Gargantua was now definitely interested in whoever was in his cage and was standing in front of me, looking down. I thought I heard other sounds, footsteps, maybe even words in the tent, but they couldn’t get through to me. Nothing could get through to me but that dark face over mine, looking curious and benevolent. I thought I heard the cage door opening, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think of moving. I couldn’t even think when Gargantua decided to start pounding on his chest. It sounded like a half-empty oil drum echoing to eternity.
I nodded my head in appreciation at the skill and artistry of his chest pounding. He pranced around the cage a few times, still pounding his chest.
“Really nice,” I said to him with an admiring and idiotic shake of my head. “Henry,” I shouted and glanced at the door of the cage. It was definitely open. A voice beyond it whispered, “Come on.” I slid a few inches toward it, and Gargantua stopped and roared.
“Just go on pounding,” I said to him softly. “Go on.”
But there was to be no going on. He showed his teeth and took a step toward me I didn’t like. The door to the cage flew open and banged, metal against metal. Gargantua turned to the sound, and I crawled toward the door on hands and knees.
While a great warm hand grabbed at my slithering back, leaving a print which would probably stay for weeks, something else leaped into the cage. I tumbled through the cage door to the ground and turned to see Jeremy Butler facing Gargantua. The ape definitely looked puzzled. There had probably never been anyone in his cage before, and now he had a changing of the guard of mad humans. His hand went up slowly toward Jeremy while a low growl came from deep in his dark stomach.
Jeremy’s right fist came up quickly, catching the gorilla in the nose and right eye. Gargantua staggered back in surprise. He was the one who was supposed to slap creatures around. Hadn’t we read the posters?
In the instant it took him to recover and lunge for Jeremy, the former wrestler and present poet had dived out of the cage door. Several hands, not mine, pushed the door shut behind him, and Jeremy turned and rammed the lock shut. The cage shook as Gargantua battered the door in rage and bellowed in anger.
Gunther, Shelly, and Jeremy stood looking at me. Henry was seated on the rung of the two-bar ladder that led up to the cage.
“He liked you,” said Henry toward my general direction. I had propped myself up against the nearby lion cage. “All that beating on the chest. Liked you. Or maybe he wanted to tear you up. Hard to tell with gor-yellas. Like people.”
Gargantua was going on with the ferocity of one who has been cheated out of dessert or lost his high school sweetheart. I wasn’t sure of how he viewed me. We hadn’t had much time to talk.
“Toby,” said Gunther, “the police are looking for you. We suggest you make a departure.”
“We gotta get the hell out of here, Tobe,” Shelly whined.
I looked at Jeremy, who nodded his head in agreement. Jeremy put an arm under mine and started me toward the door.
Behind us, Henry was getting the world confused even further.
“Franklin D. said something about gor-yellas and not getting into cages tonight,” he mused. “Franklin D., every time he is on the radio says I am his friend. Friend to the President of the United States, Henry Yew.”
We made it to the outside, and I stood on my feet, breathing in as much air as I could. “Thanks,” I said.
“I wonder,” said Jeremy in response, “if I could have downed him. He has strength but no real sense of leverage. Ultimately it would have been unfair. He made no contract with me to fight, and I had, in his eyes, invaded what little private space he has.”
“You make him sound reasonable,” I said. “Maybe you should be Secretary of State.”
Jeremy’s shoulders went up in a shrug.
We ambled forward with Gunther, for no reason I could see, in the lead. There were a few voices from wagons, some faint animal sounds, and us hurrying toward what I assumed was Shelly’s car.
“I think I know who the killer is,” I said.
“Perhaps,” said Gunther, “but it will provide you no service if no one chooses to listen to you.”
It was once again, as Gunther always was, reasonable. I had the vague idea that I would go somewhere, sleep, think for a few hours, and make Mirador and the Rose and Elder circus what they were before, while Franklin D. did the same with the rest of the world.
We made it to Kelly’s. He was there and looking none too happy.
“Are you all right?” he said while I got out of what remained of my clown costume and into my last pair of trousers, a shirt, and my gray sweater with the brown reindeer on it.
“Let’s go,” urged Shelly.
“I’m fine,” I told Kelly.
“Sorry I got you into this,” he said, looking somewhat like Willie even without the makeup.
“It goes with the job,” I said.
“I want you to get out of this,” he said. “Just take care of yourself and send me a bill.”
“I’ll send you that bill,” I said, “after I catch a killer. I’ll be in touch.” And out the door I went, followed by my faithful band of merry men from Los Angeles forest. “This handcuff has to come off,” I said as we hurried in the general direction of Shelly’s car.
“Easy enough,” said the Sheriff of Nottingham, stepping out from behind a tent with a very large shotgun in his hands. We stopped. Behind us stepped Alex, also holding a shotgun.
“You shoot from there,” I said, “and you’ll kill each other.”
“And you in the cross fire,” said Nelson evenly, his white hat over his eyes.
“That hat doesn’t make you a good guy,” I said.
“Shut up, Toby,” whispered Shelly. “Do what they say.”
“I know who killed the Tanuccis,” I went on with more confidence than I felt.
Alex took a step up behind us, and Nelson stood his ground.
“So do we,” said Nelson. “Just put up your hands, all of you. You too, big fella and little fella, or maybe you won’t have any hands to put up.”
“I think,” said Jeremy, lifting his hands and whispering to me, “we try to take them now. If they get you back to …”
“No,” I said to him and then to Nelson, “OK. Let’s go. You’ve got me.”
“Indeed, indeed,” said Nelson, rocking on his heels. “I have a whole menagerie, a regular conspiracy of freaks.”
“You,” said Gunther indignantly, stepping forward, “are a semiliterate dunderkopf.”
“Sez you, peewee,” Nelson answered. “All of you just move along slow and sweet, like the little girls at the Catholic school in Palm Hills, and we will be friends.”
We moved in a single line with our hands up through the circus grounds and to a truck on the dirt road.
“Into the back of the truck,” said Nelson. “I’m going to drive, and Alex is going to be in the car right behind. We are going to go very slowly, and if one of you happens to fall out of the truck on the way back, there is a very great chance of an accident involving you and Alex’s car. We no longer have a police car. It met with a slight accident, the nature of which we will demonstrate on the person of Mr. Peters.”
“You have a way with words, Nelson,” I said, getting into the back of the truck.
Gunther had to suffer the indignity of being put up on the truck by Jeremy. Shelly needed the same help, but he didn’t see it as indignity. He was too busy blaming me for his troubles.
“I’m sorry, Gunther,” I said.
“You did not bring this to pass,” said Gunther, trying to keep himself and his wardrobe clean as he stood holding onto a piece of rope. Jeremy made himself confortable and kept his eyes on Alex as we drove.
“I don’t know how you talk me into these things,” said Shelly, cleaning his glasses on his dirty jacket. “Mildred is not a fool. She told me something would happen if I came here. Mildred went to college like me. She had courses in things like philosophy. I should have listened to her. I’m a dentist.”