Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde Read online

  Lisa Rae took my arm and said, “Let’s go see what we can see.”

  16

  Gold Clouds

  The dining room was the old-fashioned long kind, with sideboards. There was a sort of buffet laid out on the table, or what was left of one. Some of it looked like it had been there yesterday. We went out the French doors at the back and were on a flagstone patio around a big pool. Around it a few people were chatting listlessly, dressed all different ways. The pool was half-empty, the deep end full of black water and leaves. They’d set up a bar with a guy in a white coat next to the pool and put a record player on the diving board with an extension cord running back to the house. It was playing Chubby Checker and two couples were dancing down on the bottom of the pool at the shallow end, where it was dry. They didn’t seem to be having a big time. They looked like they were doing it so they could say they’d been to a dope party and danced in the pool. Lisa Rae and I got drinks and went through a door on the other side of the pool to what must have been called the sun room. There was a piano there and a folding chair, and the guy in the folding chair was reading the paper. He didn’t look up. There were five bedrooms, three of them empty, one of them locked, and one full of reef smoke and a card game. They didn’t look up, either. In the corner there was a big circular tray of sugar cookies. Lisa Rae ate three with a look of great concentration.

  “This is no good at all,” she said. “We’re just sailing through here like the Seventh Fleet, and much too nice dressed. Everybody just stops what they’re saying and watches us sail on by.”

  “Let’s split up,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what we should do. I’ll go off somewhere and make all the men think I like them, and you go find some girls and make them think you like them. And we’ll meet back here around midnight and see what we’ve got.”

  I said that sounded fine and she headed for the living room and I went out back to the pool. The party was beginning to pick up. I walked past Dorothy Tremaine and almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing big black-framed glasses and a baggy black sweater and toreador pants. She played wisecracking secretaries and I was surprised how young she was. I didn’t try to talk to her. She looked like she thought she was incognito. I saw a driver I knew from Republic and we gave each other the raised eyebrows and then chatted awhile, but he was just there to drink and chase kittens, or so he said. I saw a couple more people about as well-known as Neale and Tremaine, and some players who were just half-familiar faces, but you couldn’t think what they’d done, and some gaudy specimens who must have been choreographers or designers, and some set dressers and grips and a couple guys who might’ve been artists, the new kind, that try to look like dockworkers. People were beginning to get just-nicely, and I thought I might find a loose thread to pull on pretty soon if I kept my wits about me this time. I’d finished my drink, a short gin, and I thought I’d go fill the glass up with water somewhere so I’d look like I was still drinking. The kitchen wasn’t anyplace obvious, because when they built this house, that was somewhere only servants went, so I worked my way toward the back and finally found it past a maid’s room and a little swinging door. There was a woman in there wearing not much and holding a knife. “Do you want a sandwich,” she said.

  I said I did.

  Her face was broad across the brow and cheekbones, young and coarsely pretty, with a turned-up nose and fine-grained pink skin. She had a nice shape and plenty of it. In a few years she’d have more than she wanted. Her nails were gnawed short, with little bits of flaked-off red polish on them, and she wore a satin kimono patterned with dragons and gold clouds, which she wasn’t too fussy about keeping closed in front. There was a big stack of sandwiches at her elbow. She seemed to like making them. She didn’t offer me one of the sandwiches in the pile. She took a loaf and sawed off a couple fresh slices. She made them a little thicker than the others. She set them side by side like it was important where they went, then looked over the cheeses and meats she’d set out on the counter, knife poised, drumming the fingers of her plump left hand thoughtfully on the cutting board. “How’s Miss Godalmighty?” she said absently.

  “Who?”

  “Your date. Miss High and Godalmighty Bellinger.”

  “Oh. Fine, thanks. She sends her love.”

  “You like tomatoes? Some people are allergic, but I think they’re good.”

  “I like tomatoes.”

  “What she probably likes is you’re not an actor.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I guess she’s not too high and mighty for a place like this.”

  “I guess she isn’t. What did she turn you down for?”

  “What?”

  “I said, what did she turn you down for? Or did she just turn you down, period?”

  The girl in the kimono didn’t say anything, just kept slicing tomatoes.

  “Me, I’d cast you in a minute,” I said. “Lucrezia Borgia. Salome. Medea. Of course, you might have to put some clothes on.”

  “Most guys wouldn’t complain. Clothes’re just a bourgeois convention anyway. You look really silly, all got up like that.” She pointed the big knife at my nose. “You’re teasing me,” she said with satisfaction.

  “Careful with that knife.”

  She laughed and flicked it at the ceiling. It whirled end over end, a rising, glittering circle of steel, and she caught it easily by the handle as it fell. “I don’t have to be careful with knives,” she said, suddenly cheery. “Anymore there’s none of the good salami left, but this ham’s pretty nice.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  She began shaving off slices of ham. She had that kitchen all set up the way she wanted it. She went with the house, all right. “Friend of Nancy’s?” I said.

  “That girl doesn’t know who her friends are.”

  “No?”

  “She’s gotten very bourgeois. Anymore I’m the only one’ll tell her the truth, and she doesn’t like that. Oh, no.”

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Maddy.”

  “Maddy what?”

  “Maddy nothing.”

  “Do you want to know my name?”

  “I know your name. You’re Suit Man. Having a good time tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “How come you’re not having a good time?”

  “Do you always disbelieve what people tell you?”

  “Mostly. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Yeah, actually.”

  “I think we’re having a good party tonight. How come you’re not enjoying it?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Doesn’t seem like it’s really gotten cooking yet.”

  “Oh. Well, he’ll be in later.”

  “Who will?”

  “I told you, later.”

  The sandwich was finished. She took a big bite and began chewing. I said, “Wasn’t that going to be my sandwich?”

  “You didn’t really want it,” she said with her mouth full.

  “You know, you’re right,” I said, and went out to find Miss Godalmighty.

  Lisa Rae was in the glassed-in gallery that ran along one side of the pool, talking to Graham Neale. He was standing in a pose he’d made slightly famous: hands in his pockets, feet planted, looking solid and bluff and reliable. He was smiling down on Lisa Rae like a doting uncle, but his face was blotchy and damp-looking and there didn’t seem to be much behind the smile. Ten years ago Neale had been a popular second lead. He was the guy in the bomber crew who died big in the last reel and the hero avenged him, or he’d lose the girl to the hero and have the rueful closing line as the hero and the girl strolled off together. He’d lost more girls than anyone else in pictures. He held the record. He looked up and saw me looking, and then Lisa Rae turned and smiled. She patted his cheek and said something and trotted over to me, and Neale grinned at me and turned to amble off. “Did you make all the girls think you liked them?” she asked, tapping a forefinger against my t
ie and smiling.

  She’d gotten a bit of glow on.

  “Knocked ’em down like ninepins,” I said.

  “He’s coming by later,” she reported.

  “So I heard. Who’s coming by later?”

  “The fella you’re looking for.”

  “Right. What’s his name?”

  “Nobody wanted to say much if I didn’t already know.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I guess this sleuth stuff’s harder than I thought.”

  “Well, they didn’t want to tell me, either. Neale wouldn’t say?”

  “I’m the last person Grammy’d tell. The very last. He loves me, he truly does, but tonight he hates me. Because I caught him in a place like this and wasn’t surprised.”

  “I can see where that might sting.”

  “So I don’t have much information for you. Are you very disappointed in me, Mr. Corson? Now, what’re you smiling about?”

  “You pulled my file,” I said.

  “I did. How come that surprises you?”

  “I’m surprised you thought to do it.”

  “Why? I’ve been thinking about you, Mr. Corson.”

  “Nice things, I hope?”

  She shook her head. Our faces were very near now.

  “Bad ideas,” she murmured. “I get the worst ideas. The... worst.”

  I kissed her. She was gripping my lapels, hanging on.

  After a while we stopped kissing.

  “Lisa Rae,” I said. A little tendril of hair had come loose, and I tucked it back where it belonged.

  She took my nose between her thumb and forefinger and tried to straighten it out, and then she poked a little here and there at my face, and all the time her lips were moving around like they were remembering kissing me. She poked at my cheek.

  “Missed a spot,” she whispered.

  “No I didn’t.”

  “I guess you didn’t. I guess you’re one of these fellas who it doesn’t matter how much they shave, they still look like they need to.”

  “Yep.”

  “I guess you’re one of these fellas who doesn’t look so smooth but gets girls anyhow.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ve got lots of girls, huh?”

  “No. I’ve been on my own awhile.”

  “I’m trying to decide, Mr. Corson, whether I’m stupid enough to have a little flutter with you. If you were a gentleman, you’d help me decide.”

  I kissed her again. She had her hands against my chest, her fingers stiff and a little clawed, and her elbows between my belly and hers, holding us just a bit apart, and was doing all her kissing with her mouth. I closed my eyes and didn’t think about anything. I was happy. I could feel her back under my hands, tensing and relaxing again like a cat’s will when you stroke it. This time she was the one who stopped. We examined each other.

  “No... ” she said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Not stupid enough?”

  “Plenty stupid enough. Plen-ty. But you lied to me, Mr. Corson.”

  “What about?”

  “You told me there wasn’t anybody else.”

  “I don’t have anyone else.”

  “Oh no. There’s someone, all right. Maybe you don’t, um, have her yet. But I can see her in there, Mr. Corson. I can taste her.”

  “I don’t have anyone else.”

  “And I’ll tell you something about that girl, Mr. Corson. Whoever she is. She’s just like me, Mr. Corson. All her ideas are bad. I believe I’ll have Graham run me home now.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” I said.

  “It’s past his bedtime anyway. Good night, Mr. Corson.”

  She turned and walked off. I shut my mouth and watched her go. She went down the gallery, and I could see her through the glass, and then she turned again and I couldn’t.

  “He’s a fairy, you know,” said Maddy behind me.

  I turned. Maddy was in the corner, propping up the wall with her broad soft back and finishing her sandwich.

  “He’s a big fairy. Grammy is,” she said. “How’s it feel, having a fairy beat your time?”

  “You’ll get fat,” I told her savagely. “You are getting fat. And the sooner the better. I don’t like you.”

  She picked a crumb off her front and ate it. “I’m sorry Miss Godalmighty gave you the air. You deserve her. You deserve each other. Why don’t you go home, Suit Man? I don’t see why you’re here in the first place. You don’t fit in. You’re not having any fun. You’re just making everybody uncomfortable who’s here to enjoy theirself. What do you want here, anyway?”

  “Dope,” I snapped.

  “Well, that’s easy enough,” she said, swallowing the last bit and licking her thumb. “Come on.”

  She boosted herself off the wall with a shove of her rump and set off down the hallway without looking around. I followed her. We crossed the dining room and she led me along the other wing of the house into a woman’s bedroom, very untidy. Out the window was a dry fountain with a figure of a faun playing a double flute. “Come into my parlor, like they say,” she said over her shoulder. “Close the door.”

  As she spoke, she was undoing the sash of her robe. She pivoted gracefully as it fell open and stood facing me, waiting for a trumpet flourish. Underneath, she wore peach satin drawers and a smudgy yellow garter. She looked like two dozen roses in a pink pot. I closed the door. She ran two fingers along the elastic of her drawers, slipped them inside just over her left hip, drew out a packet folded from patterned gold paper, and held it up. “You fuss around more’n you need to, Suit Man. Some things’re easy.”

  “Not that easy,” I said. “It’s been a while since I bought any talcum powder. I’d like it to be a longer while.”

  She nodded, took a short flat knife from under her garter, and flipped open the packet at one end with the tip of it, deft as a baccarat dealer turning a card. She slipped the knife inside and drew out a little mound of the powder, and held it in front of my face. Her hand didn’t shake. I’ve known a few sleigh-riders and maybe that’s why I was never interested enough in the stuff to try any. Anyway, I never had. I lowered my nose toward the knife, pressed my right nostril shut with my forefinger the way I’d seen it done, and snorted the cocaine up the left, praying I wouldn’t sneeze.

  It bit into my head with cold teeth. For a moment I held still, feeling something like pain behind my eyes. Then the gold clouds in Maddy’s kimono seemed to swell, or maybe they just got very important-looking. Everything in the room looked very clear and important. I was most important of all. I was King Barracuda. Maddy was very beautiful and mysterious. The back of my tongue was bitter as lye. “Good?” she said.

  I nodded, and she closed up the packet and put it in my hand. It was warm. I hefted it and tried to look judicious. “Quarter-plate?” I said.

  When I spoke, my lungs felt cold.

  “That’s right,” she said. She licked the knife clean and tucked it away. “Full measure. Twenty bucks.”

  “How much more you got?” I said.

  Her expression didn’t change. I opened my wallet and held it out to her. She glanced inside, then pulled two packets from her left hip, one from her right, and began rummaging around behind her, looking at the ceiling. “I sewed the pockets in back too deep,” she said. She got out one more and set them all in a row before me. “That’s what’s left tonight,” she said. “Like I said, it’s been a nice party.”

  “I was thinking more of fifty than five,” I said.

  She took back the four sealed packets and stowed them away beneath her tummy, and nodded at the one in my hand. “You tasted that and it was good, so you’re buying it. For the rest, you’ll have to talk to Billy when he gets here.”

  I gave her a twenty and said, “When’ll that be?”

  “When he wants,” she said, stowing the bill where she’d stowed the merchandise. “People wait for Billy long’s they have to.”

 
; She was murmuring, but I couldn’t see why she had to talk so loud. I thought it might be a good idea to bust her one in that little nose. Or maybe marry her. They were both brilliant ideas. I felt like I could pick up the house and throw it if I wanted. It was an unrestful way to feel.

  “Close that robe before I fall in love,” I said, and went back into the dining room.

  After that, all I had to do was kill time. It didn’t die without a struggle. I went back out to the pool and had a couple more drinks and then took another stroll through the dining room. Maddy had finally put out that stack of sandwiches. I had one. It was delicious. But in the middle it began to seem very strange to go around putting things in your mouth and chewing them, and I left the rest of it on the mantelpiece and tried playing the piano in the sun room. I’ve never learned how, but it seemed worth a try. Outside, someone bounced on the diving board for a joke so that the record player fell into the pool in the middle of a song. I thought that was pretty funny. I saw a door I hadn’t noticed and went down some stairs. There was a long drab room down there with padding on the ceiling and side walls, and I remembered that Nita Paley had built an underground shooting range for some reason, but what they kept down there now was a pool table and a couple of busted easy chairs and some drunks, and I began playing pool for money. The first game, I wanted to jog around the table between shots. But by the second game I started coming out from under the powder, and soon I was thirty-two bucks up and the guy wanted double or nothing again. We were well along toward my sixty-four bucks when a thin man stepped up to my opponent and held out his hand for the cue. He nodded to him and to me and began to play.

  He pocketed the first ball as if he was trying to get it out of the way so we could move on to something interesting, and then he sank another the same way. He chalked up sparingly and made two more. He was running the table, all right. I rested the butt of my cue on the floor and studied him. He held his shoulders high and wore his black hair slicked straight back. He would have been a handsome man if the bones of his face hadn’t been a little too big and the skin over them too tight. His wore narrow gray boots with heels, tight black trousers that buttoned up the front and had no belt-loops, a yellow shirt, a bolo tie, and a charcoal gray jacket, cut short, like a bolero jacket. All of his clothes looked as if he’d spent money to have them made that way on purpose. He was a real desperado. He looked as much like Zorro as anyone could look who didn’t have a sword and a flat black hat. Most coke hounds blink like fury, but he blinked only once in a while, slowly and sort of precisely, like a falcon. I wondered how much hop you had to run through to get that way. It wasn’t hurting his game any. He sank the white with no more fuss than the other balls and laid his cue gently on the felt. I opened my wallet, counted out thirty-two dollars, and added it to the thirty-two on the edge of the table. Without taking his eyes from mine, he picked it up and held it off to the side. The other man I’d been playing said, “Well — Well, thanks, Billy,” and put it in his pocket.