Let's All Kill Constance - Bradbury Ray Douglas - Страница 28

"Fritz!"

"Don't yell, goddammit! Yes! A qualified yes!"

"Okay! All right! Wonderful! Now, if only-"

My eyes strayed, scanning the length of shore to the distant storm-drain entrance. Too late, I glanced away.

Both Crumley and Fritz had caught the look.

"Junior knows where Medea is, right now," said Crumley.

Yes, God, I thought, I know! But my yell had scared her away!

Fritz focused his monocle on that storm-drain entrance.

"Is that where you came out?" he said.

"No thanks to junior here," said Crumley.

"I rode shotgun," I said guiltily.

"Like hell! Shouldn't have been in that sinkhole to start with. Probably found Rattigan, then lost her again."

Probably! I thought. Oh, God, probably!

"That storm drain," Fritz Wong mused. "Maybe, just maybe, you ran the wrong way?"

"I what?" I said, stunned.

"Here in crazy Hollywood," said Fritz, "is there not more than one way to go? The storm drains, they head in all directions?"

"South, north, west, and-" I slowed down. "East," I said slowly. It's not easy to say "east" slowly, but I did.

"East!" Fritz cried. "Ja, east, east!"

We let our thoughts roam over the hills and down toward Glendale. No one ever went to Glendale, except…

If someone was dead.

Fritz Wong twisted his monocle in his fierce right eye and probed the eastern skyline, smiling a wonderfully vicious smile.

"Gottdamn!" he said. "This will make the great finale. No script needed. Shall I tell you where Rattigan is? East! Gone to earth!"

"Gone to what*. " said Crumley.

"Sly fox, swift cat. Rattigan. Gone to earth. Tired, ashamed of all her lives! Hide them all in one final Cleopatra's carpet, roll them up, deposit them in Eternity's bank. Fade out. Darkness. Plenty of earth there to go to."

He made us wait.

"Forest Lawn," he said.

"Fritz, that's where they bury people!"

"Who's directing this?" Fritz said. "You took the wrong turn toward open air, the sea, life. Rattigan headed east. Death called her by all two dozen names. She answered with one voice."

"BS!" said Crumley.

"You're fired," said Fritz.

"I was never hired," said Crumley. "What's next?"

"Go and prove I am right!" said Fritz.

"So," said Crumley. "Rattigan climbed down into that storm drain and walked east, or drove, or was driven east?"

"That," said Fritz, "is how I would shoot it. Film! Delii" cious!

"But why would she go to Forest Lawn?" I protested weakly, thinking perhaps I had sent her there.

"To die!" said Fritz triumphantly. "Go read Ludwig Bemelmans' tale of the old man, dead, put a lit candle on his head, hung flowers around his neck, and walked, a one-man funeral, to his own grave! Constance, she does the same. She's gone to die a last time, yes? Now, do I put my car in gear? Will someone follow? And do we go aboveground or take the storm drain direct?"

I looked at Crumley, he looked at me, and we both looked at Blind Henry. He felt our gaze, nodded.

Fritz was already gone, the vodka with him.

"Lead the way," said Henry. "Swear a little now and then to give me direction."

Crumley and I headed for Crumley's old jalopy, Henry in our wake.

Fritz, in his car ahead, banged his motor, blew his horn.

"Okay, you damn Kraut!" cried Crumley.

He thrummed his engine, exploding.

"Which way to the nearest road rage, dammit?"

We paused by the storm drain, stared in, then out at the open road.

"Which is it, smart-ass?" said Crumley. "Dante's Inferno or Route 66?"

"Let me think," I said.

"Oh, no you don't!" Crumley cried.

Fritz was gone. We looked along the beach and couldn't see his car anywhere.

We looked to our right. There, speeding off down the tunnel, were two red lights. "Christ!" Crumley yelled. "He's heading in on the flood channel! Damned fool!"

"What are we going to do?" I said.

"Nothing," cried Crumley. "Just this!" He rammed the gas. We swerved and plunged into the tunnel.

"Madness!" I cried.

"Damn tootin'," said Crumley. "Goddamn!"

"I'm glad I can't see this," Henry said from the backseat, speaking to the wind in his face.

We raced up the flood channel, heading inland.

"Can we do it?" I cried. "How high is the flood channel?"

"Most places it's ten feet high," Crumley shouted. "The farther in we get, the higher the ceilings. Floods come down the mountains in Glendale, then the channel has to be really big to take the flood. Hold on!"

Ahead of us, Fritz's car had almost vanished. "Idiot!" I said. "Does he really know where he's going?"

"Yes!" said Crumley. "All the way to Grauman's Chinese then left to the goddamn marble orchard."

The sound of our motor was shattering. In that thunder we saw ahead of us a tide of those lunatics who had assaulted me. "My God," I cried. "We'll hit them! Don't slow down! Those crazies! Keep going!"

We raced along the channel. Our engine roared. The history of LA. streamed past us on the walls: pictographs, graffiti, crazed illustrations left by wandering homeless in 1940, 1930, 1925, faces and images of terrible things and nothing alive.

Crumley floored the gas. We plunged at the crazed underground mob who shrieked and screamed a horrible welcome. But Crumley didn't slow. We cut through them, tossed them aside.

One ghost rose up flailing, gibbering.

Ed, Edward, Eddie, oh Eduardo! I thought. Is that you?

"You never said good-bye!" the ghost raved and fell away.

I wept and we raced on, outpacing my guilt. We left all behind and the farther we went, the more terrified I became.

"How in hell do we know where we are?" I said. "There aren't any directions down here. Or we can't see them."

Crumley said, "I think that maybe, yeah, let's see." For there were signs on the walls, scribbled in chalk, some in black painted letters.

Crumley slowed the car. On the wall ahead of us someone had etched a bunch of crucifixes and cartoon tombstones.

Crumley said, "If Fritz is any guide, we're in Glendale."

"That means…" I said.

"Yeah," he said. "Forest Lawn."

He put on his high beams and swerved the car right and left as we moved slowly, and we saw a ladder leading up to a grate covered by a manhole in the tunnel ceiling and Fritz's car beneath it, and him out of the car and climbing the ladder. A series of crosses ran alongside the ladder leading up.

We got out of the car and crossed the dry wash and began to climb the ladder. There was a thundering clang above us. We saw Fritz's shape and the manhole shoved aside, and the beginnings of a gentle rain pelting his shoulders.

We climbed the ladder in silence. Above us, Fritz was directing and shouting. "Get the hell up here, you damn fools!"

We looked down.

Blind Henry was not about to be left behind.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

the storm was over but the drizzle stayed. The sky was a loon sky-promising much, delivering little.