McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [17]
But the words seemed hollow to him, and in their letters, no one asked him how the quest was going. Since Mary’s hanging, Nash had been directionless. He knew no one in Los Angeles or its environs, which he found lonely and strange—acres of olive groves and citrus trees somehow mysteriously kept alive in the desert climate. He halfheartedly visited Famous Players once, but was turned away at the secretarial pool when he couldn’t remember the name of the man he was supposed to meet. He spent the rest of the afternoon riding the trolley cars home.
When he cared to think about it in culinary terms, a habit he retained from his previous career, Nash believed there were two types of circus attractions: the sweet and the sour. The sweet consisted of wholesome entertainments that were exactly as presented: the trapeze, the animals, the clowns. The sour were those that relied on fooling people. The India rubber pickled punks in jars, talked up as two-headed babies. The pink lemonade they sold that was actually water the clowns had washed their tights in. They had seemed too easy to keep apart, those worlds, but at some point Nash had crossed a line, and gone sour himself.
One February afternoon, Nash was interrupted in his morning ritual of shaving by a knock at his door. He peered out the keyhole, worried that it might be an associate come to take him back early to the circus; but no, the man on the other side of the door was no one he knew. Wiping away the foam, Nash let him in.
The stranger’s face was broken and scorched, with patches of red skin among wrinkles, the expression a perpetual wince, as if he’d spent every moment of his life in hostile weather. His age was impossible to guess. He wore the familiar black cape and hat of a railway detective, which was the main reason Nash had so readily let him in.
Unaccustomed to company, Nash fumbled to offer him coffee, which the stranger accepted, announcing at the same time his name, “Leonard Pelkin.” Pelkin had once been a railway detective, he continued, but he had retired and was now working privately.
They sat on either side of a galley that had been built into Nash’s small kitchen, cramped but breezy, with a good view of the valley over Nash’s shoulder. Pelkin took the opportunity to admire it while digging a portfolio out of his knapsack.
“Might I ask you some questions?”
“Certainly.”
Pelkin carefully removed a stack of four-by-five photographs. As if dealing a hand of poker, he placed them facedown in a field of five. “It’s about a murder,” Pelkin said. He cleared his throat, as if he had more to say. Nash nodded, to indicate he was being helpful. Pelkin nodded back, and then took a sip of coffee. He gestured with the coffee cup, toward the photographs. “Suspects,” he continued.
Then he turned over the photographs, each making a confident snap as they went faceup.
For a moment, Nash was silent.
“These are murder suspects?” he finally asked.
Pelkin nodded. “Do you recognize any of them?”
“They’re elephants,” Nash said.
“Look again.”
Nash didn’t need to look. He was upset, as he felt this was a problem that had been handled long ago, destroying a good part of himself in the bargain.
“I’m sure they’re elephants. If you’re here, talking to me, then you know why I’d know that.”
Pelkin put up a finger. “One elephant,” he said. “Just one.”
The five photographs had been taken years apart, the earliest ones streaked and bubbling with emulsion. Each of them showed an elephant in the midst of carnivals or circuses—Nash recognized a wagon from the Sells organization, and a Ringling banner, and, finally, his own sagging big top, whose patches were as identifiable as surgical scars. It was like the sun breaking over a mountaintop.
“Mary,” he said.
“Can you indicate where you see her?” Pelkin asked.
“Are you serious? She’s the elephant standing before my tent.”
“Is that her