The Graveyard Game Read Online Free PDF

brushing cocoa powder off his lapels. “Where was I?”
    “That thing you were going to tell me about,” Lewis replied from the floor, where he was on his hands and knees searching for his chair.
    “Yeah. Well, see, I don’t think Mendoza’s been deactivated. And I’ll tell you why.”
    “I’m glad we’re doing Theobromos,” said Lewis as his head reappeared above the level of the table. “I don’t think I could bear to discuss this if we weren’t, you know? I just think I’d cry and cry.” He drank most of his hot chocolate in a gulp.
    “Me too.” Joseph lifted his mug and quaffed mightily as well. “But this is okay. So. You ever go over to Catalina Island?”
    Lewis blinked, remembering.
    “Once or twice. Second-unit work. Who was I stunt-doubling for? Was it Fredric March or Richard Barthelmess? I know I’ve been over there. Go on.”
    “You remember the big white hotel? It’s not there anymore, they tore it down in the sixties, but back then it was brand-new.” Joseph sighed, remembering. He reached into the souvenir bag and pulled out another bar, unwrapping it absentmindedly.
    “Big white hotel. Right.” Lewis frowned solemnly. “Oh! The Hotel Saint Catherine. I remember now, because one used to be able to get, uh . . .”
    “Yeah, liquor in the bar, because there were bootleggers all over the place.” Joseph looked around on the tabletop, trying to see where his chocolate had gone. “Did I eat that already? Christ.”
    “I hope you’re leaving me some of the ones without almonds.”
    “Uh-huh. So I was over there in 1923. I was trying to corner somebody, Chaplin or Stan Laurel or I forget who, to get him interested in a deal with Paramount.”
    “Was he?” Lewis drank the rest of his hot chocolate and signaled to the counterman for more.
    “Interested? Hell no, complete waste of time. But it was a job. So I’m at the bar, see? And I’m talking up a great line, hoping to make the guy sorry he’s not a player, you know, and I glance over into the dining room and—there she is.” Joseph gulped. Tears started in his eyes. He reached blindly for his hot chocolate and drank the rest of it.
    “Who?”
    “Mendoza. I’m telling you, Lewis. Sitting at a table in the restaurant. Sleeveless dress, peach silk with a bead fringe on the skirt, white sun hat, string of pearls. She had a glass of white wine in front of her. So did he.”
    “Who?”
    “The guy,” said Joseph, and put his head down on the table and began to weep. It’s disconcerting when a baritone weeps. Lewis was at a loss. He looked up as the fountain attendant, who had given up trying to get their attention, approached with their next hot chocolates.
    “Um, I think my friend has had enough,” he enunciated with care. “You can leave both of those, though, I’ll drink them.”
    “Can you drive?” said Joseph foggily.
    “Uh . . . no.”
    “Well, I can’t.”
    “That’s okay,” said Lewis. “We’ll just take a cable car.”
    “I live in Sausalito.”
    “Oh.” Lewis drank half of one of the hot chocolates. “Cable cars don’t go across the Golden Gate, do they?”
    Joseph shook his head, reached for the cocoa powder again.
    “Oh, busboy!” Lewis stood up and nearly fell over. “Would you call us a taxi, please? Thank you. There we go! All settled. So, anyway. The girl in the peach silk dress. She turned out not to be Mendoza, obviously.”
    “Yeah. No, it was her. I’m telling you, Lewis, I saw her!”
    “Who was the fellow she was with?”
    “That was what I couldn’t dope out.” Joseph rose up on one elbow, staring at him. He mopped tears and cocoa powder from his face with a paper napkin. “He shouldn’t have been there. Couldn’t have been, the big arrogant bastard! But they both, looked up and saw me. Recognized me, I’d swear. I pushed away from the bar and went through the crowd to get to them, but that was a hell of a crowded watering hole, and by the time I got into the restaurant,