The McCone Files Read online

  “That long ago?”

  “Uh-huh. They were the cream of the crop back then. Most of the humor in the Middle Ages was kind of basic; they loved buffoons, jesters, simpletons, that sort of thing. But they served the purpose of making people see how silly we really are.”

  I took the deuce he’d just discarded, then lay down my hand to show I had gin. Tilby frowned and slapped down his cards; nothing matched. Then he grinned. “See what I mean—I’m silly to take this game so seriously.”

  I swept the cards together and began to shuffle. “You seem to know a good bit about the history of clowning.”

  “Well, I’ve done some reading along those lines. You’ve heard the term commedia dell’arte?

  “Yes.”

  “It appeared in the late 1500s, an Italian brand of the traveling comedy troupe. The comedians always played the same role—a Harlequin or a Pulcinella or a Pantalone. Easy for the audience to recognize.”

  “I know what a Harlequin is, but what are the other two?”

  “Pantalone is a personification of the overbearing father figure. A stubborn, temperamental old geezer. Pulcinella was costumed all in white, usually with a dunce’s cap; he assumed various roles in the comedy—lawyer, doctor, servant, whatever—and was usually greedy, sometimes pretty coarse. One of his favorite tricks was urinating onstage.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “Fortunately we’ve become more refined since then. The British contributed a lot, further developing the Punch and Judy shows. And of course the French had their Figaro. The Indians created the Vidushaka—a form of court jester. The entertainers at the Chinese court were known as Chous, after the dynasty in which they originated. And Japan has a huge range of comic figures appearing in their Kyogen plays—the humorous counterpart of the Noh play.”

  “You really have done your homework.”

  “Well, clowning’s my profession. Don’t you know about the history of yours?”

  “What I know is mostly fictional; private investigating is more interesting in books than in real life, I’m afraid.”

  “Gin.” Tilby spread his cards on the table. “Your deal. But back to what I was saying, it’s the more contemporary clowns that interest me. And I use the term ‘clown’ loosely.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, do you think of Will Rogers as a clown?”

  “No.”

  “I do. And Laurel and Hardy, Flip Wilson, Mae West, Woody Allen, Lucille Ball. As well as the more traditional figures like Emmett Kelly, Charlie Chaplin, and Marceau. There’s a common denominator among these people: they’re funny and, more important, they all make the audience take a look at humanity’s foibles. They’re as much descended from those historical clowns as the white-faced circus performer.”

  “The whiteface is the typical circus clown, right?”

  “Well, there are three basic types. Whiteface is your basic slaphappy fellow. The Auguste—who was created almost simultaneously in Germany and France—usually wears pink or blackface and is the one you see falling all over himself in the ring, often sopping wet from having buckets of water thrown at him. The Grotesque is usually a midget or a dwarf, or has some other distorted feature. And there are performers whom you can’t classify because they have created something unique, such as Kelly’s Weary Willie, or Russia’s Popov, who is such an artist that he doesn’t even need to wear makeup.”

  “It’s fascinating. I never realized there was such variety. Or artistry.”

  “Most people don’t. They think clowning is easy, but a lot of the time it’s just plain hard work. Especially when you have to go on when you aren’t feeling particularly funny.” Tilby’s mouth drooped as he spoke, and I wondered if tonight was one of those occasions for him.

  I pulled a trey and said, “Gin,” then tossed my hand on the table as he shuffled and dealt. We fell silent once more. The sounds of the show went on, but the only noise in the dressing room was the slap of the cards on the table. It was uncomfortably hot. Moths fluttered around the glaring bare bulbs of the dressing tables. At about ten-thirty, Fitzgerald stood up.

  “Where are you going?” Kabalka said.

  “The men’s room. Do you mind?”

  I said, “I’ll go with you.”

  Fitzgerald smiled faintly. “Really, Sharon that’s above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “I mean, just to the door.”

  He started to protest, then shrugged and picked up his canvas bag.

  Kabalka said, “Why are you taking that?”

  “There’s something in it I need.”

  “What?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Wayne!” He snatched up his yellow cape, flung it over one shoulder.

  Kabalka hesitated. “All right, go. But Sharon goes with you.”

  Fitzgerald went out into the hall and I followed. Behind me, Nicole said, “Probably Maalox or something like that for his queasy stomach. You can always count on Gary to puke at least once before a performance.”

  Kabalka said, “Shut up, Nicole.”

  Fitzgerald started off, muttering, “Yes, we’re one big happy family.”

  I followed him and took up a position next to the men’s room door. It was ten minutes before I realized he was taking too long a time, and when I did I asked one of the security guards to go in after him. Fitzgerald had vanished, apparently through an open window high off the floor—a trash receptacle had been moved beneath it, which would have allowed him to climb up there. The window opened onto the pavilion grounds rather than outside of the fence, but from there he could have gone in any one of a number of directions—including out the performers’ gate.

  From then on, all was confusion. I told Kabalka what had happened and again left him in charge of the others. With the help of the security personnel, I combed the backstage area—questioning the performers, stage personnel, Don and the other people from KSUN. No one had seen Fitzgerald. The guards in the audience were alerted, but no one in baggy plaid pants, a red vest, and a yellow cape was spotted. The security man on the performers’ gate knew nothing; he’d only come on minutes ago, and the man he had relieved had left the grounds for a break.

  Fitzgerald and Tilby were to be the last act to go on—at midnight, as the star attraction. As the hour approached, the others in their party grew frantic and Don and the KSUN people grew grim. I continued to search systematically. Finally I returned to the performers’ gate; the guard had returned from his break and Kabalka had buttonholed him. I took over the questioning. Yes, he remembered Gary Fitzgerald. He’d left at about ten thirty, carrying his yellow cape and a small canvas bag. But wait—hadn’t he returned just a few minutes ago, before Kabalka had come up and started asking questions? But maybe that wasn’t the same man, there had been something different….

  Kabalka was on the edge of hysterical collapse. He yelled at the guard and only confused him further. Maybe the man who had just come in had been wearing a red cape…maybe the pants were green rather than blue…no, it wasn’t the same man after all….

  Kabalka yelled louder, until one of the stage personnel told him to shut up, he could be heard out front. Corinne appeared and momentarily succeeded in quieting her husband. I left her to deal with him and went back to the dressing room. Tilby and Nicole were there. His face was pinched, white around the mouth. Nicole was pale and—oddly enough—had been crying. I told them what the security guard had said, cautioned them not to leave the dressing room.

  As I turned to go, Tilby said, “Sharon, will you ask Wayne to come in here?”

  “I don’t think he’s in any shape—”

  “Please, it’s important.”

  “All right. But why?”

  Tilby looked at Nicole. She turned her tear-streaked face away toward the wall.

  He said, “We have a decision to make about the act.”

  “I hardly think so. It’s pretty clear cut. If Gary doesn’t turn up, you simply can’t go on.”

  He stared bleakly at me.
“Just ask Wayne to come in here.”

  Of course the act didn’t go on. The audience was disappointed, the KSUN people were irate, and the Fitzgerald and Tilby entourage were grim—a grimness that held a faint undercurrent of tightly-reined panic. No one could shed any light on where Fitzgerald might have gone, or why—at least, if anyone had suspicions, he was keeping them to himself. The one thing everyone agreed on was that the disappearance wasn’t my fault; I hadn’t been hired to prevent treachery within the ranks. I myself wasn’t so sure of my lack of culpability.

  So I’d spent the night chasing round, trying to find a trace of Fitzgerald. I’d gone to San Francisco: to his hotel in the Haight-Ashbury, to the St. Francis where the rest of the party were staying, even to the after-hours place I knew of, in the hopes Fitzgerald was there recapturing his youth, as Nicole had termed it earlier. And I still hadn’t found a single clue to his whereabouts.

  Until now. I hadn’t located Gary Fitzgerald, but I’d found his clown costume. On another man. A dead man.

  After the county sheriff’s men had finished questioning me and said I could go, I decided to return to the Saint Francis and talk to my clients once more. I wasn’t sure if Kabalka would want me to keep searching for Fitzgerald now, but he—and the others—deserved to hear from me about the dead man in Gary’s costume, before the authorities contacted them. Besides, there were things bothering me about Fitzgerald’s disappearance, some of them obvious, some vague. I hoped talking to Kabalka and the company once more would help me bring the vague ones into more clear focus.

  It was after seven by the time I had parked under Union Square and entered the hotel’s elegant dark-paneled lobby. The few early risers who clustered there seemed to be tourists, equipped with cameras and anxious to get on with the day’s adventures. A dissipated-looking couple in evening clothes stood waiting for an elevator, and a few yards away in front of the first row of expensive shops, a maid in the hotel uniform was pushing a vacuum cleaner with desultory strokes. When the elevator came, the couple and I rode up in silence; they got off at the floor before I did.

  Corinne Kabalka answered my knock on the door of the suite almost immediately. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, she wore the same white linen pantsuit—now severely rumpled—that she’d had on the night before, and in her hand she clutched her crocheting. When she saw me, her face registered disappointment.

  “Oh,” she said, “I thought…”

  “You hoped it would be Gary.”

  “Yes, well, any of them really.”

  “Them? Are you alone?”

  She nodded and crossed the sitting room to a couch under the heavily-draped windows, dropping into it with a sigh and setting down the crocheting.

  “Where did they go?”

  “Wayne’s out looking for Gary. He refuses to believe he’s just…vanished. I don’t know where John is, but I suspect he’s looking for Nicole.”

  “And Nicole?”

  Anger flashed in her tired eyes. “Who knows?”

  I was about to ask her more about Tilby’s unpleasant girlfriend when a key rattled in the lock, and John and Nicole came in. His face was pulled into taut lines, reflecting a rage more sustained than Corinne’s brief flare-up. Nicole looked haughty, tight-lipped, and a little defensive.

  Corinne stood. “Where have you two been?”

  Tilby said, “I was looking for Nicole. It occurred to me that we didn’t want to lose another member of this happy party.”

  Corinne turned to Nicole. “And you?”

  The younger woman sat on a spindly chair, studiously examining her plum-colored fingernails. “I was having breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “I was hungry, after that disgusting supper last night. So I went around the corner to a coffee shop—”

  “You could have ordered from room service. Or eaten downstairs where John could have found you more easily.”

  “I needed some air.”

  Now Corinne drew herself erect. “Always thinking of Nicole, aren’t you?”

  “Well, what of it? Someone around here has to act sensibly.”

  In their heated bickering, they all seemed to have forgotten I was there. I remained silent, taking advantage of the situation; one could learn very instructive things by listening to people’s unguarded conversations.

  Tilby said. “Nicole’s right, Corinne. We can’t all run around like Wayne, looking for Gary when we have no idea where to start.”

  “Yes, you would say that. You never did give a damn about him, or anyone. Look how you stole Nicole from your own cousin—”

  “Good God, Corinne! You can’t steal one person from another.”

  “You did. You stole her and then you wrecked—”

  “Let’s not go into this, Corinne. Especially in front of an outsider.” Tilby motioned at me.

  Corinne glanced my way and colored. “I’m sorry, Sharon. This must be embarrassing for you.”

  On the contrary, I wished they would go on. After all, if John had taken Nicole from his cousin, Gary would have had reason to resent him—perhaps even, to want to destroy their act.

  I said to Tilby, “Is that the reason Gary was staying at a different hotel—because of you and Nicole?”

  He looked startled.

  “How long have you two been together?” I asked.

  “Long enough.” He turned to Corinne. “Wayne hasn’t come back or called, I take it?”

  “I’ve heard nothing. He was terribly worried about Gary when he left.”

  Nicole said, “He’s terribly worried about the TV commercials and his cut of them.”

  “Nicole!” Corinne whirled on her.

  Nicole looked up, her delicate little face all innocence. “You know it’s true. All Wayne cares about is money. I don’t know why he’s worried, though. He can always get someone to replace Gary. Wayne’s good at doing that sort of thing—”

  Corinne stepped forward and her hand lashed out at Nicole’s face, connecting with a loud smack. Nicole put a hand to the reddening stain on her cheekbone, eyes widening; then she got up and ran from the room. Corinne watched her go, satisfaction spreading over her handsome features. When I glanced at Tilby, I was surprised to see he was smiling.

  “Round one to Corinne,” he said.

  “She had it coming.” The older woman went back to the couch and sat, smoothing her rumpled pantsuit. “Well, Sharon, once more you must excuse us. I assume you came here for a reason?”

  “Yes.” I sat down in the chair Nicole had vacated and told them about the dead man at the pavilion. As I spoke, the two exchanged glances that were at first puzzled, then worried, and finally panicky.

  When I had finished, Corinne said, “But who on earth can the man in Gary’s costume be?” The words sounded theatrical, false.

  “The sheriff’s department is trying to make an identification. Probably his fingerprints will be on file somewhere. In the meantime, there are a few distinctive things about him which may mean something to you to John.”

  John sat down next to Corinne. “Such as?”

  “The man had been crippled, probably a number of years ago, according to the man from the medical examiner’s officer. One arm was bent badly, and he wore a lift to compensate for a shortened leg. He would have walked with a limp.”

  The two of them looked at each other, and then Tilby said—too quickly—“I don’t know anyone like that.”

  Corinne also shook her head, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

  I said, “Are you sure?”

  “Of course we’re sure.” There was an edge of annoyance in Tilby’s voice.

  I hesitated, then went on, “The sheriff’s man who examined the body theorizes that the dead man may have been from the countryside around there, because he had fragments of madrone and chaparral leaves caught in his shoes, as well as foxtails in the weave of his pant. Perhaps he’s someone you knew when you lived in the area?”

  “No, I don’t remember anyone like t
hat.”

  “He was about Gary’s height and age, but with sandy hair. He must have been handsome once, in an elfin way, but his face was badly scarred.”

  “I said, I don’t know who he is.”

  I was fairly certain he was lying, but accusing him would get me nowhere.

  Corinne said, “Are you sure the costume was Gary’s? Maybe this man was one of the other clowns and dressed similarly.”

  “That’s what I suggested to the sheriff’s man, but the dead man had Gary’s pass in his vest pocket. We all signed our passes, remember?”

  There was a long silence. “So what you’re saying.” Tilby finally said, “is that Gary gave his pass and costume to his man.”

  “It seems so.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know. I’d hoped you could provide me with some insight.”

  They both stared at me. I noticed Corinne’s face had gone quite blank. Tilby was as white-lipped as when I’d come upon him and Nicole in his dressing room shortly after Fitzgerald’s disappearance.

  I said to Tilby, “I assume you each have more than one change of costume.”

  It was Corinne who answered. “We brought three on this tour. But I had the other two sent out to the cleaner when we arrived in San Francisco…Oh!”

  “What is it?”

  “I just remembered. Gary asked me about the other costumes yesterday morning. He called from that hotel where he was staying. And he was very upset when I told him they would be at the cleaner until this afternoon.”

  “So he planned it all along. Probably he hoped to give his extra costume to the man, and when he found he couldn’t, he decided to make a switch.” I remembered Fitzgerald’s odd behavior immediately after we’d arrived at the pavilion—his sneaking off into the audience when he’d been told to stay backstage. Had he had a confederate out there? Someone to hand the things to? No. He couldn’t have turned over either the costume or the pass to anyone, because the clothing was still backstage, and he’d needed his pass when we returned to the dressing room.