Stuart Kaminsky - Catch a Falling Clown

“Hell, he was drunk and looking for trouble.” I backed against the wall, and Alex moved forward. I could feel the vibration of radio music from Hijo’s through the thin shared wall.

“Maybe so,” agreed Alex. “But he’s my cousin.”

My minimal study of fear has demonstrated to me that people under its spell are capable of amazing and frightening things. I did what neither Alex nor I expected me to do. Actually, my body did it without my bidding. In fact, given the chance to discuss it with myself, I wouldn’t have acted. I threw a hard right, my whole body behind it, in the general direction of Alex’s chin. He turned as it came, and I caught him in the Adam’s apple. He went backwards, clutching his throat and sucking for air.

“Christ,” I shouted. “That’s not what I wanted.”

Alex was on his knees, taking short breaths, trying not to die. I went for the cell door, slammed it shut behind me, gave it a pull to be sure it was locked, and went for the front of the station.

Alex was still choking behind me, but he was doing something else too, as I discovered a second later when the first bullet pinged off the cell bars behind me. The second bullet hit the big window of the police station. The window cracked and crumbled as I went through the door into the street. I threw my shoulder up to cover my face from the blast of glass.

Two arms grabbed me, and I pulled my fist back madly, determined to get away from Alex now regardless of the cost, because I knew for sure what the cost would be if Alex got his hands on me again.

“Peters,” said Elder.

His mustaches were glistening, and his coat was pulled over his shoulders.

“Elder, let’s get the hell out of here.”

A third shot convinced him, and he turned and leaped into a small gray Ford truck.

“What?”

“Just go, go, go,” I said near panic, and he went.

On the way back to the highway, I explained what had happened, and Elder explained that the hour had passed and he had decided to come looking for me in town instead of calling the state police. I told him about Rennata’s murder. His head dropped for a particle of a second and came up again.

I told him about the elephant and the drawing made by Rennata, about Nelson’s desire to pin the murder on me and my desire to stay alive.

“We’ll hide you,” he said.

“Bad idea,” I said back. “Just have someone pick up my car and drop me off at the highway, along here somewhere.”

“You’re giving up?”

“If I stay with the circus, you’ve got some big trouble coming down from the Mirador police,” I said.

“And the murders?” said Elder. “You’ve got a job. Remember, Kelly hired you to find a killer.”

“How are you going to hide me in the circus?” I said reasonably.

“If we don’t hide you and you don’t find the killer,” he explained reasonably, “you’ll go back to Los Angeles, get picked up, and be back in the Mirador jail. Either that or you’ll have to hide in Los Angeles till we find the killer, and we, meaning me, are without experience when it comes to finding killers.”

“Right,” I said. Night was coming. “I’ll need some help. I’ve got to get some people I trust from L.A. to help me, especially if I’ve got to do some hiding.”

“All right,” he agreed. “But you can use me too.”

“Elder,” I said as evenly as I could, “I can’t trust anyone within five miles of this murder including you, Emmett Kelly, or the sheriff of Mirador, especially the sheriff of Mirador.”

I made my call to Los Angeles and then put myself in the hands of Elder and Emmett Kelly. What they did with those hands was transform me into a clown. My brother would have said that it didn’t take much, but it had to be enough to fool Nelson and Alex, who made it to the circus no more than twenty minutes after us. I had a little blue hat on and a shiny suit with an inflated inner tube inside it. I began to sweat almost immediately and knew that the greasepaint wasn’t letting me perspire enough; I was getting sicker by the minute.

Almost any law-enforcement agent, even the dumb cops played by people like Bill Demarest or Nat Pendleton in the movies, would have considered a clown costume.

“I’m going to tear this circus apart, elephant puddle by elephant puddle, until I find Peters,” Nelson told Elder through closed teeth. Kelly, I, and four other clowns were within listening distance. I was playing with a fake rope that looked as if I was twirling a lasso, only the lasso was a rigid hoop. It was a third-rate gag but a first-rate disguise.

“Lots of elephants, lots of people,” said Elder evenly. He leaned against a huge trunk in Clown Alley, where we were putting on costumes and fixing props. “Besides, Peters isn’t here. If he killed Rennata, this is the last place he’d come. He’d get himself torn to pieces.”

“Maybe,” said Nelson. Alex was looking around at every face, and when he came to mine I concentrated on the little hoop. He fingered his Adam’s apple, and his eyes went past me. I was sick of twirling the lasso.

“I don’t know where he is,” said Elder evenly.

“You are lying,” Nelson went on, letting his tongue go over his lower lip.

Elder laughed, a nice deep laugh. “Sheriff, how am I supposed to answer that? Say I’m not lying? Admit that I am, which I am not? Feel free to look around here as much as you want. My guess is that Peters got his car and is back in Los Angeles by now.”

Alex wandered over to me slowly, suspiciously. I kept twirling madly. I could feel him behind me, but I didn’t look.

“I have taken the precaution of doing just that,” sighed Nelson, removing his sweat-stained hat and wiping the band with his dirty handkerchief. I could see Nelson’s gray-stubbled chin announcing that he was losing his grip on his minimal appearance and the case.

“Hey,” said Alex behind me. Kelly, who was applying the end of his makeup, looked up, hesitated, and went back to finishing his mouth.

“Hey, you,” Alex repeated, touching my shoulder.

I turned to him, still twirling, and pointed to myself with my free hand. His eyes were looking into mine.

“How do you do that?” he said, pointing to the twirling rope. I stopped twirling and held out the hoop to him. I could see the black-and-blue mark on his neck, and his voice sounded more than a little raspy. He took the rope and held it up.

“When you are through fooling around like a damn baby,” Nelson called to him, “we can get on with catching a killer and, maybe, this time holding onto him.”

Alex stiffened at the public dressing-down, and I took the rope from his fingers. Maybe something about the way I took the rope attracted Nelson, who moved two steps toward us away from Elder, cocked his head to one side like a constipated stork, and looked at me.

Kelly stood up and looked at me, but of course he wasn’t Kelly as I knew him. He was a sad-faced tramp clown, as sad a face as could be painted on a human. His hands were plunged in his grungy pockets, and he winked at me as Nelson decided to take another step forward.

Before Nelson could challenge me, Kelly reached behind him and picked up a sledgehammer. Nelson hesitated, stopped, and put his hand on his gun. Suspicion had started to turn to more than that.

Kelly put the hammer in my hand and reached into his shaggy pocket to pull out a peanut, which he held up mournfully for us all to see. The other clowns in the tent, six of them, stopped what they were doing and watched. Kelly’s tramp went through a weary effort to crush the peanut with his fingers, under his arms, against his head, and by sitting on it. Finally, he dropped it on the ground, reached for the sledgehammer in my hands, and lifted it over his head. Nelson began to draw his gun, and Alex pushed me out of the way to make a plunge at Kelly if he attacked. Kelly brought the hammer down quickly on the peanut on the ground, dropped the hammer, looked down, knelt, and held up the crushed pieces of peanut in his hand.