"There's got to be a body in there," Crumley said as we walked toward it.
"Isn't there always a body, or else why come see?"
"Go check. I'll stand here hating myself for not bringing more booze."
"Some detective." I ambled over to the cottage and had one helluva time yanking its door wide. When it finally whined and gave way, I lurched back, afraid, and peered in.
"Crumley," I said at last.
"Yeah?" he said, sixty feet away.
"Come see."
"A body?" he said.
"Even better" I said in awe.
CHAPTER TEN
we entered a labyrinth of newsprint. A labyrinth; hell, a catacomb with narrow passages between stacks of old newspapers-the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Seattle News, the Detroit Free Press. Five feet on the left, six on the right, and a pathway between which you might jockey through, fearful of avalanches that could crush and kill.
"Holy magoly!" I breathed.
"You can say that again," Crumley groused. "Christ, there must be ten thousand Sunday and daily papers stacked here, in layers-look, yellow down below, white on top. And not just one stack, ten dozen-my God, a hundred!"
For indeed the catacomb of newsprint hollowed back through twilight shadow to curve out of sight.
It was a moment, I later said, like Lord Carnarvon opening Tut's tomb in 1922. All those ancient headlines, those obituary piles, that led to what? More news stacks and more beyond. Crumley and I sidled through with hardly enough space for bellies or behinds.
"God," I whispered, "if ever a real earthquake hit-"
"It did!" came a voice from far down the stacked tunnel of print. A mummy cried. "Kicked the stacks! Almost pancaked me!"