Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde Read online

  Delores was standing in the middle of the living room, looking wildly up the stairs, clutching a sawed-off shotgun by the barrel and stock. When I appeared, she flung it away with a little yip and ran. I caught her at the door. “Give me your purse,” I said. She nodded enthusiastically and lunged for the door again. I hauled her back. “Purse,” I reminded her. She nodded again and lunged the other way, toward the writing table. Her dress bared her back to the coccyx, and all the skinny muscles were twitching like cut worms as she hunkered and snatched up her purse, which had been sitting by a table leg in plain sight. She held it out to me and I tossed it on the sofa.

  “The day’s take,” I said. She yanked open the top drawer of the table and scrabbled inside. The money was in a long canvas wallet with a zipper, the kind bank messengers use. I tossed it next to her purse. I grabbed her by the middle, slung her over my shoulder, and headed out the door as she kicked her legs around above my head. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to kick me or just keep from falling off. Halfway across the road I started fumbling for my car keys. It’s hard to do while you’re running, especially with a woman on your shoulder. I opened the trunk. “Hey,” she said. “Hey listen.” I dumped her inside and slammed the lid.

  When I got back upstairs it was pandemonium, the doorknobs rattling, a riot of frightened or angry voices behind them. I could stop running now. The doors didn’t have to hold much longer. I went back into Estrella’s room and said “Time to go,” and she threw off the bedspread and sat up, her impassive face slick with tears. I held out my hand. She took it, stepping around the pimp’s body without looking down, and we went next door. I put the key in the lock lefty, the way the pimp had, with the gun in my right hand. Inside was a Negro girl wearing just a middy blouse and one pink ankle sock, and a thin handsome man with his shirt buttoned up wrong. He thrust a gold watch and a wad of cash at me, blinking wildly. I took the money and put it in my pocket. “Get going,” I said, and he belted past clutching his shoes and jacket. I caught the girl by the arm as she tried to follow and said, “Not yet.” She tried to kick me with the foot wearing the sock, and I grabbed her ankle and lifted, then scooped her up in my gun arm as she fell backward. She lay in my arms and gazed up at me as if I’d said a rude word. “Behave,” I said, and set her on her feet beside Estrella. I had them join hands, then took Estrella by the hand and led the procession over to the next room.

  After the first two rooms, Estrella got the idea and started grabbing the women herself as they came out and adding them to the daisy chain. It worked better that way. We finished the four upstairs rooms and then trooped downstairs to do the other three. One other customer offered me his money, and I took it. One had to be dragged from under the bed. Then I threw them both out. I led the girls back into the parlor and surveyed my haul. Seven women of various colors, shapes, and ages, naked or half-naked, standing in a row before me. They were still holding hands, waiting. For a moment I wanted to raise my arms and lead them in a chorus of Silent Night. “Okay,” I said, “who speaks English?”

  “I speak,” said one of the Mexicans.

  She was olive-skinned, built like a tree stump, and old enough to be most of their mothers. Naked as she was, she stared at me as if she were in a suit of armor. I liked the looks of her. I said, “What’s your name?”

  She said, “Soledad.”

  “What are you going to do if I turn you loose?”

  “Gonna run.”

  “What about these girls?”

  “Gonna take ’em.”

  “Where?”

  “My cousin farm.”

  “What’ll they do there?”

  “Work.”

  “Where’s your cousin’s farm?”

  “I’m no tell you,” she said.

  “Good girl,” I said. “Have ’em back here, dressed and ready to go, in five minutes. Not six. Five.” I held up five fingers.

  She nodded, and as I went into the kitchen I heard her snapping a lot of words I didn’t understand, and feet thumping up the stairs and down the back hall.

  The kitchen door was standing open. Jeeves and his wife were long gone. The safe was in the pantry, as advertised. It wasn’t a safe, but a steel lockbox, which made me feel lucky. Two shots from the pimp’s .45 did for the lock, and I pried the mangled lid open with a knife from the silverware drawer, mashing my thumb while I was at it. There was about eleven hundred dollars inside and nearly three hundred in the canvas wallet, plus around a hundred from the customers. I divided the pile roughly seven ways. There was eighteen bucks in Delores’s purse. I stuffed it in my pocket, along with her car keys and driver’s license, then trotted back to the parlor. The girls were all there, holding pocketbooks or bulging pillowcases, dressed in everything from torch singers’ gowns to a suit of men’s pajamas, and Soledad was standing in front of them with folded arms. I handed them each their cut and gave the car keys to Soledad. “There are three cars outside,” I told her. “A beat-up brown Hudson across the street and two others next to the house. The keys will fit one of the two by the house. Get as far as you can before morning, but don’t drive to your cousin’s farm, or anywhere near. They can trace the car.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Buy bus tickets. You’ve got plenty for that. Don’t try selling the car, either. Just park it on a side street with the key in the ignition and walk away.”

  “I’m no stupi’,” she said.

  “Good. Go.”

  She came over, took hold of my shoulders and tugged until I stooped, then rose on tiptoe and pressed her hard lips against my cheek. Then she turned, flicked a stubby hand at the others, and led them out the front door.

  Estrella didn’t move. She stood there, staring with her black-dot eyes. She wore the hacked-up communion dress again. It didn’t fit any better. In her fists she held a silvery beaded purse and the wad of money. She still hadn’t opened the purse and put the money in. On her feet she wore heavy leather sandals. “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  Her voice was tiny but clear.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll go with you,” Estrella said again.

  I stood there.

  Soledad marched back inside and grabbed her arm. “No con eso, chica,” she said crisply. “Eso es un malo.” She gave me a hard, brilliant smile and dragged Estrella stumbling out the door, staring back over her shoulder all the way.

  I went over to the window. They were disappearing around the corner of the house.

  I opened the window and began working my way through the ground floor, opening windows as I went. If they were stuck, I kicked them in. I heard a car start up and drive off. There was an old tin of silver polish and a small can of kerosene under the sink, a half-full can of gasoline by the back stoop, and a pile of Spanish newspapers in the corner. I used the kerosene and gas to soak down the parlor sofa, drapes, and rug, scattered the newspapers around, and set the tin of silver polish on the coffee table. I opened the front door and fumbled in my pockets for matches. All out. I flicked my cigarette lighter until it caught, tossed it underhand at the sofa, and ran, pulling my jacket up around my face. There was a great whump, as if someone had struck me with an enormous scalding pillow, and I felt a few bits of glass strike my back. I kept trotting across the street to my car and opened the trunk. Delores tried to scramble back into the corner behind the spare. “Get up,” I said.

  “Please,” she hissed, weeping. “Please.”

  I hauled her out by the arms, and she staggered and braced herself against the back fender. She’d left a shoe in the trunk. She looked wildly at the burning house behind me, and then at my face. She seemed to be all white eyes, in which the fire danced and shook in little sparks. I took her by the throat and stuck the pimp’s gun in her mouth. She closed her lips around it for a moment by instinct, then stood there holding the barrel in her bared teeth.

  I said, “When you heard the shots, you started running. You didn’t even stop to grab your purse. You’ve got
no idea who it could have been. Nobody came by tonight but the regulars. What did I just say?”

  I took the gun from her mouth.

  She gasped, “I didn’t see nothing.”

  It was pretty corny stuff, the gun in the mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything better and I stuck it back in. There was a noise like a cannon shot behind me — the tin of polish — and she jerked and bit down on the barrel. I guess that hurt her teeth. It would have hurt mine. She began weeping again. There were two sharp cracks as her shotgun went off. I pulled her driver’s license from my pocket and held it so she could see her picture and read her name and address. “If anyone comes to see me, I’ll come to see you. If they come see me, I’ll come see you. What did I just say?” I pulled the gun from her mouth again.

  “You’ll kill me,” she said. “You’ll kill me if I talk. You’ll kill me.”

  “Get going,” I said, and she kicked off her other shoe and started running barefoot across the field. There was nothing middle-aged about the way she ran. She moved like a high school sprinter.

  I watched the fire lighting her twisting white back until it disappeared in the trees. I fished her shoe out of the trunk and threw it after her. I was very tired. Letting her go had been another dumb play. If I could scare her silent, someone else could scare her noisy. If the pimp had earned his bullet, so had she. I pulled out a corner of my shirt and began wiping down his gun, feeling the heat of the fire on my back. I kept staring into the black orchard. Estrella might do all right on a farm someplace. It was probably where she’d come from. I can usually tell another kid from the country. I wasn’t a farmer’s son, but I grew up in a farm town and I’ve pulled rye and cut wheat. I thought for a moment of Estrella in a plain decent dress, on her own place somewhere, with a lot of black-haired kids that hopefully didn’t look too much like me, and her plump little body next to mine at night. I wouldn’t have been the first old slob out there with a young wife who didn’t speak much English. Yeah, well. My cousin farm. For all I knew, Soledad would put the girls straight into another house. I hadn’t reached Halliday, either. All I’d done was make bad smells and loud noises, and all I had to show was eighteen dollars and a dead pimp. No, I’d left ten bucks in the tray. One of the girls had it now. Eight dollars and a dead pimp. The fire reached the gas line in the kitchen then and made me jump. I tossed the pimp’s gun in the ditch and drove back to town. Halfway there I remembered there wasn’t anything at home, not even coffee, so I stopped at an all-night diner and bought myself a couple plates of chicken hash with Delores’s money.

  20

  Letter

  I expected to feel pretty bad the next day, but as it happened I didn’t feel much of anything. When I thought it through again, I still couldn’t see a way to turn the girls loose without killing the pimp. Not without getting cooled myself, then or later. I don’t pretend I know what people deserve, but the girls couldn’t stay there and I figured I had at least as much right to be perpendicular as the pimp. Actually, I did feel bad, like hell in fact, but about Metz’s tongue. It was Metz I still couldn’t stop thinking about. That didn’t make sense to me, but there’s no law that things have to make sense to me, and eventually I said the hell with it and went out to buy groceries.

  I was planning to get juice, bread, bacon, eggs, potatoes, and a pound of coffee. While I was there I figured I’d better get some spaghetti and maybe some ground beef, and then I thought I ought to have some vegetables, growing boy like me, and some fixings if I wanted to make stew or a casserole, and by the time I was done I’d spent just about all I had on groceries. I didn’t really regret it. There’s worse things to blow your money on. It’s good having a house full of food. When I pulled back into the lot at home, I noticed a gleaming gull-wing Mercedes parked in one of the slots. It was empty. No one with any business at the Harmon Court would be driving a car like that. I got out carrying one of the bags and put a hand to the hood. Warm. I set my groceries down on the sidewalk, got my gun from the glove compartment, and walked around the corner of the manager’s office, holding it down by my leg.

  The pool was deserted, as usual, except for the drifting clots of brown algae that weren’t supposed to hurt you. It was a bright morning and the sun was in my eyes. That wasn’t so good, and I considered swinging around and coming in the other way, but if they were watching from my window I didn’t want them to notice I’d noticed anything. The gun was down behind my right leg where they probably couldn’t see it. Then the shadow of the Sun-Glo Girl’s elbow fell across my face and I blinked in the dimness. My front door was half open. I strolled up at a little angle so whoever was inside wouldn’t have a clean shot, and when I was almost to the door, I kicked it open and spun back against the wall. Nothing. I barged into the room, gun first.

  Scarpa had pulled my desk chair to the middle of the rug, and was sitting there reading The Red Badge of Courage, one leg crossed neatly over the other. He looked up and said, “You gave me a start, with that bang. This is a pretty good book.”

  “It’s one of my favorites,” I said, my gun trained on his pocket handkerchief.

  “This is an old book? Famous?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s a pretty good book. You mind I borrow it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I lowered the gun.

  Scarpa lay the book face down on his knee, open to keep his place, and looked around the room. “You live like a pig,” he said.

  “I thought I kept it pretty neat.”

  “That’s what I mean. Imagine having to keep a place like this neat.”

  “You’re a hard man to please.”

  “It’s not true,” he said. “I’m easy to please. All I want is people acting sensible, doing what they say, and I’m pleased. Of course, they got to do what I say, too.”

  I stuck the gun in my pocket. My hand was sweaty, and I wiped it on my leg.

  “I had a little trouble last night,” he said. “Somebody came to one of my businesses. Not a big business, just a little business of mine. But they chased everybody away, and shot a guy works for me. And then they burned the place down.”

  “What, the whorehouse?”

  “Oh, you know all about it?”

  “It’s in the papers. That was your whorehouse? I wouldn’t brag about being in that line of work.”

  “Just a little business,” he said, “and it’s not enough they got to kill everybody. They got to burn it. Right down to the ground. And I’m thinking, who do I know like that? Who do I know’s a goddamn Mau-Mau that doesn’t know when to stop? I thought I taught you something. I thought you knew how to screw the lid on.”

  “It’s a big town, Lenny. Every now and then something happens I don’t do.”

  “You didn’t burn down my whorehouse?”

  “I didn’t burn down your whorehouse. Why would I?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “I’ve got no reason to do it. Where’s the percentage?”

  “No percentage.”

  “Well then,” I said and lifted my palms.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “It’s the God’s truth. As long as I been doing this, I have never gunned anybody without a reason. It’s sloppy. You start gunning people just cause you got guns and everything goes to hell.”

  “Good. Don’t gun me.”

  “I got a feeling about you, Corson. But a feeling’s not a reason.”

  “No.”

  “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “In twenty-four hours, no, let’s be nice. In seventy-two hours. I want you living someplace else. Some other city. Where I never see you or hear about you again. All right? Someplace far away. I’m not gonna come here again. I’ll send people. And Wednesday afternoon, if you’re still here? I’ll have my reason. Cause you didn’t do what I say.”

  He closed the book and stood. “This was a nice short conversation,” he said, and walked to the door.

  When he was halfway along
the pool, he called back, “Thanks for the book.”

  In a minute I heard the Mercedes start up, and then it ground off into the distance.

  I put my desk chair back where it goes and opened up my trunk to see if he’d mussed my books. Then I opened the closet and sniffed. You could still smell the smoke on my jacket. It was nice Scarpa hadn’t thought of that, but I didn’t think he’d make enough mistakes to save me.

  Aside from the chair, he hadn’t disturbed anything, but I walked around fiddling and putting things to rights anyway. My books, my bed, my clothes, my desk. It had been a pretty good room. I’d liked being here. There were plaid curtains, and I’d gotten used to seeing them when I woke up in the morning. They let me know that I wasn’t back on the road again. It was the first place I’d ever had a bathroom to myself, and I always kept it so it shone, so no one would ever be able to go in there and say, This is some bum’s bathroom. When you’ve been on the road, you hate to leave a room. You know they might not let you have another.

  My bag of groceries was still on the front walk, and I fetched it back and got the rest from the car, and then put them all away in the kitchen. I’d planned a big breakfast and that’s what I had: four eggs up, a couple stacks of flapjacks, about half the bacon, a few pieces of buttery rye toast, and coffee. Then I cleared the dishes and washed the pans and drank another cup, slowly, while I read the paper with my feet up on the guest chair. And then I went for a ride, because the car was all mine now, bought and paid for.

  I had it in mind to take a spin along the coast, with the waves rolling and racing as if they were skipping along with the car, and the sun warming my face and the clean wind in my hair, but I don’t drive a convertible and I wound up in a second-run movie theater on Pascal. It was some kind of science fiction deal. I’d come in in the middle. These octopus-things that lived in craters were dragging the spacemen underground. It was a planet of women, and you could tell their queen was evil because her eyebrows were pointy, and you could tell she was the queen because her collar stuck up in back higher than her head. When she was upset, she did these interpretive dance moves. There was a lot of running through tunnels, and finally the walls were toppling in, the queen dancing around clutching her temples, and then you saw the palace burning, the little minarets toppling off, and a big THE END in the sky. I sat there for a few minutes watching cartoon squirrels whack each other with mallets, and then it started up again. The rocket came down on a column of fire. The men set out across a kind of meadow. Way off on the horizon, the palace appeared, shining and perfect. I got up out of my seat and went to see Rebecca.