A Graveyard for Lunatics (Crumley Mysteries 2)

“You never know. I got nothing else to do—” said Clarence.

You never know. Douglas Fairbanks, alive again, might stroll along the boulevard, much better than Brando. Fred Allen and Jack Benny and George Burns might come around the corner from the Legion Stadium, where the boxing matches were just over, and the crowds happy, just like the old times, which were lovelier than tonight or all the nights to come.

I got nothing else to do. Yes.

“Yeah,” I said. “You never know. Don’t you remember me at all? The nut? The super-nut? The Martian?”

Clarence’s eyes jerked around from my brows to my nose to my chin, but not to my eyes.

“N-no,” he said.

“Goodnight,” I said.

“Goodbye,” said Clarence.

Roy led me away to his tin lizzie and we climbed in, Roy impatiently sighing. No sooner in than he grabbed his pad and pencil and waited.

Clarence was still at the curb, to one side of the taxi, when the Brown Derby doors opened and the Beast came out with his Beauty.

It was a fine rare warm night or what happened next might not have happened.

The Beast stood inhaling great draughts of air, obviously full of champagne and forgetfulness. If he knew he had a face out of some old long-lost war, he showed no sign. He held on to his lady’s hands and steered her toward the taxi, babbling and laughing. It was then that I noticed, by the way she walked and looked at nothing, that—

“She’s blind!” I said.

“What?” said Roy.

“She’s blind. She can’t see him. No wonder they’re friends! He takes her out for dinners and never tells her what he’s really like!”

Roy leaned forward and studied the woman.

“My God,” he said, “you’re right. Blind.”

And the man laughing and the woman picking up and imitating the laughter, like a stunned parrot.

At which moment, Clarence, his back turned, having listened to the laughter and the onrush of words, turned slowly to regard the pair. Eyes half shut, he listened again, intently, and then a look of incredible surprise crossed his face. A word exploded from his mouth.

The Beast stopped his laughter.

Clarence took a step forward and said something to the man. The woman stopped laughing, too. Clarence asked something else. Whereupon the Beast closed his hands into fists, cried out, and lifted his arms into the air as if he might pound Clarence, pile-drive him, into the pavement.

Clarence fell to one knee, bleating.

The Beast towered over him, his fists trembling, his body rocking back and forth, in and out of control.

Clarence cried out and the blind woman, reaching out on the air, wondering, said something, and the Beast shut his eyes and let his arms drop. Instantly, Clarence leaped up and ran off in the dark. I almost jumped to go after him, though for what reason I did not know. The next instant, the Beast helped his blind friend into the taxi, and the taxi roared off.

Roy jumped the starter and we roared after.

The taxi turned right at Hollywood Boulevard, and the red light and some pedestrians stopped us. Roy gunned the engine as if to clear a path, cursed, and finally, when the crosswalk was empty, ran the red light.

“Roy!”

“Stop calling my name. Nobody saw us. We can’t lose him! God, I need him! We got to see where he goes! Who he is! There!”

Up ahead, we saw the taxi making a right at Gower. Up ahead, also, Clarence was still running but did not see us as we passed.

His hands were empty. He had dropped and left his portfolio behind outside the Derby. How long before he misses it, I wondered.