We advanced along the path.
“Watch it. We don’t want to be seen playing this stupid game.”
We arrived at the wall. There was nothing there, of course.
“Like I said, if the body was ever here, we’re too late.” Roy exhaled and glanced.
“No, look. There.”
I pointed at the top of the wall.
There were the marks, two of them, of some object that had leaned against the upper rim.
“The ladder?”
“And down here.”
The grass at the base of the wall, about five feet out, a proper angle, had two half-inch ladder indentations in it.
“And here. See?”
I showed him a long depression where the grass had been crushed by something falling.
“Well, well,” murmured Roy. “Looks like Halloween’s starting over.”
Roy knelt on the grass and put his long bony fingers out to trace the print of the heavy flesh that had lain there in the cold rain only twelve hours ago.
I knelt with Roy staring down at the long indentation, and shivered.
“I—” I said, and stopped.
For a shadow moved between us.
“Morning!”
The graveyard day watchman stood over us.
I glanced at Roy, quickly. “Is this the right gravestone? It’s been years. Is—”
The next flat tombstone was covered with leaves. I scrabbled the dust away. There was a half-seen name beneath. SMYTHE. BORN 1875—DIED 1928.
“Sure! Old grandpa!” cried Roy. “Poor guy. Died of pneumonia.” Roy helped me brush away the dust. “I sure loved him. He—”
“Where’re your flowers?” said the heavy voice, above us.
Roy and I stiffened.
“Ma’s bringing ’em,” said Roy. “We came ahead, to find the stone.” Roy glanced over his shoulder. “She’s out there now.”
The graveyard day watchman, a man long in years and deep in suspicion, with a face not unlike a weathered tombstone, glanced toward the gate.
A woman, bearing flowers, was coming up the road, far out, near Santa Monica Boulevard.
Thank God, I thought.
The watchman snorted, chewed his gums, wheeled about, and strode off among the graves. Just in time, for the woman had stopped and headed off, away from us.
We jumped up. Roy grabbed some flowers off a nearby mound.
“Don’t!”
“Like hell!” Roy stashed the flowers on Grandpa Smythe’s stone. “Just in case that guy comes back and wonders why there’re no flowers after all our gab. Come on!”
We moved out about fifty yards and waited, pretending to talk, but saying little. Finally, Roy touched my elbow. “Careful,” he whispered. “Side glances. Don’t look straight on. He’s back.”
And indeed the old watchman had arrived at the place near the wall where the long impressions of the fallen body still remained.
He looked up and saw us. Quickly, I put my arm around Roy’s shoulder to ease his sadness.
Now the old man bent. With raking fingers, he combed the grass. Soon there was no trace of anything heavy that might have fallen from the sky last night, in a terrible rain.
“You believe now?” I said.
“I wonder,” said Roy, “where that hearse went to.”
9
As we were driving back in through the main gate of the studio, the hearse whispered out. Empty. Like a long autumn wind it drifted off, around, and back to Death’s country.
“Jesus Christ! Just like I guessed!” Roy steered but stared back at the empty street. “I’m beginning to enjoy this!”
We moved along the street in the direction from which the hearse had been coming.
Fritz Wong marched across the alley in front of us, driving or leading an invisible military squad, muttering and swearing to himself, his sharp profile cutting the air in two halves, wearing a dark beret, the only man in Hollywood who wore a beret and dared anyone to notice!
“Fritz!” I called. “Stop, Roy!”
Fritz ambled over to lean against the car and give us his by now familiar greeting.
“Hello, you stupid bike-riding Martian! Who’s that strange-looking ape driving?”
“Hello, Fritz, you stupid …” I faltered and then said sheepishly, “Roy Holdstrom, world’s greatest inventor, builder, and flier of dinosaurs!”
Fritz Wong’s monocle flashed fire. He fixed Roy with his Oriental-Germanic glare, then nodded crisply.
“Any friend of Pithecanthropus erectus is a friend of mine!”
Roy grabbed his handshake. “I liked your last film.”
“Liked!” cried Fritz Wong.
“Loved!”
“Good.” Fritz looked at me. “What’s new since breakfast!”
“Anything funny happening around here just now?”
“A Roman phalanx of forty men just marched that way. A gorilla, carrying his head, ran in Stage 10. A homosexual art director got thrown out of the Men’s. Judas is on strike for more silver over in Galilee. No, no. I wouldn’t say anything funny or I’d notice.”
“How about passing through?” offered Roy. “Any funerals?”
“Funerals! You think I wouldn’t notice? Wait!” He flashed his monocle toward the gate and then toward the backlot. “Dummy. Yes. I was hoping it was deMille’s hearse and we could celebrate. It went that way!”
“Are they filming a burial here today?”
“On every sound stage: turkeys, catatonic actors, English funeral directors whose heavy paws would stillbirth a whale! Halloween, yesterday, yes? And today the true Mexican Day of Death, November 1st, so why should it be different at Maximus Films? Where did you find this terrible wreck of a car, Mr. Holdstrom?”
“This,” Roy said, like Edgar Kennedy doing a slow burn in an old Hal Roach comedy, “is the car in which Laurel and Hardy sold fish in that two reeler in 1930. Cost me fifty bucks, plus seventy to repaint. Stand back, sir!”
Fritz Wong, delighted with Roy, jumped back. “In one hour, Martian. The commissary! Be there!”
We steamed on amidst the noon crowd. Roy wheeled us around a corner toward Springfield, Illinois, lower Manhattan, and Piccadilly.
“You know where you’re going?” I asked.
“Hell, a studio’s a great place to hide a body. Who would notice? On a backlot filled with Abyssinians, Greeks, Chicago mobsters, you could march in six dozen gang wars with forty Sousa bands and nobody’d sneeze! That body, chum, should be right about here!”
And we dusted around the last corner into Tombstone, Arizona.
“Nice name for a town,” said Roy.
10
There was a warm stillness. It was High Noon. We were surrounded by a thousand footprints in backlot dust. Some of the prints belonged to Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Ken Maynard, long ago. I let the wind blow memory, lifting the hot dust. Of course the prints hadn’t stayed, dust doesn’t keep, and even John Wayne’s big strides were long since sifted off, even as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John’s sandal marks had vanished from the shore of the Sea of Galilee just one hundred yards over on Lot 12. Nevertheless, the smell of horses remained, the stagecoach would pull in soon with a new load of scripts, and a fresh batch of riflemen cow pokes. I was not about to refuse the quiet joy of just sitting here in the old Laurel and Hardy flivver, looking over at the Civil War locomotive, which got stoked up twice a year and became the 9:10 from Galveston, or Lincoln’s death train taking him home, Lord, taking him home.
But at last I said, “What makes you so sure the body’s here?”
“Hell.” Roy kicked the floorboards like Gary Cooper once kicked cow chips. “Look close at those buildings.”
I looked.
Behind the false fronts here in Western territory were metal welding shops, old car museums, false-front storage bins and—
“The carpenters’ shop?” I said.
Roy nodded and flivvered us over to let the dog die around the corner, out of si
ght.
“They build coffins here, so the body’s here.” Roy climbed out of the flivver one long piece of lumber at a time. “The coffin was returned here because it was made here. Come on, before the Indians arrive!”
I caught up with him in a cool grotto where Napoleon’s Empire furniture was hung on racks and Julius Caesar’s throne waited for his long-lost behind.
I looked around.
Nothing ever dies, I thought. It always returns. If you want, that is.
And where does it hide, waiting. Where is it reborn? Here, I thought. Oh, yes, here.
In the minds of men who arrive with lunch buckets, looking like workers, and leave looking like husbands or improbable lovers.
But in between?
Build the Mississippi Belle if you want to steamboat landfall New Orleans, or rear Bernini’s columns on the north forty. Or rebuild the Empire State and then steam-power an ape big enough to climb it.
Your dream is their blueprint, and these are all the sons of the sons of Michelangelo and da Vinci, the fathers of yesterday winding up as sons in tomorrow.
And right now my friend Roy leaned into the dim cavern behind a Western saloon and pulled me along, among the stashed facades of Baghdad and upper Sandusky.
Silence. Everyone had gone to lunch.
Roy snuffed the air and laughed quietly.
“God, yes! Smell that smell! Sawdust! That’s what got me into high school woodshop with you. And the sounds of the bandsaw lathes. Sounded like people were doing things. Made my hands jerk. Looky here.” Roy stopped by a long glass case and looked down at beauty.
The Bounty was there, in miniature, twenty inches long and fully rigged, and sailing through imaginary seas, two long centuries ago.
“Go on,” Roy said, quietly. “Touch gently.”
I touched and marveled and forgot why we were there and wanted to stay on forever. But Roy, at last, drew me away.
“Hot dog,” he whispered. “Take your pick.”
We were looking at a huge display of coffins about fifty feet back in the warm darkness.
“How come so many?” I asked, as we moved up.
“To bury all the turkeys the studio will make between now and Thanksgiving.”
We reached the funeral assembly line.
“It’s all yours,” said Roy. “Choose.”
“Can’t be at the top. Too high. And people are lazy. So—this one.”
I nudged the nearest coffin with my shoe.
“Go on,” urged Roy, laughing at my hesitance. “Open it.”
“You.”
Roy bent and tried the lid.
“Damn!”
The coffin was nailed shut.
A horn sounded somewhere. We glanced out.
Out in the Tombstone street a car was pulling up.
“Quick!” Roy ran to a table, scrabbled around frantically, and found a hammer and crowbar to jimmy the nails.
“Ohmigod,” I gasped.
Manny Leiber’s Rolls-Royce was dusting into the horse yard, out there in the noon glare.
“Let’s go!”
“Not until we see if—there!”
The last nail flew out.
Roy grasped the lid, took a deep breath, and opened the coffin.
Voices sounded in the Western yard, out there in the hot sun.
“Christ, open your eyes,” cried Roy. “Look!”
I had shut my eyes, not wanting to feel the rain again on my face. I opened them.
“Well?” said Roy.
The body was there, lying on its back, its eyes wide, its nostrils flared, and its mouth gaped. But no rain fell to brim over and pour down its cheeks and chin.
“Arbuthnot,” I said.
“Yeah,” gasped Roy. “I remember the photos now. Lord, it’s a good resemblance. But why would anyone put this, whatever it is, up a ladder, for what?”
I heard a door slam. A hundred yards off, in the warm dust, Manny Leiber had got out of his Rolls, and was blinking into the shade, around, about, above us.
I flinched.
“Wait a minute—” Roy said. He snorted and reached down.
“Don’t!”
“Hold on,” he said, and touched the body.
“For God’s sake, quick!”
“Why looky here,” said Roy.
He took hold of the body and lifted.
“Gah!” I said, and stopped.
For the body rose up as easily as a bag of cornflakes.
“No!”
“Yeah, sure.” Roy shook the body. It rattled like a scarecrow.
“I’ll be damned! And look, at the bottom of the coffin, lead sinkers to give it weight once they got it up the ladder! And when it fell, like you said, it would really hit. Look out! Here come the barracudas!”
Roy squinted out into the noon glare and the distant figures stepping out of cars, gathering around Manny.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Roy dropped the body, slammed the lid and ran.
I followed in and out of a maze of furniture, pillars, and false fronts.
Off at a distance, through three dozen doors and half up a flight of Renaissance stairs, Roy and I stopped, looked back, craned to ache and listen. Way off, about ninety to a hundred feet, Manny Leiber arrived at the place where we had been only a minute ago. Manny’s voice cut through all the rest. He told everyone, I imagine, to shut up. There was silence. They were opening the coffin with the facsimile body in it.
Roy looked at me, eyebrows up. I looked back, unable to breathe.
There was a stir, some sort of outcry, curses. Manny swore above the rest. Then there was a babble, more talk, Manny yelling again, and a final slam of the coffin lid.
That was the gunshot that plummeted me and Roy the hell out of the place. We made it down the stairs as quietly as possible, ran through another dozen doors, and out the back side of the carpenters’ shop.
“You hear anything?” gasped Roy, glancing back.
“No. You?”
“Not a damn thing. But they sure exploded. Not once but three times. Manny, the worst! My God, what’s going on? Why all the fuss over a damned wax dummy I could have run up with two bucks’ worth of latex, wax, and plaster in half an hour!?”
“Slow down, Roy,” I said. “We don’t want anyone to see us running.”
Roy slowed, but still took great whooping-crane strides.
“God, Roy!” I said. “If they knew we were in there!”
“They don’t. Hey, this is fun.”
Why, I thought, did I ever introduce my best friend to a dead man?
A minute later we reached Roy’s Laurel and Hardy flivver behind the shop.
Roy sat in the front seat, smiling a most unholy smile, appreciating the sky and every cloud.
“Climb in,” he said.
Inside the shed, voices rose in a late-afternoon uproar. Someone was cursing somewhere. Someone else was criticizing. Someone said yes. A lot of others said no as the small mob boiled out into the hot noon light, like a hive of angry bees.
A moment later, Manny Leiber’s Rolls-Royce streamed by like a voiceless storm.
Inside, I saw three oyster-pale yes-men’s faces.
And Manny Leiber’s face, blood-red with rage.
He saw us as his Rolls stormed past.
Roy waved and cried a jolly hello. “Roy!” I yelled.
Roy guffawed, said, “What came over me!?” and drove away.
I looked over at Roy and almost exploded myself. Inhaling the wind, he blew it out his mouth with gusto.
“You’re nuts!” I said. “Don’t you have a nerve in your body?”
“Why should I,” Roy reasoned amiably, “be scared of a papier-mâché mockup? Hell, Manny’s heebie-jeebies make me feel good. I’ve taken a lot of guff from him this month. Now someone’s stuck a bomb in his pants? Great!”
“Was it you?” I blurted, suddenly.
Roy was startled. “You off on that track again? Why would I sew and glue a dimwit
scarecrow and climb ladders at midnight?”
“For the reasons you just said. Cure your boredom. Shove bombs in other people’s pants.”
“Nope. Wish I could claim the credit. Right now, I can hardly wait for lunch. When Manny shows up, his face should be a riot.”
“Do you think anyone saw us in there?”
“Christ, no. That’s why I waved! To show how dumb and innocent we are! Something is going on. We got to act natural.”
“When was the last time we did that?”
Roy laughed.
We motored around behind the worksheds, through Madrid, Rome, and Calcutta, and now pulled up at a brownstone somewhere in the Bronx.
Roy glanced at his watch.
“You got an appointment. Fritz Wong. Go. We should both be seen everywhere in the next hour except there.” He nodded at Tombstone, two hundred yards away.
“When,” I asked, “are you going to start getting scared?”
Roy felt his leg bones with one hand.
“Not yet,” he said.
Roy dropped me in front of the commissary. I got out and stood looking at his now-serious, now-amused face.
“You coming in?” I said.
“Soon. Got some errands to run.”
“Roy, you’re not going to do something nutty now, are you? You got that faraway crazed look.”
Roy said, “I been thinking. When did Arbuthnot die?”
“Twenty years ago this week. Two-car accident, three people killed. Arbuthnot and Sloane, his studio accountant, plus Sloane’s wife. It was headlined for days. The funeral was bigger than Valentino’s. I stood outside the graveyard with my friends. Enough flowers for the New Year’s Rose Parade. A thousand people came out of the service, eyes running under their dark glasses. My God, the misery. Arbuthnot was that loved.”
“Car crash, huh?”
“No witnesses. Maybe one was following too close, going home drunk from a studio party.”
“Maybe.” Roy pulled at his lower lip, squinting one eye at me. “But what if there’s more to it? Maybe, this late in time, someone’s discovered something about that crash and is threatening to spill the beans. Otherwise why the body on the wall? Why the panic? Why hush it up if there’s nothing to hide? God, did you hear their voices back there just now? How come a dead man that’s not a dead man, a body that’s not a body, shakes up the executives?”