Hollywood Gothic Read Online Free PDF Page B

away.
    “You’re Bandersnatch,” one of the smaller boys said.
    “Frumious Bandersnatch,” another said, slurring the words. There was something off-center in the scene, but Challis couldn’t pin it down.
    “Listen, you guys,” Ralph said calmly, as if lecturing a group of kindergarten children. “Go police the area. We need twigs and sticks for the fire. And snow … here, take the pan, collect snow in it. And put your candy wrappers in your pocket. No littering, or I’ll bury you at the back of this cave. You got that? Okay, get going.” He waited, taking little swallows of coffee, while the boys jumbled quietly out into the cold. Ralph was the top kick, and the rest of the kids acted like boot-camp recruits. When he and Challis were alone, he waved some smoke away and said, “You want a cigar?” He reached for the backpack. “My dad smuggles these things in from Cuba—”
    Challis began to chortle, felt the roar of laughter growing. He remembered suddenly that he’d believed at first that they were angels. And now he’d met them and he still didn’t know what they were, but, my God, there was coffee and a warm fire and Penthouse and candy bars, and now, beyond all the boundaries of imagination, a Cuban cigar. Maybe he was dead. Maybe heaven was just a bit more primitive than he’d expected.
    “We saw the plane go down, see? So we were heading that way, thinking somebody might’ve got out, see? Some of my men, well, you seen ’em—little gimpy there, some of ’em, right? So I keep what passes for their minds—just a joke, heh, heh—occupied with a little singing, a little … well, you know, what they say. A little laugh, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants … just a joke, heh, heh.”
    Ralph got a cigar for himself, lit it, and looked at it appreciatively. “Yeah, I been smoking these things since I was eleven. I’m thirteen and a half now, see?”
    “There’s something funny here …”
    Ralph smiled slowly.
    “I know,” Challis said. “You’re doing Eddie Robinson—”
    “ Key Largo, ” Ralph said, nodding. “Been working on it since I was ten. I used to do Benny and Cagney, and my Kirk Douglas wasn’t bad, ’cause he’s got a kind of high voice. That’s why my Peck is so bad … you gotta get the deep voice. Anyway, my Robinson is so good it’s all I do anymore.”
    “How’s your Ralph Halliday?”
    “Very funny. I haven’t done Ralph Halliday in a long time, see? I’ve forgotten how. Nobody any good does Ralph Halliday … it’s like Benjamin Franklin, nobody does him. Ralph Halliday! A nothing, a kid, and I don’t do kids.” He blew an arrow of smoke toward the entrance to the cave where the brightness had already given way to dark clouds and the beginnings of either snow or sleet.
    In the silence, with only the wind whirring outside, they heard the eight o’clock newscast from Los Angeles.
    “And the record rainstorms show no signs of lessening in the next few days, which is bad news for all you residents of Malibu and the canyons all the way from Bel Air and Beverly Glen to Laurel. Foothill Drive is blocked with mud as of the moment, and Pacific Coast Highway, opened at noon yesterday, is already blocked again with overnight mudslides.
    “In the mountains the rain has turned to snow again, and in the Arrowhead-Puma Point area we’ve got a couple of human-interest stories in the news this morning. Rick Wallace was on his way up the mountain last night but didn’t make it. The roads are completely snow-blocked, not open to any traffic, so all we can tell you is that both the plane carrying convicted wife-killer Toby Challis and the camping party of retarded children from St. Christopher’s School are up on the mountain and out of contact with the rest of the world. The small aircraft carrying Challis and four other passengers and crew radioed that it was going down in the storm yesterday afternoon, and nothing has been heard since … the little