Fade to Blonde hcc-2 Read online

  Fade to Blonde

  ( Hard Case Crime - 2 )

  Max Phillips

  HE AGREED TO PROTECT HER FROM A VENGEFUL MOBSTER.

  HE JUST DIDN’T REALIZE HE’D HAVE TO JOIN THE MOB TO DO IT.

  Ray Corson came to Hollywood to be a screenwriter, not hired muscle. But when money’s tight and a beautiful woman asks for your help, how can you say no?

  But going up against a man like Lance Halliday takes more than just physical strength and the guts to use it. It takes friends in high places – or low ones. Soon, Ray finds himself on the payroll of Lenny Scarpa, L.A.’s chief drug supplier. Only Scarpa’s hiding secrets even darker than Halliday’s – and, as Ray discovers, Rebecca’s hiding the darkest secret of all…

  From Publishers Weekly

  Best known for his poetry and literary fiction (The Artist's Wife, etc.), Phillips contributes to a new crime imprint a hard-boiled whodunit sure to thrill fans of such Golden Age masters as James M. Cain. Ex-boxer/failed screenwriter Ray Corson is as tough talking—and as vulnerable to a pretty face—as any 1940s gumshoe. And terrified blonde bombshell Rebecca LaFontaine looks like a classic damsel in distress when she hires Corson to protect her from murderous rejected suitor Lance Halliday, a Hollywood porn producer. The author deftly balances his lovestruck hero's terse yet tender introspection with hard-hitting physical action, as Corson's investigation of Tinsel Town's tarnished underside uncovers drug dealing, gangland vengeance and evidence that the heroine's history may hold even deadlier secrets. Especially graceful is the way Phillips lightens the plot's noir darkness with delightfully breezy dialogue. The convincingly understated, witty repartee between guy and gal—and their gangster pals—prevents the book from descending, for even a paragraph, into period pulp parody. They do write 'em like they used to.

  Rave Reviews

  for MAX PHILLIPS!

  “A rip-roaring page-turner.”

  —New York Newsday

  “Snappy dialogue, caustic characterizations, hot descriptive passages.”

  —Esquire

  “A graphic satire of bedroom mores.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Deft satiric wit.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Masterfully told... Phillips keeps it compelling to the end.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Irresistible.”

  —J.D. Landis, author of Longing

  “Inventive, vividly written... highly entertaining.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  High Praise for

  ‘FADE to BLONDE’!

  “Sharp, savvy, and unapologetically raunchy... this taut, hard novel is a winner.”

  —January Magazine

  “A dark, dangerous style.”

  —The New York Times Sunday Magazine

  “A sleek ride... note-perfect noir.”

  —The Haddon Herald

  “It’s been said that Fade to Blonde could have been a Gold Medal novel. It certainly could have. It’s easily one of the best books I’ve read this year.”

  —James Reasoner

  “A smash from beginning to end.”

  —Pop Thought

  “Sure to thrill... They do write ’em like they used to.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The one with the big watch put a hand on my chest, and I stopped and looked down at it.

  “That’s a mistake,” I said. “Undo it.”

  “We need to talk a minute, Mr. Rose,” he said.

  “You don’t look like much of a conversationalist. Take that hand away.”

  “Listen, friend,” he said. “We need to talk about how you talk to people.”

  Maybe it’s because I was such a lousy boxer, but I don’t see the point of going move and countermove with people who ought to know the moves as well as you do. What I’d rather do is upset the board. I gave out a sort of groan and began to sit down, as if I were tired or having an attack, and without thinking the pug tried to pull me back up again by the tie. All two hundred forty-odd pounds of me, one-handed. I almost felt sorry for him. But I came up again fast, grabbing the back of his neck as I went, and broke his nose with my forehead. The pug fell back clutching his face and screaming way back in his throat, and his buddy moved in, but glancing over at his friend instead of tending to business, and I kicked out sideways and broke the buddy’s knee. That would have settled me for a while, but he looked like he wanted to get up again somehow, and I kicked him in the belly, which made him more introspective. By this time the first guy had gotten out his gun and lit off a couple, clutching his face and firing half-blind...

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS

  YOU WILL ENJOY:

  MONEY SHOT by Christa Faust

  ZERO COOL by John Lange

  SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB by Robert Bloch

  THE MURDERER VINE by Shepard Rifkin

  SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY by Donald E. Westlake

  NO HOUSE LIMIT by Steve Fisher

  BABY MOLL by John Farris

  THE MAX by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  GUN WORK by David J. Schow

  FIFTY-TO-ONE by Charles Ardai

  KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block

  THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER by Roger Zelazny

  THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake

  HOUSE DICK by E. Howard Hunt

  CASINO MOON by Peter Blauner

  FAKE I.D. by Jason Starr

  PASSPORT TO PERIL by Robert B. Parker

  STOP THIS MAN! by Peter Rabe

  LOSERS LIVE LONGER by Russell Atwood

  HONEY IN HIS MOUTH by Lester Dent

  QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE by Max Allan Collins

  THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES by Jonny Porkpie

  Fade to

  BLONDE

  by Max Phillips

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-002)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: September 2004

  Copyright © 2004 by Max Phillips

  Cover painting copyright © 2004 by Gregory Manchess

  All rights reserved.

  For K, the most dangerous blonde of all

  1

  Blue Convertible

  Well, maybe she wasn’t all that blonde, but it’d be a crime to call hair like that light brown. It was more sort of lion-colored. Lioness. It was heavy, shiny hair, and it fell straight down to her shoulders from a central part. She hadn’t done much to it. She didn’t have to. She got out of the big Studebaker convertible and walked across the red dirt where someday there was supposed to be a front lawn. I was up on the roof, laying tile for one of those little hacienda-looking breadboxes. The whole street was full of them, all half-built. She wore a pale blue dress with cream piping, a dark blue belt, and a silly little schoolgirlish collar. She had nice straight shoulders. There was nothing wrong between them and her open-toed shoes, so I guess the trouble must have been somewhere behind those blue-gray eyes. There’d be trouble, of course. She looked up and called, “Is your name Corson?”

  I said it was.

  “Are you busy?”

  I didn’t think she could be an actual movie star. She didn’t walk right, and she was too thin for the work, with two notable exceptions. She looked up at me, shading her eyes. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “You are,” I said.

  “I might have some work for you.”

  “What kind?”

  She just stood there, looking up at me. “Well, you’re big enough,” she said at last.

  I kept waiting.

  “I hear you did some boxing,” she said.

  I kept waiting.

  “It looks like you got hit.”

  “Not reall
y,” I said. “I went nine and two. I broke the nose falling out of a tree in third grade. The rest of the face has just always been that way.”

  I was annoyed with myself. No one needed to hear any of that.

  “I still think you’ve been hit a few times,” she said, smiling faintly.

  It was actually a pretty nice smile.

  I walked over toward the carport to where the roof swooped down low, and sat myself down on the edge. She came and stood below me, between my feet. She was a tall one, all right.

  “I’ve been hit a few times,” I said.

  “Nine and two’s not bad. Why’d you stop?”

  I shrugged. “They started to match me with guys who knew how to box. And it wasn’t what I came here to do.”

  “What did you come here to do?”

  “Why don’t you keep telling it?”

  “You came here to write. For pictures. But you didn’t have any luck. You did a few treatments for Republic and Severin gave you a few scripts to read. He liked you, there were a few of them who did, but he didn’t know quite what to do with you. He gave you extra work and a few bit parts. You even had a line in one. You were the palooka the promising young boxer knocked out in the first reel. What was your line, by the way? If you don’t mind my asking?”

  After a minute, I said, “ž’So you’re the Kid. They tell me you’re pretty good.’ž”

  She smiled again, still faintly. She was still looking up from between my feet, shading her eyes. When one arm got tired, she’d use the other hand. “I’m getting a crick in my neck.”

  “I’m comfortable.”

  She patted my boot. “I just don’t want you to kick me in the face. At least not until we’ve been properly introduced.”

  I slowly pushed my boot out toward her chin, and she walked backward to keep ahead of it, her hands clasped behind her hips, smiling faintly up at me the whole while. When she was back far enough, I jumped down. “Thanks,” she said. “Can we talk somewhere private?”

  “This is private,” I said.

  She looked up the street. “Yes. I guess it is. You seem to be the only one working this morning.”

  “The contractor’s going bust. Our pay’s been late.”

  “But you’re still here.”

  “I like to keep busy. Who’s been singing my praises?”

  “A man named Reece who does security at Republic.”

  “How do you come to know Mattie?”

  “He’s not difficult for a girl to know,” she said. “When the acting didn’t work out, you tried a little bodyguarding.”

  “If you want to call it that. I put on a suit and stood around behind some guys. Every once in a while I’d lay my hand on someone’s shoulder and give him the look.”

  “Show me,” she said.

  The hell, if that’s what she wanted. I reached out and let my hand fall on her shoulder. I gave her the look.

  She clasped her hands together and laughed delightedly. “I take it all back. You are an actor. Unless you really want to beat my head in with a pipe wrench and dump my body in a ravine?”

  “Not until we’ve been properly introduced,” I said. “Anyway, that’s not what the look says. The look says, Are you sure you want me to kill you with a pipe wrench and dump you in a ravine? Because I’d really rather not be bothered.”

  “Yes. You’re right. That’s what the look says.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rebecca LaFontaine.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “It’s not very pretty.”

  “Yeah, well. Still.”

  “Out here, I go by Rebecca LaFontaine.”

  “Where are you from? Middle West someplace?”

  “That’s close enough.”

  “Why’d you come here?”

  “Why does anybody come here?” She shrugged. “It didn’t work out. I can’t act. I got some offers. Of a certain kind.”

  “But not for movies.”

  “I got offers for movies of a certain kind.”

  “But none you wanted to do.”

  “No,” she said steadily. “I did a couple. I don’t want to do that again.”

  I looked up the street. It was still just a dirt track. You could hear the whisper of the cars from the freeway across the valley. It was one of those bone-dry days when sound travels. There were big rolls of cyclone fencing lying around, I don’t know what for. No one had bothered to put them up. I looked back at her and said, “That’s terrible. You know where they’re showing any of them?”

  “You wouldn’t recognize me,” she said. “I parted my hair differently back then. Look, let’s not keep standing around like this. Let’s go sit in the car.”

  She turned and walked off. After a moment, I followed. She got in on the driver’s side, and I rode shotgun, if we were riding. The seats were white vinyl and already hotting up in the sun. She took hold of the steering wheel, closed her eyes, and let her breath out through her nostrils. Then she gave the wheel a little pat and dropped her hands in her lap. “So. You’re a screenwriter, an actor, a bodyguard. And a roofer, too.”

  “I do odd jobs.”

  She said, “I want a man killed.”

  “Not that odd.”

  “I didn’t mean that. Not killed, really. Just hurt.”

  “I’d think you could do that work yourself.”

  “Or scared.”

  “Like I said.”

  “I’m serious. There’s a man who’s, who’s got to leave me alone. I don’t know what to do about him. I need someone to help me.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I can’t tell you that unless I know you’ll help me.”

  “Does it have to do with those movies?”

  “It has to do with a lot of things. I can’t tell you unless I know you’re with me.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Like you. Odd jobs.”

  “Such as.”

  “Sales clerk, lifeguard — I swim pretty well. Hatcheck girl. Perfume girl. One of those girls who stands around department stores smiling, with a bottle of perfume, and asks if you want a little puff. I tried modeling, but clothes don’t fit me.”

  “Where’d you meet this man?”

  “I was a hat check girl.”

  “That pay pretty well?”

  “No.”

  “Nice car.”

  “He didn’t buy it for me, if that’s what you mean. My folks left me a little money, and I came out here and got a place and bought a car, because I thought it would help, you know, to look right. The car’s what’s left. I can’t even afford to have it washed.”

  “Why don’t you sell it?”

  “I did. To him. He holds the note on it now.”

  “But he lets you go on driving it.”

  “He says one night when I’m out miles from anywhere, he’ll pull up behind me at a light and make me get out and give him the keys. And then I’ll have to walk home. In my high heels and little dress. So that by the time I get home, my feet will be bleeding and my stockings will be torn and my legs will be black with dust, and my face, and I’ll stink with sweat like a farm animal, like a cow, which, you see, is all I am, and I won’t be pretty anymore. Except he knows I’ll hike up my skirt to get a ride from somebody, some, um, farm hands — yeah, that’s about right — and be taken into some field and, and raped by the whole bunch of them, one after another, raped to death, which I’ll love, because that’s the kind of skinny bony filthy whore I am.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “He really is crazy, but he’s got a business and I don’t suppose he wants that interfered with, so there must be some way to reach him. Don’t you know how to do things like that? Mattie seems to think so. He’s got to leave me alone. He’s got to stop threatening me. Just when I’m beginning to get somewhere and get myself normal for once.”

  “You could’ve picked someone else to sell your car to.”

  She let her h
ead flop back against the seat. “Well. You know. He used to be very sweet.” She reached out a knuckle and rapped me softly on the chest. “I’ve been hit a few times, too,” she said.

  Her eyes were large, pale, and set wide beneath a broad, low forehead. Her chin was pointed, but her fine-lipped mouth was wide. There wasn’t really room for it on her face, any more than there was room for that chest on her skinny frame. Her arms and legs were too long. Sitting there behind the wheel, she looked like she’d folded them up the wrong way, the way you’ll fold a road map the wrong way. I could see why she’d flopped in pictures. She was disturbing-looking. Ten thousand guys had made a play for her, but I don’t guess any of them kidded himself it was a good idea at the time. I rubbed my face and said, “Let’s see what we’ve got. There’s a man, you’d rather not say who, and you want me to make him stop doing something, you’d rather not say what. Kill him, threaten him, you’d rather not say. And you’d rather not tell me your real name. And you’re broke.”

  She opened her purse, took out what was in it, and gave it to me.

  I counted it. “It’s not much,” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “But you’ll take it?”

  Way out on the freeway, I heard a car horn, very faintly. Somebody was losing his temper. Then the traffic was whispering along smoothly again. The sun felt good on my face. I could smell the hot vinyl seat and the girl sitting beside me with her fists in her lap, waiting. She didn’t use perfume, just regular soap. I got out my wallet and tucked her money inside.

  “Don’t they always?” I said.

  2

  Chain

  I watched her car out of sight, and then climbed back on the roof and finished the row. I didn’t like to leave it all cranksided like that. To pass the time I thought what I sometimes do. I think, What if it was my house I was working on. I think about how I’d finish the roof, or the driveway or what have you, and how I’d get a truck then and move some nice furniture in, and hang up some curtains, and some pictures, and put some dishes in the cabinets and some food in the fridge, and how it’d be done then, my house, and how me and some nice woman would move in and live our lives. I didn’t think about moving in with Rebecca while I was finishing the last row. I wasn’t that dumb, not yet. So the little woman didn’t have a face or name, but I’ll admit she did wind up on the tall side. When I was done I stacked up the loose tiles for the next guy, if there was one, and gave each of my tools a wipe with an oily rag as I put it away. I like a good set of tools. I closed the toolbox and climbed back down, leaving the ladder where it was. There was supposed to be a truck coming by each evening for things like that. I put my tools in the trunk of my car and went to see the boss.