Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde Page 18

  “He’ll come here,” she said.

  “No he won’t. You said he doesn’t know where you are. Look. I’m locking the door now, and bolting it. That’s the only door. And I’m closing the curtains, all right? And look, Becky.” I opened the desk and took out my gun. It made a good clunk when I set it down on the blotter. “See? We’re ready for anyone. Now let’s get you cleaned up a little.”

  “I’m very dirty,” she said.

  “You’re a sight,” I said. I slipped off what was left of her dress and stockings and dropped them in the waste-basket. I undid her brassiere, then gave her a quick onceover and had her move her arms and fingers. Nothing broken. I wrapped her in a blanket and sat her down in the armchair while I ran a bath, and had her watch my fingertip as I moved it around in circles in front of her face. No concussion I could see. The bath was ready then, and I helped her into it. She blinked and looked around, and worked her feet in the water. I handed her the soap and she began to wash the blood from her face.

  An Avianca stew had left half a bottle of blue dolls in my medicine cabinet. She only used to need two to put her away for the night. I gave Rebecca four with a finger of Old Overholt. “I don’t want it,” she said.

  “Drink.”

  I took the glass from her and helped her lather up her hair. “Becky? Where did all this happen?”

  “Don’t want to think about it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Down past Crenshaw.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “Where Crenshaw jogs over, past 405? As if you’re going to the airport, and there’s a little hill and those jointed oil things. That look like bugs. Crickets.”

  “Which one? Near which of the pumps? Can you remember?”

  “Don’t know. Three or four of them. There’s a little silver shack. Listen, Ray?” She sat up in the water and looked at me with wide eyes to show me how reasonable she was being. “I decided, he can have my face if he wants, because don’t you think he’d leave me alone then? And be satisfied? It doesn’t matter what I look like if he’ll just leave me alone, but I can’t be running around like this. I can’t be scared all the time.”

  “Close your eyes,” I said, and dunked her head in the water. She reached back and worked her fingers through her hair, then sat up again.

  “We didn’t get it all out,” she said. “But don’t you think he’d leave me alone then? It doesn’t matter what I look like. How I look’s never brought me anything good.”

  “What were you doing down there past Crenshaw?”

  “We went for a ride. He must’ve followed us.”

  “From where? Where had you been?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “We need to dunk you again,” I said. “There. I think that’s all of it.” I lifted one of her feet from the water. “You’ve got some blisters coming up. Want me to take care of them?”

  “Yes please,” she said, speaking very clearly. She was starting to go.

  I didn’t have a needle, so I got out a fresh razor blade and used the corner. She acted as if I was doing it to someone else’s feet. “There. Let’s get you dried off and in bed now.”

  I pretty much had to lift her out, and she leaned against me as I toweled her off. “Are you going out there,” she murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” She was silent a while, letting herself be rubbed dry. “Can I have my comb?”

  “Sure.”

  I sat her on the toilet lid and spread some antiseptic salve on her feet and her scrapes, then buttoned her into one of my old flannel shirts and tucked her up in my bed.

  “You’ll make me... ” she murmured.

  “What?”

  She was almost out.

  “You’ll make me say things,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t.”

  She went to sleep.

  I changed into dry clothes, got my toolbox from the closet and put my gun in my pocket. I turned out the light and left, locking the door behind me.

  I cut over to Crenshaw and headed due south. It was the same route she’d driven me last Friday, in the sunshine. The night was coolish, and I opened the window and let the breeze clear the bathroom steam out of my head. It was around six miles to the oil fields, a pretty solid walk for someone in bare feet. Maybe she’d had her shoes on for part of the way. She probably had, and thrown them away when a heel broke. Her feet had looked fairly bad. You can do all sorts of things when you’re in shock. Some of the houses and shops I passed were all right, and some weren’t so good, and in some places any white woman on foot would have stood out, even if she wasn’t bleeding and in rags. But whoever saw her had kept their distance. There are people who seem in such trouble that, whether you’re a Samaritan or a hyena, you want to back off, shield your face, as if they were on fire.

  As the 405 underpass came up, I could see through it to the big silver curves of the Mobil tanks in the distance. When I got to the other side the road jogged to the right, just as she’d said, and I saw a convertible with its lights on, standing fifteen yards or so from the road. Beside it was a corrugated steel shed with no windows, and behind that, three walking-beam pumps loomed up against the night sky. Rebecca was right. They looked like insects, enormous mantises, bowing and rising very slowly over something on the dark ground I couldn’t see. I stopped ten feet from the convertible and killed the lights, but left the motor running. I got out with my gun in my right hand and my flashlight in my left. I didn’t turn on the flash. The Studebaker’s motor was still running. I didn’t see anyone around. Each pump clanked softly at the bottom of each slow stroke. My nostrils were thick with the rank, gluey smell of crude oil.

  There was no one in the convertible, dead or alive. No stains on the white vinyl seats. I switched on the flash and walked once around the car, hearing that big V-8 Stude engine purr, looking at the footprints all around. They didn’t tell me anything. I followed the scuffed-up dirt around the back of the shed and found Lorin Shade where I thought he’d be. He was on his back, just out of sight of the road, and his pearl-snapped shirt was a black mess underneath his heart.

  I put the flash on the mess and thought I could count four holes. I swallowed hard and brought my nose down close to the wounds. There was the smell of blood, half new copper penny, half raw beef, and a smell of scorched cloth. I put the light on Shade’s face. He didn’t have any opinion of what had gone on. There was thick red dust on his shirt and his face, even on his open eyes. I stood up and thought a while as the pumps went up and down. I walked in a circle around him and the shed, and kept widening the circle a bit with every revolution, my flash on the ground. Maybe fifteen, eighteen feet from Shade’s body I found a scrap of lacy cloth, stained gray in the middle. I sniffed it, and then dropped it back on the ground. I wasn’t about to introduce it in court. I went to my car, got some surgical gloves from my toolkit, and came back and got into the Stude.

  It was the same car, all right, only now I was in the driver’s seat. I had a quick, screwy impulse to put it in gear and cruise around a while. I’ve never driven a car that nice. I opened the glove compartment, but the registration was already gone. There was nothing else in there I needed to think about. Nothing on the floor or under the seats. I killed the lights, turned the engine off, and got out. Someone had thought to take the license plates, too, front and back. Nothing in the trunk, not a thing. It was still the cleanest damn trunk you could imagine, like no one had ever opened it. I closed it, pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, and polished the trunk latch. I polished the gas tank lid too, and all the door handles, and then I got back in and did the steering wheel and gearshift and so on. That was probably everything. I stood there, thinking. The hell, I was tired. I got back in my car and went home.

  I spent the night in the armchair, under my overcoat, with my feet propped up on the bed. I woke up at dawn, a little before Rebecca. She hadn’t moved. She was thin enough that you could barely see her body under the blankets. All
you saw was thick pale hair on the pillow and a face that seemed a little childish in sleep, with the top front teeth showing, which made her look a little rabbity. When she started waking up, I could tell she didn’t want to. She knew she was going to remember something bad. It was her turn to wake up that way. She blinked at the ceiling, and then she blinked at me, and then she looked at me.

  I said, “All right. I’ll take care of him for you.”

  23

  Bed

  She took a long time to focus on my face. She had a strand of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth, and she brushed it away. It took two tries. “You were there all nigh’? In the chair?”

  “Sure.”

  “You should’n’ be there,” she murmured. “You nee’ your sleep.”

  “I slept fine. I’ve slept worse places than a comfortable chair in a clean room.”

  “You slept all right?”

  “I slept fine.”

  “You’ll take care of him for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You need your sleep,” she said. “You should sleep in your own bed. Come on. Get into bed. You need your sleep.”

  There was a stirring under the blankets, and then my shirt dropped out the side of the bed.

  “You need to rest,” she said.

  I got up and went around the other side of the bed. I took off my belt so the buckle wouldn’t jab her and got in.

  “No,” she said. “Your skin. Want your arms and your skin.”

  I got up again, shucked off my clothes, and got back in. She hitched backwards into me bottom-first and pulled my arms around her as if she were getting into a mink coat. “How’s the nose?” I said.

  “I hurt it,” she said. “But it’s better.” She put my right hand on her left breast and my left hand on her belly. “G’night,” she said.

  We lay like that for a minute. Then she squirmed around until she was facing me, slung a leg over mine, and gave my collarbone a vague kiss.

  “Okay. Good night,” she said. “I keep seeing Lorrie.”

  “It’ll be better,” I said. “Good night.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes. I went and saw him.”

  “Oh. G’night.”

  We lay there for a few minutes. Her breath was humid against my throat, and a little sour. “Mmn,” she said. “I keep seeing Lorrie. Can you, can I have a little... ”

  She kept tugging at my shoulder and hip until she’d rolled me over on top of her.

  “Easy,” I said.

  “Now,” she said. “Now he can’t get at me.”

  “All right. Are you all right?”

  “He can’t get me now,” she said, and wound her legs around mine. “Can you sleep like this?”

  “On top of you?”

  “It’s safer this way. I’m safe now.” She moved sleepily beneath me, getting comfy. I found I was ready again. “Do you want to do some more?” she said, noticing.

  “I don’t think you’re in any shape.”

  “You have to take care of me now,” she said, moving beneath me.

  Neither of us put on a stitch of clothing until we left the room that night. Of course, she didn’t have any clothing to put on, but she didn’t let me get dressed, either. It was different from the first night. She didn’t make those nice noises now or say any of those picturesque things, or much of anything at all except faster or easy or wait, and the only sound she made was harsh steady breathing, which choked off every now and then as she thought we might be getting somewhere. I tried to be careful of her bruises, but she didn’t want me to be careful. She wanted me to work. She almost didn’t care what I did, but she wanted me doing something to her all the time, and she’d clench her teeth like a small animal caught in a trap each time she thought there was some hope. And then little by little she’d see it was no good again and ease off, her face gray and exhausted and the tips of her breasts just pale flat circles.

  In between, she sat naked at my desk like a schoolgirl doing lessons and drew Halliday’s house from memory on typing paper. She knew it pretty well. She scratched in every stick of furniture and put hash marks through the walls to show where the windows were. She told me how many steps there were in the back stoop and the front stoop, and made a guess about how many there were in the hall stairs.

  “Where’s the safe?” I said.

  She said, “When you’ve got your money, you can find a sweet young girl who doesn’t mind questions questions questions every minute of the goddamned day.”

  She made me close my eyes and describe each room from memory as if I were walking through it from the back to the front, and then from the front door to the back, and when she felt I’d gotten it right she took me to bed and rewarded me. But she kept forgetting it was supposed to be my reward and started grinding again.

  She was pale everywhere the sun didn’t go, and the bruises made her look paler. She looked fragile. I thought of Scarpa and his men, and what they did for a living, and how people are so damn easy to hurt.

  For breakfast I made her a big omelette with tomatoes and cheddar, and for lunch I made a tuna casserole with canned salmon instead of tuna, which worked all right, and that night we had a big spaghetti dinner. I’d never been so proud to have a house full of food. People had done it for me sometimes when I was on the bum, but I’d never done it for anyone else, taken them into my house and fed them. When I was cooking, she’d either lean with her cheek against my back, humming, or sit over her plans, noodling and frowning. After lunch, she helped with the dishes, and then we sat side by side on the bed and watched TV, still in the altogether but not mauling each other particularly, as if we were an old married couple. We watched Friendship Ranch and part of Carter and Sharp on the High Seas. She hooked her leg over mine at one point and took it back when she got pins and needles.

  By mid-afternoon the bed was so rotten with sweat that I had Rebecca get up so I could put on fresh sheets. She slumped in my armchair, her knees gangling out, watching me. “You’re really making that bed,” she remarked.

  “It doesn’t take any longer to do it right.”

  “The Army teach you to make a bed like that? Your mother?”

  “She didn’t teach us to make the bed.”

  “Why not?”

  “She was busy. There. In you go now.”

  “That’s right,” she said, her eyes closed. “I forgot you were masterful.”

  The radio was playing some slow Nelson Eddy thing.

  “Come on,” I said. I came over and took her hands, and she let me pull her to her feet.

  “I’m so tired,” she said, and leaned against me. She put her arms around my neck and hung from it like a necklace, rocking a little. We started rocking from foot to foot together to the music.

  “You got yourself all snug in here,” she said. “A real little nest.”

  “I like having a nice place to stay.”

  “Sure. You were on the tramp once. I forgot.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Weren’t you afraid? Out there?”

  “Of what?”

  “I dunno. Getting hurt.”

  “A little. Not much. Hurt never lasts. What doesn’t last doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Then I guess you think nothing means anything much, because I don’t know anything that lasts. I don’t even think death’ll last. I think when it comes, it’ll be as crappy and slipshod as everything else.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think it’ll fall apart in an afternoon like a pair of cheap stockings.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. What are you trying to do, foxtrot?”

  “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Why are you even listening to me?”

  “Who says I’m listening?”

  It was a new song now, and we weren’t even trying to keep time anymore, just shuffling in circles.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I was afraid. When I was on the road. That’s why I joined u
p. I was afraid if I kept rattling around like that, I’d die.”

  “Were you that starving?”

  “I ate fine,” I said impatiently. “Sometimes I went a day or two without, but that doesn’t kill you. I don’t mean starve, I mean just die. Just go rattling around from town to town for years and years until you’re too sorry to waste a bullet on. Just go on forever. That’s what I mean by dying. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

  “All right. Don’t get excited.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “You’re not dead yet. We’re not dead yet.”

  “No.”

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said.

  “All right.”

  We kept circling around.

  “It was little different this morning,” I said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “You were trying to get a little... ”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “I listen to the same songs on the radio as everyone else,” she said. “Sometimes I still want those things, too. You’ve got a lot. I thought maybe you might have something for me.”

  “I wish I did.”

  “I wish somebody did,” she said.

  It was hard to hear that ‘somebody.’

  “All right,” I said. “Then I hope somebody does, too.”

  She kissed me. She wasn’t kissing me because she thought I might like a kiss, or because she thought it’d be a good idea to kiss me just then, or because she knew a lot about kissing and she’d figured out just how I wanted it, or anything like that. She just kissed me. It went on for quite a while, and then she laid her head against my chest.

  “Uh huh,” she said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “Ray?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You think you’ll ever marry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You wouldn’t marry me? If you could?”

  I shook my head. She felt my chin going back and forth against her hair.

  “No?” she said.

  “You’ve got the best little jungle-gym in the world, honey. But I’d get bored climbing around on it all by myself.”

  “And yesterday you thought you loved me.”