Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

Shrank, I thought. What a name. Shrink from this, shrink from that, you wind up shrunk! How had it started? Out of college, on top of the world, hang a shingle; then the great earthquake of some year, did he recall? the year his legs and mind broke and there was the long slide without a toboggan, just on his skinny backside, and no women between him and the downfall pit to ease the concussion, lubricate the nightmare, stop his crying at midnight and hatred at dawn? And one morning, he got out of bed and found himself, where?

Venice, California, and the last gondola long since departed and the lights going out and the canals filling with oil and old circus wagons with only the tide roaring behind the bars....

“I have a little list,” I said.

“What?” said Shrank.

“The Mikado,” I told him. “One song explains you. Your object all sublime, you will achieve in time. To make the punishment fit the crime. The Lonelies. All of them. You put them on your list, in the words of the song, they never will be missed. Their crime was giving up or never having tried. It was mediocrity or failure or lostness. And their punishment, my God, was you.”

He was puffed now, with a peacock stride.

“Well?” he said, walking ahead. “Well?”

I loaded my tongue and took aim and fired a round.

“I imagine,” I said, “that somewhere nearby is the decapitated head of Scott Joplin.”

He could not help the impulse that moved his right hand to his greasy coat pocket. He pretended to pat it in place, found himself staring with pleasure at that hand, glanced away, and went on walking.

One shot, one hit. I glowed. Detective Lieutenant Crumley, I thought, wish you were here.

I fired a second round.

“Canaries for sale,” I said in a tiny voice like the faded lead-pencil lettering on the cardboard in the old lady’s window. “Hirohito ascends throne. Addis Ababa. Mussolini.”

His left hand twitched with secret pride toward his left coat pocket.

Christ! I thought. He’s carrying her old bottom-of-the-birdcage headlines with him!

Bull’s-eye!

He strode. I followed.

Target three. Aim three. Fire three.

“Lion cage. Old man. Ticket office.”

His thin dropped toward his breast pocket.

There, by God, would be found punchout ticket confetti from a train never taken!

Shrank plowed on through the mist, absolutely oblivious of the fact that I was butterfly-netting his crimes. He was a happy child in the fields of the Antichrist. His tiny shoes flinted on the planks. He beamed.

What next? My mind swarmed. Ah, yes.

I saw Jimmy in the tenement hall with his new choppers, all grin. Jimmy in the bathtub, turned over and six fathoms deep.

“False teeth,” I said. “Uppers. Lowers.”

Thank God, Shrank did not pat his pockets again. I might have shouted a terrible laugh of dread to think he carried a dead grin about. His glance over his shoulder told me it was back (in a glass of water?) In his hut.

Target five, aim, fire!

“Dancing Chihuahuas, preening parakeets!”

Shrank’s shoes did a dog-dance on the pier. His eyes jumped to his left shoulder. There were bird-claw marks and droppings there! One of Pietro Massinello’s birds was back there in the hut.

Target six.