The Road to Vent Haven: The Murder of The Adequate Rando

• Night Illuminated
• Moonlight to Burn

David Englund

Randy leaked blood all over the dressing room floor. The carpet would have to go, that's for sure. I wouldn't want to have to be the one who did it. It occurred to me as quickly that the owner would consider that part of my job.

I didn't want to get too close. I've found that the sensible thing to do in circumstances like these is not to be in a room with a recently murdered body. Unfortunately for me -- and the late The Adequate Rando -- he was a piece of crap. After our fight, it would not be outside his wheelhouse to try to spook me, like that would make me look like an idiot. "Hey, remember that time I pretended I was murdered, and you fell for it like a chump and tried to see if I was alive? God, what a moron you are!"

I stepped in to see if the magic wand in his eye was more than a prop.

If it were, this was the best-damned horror makeup I'd seen in my career. It was jammed in there something good. That would have taken some force, or he landed on it when he fell. It looked like he might have popped his eyeball, but that's not my department. The result would have been the same, so it didn't seem to matter.

He wasn't the least presentable body I had ever seen. The blood had made his costume more eye-catching. I doubted he would have appreciated either this truth or my phrasing. Punchlines were never his strong suit.

I rested my fingertips on his carotid artery. After this amount of blood, Randy couldn't have a pulse. He was still as warm as I imagined he had been in life. (Though, in perfect honesty, I imagined him feverish and tacky to the touch in life. It was something about his unruly mop of curling red hair and a spotted complexion a shade different. Yet another reason he always wore a mask onstage.)

"I know who did this," said a gruff voice in the corner, the sort of voice you'd imagine only from a police detective a week from retirement.

I looked around the room, but this was only for that moment of denial. I knew who was talking. Since I started here, Woodrow and I had had a few conversations, and he understood I would hold a conversation with him. We played cards once, which perplexed Randy when he walked in on it.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "So?"

"So, you might want to listen to me before the cops get here. Dope."

I went over to him, his denim legs crossed under a hand-sewn flannel too large for him. I took a cape off him, straightening his posture. "This isn't any of my business. I just found him. I barely owe him alerting the police that they need to pick him up, only I don't want someone else to find him like this."

"Is that so? Because, from where I'm sitting, you spread forensic evidence all over this goddamned room. Did you even touch the wand? What the hell is wrong with you, Chuck?" He scoffed. "But, sure, you walk out of this room--a room I am positive people will gleefully say they saw you enter--and tell the police that you just happened to show up to a murder scene."

He wasn't looking at me. He couldn't without help. I didn't see him smile, but I imagined I did. If he could smile now, it would be smug, no matter the sharp lines down from the corners of his mouth.

"I didn't do it."

He laughed uproariously. If anyone else could hear him, I would already be in handcuffs. "Yeah, I know that perfectly well, pal. Why don't you stick a hand up my ass and see if I can't convince anyone else? I am ready and willing to testify. Just point me to the stand, bailiff. The whole truth and nothin' but the truth, so help me, God."

His actual voice was a world different from the languid drawl Randy had given him in his act, like he was perpetually stoned. It was lazy, a cheap joke, but he didn't know any other kind. Randy took the cadence from Cheech and Chong movies he had snuck into when he was a kid. I tried to get him to watch Clerks when it came out a couple of years ago, but he said he couldn't sit through anything black and white. He implied that I was trying to be pretentious.

Woodrow didn't look like a stoner, but Randy didn't understand that his puppet was dressed as though he was straight from the Seattle grunge scene. He wanted Woodrow to be high, so that's the voice he gave him. It barely made sense in his act to retirees, especially coupled with The Adequate Rando's mask.

Woodrow was too good a dummy for that act. The body had been refurbished, but that head was solid wood. I guessed that he was a McElroy creation. The mechanism of his head was too intricate. His expression, though by design goofy, had a proud expressiveness. I tried to explain this all to Randy once, but I would have had better luck telling an actual block of wood.

I began to pace around the room until Woodrow pointed out that this only increased the evidence that I was here. "Tell me who did it. I'll send in an anonymous tip, and you can get... I don't know... your revenge?"

"Why would I want revenge?" asked the dummy.

I stared at him. "Because he was murdered in front of you. He was your ventriloquist."

Woodrow was quiet, but I knew that he wasn't going silent. They never did. "I never liked him. It wasn't what you would call an equal partnership. I'm glad someone did it. Saves me from years more of his shit."

"What do you think will happen to you if you don't tell me?"

"The same thing that will happen to you, buddy," he said. "They'll put you in a small, dark box until they want to put words in your mouth that you don't mean."

"But I didn't do it."

A shorter laugh this time. "You have a lot of faith in the justice system."

I cocked an eyebrow. This had to be more of him giving me a hard time. He couldn't know what happened back then. "Where'd you get your law degree?"

"The Adequate Rando left on Law & Order tapes whenever he wasn't in his dressing room. I picked up a few things."

I was about to tell him that that show wasn't real, but I knew that he would only tell me that he wasn't either.

"You tell me who did this," I said, "and what do you want in return?"

"I'm that transparent?"

"Who did this?" I prompted.

"Vent Haven."

My brow furrowed. I knew most people who passed through this club, and that name did not ring a bell. "Who?"

"Not who. What. Vent Haven. That's where the dummies of dead ventriloquists go."

"You want me to save you from that?"

"Absolu-fuckin'-lutely not. I need a ride." I imagined him narrowing his glassy eyes at me. "I don't have a license. Too short to take the test. And, 'course, my arms don't move."

"Where is this place?"

"Best state in the nation!" he said with false cheer. "Kentucky!"

Someone moved outside the room. Randy was due on stage in twenty minutes, at which point I wanted to be in another county. Twenty minutes was enough of a head start on getting away from this murder scene.

Kentucky, though, was eleven hours from the Catskills. I have to more than drive through the night. They might not notice me missing tonight--I had taken off a few times without notice--but they would tomorrow night. When that happened, something would let the police know about me. I needed every spare minute before that happened.

I had been working for the club for close to a year. It was not good-paying work, but it kept me out of the light of scrutiny. There had been another incident a few years prior. Even if I hadn't been at the club this night, the police would have brought me in for questioning sooner or later.

The dummy hummed the Jeopardy theme.

"If you don't tell me now," I threatened, "you are going to end up sold or kept in storage forever."

Woodrow sighed contentedly, mocking me. "I like the quiet. You won't. Vent Haven or bust, compadre."

He had me at a disadvantage. This is what happens when you listen to dummies. "Fine, you have my word. I'll get you to Vent Haven. Help me."

"No," said the dummy, smugly. "I'm not the most trusting sort. When I'm there, I'll spill. Not before."

I considered my chances with the police. I wouldn't believe my story: that, after a blowout fight backstage over a woman, after screaming that I wish someone would slit his throat and use him as a dummy, I had come backstage to talk things over with Randy. The truth was not on my side.

"You want to go now?" I asked.

"We're burning daylight, Chuckles."

Eighteen minutes until showtime. Before The Adequate Rando's set, the comedian tended to go long, sopping up the laughter of elderly New York City Jews, but it wouldn't be enough if I kept this argument up. "We have to get out of here first."

Woodrow resumed humming the Jeopardy theme, interrupted only by "That sounds like a you problem. And you are stepping in a spot of his blood. That's how they get you: shoeprints in the blood-forensic evidence. I hope you got balls enough not to crack under interrogation. Remember, you got a right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you. So, don't say nothin' to anybody who isn't your lawyer. Sure as hell don't tell them you been taking legal advice from someone made of wood."

I rubbed the tip of my shoe clean with tissue from the table, putting this in my pocket to burn later. I stepped over Randy's body and blood to get to Woodrow's case.

"I'm not leaving here in that. Too uncomfortable and too goddamn many bad memories," said the dummy, not that he could stop me. But he could be obnoxious for the next eleven hours, so I obliged him. "Randy has a duffle bag under the table. He's not gonna miss it."

I found it, but it already held another of his costumes and papers.

"Leave 'em," said the puppet. "More cushioning."

I placed him as gently as I could manage into the bag, covering him with the costume, though he complained anyway. It wasn't like it would hurt him, but you have to treat dummies with respect.

I had worked at the club long enough that I would be invisible hauling gear to my car. Short of another shouting match, I was invisible on principle. The performers thought of themselves as gigantic fish in a small pond, but most of them were exactly the size where this pond felt like home. They would never grow bigger. Nothing but applause made them feel better than acting as though other people were beneath them.

I put the duffle bag in the passenger's seat, told him to bucket up, and hit the road.