Catch a Falling Clown: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Seven) (23 page)

Nelson turned his head to the deputy. “Well, well, an alienist in my own midst,” snickered Nelson. “The man you are willing to believe is the man who made a fool out of you, deputy, a large Mexican fool.”

“He wouldn’t run,” Alex repeated without emotion.

“All right,” Nelson said with the trembling voice of hysteria and no sleep. “Supposing we agree to let you roam around while we baby-sit with your barrel of monkeys. What next?”

Gunther began to whisper furiously in my ear. It was a plan. It was simple.

“If he needs a bathroom, all he has to do is come out and say it,” said Nelson. Gunther said it, and Nelson pointed the way. “No way out back there,” he added.

“You want to hear the plan or not?” I tried, testing a slightly aggressive tone of my own as we watched Gunther move down the corridor between the cells. I gritted my teeth. I was taking over. Jeremy gave me an approving nudge. Shelly had his arms crossed and was looking at the boarded-up window, having dismissed us from his world.

“Go ahead,” said Nelson.

He bought it. It wasn’t an easy sale, and he reserved the right to demand his money back, but he bought it. It took a few minutes to work out the details, and the final one came only when Gunther returned and whispered something to me.

“I need the keys to the truck or the car,” I said when I had finished.

“You want our shotguns too?” barked Nelson, but it was now the bark of a moody child.

“No,” I said. “I’d like my gun back, but I can do without it if I have to.”

“You have to,” said Nelson. I knew he would. I just thought it better to give him something to save his face.

“Be careful, Toby,” said Jeremy as Nelson handed me the key to the truck.

“I must be crazy myself,” mumbled the sheriff.

There were no shock absorbers worthy of being called shock absorbers on the truck. I bounced without event down the street, which was just waking up. The door of Hijo’s opened next to the sheriff’s office, and someone was fiddling with the lock of the “Fresh Bate” store.

There was clearly no day of mourning for Thomas Paul of Mirador. I got to Paul’s house after making a few mistakes, but I figured it out. It looked as if no one was there, and there might not be, but I had the feeling that there was. Gunther had said it was logical. Whoever was working with Paul would have to go back to his house to see if there was anything that could link the two of them. The killer might do it quickly or might take a long time. The killer might even say the hell with the whole thing and run for Acapulco.

But this killer had been in the game for a long time, had poisoned some elephants and started a fire the year before, had shared a hatred for the circus, and, if I was right, done some very dangerous and equally dumb things.

I parked in the driveway and went in, making a lot of noise. I didn’t want to catch the killer there and get myself killed. I was after a confession where others could hear it. I went into the living room, kicking things, singing “Flat Foot Floogie” and alerting any living thing within a hundred yards. The person I was trying to alert was not a hundred yards away but upstairs somewhere. I heard the creak and the step, and then it stopped. I kept singing and hurried for the phone.

There was no click on the line to indicate that anyone had picked up an extension. I asked for a number from the operator. It was 5454 and meant nothing to me.

“
Quién es?
” came a young man’s voice.

“Right,” I said loudly. “I’m out at Paul’s place now.”

“
Qué?
”

“No, no point in staying here,” I said. “Look, it doesn’t mean anything unless you’re willing to tell the sheriff. Are you willing to tell him or not?”

“
Qué pasa aquí? Está usted, Manuel?
”

“I can’t force you to do anything,” I said with exasperation. “You can just pack up with the circus and go. Just forget two murders. If you saw who took the Tanuccis’ harness, and it wasn’t Paul, then it was someone working with Paul.”

“
Es un chiste muy estúpido, Manuel.
”

“OK, then we talk. Come to town. Mirador. Right in the center of town there’s a little bar called Hijo’s. I’ll be there in ten minutes. It shouldn’t take you more than fifteen or twenty. We’ll talk, and if you agree, we go to the sheriff. Look, they’re trying to nail all this on me.”

“
Loco en cabeza.
” He hung up, and I kept talking.

“Just come,” I insisted. “Your life isn’t worth a box of popcorn if the bastard knows what you saw.”

I hung up the phone. I wondered whether I would have fallen for it, but it was hard to tell. I wasn’t a killer and I wasn’t crazy. Something creaked very slightly upstairs. I didn’t want to give the killer a chance to consider getting rid of me on the spot. I counted on the killer wanting me to point out the possible witness at Hijo’s, but I have been wrong so many times that I more than half expected a sharp phutt of a bullet hitting my back or the vibration of a chair against my head. I got neither. As I climbed into the cabin of the truck, I noticed a curtain move on the second floor of Paul’s house. I drove on down the road.

The trip back was faster than the trip out. I knew my way now. I parked on the street in front of Alex’s car, where the truck had been before, and stepped out. A little Mexican kid about nine stood outside the door.

“I seen you before,” the kid said, squinting up at my bristly chin and unforgettable face. “You came through when that guy got bumped off. Hey, you the guy they was looking for last night who cut off old Two-face’s head?”

“I didn’t cut off anyone’s head,” I said. “Now beat it.”

“Cost you,” he said.

I looked at the sun, the white clouds, and then at the sweet-faced kid asking for hush money.

“What’s the going price for covering a murder?” I said, digging into my pocket. I didn’t want to keep talking, but I didn’t want him messing the setup. I was willingly contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

“Four bits,” he said.

“Reasonable,” I said, giving him two quarters.

He took them in his hand and examined them carefully.

“You think I’m a counterfeiter in addition to a murderer?”

“Just being careful,” he said, pocketing the coins. “Don’t worry. I didn’t see nothin’, I don’t know nothin’, and I don’t say nothin’.”

I hadn’t seen a car at Paul’s house, but the killer wouldn’t have been dumb enough to park in the driveway. It would take a few minutes to get to wherever the car was, but that car couldn’t be far behind me now.

“Take it easy,” I said to the kid, moving toward Hijo’s.

“Hey, I take it any way it comes,” he said with a big grin.

“Ever thought of being a movie producer?” I said in front of Hijo’s.

“What’s it pay?”

“Almost as good as hush money,” I said.

“I’ll think about it,” he said seriously. “Hey, you’re not going into Hijo’s, are you? You can get in trouble in there, my old man says.”

“Got to,” I said with a grin. “I’ve got a killer to catch.”

The kid looked at me like I was crazy as I pushed open the door and left the day behind me.

None of the boys were whooping it up at Hijo’s saloon. I stepped back two days in time. There were three people at the bar, a drunk at a table, and music playing. They were the same three people I had met there the last time. Only the music was different. At least I think it was different. It was a woman almost weeping in Spanish.

The Falstaff Beer sign sputtered on the wall, trying to keep up with the weeping woman on the radio, but was a beat or two behind.

My eyes adjusted slowly to the bartender sitting behind the bar with his head in but one hand this time and what looked like the same cigarette drooping from his chubby lips.

“You still with the circus?” called Jean Alvero, the whore with the heart of a dove.

I stepped to the bar, eyeing Alex’s brother Lope, who wore the same denims but might have changed his shirt. The only thing different about him was the bandage over his head and right eye.

“Right,” I said, keeping an eye on Lope, who walked over to me. The drunk at the table was awake. It was early. He probably didn’t pass out till nine or ten in the morning.

“No trouble,” I said to Lope, holding out my hand. His smaller friend was standing behind him, thumbs hooked in his belt.

“No trouble,” said Lope. “I was drunk the other time. I deserved this.” He pointed to his head. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

“I’ll take a Pepsi, and thanks,” I said with my smashed-face grin, “but I don’t think it will be healthy to drink with me.”

Lope’s remaining eye went narrow. He had put out his hand in friendship, and if I turned it away he was going to lose what was left of his face.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I added quickly. “I’m expecting trouble through that door, and I don’t want anyone too near me when it comes.”

Lope understood that. His eye opened wider. “I’m not afraid of a little trouble,” he said, looking back at his faithful companion Carlos, who grinned broadly.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Keep an eye on me from the end of the bar, and if trouble breaks out, go for the one with the gun, knife, or chair in his hand, providing it isn’t me.”

Lope grinned, I think, and belched something at the bartender, who tore himself away from the radio to get me a warm Pepsi.

Lope and Carlos returned to Jean Alvero. I toasted her with warm Pepsi. “I thought you come back to see Jean Alvero,” she said. I’d noticed that opera and movie stars and whores referred to themselves in the third person. Maybe they had something in common.

“I did,” I said, trying to watch the door without insulting my hosts by turning my back. “It was your beauty that drew me irresistibly to Hijo’s, though my duty lay elsewhere.”

“You full of crapola, gringo,” she grinned.

And warm Pepsi and a jigger of fear. My killer was probably not exactly sane. I wondered if one could be inexactly sane.

The drunk at the table eyed me through two tiny holes of red, and the weeping woman on the radio stopped. For a beat or two of the heart all that could be heard in that dim bar was the sputtering of the Falstaff Beer sign. Then the radio burst forth with rapid-fire Spanish.

The door to the bar swung open, and I tried to keep from looking, but you can’t ignore a crowd, and a crowd it was.

“There you are,” came a voice, which was clearly Emmett Kelly’s and clearly concerned. Behind Kelly came Elder, Agnes Sudds, Peg, Henry Yew, Doc Ogle, and assorted people I didn’t recognize.

The drunk at the table sat up, perplexed, and the bartender turned the radio down, ready to cater the party.

Elder, Kelly, Agnes, and Peg detached themselves from the group and moved over to me. This wasn’t what I wanted, planned, or expected. Hell, few things were what I wanted, planned, or expected.

“What are you doing out of jail?” asked Peg. “We went next door and that sheriff said you weren’t there and slammed the door on us.”

“What’s going on?” asked Elder. Kelly looked puzzled, and Agnes smiled at me with something that I might have thought pert if she weren’t wearing a hat, a little blue thing big enough to hide a snake or two.

“I can’t explain,” I said. “I just need a few minutes to be alone, to think. Have a seat, take a table. Drinks are on me. See what the boys in the back room will have. Whatever. Just give me a few minutes.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” demanded Elder.

Kelly turned his head slightly and our eyes met. I had the feeling he was sensing my thoughts. “Let’s leave Toby alone,” he said, touching Elder’s arm.

“Toby,” said Peg softly, “are you all right?”

I looked at the door and looked at Peg. Her hair was dark and down, and I realized that she reminded me of Ann, my wife, I mean Ann, my ex-wife, who was due to marry an airline exec who looked like a tall Claude Rains.

“Please,” I said, turning my back and picking up the Pepsi.

“You bastard,” hissed Elder behind me. “We came here to help you, and …”

“Come on,” urged Kelly. “Let’s sit down.”

They moved away behind me, but I didn’t turn back. The bar was now bustling with circus people ordering early-morning tequila, beer, and Squirt—a party. The bartender shuffled, the music blared, and I looked into the dirty dark mirror behind the bar to see figures shifting. I thought I could see the door. I looked at my glass of almost finished Pepsi. There was something at the bottom of the glass, probably my nerve. I held up the empty to Lope and shouted to the bartender to buy drinks for my good friends at the end of the bar.