Stuart Kaminsky - Catch a Falling Clown

“Thanks,” she said. “Want some coffee?”

“Thanks.” I got up and found a towel in a corner near a mirror. “Can I use this?”

She told me to go ahead, and I removed the makeup. It took me awhile to find me, and I didn’t get it all off, but it was enough off me for me to be comfortable. I looked around the small room. Peg had done what she could to make it look like home. Curtains, a quilt on the cot, photographs on the wall of a family that was probably hers, a small table with a cloth, three chairs, a small icebox under the window.

“Nice,” I said, going back to the table.

“It’s enough,” she said, handing me a cup of coffee with one hand and a doughnut with the other. I was hungry and stuffed the doughnut in my mouth.

“You wouldn’t have another two or three doughnuts?” I asked with my mouth full. She grinned and reached back through a cloth covering a cabinet to pull out a plate with two more doughnuts.

“The start of real romance,” I said, gulping down some coffee.

“You look silly,” she said.

“Try to ignore it,” I suggested, choking on the last bite of my second doughnut.

“Can’t,” she said.

“You really look great,” I said.

“You don’t,” she answered.

“I give up,” I said, and I did, for the moment. “Will you marry me?”

“You serious?” she said.

“Hell, no,” I said, going for the last of the coffee and handing the cup to her in hope of a refill. “Don’t you know what you’re supposed to say?”

She got up, pulled her robe around her, turned her back, and poured more coffee.

“Nope,” she said. “I don’t know much about man-and-woman games.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.” She turned and handed me the cup, looking into my eyes with a soft smile. “I don’t go to movies much, just circuses.”

“I’d like to take you to a movie,” I said, accepting the cup and deciding to try to do some dunking with the final doughnut. “You make a mean doughnut.”

“Stole it from the mess truck.”

“You know how to steal a good doughnut.”

We sat watching me try not to lose any of the soggy doughnut until the whole thing was gone. I sat back, wishing I had my pants on and something over my chest besides the purple silk clown’s shirt. Peg was looking at me with a soft amusement that might turn to more, and I was trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t be a game when the knock came.

“Who is it?” she asked, with just enough touch of fear to show she cared.

“Elder,” came the voice.

She told him to come in, and he did. At the top of the step, he looked at both of us, me with my pants off, Peg in her pajamas and robe. Something like anger crossed his face and then disappeared.

“Some visitors from Los Angeles,” he said, pointing to the door, through which came the bizarre trio that passes in this life as my best and only friends.

“Shelly, Jeremy, Gunther. Close the door.”

And they did.

“You look like a grape popsicle,” Sheldon Minck observed through his thick glasses. Shelly is about five five, fat, fifty-five, bald, smokes very wet cigars, and has dirty fingers and questionable habits which make for particular problems since he is a dentist, the dentist with whom I share an office. More accurately, he sublets a closet to me on the fourth floor of the Farraday Building, the last refuge of forgotten dentists, detectives, pornographers, and agents without clients in various fields of life.

“I’ve had a difficult day, Shel,” I said. “I’ll explain.”

My other two guests nodded in understanding. They are as much in contrast as two humans could be unless we also made one a woman and turned one black or brown or tan. As it is, Jeremy Butler stands about six three and weighs in at just short of 250 pounds, which is rather awesome for a poet and the owner-manager of the Farraday Building. Jeremy had once been a professional wrestler. He now wrestles with meters and the grime that threatens to take over his property. In contrast to Jeremy is Gunther Wherthman, who stands no more than four feet high and is certainly a very little person, a midget, who speaks with a precise Swiss accent and wears precise clean suits with vests. His fingernails are never dirty, and he makes a living by translating books and articles from German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Danish into English. Gunther got me the room in Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse in Hollywood after the place I lived in got crushed by a wrecker.

The first piece of business was to clear the room by asking Elder and Peg to give us some time together. Peg went behind a towel hung in a corner and changed, while the four of us said nothing.

Peg smiled at me on the way out, and as soon as the door closed, Gunther, seated on the bed so his feet would touch the floor, said, “You suspect her of something?”

“No,” I told him. “Just want to be sure.”

Gunther nodded in agreement. He wore a beautiful little chesterfield coat.

Jeremy Butler pulled out one of the chairs at the table with a lobster hand and sat carefully. The chair didn’t break. He unbuttoned his flannel jacket and looked at me.

“Been brushing your teeth?” asked Shelly.

“Shel, what are you doing here? I called Jeremy and Gunther.”

“I ran into Jeremy, and he told me you needed help,” said Shelly, removing his cigar to examine the end. His glasses slipped down his nose, and he almost poked himself in the eye with the cigar stub to keep them from dropping. “Besides, they needed a car.”

Shelly’s 1937 Ford was as filthy as his 1914 office, but it ran and defied reason by never causing him trouble in spite of his neglect.

“I’m sorry, Toby,” Jeremy began.

“OK,” I said with my hand up. “Shelly can help. We’ve got a murder or two here, animals, people, and maybe more to come. The local police think I did it, and if they get their hands on me, I will probably lose my hands. So we’ve got to find the killer and protect the circus, and we’ve got to do it fast before there are no more performers to protect. Oh, yes, we’ve also got a runaway elephant.”

“Proceed,” said Gunther calmly, and I proceeded. I told them the whole story. Jeremy and Gunther sat quietly, listening. Shelly was soon floating somewhere, thinking of cavities.

“So,” said Gunther, “it seems an easy process. We list everyone who stood in the tent when the unfortunate Mr. Tanucci died. We then make that list smaller if we can.”

“The killer already has made it smaller,” Shelly said with a satisfied grin.

“How did you get Mildred to let you go?”

“I told her you needed my help.”

“Mildred would gladly see me turned over to the Japanese,” I told him.

“You wrong my Mildred,” countered Shelly.

“Toby,” said Gunther softly. “May I continue?”

I apologized, and he continued. “We may, for the moment, assume that the Tanuccis are not responsible for the murder of their own clan. This may turn out to be a false assumption, but given our group size …”

“Reasonable,” agreed Jeremy.

“We eliminate Toby,” Gunther went on. “May we eliminate the doctor? He is quite old, yes?”

“Probably,” I said. “It would take a quick hand to cut that harness and someone with a steady hand to gun down Rennata so neatly on the beach.”

“Good,” continued Gunther. “We then have Mr. Elder, who you were talking to, which eliminates him….”

“From stealing the harness,” Jeremy said quickly. “He might have an accomplice.”

My chest thumped. Peg might be such an accomplice. “Maybe,” I agreed.

“Now, we eliminate you,” added Gunther, “and may I assume we eliminate Alfred Hitchcock?”