Let's All Kill Constance (Crumley Mysteries 3)

“Her first husband is there, her first big mistake. So she goes up to swipe the newspapers with all her old selves filed away. She grabs the papers, like I did, and gives a final yell. Whether she pushed the landslide of newsprint, or gave one last shriek, who knows? Regardless, the Mount Lowe trolley master drowned in a bad-news avalanche. Okay?”

I looked over at Crumley, whose mouth gaped with his “okay.” He nodded, as did Fritz. Henry sensed this and gave the go-ahead.

“Chair number two. Bunker Hill. Queen Califia. Predictor of futures, insurer of fates.”

I held on to the chair as if I pushed that massive elephant on roller skates.

“Constance shouted outside her door. Califia wasn’t murdered any more than that Mount Lowe Egyptian relic was. Yelled at, sure, by Rattigan, telling Califia to take back all her lousy predictions that insured the future. Califia had unrolled a papyrus road map, Constance followed, blind as a bat—sorry, Henry—all enthusiasm. Would Califia lie? No! Was the future wondrous? You betcha! Now, late in the game, Constance wanted retractions. Califia would have retracted, told new lies, and gone on living, but alarmed, fell downstairs into her grave. Not murder, but panic.”

“So much for Califia,” said Crumley, trying to hide his approval.

“Scene three, take one,” said Fritz.

“Scene three, take one, chair number three.” I moved. “This here is the confessional booth, St. Vibiana’s.”

Fritz scooched his chair closer, his monocle a lighthouse flash, searching my small private stage. He chopped his head at me to continue.

“And here’s Rattigan’s bighearted brother, trying to lead her along the straight and narrow. When Califia said ‘left,’ he yelled ‘right,’ and maybe after years of storms of brutal sin, he threw up his hands, tossed her out of the church. But she came back, raving, demanding absolution, screaming her demands, purify me, forgive me, your own flesh, give way, give in, but he clapped his hands over his ears and yelled against her yell, and his yells, not hers, struck him dead.”

“So you say,” said Fritz, one eye shut, the fire from his monocle stabbing. “Prove it. If we’re going to shoot this like a goddamn film, write me the moment of truth. Tell how you know the priest killed himself with his own rage, yes?”

“Who the hell’s the detective here?” Crumley cut in.

“The boy wonder is,” drawled Fritz, not looking at him, still shooting lightning bolts of optical glass at me. “He gets hired or fired by what he next claims.”

“I’m not applying for a job,” I said.

“You’ve already got it,” said Fritz. “Or get thrown out on your ass. I’m the studio head and you’re plea-bargaining. How do you know the priest was self-murdered?”

I exhaled.

“Because I heard him breathe, watched his face, saw him run. He couldn’t stand Constance diving in the surf one way, to come out another. She was hot desert air, he was fog. Collision. Lightning. Bodies.”

“All from one priest and one bad sister?”

“Saint. Sinner,” I said.

Fritz Wong stiffened with a glow in his

face and a most ungodly smile.

“You got the job. Crumley?”

Crumley reared back from Fritz but at last nodded. “As proof? It’ll do. Next?”

I moved on to the next chair.

“Here we are at Grauman’s Chinese, up high, late night, film running, figures on the screen, pictures on the wall. All of Rattigan’s former selves nailed, ready to be nabbed. And the one man who really knows her, bum to belly button, her dad, keeper of the unholy flame, but he doesn’t want her either, so she busts in and swipes the pictures that prove her past. She’s got to burn those, too, because she doesn’t like all her former selves. The final bust-in puts her pa in shock, like all the rest. Torn both ways—after all, it is his daughter—he lets the pictures go but runs the film on a continuous roundabout reel, Molly, Dolly, Sally, Holly, Gala, Willa, Sue … The reel’s still running and the faces lit when we arrive too late to save him or the swiped photos. Unmurder number four …”

“So J. Wallington Bradford a.k.a. Tallulah Bankhead cum Crawford cum Colbert is still alive, and he’s not a victim?” said Crumley. “The same goes for quick-change artist Quickly?”

“Alive but not for long. They’re as flimsy as kites in a long storm. Constance ranted at them—”

“Because?” said Crumley.

“They taught her all the ways to not be herself,” said Fritz, proud of his insight. “Don’t do this, do that, don’t do that, do this. Richard the Third tells you how to be Lear’s daughter, Lady Macbeth, Medea. One size fits all. So she became Electra, Juliet, Lady Godiva, Ophelia, Cleopatra. Bradford said. Rattigan did. Same with Quickly. See Connie run! She had to show up on both their doorsteps to disrobe, junk her lines, burn her notices. Can teachers unteach? Constance demanded. ‘Who is Constance, what is she?’ was the essence of her declaration. Being only forward teachers, they didn’t know how to teach backward. So, Constance was driven to—”

“The basement dressing rooms,” I said. “Snatch the pictures from upstairs, sure, but then wipe out the evidence of her former selves on the mirrors. Scrape, erase, eliminate, name by name, year by year.”