Let’s All Kill Constance

“Nothing. Zero. Zilch.”

“Gimme.” Crumley grabbed and used one eye on the news, one on the road. It was starting to rain.

“ ‘Emily Starr, dead at twenty-five,’ ” he read.

“Watch it!” I cried as the car drifted.

He scanned another paper. “ ‘Corinne Kelly divorces Von Sternberg.’ ”

He hurled the paper over his shoulder.

“ ‘Rebecca Standish in hospital. Fading fast.’ ”

Another toss, another paper. “ ‘Genevieve Carlos marries Goldwyn’s son.’ So?”

I handed him three more between flashes of rain. They all went into the backseat.

“He said he wasn’t crackers. Well?”

I shuffled the news. “We’re missing something. He wouldn’t keep these for the hell of it.”

“No? Nuts collect peaches, plums collect nuts. Fruit salad.”

“Why would Constance—” I stopped. “Hold on.”

“I’m holding.” Crumley clenched the wheel.

“Inside, society page. Big picture. Constance, good Lord, twenty years younger, and the mummy, that guy up there, younger, with more flesh, not bad looking, their wedding, and on one side Louis B. Mayer’s assistant, Marty Krebs, and on the other, Carlotta Q. Califia, noted astrologer!”

“Who told Constance to marry up on Mount Lowe. Astrologer forecasts, Constance takes the dive. Find the obituary page.”

“Obit—?”

“Find it! Whatta you see?”

“Holy cow! The daily horoscope and the name—Queen Califia!”

“What’s the forecast? Fair? Mild? Good day to start a garden or marry a sucker? Read it!”

“ ‘Happy week, happy day. Accept all proposals, large or small.’ So, what’s next?”

“We got to find Califia.”

“Why?”

“Don’t forget—she’s got a red circle around her name, too. We got to see her before something awful happens. That red crucifix means death and burial. Yes?”

“No,” said Crumley. “Old Tutankhamen up on Mount Lowe is still flopping around, and his name’s red-inked, too, with a crucifix!”

“But he feels someone’s coming to get him.”

“Who, Constance? That knee-high wonder?”

“All right, the old man’s alive. But that doesn’t mean Califia hasn’t already been wiped out. Old Rattigan didn’t give us much. Maybe she can give us more. All we need is an address.”

“That’s all? Hey.” Crumley suddenly swerved to the curb and got out. “Most people never think, Constance didn’t think, we didn’t think. One place we never looked. The Yellow Pages! What a goof ! The Yellow Pages!”

He was across the sidewalk and into a public phone booth to scrabble through some beat-up Yellow Pages, tear out a page, and tote it back. “Old phone number, useless. But maybe a half-ass address.”

He shoved the page in my face. I read: QUEEN CALIFIA. Palmistry. Phrenology. Astrology. Egyptian Necrology. Your life is mine. Welcome.

And the damned zodiac street locale.

“So!” said Crumley, as close to hyperventilation as he ever got. “Constance tipped us to the Egyptian relic and the relic names Califia who said marry the beast!”

“We don’t know that!”

“Like hell we don’t. Let’s see.”

He put the car in gear and we went fast, to see.

Chapter Twelve

We drove up near Queen Califia’s Psychic Research Lodge, dead center of Bunker Hill. Crumley gave it a sour eye. Then I nodded to one side and he saw what to him was a lovely sight: CALLAHAN AND ORTEGA FUNERAL PARLOR.

That raised his spirits. “It’s like a homecoming,” he admitted.

Our jalopy stopped. I got out.

“You coming in?” I said.

Crumley sat staring out the windshield, hands on the steering wheel, as if we were still moving. “How come,” he said, “everything seems downhill with us?”

“You coming in? I need you.”

“Outta the way.”

He was halfway up the steep concrete steps and then the cracked cement walk before he stopped, surveyed the big white dilapidated bird cage of a house, and said, “Looks like the half bakery where they bake your misfortune cookies.”

We continued up the walk. On the way we met a cat, a white goat, and a peacock. The peacock flirted its thousand eyes, watching us pass. We made it to the front door. When I knocked, an unseasonable blizzard of paint snowflakes rained on my shoes.

“If that’s what holds this joint up, it won’t be long,” observed Crumley.

I rapped on the door with my knuckles. Inside I heard what sounded like a massive portable safe being trundled across a hardwood floor. Something heavy was shoved up against the other side of the door.

I raised my hand again, but a high sparrow voice inside cried, “Go away!”

“I just want—”

“Go away!”

“Five minutes,” I said. “Four, two, one, for God’s sake. I need your help.”

“No,” the voice shrilled, “I need yours.”

My mind spun like a Rolodex. I heard the mummy. I echoed him.

“You ever wonder where the name California came from?” I said.

Silence. The high voice lowered to almost a whisper. “Damn.”

Three sets of locks rattled.

“Nobody knows that about California. Nobody.”

The door opened a few inches.

“Okay, give,” the voice said.

A hand like a great plump starfish thrust out.

“Put it there!”

I put my hand in hers.

“Turn it over.”

I turned it, palm up.

Her hand seized it.

“Calmness.”

Her hand massaged mine; her thumb circumnavigated the lines on my palm.

“Can’t be,” she whispered.

More quiet motions as she thumbed the pads under my fingers.

“Is,” she sighed.

And then, “You remember being born!”

“How did you know that?”

“You must be the seventh son of a seventh son!”

“No,” I said, “just me, no brothers.”

“My God.” Her hand jumped in mine. “You’re going to live forever!”

“No one does.”

“You will. Not your body. But what you do. What do you do?”

“I thought my life was in your hands.”

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