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Beast, I thought, where are you?
I looked back at Crumley’s car and suddenly it was a dear friend I was leaving a thousand miles back.
“You haven’t told yet,” said Henry. “Why’d you bring a blind man to a graveyard? You need my nose?”
“You and the Baskerville Hound,” Crumley said. “This way.”
“Don’t touch,” said Henry. “I got a dog’s nose, but my pride is all cat. Watch out, Death.”
And he led the way between the gravestones, tapping right and left, as if to dislodge big chunks of night or strike sparks where sparks never struck before.
“How’m I doin’?” he whispered.
I stood with Henry among all the marbles with names and dates and the grass growing quietly between.
Henry sniffed.
“I smell me one big hunk of rock. Now. What kind of Braille is this?”
He transferred his cane to his left hand while his right hand trembled up to feel the chiseled name above the Grecian tomb door.
His fingers shook over the “A” and froze on the final “T.”
“I know this name.” Henry spun a Rolodex behind his white billiard-ball eyes. “Would that be the great, long-gone proprietor of the studio across the wall?”
“Yes.”
“The loud man who sat in all the boardrooms and no room left? Fixed his own bottles, changed his own diapers, bought the sandbox, two and one half, fired the kindergarten teacher age three, sent ten boys to the nurse, age seven, chased girls at eight, caught ’em at nine, owned a parking lot at ten, and the studio on his twelfth birthday when his pa died and left him London, Rome, and Bombay? That the one?”
“Henry,” I sighed, “you’re marvelous.”
“Makes me hard to live with,” admitted Henry, quietly. “Well.”
He reached up to touch the name again and the date underneath.
“October 31st, 1934. Halloween! Twenty years gone. I wonder how it feels, being dead that long. Hell. Let’s ask! Anyone think to bring some tools?”
“A crowbar from the car,” said Crumley.
“Good …” Henry put out his hand. “But for the helluvit—” His fingers touched the tomb door.
“Holy Moses!” he exclaimed.
The door drifted open on oiled hinges. Not rusted! Not squealing! Oiled!
“Sweet Jesus! Open house!” Henry stood quickly back. “You don’t mind, since you got the faculties—you first.”
I touched the door. It glided further into shadow.
“Here.”
Crumley brushed past, switched on his flashlight, and stepped into midnight.
I followed.
“Don’t leave me out here,” said Henry.
Crumley pointed, “Shut the door. We don’t want anyone seeing our flash—”
