The room was lighted with three fancy, turn-of-the century lamps. Two plush couches faced each other in the center of the room. Behind them was a massive four-poster bed. The walls were draped with tapestries-one a scene of men in feathered hats about to shoot a deer, another a scene of two men with feathered hats whispering while two young women stood giggling at a fountain. A violin lay on one of the couches. A phonograph, an old wind-up thing with a megaphone speaker, sat on an ornate table. The chest of drawers in the corner looked as if it had been designed for a giant with a taste for fancy wedding cakes.
“Props,” he said. “Pulled ’em up here years ago. Gonna turn me in?”
“No,” I said. “You play the violin.”
“Play every damned instrument man invented,” he said proudly. “Even the lyre. Nothing else to do. One instrument a year, night after night. Plenty of music. Plenty of instruments. And I can repair them all. Can play any tune. You name it. Name the instrument and I’ll play the song on it. Even do ragtime on a French horn.”
“‘Sheik of Araby’ on a tuba,” I said.
“Hell, I can do that,” he said. “Do it sitting on a toilet.”
“Projectors,” I said as he looked around the room for either a toilet or a tuba or both. He stopped looking.
“Projectors,” he repeated, turning to me.
“Movie projectors,” I said. “One of them almost killed Miss Bartholomew.”
“Couple of old Edison projectors in the balcony,” he said, picking up his violin. “Can play this thing like a guitar. Listen.”
He started to plunk, and I put my hand out to stop him.
“Where were you fifteen minutes ago?” I asked.
“Where? Here practicing.”
“No one can be as eccentric as you pretend to be.” I looked him directly in the eye.
“Son,” he said, “it is not easy. I’m the harmless old coot. The character every good theater needs. If I didn’t exist, they’d have to go out and cast me.”
“I thought so,” I said.
“Thought so, hell,” Raymond said. “I’m the genuine article. Been playing this role so long I am it. Don’t know where my act begins and ends. Danger of playing any role too long. You want my secret? I was an actor. When this place was a theater, I was an actor in the last show. Quake came and went and I stayed. Didn’t have much money. Didn’t plan to stay. Went out for some roles. Didn’t get them. It just happened.”
“Someone who knows this place has killed a man, tried to kill me and Miss Bartholomew,” I said. “You’re the only one who knows this place that well.”
“Miss Bartholomew,” he said. “Tell my old Granny. I was with the fat guy when she came screaming. Ask him.”
He was right. He had come down the hall with Lundeen seconds after Lorna had come up the stairs after the Phantom … or someone … had tried to strangle her.
“Coming to you, son?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t give up easy.”
“No man worth a brass turd would,” he said.
“Cut it out, Raymond,” I said.
“Told you, I can’t. Lots of people have been nosing around this place since they decided to open it up again,” Raymond said. “That fat guy.”
“He was with you when Miss Bartholomew was attacked, remember?” I said. “Lose him and you lose your alibi.”
“I see what you mean,” he acknowledged, reaching a bony finger to touch an itch just under his nose. “I’ve spent too damn much time alone to make sense. Want a sandwich? I got Prem and stuff in an icebox.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “We’ll be talking again.”
“I’ll practice up for it,” said Raymond with a snaggle-toothed grin.
I was down the second step of the tower when the violin began to play ragtime behind me. I was on the way to the third step when I saw Jesus Ortiz standing in front of me.
“Lost?” I asked pleasantry.
I would have liked an answer, something to bounce off of, but the Deacon Jesus Ortiz did the one thing I would have preferred not to see. He grinned, and the grin was not pretty. His teeth were large and close to white and he looked happy. The bridge of his nose was raw from where it had met the hood of my Crosley the night before. I backed up a step. He didn’t follow.
Behind me Raymond Griffith was playing a Scott Joplin version of “Anything Goes,” no mean trick on a fiddle, but I really couldn’t appreciate it at the time.
Ortiz was wearing a new light gray suit.
“Nice suit,” I tried.
The closest sound I could equate to what Ortiz gave out was the snort of a pregnant seal I once saw in the Griffith Park Zoo.
I backed up. I was running out of back-up room. My back was to Raymond’s door. I reached behind me and knocked as Jesus Ortiz, who had all the time in the world, moved-or rather, hulked-toward me, getting happier with each step. Raymond’s playing grew a little less frenzied.
“What you want?” he called.
“I forgot something,” I said.
“Can’t stop,” Raymond shouted. “The muse has got me.”
There was about five feet of space between Ortiz and me, and through, above, or beyond Raymond’s playing, I could have sworn Ortiz was humming.
There was no room to get past Ortiz, and Raymond was taken by the muse.
“I don’t think Reverend Souvaine would want you …” I began, but Ortiz was shaking his head.
“He would want you to …” I went on.
When Ortiz was close enough to kiss my chin and for me to smell Adam’s Clove on his breath, I threw a right cross to his stomach. He didn’t even bother to block it. My fist hit solid concrete just above the kidney.
I threw a left toward his already tender nose. His shoulder came up and caught the blow. I came up with my right knee. He turned so the kneecap hit his thigh. I was running out of ideas.
Ortiz’s right hand came up and grasped my arm. It did more than hurt.
“You got a mother?” I asked.
He shook his head no.
Raymond stopped playing and complained, “Stop the noise out there, will you? Thirty years I hear nothing but creaking and mice, and wouldn’t you know it, the day I get inspired, a bunch of hooligans set up a circus on my doorstep.”
“Raymond,” I called to him as Ortiz’s left hand came up toward my throat. “Call for help, now.”
“Got no phone,” Raymond bleated. “Got no phone. Got no phone. Told you that. I got nothing in here but what I got in here, and now I don’t have my inspiration.”
Jesus Ortiz’s thick fingers now had a firm grip on my neck, and I was getting a headache. He was definitely humming, but I didn’t know the tune. He pulled my head down to him and put his mouth to my ear.
“I’m gonna pop your eyeballs,” he whispered in a surprisingly high voice.
I took little comfort in the knowledge that he could talk. My head was throbbing.
“Murder,” I gasped.
“Yeah,” he said. “Murder puta.”
“God will …” I groaned.
“God’s will, si,” he said.
I’ll be truthful here. I’m not sure if Deacon Ortiz would have killed me if Jeremy hadn’t appeared on the landing behind him. Maybe he was just planning to cause me great pain and murder Raymond’s inspiration. But there, over the deacon’s shoulder, I saw Jeremy Butler. I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs.
I did hear the door behind me open and Raymond shout, “Begone!”
Ortiz did not see Jeremy, but he did see something in my eyes-hope of salvation-and he saw that my eyes were looking over his shoulder. Without letting me go, he turned. Raymond saw a bald giant moving forward, noticed that a marble slab of a man was about to strangle me, and hastily closed his door.
“I know you,” Ortiz said to Jeremy.
“Wichita, 1934,” said Jeremy. “Baseball park. You wrestled Man Mountain Dean in the headline.”
Ortiz considered. I began to pass out.
“Butler,” he said. “You wrestled my brother, Jaime. You broke Jaime’s shoulder.”
Jeremy ambled slowly forward and reached up toward Ortiz’s left hand, which was now only vaguely visible to me as I started to pass out.