Crumley exploded.
“Goddamn, what the hell is that stupid jerk doing running around the studio anyway? Why doesn’t he get the hell out, escape, dammit?! What’s he sticking around for? To get himself killed?! He’s had his chance to run, but he’s putting you, and me, through the wringer. Why!?”
“Revenge,” I said. “For all the murders.”
“What murders!?”
“Of all of his creatures, all his most dear friends.”
“Crap.”
“Listen, Crum. How long you been in your house in Venice? Twenty, twenty-five years. Planted every hedge, every bush, seeded the lawn, built the rattan hut out back, put in the sound equipment, the rain makers, added the bamboo and the orchids, and the peach trees, the lemon, the apricot. What if I broke in one night soon and tore up everything, cut down the trees, trampled the roses, burned the hut, threw the sound deck out in the street, what would you do?”
Crumley thought about it and his face burned red.
“Exactly,” I said, quietly. “I don’t know if Roy will ever get married. Right now, his children, his whole life has been stomped down in the dust. Everything he ever loved was murdered. Maybe he’s in here now, solving these deaths, trying, just as we are, to find the Beast, and kill him. Maybe Roy’s gone forever. But if I were Roy, yeah, I’d stay on, hide, and keep searching until I buried the killer with the killed.”
“My lemon trees, huh?” said Crumley, looking off toward the sea. “My orchids, my rain forest? Done in by someone? Well.”
The phalanx ran by below in the late sunlight and away into the blue shadows.
There was no great gawky whooping-crane warrior with them.
The footsteps and yells faded.
“Let’s go home,” said Crumley.
At midnight, a sudden wind blew through Crumley’s African garden. All the trees in the neighborhood turned over in their sleep.
Crumley studied me. “I can feel something coming.”
It came.
“The Brown Derby,” I said, stunned. “My God, why didn’t I think sooner!? The night Clarence ran off in a panic. He dropped his portfolio, left it lying on the walk by the Brown Derby entrance! Someone must’ve picked it up. It might still be there, waiting for Clarence to calm down and dare to sneak back for it. His address would have to be in it.”
“Good lead.” Crumley nodded. “I’ll follow up.”
The night wind blew again, a very melancholy sigh through the lemon and orange trees.
“And—”
“And?”
“The Brown Derby again. The maître d’ might not talk to us, but I know someone who ate there every week for years, when I was a kid—”
“Oh, God,” Crumley sighed. “Rattigan. She’ll eat you alive.”
“My love will protect me!”
“God, put that in a sack and we’ll fertilize the San Fernando Valley.”
“Friendship protects. You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?”
“Don’t count on it.”
“We got to do something. Roy’s hiding. If they, whoever they are, find him, he’s dead.”
“You, too,” said Crumley, “if you play amateur detective. It’s late. Midnight.”