Stuart Kaminsky - Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

A year, several thousand memories, and a dozen broken bones ago I had seen The Wizard of Oz. It had been on one of those nights when I was feeling sorry for myself. There had been nothing on the radio and nothing to read. I decided to see the movie again. I wanted to try to pick out Cash and Grundy, wanted to look at Judy Garland and see if she had changed as much as I thought.

I stopped at a newsstand and got a Times. The picture wasn’t playing anywhere. I was going to give up, and head home, but I didn’t want to think about what or who might be looking for me at home. I had to see The Wizard of Oz.

I called Warren Hoff at home. He answered and told me I didn’t need to see the picture. I suggested that he handle the publicity business and I’d handle the detective business, and both of us would probably meet at the funny farm. He said he’d set up a screening in the morning. I pushed, for the moon was high, my blood was up, and I had no lead to follow.

“Wait,” said Hoff. “I’ve got an idea.” He put the phone down, and I looked out of the booth at a thin blonde woman in a grey suit. She caught me looking and stared me down. I pretended to start talking even before Hoff came back.

“Right,” I said.

“What’s right?” said Hoff.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What did you find?”

“There’s a charity screening of the picture tonight.” I could hear him crunching through some papers. “I’ve got a list of extra screenings on… here it is. Holy Name Church of God’s Friends in Van Nuys, on Van Nuys just South of Victory.”

“I know the place,” I said. “What time?”

“Nine-thirty. Enjoy yourself.” He hung up.

I drove in the dark, listening to the end of the San Jose-Loyola game. San Jose won 27 to 12, and a back named Gene Grady ran ninety-seven yards for a touchdown.

The church was where I remembered it. A few years before, I had waited for a bus outside of that church for an hour, listening to a skinny woman with a red wig tell me her life story. It was a hell of a sad life. I remember her face when the rain came down in the middle of her tale about a draining liver.

“See?” she had said, shaking her head knowingly. The rain had been another proof of the hell of her life. She didn’t seem to notice that the rain was falling on me, too.

The Holy Name Church of God’s Friends was a four-story red brick building with a big sign. When I stepped through the thick wooden doors I could tell what kind of church it was. The ceiling went up about ten feet and I didn’t see any second floor. The front of the church was a facade, a store front, a prop to make it look as if the church went up four stories, three closer to God than the truth. I wondered who the people of the church were trying to fool, God or the street trade. I didn’t much care.

A guy with a thick, white, turned-around collar greeted me at the door. He had red cheeks and messy white hair. He looked like a priest.

“You’re a little late,” he whispered. “The short is already on.”

I gave him a nod and headed for the door in front of me and behind him. He touched my hand gently.

“We would appreciate a donation to the church,” he said humbly.

“And if I don’t want to give a donation?”

“Well,” he whispered, “I’ll just call a few people and throw your ass out of here.” The benevolent look never left his face.

I smiled and coughed up a buck. He took it and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Enjoy the movie, son,” he said.

“Thank you, Father,” I said.

“No,” he corrected. “In this church I am called Friend. Friend Yoder.”

I left him standing in the hall and stepped into the dark room. I couldn’t see much except the beam of light from the projector and restless shadows. The projector grinded, feet shuffled, old women coughed, and a baby revved up for a hell of a cry.

The short was an English thing about a train carrying mail to Scotland. I watched for a minute or two while my eyes got used to the dark. An English narrator was reading a poem about postal orders. It sounded kind of sing-songy. It had something to do with carrying mail and how great it was. I found a wooden seat next to a woman holding a kid who couldn’t have been more than three. The kid decided to look at me instead of the picture. I couldn’t tell if the kid was a boy or a girl, but I could tell that someone should have wiped his nose when he was two.

I played goo with the kid till the picture ended. The lights went on and I could see the place was crowded, mostly with old people and a couple of women with kids falling asleep or trying to get away from the arms that held them. I moved to another seat near the front and the kid at my side whined. The old man next to me smiled. I smiled back, and the picture started.

The old man chuckled when the Bert Lahr character Zeke told a pig to get in the pen before he made a dime bank out of him. No one else chuckled. Things picked up when Dorothy got to Munchkinland. I recognized the set and the soldier costume on a bunch of midgets marching. They all looked the same to me.

When the Wicked Witch said, “Just try to stay out of my way,” the blond kid with the nose let out a scream of terror. His mother told him to shut up.

In a few minutes, Dorothy observed that, “People come and go so quickly here.” It was the problem I was facing.

The blond kid got uncomfortable again when the trees talked, and I got uncomfortable when the Scarecrow observed that, “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.”

I got sleepy when the group hit the poppy field and felt like going home when the movie ended with Dorothy saying, “There’s no place like home.” Then the lights went on and I remembered where I lived.

I dodged past old people and women with kids and nodded to Reverend Yoder as I pushed open the front door and went out onto Van Nuys.

When I reached home thirty minutes later, I locked my door, pulled down the shades, propped a chair under the doorknob, and put my. 38 under the pillow. It wasn’t likely that a reasonable killer would break in here and take a few shots at me, but it was possible that a murderous midget who knew my address might just be wild enough to try it. For some reason, the prospect of being shot by a midget scared me more than the idea of the same thing being done by a normal-size man. What if the little killer crept in through a crack under the door and plunked a knife into my chest? I could see the dead soldier Munchkin and me lying side by side on the yellow brick road.

I had a hard time getting to sleep, so I left the light on in the bathroom. It had worked when I was a kid, and it helped now. No one would ever know. The radio was glowing next to me and singing softly. My hand felt the comforting steel of the. 38 under my pillow, and I fell asleep expecting nightmares.

There were no nightmares. I dreamed I was sleeping peacefully in a field of poppies, and snow was falling coldly and gently on my face.

The radio was purring music softly in my ear, and a band of light was dancing across my face from a slit in the shade of the single window in my living room/bedroom. I felt like turning over for a few more hours, but I had a busy day planned and fifty bucks to earn, probably the hard way.

I turned off the radio and padded my way to the bathroom carrying my. 38. I kept the gun on the toilet seat while I brushed my teeth and shaved with a Gilette Blue Blade, the sharpest edge ever honed. I cut myself twice. After coffee and a mixed bowl of puffed rice and shredded wheat, I looked up an address in the phone book, got dressed, plunked my. 38 in the holster inside my jacket, pushed my hat back at what I considered a rakish angle, and went out into the sun.