Catch a Falling Clown tp-7 Read online

  “Nothing whatsoever,” he said.

  “I thought you were going back to Los Angeles today,” I said.

  “I am,” he said. “Just as soon as I see tonight’s performance. A murder,” he went on, savoring the word and then backing away from it when he repeated it, “a murder.”

  Maybe I would have thought of another question, maybe an important one that would have cracked the case, but I spotted Alex coming around a tent about forty feet away. He might wonder why a clown wasn’t with the other clowns. I lifted my hat to Hitchcock and went toward the big top as quickly as my costume and back would let me. I could feel the wet mud oozing under my shoes. I was afraid my costume might come apart. It reminded me of the time I was in kindergarten back in 1904 or 1905.1 was spending a few months with my aunt in Chicago. It was Halloween. I wore a paper devil’s costume she had made for me. It started to come apart on the way to school, and I was scared through the whole morning that it would all come off and I’d be in school in my underwear. Each movement had terrified me. Ever since then, I’ve hated the idea of wearing a costume. The clown suit was no exception. I was afraid Alex would chase me right into the light inside the tent I was heading for and into the middle of the ring, where I’d trip and my costume would come off.

  I didn’t know if Alex was after me, but I kept moving toward the music, the light, the big tent as if I were late for my act. I went through a small flap and found myself right next to the band. A tuba blasted in my ear. I looked down and saw that the round piece of metal on top of the drum an old guy in a maroon uniform was playing was rotting with age or accident and had been placed behind the tuba player and out of sight of the crowd. That was the way the whole circus operated, on the surface, a thin, fragile surface.

  I began twirling my lasso furiously and headed away from the tent flap and the band. Some wire acts were just coming down. One of them had been using a bear; and the bear, the same one I had run into earlier, went by and took a swipe at me. I jumped back, and the crowd near us roared with laughter.

  The band stopped and the tent went dim. I looked out into the arena and saw nothing. The ringmaster announced nothing, and then I saw Willie walk out, Emmett Kelly’s Willie.

  The audience sounds were loud, but they went down as he moved forward and began to plant imaginary seeds in a victory garden in the center ring. As he planted, he also ate some of the seeds. Soon there were no seeds. He took off his hat to scratch his head, and there was a frog perched there. He spent a few minutes trying without success to determine where the frog sound was coming from. The crowd roared.

  Then he picked up a broom and began to sweep or pretend to sweep. It took me and Willie a few seconds to see that he could also sweep the spotlight that lit him up. The spotlight grew a bit smaller as he swept it, and then it tried to run away. Willie chased it, holding onto his hat with one hand and the broom with the other. Gradually the circle of light got tired and Willie began to sweep it smaller and smaller until there was only a yellow spot about the size of a plate. He reached under his jacket, pulled out a dustpan, put it down, swept the last circle of light into the pan, and the tent went dark.

  There was a beat of silence and then thunderous applause in the darkness. I was crying. I didn’t know what the hell I was crying about, and I didn’t want that light to come on and people to see me, but it came on. Two boys, fat kids stuffing their faces with popcorn, looked at me. One pointed and spit out about half a pound and laughed. I walked away and out the same tent flap I had come in, expecting to run into the waiting arms of Alex the angry cop, but I didn’t. Alex wasn’t there. Hitchcock wasn’t there. The band struck up behind me, and I walked slowly away, determined that if there was a threat to Emmett Kelly, it had to be stopped.

  I stayed in the shadows, moved past tents and wagons, people talking in concession stands, and to a wagon I had been told to find marked with a big red number forty-five. Elder and I had agreed to stay away from Kelly’s wagon, the clown tent, and Elder’s office wagon, in case Nelson decided to look where he had already seen me or might look.

  I knocked at the door of forty-five, and it opened. Peg was startled for a second and then put out her hand to help me up. I had trouble getting through the door with my inner tube and ache, but we popped me in.

  “Nice place,” I said, starting to take off my pants.

  She was wearing a robe and pajamas. Her hair was down, and she looked comfortable and comforting.

  “Hold it,” she said.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said, continuing. “I’ve got to get out of this tube and sit down. My back hurts, and I miss the feeling of just getting off my legs. I’m not going to attack you in a clown suit.”

  “Or any other way?” she asked with a smile, watching me struggle.

  “Depends on if you keep laughing at me like that or give me a hand.”

  She gave me a hand, getting close enough for me to decide that she smelled good, not perfume good but clean good. As soon as I had inched out of the tube after removing my pants, I sat in a chair in my shorts, still wearing my clown makeup, tore off the hat, rubbed the indentation under my chin from the rubber band, and scratched my stomach furiously.

  Peg was holding her stomach with laughter.

  “I’d rather face Alex in that Mirador cell than put that costume back on,” I said. “You’ve got a great laugh.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

  “Thanks.” I got up and found a towel in a corner near a mirror. “Can I use this?”

  She told me to go ahead, and I removed the makeup. It took me awhile to find me, and I didn’t get it all off, but it was enough off me for me to be comfortable. I looked around the small room. Peg had done what she could to make it look like home. Curtains, a quilt on the cot, photographs on the wall of a family that was probably hers, a small table with a cloth, three chairs, a small icebox under the window.

  “Nice,” I said, going back to the table.

  “It’s enough,” she said, handing me a cup of coffee with one hand and a doughnut with the other. I was hungry and stuffed the doughnut in my mouth.

  “You wouldn’t have another two or three doughnuts?” I asked with my mouth full. She grinned and reached back through a cloth covering a cabinet to pull out a plate with two more doughnuts.

  “The start of real romance,” I said, gulping down some coffee.

  “You look silly,” she said.

  “Try to ignore it,” I suggested, choking on the last bite of my second doughnut.

  “Can’t,” she said.

  “You really look great,” I said.

  “You don’t,” she answered.

  “I give up,” I said, and I did, for the moment. “Will you marry me?”

  “You serious?” she said.

  “Hell, no,” I said, going for the last of the coffee and handing the cup to her in hope of a refill. “Don’t you know what you’re supposed to say?”

  She got up, pulled her robe around her, turned her back, and poured more coffee.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t know much about man-and-woman games.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be.” She turned and handed me the cup, looking into my eyes with a soft smile. “I don’t go to movies much, just circuses.”

  “I’d like to take you to a movie,” I said, accepting the cup and deciding to try to do some dunking with the final doughnut. “You make a mean doughnut.”

  “Stole it from the mess truck.”

  “You know how to steal a good doughnut.”

  We sat watching me try not to lose any of the soggy doughnut until the whole thing was gone. I sat back, wishing I had my pants on and something over my chest besides the purple silk clown’s shirt. Peg was looking at me with a soft amusement that might turn to more, and I was trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t be a game when the knock came.

  “Who is it?” she asked, with just enough touch of fear to show she ca
red.

  “Elder,” came the voice.

  She told him to come in, and he did. At the top of the step, he looked at both of us, me with my pants off, Peg in her pajamas and robe. Something like anger crossed his face and then disappeared.

  “Some visitors from Los Angeles,” he said, pointing to the door, through which came the bizarre trio that passes in this life as my best and only friends.

  “Shelly, Jeremy, Gunther. Close the door.”

  And they did.

  8

  “You look like a grape popsicle,” Sheldon Minck observed through his thick glasses. Shelly is about five five, fat, fifty-five, bald, smokes very wet cigars, and has dirty fingers and questionable habits which make for particular problems since he is a dentist, the dentist with whom I share an office. More accurately, he sublets a closet to me on the fourth floor of the Farraday Building, the last refuge of forgotten dentists, detectives, pornographers, and agents without clients in various fields of life.

  “I’ve had a difficult day, Shel,” I said. “I’ll explain.”

  My other two guests nodded in understanding. They are as much in contrast as two humans could be unless we also made one a woman and turned one black or brown or tan. As it is, Jeremy Butler stands about six three and weighs in at just short of 250 pounds, which is rather awesome for a poet and the owner-manager of the Farraday Building. Jeremy had once been a professional wrestler. He now wrestles with meters and the grime that threatens to take over his property. In contrast to Jeremy is Gunther Wherthman, who stands no more than four feet high and is certainly a very little person, a midget, who speaks with a precise Swiss accent and wears precise clean suits with vests. His fingernails are never dirty, and he makes a living by translating books and articles from German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Danish into English. Gunther got me the room in Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse in Hollywood after the place I lived in got crushed by a wrecker.

  The first piece of business was to clear the room by asking Elder and Peg to give us some time together. Peg went behind a towel hung in a corner and changed, while the four of us said nothing.

  Peg smiled at me on the way out, and as soon as the door closed, Gunther, seated on the bed so his feet would touch the floor, said, “You suspect her of something?”

  “No,” I told him. “Just want to be sure.”

  Gunther nodded in agreement. He wore a beautiful little chesterfield coat.

  Jeremy Butler pulled out one of the chairs at the table with a lobster hand and sat carefully. The chair didn’t break. He unbuttoned his flannel jacket and looked at me.

  “Been brushing your teeth?” asked Shelly.

  “Shel, what are you doing here? I called Jeremy and Gunther.”

  “I ran into Jeremy, and he told me you needed help,” said Shelly, removing his cigar to examine the end. His glasses slipped down his nose, and he almost poked himself in the eye with the cigar stub to keep them from dropping. “Besides, they needed a car.”

  Shelly’s 1937 Ford was as filthy as his 1914 office, but it ran and defied reason by never causing him trouble in spite of his neglect.

  “I’m sorry, Toby,” Jeremy began.

  “OK,” I said with my hand up. “Shelly can help. We’ve got a murder or two here, animals, people, and maybe more to come. The local police think I did it, and if they get their hands on me, I will probably lose my hands. So we’ve got to find the killer and protect the circus, and we’ve got to do it fast before there are no more performers to protect. Oh, yes, we’ve also got a runaway elephant.”

  “Proceed,” said Gunther calmly, and I proceeded. I told them the whole story. Jeremy and Gunther sat quietly, listening. Shelly was soon floating somewhere, thinking of cavities.

  “So,” said Gunther, “it seems an easy process. We list everyone who stood in the tent when the unfortunate Mr. Tanucci died. We then make that list smaller if we can.”

  “The killer already has made it smaller,” Shelly said with a satisfied grin.

  “How did you get Mildred to let you go?”

  “I told her you needed my help.”

  “Mildred would gladly see me turned over to the Japanese,” I told him.

  “You wrong my Mildred,” countered Shelly.

  “Toby,” said Gunther softly. “May I continue?”

  I apologized, and he continued. “We may, for the moment, assume that the Tanuccis are not responsible for the murder of their own clan. This may turn out to be a false assumption, but given our group size …”

  “Reasonable,” agreed Jeremy.

  “We eliminate Toby,” Gunther went on. “May we eliminate the doctor? He is quite old, yes?”

  “Probably,” I said. “It would take a quick hand to cut that harness and someone with a steady hand to gun down Rennata so neatly on the beach.”

  “Good,” continued Gunther. “We then have Mr. Elder, who you were talking to, which eliminates him….”

  “From stealing the harness,” Jeremy said quickly. “He might have an accomplice.”

  My chest thumped. Peg might be such an accomplice. “Maybe,” I agreed.

  “Now, we eliminate you,” added Gunther, “and may I assume we eliminate Alfred Hitchcock?”

  “No,” shouted Shelly, leaping to his feet and pointing his cigar at me. “Movie directors can be killers.”

  “Shelly,” I said in exasperation, “why would Alfred Hitchcock be killing people and elephants in the circus?”

  “Material for movies,” he said triumphantly. He began to pace the small floor while presenting his theory. “Movie director goes crazy. Can’t think of stories for his movies. Maybe he was scared by a clown or a wombat when he was a kid.”

  “What the hell is a wombat?” I said.

  “Marsupial,” explained Gunther, “large, rodent appearance. Native, I believe, to Tasmania.”

  “What the hell has a wombat got to do with this case?” I said.

  “Hitchcock may have …”

  “Hitchcock, hell. Shel, just stand still and let Gunther finish.”

  Shelly went back to his chair, folded his arms, and pouted while Gunther continued. “Therefore, our most likely suspects are Henry, the animal keeper; Agnes Sudds, the serpent lady, and Thomas Paul, the curious double-faced man for whom you have no affection.”

  It sounded reasonable to me.

  “Therefore, if we also eliminate Emmett Kelly,” continued Gunther, “it would be best to use our resources in watching the three prime suspects rather than trying to anticipate potential victims.”

  It sounded perfectly good to me, which made me wonder for a few seconds why I hadn’t thought of it, but only for a few seconds. I hadn’t thought of it for just that reason-it was reasonable. I was not used to operating from reason.

  “It has problems,” said Jeremy Butler, “but it seems the most reasonable to me too.”

  “I’m sorry to bring you down here,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

  “I welcome the chance to see the circus,” said Jeremy, standing and examining Peg’s posters. “I’ll get a sense of it, perhaps already have, for my life poem. The elephants’ ears like huge leaves. The burning smell of animal life.”

  “That’s donkey piss,” explained Shelley.

  “Thanks, Shel.”

  Shelly looked satisfied.

  I got up slowly. A debate then began over how to treat my once again sore back. Shelly had his pain pills and Jeremy his experience. The back wasn’t bad enough for both yet, so I went with Jeremy’s treatment. I got on my stomach and let him work with his powerful grip. A second of pain and then the relief, not perfect but much better.

  I deployed the troops by assigning Shelly to Henry Brain-feeble Yew, assuming Henry was the only one Shelly could watch without being spotted unless Henry was putting on an act. Gunther I sent to Agnes Sudds and the slithering Abdul, and Jeremy to Thomas Paul, should the creature show up as he had promised. I would stay with Peg and try to keep an eye on Elder. It s
eemed reasonable. We called Elder in to help us find our suspects.

  “Don’t I know you?” Elder said to Gunther as I explained our plan, at least all of it except the part about my watching him.

  “Yes,” said Gunther with dignity and an accent. “I worked briefly in the circus when I came to this country. Our paths crossed. While I respect it, it is not the life with which I wish to be identified. Please do not take offense.”

  Elder touched his mustache and nodded politely.

  I wondered how painful the experience of coming back to the circus would be for Gunther. I hadn’t thought about it when I sent for him. I had sent for a friend and forgotten that he was a sensitive small human who was trying desperately to achieve some dignity and distance from the public view of midgets as curiosities and freaks. I didn’t think he could do it with people on the street. It takes knowing someone not to see him.

  Elder led everyone out after we agreed to meet again at midnight or when we were sure the people we were watching were well tucked in for the night. It was the best we could do for the moment.

  Peg came back with a pair of pants for me, a shirt, and my zipperless jacket.

  “Coast is clear,” she said. “The sheriff has gone. I think he’s convinced you went back to Los Angeles.”

  I started to dress, put one foot in my pants and tore some stitches. Peg sat down and watched me. The band struck a loud chord far off, and the crowd went, “Ahhhh.”

  “Martin the Great,” she said. “Sways on a flexible bar fifty feet high. They think he’s going to fall. A good trick.”

  “Dangerous?” I asked, buttoning my shirt.

  “You’re one button off,” she said. “Not too dangerous. Emmett Kelly told me once the most dangerous act he ever saw was a guy named Fitzgerald at a small circus back in Missouri. Fitzgerald worked a high wire without a net, dangerous stuff, didn’t give a darn for the audience. Didn’t make easy things look hard. Tried to make everything look easy. Wouldn’t play for a bow, just walked off when his act was finished. Kelly says he was the greatest, but no one but the circus people ever knew it.”