“Quiet,” said Crumley, sotto voce.
And Arbuthnot’s tomb door, with flowers inside, and the body of the Beast, slammed shut.
74
I went to see Manny Leiber.
He was still sitting, like a miniature gargoyle, on the rim of his desk. I looked from him to the big chair behind him.
“Well,” he said. “Caesar and Christ is done. Maggie’s editing the damn thing.”
He looked as if he wanted to shake hands, but didn’t know how. So I went around, collected the sofa cushions, like in the old days, piled them, and sat on them.
Manny Leiber had to laugh. “Don’t you ever give up?”
“If I did, you’d eat me alive.”
I looked beyond him to the wall. “Is the passage shut?”
Manny slid off the desk, walked over, and lifted the mirror off its hooks. Behind it, where once the door had been, was fresh plaster and a new coat of paint.
“Hard to believe a monster came through there every day for years,” I said.
“He was no monster,” said Manny. “And he ran this place. It would have sunk long ago without him. It was only at the end he went mad. The rest of the time he was God behind the glass.”
“He never got used to people staring at him?”
“Would you? What’s so unusual about him hiding out, coming up the tunnel late at night, sitting in that chair? No more stupid or brilliant than the idea of films falling off theatre screens to run the world. Every damn city in Europe is starting to look like us crazy Americans, dress, look, talk, dance like us. Because of films we’ve won the world, and are too damn dumb to see it. All that being true, what, I say, is so unusual about the given creativity of a man lost in the woodwork?!”
I helped him rehang the mirror over the fresh plaster.
“Soon, when things calm down,” said Manny, “we’ll call you and Roy back and build Mars.”
“But no Beasts.”
Manny hesitated. “We’ll talk about that later.”
“Unh-unh,” I said.
I glanced at the chair. “You gonna change that?”
Manny pondered. “Just grow my behind to fit. I been putting it off. I guess this is the year.”
“A backside big enough to tackle the New York front office?”
“If I put my brains where my butt is, sure. With him gone I got a lot to shoot for. Want to try it?”
I eyed the chair for a long moment.
“Naw.”
“Afraid once you sit you’ll never get up again? Get your can out of here. Come back in four weeks.”
“When you’ll need a new ending for Jesus and Pilate or Christ and Constantine or—”
Before he could pull back, I shook his hand.
“Good luck.”