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“Accepted!”
And laughing, he went to drag out a whole case of beer.
We sat eating hotdogs in the little rattan gazebo at the back of his garden.
“Okay, son,” he said, finally. “Your old dad has missed you. But a young man between blankets has no ears. Old Japanese proverb. I knew you’d come back someday.”
“Do you forgive me?” I said, welling over.
“Friends don’t forgive, they forget. Swab your throat out with this. Is Peg a great wife?”
“Been married a year and yet to have our first fight over money.” I blushed. “She makes most of it. But my studio salary is up—one hundred fifty a week.”
“Hell! That’s ten bucks more than I make!”
“Only for six weeks. I’ll soon be back writing for Dime Mystery.”
“And writing beauts. I’ve kept up in spite of the silence—”
“You get the Father’s Day card I sent?” I said quickly.
He ducked his head and beamed. “Yeah. Hell.” He straightened up. “But more than familial emotions brought you here, right?”
“People are dying, Crumley.”
“Not again!” he cried.
“Well, almost dying,” I said. “Or have come back from the grave not really alive, but papier-mâché dummies—”
“Hold ’er, Newt!” Crumley darted into the house and ran back with a flask of gin, which he poured into his beer as I talked faster. The sprinkler system came on in his Kenya tropical backyard, along with the cries of veldt animals and deep-jungle birds. At last I was finished with all the hours from Halloween to now. I fell silent.
Crumley let out a grievous sigh. “So Roy Holdstrom’s fired for making a clay bust. Was the Beast’s face that awful?”
“Yes!”
“Aesthetics. This old gumshoe can’t help with that!”
“You got to. Right now Roy is still in the studio, waiting for a chance to sneak all of his prehistoric models out. They’re worth thousands. But Roy’s there illegally. Can you help me figure out what in hell this all means? Help Roy get his job back?”
“Jesus,” sighed Crumley.
“Yeah,” I said. “If they catch Roy trying to move things out, lord God!”
“Damn,” said Crumley. He added more gin to his beer. “You know who that guy was in the Brown Derby?”
“No.”
“You got any notions about anyone who might know?”
“The priest at St. Sebastian’s.”
I told Crumley about the midnight confession, the voice speaking, the weeping, and the quiet response of the church father.
“No good. No way.” Crumley shook his head. “Priests don’t know or don’t give names. If I went in, asking, I’d be out on my ass in two minutes. Next.”
“The maître d’ at the Derby might. And he was recognized by someone outside the Derby that night. Someone I knew when I was a kid hanging out on my roller skates. Clarence. I’ve been asking around for his last name.”
“Keep asking. If he knows who the Beast is, we’d have something to go on. Christ, it’s dumb. Roy fired, you tossed into a new job, all from a clay bust. Overreaction. Riots. And how come all that uproar about a dummy on a ladder?”
