“But if we could find the guy that did it, he’d prove it for us. Okay, buster, what next?”
“I suppose we check the old local newspapers from twenty years ago to see what’s missing. And if you could kind of prowl around the studio. Unobtrusively, that is.”
“With these flat feet? I think I know the studio gate guard. Worked at Metro years ago. He’d let me in and zip his lip. What else?”
I gave him a list. The carpenters’ shop. The graveyard wall. And the Green Town house where Roy and I had planned to work, and where Roy might be now.
“Roy’s still there, waiting to steal back his beasts. And, Crum, if what you say is true, night chicken rides, manslaughter, murder, we got to blow Roy out of there now. If the studio people go in Stage 13 tonight and find the box in which Roy hid that papier-mâché body after he stole it, what won’t they do to him?!”
Crumley grunted. “You’re asking me to not only get Roy rehired but help him stay alive, right?”
“Don’t say that!”
“Why not? You’re all over the ball field, playing pitcher and running to bat flies and fumble balls. How in hell do I catch Roy? Wander around the sets with a butterfly net and some cat food! Your studio friends know Roy, I don’t. They can stomp him long before I get out of the bull pen. Give me just one fact to start with!”
“The Beast. If we found out who he is, we might find why Roy was fired for making that clay bust.”
“Yeah, yeah. What else? About the Beast—”
“We saw him go into the graveyard. Roy followed him, but wouldn’t tell me what he saw, what the Beast was up to. Maybe, maybe it was the Beast put that papier-mâché duplicate of Arbuthnot up on the graveyard wall—and sent notes to blackmail people!”
“Now you’re cooking!” Crumley rubbed his bald head with both hands, rapidly. “Identify the Beast, ask where he borrowed the ladder and how he made the look-alike Arbuthnot papier-mâché corpse! Well! well!” Crumley beamed.
He ran to the kitchen for more beer.
We drank and he gazed at me with paternal affection. “I was just thinking … how great it is to have you home.”
I said, “Hell, I haven’t even asked you about your novel—”
“Downwind from Death?”
“That’s not the title I gave you!”
“Your title was too good. I’m giving it back. Downwind from Death will be published next week.”
I leaped to grab Crumley’s hands.
“Crumb!! Oh, God! You did it! You got some champagne?!”
We both peered in his icebox.
“If you churn beer and gin in a Waring blender, is that champagne?”
“Why not try?”
We tried.
24
And the phone rang.
“It’s for you,” said Crumley.
“Thank God!” I grabbed the phone. “Roy!”
Roy said, “I don’t want to live. Oh, God, this is terrible. Get over here before I go mad. Stage 13!”
And he was gone.