Let’s All Kill Constance

I grabbed her hand until the knocking stopped.

Then she picked up her big black purse and handed over a small book, trembling.

“Here.”

I read: Los Angeles Telephone Directory, 1900.

“Oh, Lord,” I whispered.

“Tell me why I brought that?” she said.

I turned from the As on down through the Gs and Hs and on through M and N and O to the end, the names, the names, from a lost year, the names, oh my God, the names.

“Let it sink in,” said Constance.

I started up front. A for Alexander, Albert, and William. B for Burroughs. C for …

“Good grief,” I whispered. “1900. This is 1960.” I looked at Constance, pale under her eternal summer tan. “These people. Only a few are still alive.” I stared at the names. “No use calling most of these numbers. This is—”

“What?”

“A Book of the Dead.”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“A Book of the Dead,” I said. “Egyptian. Fresh from the tomb.”

“Fresh out.” Constance waited.

“Someone sent this to you?” I said. “Was there a note?”

“There doesn’t have to be a note, does there?”

I turned more pages. “No. Since practically everyone here is gone, the implication is—”

“I’ll soon be silent.”

“You’d be the last name in these pages of the dead?”

“Yep,” said Constance.

I went to turn the heat up and shivered.

“What an awful thing to do.”

“Awful.”

“Telephone books,” I murmured. “Maggie says I cry at them, but it all depends on what telephone books, when.”

“All depends. Now …”

From her purse she pulled out a second small black book.

“Open that.”

I opened it and read, “Constance Rattigan” and her address on the beach, and turned to the first page. It was all As.

“Abrams, Alexander, Alsop, Allen.”

I went on.

“Baldwin, Bradley, Benson, Burton, Buss …”

And felt a coldness take my fingers.

“These are all friends of yours? I know those names.”

“And …?”

“Not all, but most of them, buried out at Forest Lawn. But dug up tonight. A graveyard book,” I said.

“And worse than the one from 1900.”

“Why?”

“I gave this one away years ago. To the Hollywood Helpers. I didn’t have the heart to erase the names. The dead accumulated. A few live ones remained. But I gave the book away. Now it’s back. Found it when I came in tonight from the surf.”

“Jesus, you swim in this weather?”

“Rain or shine. And tonight I came back to find this lying like a tombstone in my yard.”

“No note?”

“By saying nothing, it says everything.”

“Christ.” I took the old directory in one hand, Rattigan’s small names and numbers book in the other.

“Two almost–Books of the Dead,” I said.

“Almost, yes,” said Constance. “Look here, and here, and also here.”

She showed me three names on three pages, each with a red ink circle around it and a crucifix.

“These names?” I said. “Special?”

“Special, yes. Not dead. Or so I think. But they’re marked, aren’t they? With a cross by each, which means what?”

“Marked to die? Next up?”