesus Christ! Just like I guessed! Roy steered but stared back at the empty street. Im beginning to enjoy this!
We moved along the street in the direction from which the hearse had been coming.
Fritz Wong marched across the alley in front of us, driving or leading an invisible military squad, muttering and swearing to himself, his sharp profile cutting the air in two halves, wearing a dark beret, the only man in Hollywood who wore a beret and dared anyone to notice!
Fritz! I called. Stop, Roy!
Fritz ambled over to lean against the car and give us his by now familiar greeting.
Hello, you stupid bike-riding Martian! Whos that strange-looking ape driving?
Hello, Fritz, you stupidI faltered and then said sheepishly, Roy Holdstrom, worlds greatest inventor, builder, and flier of dinosaurs!
Fritz Wongs monocle flashed fire. He fixed Roy with his Oriental-Germanic glare, then nodded crisply.
Any friend of Pithecanthropus erectus is a friend of mine! Roy grabbed his handshake. I liked your last film.
Liked! cried Fritz Wong. Loved!
Good. Fritz looked at me. Whats new since breakfast!
Anything funny happening around here just now?
A roman phalanx of forty men just marched that way. A gorilla, carrying his head, ran in Stage 10. A homosexual art director got thrown out of the Mens. Judas is on strike for more silver over in Galilee. No, no. I wouldnt say anything funny or Id notice.
How about passing through? offered Roy. Any funerals?
Funerals! You think I wouldnt notice? Wait! He flashed his monocle toward the gate and then toward the backlot. Dummy. Yes. I was hoping it was deMilles hearse and we could celebrate. It went that way!
Are they filming a burial here today?
On every sound stage: turkeys, catatonic actors, English funeral directors whose heavy paws would stillbirth a whale! Halloween, yesterday, yes? And today the true Mexican Day of Death, November 1st, so why should it be different at Maximus Films? Where did you find this terrible wreck of a car, Mr. Holdstrom?
This, Roy said, like Edgar Kennedy doing a slow burn in an old Hal Roach comedy, is the car in which Laurel and Hardy sold fish in that two reeler in 1930. Cost me fifty bucks, plus seventy to repaint. Stand back, sir!
Fritz Wong, delighted with Roy, jumped back. In one hour, Martian. The commissary! Be there!
We steamed on amidst the noon crowd. Roy wheeled us around a corner toward Springfield, Illinois, lower Manhattan, and Piccadilly.
You know where youre going? I asked.
Hell, a studios a great place to hide a body. Who would notice? On a backlot filled with Abyssinians, Greeks, Chicago mobsters, you could march in six dozen gang wars with forty Sousa bands and nobodyd sneeze! That body, chum, should be right about here!
And we dusted around the last corner into Tombstone, Arizona.
Nice name for a town, said Roy.
There was a warm stillness. It was High Noon. We were surrounded by a thousand footprints in backlot dust. Some of the prints belonged to Tom Mix,
