Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“There,” I said. “It’s waiting. Tomorrow morning you get out of bed, walk to the machine, no phone calls, no newspaper reading, don’t even go to the bathroom, sit down, type, and Elmo Crumley is immortal.”

“B.S.,” said Crumley, but ever so quietly.

“God promises. But you got to work.”

I got up and Crumley and I stood looking at his Corona as if it were the only child he would ever have.

“You giving me orders, kid?” said Crumley.

“No. Your brain is, if you’d just listen.”

Crumley backed off, walked into the kitchen, got some more beer. I waited by his desk until I heard the back screen door bang.

I found Crumley in his garden letting the whirlaround water-tosser cover his face with cooling raindrops, for the day was warm now and the sun out full here on the rim of fog country.

“What is it,” said Crumley, “forty stories you sold so far?”

“At thirty bucks apiece, yeah. The Rich Author.”

“You are rich. I stood down at the magazine rack at Abe’s Liquor yesterday and read that one you wrote about the man who finds he has a skeleton inside him and it scares hell out of him. Christ, it was a beaut. Where in hell do you get ideas like that?”

“I got a skeleton inside me,” I said.

“Most people never notice.” Crumley handed me a beer and watched me make yet another face. “The old man—”

“William Smith?”

“Yeah, William Smith, the autopsy report came in this morning. There was no water in his lungs.”

“That means he didn’t drown. That means he was killed up on the canal bank and shoved down into the cage after he was dead. That proves—”

“Don’t jump ahead of the train, you’ll get run down. And don’t say I told you so, or I’ll take that beer back.”

I offered him the beer, gladly. He nudged my hand aside.

“What have you done about the haircut?” I said.

“What haircut?”

“Mr. Smith had a really lousy haircut the afternoon before he died. His friend moaned about it at the morgue, remember? I knew only one really lousy barber could have done it.”

I told Crumley about Cal, the prizes promised William Smith, Myron’s Ballroom, Modesti’s, the big red train.

Crumley listened patiently, and said, “Flimsy.”

“It’s all we got,” I said. “You want me to check the Venice Cinema to see if they saw him out front the night he disappeared?”

“No,” said Crumley.

“You want me to check Modesti’s, the train, Myron’s Ballroom?”

“No,” said Crumley.

“What do you want me to do, then?”

“Stay out of it.”

“Why?”