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“What are we going to do?” I said.
“Nothing,” cried Crumley. “Just this!” He rammed the gas. We swerved and plunged into the tunnel.
“Madness!” I cried.
“Damn tootin’,” said Crumley. “Goddamn!”
“I’m glad I can’t see this,” Henry said from the backseat, speaking to the wind in his face.
We raced up the flood channel, heading inland.
“Can we do it?” I cried. “How high is the flood channel?”
“Most places it’s ten feet high,” Crumley shouted. “The farther in we get, the higher the ceilings. Floods come down the mountains in Glendale, then the channel has to be really big to take the flood. Hold on!”
Ahead of us, Fritz’s car had almost vanished. “Idiot!” I said. “Does he really know where he’s going?”
“Yes!” said Crumley. “All the way to Grauman’s Chinese then left to the goddamn marble orchard.”
The sound of our motor was shattering. In that thunder we saw ahead of us a tide of those lunatics who had assaulted me. “My God,” I cried. “We’ll hit them! Don’t slow down! Those crazies! Keep going!”
We raced along the channel. Our engine roared. The history of L.A. streamed past us on the walls: pictographs, graffiti, crazed illustrations left by wandering homeless in 1940, 1930, 1925, faces and images of terrible things and nothing alive.
Crumley floored the gas. We plunged at the crazed underground mob who shrieked and screamed a horrible welcome. But Crumley didn’t slow. We cut through them, tossed them aside.
One ghost rose up flailing, gibbering.
Ed, Edward, Eddie, oh Eduardo! I thought. Is that you?
“You never said good-bye!” the ghost raved and fell away.
I wept and we raced on, outpacing my guilt. We left all behind and the farther we went, the more terrified I became.
“How in hell do we know where we are?” I said. “There aren’t any directions down here. Or we can’t see them.”
Crumley said, “I think that maybe, yeah, let’s see.” For there were signs on the walls, scribbled in chalk, some in black painted letters.
Crumley slowed the car. On the wall ahead of us someone had etched a bunch of crucifixes and cartoon tombstones.
Crumley said, “If Fritz is any guide, we’re in Glendale.”
“That means …” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Forest Lawn.”
He put on his high beams and swerved the car right and left as we moved slowly, and we saw a ladder leading up to a grate covered by a manhole in the tunnel ceiling and Fritz’s car beneath it, and him out of the car and climbing the ladder. A series of crosses ran alongside the ladder leading up.
We got out of the car and crossed the dry wash and began to climb the ladder. There was a thundering clang above us. We saw Fritz’s shape and the manhole shoved aside, and the beginnings of a gentle rain pelting his shoulders.
We climbed the ladder in silence. Above us, Fritz was directing and shouting. “Get the hell up here, you damn fools!”
We looked down.
Blind Henry was not about to be left behind.
Chapter Forty-Four
The storm was over but the drizzle stayed. The sky was a loon sky—promising much, delivering little.
