Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“Then,” said Helmut the Hun, turning to show me Antinous’ magnificent facade, something to match the golden hind, “you are in no position to threaten me, ja?”

His mouth was a razor slit from which bursts of bright shark teeth hissed and chewed.

“I will come and go on the beach,” he said.

With the Gestapo ahead and the summer boys soon after, I thought.

“I admit nothing. Perhaps I was there some nights.” He nodded up the coast. “Perhaps not.”

You could have cut your wrists with his smile.

He hurled the towel at me. I caught it.

“Get my back for me, will you?”

I hurled the towel away. It fell and hung over his head, masking his face. The Horrible Hun was, for a moment, gone. Only Sun King Apollo, his rump as bright as the apples of the gods, remained.

From under the towel his voice said quietly:

“The interview is over.”

“Did it ever really begin?” I said.

I went downstairs as the dragon’s sick calliope music was coming up.

There were no words at all on the Venice Cinema marquee.

All the letters were gone.

I read the emptiness half a dozen times, feeling something roll over and die in my chest.

I went around trying all the doors, which were locked, and looked into the box office, which was deserted, and glanced at the big poster frames where Barrymore and Chaney and Norma Shearer had smiled just a few nights ago. Now—nothing.

I backed off and read the emptiness a last time to myself, quietly.

“How do you like the double bill?” asked a voice from behind me.

I turned. Mr. Shapeshade was there, beaming. He handed over a big roll of theater posters. I knew what it was. My diplomas from Nosferatu Institute, Graduate School of Quasimodo, Postgraduate in d’Artagnan and Robin Hood.

“Mr. Shapeshade, you can’t give these to me.”

“You’re a romantic sap, aren’t you?”

“Sure, but—”

“Take, take. Farewell, goodbye. But another farewell, goodbye, out beyond. Kummen-sei pier oudt!”

He left the diplomas in my hands and trotted off.

I found him at the end of the pier, pointing down and watching my face to see me crumple and seize the pier rail, staring over.

The rifles were down there, silent for the first time in years. They lay on the sea bottom about fifteen feet under, but the water was clear because the sun was coming out.

I counted maybe a dozen long, cold, blue metal weapons down there where the fish swam by.

“Some farewell, huh?” Shapeshade glanced where I was looking. “One by one. One by one. Early this morning. I came running up, yelled, what’re you doing!? What does it look like? she said. And one by one, over and down. They’re closing your place, they’re closing mine this afternoon, so what the hell, she said. And one by one.”

“She didn’t,” I said, and stopped. I searched the waters under the pier and far out. “She didn’t?”