Let's All Kill Constance (Crumley Mysteries 3)

“Satchel Paige said don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.”

A dozen figures lurched into the light.

“Now!” I yelled.

We left …

At seventy miles an hour, backward.

Crumley yelled, “Henry called, said where the damn dumb stupid Martian was!”

“Henry,” I gasped.

“Fritz called! Said you were twice as stupid as Henry said!”

“I am! Faster!”

Faster.

I could hear the surf.

Chapter Forty-One

We motored out of the storm drain and I looked south one hundred yards and gasped. “Ohmigod, look!”

Crumley looked.

“There’s Rattigan’s place, two hundred feet away. How come we never noticed the storm drain came out so close?”

“We never used the storm drain before as Route 66.”

“So if we could take it from Grauman’s Chinese all the way here, Constance could have gone from here to Grauman’s.”

“Only if she was nuts. Hell. She was a Brazilian nut factory. Look.”

There were a dozen narrow swerving marks in the sand. “Bicycle tracks. Bike it in one hour, tops.”

“God, no, I don’t see her on a bike.”

I stood up in the jalopy to peer back at the tunnel.

“She’s there. I doubt she’s moved. She’s still in there, going somewhere else, not here. Poor Constance.”

“Poor?” Crumley erupted. “Tough as a rhino. Keep bellyaching about that five-and-dime floozy, I’ll phone your wife to come crack your dog biscuits!”

“I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“No?” Crumley gunned the car the rest of the way out on the shore. “Three days of maniac running in and out of lousy L.A. palmistry parlors, upstairs Chinese balconies, climbing Mount Lowe! A parade of losers, all because of an A-1 skirt who gets the Oscar for loss-leading. Wrong? Rip the roll from my pianola if I’ve played the wrong tune!”

“Crumley! In that storm drain, I think I saw her. Could I just say ‘go to hell’?”

“Sure!”

“Liar,” I said. “You drink vodka, pee apple juice. I’ve got your number.”

Crumley gunned the motor. “What’re you getting at?”

“You’re an altar boy.”