Stuart Kaminsky - Catch a Falling Clown

“Well,” I said, “maybe we’ll talk again soon.” I backed to the door, reaching for the handle.

“Do you do anything besides talk?” she said, pursing her lips.

“We’ll talk about it,” I said and leaped out into the air, pushing the door closed behind me.

I breathed deeply and looked around. Gunther and his friends were nowhere around, so I headed toward the big top. Gunther intercepted me while I paused to watch a man about fifty walking behind three small boys in green tights and matching blue jackets. The man was shaking his head and shouting to them about looking straight ahead, always straight ahead.

“Funambulists,” said Gunther, looking at the quartet as it passed us. “Rope walkers. Family tradition. The word comes from the Latin funis -rope-and ambulare -to walk. It goes back thousands of years. Some say the acrobats arid rope walkers are the oldest tradition in the circus next to the clowns, if we acknowledge that the commedia dell’arte is, indeed, clearly a part of the circus tradition and not the theater.”

“I acknowledge,” I said. “What did you find out about Hitchcock?”

“He is here,” Gunther said, still watching the receding figures of the rope walkers. “In the big tent, watching. The circus grapevine is fast, and outsiders are sensed like a low-level voltage….”

“Shock,” I said.

Gunther nodded, adding the word to his vocabulary.

“I suppose that includes me, that outside shock?”

“Yes,” he said. “Your presence is felt. Mine is less so because I have been with a circus and for other reasons. Jeremy too, for some reason, is accepted, perhaps because of his wrestling and size. I’d best return to my duties outside the wagon of the reptile woman.”

“Thanks, Gunther,” I said and went into the big top.

There were streaks of sunlight coming through entrances to the tent and a central opening at the peak of the tent. Some of the lights were on, and people were practicing acts in various rings. In one side ring, the three Tanuccis were standing in a small group. The eldest Tanucci was pointing up to the trapeze and speaking earnestly.

In the center ring, a cage had been set up, a big animal cage, and inside it stood young Shockly and a tired tiger, looking at each other with mutual confusion, or so it seemed to me.

I looked around for Hitchcock, and Elder came to my side, his mustache trim and waxed, his scalp moist, his green sweater snug over his well-muscled chest and only the sag of a cheekbone revealing doubt.

“Tanuccis are trying to put a makeshift act together,” he said. “We have to pull them from center ring, but when word gets out about the murder …”

“Murders,” I corrected, but he went on.

“Murders,” he agreed. “People will want to see them. Things like this have happened before. We pulled Shockly up from an apprenticeship to see if he can handle the cats. We’ve got no show without a cat act. My partner back East is trying to get Beatty, but he’s hard to find. There’s Grunwald in England. Retired. We might get him, but by the time he got here the season would be over and we’d be headed for a home run, headed back to Florida.”

“Someone’s doing a good job wrecking the circus,” I observed, looking around for Hitchcock and spotting him sitting alone and placidly watching, his pudgy hands folded in his lap. He was dressed in a dark suit and seated several rows up in the wooden grandstands. “What’s Hitchcock doing here?” I said.

“He asked to watch,” replied Elder. “He’s a well-known film producer, and he keeps his mouth shut. Maybe it will make some good publicity. Who knows?”

“He’s a director,” I corrected, moving toward Hitchcock.

“What’s the difference?” said Elder, heading away without waiting for an answer.

Hitchcock looked up at me languidly while I climbed the stands. His eyes scanned my clothing. “Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” said I, sitting next to him but not too close.

“I do not wish to be rude,” he said, looking back at the Tanuccis, “but your trousers and jacket do not match. Nor does your shirt.”

“All I have left,” I shrugged, watching the Tanuccis in their huddle.

“I think it essential that one dress carefully and formally when one works,” he said. “It establishes the aura of seriousness necessary in a potentially chaotic situation.”

“Maybe so,” I sort of agreed. “But the world I work in doesn’t seem to be affected by my sense of anything.”

“The difference between life and movies,” said Hitchcock. “I prefer movies. In fact, I have no great affection for the real world.”

The Tanuccis were climbing the rope ladder to the trapeze, led by Carlo. In the center ring, Elder had entered the cage with Shockly and the tiger and was urging the kid on, saying something about how old the tiger was. The tiger seemed to be asleep.

“Absolutely fascinating,” sighed Hitchcock.

“I thought you were going back to Los Angeles,” I said.

“I am,” said Hitchcock evenly. “My friend was good enough to put me up for another night so that I might discover something more of the events of the last day. You have not, I may presume, discovered a murderer or a motive?”

“Nope,” I said, searching my pockets for something without knowing what, maybe Abdul the snake. Instead, I found a single peanut. I offered to share it with Hitchcock, who refused politely.

“Pity,” he said. “I’ll have to depart nonetheless. Might I suggest that you are searching for someone who is quite mad? When you discover the nature of that madness, the key to it, what obsession moves this man or woman, you will discover your killer.”

“Great,” I said, munching my peanut as the youngest surviving Tanucci, Tino, swung out on the trapeze. “Now all I need is a psychiatrist. You know a lion was let loose last night?”

“I am aware of that,” he said, his eyes watching Tino without moving his head.

“You were near the cage just before it happened,” I said, fishing some peanut from between my teeth.

Hitchcock glanced at me and made it clear, though he tried not to, that he did not approve of people picking their teeth in public. “May I assume, therefore,” he said, “that I am a suspect?”

“No,” I said. “You’re not a suspect. You’re a possible witness.”

“I was rather hoping for something grander than that,” he said, “but then it might mean an encounter with the police, a situation which I would do very nearly anything to avoid.”

The Tanuccis were trying some switches and routines tentatively, with the older Tanucci shouting changes, suggestions in Italian, encouraging, discouraging, supporting.

“Did you see anybody near the cage?” I went on.

“The keeper who has such great difficulty with the human language,” said Hitchcock, “and one other person, a woman. A red-haired woman with a gaudy costume. She stood beside me watching the lions. We exchanged no conversation.”

Agnes again, thought I.

“I left before she did,” he added. “There certainly may have been others. I left just in time to see the show.”

“Well,” I said, getting up, “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Hitchcock put out his pudgy right hand, and I took it. It was deceptively firm. “Perhaps we will encounter each other again,” he said. “If you are in the directory, I may call you, if you have no objection.”

“None,” I said. “And thanks for the theory.”

Elder was still trying to introduce the shy Shockly to the weary tiger when I went into the light. I’d have to talk to Agnes again, but I wasn’t sure of how it would go. I didn’t have enough to turn her over to Nelson, and I wasn’t sure I could break her down. It would take a little thought. I headed for the animal tent. It was dark but full of sounds.