Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

By the end of the first song, I was crying again.

This time, with laughter.

Only later did I think to myself, my God. For the first time. In her room. She sang.

For me!

Downstairs, it was afternoon.

I stood in the sunlit street, swaying, savoring the aftertaste of the wine, looking up at the second floor of the tenement.

The strains sounded of the song of farewell; the leave-taking of Butterfly by her young lieutenant, all in white, sailing away.

Fannie loomed on her porch, looking down at me, her little rosebud mouth smiling sadly, the young girl trapped in her round harvest-moon face, letting the music behind her speak our friendship and my leave-taking for now.

Seeing her there made me think of Constance Rattigan locked away in her Moorish fort by the sea. I wanted to call up and ask about the similarity.

But Fannie waved. I could only wave back.

I was ready for Venice in clear weather now.

Little balding man who doesn’t look like a detective—Elmo Crumley, I thought, here I come!

But all I did was loiter in front of the Venice Police Station feeling like a gutless wonder.

I couldn’t decide whether Crumley was Beauty or the Beast inside there.

Such indecision made me ache out on the sidewalk until someone who looked like Crumley glanced out of an upstairs jail window.

I fled.

The thought of him opening his mouth like a blowtorch to scorch the peach fuzz on my cheeks made my heart fall over like a prune.

Christ, I thought, when will I face up to him at last to unload all the dark wonders that are collecting like tombstone dust in my manuscript box? When?

Soon.

During the night, it happened.

A small rainstorm arrived out front of my apartment about two in the morning.

Stupid! I thought, in bed, listening. A small rainstorm? How small? Three feet wide, six feet tall, all just in one spot? Rain drenching my doormat, falling nowhere else, and then, quickly, gone!

Hell!

I leaped to yank the door wide.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The stars were bright, with no mist, no fog. There was no way for rain to get there.

Yet there was a pool of water by my door.

And a set of footprints arriving, pointed toward me, and another set, barefoot, going away.

I must have stood there for a full ten seconds until I exploded. “Now, hold on!”

Someone had stood there, wet, for half a minute, almost ready to knock, wondering if I was awake, and then walked off to the sea.

No. I blinked. Not to the sea. The sea was on my right, to the west.