Let's All Kill Constance - Bradbury Ray Douglas - Страница 29

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"Are we there yet?" said Henry.

We all looked in the gates at Forest Lawn Cemetery, a sweeping hillside covered with a cannonade of memorial stones embedded like meteors in its grass.

"They say that place," said Crumley, "has a greater voting population than Paducah, Kentucky, Red River, Wyoming, or East End, Azusa."

"I like old-fashioned graveyards," said Henry. "Things you can run your hands over. Tombs you can lie on like statues or bring your lady in late hours to play doctor."

"Anyone ever gone in just to check the boy Davids fig leaf?" said Fritz.

"I hear tell," said Henry, "when they shipped him over, there was no leaf, so he lay around the north forty a year, under canvas, so old ladies in tennis shoes wouldn't be offended. Day before the fig leaf was glued on to spoil the fun, they had to beat off a gloveless Braille Institute convention. Live folks doing gymnastics in midnight graveyards is called foreplay. Dead folks doing the same is afterplay."

We stood there in the drizzle looking across the way to the mortuary offices.

"Gone to earth," I heard someone murmur. Me.

"Move!" said Crumley. "In thirty minutes the rain from the hills hits below. The flood will wash our cars down to the sea."

We stared at the gaping manhole. We could hear the creek whispering below.

"My God!" said Fritz. "My classic car!"

"Move!" said Crumley.

We ducked across the street and into the mortuary building.

"Who do we ask?" I said. "And what do we ask?"

There was a moment of colliding looks, pure confusion. "Do we ask for Constance?" I said.

"Talk sense," said Crumley. "We ask about all those newspaper headlines and names. All those lipstick aliases on the basement dressing-room mirrors."

"Say again," said Henry.

"I'm talking pure circumstantial metaphor," said Crumley. "Double time!"

We double-timed it into the vast halls of death, or to put it another way, the land of clerks and file cabinets.

We did not have to take a number and wait, for a very tall man with ice-blond hair and an oyster complexion glided to the front desk and disdained us as if we were discards from a steam laundry.

He laid a card on the desktop and dared Crumley to take it. "You Grey?" he said.

"Elihu Phillips Grey, as you see."

"We're here to buy gravesites and plots."

A late— winter smile appeared on Elihu P. Grey's mouth and hung there, like a mist. With a magician's gesture, he manifested a chart and price sheet.

Crumley ignored it. "First, I got a list."

He pulled out all the names I had put together but placed it upside down in front of Grey, who scanned the list in silence.

So Crumley pulled forth a rolled wad of one-hundred-dollar bills.

"Hold that, will you, junior?" he said, tossing the wad to me. And then, to Grey: "You know those names?"

"I know all the names." Grey relapsed into silence.

Crumley swore under his breath. "Recite them, junior."

I recited the names, one by one.

"Holly Morgan."

Grey flicked through his file.

"She's here. Buried 1924."

"Polly Starr?"

Another quick run-through.

"Here. 1926."

"How about Molly Circe?"

"Right. 1927."

"Emily Danse?"

"1928."

"All buried here, for sure?"

Grey looked sour. "I have never once in all my life been wrong. Strange, however." He rescanned the items he had drawn out of the file. "Odd. Are they all related, all one family?"

"How do you mean?"

Grey fixed his arctic stare at the names. "Because, see here, they're all entombed in the same aboveground Gothic stone hut."

"How's that again?" Crumley lurched from his boredom and grabbed the file cards. "What?"

"Odd, all those different surnames, put to rest in one tomb, a memorial dwelling with eight shelves for eight family members."

"But they aren't family!" said Fritz.

"Odd," said Grey. "Strange."

I stood as if struck by lightning.

"Hold on," I whispered.

Fritz and Crumley and Henry turned to me.

Grey lifted his snowy eyebrows. "Ye-e-ss." He made two long syllables out of it. "Well?"

"The tomb house? The family vault? There must be a name on the portico. The name chiseled in marble?"

Grey scanned his cards, making us wait.

"Rattigan," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"I have never-"

"Yes, I know! The name again!"

We all held our breath.

"Rattigan." His cold voice issued from a steel-trap mouth.

We let our air out.

At last I said, "They can't all be there in that one vault."

Grey shut his eyes. "I-"

"I know, I know," I said quickly. I stared at my friends.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Jesus Christ," murmured Crumley. "Goddamn. Can you give us directions to the Rattigan tomb?"

Grey scribbled on a notepad map. "Easy to find. There're fresh flowers out front. The tomb door is open. There will be a memorial service there tomorrow."

"Who's being entombed?"

We all waited, eyes shut, guessing the answer.

"Rattigan," said Grey, almost smiling. "Someone named Constance Rattigan."

THE rain was so thick the graveyard disappeared. All we could see as we drove uphill in an electric runabout were monuments on the side of the road. The path ahead vanished in the downpour. I carried a map on my lap, marked with an arrow and the name of the area. We stopped.

"It's there," said Crumley. "Azalia Gardens? Plot sixteen. Neo-Palladian edifice."

The rain blew back like a curtain and a flicker of lightning showed us a slender tomb with Palladian pillars on each side of a tall metal door, which stood ajar.

"So if she wants out," said Henry, "she's out. Or invite folks in. Rattigan!"

The rain lifted and blew away and the tomb waited while thunder ran along the far brim of the graveyard. The open door trembled.

Crumley spoke almost to himself: "Jesus! Constance buried herself. Name after name. Year after year. When she was done with one act, one face, one mask, she hired a tomb and stashed herself away. And now, to get the job, maybe, from Fritz, she's killing all her selves again. Don't go in there, Willie."

"She's in there now," I said.

"Horse apples," said Crumley. "Goddamn intuition?"

"No." I shivered. "Goddamn hunch. She's got to be saved." I climbed out.

"She's dead!"

"I'll save her anyway?

"Like hell you will!" said Crumley. "You're under arrest! Get back in here!"

"You're the law, sure, but you're my friend."

I was flooded with cold rain.

"Dammit, dammit all to hell. Go on! Run, you stupid idiot! We'll be waiting downhill. I'll be goddamned if I'll sit and watch your head come flying out that goddamn door. Come find us! Damn you!"

"Hold on!" Fritz cried.

"Hold goddamn nothing!"

Fritz threw a small flask that hit me in the chest.

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