Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde Page 14

  I took her to the Gold Medal. She always had the fried chicken platter, and it never died a lingering death. Between bites, she said, “Honey, I feel so awful and I hope you won’t be upset, but I couldn’t find you hardly anything. Halliday’s Halliday’s legal name. I know it sounds phony but he could’ve changed it anywhere in the country and we wouldn’t have the records. He bought the Shippie place in that name three years ago for thirteen five and he’s already got a second mortgage on it. I’d love to have listened to him talk somebody into that one. The Lincoln’s his, all right, but he’s way behind on it. He’s got two other nice cars, a Buick and a Stude baker, and he’s way behind on them, and I’ve written them down with their license numbers, um, come on now, oh, here.” She handed me a little scrap of paper with potato salad on the corner. “And he’s been arrested twice for pandering, and, are you ready? The charges were dropped both times with no trial. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “How’d you get the pandering bit?”

  “Oh, honey, I know so many cops, I could murder somebody every Tuesday and get off with a warning. Jay Russert, you know Jay? Well, he’s not Organized but he is Vice, and he says they’re very interested in your Mr. Halliday. Not because he does so much, but because he’s all over the lot doing everything and he doesn’t seem to have good sense.”

  “Joanie, this is terrific. You’ve really done a job for me.”

  “I haven’t done hardly anything, and here’s the worst. As far as L.A. County’s concerned, there’s no such thing as Rebecca LaFontaine at all. We don’t have a thing on her, not a thing. I want you to tell me the truth about Miss LaFontaine.”

  “I’m in love with her, Joanie.”

  “I knew it. I knew it.”

  “I’m going to take her away from him. He’s not good enough for her.”

  “I should say not. Is she really beautiful? Where did you meet?” Joanie settled in with her face in her palms and her eyes shining and for a while I said whatever came to mind. Joanie loved stories — she probably lived her life the way she did because she loved stories — but she didn’t necessarily listen to them that closely.

  After I settled the bill Joanie had a bit of a dilemma, since she couldn’t take me to her new place, because she’d just moved way out to Baldwin Park and it was still all boxes and depressing, and she couldn’t go back to my place because she needed to do some shopping while she was downtown. You could see her getting upset at the idea that an old friend like me might have to go home unbedded, but I reminded her that I was in love now and she lit up again. She gave me a five-minute goodbye kiss and said she’d have to have me over soon when she was settled, some afternoon or maybe some evening when Lewis, had I met Lewis? was on the late shift. Then she gave me a wave and headed off to Bullock’s. If nobody killed Joanie she’d make someone a wonderful little wife.

  When I got home I called Mattie Reece and asked if he had anything yet. He suggested I cultivate patience. He didn’t use those words. I stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling for a while. Then I rolled over and looked at the blanket. I was supposed to sit tight and wait for Scarpa to call. He’d call when he had more work.

  Work like last night’s.

  I went to the closet and looked over my new suit again. Somehow there wasn’t any blood on it. You’d think there would be.

  I wandered around the place some more, then sat down at the desk. I took out four sheets of paper and marked them SCARPA, BURRI, HALLIDAY, and REBECCA. Then I got out a fifth and marked it METZ, but that was silly. Metz was done, and I crossed out METZ and wrote in THE SITUATION. I laid them out in a row and started noodling names and facts and connecting them with arrows and generally smoking my meerschaum and playing my violin. When evening came, what looked best was the business card I’d found in Halliday’s desk, the one with no name on it. The address was way out in Calabasas, and I got in the car and went there.

  It was mostly ranches and farms out there, and the place I wanted looked to be a regular old farmhouse in the middle of an orchard, but they’d knocked down the barn in back and instead there was a gravel parking lot with seven cars in it. On impulse I kept out of the lot and parked on the shoulder across the road from the front door, facing back toward town. The orchard stretched out in the dark around me, a working orchard from the look of it, grapefruit from the smell, but I guessed whoever used to live in the house had sold out to a bigger concern and someone else was farming it now. There wasn’t another house within a mile. I chewed my lip a little, then took off my holster and gun and put them in the glove compartment. I got out of the car and went to ring the doorbell.

  The door was opened by a thin woman of fifty or so in a party dress that showed too much of her and tried to push around what it didn’t show. She smiled at me and said hello honey. I nodded and said hello back. Behind and to the side of her was what looked like an ordinary front parlor in somebody’s house, except they’d set an antique writing desk facing the door. When I didn’t say anything more, she turned and walked back to the desk and sat down behind it with her ankles gracefully crossed and her fingers laced and her nails gleaming. They were some nails. Her hair was done Kim Novak-style and blonde enough to hurt. You could have sterilized a cut by running your fingers through that hair. The desk had a fake marble top and ball-and-claw feet, and was open in front to show off her legs. Her arms and legs were smooth and young-looking, the way you’ll see sometimes with women who earn a living by physical labor. She’d probably done her share of what I guessed went on upstairs, before she moved over to management, and whatever else you want to call it, it is hard labor. “Why, I don’t think I know you, honey,” she said.

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “I’m Miss Delores,” she said. “How’re you doing tonight?”

  “I’m Bill Jones,” I said. “Fine.”

  She thought about that and decided it was a joke. She laughed. It didn’t bother her hair any. “Well, I think we can get you relaxed now after your hard day, Mr. Jones. How does that sound?”

  I said it sounded fine. She asked me if I wanted a drink and I said I was fine, then changed my mind and said gin and lime. She tapped the little bell at her elbow. Off to my left was a small arched doorway that must have led to the kitchen, and I heard footsteps and the clack of dishes being washed. There’d be someone there to make food and do the laundry. Especially laundry, there’d be lots of that. A short dark man in a white shirt and black trousers appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Delores told him to get me a gin and lime and he went silently away. He came back almost at once and set the drink on the writing table without looking at me. The kitchen noises hadn’t stopped. I guessed it was him and a wife to do the chores, with maybe a shack out in the yard where they lived. I picked up the drink and had a taste. It was strong.

  On the desk was the kind of little photo album grandparents carry around to show off their grandchildren. It had only seven pages inside, and on each was a full-length snapshot of a woman. Two of them were white, three were Mexican or Filipino, one was a Jap, and one was colored. Beneath each picture someone had written a name and three figures separated by asterisks: 9–* 15–* 25– or 12–* 18–* 40–. Each woman had been posed in a formal dress, standing in front of the same pine-paneled wall. One plump brown girl wore what looked like a communion dress someone had gone over with scissors and thread, scooping out the neckline and splitting it up the side. She was coming out of it like toothpaste from a tube. Her name was Estrella and her rates were ten, sixteen, and thirty.

  “A very good girl,” Miss Delores said. “Especially when she has a gentleman to make her behave.”

  “Uh huh?” I said.

  “Uh huh,” she said.

  “She looks young,” I said.

  Miss Delores leaned closer and murmured, “Only fifteen.”

  “Is that right.”

  “You’re shy,” she said. “But there’s no need to be shy.” There was a small bakelite tray at her e
lbow, and she nudged it forward with a fingernail. I put two fives into it and she looked disappointed, then smiled. “You’ll want more,” she said, and tapped the bell again, twice.

  “What do I owe for the drink?” I said.

  “Oh,” she said, “let’s leave it on the tab for now. Because I do believe Mr. Jones will be wanting more.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I heard heavy footsteps and a young man in a blazer came down the stairs. He had muscles and big shiny movie-star eyes, but his face was too short. It was like the face of a chisel, sloping down fast toward a sharp flat chin, with just a little slot of a mouth right above it. He was the kind of guy whose chest hair grows right up his neck. So am I, but I keep my shirt buttoned, and when I wear a gun I don’t let it bulge out all over the place.

  His eyes flicked down on the book of photos and he said, “Good to meet you, buddy. You’re in luck, as it happens. Estrella’s free. She’s waiting for you.”

  I went to tip back my drink.

  “No, no, take the drink, take the drink. We got coasters in the rooms.”

  I followed him up the stairs, holding my drink. It was just an old farmhouse up there. A big farm family had lived here once. It was silly to let that throw me. The world was full of whorehouses, and most of them had been something else first. Then I saw what had been bothering me.

  There was a new Yale lock on every one of the upstairs doors.

  The pimp got out a ring of keys, opened one of the doors, and motioned me inside. “Here you go,” he said. “I’m gonna lock the door now, so you got your privacy. But you’re ready to go, or you need anything? You just ring that little buzzer over here, and I’ll come fix you up. Okay? Have a good time,” he said.

  A new Yale lock.

  There’s never anything to steal in a whore’s room.

  He closed the door behind me. I heard it click.

  19

  Estrella

  It wasn’t a bad-sized room. I guessed it had been a son’s or daughter’s bedroom. In the corner there was a little sink and a stack of towels, and on the bed a short brown girl was sitting in a translucent nightgown, knees together. As soon as the lock clicked, Estrella pulled her nightgown over her head, got up, and walked toward me. She was a little thing with a satiny heart-shaped face and eyes like black dots, and well upholstered everywhere you looked. If you ran into her, you’d never bruise yourself on a sharp corner. Halfway to me, she gave each brown nipple a businesslike twist with thumb and forefinger, to make them look festive for the customer, and when she reached me, she took the drink from my hand and set it on a coaster on the dresser. Then she draped her arms around my neck and turned up her face to kiss me. No one had told her this was the one thing that wouldn’t be expected of her. Her hair was black and loose on her shoulders, and there was enough of it that you could smell it. I admitted to myself that I’d picked her because I’d thought she was the prettiest. I bent down and pecked her gently on the forehead, then straightened and stared straight ahead again, thinking hard. There was a curlicued wrought-iron grille over the window by her bed, painted white. That made sense, considering. Probably there’d be one over all the girls’ windows. It didn’t surprise Estrella, my not kissing her. She probably thought I didn’t want to kiss a whore on the mouth. She patted my chest and walked off toward the sink in the corner, then turned and beckoned me over. There was no expression at all on her tiny-eyed face, not even a look of resignation. They hadn’t lied much about her age. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and I could feel it start to build up inside me, the way it does. You heard about places like this, but you always hoped people were exaggerating. They’d come here answering want ads for dancers or domestics, and then the Yale lock would click and somebody, the pimp probably, would sit them down and tell them what they’d be doing with their days from then on. They’d be illegals, mostly, who didn’t speak much English. They wouldn’t have anyone here to worry about them. They wouldn’t be able to yell for a cop. I wondered how old Estrella would be when they let her out. I wondered what she’d be made to do between now and then. I felt my heart grinding inside me now, as if it were being squeezed through a hole too small for it, a hole with sharp edges, and my blood going, and I saw that I’d made my decision. It would make a lot of noise, and probably be kind of tough on the pimp, but none of that could be helped.

  When I didn’t come over, that didn’t surprise Estella either. There’d be lots of men who didn’t think they needed to wash. She walked back to me, sank to her knees, and took hold of my belt. I picked her up and set her on her feet again.

  “No,” I said. “Let me think.”

  She waited. She had a deep belly button and a round dark belly. I wanted to rest my face against it. I caught myself thinking that twenty minutes wouldn’t make any difference. That she probably wouldn’t even mind. But that was the point. She ought to have been able to mind. “You don’t speak English, do you,” I said.

  She was silent.

  “Put your nightgown on,” I said. “Here. Sit down. Here, next to me. Listen. Some bad things are going to happen now. Some, some unpleasant things. But not to you. And when they’re done happening, you’ll be able to leave. Out.” I gestured. “Afuera. Libre.”

  She began to have a look in her eyes, one of fright. She still didn’t move.

  I took her by the elbow and led her around to the far side of the bed. “Lie down,” I said, gesturing. “Down. On the floor, here. And whatever you do, whatever you hear, don’t move, don’t say anything, until I come for you. I’m going to come for you.” She didn’t like any of this a bit, but it had been a long time since she’d even thought of trying to stop what she didn’t like, and she lay down on the floor. I pulled the spread from the bed and covered her up head to toe. “Okay,” I told her. “Silencio. Siempre silencio.” I went to the door and pressed the buzzer.

  I leaned on it a while, and then gave it a few petulant jabs, and by that time I heard heavy footsteps down the hall and the pimp saying, “Easy, easy. I hear you.”

  “What the hell kind of joint is this?” I shouted querulously through the door.

  “Easy, friend. Just give me a minute,” he said, putting the key in the lock.

  “I want you to see something,” I snapped. “I want you to have a look at this.” The door opened and the pimp came in. His left hand held a ring of keys and right hand was up near his gun, just in case. He wasn’t entirely stupid. I gave him the edge of my forearm across his throat, then opened my hand and yanked him foreward and off balance by the back of the neck, while my left hand slipped in ahead of his right and closed on his gun. It was a big fella, and I held on as he dropped away from it. By the time he hit the floor, I’d switched it to my right hand. He tried to sit up, choking, and I leveled the barrel at his mouth.

  “You make a loud noise with that,” I said, “and I’ll make a loud noise with this.”

  “Don’t shoot me,” he whispered raggedly. “Don’t shoot me.”

  I pressed the door closed with my rear.

  “Delores has the day’s take,” he whispered rapidly. “It’s just in a pouch. The safe’s in the pantry, but I swear to God we don’t have the key. I swear to God. They send a guy with the key to transfer the money a couple times a week. Don’t shoot me.”

  “Get down on all fours,” I said. “Like that. Good. Does that key open all the rooms?”

  “All the girls’ rooms.”

  “Same key for all of them? Show me which. Slowly.”

  “This one. Don’t shoot me, I swear to God.”

  “Push it closer. How many customers right now?”

  “Four. You and three others. In Two, Five, and Six. Two’s downstairs.”

  “Where do you get the girls?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Where do you get the girls? Ads for singers and cleaning ladies, like that?”

  I wanted him to tell me I had it wrong, that this was a plain old cathouse.

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sp; “Sure,” he said. “Some from bars. I get a commission. Please, guy.”

  “How often do the girls get to go out?” I said.

  “They get supper in the kitchen and a bath down the hall twice a week.”

  “I mean leave the house.”

  “Jesus Christ, they don’t leave the house! Jesus, buddy, don’t shoot me.”

  “What about when they get sick? Or too old?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I said, “How often does Halliday come by?”

  “Who the hell is Holiday?”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, isn’t this Halliday’s joint? Whose is it, Scarpa’s?”

  “He’ll kill me.”

  “I’ll kill you. Is this place Scarpa’s?”

  “You moron,” he said, weeping, “you crazy goddamn moron, everything in this valley is Scarpa’s. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me.”

  “No he won’t,” I said, and shot him.

  I put it in his forehead. It was probably cleaner than he deserved. He rocked back and then flopped down on his face and there was a little shriek from under the bedspread, but then she was still again, like I’d told her. I put another in the back of his head for insurance and then stood there a minute, rubbing my face with my free hand and muttering, “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.” But I’d known it was a dumb play before I pushed the buzzer. I pulled the sheet from the bed and dropped it over the pimp, so Estrella wouldn’t have to see him on her way out. I was getting goofier by the minute. “Be right back,” I said, and reached over the bed to pat the hump in the bedspread. Then I ran downstairs three steps at a time. There was a lot of hollering behind the locked doors as I went by.