"Let's All Kill Constance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray Douglas)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

OUR taxi dropped us at the curb behind Rattigan's big white Arabian fortress.

"Lordy," said Henry, and added, "That meter ran overtime. From now on, I'm driving."

Crumley was not out front by the shoreline but farther up by the pool with half a dozen full martini glasses, two already empty. He gazed at these fondly and explained.

"I'm ready now for your numbskull routines. I am fortified. Hello, Henry. Henry, aren't you sorry you left New Orleans for this can-o'-worms factory?"

"One of those drinks smells like vodka, right? That will make me not sorry."

I handed a glass to Henry and took one for myself in haste while Crumley scowled at my silence.

"Okay, spill it," he said.

I told him about Grauman's and the basement dressing-room mirrors. "Plus," I said, "I been making lists."

"Hold it. You've sobered me up," said Crumley. "Let me kill another." He lifted a glass in mock salute. "Okay, read your lists."

"The grocery boy on Mount Lowe. The neighbors of Queen Califia in Bunker Hill. Father Rattigan's secretary. The film projectionist on high in Grauman's Chinese."

Henry cut in. "That gent in Grauman's…?"

I described Rustler, stashed among stacks of old film with the pictures on the walls of all the sad women with all the lost names.

Henry mused. "Hey now. Did you make a list of those ladies in the pictures up on high?"

I read off my pad: "Mabel. Helen. Marilee. Annabel. Hazel. Betty Lou. Clara. Pollyanna…"

Crumley sat up straight.

"You got a list of those names on the cellar mirrors?"

I shook my head. "It was dark down there."

"Easy as pie." Henry tapped his head. "Hazel. Annabel. Grace. Pollyanna. Helen. Marilee. Betty Lou. Detect the similarities?"

As the names rolled from Henry's mouth, I ticked them off my penciled list. A perfect match.

At which point there was a lightning strike. The lights failed. We could hear the surf roar in to salt Rattigan's beach as pale moonlight silvered the shore. Thunder clamored. It gave me time to think and say, "Rattigan's got a complete run of Academy annuals with all the pictures, ages, roles.

Her competition is in every one. It ties in with all those upstairs pictures, downstairs mirrors, right?"

Thunder echoed, the lights blinked back on.

We went inside and got out the Academy books.

"Look for the mirror names," Henry advised.

"I know, I know," Crumley growled.

In half an hour we had thirty years of Academy annuals paper-clipped.

"Ethel, Carlotta, Suzanne, Clara, Helen," I read.

"Constance can't hate them all."

"Chances are," said Henry. "What else she got in her bookshelves?"

An hour later we found some actors' reference albums, crammed with pictures, going way back. One with a legend up front giving the name J. Wallington Bradford. I read, "A.k.a. Tallullah Two, a.k.a. Swanson, Gloria in Excelsius, a.k.a. Funny Face."

A quiet bell sounded in the back of my head.

I opened another album and read: "Alberto Quickly. Fast flimflammery. Plays all parts Great Expectations. Acts A Christinas Carol, Christmas Carol's Scrooge, Marley, Three Christmases, Fezziwig. Saint Joan, unburned. Alberto Quickly. Quick Change. Born: 1895. At liberty." The quiet bell sounded again.

"Hold on," I said. I felt myself murmuring. "Pictures, mirrors, and now here's a guy, Bradford, who is all women. And then here's another guy, Quickly, who is all men, every man." The bell faded. "Did Constance know them?"

Like a sleepwalker I moved to pick up Constance's Book of the Dead.

There it was.

Bradford on one page, near the beginning of the book.

Quickly toward the end.

"But no red circles around the names. So? Are they alive or dead?"

"Why not go see," said Henry.

Lightning struck. The lights failed again.

In the dark, Henry said, "Don't tell me, let me guess."