Let's All Kill Constance (Crumley Mysteries 3)

“Rattigan!” I cried. “How’d you know?”

“She was here and gone. Every few years Rattigan vanishes. It’s how she divorces a new husband, an old lover, God, or her astrologer. ¿Quién sabe?”

I nodded, stunned.

“She came years ago, asking how I did it. All those people, she said. Constance, I said, how many cat lives have you had? A thousand? Don’t ask which flue I slid up, which bed I ran under!”

“But—”

“No buts. Mother Earth knows all. Constance invented Freud, tossed in Jung and Darwin. Did you know she bedded all six studio heads? It was a bet she took at the Brown Derby from Harry Cohn. ‘I’ll harvest Jack Warner and his brothers till their ears fly off,’ she said.

“‘All in the same year?’ Cohn yelled.

“‘Year, hell,’ said Constance. ‘In one week, with Sunday off !’

“ ‘I bet a hundred you can’t!’ said Cohn.

“ ‘Make it a thousand and you’re on,’ said Constance.

“Harry Cohn glared. ‘What will you put up as collateral?’

“ ‘Me,’ said Rattigan.

“ ‘Shake!’ cried Cohn.

“She shook all over. ‘Hold these!’ She flung her pants in Cohn’s lap and fled.”

Breathless, J. W. Bradford raved on: “Did you know that once I was Judy Garland. Then Joan Crawford, then Bette Davis. I was Bankhead in Lifeboat. A real nightwalker, late sleeper, bed buster. You need help finding Rattigan? I can list her discards. Some fell in my lap. You want to say something?”

“Is there a real you in there, somewhere?” I said.

“God, I hope not. How terrible to find me in bed with just me! Rattigan. You tried her beach house? Artie Shaw stayed there after Caruso. She got him when she was thirteen. Drove him up the La Scala wall. When she topped off Lawrence Tibbett, he sang soprano. They had a squad car of paramedics by her joint, 1936, when she mouth-to-mouth breathed Thalberg into Forest Lawn. You okay?”

“I just got hit by a ten-ton safe.”

“Take more gin. Tallulah says so.”

“You’ll hel

p us find Constance?”

“No one else can. I loaned her my whole wardrobe a million years back. Gave her my makeup-box rejects, taught her perfumes, how to surprise her eyebrows, lift her ears, shorten her upper lip, widen her smile, flatten or bulge her bosom, walk taller than tall, or fall short. I was a mirror she posed in front of, watching me stare, blink, pretend remorse, alert, despair, delight, sing in a gilded cage, power-dive into pajamas, breast-stroke out. She trotted in a high school pony, swarmed out a nest of ballerinas. By the time she left, she was someone else. That was ten thousand vaudevilles ago. And all so she could compete with other actresses for other roles in films, or maybe steal their men.

“Okay, doll,” J. W. Bradford said as he scribbled on a pad. “Here’s more names of those who loved Constance. Nine producers, ten directors, forty-five at-liberty actors, and a partridge in a pear tree.”

“Did she never hold still?”

“Ever see those seals in Rattigan’s surf ? Slick as oil, quicker than quicksilver, hit the bed like lightning. Number one in the L.A. Marathon long before there was one. Could have been board chairman at three studios, but wound up as Vampira, Madame Defarge, and Dolley Madison. There!”

“Thanks.” I scanned a list that would have filled the Bastille twice over.

“Now if you’ll forgive, Mata Hari must change!”

Zip! He flourished his kimono.

Zip! I grabbed Henry’s arm and we flew down the stairs and out onto the street.

“Hey!” someone cried. “Wait!”