Catch a Falling Clown

15

None of the boys were whooping it up at Hijo’s saloon. I stepped back two days in time. There were three people at the bar, a drunk at a table, and music playing. They were the same three people I had met there the last time. Only the music was different. At least I think it was different. It was a woman almost weeping in Spanish.

The Falstaff Beer sign sputtered on the wall, trying to keep up with the weeping woman on the radio, but was a beat or two behind.

My eyes adjusted slowly to the bartender sitting behind the bar with his head in but one hand this time and what looked like the same cigarette drooping from his chubby lips.

“You still with the circus?” called Jean Alvero, the whore with the heart of a dove.

I stepped to the bar, eyeing Alex’s brother Lope, who wore the same denims but might have changed his shirt. The only thing different about him was the bandage over his head and right eye.

“Right,” I said, keeping an eye on Lope, who walked over to me. The drunk at the table was awake. It was early. He probably didn’t pass out till nine or ten in the morning.

“No trouble,” I said to Lope, holding out my hand. His smaller friend was standing behind him, thumbs hooked in his belt.

“No trouble,” said Lope. “I was drunk the other time. I deserved this.” He pointed to his head. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

“I’ll take a Pepsi, and thanks,” I said with my smashed-face grin, “but I don’t think it will be healthy to drink with me.”

Lope’s remaining eye went narrow. He had put out his hand in friendship, and if I turned it away he was going to lose what was left of his face.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I added quickly. “I’m expecting trouble through that door, and I don’t want anyone too near me when it comes.”

Lope understood that. His eye opened wider. “I’m not afraid of a little trouble,” he said, looking back at his faithful companion Carlos, who grinned broadly.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Keep an eye on me from the end of the bar, and if trouble breaks out, go for the one with the gun, knife, or chair in his hand, providing it isn’t me.”

Lope grinned, I think, and belched something at the bartender, who tore himself away from the radio to get me a warm Pepsi.

Lope and Carlos returned to Jean Alvero. I toasted her with warm Pepsi. “I thought you come back to see Jean Alvero,” she said. I’d noticed that opera and movie stars and whores referred to themselves in the third person. Maybe they had something in common.

“I did,” I said, trying to watch the door without insulting my hosts by turning my back. “It was your beauty that drew me irresistibly to Hijo’s, though my duty lay elsewhere.”

“You full of crapola, gringo,” she grinned.

And warm Pepsi and a jigger of fear. My killer was probably not exactly sane. I wondered if one could be inexactly sane.

The drunk at the table eyed me through two tiny holes of red, and the weeping woman on the radio stopped. For a beat or two of the heart all that could be heard in that dim bar was the sputtering of the Falstaff Beer sign. Then the radio burst forth with rapid-fire Spanish.

The door to the bar swung open, and I tried to keep from looking, but you can’t ignore a crowd, and a crowd it was.

“There you are,” came a voice, which was clearly Emmett Kelly’s and clearly concerned. Behind Kelly came Elder, Agnes Sudds, Peg, Henry Yew, Doc Ogle, and assorted people I didn’t recognize.

The drunk at the table sat up, perplexed, and the bartender turned the radio down, ready to cater the party.

Elder, Kelly, Agnes, and Peg detached themselves from the group and moved over to me. This wasn’t what I wanted, planned, or expected. Hell, few things were what I wanted, planned, or expected.

“What are you doing out of jail?” asked Peg. “We went next door and that sheriff said you weren’t there and slammed the door on us.”

“What’s going on?” asked Elder. Kelly looked puzzled, and Agnes smiled at me with something that I might have thought pert if she weren’t wearing a hat, a little blue thing big enough to hide a snake or two.

“I can’t explain,” I said. “I just need a few minutes to be alone, to think. Have a seat, take a table. Drinks are on me. See what the boys in the back room will have. Whatever. Just give me a few minutes.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” demanded Elder.

Kelly turned his head slightly and our eyes met. I had the feeling he was sensing my thoughts. “Let’s leave Toby alone,” he said, touching Elder’s arm.

“Toby,” said Peg softly, “are you all right?”

I looked at the door and looked at Peg. Her hair was dark and down, and I realized that she reminded me of Ann, my wife, I mean Ann, my ex-wife, who was due to marry an airline exec who looked like a tall Claude Rains.

“Please,” I said, turning my back and picking up the Pepsi.

“You bastard,” hissed Elder behind me. “We came here to help you, and …”

“Come on,” urged Kelly. “Let’s sit down.”

They moved away behind me, but I didn’t turn back. The bar was now bustling with circus people ordering early-morning tequila, beer, and Squirt-a party. The bartender shuffled, the music blared, and I looked into the dirty dark mirror behind the bar to see figures shifting. I thought I could see the door. I looked at my glass of almost finished Pepsi. There was something at the bottom of the glass, probably my nerve. I held up the empty to Lope and shouted to the bartender to buy drinks for my good friends at the end of the bar.

“I want to confess.”

The words came over the bustling sounds in the room. Conversation was cut in half, and then the voice repeated, “I want to confess.”

All conversation stopped. The radio kept going, this time playing a guitar solo. I looked toward the voice in the middle of the bar.

Henry Yew, the animal keeper, was looking somberly at his amber glass of liquid. “A confession,” he said, holding up the glass as if he were toasting the happy crowd. “I am guilty. I am not Henry Yew. I am,” he said dramatically with a drunk’s satisfied smile, “Henry Ackerman.”

“So?” said Jean Alvero.

“So,” repeated Henry, turning to the bar and his drink, squeezing between a pair of burly roustabouts, “I confessed.”

“And …” asked Jean.

“And nothing,” said Henry. “Nothing. That’s it, my real enumeration.”

“That’s not interesting,” said Lope.

“I knew a one-eyed dog trainer once,” said Henry, looking at Lope.

Lope cocked his head like a bird so that he could see Henry with his good eye, and Henry mocked him by doing the same.

“I think maybe I’ll take your skinny eye out,” said Lope.

“He’s just drunk,” said one of the roustabouts, turning to face Lope.

“Hell,” said Lope reasonably, “people in bars are drunk all the time. That don’t mean they have to be stupid.”

“Who are you calling stupid?” said the roustabout.

“Stupid people like …”

“Drinks on me,” I shouted, hoisting my empty glass and hoping the bartender wouldn’t give me a refill. The crowd at the bar shouted their orders. In the dark mirror I could see Kelly and group watching my back and wondering what the hell was wrong with me.

It was possible my killer wouldn’t come over to me, wouldn’t make contact, that I’d stand at that bar for the next year or two, waiting for the war to end or armed Japanese soldiers to walk through the door, order a bottle of Black and White, and mow us down. But it didn’t happen that way. The door to Hijo’s opened, and a familiar figure walked in. My back was turned, but I saw the figure pause in the mirror, look around, spot me, and move in my direction.

I played with my glass, tried to realign whatever small dark things were at the bottom. Maybe I’d be able to read my fortune.

“Good morning,” the killer said.

“Good morning,” I answered without looking up. “What’s your pleasure?”

“If the glasses are reasonably clean, a gin and tonic.”

“The glasses are not reasonably clean,” I said, showing my glass.

“Then,” sighed the killer, “I’ll do without it. It is a bit early in the morning.”

“Right,” I said. Emmett Kelly had stood up. I could see him in the mirror, could see that he was going to come to me. I shook my head no. Kelly paused and then sat down.

“I see,” said the killer, leaning against the bar and squinting into the mirror. We were shoulder to shoulder, could have been taken for buddies. “I take it that our clown friend is the one you were to meet here. It was not a question,” said the killer, “but an observation. I was aware that the charade at my brother’s house was for my benefit. I have been around performers most of my life. I can spot a poor performance with no difficulty. Yours was not exactly terrible. It had some energy, but far from professional.”

Jean Alvero’s laugh broke through the other sounds. I turned to look at her. She was talking down the bar to one of the roustabouts. One-eyed Lope didn’t look too happy about the social possibilities.

“Then why did you come?” I said.

My killer shrugged. The bartender moved to us behind the bar, removed his cigarette and opened his mouth to let us know he was taking orders.

“A beer,” said the killer. “No glass, just bring the bottle.”

The bartender moved away.

“Good idea,” I said. “No contamination. Not that you should worry about contamination.”

“Are you going to insult me?” asked the killer with an amused smile.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There was a full moon last night, and someone tried to kill me.”

“That was me. You are remarkably heavy for your size. You are also remarkably durable. But perhaps we can remedy that.”

The bartender returned with the bottle of Gobel beer. It was open, and my friendly neighborhood lunatic took a deep drink.

“Warm.”

“House rules,” I said.

“I don’t really mind,” came the answer. “I grew accustomed to warm beer when I was in England. The taste comes through. Now, if you will just tell me who you are to meet.”

I turned around and put my arms on the bar the way Walter Huston had done in The Virginian. “Why should I tell you?” I said, looking at Kelly. The others had their heads together talking.

“Because I can simply pull the trigger on the gun I am holding under the eave of this bar and make a very large hole in your side.”

“And then you’d be caught,” I said reasonably.

“Yes, but if you don’t tell me, I’ll be caught anyway. This way I might be able to make an escape. I think I am being clear and logical.”

“La Paloma” burst out of the radio. It sounded like the same group that had sung it the first time I entered Hijo’s. Jean Alvero joined in, in a rather nice cracking soprano.

“You had me fooled,” I said with a shake of my head. “You really did, but how long did you think you could carry it off?”

I turned to look my killer full in the face now, and he looked back at me, putting down his empty bottle of beer. Something approaching a smile touched his face.

“Who would peg Alfred Hitchock as a murderer?” he said, showing me the gun beside his medicine ball of a stomach.