Stuart Kaminsky - Catch a Falling Clown

When he left, the room grew larger, and I breathed deeply. Then the room got smaller again, and I wondered if I had reacted to the way he looked or if he had really brought the tension in, in some other form than his face.

Agnes Sudds came next, and a welcome change she was, a breath of cold simplicity in a room full of hot air. She was small, red of hair, with a face that people surely called pert and a blue twinkling dress which showed a lot of Sudds. Her hand remained on the tiny hat with the tall feather that threatened to fall off.

“Why don’t you just take it off?” I said as she ducked to make it through the door.

“You ain’t even Boss Canvas Man,” she said sharply. “And someone should have told you I take it off for nobody, especially a First of May like you.” With that, she sat and crossed her legs.

“I meant your hat, not your britches, and what’s a First of May?” I moved out from behind the desk and leaned against it to look down at her.

“A newcomer to the circus,” she said. I could see now that she had gum in her mouth.

“You like Glenda Farrell?” I said.

She shrugged.

“Ginger Rogers?”

She lit up. “I can dance like that,” she said. “I can sing too. I know a guy who knows a producer.”

“So do I,” I said.

“Mine’s real,” she said.

“Maybe we can discuss mine,” I said, leaning toward her.

Then she took off her blue cap and put it on the floor next to her. I saw why she had been holding it down. A small green snake perched on her head and looked around the room. I didn’t turn to stone, but I did head back behind the desk.

“There’s a snake on your head,” I said, looking for a weapon and wondering how I could kill the snake without destroying the potential victim.

“Of course,” she sighed with exasperation. “I work snakes. Abdul is little, but he’s full of poison. I work the big snakes too. Rattlers, small boa, python, even. That’s for show. Abdul is the real thing. He gets his fangs in you, you’re dead in maybe, I don’t know, the time it takes to get to the toy in Cracker Jacks.”

“You always carry him around with you?” I said, watching Abdul watch me.

“No, but I wanted to show him to you,” she said seriously. “Elder said this was about what happened this morning. I … I did it.”

“You did it?” I said.

“Right,” she agreed, popping her gum. The pop scared the hell out of Abdul, who curled back on her head.

“The Tanucci kid Marco was after me for weeks. I told him no chance. Well, that’s what I told him. I didn’t want that wife of his, Rennata, after me, but he was a cute kid and if he had stayed with it … but I told him no yesterday and showed him Abdul. I think he was a little upset this morning. Maybe because of me and Abdul. I mean, if a guy really wants you, he’s not going to let a snake or a ‘no’ end it, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, having just decided that I didn’t really want Agnes Sudds.

“So maybe he had me and Abdul on his mind this morning and took a fall,” she said, reaching up to her head. I held my breath. Abdul pulled back as if to strike. She held up a finger, made a circle with it, and reached back quickly to grab the snake neatly right behind his head. She pulled him down to her lap and stroked him carefully.

Agnes smiled and snapped her gum again. “Trick,” she said. “I could see him in the window behind you. Like a mirror.”

I had nothing to say.

“So we did it,” she said.

Some moisture came back into my mouth. But so did the acrid taste of part of my breakfast.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Agnes,” I said. “I’m sure you and Abdul had nothing to do with Mr. Tanucci’s death.”

“I’m not being hard,” she said. “Trial might be good for my career. You know. Circus star drives aerialist to death when she spurns his love. That sort of thing.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to think of a way to get her to the door without getting too close.

“Can’t we make some kind of deal?” she said, holding up Abdul. “I mean, you guys turn me in to the cops and call the radio stations and the newspapers. Maybe I did it. You can’t be sure.”

“Right,” I said, “I can’t be sure, but …”

“I would be very grateful,” she said, removing her gum with her free hand and dropping it into Elder’s wastebasket. She turned her even-toothed smile at me. Ginger Rogers with a snake. Toby Peters was nowhere near Eden and not tempted.

“Let me think about it,” I said softly, looking into her green eyes. “I’ll get back to you later.”

There were about thirty seconds of silence while she poised and only gradually got the idea.

“I’ve got my own wagon,” she said. “Behind the big top. Green wagon near the end.”

I could see why Agnes had her own wagon. “I’ll remember,” I said. “I really will.”

Then Agnes and Abdul left. Peg came in almost immediately after, bearing a cup of coffee in the white circus mug. It was full of sugar and almost half-cream, which was just the way I like it.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it from her hands. Her hair was almost all down now and looking better with each battle lost against the army of pins. Our hands touched.

“I thought you might be needing this after Agnes,” she said.

“You might have warned me,” I said.

“I wasn’t sure you’d believe me,” she said with a small smile.

I leaned back and looked at the posters while I drank. Then I looked out the window and watched an elephant walk by. I found myself dreaming of what it would be like to have a real office instead of a closet behind a dentist’s office.

“Peg,” I said. “Did you murder Tanucci?”

“No,” she said.

“Good,” I sighed, putting my feet on the desk and looking into the brown coffee.

“And you just believe me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t want anyone who would bring me coffee and sympathy and sanity to be a killer. Sure you’re not the killer?”

“Positive,” she said.

“That’s a relief,” I said with a grin.

She laughed, a nice laugh.

“You’re maybe thirty,” I said. “Too shy to be a performer. Maybe you had a little college. Dull small-town life. Circus looked good, so you got up the nerve to ask for a job. Elder needed someone, and you fell in love with him.”

She was looking down and biting her lower lip. “Something like that,” she said softly. “For some people it’s movies or fairy tales. I didn’t start dreaming till I was about twenty-five, and I found the circus.” She looked up at me with a grin that could have turned to a cry. “I’ll grow up someday,” she said. It sounded like a promise to some daddy or teacher way beyond the me she was talking to.

“Forget it,” I said, draining the last of the coffee and looking at the few grains at the bottom of the cup. “I never grew up. Have no plans to. Took me almost forty years to find that out. I lost my wife when we both finally agreed on that, and I’ve been playing private detective ever since.”

She brightened, and I could see that her eyes were brown and wide. “And you’ve had fun?”

“It beats growing up,” I said. “You are a pretty girl.”

“No, I’m all right, and I’m not a girl. You don’t talk like you look.”

“I look like a reheated meatball because my brother played a tune on my face once too often and because not growing up can get you in trouble.”

I’m not sure where we were going, but I didn’t get a chance to find out. Elder came through the door. He looked at me. Then he looked at Peg. He seemed more relieved than upset by what he saw. My guess was that he would have been happy for Peg to pin her fairy tale on someone else.