A Graveyard for Lunatics (11 page)

“Idiot!” said Fritz. “Where are you going?”

“I just saw Roy fired,” I said, walking. “Now I need to get him rehired!”

“
Dummkopf
.” Fritz strode after me. “Manny wants you
now
!”

“Now, plus five minutes.”

Outside the studio gate, I glanced across the street.

Are you there, Clarence? I wondered.

And there indeed they stood.

The loonies. The jerks. The idiots.

That mob of lovers worshiping at studio shrines.

Much like the late-night travelers that had once jostled me along to haunt the Hollywood Legion Stadium boxing matches to see Gary Grant sprint by, or Mae West undulate through the crowd like a boneless feather boa, or Groucho lurk along by Johnny Weissmuller, who dragged Lupe Velez after him like a leopard pelt.

The goons, myself among them, with big photo albums, stained hands, and little scribbled cards. The nuts who stood happily rain-drenched at the premiere of
Dames
or
Flirtation Walk
, while the Depression went on and on even though Roosevelt said it couldn’t last forever and Happy Days would come again.

The gorgons, the jackals, the demons, the fiends, the sad ones, the lost ones.

Once, I had been one of them.

Now, there they were. My family.

There were still a few faces left from the days when I had hid in their shade.

Twenty years later, my God, there stood Charlotte and her ma! They had buried Charlotte’s dad in 1930 and taken root in front of six studios and ten restaurants. Now a lifetime later, there was Ma, in her eighties, stalwart and practical as a bumbershoot, and Charlotte, fifty, as flower-fragile as she had always seemed to be. Both were frauds. Both hid boilerplates behind their rhino-ivory smiles.

I looked for Clarence in that strange dead funeral bouquet. For Clarence had been the wildest: lugging huge twenty-pound photo portfolios from studio to studio. Red leather for Paramount, black for RKO, green for Warner Brothers.

Clarence, summer and winter, wrapped in his oversize camel’s-hair coat, in which he filed pens, pads, and miniature cameras. Only on the hottest days did the wraparound coat come off. Then Clarence resembled a tortoise torn from its shell and panicked by life.

I crossed the street to stop before the mob.

“Hello, Charlotte,” I said. “Hiya, Ma.”

The two women stared at me in mild shock.

“It’s me,” I said. “Remember? Twenty years back. I was here. Space. Rockets. Time—?”

Charlotte gasped and flung her hand to her overbite. She leaned forward as if she might fall off the curb.

“Ma,” she cried, “why—it’s—the Crazy!”

“The Crazy.” I laughed, quietly.

A light burned in Mom’s eyes. “Why land’s sake.” She touched my elbow. “You
poor
thing. What’re you doing
here
? Still
collecting
—?”

“No,” I said, reluctantly. “I work there.”

“Where?”

I nodded over my shoulder.

“There?” cried Charlotte in disbelief.

“In the mailroom?” asked Ma.

“No.” My cheeks burned. “You might say… in the script department.”

“You
mimeograph
scripts?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ma.” Charlotte’s face burst with light. “He means
writing
, yes? Screenplays?!”

This last was a true revelation. All the faces around Charlotte and Ma took fire.

“Ohmigod,” cried Charlotte’s ma. “
Can’t
be!”

“Is,” I almost whispered. “I’m doing a film with Fritz Wong.
Caesar and Christ
.

There was a long, stunned silence. Feet shifted. Mouths worked.

“Can—” said someone, “we have…”

But it was Charlotte who finished it. “Your autograph.
Please
?”

“I—But all the hands thrust out now, with pens and white cards.

Shamefacedly, I took Charlotte’s and wrote my name. Ma squinted at it, upside down.

“Put the name of the picture you’re working on,” said Ma. “
Christ and Caesar
.”

“Put ‘The Crazy’ after your name,” Charlotte suggested.

I wrote “The Crazy.”

Feeling the perfect damn fool, I stood in the gutter as all the heads bent, and all the sad lost strange ones squinted to guess my identity.

To cover my embarrassment, I said: “Where’s Clarence?”

Charlotte and Ma gaped. “You remember
him
?”

“Who could forget Clarence, and his portfolios, and his coat,” I said, scribbling.

“He ain’t called in yet,” snapped Ma.

“Called in?” I glanced up.

“He calls on that phone across the street about this time, to see has so-and-so arrived, come out, stuff like that,” said Charlotte. “Saves time. He sleeps late, cause he’s usually out front restaurants midnights.”

“I know.” I finished the last signature, glowing with an inadmissible elation. I still could not look at my new admirers, who smiled at me as if I had just leaped Galilee in one stride.

Across the street the glass-booth phone rang.

“That’s Clarence now!” said Ma.

“Excuse me—” Charlotte started off.

“Please,” I touched her elbow. “It’s been years. Surprise?” I looked from Charlotte to her Ma and back. “Yes?”

“Oh, all right,” grumped Ma.

“Go ahead,” said Charlotte.

The phone rang. I ran to lift the receiver.

“Clarence?” I said.

“Who’s
this
!?” he cried, instantly suspicious.

I tried to explain in some detail, but wound up with the old metaphor, “the Crazy.”

That buttered no bread for Clarence. “Where’s Charlotte or Ma? I’m sick.”

Sick, I wondered, or, like Roy, suddenly afraid.

“Clarence,” I said, “where do you live?”

“Why?!”

“Give me your phone number, at least—”

“
No one
has that! My place would be
robbed
! My photos. My
treasures
!”

“Clarence,” I pleaded, “I was at the Brown Derby last night.”

Silence.

“Clarence?” I called. “I need your help to identify someone.”

I swear I could hear his little rabbity heart race down line. I could hear his tiny albino eyes jerk in their sockets.

“Clarence,” I said, “please! Take my name and phone numbers.” I gave them. “Call or write the studio. I saw that man almost hit you last night. Why? Who… ?”

Click. Hum.

Clarence, wherever he was, was gone.

I moved across the street like a sleepwalker.

“Clarence won’t be here.”

“What d’ya mean?” accused Charlotte. “He’s always here!”

“What’d you
say
to him!?” Charlotte’s Ma showed me her left, her evil, eye.

“He’s sick.”

Sick, like Roy, I thought. Sick, like me.

“Does anyone know where he lives?”

They all shook their heads.

“I suppose you could
follow
him and see!” Charlotte stopped and laughed at herself. “I mean—”

Someone else said, “I seen him go down Beachwood, once. One of those bungalow courts—”

“Does he have a last name?”

No. Like everyone else in all the years. No last name.

“Damn,” I whispered.

“Comes to that—” Charlotte’s Ma eyed the card I had signed. “What’s
your
monicker?”

I spelled it for her.

“Gonna work in films,” sniffed Ma, “oughta get you a
new
name.”

“Just call me Crazy.” I walked away. “Charlotte. Ma.”

“Crazy,” they said. “Goodbye.”

Fritz was waiting for me upstairs, outside Manny Leiber’s office.

“They are in a feeding frenzy inside,” he exclaimed. “What’s
wrong
with you!?”

“I was talking to the gargoyles.”

“What, are they down off Notre Dame
again
? Get
in
here!”

“Why? An hour ago Roy and I were on Everest. Now he’s gone to hell and I’m sunk with you in Galilee. Explain.”

“You and your winning ways,” said Fritz. “Who knows? Manny’s mother died. Or his mistress took a few wrong balls over the plate. Constipation? High colonies? Choose one. Roy’s fired. So you and I do Our Gang comedies for six years.
In
!”

We stepped into Manny Leiber’s office.

Manny Leiber stood with the back of his neck watching us.

He stood in the middle of a large, all-white room, white walls, white rug, white furniture, and a huge all-white desk with nothing on it but a white telephone. A sheer blizzard of inspiration from the hand of some snow-blind artist over in Set Design.

Behind the desk was a four-by-six mirror so that if you glanced over your shoulder you could see yourself working. There was only one window in the room. It looked down on the back studio wall, not thirty feet off, and a panoramic view of the graveyard. I could not take my eyes away.

But Manny Leiber cleared his throat. With his back still turned he said: “Is
he
gone?”

I nodded quietly at his stiff shoulders.

Manny sensed my nod and exhaled. “His name will not be mentioned here again. He never was.”

I waited for Manny to turn and circle me, working off a passion he could not explode. His face was a mass of tics. His eyes did not move with his eyebrows or his eyebrows with his mouth or his head twisting on his neck. He looked dangerously off-balance as he paced; at any moment he might fly apart. Then he noticed Fritz Wong watching us both, and went to stand by Fritz as if to provoke him to a rage.

Fritz wisely did the one thing I noticed often when his world became too real. He removed his monocle and slipped it into his breast pocket. It was like a fine dismantling of attention, a subtle rejection. He shoved Manny in his pocket with the monocle.

Manny Leiber talked and paced. I half whispered, “Yeah, but what do we do with Meteor Crater!”

Fritz warned me with a jerk of his head:
Shut up
.

“So!” Manny pretended not to hear, “Our next problem, our
main
problem is… we have no
ending
for
Christ and Galilee
.”

“Say that
again
?” asked Fritz, with deadly politeness.

“No ending!” I cried. “Have you tried the Bible?”

“We
got
Bibles! But our screenwriter couldn’t read the small print on a Dixie cup. I saw that
Esquire
story of yours. It was like Ecclesiastes.”

“Job,” I muttered.

“Shut up. What we need is—”

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and me!”

Manny Leiber snorted. “Since when do beginning writers reject the greatest job of the century? We need it yesterday, so Fritz can start shooting again. Write good and someday you’ll own all
this
!”

He waved.

I looked out over the graveyard. It was a bright day, but invisible rain washed the tombstones.

“God,” I whispered. “I hope not.”

That did it. Manny Leiber paled. He was back on Stage 13, in the dark, with me, Roy, and the clay Beast.

Silently, he ran to the restroom. The door slammed.

Fritz and I traded glances. Manny was sick behind the door.

“
Gott
,” exhaled Fritz. “I should have listened to Goering!”

Manny Leiber staggered back out a moment later, looked around as if surprised the place was still afloat, made it to the telephone, dialed, said, “Get in here!” and headed out.

I stopped him at the door.

“About Stage 13—”

Manny had his hand over his mouth as if he might be sick again. His eyes widened.

“I know you’re going to clean it out,” I said, quickly. “But I got a lot of stuff on that stage. And I want to spend the rest of the day talking with Fritz here about Galilee and Herod. Could you leave all the junk so I can come tomorrow morning and claim my stuff?
Then
you can clean out.”

Manny’s eyes swiveled, thinking. Then, hand over his mouth, he jerked his head once, yes, and turned to find a tall thin pale man coming in. They whispered, then with no goodbyes, Manny left. The tall pale man was I. W. W. Hope, one of the production estimators.

He looked at me, paused, and then with some embarrassment said, “It seems, ah, we have no ending for your film.”

“Have vou tried the
Bible
?” Fritz and I said.

The menagerie was gone, the curb was empty in front of the studio. Charlotte, Ma, and the rest had gone on to other studios, other restaurants. There must have been three dozen of them scattered across Hollywood. One would surely know Clarence’s last name.

Fritz drove me home.

Along the way he said, “Reach in the glove compartment. That glass case. Open.”

I opened the small black case. There were six bright crystal monocles in six neat red velvet cups nested there.

“My luggage,” said Fritz. “All that I saved and took to bring to America when I got the hell out with my ravenous groin and my talent.”

“Which was huge.”

“Stop.” Fritz dutch-rubbed my skull. “Give only insults, bastard child. I show you these—” he nudged the monocles—”to prove all is not lost. All cats, and Roy, land on their feet. What else is in the glove compartment?”

I found a thick mimeographed script.

“Read that without throwing up and you’ll be a man, my son. Kipling. Go. Come back, tomorrow, two-thirty, the commissary. We talk. Then, later, we show you the rough cut
of Jesus on the Dole
or
Father, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me
.
Ja
?”

I got out of his car in front of my house.

“
Sieg Heil
,” I said.

“That’s more
like
it!” Fritz drove away, leaving me to a house so empty and quiet I thought: Crumley.

Soon after sunset, I rode out to Venice on my bike.

I hate bikes at night, but I wanted to be sure no one followed.

Besides, I wanted time to think just what I would say to my detective friend. Something like: Help! Save Roy! Get him re-hired. Solve the riddle of the Beast.

That made me almost turn back.

I could hear Crumley now, heaving great sighs as I spun my impossible tale, throwing up his hands, slugging back the beer to drown his contempt for my lack of real hammered-out Swedish-steel-spiked facts.