Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (12 page)

“Okay. I don’t.”

“You work for me now. So I don’t need as much mouth from you as I been getting.”

“All right. I’ll want some money.”

“You’ll get paid when you show you’re worth paying.”

“I’ll have to be nice to people. I’ll probably have to make a buy myself.”

“All right.” He pulled out his wallet, counted off two fifties and five twenties, and handed them over. New bills, fresh from the bank. Two weeks’ work for Nestor. He took out a small leather notebook and began writing. “You find the guy, you call this number. I don’t care what time it is.”

He tore out the sheet, turned it over, and began writing again. “And this, this is my tailor. You’re gonna be there tomorrow morning when he opens at eight. He’ll be expecting you. Don’t tell him what you want. He’ll give you what I want. The tie’s all right. You can keep the tie. But if I gotta look at you? It’s not gonna be in that suit.”

Joseph Callender, Suitings wasn’t right on Rodeo Drive, but just around the corner on Brighton, behind a door that was freshly painted green but didn’t look like much and up a flight of stairs with gleaming black marble treads. There wasn’t any sign out front. Mr. Callender was there, sirring away at me, when I reached the top of the stairs at eight the next morning. There was no one thing about his clothes you’d notice, but he was about sixty and pear-shaped and the way he dressed, he made you wish you were sixty and pear-shaped, too. I thought I
might be a problem for him but he said I was actually a fairly classic 50 Long and wouldn’t need much work. I said that was good to know. He ran a tape over me just to make sure, dictating to an assistant the while, and took tracings of my stocking feet, and then sat me down in a green leather chair with a
Tribune
that was hot and flat, as if it had just been ironed, and some coffee in a cup I was kind of proud of myself for not breaking. In the next half hour three boys came up the stairs, loaded down with packages from some of the stores around the corner: Carroll & Co. and Lanzetti and D. Salzburg. Callender had me try on suits until he found one he could live with, then touched it here and there with chalk. He asked whether I’d need a little extra room under the left arm. I said I carried a .44 Python and should I have brought it? He said he’d seen them. He gave the jacket to one assistant and the pants to another, then sat me down and poured me more coffee, and I asked if he usually did alterations on off-the-rack clothes. He said that for a customer like Mr. Scarpa one made exceptions. I said yes, one did.

He had the whole shop working at once, it looked like, and got me out the door in under three hours. It was a little before noon when I pulled back into the lot at home. Rebecca was there, sitting in her convertible in a big sun hat and sunglasses. She took off the glasses when she saw me, and got out of her car, and I parked and walked over to meet her. I was wearing a sharkskin suit like Scarpa’s, only a darker gray they called oxford, a white button-down shirt — I had three more in the car, wrapped in paper — a snap-brim hat with a midnight blue band, black wingtips that shone dully, like obsidian, gray silk socks — I had a dozen of those — and my tie. I stood before her and held out my arms. “This is it,” I said. “As
Sinatra as I’ll ever get.”

She shook her head helplessly. “All right,” she said. “Tell me.”

“Last night Lenny Scarpa made me one of his gentlemen-in-waiting. He didn’t like my clothes, so he sent me to his tailor this morning. They let me keep my tie.”

“You got a job with Scarpa,” she said.

“Someone’s been poaching his snowbirds. He hired me to find out who. If it’s Halliday, we’ll have a number of angles to play, plus Scarpa’s backing. If it’s not, we’ve still got more leverage then we did. I know you wanted a plan, and this is a little vaguer than that, but it’s what I’ve got. If it doesn’t sound good, you can have your money back.”

“You’re working for Scarpa,” she said again, like somebody had sapped her and she was waiting to fall down.

Then, starting with the eyes, a smile spread over her face. You’ve never seen a smile like that.

I pity you.

She said, “You’re — You really are the most amazing man I have ever met in my life.”

“You ought to get out more.”

“That is brilliant. That is better than anything I could possibly — It’s
perfect
. I’ve been sitting here, waiting to tell you that I’d been, um, unreasonable is a kind word, and that you could have more time, if you needed it, and all the while you were — ” She shook her head. “I thought you’d run off again. I thought you’d run off. Not that I’d have blamed you. I was horrible to you yesterday, and I’ve also been waiting here to apologize.”

“That’s all right. It wasn’t all bad.”

“I suppose,” she said, flushing a little. “Anyhow, Ray, I’m sorry. I act badly when I’m frightened. I’ve spent too much time sitting in my room being frightened.”

“Maybe we can fix that.”

“I think you can. I know you can. This morning I know you can do anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Isn’t it a beautiful morning?”

“It’s almost a beautiful afternoon.”

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

I got in the car, and she pulled out and headed down Hawthorne to Rosecranz, then swung north on Vista del Mar, and we went cruising up the coast with the big silver tanks of the refinery on one side and the waves along the other. People say the weather’s always perfect in L.A., but what they really mean is always sunny. Most of the days aren’t actually perfect. That one was. Even the oil tanks looked pretty, and then we’d left them behind, and off to our right the waves were loping along, the edges like fine silver chains, seeming to braid and unbraid themselves. I come from way inland, and that stuff always stops me.

“It’s worth it,” she said. “Oh, it’s worth the risk. I should have done this days ago.”

I said, “You’re not telling me that’s all this heap’ll do.”

“No. I guess I’m not.”

“C’mon, then,” I said.

She eased her foot down on the gas, and the big car surged smoothly forward until the needle read 85. It wasn’t anything for that car. She held it there for a minute, then said, “That’s as far as I go, for now,” and eased it back down to 60.

“This is some car. What are you laughing at?” I said.

She said, “You. You just sitting there with your face in the wind like, I don’t know. Some big dog. I don’t mean that in any bad way. It’s just, you’re always trying to be so tough, and here you are just riding along in the sun and enjoying it so much.”

“It’s a nice day.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s not a bad car, either.”

“I’d like you to have something.” She picked her purse up from the floor under her knees, set it on her lap, and started rummaging in it one-handed.

“Don’t run us off the road,” I said.

She held out a dollar bill, folded twice. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“It’s from yesterday. I wish you’d take it back.”

“What for? You—”

“No, please. Please don’t say whatever you were about to say about, I don’t know. Services rendered or goods delivered or whatever hard-boiled wisecrack it was. I wish you’d please just take it. Because I think I was very ugly to you, and if I at least didn’t make you give me a dollar, then, well, I don’t know, then whatever it was was something else. Nicer. Not just me trying to make a monkey of you.”

“What would it’ve been? Without the dollar?” I said, taking the money. “Thanks.”

“I don’t know. Something just silly and, I don’t know, sort of high-schoolish. I was still a nice girl in high school. Not the kind of nice girl who’s never done anything, but I hadn’t done everything, and I was still nice to people. I had a beau and I was true to him.”

“Yeah? Was he nice too?”

“Very nice. He was my own true love.”

“You had one of those?”

“Yes. Just one.”

“They say that’s all you need.”

“They say.”

“What was nice about him?”

“He was inquisitive.”

“I guess that’s good. What happened?”

“Well, after a few years, I guess he sort of stopped being nice. He was a nice boy, but he didn’t turn out to be a nice man.”

“What did you do?”

“I guess I stopped being nice, too. He was my own true love, and I wanted to keep him company.”

“Then what?”

“Then it was over. My God, to think about me being still nice. How long has it been since you were a nice boy?”

“I don’t know that I was ever particularly nice.”

“Please don’t say that,” she said. “It can’t be true. You’re nice now, in some ways.”

“I think I’m about as nice now as I ever was. I used to be dumber.”

“I can’t imagine you being dumb. But I can imagine you being nice in an angry, rough way, and sort of serious. Maybe too serious. Were you always a big reader?”

“I never finished high school.”

“I know that. Mattie told me. That’s not what I’m talking about, that’s just you being hard-boiled again. Were you a reader?”

“I always liked books pretty well.”

“Why didn’t you finish high school?”

“I went out on the road. How’d you know that about the books? Mattie?”

“No, I guessed it about you. You look at everything as if it was a problem you had to study up on.”

“I do, huh.”

“Yes. You have this patient look, like you’re listening very carefully to find out how we’ve all screwed everything up, so you can fix it.”

“Sounds charming.”

“Were you the one in the family that always thought it
was his job to fix everything? And then, when everything started going to hell, you tried to stop it and couldn’t?”

After a moment I said, “You’re a good guesser. What makes you say things went to hell?”

“Because you went on the road before you finished high school. You wouldn’t have, not so young, if you could still have stood it there. If there was anyone left there who could care for you.”

“I guess we all did what we needed to.”

“You must’ve had to leave all your books behind,” she said softly.

We were silent.

“Well,”
she said very brightly. “
I
never opened a book I didn’t have to. Or had an idea in my head I didn’t have to. I read lots of movie magazines and if you’d known me then you’d have thought I was one Dumb Dora. You would have sneered at my movie magazines.”

“You know,” I said, “you’re right. I would’ve.”

“You never read any yourself?”

“All I could get my hands on,” I said, and she laughed. I laughed, too.

“But you would’ve tried to stop me reading them,” she said. “You would have tried to improve my mind.”

“I wouldn’t have had the nerve to talk to you.”

“Maybe I would have talked to you. Do you think we’d have liked each other? Back when we were nice kids, reading movie magazines? I know you’re a little older, but let’s say.”

“I didn’t like nice girls.”

“Hard-boiled,” she said warningly.

“No, it’s true. I liked Sin. I was praying for a girl who’d, you know, pull the book out of my hands and the glasses off my face, even though I didn’t wear glasses, and, you know, corrupt me. I thought I was a very serious guy, too, but I was hoping some red-hot mama would
come along and make a wolf of me.”

“And what happened?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Oh ho.”

“Took a few years, though.”

“So I’d’ve been too nice to be your girl. But maybe we could have been friends?”

“If you’d ever talked to me, I’d have fainted.”

“And after I threw a bucket of water over you and woke you up?”

“Then I’d have made fun of your movie magazines.”

“And after I kicked you in the shins?”

“Then I guess we might have been friends. I don’t know, Rebecca. To tell the truth, you play-act so much, I couldn’t say what you’d be like if you stopped.”

“Neither could I,” she said sadly. “I’m play-acting now?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Rebecca.”

“Neither could I,” she said again.

We’d jogged through town just past the airport and were back on the Coast Highway now, and the road was rising as we came around the curve toward Malibu. I could see Point Dume off in the distance.

I said, “Aw, hell, Rebecca. I’m sorry. The truth is, I may be too old to faint, but you pretty much scare me now.”

“I scare all the boys,” she said. “All of them with any brains. Well, so much for our beautiful friendship.”

“Even if it never happened,” I said, “it was nice while it lasted.”

“Yes, at least we’ve got our memories.”

“Yeah.”

“Our movie magazines. Your glasses.”

“Your bucket.”

“Do you know what I really would’ve said to you, Ray?
If I were your friend?”

“What?”

“I’d tell you, stay away from that Rebecca girl.” She leaned toward me. “I’d tell you:
Run, run as fast as you can!
” She fell back against the seat, laughing.

“Yeah,” I said. “But if I was your friend, I’d say, Sorry, I’m sticking around anyway.”

“So I guess it wouldn’t matter, me warning you.”

“I guess not.”

“You keep looking back in the mirror. Why do you keep looking in the mirror?”

“Rebecca?”

“Yes? What’s back there?”

“You wouldn’t set me up, now, would you?”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“The same car’s been behind us for the last fifteen minutes. I’m pretty sure it’s been with us since we left my place.”

“It’s him,”
she said in a horrible little voice with no breath, and stamped on the gas.

The big engine took hold, and I felt us both being mashed back into our seats.

The speedometer said 70, then 80, then 90. The wind rushed by my ears with a scraping sound.

“All right,” I said. “That’s enough. That’s not necessary.”

“He’s going to burn me,” she whispered. No, it was worse than whispering. “He’ll burn me.”

105, and starting to rock a little. Rebecca’s face was
stretched taut and her lips were white, and behind the sunglasses her eyes were huge and lopsided. The cords were out on her throat. She looked as if she were forty years old and hadn’t been living right. I set my hand on the back of her neck and stroked it. “It’s okay, Rebecca,” I said. “This isn’t necessary. Just stop it.”