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Crumley cocked his head at me. “You’re a queer egg.”
“You’re another.”
We drove slowly along the shore toward Rattigan’s. I was silent.
“You got another hairball?” Crumley said.
“Why is it,” I said, “someone like Constance is a lightning bolt, performing seal, high-wire frolicker, wild laughing human, and at the same time she’s the devil incarnate, an evil cheater at life’s loaded deck?”
“Go ask Alexander the Great,” said Crumley. “Look at Attila the Hun, who loved dogs; Hitler, too. Bone up on Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Mao, hell’s Anvil Chorus. Rommel, good family man. How do you cradle cats and cut throa
ts, bake cookies and people? How come we love Richard the Third, who dumped kids in wine casks? How come TV is all Al Capone reruns? God won’t say.”
“I don’t ask. He turned us loose. It’s up to us, once He took off the leash. Who wrote, ‘Malt does more than Milton can, to justify God’s way towards Man?’ I rewrote it and added, ‘And Freud spoils kids and spares the rod, to justify Man’s ways toward God.’”
Crumley snorted. “Freud was a nut loose in a fruit patch. I always believed smart-ass punks need their teeth punched.”
“My dad never broke my teeth.”
“That’s because you’re a half-stale Christmas fruitcake, the kind no one eats.”
“But Constance is beautiful!”
“You mistake energy for beauty. Overseas, French girls knocked me flat. They blink, wave, dance, stand on their heads to prove they’re alive. Hell, Constance is all battery acid and short circuit. If she ever slows down she’ll get—”
“Ugly? No!”
“Gimme those!” He seized the glasses off my nose and peered through them.
“Rose-colored! How do things look without them?”
“Nothing’s there.”
“Great! There’s not much worth seeing!”
“There’s Paris in the spring. Paris in the rain. Paris on New Year’s Eve.”
“You been there?”
“I saw the movies. Paris. Gimme.”
“I’ll just keep these until you take waltz lessons from blind Henry.” Crumley shoved my glasses in his pocket.
As we pulled our jalopy up on the shore in front of the white château, we saw two dark shapes by her oceanside pool, under the umbrella, to keep off the moonlight.
Crumley and I trudged up the dune and peered in at Blind Henry and angry Fritz Wong. There were martinis laid out on a tray.
“I knew,” Henry said, “after that storm drain you’d seek refreshment. Grab. Drink.”
We grabbed and drank.
Fritz soaked his monocle in vodka, thrust it in his stare, and said, “That’s better!” And then he finished the drink.
Chapter Forty-Three
I went ’round, placing camp chairs by the pool.
Crumley watched with a dour eye and said, “Let me guess. This is the finale of an Agatha Christie murder mystery, and Poirot’s got all the usual suspects stashed poolside.”
