“Okay! Zip your lip!”
We drove down beneath twenty thousand leagues of silence. Out on the street, in traffic, I scanned the newspapers, one by one.
“Hell,” I said, “I wonder why he let us have these?”
“Whatta you see?”
“Nothing. Zero. Zilch.”
“Gimme.” Crumley grabbed and used one eye on the news, one on the road. It was starting to rain.
“ ‘Emily Starr, dead at twenty-five,’ ” he read.
“Watch it!” I cried as the car drifted.
He scanned another paper. “ ‘Corinne Kelly divorces Von Sternberg.’ ”
He hurled the paper over his shoulder.
“ ‘Rebecca Standish in hospital. Fading fast.’ ”
Another toss, another paper. “ ‘Genevieve Carlos marries Goldwyn’s son.’ So?”
I handed him three more between flashes of rain. They all went into the backseat.
“He said he wasn’t crackers. Well?”
I shuffled the news. “We’re missing something. He wouldn’t keep these for the hell of it.”
“No? Nuts collect peaches, plums collect nuts. Fruit salad.”
“Why would Constance—” I stopped. “Hold on.”
“I’m holding.” Crumley clenched the wheel.
“Inside, society page. Big picture. Constance, good Lord, twenty years younger, and the mummy, that guy up there, younger, with more flesh, not bad looking, their wedding, and on one side Louis B. Mayer’s assistant, Marty Krebs, and on the other, Carlotta Q. Califia, noted astrologer!”
“Who told Constance to marry up on Mount Lowe. Astrologer forecasts, Constance takes the dive. Find the obituary page.”
“Obit—?”
“Find it! Whatta you see?”
“Holy cow! The daily horoscope and the name—Queen Califia!”
“What’s the forecast? Fair? Mild? Good day to start a garden or marry a sucker? Read it!”
“ ‘Happy week, happy day. Accept all proposals, large or small.’ So, what’s next?”
“We got to find Califia.”
“Why?”
“Don’t forget—she’s got a red circle around her name, too. We got to see her before something awful happens. That red crucifix means death and burial. Yes?”
“No,” said Crumley. “Old Tutankhamen up on Mount Lowe is still flopping around, and his name’s red-inked, too, with a crucifix!”
“But he feels someone’s coming to get him.”