Kirby's Last Circus Page 6

  Kirby nodded understandingly. “Yeah, Dixie, that’s the way it goes—nobody put any faith in those yarns about Jeannette, the Shark Woman, either.”

  Dixie gritted her teeth audibly.

  Kirby said, “Then Jeannette polished off the Cook Brothers.”

  Dixie snapped, “Shut up, Kirby, just shut the hell up!” For twenty minutes she sat silently at the wheel, tooling the BMW south. Then she threw Kirby a sidelong glance. “Jeannette ate the other one?”

  “The other one? Hell, there were five of ’em!”

  Dixie whistled tunelessly through Blister Bend and Jericho Junction before she said, “There’s something downright malevolent about this circus, it’s up to some sort of serious mischief—Gallagher thought so, Jefferson thinks so, and I’ll bet my left tit on it!”

  “What put you people on this Grizzly Gulch tack in the first place?”

  “The mysterious radio signals, of course—they come from Grizzly Gulch and they made us perk our ears, but they were a vague thing, nothing that we could move on. Then we captured a KGB operative, a real biggie named Boris Chekov—he was off the KGB’s top shelf, right up there with Caviar, Kisarze, and Tofchitsky! During Chekov’s interrogation, he muttered something about the Admiral Doldrum Circus, and when we learned that the circus had checked into Grizzly Gulch in April, we knew we had something—we didn’t know exactly what we had but we knew we had something!”

  “That was all Chekov gave you—just the name of the circus?”

  “Well, you see, Chekov was incapable of divulging additional information—he seemed terribly bewildered—kept babbling something about Stalingrad, calling for artillery support and stretcher-bearers—it was unreal!” Dixie spun the BMW into a long winding driveway leading through a stand of pin-oaks to a blacktopped parking lot and a low, rambling, red-brick building. A sign atop its roof said REST AND RECREATION MOTEL, RESTAURANT & LOUNGE—MAX LIVERSHANK AT THE CONSOLE OF THE HAMMOND ORGAN. Dixie said, “We’re five miles out of Grizzly Gulch so we’ll spend the night here.”

  Kirby said, “But it’s early and what’s another five miles? We’d might as well take it right on in.”

  Dixie shook her head. “No, there are important matters to be discussed, and there’ll be no ball game tonight. Tomorrow evening the Grizzly Gulch No Sox open a series against the Kelly’s Corners Shillelaghs—Kelly’s Corners will be heavily favored, by the way.”

  Kirby said, “Why?”

  Dixie froze him with a violet-eyed stare. She said, “Kirby, do you want to take me to bed or do you prefer to sit there and prattle incessantly about baseball, of all things?”

  Ten

  The motel room was dark and a lilac-scented breeze rippled the curtains at its open windows. Shortly before ten o’clock, Dixie sat up in bed, lit a pair of her cork-tipped cigarettes, passed one to Kirby, and said, “I have an excellent idea!”

  Kirby said, “Well, look, before we get to your next excellent idea, maybe I’d better recover from your last excellent idea.”

  Dixie rumpled his hair with possessive affection. Over the years, Kirby had noticed that most of them do things like that during the second occasion. She said, “Why don’t we just scoot down to the lounge for a nightcap?”

  Kirby said, “How many reasons you want?”

  “How many you got?”

  “Four, one of which is raw, two of which ache, and the last of which is dragging.”

  “I know, but the girl at the desk was telling me that Max Livershank has virtuosic versatility.”

  “Well, that’s what he gets for fooling around. A man gotta be mighty careful these days!”

  “I want to see if he can play ‘Meditation.’ I just love ‘Meditation’!”

  “I played it once, but I kept landing on ‘Go to Jail.’”

  She gave him a reproving sharp slap on his upturned hindquarters, another sure sign that it’s the second time. She said, “‘Meditation’ is a selection from the opera ‘Thaïs.’ We’ll take a short breather in the lounge and when we come back, we’ll be able to get at this in earnest.”

  Kirby stared at Dixie’s silhouette. He said, “What do you mean, ‘We’ll be able to get at this in earnest’? Are you by any chance inferring that we’ve spent the last five hours practicing?”

  The silhouette sighed a patient sigh. It leaned over Kirby. It stroked his stomach. It nibbled on his neck. It whispered, “C’mon, let’s go have that nightcap.”

  Kirby struggled to a sitting position. He said, “I wonder if Max Livershank can play ‘Beyond the Sunset.’”

  Dixie turned on the nightstand lamp and smiled at him. She was something to behold—her perfect dark-nippled breasts jutting from the sweet shadows of a body designed expressly for the leading of adult males down primrose paths, her violet eyes gleaming starrily. She took his hand and her scent of roses and spice spun a numbing web around his beleaguered senses. She said, “Birch Kirby, you’re out of this world! I’m expecting great things from you!”

  “Well, I hope you ain’t expecting them tonight!”

  “Don’t try to throw me off with that misdirection crap—you know that we’re onto you! You’re an actor of Academy Award potential! You didn’t quite get by Jim Gallagher, but you’d have fooled me any old day in the week! Under that babe-in-the-woods veneer, you’re probably a cold-blooded, ruthless bastard, but, I swear to God, I like you, anyway!”

  Kirby shrugged. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I never really believed that we’re in bed because we hated each other’s guts.”

  Dixie took his cigarette and killed it. She snuffed out her own. She turned out the nightstand lamp. She pushed him down, pinning his shoulders to the mattress. She stretched cat-like on top of him, warm satin, her breath hot and fragrant in his mouth. She nuzzled his face and murmured, “All right, Mr. Chameleon, I’ll probably be able to make it through the night without ‘Meditation.’”

  Kirby said, “I’m not familiar with that number.”

  Dixie was wriggling downward on him, clutching his shoulders, arching her glorious body, pulling her knees under her, lowering her hindquarters slowly but relentlessly until she’d bottomed out, then gasping, “Oh, it’s wonderful!”

  Kirby said, “I just can’t place it.”

  Dixie was squirming, her buttocks rolling, her breasts heaving, her tight belly expanding and contracting in bellows fashion. She said, “Beautiful, beautiful!”

  Kirby said, “Opera stuff doesn’t do too much for me, but this one might be okay.”

  Dixie was lurching wildly, side to side, back, forward, up and down, her eyes glazed, her mouth open, her breathing loud and without rhythm. She downshifted to a slow, circular grind, her downward pressure increasing, her pace diminishing in brief stages until suddenly she froze, clamping him between her knees and groaning, “Ahh-h-h-h-h, God, it’s EXQUISITE!!!”

  Kirby said, “Whistle a few bars—maybe I’ll recognize it.”

  Eleven

  They pulled into the north end of Grizzly Gulch on a bumpy macadam road that had three lanes, two lanes southbound, one north. Dixie said, “We’d better stop for gas—we may leave here with the KGB hot on our heels.” She whipped the BMW into Lem Stuttart’s Double Octane Station, a dreary installation on the west side of the highway. Lem Stuttart’s Double Octane Station featured a pair of rusty white pumps, two drowsing yellow mongrel dogs, and one angular, grizzled attendant wearing a greasy plaid shirt and faded blue jeans with ragged holes in both knees. The attendant had been tinkering under the hood of an ancient lopsided blue Chevrolet pickup truck, the bed of which was swarming with flies. Now, while the BMW was taking fuel, Kirby motioned to the attendant and said, “Say, Lem, tell me something.”

  The attendant frowned. He said, “I ain’t Lem. I’m Luke.”

  “Where’s Lem?”

  Luke shrugged. “Well, he ain’t here, so he must be some other place.”

  Kirby nodded. “Anyway, Luke, how come this road got two lanes going south and onl
y one going north?”

  Luke hauled out a greenish-hued plug of tobacco and attacked it with snaggled brown teeth. He said, “Don’t reckon as how that’s no brain-buster—we gits twicet as much southbound traffic as we gits northbound traffic.” He directed a thin steam of tobacco juice into the V-shaped opening in the top of a discarded Pennzoil can. His accuracy was uncanny.

  Kirby frowned vague understanding and glanced at the decrepit Chevy pickup truck. “Guess that old gal’s just about over the hill.”

  “Oh, no, she ain’t—she’s right in her prime! Belongs to Seth Dooley. I was just doin’ a speck of work on her differential.”

  “Her differential—under the hood?”

  “Yeah, Seth modified her some. Seth’s the Butterville postman.”

  Kirby sniffed the balmy morning air of Grizzly Gulch and grimaced. He said, “By the way, is what’s in the back of that truck what it smells like is in the back of that truck?”

  Luke knocked a large green bottle-fly ass over appetite with a torrent of tobacco juice. “Well, if it smells like half chicken droppin’s an’ half cow manure, then it’s what it smells like it is.”

  Kirby said, “But, good God, man, surely Seth Dooley doesn’t haul that awful stuff around when he delivers the Butterville mail!”

  “Why, that don’t make no never-mind a-tall! Folks out Butterville way don’t know manure from apple butter, so Seth just tells ’em it’s apple butter.” Luke glanced at the gasoline pump, then at Dixie. “That gonna be twenny-three dollars an’ fourteen cents, ma’am.”

  Dixie handed him a twenty and a five and drove away smiling. A hundred yards down the road she said, “Kirby, have you ever noticed the profound logic of people who live in rural communities?”

  Kirby thought about it before saying, “Yeah, but until now I didn’t know the right name for it.”

  Twelve

  By and large, hotel desk clerks are the most blasé individuals on the planet. The average desk clerk can assign a room to a nine-foot polar bear armed with a Browning automatic rifle and not blink once during the process. Kirby was positive that he’d be able to spot a hotel desk clerk during the Second Coming of Christ. He’d be the guy who was yawning. The desk clerk at the Grizzly Gulch Hotel promised to be no exception to the rule. He stared dully as Kirby dropped his battered cardboard suitcase to make inquiries, but at the mention of Matilda Richwell, Kirby noticed that a corner of the desk clerk’s mouth twitched perceptibly. He picked up the phone, punched a couple or three buttons, spoke briefly, and listened. He eased the phone back into its cradle and said, “Matilda Richwell is in Room 222 and she’ll advise as to when you should come up—Matilda’s in conference with the general manager of the Kelly’s Corners Shillelaghs—she’s trying to work out a trade for a shortstop.” His voice was unsteady and there were little beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. “You’re acquainted with Matilda, sir?”

  Kirby shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  “Oh, sir, you’d know! When one has met Matilda Richwell, one never forgets!” He arranged a few papers on the desk and Kirby thought he detected a rather un-desk clerklike tremor in his hands. He stacked his papers and said, “This may directly attributable to the fact that Matilda Richwell is unforgettable!” His eyes had grown feverish and flecks of spittle had clustered on his chin. “Sir, I could spot Matilda Richwell during the Second Coming of Christ! She’d be the woman tearing Christ’s robe off.”

  A big man came reeling down the stairs. His bulging eyes were glassy, his shirt was in tatters, the front of his T-shirt was missing, and there was a long streak of lipstick just north of his navel. He moved with considerable haste, glancing in many directions simultaneously, like a termite at an aardvark convention, and Kirby was quick to step clear of his route. When the man had stumbled across the lobby and through the exit, Kirby said, “Who the hell was that?”

  “That, sir, was the general manager of the Kelly’s Corners Shillelaghs.” The telephone jingled, the desk clerk picked it up, mumbled something into the mouthpiece, and nodded to Kirby. “You may go up now, sir.” He made the sign of the cross.

  Kirby watched this ritual with suspicious eyes. He said, “You’re Catholic?”

  “Oh, no, sir, I’m of Buddhist persuasion.”

  Kirby shrugged and headed for the stairs. On the second floor he located room 222 in a dim, dusty, red-carpeted corridor. He sucked in a deep breath and knocked lightly on the door. It opened instantly. Matilda Richwell was seventy-two, all right, every minute of it. She was a small, wizened, white-haired, flat-chested, sparrow-legged woman who might have weighed sixty-five pounds if she’d been carrying a twenty-five pound sledgehammer. She peered at Kirby through pop-bottle spectacle lenses and her welcoming smile would have frightened a bull mastadon half out of his wits. She wore a skin-tight black dress slit to the armpits on both sides and she was smoking a crooked El Furor cigar, the kind that had nearly killed Kirby when he’d been fifteen years old. She took a generous belt from a pint of Old Cripple Creek Deluxe Sour Mash Whisky, wiped her mouth in Kirby’s direction. Kirby threw up his hands defensively. He said, “For God’s sake, be careful how you handle that stuff! A guy in Chicago dropped a quart of it and struck oil!”

  Matilda Richwell grinned a silent, toothless grin and motioned for him to be seated. Kirby parked on a sofa, squeezing between a March copy of Sex Illustrated and a May copy of Sex Illustrated. He dug nervously for a cigarette, found one, got it going, and said, “Ms. Richwell, I’m your new bullpen catcher.”

  Matilda Richwell sighed, “Ah, yes!” Her faded eyes were flickering like twin fluorescent bulbs. She cleared her throat, just a trifle too loudly, Kirby thought. She seated herself on an arm of an overstuffed chair directly opposite the sofa. She crossed her legs and it became immediately apparent that Matilda Richwell wore no skivvies. She said, “Well, thank heavens, you’ve arrived! Our previous bullpen catcher has sought employment elsewhere. Incidentally, he was completely unsatisfactory.”

  “How’s that, Ms. Richwell?”

  “He was extremely reticent about making his nightly reports!”

  Kirby blinked. “Nightly reports?”

  “Yes—reports concerning our relief corps—you know, dearie, whose control is ragged, whose fastball isn’t hopping, whose breaking stuff is hanging—things of that nature.”

  Kirby nodded. “And to whom are these nightly reports made?”

  Matilda Richwell smiled a melon-patch coyote smile. She said, “Well, dearie, we simply can’t place an additional burden on the shoulders of our field manager, now can we? Bucky Kilroy is experiencing difficulty enough as things now stand—our starting rotation and our shortstop have the poor darling nearly beside himself and wisdom would dictate that you spare him additional grief and bring such problems to my attention—after all, the buck does stop here!” She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, giving Kirby an excellent view of where a great many bucks had stopped. “This arrangement will enable us to reach climaxes, err-r-r, conclusions in complete privacy.” She slithered from the chair-arm to approach Kirby, a dribble of saliva gleaming at a corner of her mouth. She reached for him the way a peregrine falcon reached for a hummingbird. She ripped his shirt open and buttons flew like hailstones. She tore out the front of his T-shirt. She stooped to kiss him lingeringly just above his navel. She said, “Welcome to the Grizzly Gulch No Sox, dearie!”

  Kirby juked left, deked right, and left Matilda Richwell’s sofa like a quarter horse leaves the starting gate. He found the door, threw it open, sprinted the length of the hall, and went down the stairs three steps at a time. He walked briskly through the lobby, throwing a baleful glance at the desk clerk. The desk clerk held up a detaining hand. “Your luggage, sir—you’re leaving your luggage in the lobby!”

  Kirby said, “The Germans left theirs in Russia, didn’t they?”

  The desk clerk’s voice faded behind him. “Yes, but the Germans were terrified, sir!”

  In an investig
atory career that had never known a zenith, Birch Kirby had stumbled from nadir to nadir, and this was the granddaddy of the bunch. He glanced at his watch. He’d been in Grizzly Gulch less than half-an-hour.

  Thirteen

  Winded, unnerved, and badly in need of a bracer, Kirby put in at a little side-street tavern just a block south of the Grizzly Gulch Hotel. The watering hole, Brady’s Corncrib by name, suited Kirby perfectly because he was a side-street tavern creature by nature, preferring the smaller, more intimate places to the louder ones usually found on main thoroughfares. Brady’s Corncrib was a cozy cove, quiet and spotlessly clean, and there wasn’t a soul in it save for a paunchy, plaid-shirted, white-aproned bartender who teetered precariously atop a wobbly barstool, stringing bright-colored ribbons and balloons along the top of the back-bar mirror. He waved to Kirby and returned laboriously to floor-level, wheezing, “Howdy, neighbor—just getting ready for the holiday.” He had a hearty, booming voice, and he reminded Kirby a great deal of an aging walrus.

  Kirby flipped rapidly through his mental calendar. “Yeah, Fourth of July’s just around the corner.”

  The barkeep shook his head. “Fourth of July? Man, Fourth of July ain’t nothin’ compared to Smokey Abe Matthewson Day! Smokey Abe Matthewson Day comes this month, in June!”

  Kirby frowned. “Smokey Who-the-hell Day? There ain’t no holidays in June.”

  “Hey, don’t you never ever tell that to no old Grizzly Gulcher!” He was staring at Kirby’s buttonless shirt. He said, “What happened—you run astraddle of that lion out at the circus?”

  “My lawn-mower ran amok. What lion out at the circus?”