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“It’s still nuts!”
“Nuts all his life, sure,” I said. “But now? For real!”
“What’s he gain from it?”
“Revenge.”
“Revenge?!”
“Let the Beast kill the Beast,” I said.
“No, no.” Crumley shook his head. “To hell with that. Run the film again!”
I ran it. The images streamed up and down our faces.
“That’s not Roy!” said Crumley. “That’s a clay bust, animated!”
“No.” I shut off the film.
We sat in darkness.
Constance made strange sounds.
“Why,” said Henry, “know what that is? Crying.”
58
“I’m afraid to go home,” said Constance.
“Who said you had to?” said Crumley. “Grab a cot, any room, or the jungle compound.”
“No,” murmured Constance. “That’s his place.”
We all looked at the blank wall where only a lingering retinal image of the Beast faded.
“He didn’t follow us,” said Crumley.
“He might.” Constance blew her nose.
“I won’t be alone in some damned empty house by a damned ocean full of monsters tonight. I’m getting old. Next thing you know I’ll ask some jerk to marry me, God help him.”
She looked out at Crumley’s jungle and the night wind stirring the palm leaves and the high grass. “He’s there.”
“Cut it,” said Crumley. “We don’t know if we were followed through that graveyard tunnel to that office. Or who slammed the tomb door. Could’ve been the wind.”
“It always is …. ”Constance shivered like someone coming down with a long winter’s illness. “Now what?” She sank back in her chair, shuddering, clutching her elbows.
“Here.”
Crumley laid out a series of photocopies of newspapers on the kitchen table. Three dozen items, large and small, from the last day in October and the first week in November 1934.
“ARBUTHNOT, STUDIO MAGNATE, KILLED IN CAR CRASH” was the first one. “C. Peck Sloane, associate producer at Maximus studio, and his wife, Emily, killed in same accident.”
Crumley tapped the third article. “The Sloanes were buried the same day as Arbuthnot. Services in the same church across from the graveyard. All buried in the same graveyard, over the wall.”
“Where’d the accident happen?”
“Three in the morning. Gower and Santa Monica!”
