CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

the sun was long gone when my phone rang.

"You know what time it is?" said Crumley.

"Ohmigod, it's night!"

"People dying takes a lot out of you. You done blubbering? I can't stand hysterical sob sisters, or bastard sons who carry Kleenex."

"Am I your bastard son?"

"Hit the shower, brush your teeth, and get the Daily News off your porch. I rang your bell, but you were lost. Did Queen Califia tell your fortune? She should have told her own."

"Is she— ?"

"I'm heading back to Bunker Hill at seven-thirty. Be out front with a clean shirt and an umbrella!"

I was out front with a clean shirt and an umbrella at seven twenty-nine. When I got in, Crumley grabbed my chin and scanned my face.

"Hey, no stormy weather!"

And we roared to Bunker Hill.

Passing Callahan and Ortega seemed different suddenly.

There were no police cars or morgue wagons.

"You know a scotch ale called Old Peculiar?" said Crumley as we pulled up to the curb. "Look at the nonevent outside Queen Califia's."

I also looked at the newspaper in my lap. Califia wasn't a headliner. She was buried near the obits.

" 'Renowned psychic, famed in silent films, dies in fall. Alma Crown, a.k.a. Queen Califia, was found on the steps of her Bunker Hill residence. Neighbors reported hearing her peacock cry. Searching, Califia fell. Her book The Chemistry of Palmistry was a 1939 bestseller. Her ashes are to be strewn in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, where, some said, she was born.' "

"Garbage," said Crumley.

We saw someone on the front porch of the Queen's house and walked up. It was a young woman in her twenties, with long dark hair and Gypsy coloring, wringing her hands, moaning, and letting tears fall, pointing her face toward the front door.

"Awful," she mourned. "Oh, awful, awful."

I opened the front door and stared in.

"No, my God, no."

Crumley came to look in at the desolation.

For the house was completely empty. All the pictures, crystal balls, tarot cards, lamps, books, records, furniture had vanished. Some mysterious van and transfer company had lugged it all away.

I walked into the small kitchen, pulled open drawers. Empty, vacuumed clean. Pantry: no spices, canned fruit. The cupboard was bare, so her poor dog had none.

In her bedroom the closet was crammed with hangers but no tent-size dressing gowns, stockings, shoes.

Crumley and I went out to stare at the young Gypsy woman's face. "I saw it all!" she cried, pointing in all directions. "They stole everything! They're all poor. Excuses! Poor! Across the street, when the police left, they knocked me down, old women, men, kids, yelling, laughing, ran in and out, carrying chairs, drapes, pictures, books. Grab this, grab that! A fiesta! One hour and it was empty. They went to that house over there! My God, the laughs. Look, my hands, the blood! You want Califia's junk? Go knock on doors! You gonna go?"

Crumley and I sat down on either side of her. Crumley took her left hand. I took her right.

"Sonsabitches," she gasped. "Sonsabitches."

"That's about it," said Crumley. "You can go home. There's nothing to guard. Nothing inside."

"She is inside. They took her body, but she's still there. I'll wait until she says go."

We both looked over her shoulder at the screen door and some unseen massive ghost.

"How will you know when she says go?"

The Gypsy wiped her eyes. "I'll know."

"Where are you going?" said Crumley.

Because I was on the walk heading across the street. At the opposite house I knocked.

Silence. I knocked again.

I peered through a side window. I could see shapes of furniture in midfloor, where there should be no furniture, and too many lamps, and rolled carpets.

I kicked the door and cursed and went to the middle of the street and was about to yell at every door when the Gypsy girl came quietly to touch my arm.

"I can go now," she said.

"Califia?"

"Said okay."

"Where to?" Crumley nodded at his car.

She could not stop staring at Califia's home, the center of all California.

"I have friends near the Red Rooster Plaza. Could you-"

"I could," said Crumley.

The Gypsy looked back at the vanishing palace of a queen.

"I will be back tomorrow," she called.

"She knows you will," I said.

We passed Callahan and Ortega, but this time Crumley ignored it.

We were quiet on the way to the plaza named for a rooster of a certain color.

We dropped the Gypsy.

"My God," I said on the way back, "it's like a friend, years ago, died, and the immigrants from Cuernavaca poured in, grabbed his collection of old 1900 phonographs, Caruso records, Mexican masks. Left his place like the Egyptian tombs, empty."

"That's what it's like to be poor," said Crumley.

"I grew up poor. I never stole."

"Maybe you never had a real chance."

We passed Queen Califia's place a final time.

"She's in there, all right. The Gypsy was right."

"She was right. But you're nuts."

"All this," I said. "It's too much. Too much. Constance hands me two wrong-number phone books and flees. We almost drown in twenty thousand leagues of old newspapers. Now, a dead queen. Makes me wonder, is Father Rattigan okay?"

Crumley swerved the car to the curb near a phone booth.

"Here's a dime!"

In the phone booth I dialed the cathedral.

"Is Mister…" I blushed. "Father Rattigan… is he all right?"

"All right? He's at confession!"

"Good," I said foolishly, "as long as the one he's confessing is okay."

"Nobody," said the voice, "is ever okay!"

I heard a click. I dragged myself back to the car. Crumley eyed me like a dog's dinner. "Well?"

"He's alive. Where are we going?"

"Who knows. From here on, this trip is a retreat. You know Catholic retreats? Long silent weekends. Shut la trap. Okay?"

We drove to Venice City Hall. Crumley got out and slammed his door.

He was gone half an hour. When he returned he stuck his head in the driver's-side window and said, "Now hear this, I just took a week's sick leave. And, Jesus, this is sick. We got one week to find Constance, shield St. Vibiana's priest, raise the Lazarus dead, and warn your wife to stop me from strangling you. Nod your head yes."

I nodded.

"Next twenty-four hours you don't speak without permission! Now where are those goddamn phone books?"

I handed him the Books of the Dead.

Crumley, behind the wheel, scowled at them.

"Say one last thing and shut up!"

"You're still my pal!" I blurted.

"Pity," he said, and banged the gas.