Nicole and Moses Maxwell were assembling the carnival crew in one corner of the Venice Hotel lobby when I arrived shortly before nine o’clock. Seeing me, Nicole hurried over with greetings. Pop had told her of my hospital visit, and she plied me with questions about what I thought of his progress, as though somehow my opinions mattered. I told her that the nurse had said she thought he was on the mend. Nicole seemed relieved.
“How’s your other patient doing?” I asked. “Speedo.”
“He’s fine. But his real name is Mr. Earl.” She gave a delighted grin, and I had to laugh. “It’s an old song, right? I asked him.” She gripped Moses Maxwell’s arm as he joined us.
“Mr. Maxwell knows his stuff.”
The jazzman smiled. “That’s a myth I have perpetuated by sprinkling my talk with crossword trivia, and otherwise lyin’ my fool head off. How are you, Mr. Rasmussen?” We shook hands. I was conscious of his bad fingers and adjusted my grip accordingly. “Thank you for booking this hotel for us,” he said. He wasn’t being facetious.
“It isn’t much.”
“If the beds sleep good, I’m satisfied. You ready to mingle with the restless natives?”
I followed them over to the corner of the lobby as people drifted in from smoking outside, and soon about twenty-five people were assembled in couches and overstuffed chairs, others standing nearby. Moses opened the meeting with an update on Pop Sonders’s condition and a report on where things stood with the city on letting the carnival operate; then he opened the floor to discussion.
Penny Bergfors spoke up. “Bad enough we cain’t work,” she drawled, “but without Pop, I got to wonder how long the show can survive.”
“Hold on.” Ray Embry shouldered forward. “That’s the trouble with this whole damned outfit. Pop’s been living in the past. High time we got our act together, get into the present.”
“What kind of present you got in mind, Ray?” Tito Alvarez asked from a wing chair in the corner.
“I say we get moving again, for one thing. Screw this fool city! Sitting around here waiting for something to happen … This is a road show. It’s time we got back on the road.”
There were murmurs of agreement and dissent. I watched Moses Maxwell, trying to read the mood through him. He stood listening, pinching at his little soul patch, not overreacting to the hubbub. Finally he said quietly, “What about Troy Pepper?”
“What about him?” Embry challenged. “He’s got to take his own chances. We’re not doing him any good sitting here. Or ourselves, either.”
“The dude is right,” said a lanky roustabout with tattoos covering both his arms. “If Pepper was level in the first place, maybe Pop never would’ve hired him and none of this would’ve happened.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Penny held up her hands. “Let’s get real, folks. Even if we wanted to go, how can we with Pop in the hospital? He’s our helmsman … our anchor.”
The implications of the metaphor were a little too frightening to work through, but I knew what she meant. She was confused and uncertain; they all were.
“Then maybe we need to put someone else in charge,” Embry said.
“The show ain’t about any one person.”
“What? Replace Pop?” Nicole looked aghast.
“No one’s irreplaceable. Besides, I don’t think he’s been level with us, either.”
“That’s a dirty filthy lie!” Nicole cried.
“Is it?” Embry’s grin was like a joke only he knew the punch line to.
“Come on, girl. Did Sonders ever tell you about the offer he got from an outfit that wanted to buy him out? He ever tell any of you?”
Tito Alvarez pushed up from the chair, his ponytail swaying. “The hell you sayin’, man?”
“This outfit wanted to invest some money in the show. Wanted to upgrade it.”
I caught Moses Maxwell’s eye as he stepped forward, one hand raised in a calming gesture. “I can tell you all about that, and put your minds to rest.” His hand looked like a spider with broken legs. “First place, it wasn’t no genuine offer—just mostly talk. And the people talkin’ wanted to buy the show for chicken feed. If that deal went down, a lot of us would’ve been out of a job long since.”
“That what Sonders told you?” said Embry.
“It’s what I seen and heard for myself.”
“You’d be out of a job, maybe. What are you doing here anyway, Moses? I mean, you were a musician, right? A piano man. What’ve you got to do with a carnival? Want to tell us that? I never figured that one out.” The words came rapidly, like coal clattering down a chute.
Maxwell maintained his dignity, but he was shaken. He licked his lips but said nothing. No one else spoke up, either. Perceiving his advantage, Embry pressed. “Sonders has got reasons why he doesn’t tell us things. Sure, he talks that all-for-one, one-for-all shit, but I think that’s all it is is talk. I mean, hell, bottom line, it’s his show. He’s going to do what’s best for him.” Nicole fidgeted and looked lost, unable to keep up with the caustic flow of words. “Truth is, I don’t think he’s been level with us at all.”
I cleared my throat. “Who here is?” I said.
People turned to where I’d been standing by the wall, out of the way. Embry looked flummoxed for a moment, but he recovered fast. “What’s any of this got to do with you, pal?”
I saw the question rise on the faces of some of the other people, too. I stepped forward. “Who here is level?” I said again.
“What are you, crazy? Everyone here is,” Embry cried.
“Completely level? Right out front about everything?” It bought a
silence. To plug it before it grew too loud, I said, “Okay, form a line over there.” I pointed. “Every one of you who doesn’t have some secret, something to hide, that he’d rather not share with anyone, step over there. Come on, I’ll go first.”
I stood right where I was.
The know-it-all, Embry, marched over. He was a tall man, big in a way that spoke of power underneath the heaviness. For a sticky second, I thought he intended to attack me, but he stopped, laced his arms across his chest, and turned to the others. “Let’s go. Show him.”
In the stillness, the old hotel went on with its life: A desk phone rang, music tinkled faintly from the bar, an elevator hummed.
Penny Bergfors laughed. “Ray, you’re a finer person than I had y’all figured for. Yes, indeed.”
Embry’s face blazed crimson right up to his bare scalp. “Don’t let this two-bit rent-a-cop push us around.” But whatever momentum he had faltered; although there was some muttering in the group, no one else moved to join him. Embry searched their faces. “Alvarez,” he said. “Come on.”
His badgering flickered on for a time, the way a fire will after the fuel source has burned low, but no one joined him, and soon Moses Maxwell and Penny, and even silent Red Fogarty, prevailed on their coworkers to forgo any big decisions for now. Moses promised to keep them updated on Pop Sonders’s condition and got me to agree to speak with Fred Meecham about the city’s cease-operations order. “Now,” Moses said, “it’s late. We’ll talk again when we’re not all running on empty. If anyone’s of a mind to have a nightcap, I’ll buy.”
About half the crew took him up on the offer. I joined him and Nicole and we repaired to the hotel bar, but I imagined that I could feel Embry’s angry eyes drilling me the whole way.
“I betcha this bar hasn’t moved this much juice since Repeal,” Moses Maxwell said over a glass of Hennessy five-star. “What do you think, Mr. Rasmussen?”
“It probably moved more before Repeal,” I said.
We were standing by the door with our glasses—brandy for
Maxwell, bourbon for me. The carnies were hunkered around tables and the ancient oak bar, keeping a bartender busy with drink orders. The tensions of earlier hadn’t been resolved, but for now they seemed to have been set aside. Maybe it was just the prospect of a hotel bed for a change, or the idea that Pop Sonders was going to be okay. I saw Nicole table-hopping, a Shirley Temple in hand, and I realized that everyone liked her and she them. Her function was more complex than I’d first imagined. She was the social glue of the group, a tuning fork that brought cadence, a softener of some of the rough edges of these people. Nicole would have tossed a maraschino cherry at me if I’d tried to say this, but it was there. These people were a family; this fact had been lost on me till now. Although there almost certainly was a hierarchy, with its own pecking order, it wasn’t obvious. Men and women seemed to be equals, as did young and old, and there was energy here that it felt good to be near. Nicole caught my eye and waved. I smiled back.
Moses Maxwell was saying, “There’s always a little … contretemps. Just like in my days playing music. We’d be in some town—shoot, this is fancy compared to most—and hear a train goin’ by, you know, hootin’ out there in the night and, like as not, one of us would say, ‘I believe I hear the old Lackawanna.’ And we’d laugh. That’s what it is, too, y’know? It’s about wanting something bad enough you’re willing to deal with what you got to deal with. I guess Pop’s dream is that little six-letter word for a just-right society.”
“Utopia?”
He chuckled. “I think he knows there ain’t really no way you can do it in the big world, but maybe, if you’re lucky, you can make it turn out in a small way. Only it’s hard work. When you’re just a sideman, you get spared some of that. But when you’re the headman … whew. I know that from when I had my band.”
“But you made some good music,” I said.
“Could’ve made more. We had a contract to record some more, but my fingers didn’t work so good then. I urged the others to carry on, said finding a piano player wouldn’t be hard, but they said no. So that record you got—hang on to it, it’s all there is.” He grew a little somber, though maybe it was just the nostalgia of remembering. I couldn’t imagine anyone being sentimental about having his fingers broken. He mustered a
smile. “Sometimes I see one or two of the old cats, and it don’t go by without someone mentions hearing the old Lackawanna.”
“Is that where you people are now—you folks here?”
“You meanin’ should Pop sell the show?”
“He’s got a lot on his plate. It would be a way of dealing with some of it.”
He sucked his mouth in, as if he were getting ready to blow a lick. The little tuft beneath his lower lip stuck out. “It’s Pop’s call. What he says, I go with.”
Tito Alvarez came over, grinning. He’d taken his hair out of the ponytail and it hung dark and thick to his shoulders. He gestured to us with a beer bottle. “What you distinguished gentlemen drinking? I hate to see grown-up dudes with empty glasses.”
“I’m not crazy about it myself,” I said, “but, alas, I have some things to do. Buy a cerveza for you and whatever Mr. Maxwell wants.” Over his protest I gave Tito a twenty. The three of us shook hands and said good night. As I got outside, Nicole caught up to me.
Her eyes shone. “I said my prayers for Pop, and for all of us. For you, too, Mr. Rasmussen.”
“Thank you.”
Her face clouded. “You think it’s true that God knows the names of every star in the sky?”
“Well … you know the names of all those dogs, don’t you?”
“Do you believe that prayers get answered?”
When I hesitated, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask that. I’m too nosy sometimes.”
“No, it’s fine. I think they probably are answered, but not always in the ways we want them to be.”
Her face unclouded slowly, and she smiled. “Good night, Mr. Rasmussen.”
I got my car, and as I drove past the hotel, I noticed someone emerge from a lighted side exit and start along the sidewalk, peering about as though looking for a taxi. It was Ray Embry. I pulled up, opened the window, and leaned across the seat. “Need a lift someplace?”
He bent to peer in, then straightened at seeing me. “I was hoping to get a cab.”
“Unless you phone ahead, you’re not likely to catch one cruising over here. Get in, I’ll save you a fare.”
He hesitated a moment but then got in. “I’m going back to the carnival if it’s not out of your way. I want to get some things from my trailer.”
Neither of us brought up our earlier differences of opinion. “How’d you get to be a clown?” I asked.
He looked over. “How’d you get to be a private cop?”
“Fair point.”
He grunted. “Being a professional clown isn’t something you fall into. It calls for skills—it’s part mime, part dance. There’s juggling. It’s got a tradition, a time-honored one. The royal courts had clowns, jesters, fools. It was something rulers considered important. I used to believe that making people laugh helped them, made them healthy, made society stronger. Now …” He shook his head. “Clowns aren’t in the mix anymore. People sink themselves in front of the TV night after night and get canned laugh tracks.” He waved a hand at the passing night, where in darkened houses television sets glowed. “I think people are numb to any real joy.”
“Yet you still have a job,” I said.
His expression held sour. “Call it that. Carnivals are a throwback. That hotel’s a run-down rat fest, but my coworkers seem to be delighted to be there. Compared to living on the road, it’s the Ritz.”
There wasn’t anyplace to take it. I stopped for a traffic signal. When we were rolling again, I said, “What about the killing? You don’t seem to be Pepper’s biggest ally.”
He looked at me. “Why should I be? I have no proof, obviously, but it’s certainly a possibility he did it. People in their tawdry sexual relationships and passions are capable of most anything. Still, I suppose it’s passion that keeps someone like you in business.”
We were silent the rest of the way to the fairgrounds. I pulled to the curb and he climbed out. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. He seemed eager to be gone.
“If you like, I can drive you back. I’m in no rush.”
“No. I appreciate it, but I’m going to stay here tonight.”
“All right, then.”
He shut the door.
I drove off and a short distance up the boulevard pulled over and parked. I waited a few minutes, peering back at the mostly darkened cluster of trailers in the big field. I picked out Embry’s Airstream by its rounded contour and a light on inside and kept an eye on it. When I saw the trailer go dark a few minutes later, I wasn’t surprised. Embry emerged, looked around furtively, as if satisfying himself that he was alone, and set off on foot toward the highway. In a moment a cab slowed and drew over, and he got in.