The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish (24 page)

ARMAGEDDON

The
Costume Ball

O
f
all Hearst’s parties, his costume balls were the best. He wanted his company to look spectacular, so he let them borrow outfits from Cosmopolitan Pictures’ wardrobe department. On this particular weekend, Doyle and his mother were going as d’Artagnan and the Queen of France. Mary Mabel was to be the Match Girl, and Floyd, Rumpelstiltskin. The Baroness had selected Little Bo Peep, and ordered Dr. Silver and Miss Pigeon to play her sheep. She planned to lead them around on jewelled leashes.

As usual, Hearst had arranged for a private train from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo County; his fleet of cars would taxi his guests the final leg to his castle. The train was a terrific icebreaker, particularly for first-timers like Doyle and his mother. By the time it pulled into the station, everyone was in a festive mood and on a first-name basis.

Still, Mary Mabel wanted to drive. Her life was so full of people she wanted a few hours of privacy. So did Brother Floyd and the Baroness. They kept company in the back seat of her limo behind a panel of tinted glass; Mary Mabel sat up front with the chauffeur, reading a book, peering through her binoculars, or waving out the window to Dr. Silver and Miss Pigeon; they followed in the Olds in case the Baroness had car trouble. “Heavens,” she’d said, fanning herself, “what if we got stuck in the middle of nowhere, fending off turkey vultures with a road map?”

For Mary Mabel, the best part of the trip was the ride by the Santa Lucia Mountains. The Pacific crashing against the cliffs created mists and wisps of cloud. It was like travelling through dreamscapes. And then to see the Hearst castle in the distance, glistening atop La Cuesta Encantada. It seemed every name came from fairy tale and myth.

She had a second reason for wanting to travel by car. Something had been bothering her, but every time she’d broached the subject, her partners had been too busy to listen. A two-hundred-mile car ride denied them any excuse. She waited till they were an hour out of town before knocking on the glass panel.

“Just a minute.” There were sounds of a scramble, then Floyd slid open the glass. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Mary Mabel said, “but there’s something I have to get off my chest. I love performing on the radio, but I wish you weren’t forever handing me scripts about the Heavenly Dwellings. I’m either praising their spiritual benefits, chatting up buyers, or praying for donations. I feel like a real-estate agent.”

Miss Bentwhistle and her partner stared blankly and rolled down their side windows. They pretended they couldn’t hear her over the breeze.

“We have to talk,” Mary Mabel shouted.

Floyd ordered the driver to pull over and take a walk. He did. The Olds stopped ahead of them. Dr. Silver came running to see what was wrong.

“We’re fine,” said Miss Bentwhistle. “Go entertain Dolly. Nibble her ears. Tell her tales of your youth.” The dentist brightened and hurried off to shock his Baptist.

“Okay,” Floyd said coldly to the troublemaker. “Economics 101. We want to spread hope, right? So we bought more radio stations, remember? They don’t come cheap. Pushing Dwellings is the fastest way to raise the boodle.”

“But how does money raised to build apartments end up buying radio stations?”

Miss Bentwhistle sighed. “You clearly have no head for business.”

“Perhaps not,” Mary Mabel said. “But I know how to spell fraud.”

Floyd bristled. “It’s not fraud. It’s borrowing. Each new station enlarges our pool of donors and buyers. Their contributions repay the Dwellings accounts.”

“Mr. Cruickshank, we’re soliciting money under false pretenses.”

Miss Bentwhistle tapped Floyd’s knee. “She was always a difficult child.”

“I’m not a child. I’m not a grifter, either. From now on, I won’t solicit for the Dwellings, I demand to see the books, and I insist they be above board.”

“Mind your place,” Miss Bentwhistle snapped. “You may be a star, but to us you’re the help.”

“I’m a partner,” Mary Mabel snapped back. “I’m also the one with the story. Back off or I’ll take it elsewhere.”

Floyd smiled. “Actually you won’t. According to our agreement, I hold the rights to your career. You perform when and where I say.”

“Is that so?” Mary Mabel coughed. “I seem to be coming down with permanent laryngitis.”

“Don’t play cute. If you don’t push apartments, sales will dry up. Without those sales we’ll lose the new stations, their income, and all we’ve invested. Shazam, the Dwellings will fold before they’re built, with no cash to repay buyers. Enter the F.B.I.”

“If the operation is crooked, I ought to turn it in myself.”

“But, as you say, you’re a partner,” Miss Bentwhistle observed. “Moreover, the partner soliciting the cash. If there’s a problem, you’ll be the first to be nicked.”

“You and your poor Mr. Doyle,” said Floyd. “Rat us out and I’ll destroy him.”

How?
Mary Mabel wondered, but was afraid to ask. “There’s a smell in this car.” Mary Mabel jumped out and drove the rest of the way with Dr. Silver and Miss Pigeon.

By the time they arrived at San Simeon, the other guests had eaten at the refectory and dressed for the party. Hearst’s secretary, Willicombe, got them settled and asked the kitchen to send up dinner trays. He said the night would be grand. There’d be jugglers, fire-eaters, magicians — oh, and the McConaghie Family Circus was going to shoot a clown out of a cannon. Tomorrow, Hearst would like to talk to them about their movie.

“Terrific,” Mary Mabel said, but she had more important things on her mind than her biopic. As soon as Willicombe left, she whipped into her Match Girl outfit and tore off in search of d’Artagnan.

He was sitting by the Neptune Pool with his mother, talking to Henry the Eighth: Charles Laughton munching a turkey leg. Acrobats and fire-eaters circled around them, juggling torches, and breathing flames. Across the pool, a trio of clowns were setting up the McConaghie Family’s human cannonball act.

“May I steal your musketeer?” Mary Mabel asked.

The company laughed. Doyle said he’d happily be of service to a match girl. She marched him off towards Hearst’s private zoo. “Keep a smile on and pretend to be talking about the animals.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You tell me.” Mary Mabel recounted the conversation with her partners. “What I want to know is, what have you done? How can Mr. Cruickshank bring you down?”

Doyle gripped the bars of the antelope cage and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. And then he told her how he’d extorted 15 percent of ministry earnings in exchange for puffing her miracles. His eyes begged her to say something, but she couldn’t, she just stood there.

“I didn’t take a penny,” he pleaded. “Cruickshank never deposited to the account.”

“Then I guess you’re scot-free.”

“In court. But if the story leaks, I’m finished. Who wants a writer who uses his column to front frauds and solicit bribes?”

“I wouldn’t know. All I know is, I trusted you. You used me.”

“I didn’t mean to. I was thinking of Ma.”

“Don’t hide behind your mother.”

“I wanted the cash to save her from the county home. I’m sorry.”

“It’s easy to be sorry when your chickens come home to roost.”

“What makes you so self-righteous?” Doyle demanded.

“Pardon?”

“Don’t play dumb. You knew Cruickshank was a flim-flam artist.”

Mary Mabel shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t. I’ve just thought about doing good.”

“Nice excuse.”

He was right, and Mary Mabel knew it. True, she could pretend she didn’t know the ministry was corrupt. But there’s knowing and
knowing
. She’d ignored so much, claiming her mama as her guide; yet her mama would never have led her into temptation. Her wishful thinking had betrayed her mama’s memory.

Doyle turned away and slumped against the cage. Mary Mabel paused, then put her arm around his shoulder. He squeezed her hand. “I’m afraid. I don’t know how to tell Ma what I’ve done. She’ll be ashamed of me.”

“No she won’t. She loves you.”

“That makes it worse.”

They stared through the bars at the antelope.

Mary Mabel remembered how her papa had mocked her for reading so much. “Why waste your time with lies?” he’d said.
But the thing is
, she thought,
lies can make truth.
Whether real or imagined, her miracle had led her into a life of deceit with no escape. To remain in the ministry was unthinkable: every second she continued was a crime against her mama. But bringing the ministry down would bring ruin to the two people she cared about most: Doyle and Ma Rinker.
Mama
, she prayed,
forgive me. Please. Help me to get out of here.

Suddenly there was a terrible explosion at the Neptune Pool. Guests were screaming, scattering in all directions: “They’re everywhere! Run for your lives! We’re surrounded!”

What?

Doyle leapt to attention. “Don’t move!” he said. “I’ve got to get Ma!” He took off in a flash. Mary Mabel went to run after.

“Not so fast.” A man grabbed her by the shoulder.

She whirled around. “Papa?” she gasped.

“Shush up. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

Revolution

W
hen
Comrade Duddy felled Slick Skinner with a handkerchief of ether, there had been fevered discussion about what to do next. Comrade Canuck was all for a summary execution. “He’s a bourgeois counter-revolutionary. A stooge of the capitalist bosses.”

It was the first time Duddy had heard McTavish talk remotely like a Bolshevik, so he was a little suspicious. “Why did this guy want to kill you?”

“I screwed his wife.”

Duddy explained that screwing somebody’s wife didn’t make the husband a counter-revolutionary, and that Slick didn’t exactly look bourgeois. McTavish replied that if Skinner lived he’d track them down, thus imperilling the grand revolutionary struggle to come. Lapinsky agreed. He thought it would be fun to choke Skinner with the Hand.

The commissars broke off their dialectic with the arrival of the cops, who were sweeping the alley for drunks. Comrade Duddy grabbed Slick’s rifle and golf bag, and the trio escaped to the street beyond.

W
ith Skinner alive and no doubt on the warpath, the comrades decided to stage a strategic retreat to Casa Mama Rosa, by way of small-town banks in Ohio and Arkansas. Once settled into the girls and tequila, McTavish and Lapinsky wanted to stay put. Comrade Duddy said that any more whoring and they’d turn into capitalists. The comrades didn’t care. But Duddy was still determined to kidnap Mary Mabel for the revolution. When he heard that she was in Los Angeles, he found a way to motivate them. “L.A. is the hooker capital of the world. Only there, they call them starlets.”

The comrades hopped a train to an area of bush near Hollywood. There was a road nearby that went to town. While the other two set up camp, Duddy scouted Mary Mabel’s radio station. He reported back that Skinner was there in sniper position, sitting under a nearby tree pretending to read the
Saturday Evening Post
. A long thin object wrapped in black tissue paper lay at his side.

Lapinsky volunteered to surprise him with a knife in the ribs. Duddy pointed out that a murder would raise security and make their job more difficult. Instead, he’d comb the papers for word on Sister’s upcoming appearances. With luck they’d find a venue that the hunter would ignore.

A spread in the
Herald-Examiner
provided inspiration. There was to be a costume ball at San Simeon; the guest list included Sister Mary Mabel. Duddy was certain that Skinner would steer clear; the hunter would never imagine that McTavish would be stupid enough to try and crash Hearst security.

“And he’d be right,” said McTavish. “How do you propose we get in? How do you propose we get out?”

Comrade Duddy smiled.

M
r. McConaghie was in a fine mood. He’d been doing a brisk trade in circus rentals. It had started with his animals. Now it had progressed to his hardware. The newest clients were a trio of clowns in full makeup, red noses, and yellow fright wigs.

“The truck and the cannon haven’t been used in years,” said McConaghie. “Gimme a couple of days to scrape out the rust and touch up the paint job.”

The biggest clown, Leo the Large, tried the cannon on for size. It was a tight fit.

“You boys know about explosives?” asked McConaghie.

The littlest clown, Duddles, honked a horn. “I’ve worked in coal mines.”

McConaghie gave him a sheet of instructions about the amount and placement of the fuse and gunpowder, and where to set the safety net. Oh, and he’d need some identification and a signed release before letting his stuff off the lot.

Friday morning the clowns returned with a driver’s license. McConachie checked it over. “You sure you’re fifty-two, Mr. Jenson?”

“Fifty-two, whoo-pitty-do!” sang Duddles and rang a little bell.

Belinda McConaghie came running out of her trailer, eyes popping. She wore a purple cape over her brassiere, and a jewelled fortune-teller’s hat. There were runs in her leotards. “I see an explosion!” she exclaimed, and stabbed her forefinger at Leo. “You will come out of a cannon. There will be much surprise.” She cackled and ran off to her mother’s card table for some lemonade and Crackerjack.

Under the circumstances, McConaghie didn’t figure he had the right to be asking the clowns any more questions.

Duddles took the driver’s seat. He blew a kazoo.

“Knock ’em dead,” McConaghie hollered as the truck pulled onto the highway.

C
omrade Duddy ordered the commissars to shut-the-fuck-up as he drove up to the Hearst castle security post. At least the truck looked official. The touch-ups to the side walls reading T
HE
M
C
C
ONAGHIE
F
AMILY
C
IRCUS
were in crisp reds and golds, and the sparkles and stars on the cannon were a nice touch. Duddy knew the circus’s name would ring a bell, too; it had been credited in the press for providing Sister with lambs and lions.

The guard gave the truck a once over and peered into the cab.

“McConaghie Family Circus,” said Duddy brightly. “I’m Duddles, and these are my pallys: Leo the Large and Mr. Spiffy. We’re doing the Human Cannonball act.”

The guard frowned. They sure looked like clowns. Still, they weren’t on the list of entertainers. “I’ll have to check with the Chief,” he said.

“Okey-dokey,” chirped Duddles. The guard entered his booth and got on the phone. Mr. Spiffy whimpered; Leo the Large drummed the fingers of the Hand on the dash.

“McConaghie’s Family Circus?” Hearst said on the other end of the line. “Of course, let them in.” (Another surprise from Marion, he smiled, or maybe a treat from Sister.) “Have them set up by the Neptune Pool. Instead of a net, ask them to splash down in the deep end. We’ll have a cannonball to end all cannonballs!”

The guard passed them through.

From now on it’ll be easy
, Duddy thought. After the act, Comrade Canuck would get his daughter to the truck — she’d go quietly or be ethered — then, bingo, they’d slip her down the cannon barrel and escape.

The comrades set up while the guests ate. As the cannon was manoeuvred into final position, Brewster spotted Mary Mabel across the pool. She looked well. It pissed him off. How dare she have fun with the mucky-mucks, while he slaved with the proles? He watched the little slut wander up a garden path with some highfalutin’ sugar boy. He’d soon wipe that smile off her face.

Out of nowhere, Little Bo Peep sashayed by accompanied by two balls of wool crawling on all fours. It couldn’t be. “Who’s Bo Peep when she’s home?” Brewster asked a fire-eater.

“You don’t recognize the Baroness Bentwhistle?”

“The
Baroness
Bentwhistle?”

“Her jewels are worth twenty-five million,” the fire-eater confided. “Excuse me, I have to go suck some kerosene.”

Twenty-five million! What an unexpected honey pot. Brewster would have to drop by and pay his respects. Alone.

Suddenly, klieg lights lit up the cannon. The castle’s drummers and coronet players assembled at the side of the pool and played a fanfare. From all corners, guests surged around, filling the deck and marble stairways. W.R. Hearst appeared at a microphone, Willicombe at his side. A hush fell over the crowd.

“Glad to see you, my friends,” Hearst said. The microphone squealed. Willicombe adjusted the volume and all was well. “I hope you were as tickled as me to see the McConaghie circus truck pull in. It brought back memories. Tonight, I understand they’re favouring us with their Human Cannonball act. So, with no further ado, may I present Duddles the Clown.”

Duddles did a handspring into the light. He honked his horn. “Hi there, boys and girls, ladies and gents,” he squeaked.

“Hi there, Duddles,” the crowd called back affectionately.

“Before we get started, let me introduce my pallys. This is Mr. Spiffy.” Caught in the glare of the klieg, Mr. Spiffy covered his head and fell to the ground, bum up. Much laughter.

“And this here’s Leo the Large.” Lapinsky marched forward waving the Hand. Duddles rang his little bell. “Give Leo a hand. A left hand.” The crowd hooted. They expected a real paw to pop out of the empty sleeve. It didn’t.

Yet there was no time for shock. Leo was already being squeezed down the cannon barrel. It was a tight fit. So tight he had to stick the Hand in his mouth. Duddles and Mr. Spiffy pushed with all their might. Leo’s shoulders plugged the end of the barrel; his head was stuck outside. Duddles made a great show of trying to force it down with a toilet plunger.

The veins on Leo’s neck bulged. “Get me outta here!”

“You asked for it!” Duddles yukked. He ran back and lit a fuse as long and thick as a skipping rope. Drum roll. As the flame snaked and sparkled its way along the deck and up the butt of the cannon, Duddles stuffed his fingers in his ears.

Three. Two. One. There was a tremendous explosion.

The cannon elevated two feet off the ground and crashed down. Duddles and Mr. Spiffy were somersaulted backwards. There was only one problem. Leo the Large hadn’t budged. He was the immovable object meeting the irresistible force.

Leo raised his eyebrows. He looked surprised, as his head dropped off the end of the barrel, bounced twice, and plopped into the swimming pool.

The cannon wobbled. It tilted downward. Guests held their breath in the hope that this was a magic trick — that a whole Leo the Large was going to slide out the end. Instead, what slid out was two hundred and twenty pounds of lasagna.

Even Jack Warner was sick.

Comrade Duddy knew the jig was up. He’d be put on trial for murder. But if he was going to face the electric chair, he wouldn’t go down as a clown. Instead, he’d go down as a hero in the grand revolutionary struggle. “Workers of the world unite!” he roared into the microphone. “Throw off your chains!”

The crowd gasped. An emulsified clown was one thing, a Communist insurrection another. How many armed fanatics were in their midst masquerading as waiters? Elves? With visions of fire-eaters setting them alight, and an army of Okies storming the castle walls, the high and mighty fled screaming in all directions.

In the confusion, Brewster tossed off his red nose and wig. Soot coated his clothes and makeup. He was one of the mob. He ran up the path where his daughter had disappeared. He saw her. Grabbed her.

“Papa?”

“Shush up. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

To his surprise, she didn’t need ether.