Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

A hand gestured from within the cage.

Some old lion-tamer, gone to sleep, had just wakened to find himself in a strange place.

An arm outstretched within the cage, behind the bars, languidly. The lion-tamer was coming full awake.

The water fell and rose again.

And a ghost pressed to the bars.

Bent over the rail, I could not believe.

But now the spirit-light took shape. Not only a hand, an arm, but an entire body sagged and loosely gesticulated, like an immense marionette, trapped in iron.

A pale face, with empty eyes which took light from the moon, and showed nothing else, was there like a silver mask.

Then the tide shrugged and sank. The body vanished.

Somewhere inside my head, the vast trolley rounded a curve of rusted track, chocked brakes, threw sparks, screamed to a halt as somewhere an unseen man jolted out those words with every run, jump, rush.

“Death—is a lonely—business.”

No.

The tide rose again in a gesture like a stance remembered from some other night.

And the ghost shape rose again within the cage.

It was a dead man wanting out.

Somebody gave a terrible yell.

I knew it was me, when a dozen lights flashed on in the little houses along the rim of the dark canal.

“All right, stand back, stand back!”

More cars were arriving, more police, more lights going on, more people wandering out in their bathrobes, stunned with sleep, to stand with me, stunned with more than sleep. We looked like a mob of miserable clowns abandoned on the bridge, looking down at our drowned circus.

I stood shivering, staring at the cage, thinking, why didn’t I look back? Why didn’t I see that man who knew all about the man down there in the circus wagon?

My God, I thought, what if the man on the train had actually shoved this dead man into the cage?

Proof? None. All I had was five words repeated on a night train an hour after midnight. All I had was rain dripping on the high wire repeating those words. All I had was the way the cold water came like death along the canal to wash the cages and go back out colder than when it had arrived.

More strange clowns came out of the old bungalows.

“All right, folks, it’s three in the morning. Clear away!”

It had begun to rain again, and the police when they had arrived had looked at me as if to say, why didn’t you mind your own business? or wait until morning and phone it in, anonymous?

One of the policemen stood on the edge of the canal in a pair of black swim trunks, looking at the water with distaste. His body was white from not having been in the sun for a long while. He stood watching the tide move into the cage and lift the sleeper there, beckoning. A face showed behind the bars. The face was so gone-far-off-away it was sad. There was a terrible wrenching in my chest. I had to back off, because I heard the first trembling cough of grief start up in my throat.

And then the white flesh of the policeman cut the water. He sank.

I thought he had drowned, too. The rain fell on the oily surface of the canal.

And then the officer appeared, inside the cage, his face to the bars, gagging.

It shocked me, for I thought it was the dead man come there for a last in-sucked gasp of life.