Let's All Kill Constance - Bradbury Ray Douglas - Страница 12

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I nodded.

"Next twenty-four hours you don't speak without permission! Now where are those goddamn phone books?"

I handed him the Books of the Dead.

Crumley, behind the wheel, scowled at them.

"Say one last thing and shut up!"

"You're still my pal!" I blurted.

"Pity," he said, and banged the gas.

we went back to Rattigan's and stood down on the shoreline. It was early evening and her lights were still full on; the place was like a full moon and a rising sun of architecture. Gershwin was still manhandling Manhattan one moment, Paris the next.

"I bet they buried him in his piano," said Crumley.

We got out the one Book of the Dead, Rattigan's personal phone pals, mostly cold and buried, and repeated what we had done before. Went through it page by page, with a growing sense of mortality.

On page 30 we came to the Rs.

There it was: Clarence Rattigan's dead phone and a red Christian cross over his name.

"Damn. Now let's check Califia again."

We riffled back and there it was, with big red lines under her name and a crucifix.

"That means-?"

"Whoever planted this book with Constance marked all the names with red ink and a cross, handed it over, and then killed the first two victims. Maybe. I'm running half-empty."

"Or, hoping Constance would see the red ink crucifixes, before they were killed, panic on that night she came running, and destroy them inadvertently with her shouts. Christ! Let's check the other red lines and crosses. Check St. Vibiana's."

Crumley turned the pages and exhaled. "Red crucifix."

"But Father Rattigan's still alive!" I said. "Hell!"

I trudged up the sand to Rattigan's poolside phone. I dialed St. Vibiana's.

"Who's this?" a sharp voice answered.

"Father Rattigan! Thank God!"

"For what?"

"This is Constance's friend. The idiot."

"Dammit!" the priest cried.

"Don't take any more confessions tonight!"

"You giving orders?"

"Father, you're alive! I mean, well, is there anything we can do to protect you, or-"

"No, no!" the voice cried. "Go to that other heathen church! That Jack and the Beanstalk place!"

The telephone slammed.

I looked at Crumley, he looked at me.

"Look under Grauman's," I said.

Crumley looked. "Chinese, yeah. And Grauman's name. And a red circle and a crucifix. But he died years ago!"

"Yeah, but part of Constance is buried there, or written there in cement. I'll show you. Last chance to see Jack and the Beanstalk*."

"If we time it," said Crumley, "the film will be over."

we didn't have to time it right.

When Crumley dropped me in front of the Other Church, the great loud boisterous romantic tearstained celluloid cathedral… There was a sign on the red Chinese front door, CLOSED FOR ALTERATIONS, and some workmen moving in and out. A few people were in the forecourt, fitting their shoes in the footprints.

Crumley dropped me and vamoosed.

I turned to look at the great pagoda facade. Ten percent Chinese, ninety percent Grauman's. Little Sid's.

He was, some said, knee-high to a midget, the eighth Dwarf Cinema Munchkin, all four feet bursting with film clips, sound tracks, Kong shrieking on the Empire State, Colman in Shangri-la, friend to Garbo, Dietrich, and Hepburn, haberdasher to Chaplin, golf buddy to Laurel and Hardy, keeper of the flame, recollector of ten thousand Pasts… Sid, pourer of cement, imprinter of fair and flat feet, begging and getting pavement autographs.

And there I stood on a lava flow of signatures of ghosts who had abandoned their shoe sizes.

I watched the tourists quietly testing their feet in the vast spread of cement prints, laughing softly.

What a church, I thought. More worshipers here than at St. Vibiana's.

"Rattigan," I whispered. "Are you here?"

IT was said that Constance Rattigan had the smallest tootsies in all Hollywood, perhaps in the whole world. She had her shoes cobbled in Rome, and airmailed to her twice a year because her old ones were melted from champagne poured by crazed suitors. Small feet, dainty toes, tiny shoes.

Her imprints left in Grauman's cement the night of August 22, 1929, proved this. Girls testing their size found their feet to be titanic and pitiful and abandoned her prints in despair.

So here I was alone on a strange night in Grauman's forecourt, the only place in dead, unburied Hollywood where shoppers brought dreams for refunds.

The crowd cleared. I saw her footprints some twenty feet away. I froze.

Because a small man in a black trench coat, a snap-brim hat yanked over his brow, had just tucked his shoes in Rat-tigan's footprints.

"Jesus God," I gasped. "They fit!"

The small man gazed at his tiny shoes. For the first time in forty years, Rattigan's tracks were occupied.

"Constance," I whispered.

The small man's shoulders shrank.

"Right behind you," I whispered.

"Are you one of them?" I heard a voice say from under the large dark hat.

"One of what?" I said.

"Are you Death chasing me?"

"Just a friend trying to keep up."

"I've been waiting for you," the voice said, not moving, the feet planted firmly in the footprints of Constance Rattigan.

"What's it mean?" I said. "Why this wild goose chase? Are you scared or playing tricks?"

"Why would you say that?" the voice said, hidden.

"Good grief," I said. "Is this all some cheap dodge? Someone said you might want to write your life and needed someone to help. If you expect that to be me, no thanks. I've got better things to do."

"What's better than me?" said the voice, growing smaller.

"No one, but is Death really after you or are you looking for a new life, God knows what kind?"

"What better than Uncle Sid's concrete mortuary? All the names with nothing beneath. Ask away."

"Are you going to turn and face me?"

"I couldn't talk then."

"Is this some way of getting me to help you uncover your past? Is the casket half-full or half-empty? Did someone else make those red marks in your Book of the Dead, or did you make them?"

"It had to be someone else. Or else why would I be so frightened? Those red ink marks? I've got to look them up, find which ones are dead already, and which are just about to die but still alive. Do you ever have the feeling everything's falling apart?"

"Not you, Constance."

"Christ, yes! Some nights I sleep Clara Bow, wake up Noah, wet with vodka. Is my face ruined?"

"A lovely ruin."

"But still-"

Rattigan stared out at Hollywood Boulevard. "Once there were real tourists. Now it's torn shirts. Everything's lost, junior. Venice pier drowned, trolley tracks sunk. Hollywood and Vine, was it ever there?"

"Once. When the Brown Derby hung their walls with cartoons of Gable and Dietrich, and the headwaiters were Russian princes. Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck drove by in their roadster. Hollywood and Vine? You planted your feet there and knew pure joy."

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