Stuart Kaminsky - Catch a Falling Clown

“I understand,” said Gunther. I noticed that he had changed clothes. He now wore a gray three-piece suit with a perfectly starched shirt and an immaculate pink tie and matching handkerchief in his pocket. He turned and moved back to his friends, and I walked boldly up to the wagon decorated with a snake painting that started with the head at the door and went around to the left, circling the entire wagon and emerging on the right side. The tail was a rattle, and the open-mouthed head was a warning, but I knocked, and Agnes Sudds’s voice told me to come in.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The shades over the two wagon windows were thick and drawn. A small lamp was on, but the bulb was just a few watts and painted over in brown.

“Sorry,” came Agnes’ voice. “Some of the guys don’t like a lot of light. It puts them to sleep.”

I stood until I could see her figure in the corner near an open trunk. Then I could see that the trunk was a cage. Then I could see that Agnes wasn’t alone. A large, thick snake was draped around her waist and over her shoulder, and she was stroking its head.

Agnes was dressed in a gray sweat shirt and trousers. Her red hair, red like that of the kid in the window of the Waldorf, was tied with a ribbon and hanging down her back. She looked cute, a little like Lucille Ball. Or she would have looked cute if it weren’t for the snake, who looked like the one painted on the wagon.

“Murray,” she said, smiling and stroking the snake. “His name is Murray. You want to make friends?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I mean, you and I, yes, but Murray and I can stay cordial.”

“Cordial,” she repeated. “Education and everything. Snakes feel good. Cool, friendly, soothing. Holding a snake is very restful. They like being near warm bodies.”

“That a fact?” I said with a smile. “How’s Abdul?”

“Resting,” she said, putting a finger to her lips to indicate that we had to be quiet. I wondered where Abdul-the-green might be resting. In some corner of the room? Above me? I decided to make the visit short.

“Have a seat,” she said, still standing.

“I’m comfortable,” I said. “Murray posed for the picture on your wagon?”

“No,” she said, rolling her eyes upward at my stupidity. “Murray is a python. The picture is a rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes are not friendly. But it makes a nice picture on the wagon. You know. Identifies me. Like Charlie McCarthy and Chase and Sanborn.”

“I see,” I said, looking around for Abdul and others of his ilk. The wagon was small and the neatest one I had yet seen in the circus, even neater than Peg’s. It was decorated in restful browns made more brown by the painted bulb. The walls were paneled in wood, with one wall of small cages filled with grass in which, I was sure, lurked slithering snakes.

My hand reached out and touched something cold against the other dark wall, and I pulled it away. I had touched a cage, and something had rustled inside it.

Agnes laughed gently. “Those are frogs,” she said. “I keep dozens of them.”

“You have a frog act too?” I asked.

“No, I feed the frogs to Murray and some of the others.”

Murray looked at me and seemed to yawn. He had clearly never seen as stupid a human as I was.

“Can I do something for you?” Agnes said with something that might have been interpreted as seductive. “Or is Peg doing everything you need? But Peg can’t be doing very much.” She crinkled her nose like Shirley Temple. “Peg is the circus good girl.”

“And you’re the circus bad girl?” I said, trying to stay in the middle of the room and glancing up at the ceiling a few feet over my head.

“Not bad, exactly,” she said. “Mina, she works with the horses. Now that’s a bad girl. I’m just average bad, if you like average bad.”

“I like information,” I said. “I’ll talk about degrees of badness later. Would you mind putting Waldo back in his bed while we talk?”

“His name is Murray,” she said, looking into the snake’s rheumy eyes. “He needs affection or he gets leathergic.”

“I think that’s lethargic,” I corrected. “OK, I’m a little curious about why you and Abdul didn’t spot Puddles in that tent last night. It isn’t a very big tent, and he’s a very big lion.”

“ She’s a very big lion,” Agnes corrected me as she began to untangle Murray gently from her body. “I don’t know. Maybe she was scared and just being quiet. Maybe she circled around behind me. Maybe Abdul scared her, or she came under the tent as I was leaving. Why?”

Murray was almost unwound, and Agnes began to coax him into the trunk. She cooed to him while waiting for my answer.

“You didn’t like Rennata Tanucci,” I said. “Her husband liked you. Someone might think you had a reason to want to get rid of both of them. First the husband, maybe because he was going back to his wife, and then the wife because you resented giving him up.”

Murray was safely back in the box when Agnes locked the trunk and turned her eyes on me. I expected hate or anger. I was trying to provoke her, but she looked amused.

“I turned him down,” she said, lifting her chin. “I don’t need to chase flyers. Plenty of men in this circus know a class act when they see one.” She put her hand on her hip and looked at me with a smile. I couldn’t make out much of her body under the sweat suit, but she was reminding me of what I had seen the day before.

“How long have you been with the circus?” I asked.

The hand came off the hip. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked with some of the amusement gone.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m trying to find a killer. I’m trying to eliminate people. I’m doing a job. If I can eliminate enough people, what I’ll be left with is a killer. There might be an easier way, but I don’t know easier ways.”

“The Thin Man doesn’t work like that,” she sneered.

“He has a script and a smart wife.”

“And a dog,” she added.

“And a dog,” I agreed. Then there was silence.

“I was with Sell-Floto for ten years,” she said. “Just joined this one last month.”

“And before that?” I pushed. Another silence.

“Five years with the Tom Mix Show, Helig’s, others,” she said, looking away. “I started when I was a real young kid.”

“Right,” I agreed. The frogs rustled behind me. “You happy in the circus?”

“I like the snakes, the ones without legs,” she said with a smile.

“Must get to you after all this time to still be in a sideshow while people like the Tanuccis are under the big top, center ring. Even the lions and elephants get center ring.”

Agnes laughed. I was surprised that I liked the laugh. The little-girl front cracked with that laugh. She shook her head.

“I’m not knocking off animals and people because I got dreams about dragging my snakes into the big top,” she said. “Snakes don’t drive you nuts. They soothe you. You learn from them. You learn to be perversive.”

“Passive?” I tried.

“Very,” she agreed. “Now, if you want to stop trying to nail me for murder and World War II, maybe we could be friends. I’d really like to know about private investigators. I listen to all the shows on the radio. Sam Spade, Sherlock Holmes, Richard Diamond, Nero Wolfe. I go to movies. Charlie Chan at the Circus was one of my favorites. Nothing like the circus, but like what people think about it. You know?”

The little-girl interest was back, and I liked it. She sort of swayed from hip to hip as she talked, and I felt as if I were being hypnotized. Maybe it was just the darkness, the air in the wagon, and my knowing that snakes named Murray and Abdul and frogs that were going to be swallowed whole were all around me.