“Creative adhesive! Japanese bushido! American bull! Once those things are off the wall, like you, do they propagate?”
“Why not? If you don’t put in, you never get out.”
“Wait while I kill this.” Crumley drank. “Lie down with porcupines, get up with pandas?” He nodded at all those pictures, names, and lives. “Constance in there somewhere?”
“Hidden.”
“Hit the shower. I’ll stand guard on the obituaries. If they move, I’ll yell. How does a margarita strike you as nightcap?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
St. Vibiana’s Cathedral awaited us. Downtown L.A. Skid Row. At noon, heading east, we stayed off the main boulevards.
“Ever seen W. C. Fields in If I Had a Million? Bought some old tin lizzies and rammed road hogs. Super,” said Crumley. “That’s why I hate highways. I want to roadkill. You listening?”
“Rattigan,” I said. “I thought I knew her.”
“Hell.” Crumley laughed gently. “You don’t know anyone. You’ll never write the great American novel, because you don’t know shoats from shinola. You overestimate character where there is none, so you upchuck fairy princes, virgin milkmaids. Most writers can’t even do that, so you go with your taffy pulls, thirteen to the dozen. Let those realists scoop dog doo.”
I remained silent.
“Know what your problem is?” Crumley barked, and then softened his voice. “You love people not worth loving.”
“Like you, Crum?”
He glanced over cautiously.
“Oh, I’m okay,” he admitted. “I’ve more holes than a sieve, but I haven’t fallen through. Hold on!” Crumley hit the brakes. “The pope’s home away from home!”
I looked out at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in the midst of the slow-motion desolation of long-dead Skid Row.
“Jesus,” I said, “would have built here. You coming in?”
“Hellfires, no! I was kicked outta confession, age twelve, when I skinned my knees on wild women.”
“Will you ever take Communion again?”
“When I die. Hop out, buster. From Queen Califia to the Queen of Angels.”
I climbed out.
“Say a Hail Mary for me,” Crumley said.
Chapter Fifteen
Inside the cathedral it was empty, just after noon, and just one penitent was waiting by the confessional when a priest arrived and beckoned her in.
His face confirmed I was in the right place.
When the woman left, I ducked in the other side of the confessional, tongue-tied.
A shadow moved in the lattice window.
“Well, my son?”
“Forgive me, Father,” I blurted out. “Califia.”