Let’s All Kill Constance. Ray Bradbury

scowling.

      “Know where that is?” I said.

      “Bunker Hill, hell, I know, I know. I was born a few blocks north of there. A real free-for-all stewpot of Mexicans, Gypsies, stovepipe-out-the-window Irish, white trash and black. Used to go by there to look in at Callahan and Ortega, Funeral Directors. Hoped to see real bodies. My God, Callahan and Ortega, what names, right there in the middle of Juarez II, Guadalajara bums, dead flowers from Rosarita Beach, Dublin whores. Crud!” Crumley suddenly yelled, furious at listening to his own travel talk, half selling himself on my next expedition. “Did you hear me? Did you listen? God!”

      “I heard,” I said. “So why don’t we just call one of those red circle numbers to see what’s aboveground or below?”

      And before he could protest, I seized the book and ran up the dune to Rattigan’s outdoor pool, brightly lit, with an extension phone on a glass-top patio table, waiting. I didn’t dare look at Crumley, who had not moved as I dialed.

      A voice answered from long miles away. That number was no longer in service. Damn, I thought, and then, Wait!

      I dialed information swiftly, got a number, dialed it, and held the phone out so Crumley could hear the voice:

      “Callahan and Ortega, good evening,” the voice said, a full rich ripe brogue from center stage of Abbey Theatre. I smiled wildly. I saw Crumley, below, twitch.

      “Callahan and Ortega,” the voice repeated, louder now, its temper roused. A long pause. I stayed mum. “Who the hell is this?”

      I hung up before Crumley reached me.

      “Son of a bitch,” he said, hooked.

      “Two blocks, maybe three, from where you were born?”

      “Four, you conniving bastard.”

      “Well?” I said.

      Crumley grabbed Rattigan’s book.

      “Almost but not quite a Book of the Dead?” he said.

      “Want to try another number?” I opened the book, turned, and stopped under the Rs. “Here’s one, oh Lord yes, even better than Queen Califia.”

      Crumley squinted. “Rattigan, Mount Lowe. What kind of Rattigan lives up on Mount Lowe? That’s where the big red trolley that’s been dead half my lifetime used to take thousands up for picnics.”

      Memory shadowed Crumley’s face.

      I touched another name.

      “Rattigan. St. Vibiana’s Cathedral.”

      “What kind of Rattigan, holy jumping Jesus, hides out in St. Vibiana’s Cathedral?”

      “Spoken like a born-again Catholic.” I studied Crumley’s now-permanent scowl. “Want to know? I’m on my way.”

      I took three false steps before Crumley swore. “How the hell you going to get there with no license and no car?”

      I kept my back turned. “You’re going to take me.”

      There was a long brooding silence.

      “Right?” I prompted.

      “You know how in hell to find where the Mount Lowe trolley once ran?”

      “I was carried up by my folks when I was eighteen months old.”

      “That means you can show the way?”

      “Total recall.”

      “Shut up,” said Crumley as he tossed a half-dozen bottles of beer into the jalopy. “Get in the car.”

      We got in, left Gershwin to punch piano-roll holes in Paris, and drove away.

      “Don’t say anything,” said Crumley. “Just nod your head left, right, or straight ahead.”

Chapter Eight

      “I’ll be damned if I know why in hell I’m doing this,” Crumley muttered, almost driving on the wrong side of the street. “I said, I’ll be damned if I know why in hell—”

      “I heard you,” I said, watching the mountains and the foothills coming closer.

      “You know who you remind me of ?” Crumley snorted. “My first and only wife, who knew how to flimflam me with her shapes and sizes and big smiles.”

      “Do I flimflam you?”

      “Say you don’t and I’ll throw you out of the car. When you see me coming, you sit and pretend to be working a crossword puzzle. You’re maybe four words into it before I grab your pencil and shove you outta the way.”

      “Did I ever do that, Crumley?”

      “Don’t get me mad. You watching the street signs? Do so. Now. Tell me, why are you heading this damn-fool expedition?”

      I looked at the Rattigan phone book in my lap. “She was running away, she said. From Death, from one of the names in this book. Maybe one of them sent it to her as a spoiled gift. Or maybe she was running toward them, like we’re doing, heading for one to see if he’s the sinner who dared to send tombstone dictionaries to impressionable child actresses.”

      “Rattigan’s no child,” Crumley groused.

      “She is. She wouldn’t’ve been so great up on the screen if she hadn’t kept one heckuva lot of her Meglin Kiddie self locked up in all those sexual acrobatics. It’s not the old Rattigan who’s scared here; it’s the schoolgirl in panic running through the dark forest, Hollywood, full of monsters.”

      “You whipping up another of your Christmas fruitcakes full of nuts?”

      “Does it sound like it?”

      “No comment. Why would one of these red-lined friends send her two books full of lousy memories?”

      “Why not? Constance loved a lot of people in her time. So, years later, one way or another, a lot of people hate her. They got rejected, left behind, forgotten. She got famous. They were found with the trash by the side of the road. Or maybe they’re real old now and dying, and before they go they want to spoil things.”

      “You’re beginning to sound like me,” Crumley said.

      “God help me, I hope not. I mean—”

      “It’s okay. You’ll never be Crumley, just like I’ll never be Jules Verne Junior. Where in hell are we?”

      I glanced up quickly.

      “Hey!” I said. “This is it. Mount Lowe! Where the great old red trolley train fell down dead, a long time ago.

      “Professor Lowe,” I said, reading some offhand memory from the dark side of my eyelids, “was the man who invented balloon photography during the Civil War.”

      “Where did that come from?” Crumley exclaimed.

      “It just came,” I said, unsettled.

      “You’re full of useless information.”

      “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, offended. “We’re here at Mount Lowe, right? And it’s named for Professor Lowe and his Toonerville Trolley scaling its heights, right?”

      “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Crumley said.

      “Well then, Professor Lowe invented hot-air balloon photography that helped catch enemy images in the great war of the states. Balloons, and a new invention, trains, won for the North.”

      “Okay, okay,” Crumley grumbled. “I’m outta the car and ready to climb.”

      I leaned out the car window and looked at the long weed-choked path that went up and up a long incline in evening’s gathering shadows.

      I shut my eyes and recited.