Let's All Kill Constance (3 page)

"It just came," I said, unsettled.

"You're full of useless information."

"Oh, I don't know," I said, offended. "We're here at Mount Lowe , right? And it's named for Professor Lowe and his Toonerville Trolley scaling its heights, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Crumley said.

"Well then, Professor Lowe invented hot-air balloon photography that helped catch enemy images in the great war of the states. Balloons, and a new invention, trains, won for the North."

"Okay, okay," Crumley grumbled. "I'm outta the car and ready to climb."

I leaned out the car window and looked at the long weed-choked path that went up and up a long incline in evening's gathering shadows.

I shut my eyes and recited. "It's three miles to the top. You really want to walk?"

Crumley glared at the foothill.

"Hell, no." He got back in the car and banged the door shut. "Is there any chance we could run off the edge of that damn narrow path? We'd be goners."

"Always the chance. Onward!"

Crumley edged our jalopy to the foot of the mostly blind path, cut the engine, got out, walked over, kicked some dirt, and pulled some weeds.

"Hallelujah!" he exclaimed. "Iron, steel! The old rail track, didn't bother to yank it out, just buried it!"

"See?!" I said.

His face crimson, Crumley plunged back in, almost submerging the car.

"Okay, smart-ass! Damn car won't start!"

"Put your foot on the starter!"

"Damn!" Crumley stomped the floorboard. The car shimmied.

"Double-damn smart-ass kids!"

We ascended.

THE way up the mountain was a double wilderness. The dry season had come early and burned the wild grass to sere crispness. In the rapidly fading light the whole hillside up to the peak was the color of wheat, fried by the sun. As we rode, it crackled. Two weeks before, someone had tossed a match and the whole foothill had exploded in flame. It was headlined in the papers and lit the television news, the flames were so pretty. But now the fire was gone and the chars and dryness with it. There was a dead-fire smell as Crumley and I threaded the lost path winding up Mount Lowe .

On the way, Crumley said, "It's good you can't see over my side. A thousand-foot drop."

I clutched my knees.

Crumley noticed. "Well, maybe only a five-hundred-foot drop."

I shut my eyes and recited off my clenched eyelids.

"The Mount Lowe railway was part electric, part cable car."

Crumley, made curious, said, "And?"

I unclenched my knees.

"The railway opened July Fourth, 1893 , with free cake and ice cream and thousands of riders. The Pasadena City Brass Band rode the first car playing 'Hail, Columbia .' But considering their passage into the clouds, they had shifted to 'Nearer My God to Thee,' which made at least ten thousand people along the way cry. Later in the ascension they decided to do 'Upward, Always Upward' as they reached the heights. They were followed in three cable cars by the Los Angeles Symphony; the violins in one car, the brass in a second, and the timpani and woodwinds in the third car. In the confusion, the conductor was left behind with his baton. Later in the day the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle Choir ascended, also in three cars; sopranos in one, the baritones in another, and the bass in the third. They sang 'Onward, Christian Soldiers,' which seemed very appropriate as they vanished in the mist. It was reported that ten thousand miles of red, white, and blue bunting covered all of the trolleys and the trains and the cable cars. When the day was finally over, one semihysterical woman who admired Professor Lowe for what he had done to bring about the creation of the Mount Lowe railway and its taverns and hotels was quoted as saying, 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow and also praise Professor Lowe,' which made everyone cry again," I babbled on.

Crumley said, "I'll be damned."

I added, "The Pacific Electric Railway ran to Mount Lowe , the Pasadena Ostrich Farm, Seleg Lion Zoo, San Gabriel Mission, Monrovia , Baldwin 's Ranch, and Whittier ."

Crumley mumbled under his breath and drove on in silence.

Taking that as a hint, I said, "Are we there yet?"

"Cowardly custard," said Crumley. "Open your eyes."

I opened my eyes.

"I think we're there."

And we were. For there stood the ruins of the old rail station, and beyond that, a few charred struts of the burned pavilion.

I got out slowly and stood with Crumley surveying miles of land that went forever to the sea.

"Cortes never saw better," said Crumley. "View's great. Makes you wonder why they didn't rebuild."

"Politics."

"Always is. Now, where in hell do we find someone named Rattigan in a place like this?"

"There!"

Some eighty feet away, behind a huge spread of pepper trees, was a small cottage half-sunk in the earth. Fire hadn't touched it, but rain had worn its paint and battered its roof.

"There's got to be a body in there," Crumley said as we walked toward it.

"Isn't there always a body, or else why come see?"

"Go check. I'll stand here hating myself for not bringing more booze."

"Some detective." I ambled over to the cottage and had one helluva time yanking its door wide. When it finally whined and gave way, I lurched back, afraid, and peered in.

"Crumley," I said at last.

"Yeah?" he said, sixty feet away.

"Come see."

"A body?" he said.

"Even
better"
I said in awe.

WE entered a labyrinth of newsprint. A labyrinth; hell, a catacomb with narrow passages between stacks of old newspapers—the
New York Times,
the
Chicago Tribune,
the
Seattle News,
the
Detroit
Free Press.
Five feet on the left, six on the right, and a pathway between which you might jockey through, fearful of avalanches that could crush and kill.

"Holy magoly!" I breathed.

"You can say that again," Crumley groused. "Christ, there must be ten thousand Sunday and daily papers stacked here, in layers—look, yellow down below, white on top. And not just one stack, ten dozen—my God, a hundred!"

For indeed the catacomb of newsprint hollowed back through twilight shadow to curve out of sight.

It was a moment, I later said, like Lord Carnarvon opening Tut's tomb in 1922. All those ancient headlines, those obituary piles, that led to what? More news stacks and more beyond. Crumley and I sidled through with hardly enough space for bellies or behinds.

"God," I whispered, "if ever a
real
earthquake hit—"

"It did!" came a voice from far down the stacked tunnel of print. A mummy cried. "Kicked the stacks! Almost pancaked me!"

"Who's there?" I called. "Where in hell
are
you?"

"A great maze, yeah?" The mummy's voice yelled in glee. "Built it myself! Morning extra by night final, race specials, Sunday comics, you name it! Forty years! A museum library of news, un-fit to print. Keep moving! Around the bend to your left. I'm here somewhere!"

"Move!" Crumley panted. "There's gotta be a space with fresh air!"

"That's it!" the dry voice called. "You're close. Bear left. Don't smoke! Damn place's a firetrap of headlines: 'Hitler Takes Power,' 'Mussolini Bombs Ethiopia for Kindling,' 'Roosevelt Dead,' 'Churchill Builds Iron Curtain,' swell, huh?"

We turned a final comer among tall flapjack stacks of print to find a clearing in the forest.

On the far side of the clearing was an army cot. On the cot lay what seemed a long bundle of beef jerky or a mummy rampant from the earth. There was a strong smell. Not dead, I thought, not alive.

I approached the cot slowly, with Crumley behind. I knew the odor now. Not death, but the great unwashed.

The rag bundle stirred.  Some ancient blanket shreds flaked from a face like watermarks on mud shallows. A faint crack of light glinted between two withered lids.

"Pardon my not rising," the withered mouth trembled. "Chez Monsieur from Armentières, haven't got up in forty years." It cackled a cackle that almost killed it. It began to cough.

"No, no, I'm okay," it whispered. The head fell back. "Where the hell you been?"

"Where . . . ?"

"I been expecting you!" said the mummy. "What year is it? 1932? 1946? 1950?"

"You're getting warmer."

"1960. Howzat?"

"Bull's-eye," said Crumley.

"I'm not all crackers." The old man's dry dust mouth quavered. "You bring my vittles?"

"Vittles?"

"No, no, couldn't be. It's a kid, totes the dog food through that Grub Street newsprint alley, can by can, or the whole damn thing falls. You're not him—or he?"

We glanced behind and shook our heads.

"How you like my penthouse? Original meaning: place where they used to pent up people so they couldn't run amok. We gave it a different meaning and raised the rent. Where was I? Oh, yeah. How you like this joint?"

"A Christian Science reading room," said Crumley.

"Darn tootin'," said Ramses II. "Started 1925. Couldn't stop. Smash and grab, not much smash, mainly grab. It all started one day when I forgot to throw out the morning papers. Next thing there was a week collected and then more
Tribune/Times/Daily News
trash. That there on your right is 1939. On the left: 1940. One stack back: '41. Neat!"

"What happens if you want a special date and it's four feet down?"

"I try not to figure that. Name a date."

" April ninth, 1937 ," leaped off my tongue.

"Why the hell
that?"
said Crumley.

"Don't stop the boy," came the whisper from under the dust blanket. " 'Jean Harlow, dead at twenty-six. Uremic poisoning. Services mañana. Forest Lawn. Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald duet at the obsequies.' "

"My God!" I exploded.

"Pretty damn smart, huh? More!"

" May third, 1942 ," popped from my mouth.

" 'Carole Lombard killed. Air crash. Gable weeps.' "

Crumley turned to me. "Is that
all you
know? Dead film stars?"

"Don't fret the kid," said the old voice six feet under. "What you doing here?"

"We came—" said Crumley.

"It's about—" I said.

"Don't." The old man whirled a dust storm of thoughts. "You're a
sequel
!"

"Sequel?"

"Last time anyone climbed Mount Lowe looking to jump off, he failed, went back down, and was hit by a car that cured his living. Last time someone really came was . . . noon today!"

"Today!?"

"Why not? Come find the old crock, drowned in dust, no rolls in the hay since '32. Someone
did
come a few hours ago, shouted down those tunnels of bad news. Recall that fairy tale porridge mill? Say 'go!' it made hot porridge. Kid got it started. Forgot the 'stop' word. Damn porridge flooded the whole town. People ate their way door-to-door. So I got newsprint, not porridge. What did I just say?"

"Someone shouted down—"

"The corridor between the
London Times
and
Le Figaro?
Yeah. Woman, braying like a mule. Yells emptied my bladder. Threatened to tiddlywink my stacks. One shove and it's dominoes, she screamed, whole damn print architecture
squashes
me!"

"I should think earthquakes—"

"Had 'em! Shook the hell out of 'Yang-Tse River Deluge' and 'Il Duce Conquers,' but here I am. Even the big one, in '32, didn't kick my poker stacks. Anyway, this wild woman screamed all my vices and demanded certain papers from special years. I said try first row on the left, then the right; I keep all the raw stuff high. I heard her wrestle the stacks. Her cursing could have set ' London on Fire!' She slammed the door, skedaddled, looking for a place to jump. I don't think a car got her. Know who she was? I been holding out on you. Guess?"

"I can't," I said, stunned.

"See that desk there in cat litter? Scrap the litter, lift the stuff with fancy type."

I stepped to the desk. Under a tangle of sawdust and what seemed to be bird droppings, I found two dozen identical invitations.

" 'Clarence Rattigan and—' " I paused.

"Read it!" said the old man.

" 'Constance Rattigan,' " I gasped, and went on. " 'Are pleased to announce their marriage atop Mount Lowe , June tenth, 1932 , at three in the afternoon. Motor and rail escorts. Champagne following.'"

"That hit you where you live?" said Clarence Rattigan.

I glanced up.

"Clarence Rattigan and Constance Rattigan," I said. "Hold on. Shouldn't Constance 's maiden name be listed?"

"Looks like incest, you mean?"

"Strange peculiar."

"You don't get it," the lips husked. " Constance made me change
my
name! It
was
Overholt. She said she was damned if she'd give up her first-class moniker for a second-rate hand-me-down, so—"