A Graveyard for Lunatics (Crumley Mysteries 2)

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Well, well.” The Beast remembered. “Prohibition over but we ran the booze in from Santa Monica, through the tomb, down the tunnel, for the hell of it, laughing. Half of the party on the graves, half in the film vaults, lord! Five sound stages full of yelling men, girls, stars, extras. I only half remember that midnight. You ever think how many people, crazy, make love in graveyards? The silence! Think!”

I waited while he moved remembrance back in years. He said:

“He caught us. Christ, there among the tombstones. Graveyard keeper’s hammer, beat my head, my cheek, my eye! Beating! He ran with her. I ran screaming after. They drove. I drove, God. And the smashup and, and—”

He sighed, waiting to slow his heart.

“I remember Doc carrying me to the church, first! and the priest in a frenzy of fear, and then to the mortuary. Get well in tombs! Recover in graves! And the next morgue slab over, damned dead, Sloane! And Groc! trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed. Poor bastard Groc. Lenin was luckier! My mouth moving to say cover up, do it! Late. Empty streets. Lie! Say I’m dead! My God, my face! No way to fix! My face! So say I’m dead! Emily? What? Mad? Hide Emily! Cover up. Money, of course. Lots of money. Make it look real. Who’ll guess? And a shut-coffin funeral, with me nearby, all but dead in the mortuary, the Doc nursing me for weeks! My God, what madness. Me feeling my face, my head, able to yell ‘Fritz’ when I saw him. ‘You! Take charge!’ Fritz did! A maniac-at-work. Sloane, dead, get him out! Emily, poor, lost, mad. Constance! And Constance walked her off to the Elysian Fields. What they called that row of drunk/mad/dope convalescent sanitariums, where they never convalesced and weren’t sanitary, but there they went, Emily going nowhere and me raving. Fritz said shut up, and them crying, all looking at my face as if it was something from a meat grinder. I could see my horror in their eyes. Their look said, dying, and I said, like hell! and there was Doc the butcher and Groc the beautician, trying at repairs, and J. C. and Fritz at last said, ‘That’s it! I’ve done all I can do. Call a priest!’ ‘Like hell!’ I cried. ‘Hold a funeral, but I won’t be there!’ And all their faces turned white! They knew I meant it. From the mouth, this ruin: a crazed plan. And they thought: If he dies, we die. For you see, Christ Almighty, for us it was the greatest film year in history. Mid-Depression, but we had made two hundred million and then three hundred million, more than all the other film studios combined. They couldn’t let me die. I was hitting a thousand over the fence. Where would they find a replacement? Out of all the fools and jerks, idiots and hangers-on? You save him, I’ll fix him! Groc told the butcher, Doc Phillips. They midwifed me, rebirthed me away from the sun, forever!”

Listening, I remembered J. C.’s words: “The Beast? I was there the night he was born!”

“So Doc saved and Groc sewed. Oh, God! but the faster he mended, the faster I burst the seams, while they all thought, If he dies, we sink. And me now wanting to die with all my heart! But lying there under all the tomato paste and torn bone, the old groin itch for power won. And after some hours of falling toward death and climbing back, afraid to ever touch my face again, I said: ‘Announce a wake. Pronounce me gone! Hide me here, get me well! Keep the tunnel open, bury Sloane! Bury me with him, in absentia, with headlines. Monday morning, God, Monday I report for work. What? And every Monday from now on and on. And no one to know! I don’t want to be seen. A murderer with a smashed face? And fix an office and a desk and a chair and slowly, slowly, over the months, I’ll come closer, while someone sits there, alone, and listens to the mirror and, Manny, where’s Manny? You listen! I’ll talk through the beams, whisper through the cracks, shadow the mirror, and you open your mouth and I talk through your ear, through your head, and out. You got that? Got it! Call the papers. Sign the death certificates. Box Sloane. Put me in a mortuary room, rest, sleep, getting well. Manny. Yes? Fix the office. Go!’

“And in the days before my funeral, I shouted and my small team listened and got quiet and nodded and said yes.

“So it was Doc to save my life, Groc to fix a face that could never be fixed, Manny to run the studio, but with my orders, and J. C. simply because he was there that night and was the first to find me bleeding, and the one who rearranged the cars, made the crash look accidental. Only four people knew. Fritz? Constance? In charge of cleaning up, but we never told them I survived. The other four got five thousand a week forever. Think! Five thousand a week, in 1934! The average wage then was fifteen lousy bucks. So Doc and Manny and J. C. and Groc were rich, yes? Money, by God, does buy everything! Years of silence! So it was all great, all fine. The films, the studio, from then on, growing profits, and me hidden away, and no one to know. The stock prices up, and the New York people happy, until—”

He paused and gave a great moan of despair.

“Someone discovered something.”

Silence.

“Who?” I dared to ask in the dark.

“Doc. Good old surgeon general Doc. My time was up.”

Another pause and then:

“Cancer.”

I waited and let him speak when he could gather his strength.

“Cancer. Which of the others Doc told, who can say. One of them wanted to run. Grab the cash and vanish. So the scares began. Frighten everyone with the truth. Then—blackmail— then ask for money.”

Groc, I thought, but said: “Do you know who it was?”

And then I asked: “Who put the body up on the ladder. Who wrote the letter so I came to the graveyard? Who told Clarence to wait outside the Brown Derby so he could see you? Who inspired Roy Holdstrom to make the bust of the possible monster for an impossible film? Who gave J. C. overdoses of whiskey hoping he would run wild and tell everything? Who?”

With each question, the huge mass beyond the thin panel moved, trembled, took in great soughs of air, sighed it out, as if each breath was a hope for survival, each exhalation an admission of despair.

There was a silence and then he said: “When it all began, with the body on the wall, I suspected everyone. It got worse. I ran mad. Doc, I thought, no. A coward, and too obvious. He had, after all, found and told me my illness. J. C.? Worse than a coward, hiding in a bottle every night. Not J. C.”

“Where’s J. C. tonight?”

“Buried somewhere. I would have buried him myself. I set out to bury everyone, one by one, get rid of anyone who tried to hurt me. I would have smothered J. C. as I did Clarence. Killed him as I would have killed Roy, who, I thought, killed himself. Roy was alive. He killed and buried J. C.”

“No!” I cried.

“There are lots of tombs. Roy hid him somewhere. Poor sad Jesus.”

“Not Roy!”

“Why not? We’d all kill if we had the chance. Murder is all we dream, but never do. It’s late, let me finish. Doc, J. C., Manny, I thought, which would try to hit me and run? Manny Leiber? No. A phonograph record I could play any time and hear the same tune. Well then, at last—Groc! He hired Roy, but I thought to bring you in for the grand search. How was I to know the final search was for me!? That I would wind up in clay! I went, oh, quite insane. But now—it’s over.

“Running, shouting, mad, I suddenly thought: too much. Tired, so damned tired from too many years, too much blood, too much death, and all of it gone and cancer now. And then I met the other Beast in the tunnel near the tombs.”