Let's All Kill Constance Read Online Free PDF

don't. Let's see."
    He put the car in gear and we went fast, to see.

CHAPTER TWELVE

    WE drove up near Queen Califia's Psychic Research Lodge, dead center of Bunker Hill. Crumley gave it a sour eye. Then I nodded to one side and he saw what to him was a lovely sight: CALLAHAN AND ORTEGA FUNERAL PARLOR.
    That raised his spirits. "It's like a homecoming," he admitted.
    Our jalopy stopped. I got out.
    "You coming in?" I said.
    Crumley sat staring out the windshield, hands on the steering wheel, as if we were still moving. "How come," he said, "everything seems downhill with us?"
    "You coming in? I need you."
    "Outta the way."
    He was halfway up the steep concrete steps and then the cracked cement walk before he stopped, surveyed the big white dilapidated bird cage of a house, and said, "Looks like the half bakery where they bake your misfortune cookies."
    We continued up the walk. On the way we met a cat, a white goat, and a peacock. The peacock flirted its thousand eyes, watching us pass. We made it to the front door. When I knocked, an unseasonable blizzard of paint snowflakes rained on my shoes.
    "If that's what holds this joint up, it won't be long," observed Crumley.
    I rapped on the door with my knuckles. Inside I heard what sounded like a massive portable safe being trundled across a hardwood floor. Something heavy was shoved up against the other side of the door.
    I raised my hand again, but a high sparrow voice inside cried, "Go away!"
    "I just want—"
    “Go away!”
    "Five minutes," I said. "Four, two, one, for God's sake. I need your help."
    "No," the voice shrilled, "I need yours."
    My mind spun like a Rolodex. I heard the mummy. I echoed him.
    "You ever wonder where the name California came from?" I said.
    Silence. The high voice lowered to almost a whisper. "Damn."
    Three sets of locks rattled.
    "Nobody knows that about California. Nobody."
    The door opened a few inches.
    "Okay, give," the voice said.
    A hand like a great plump starfish thrust out.
    "Put it there!"
    I put my hand in hers.
    "Turn it over."
    I turned it, palm up.
    Her hand seized it.
    "Calmness."
    Her hand massaged mine; her thumb circumnavigated the lines on my palm.
    "Can't be," she whispered.
    More quiet motions as she thumbed the pads under my fingers.
    "Is," she sighed.
    And then, "You remember being born!"
    "How did you know that?"
    "You must be the seventh son of a seventh son!"
    "No," I said, "just me, no brothers."
    "My God." Her hand jumped in mine. "You're going to live forever!"
    "No one does."
    " You will. Not your body. But what you do. What do you do?"
    "I thought my life was in your hands."
    She let out a breathless laugh.
    "Jesus. An actor? No. Shakespeare's bastard son."
    "He had no sons."
    "Melville, then. Herman Melville's by-blow."
    "Wish it were true."
    "Is."
    I heard the great weight behind the door roll back on creaking wheels. The portal drifted wide.
    I saw an immense woman in an immense crimson velvet queen's robe receding on roller wheels in a metal throne across the hardwood floor to the far side of the room. She stopped by a table on which rested not one, but four crystal balls, coruscant with light from a green-and-amber Tiffany lamp. Queen Califia, astrologer, palmist, phrenologist, past and futurist, sank inside three hundred mountainous pounds of too-too-solid flesh, her stare flashing X rays. A vast iron safe hulked in the shadows.
    "I don't bite."
    I stepped in. Crumley followed.
    "But leave the door open," she added.
    I heard the peacock scream in the yard and dared to hold out my other hand.
    Queen Califia reared back as if burned.
    "You know Greene, the novelist?" she gasped. "Graham Greene?"
    I nodded.
    "Wrote about a priest who lost faith. Then witnessed a miracle he himself had caused. The shock at his renewed faith almost killed him."
    "So?"
    "So." She stared at my hand as if it were disconnected from my arm. "Lord."
    "Is it happening to you?" I said. "What happened to that priest?"
    "Oh, God!"
    "Did you