Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (20 page)

All my love allways,

“Lance”

I heard a door slam down the hall, and footsteps approaching. She walked back into the room saying, “I’ll
kill him. I’ll
kill
him.”

When she saw me holding the letter, she stopped.

She walked over to the straight chair by the closet. She sat herself down cautiously, as if she wasn’t sure the chair would hold.

We looked at each other.

“You met him a few months ago when he hired you to do a stag movie,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

I said, “So you did a couple movies and then stole his money, because he wasn’t much of anything to you anyway, and now he wants to douse you with lye.”

“May I have that, please,” she whispered.

“Sure,” I said, and handed her the letter.

“May I have my book, please.”

I gave that to her, too, and she folded the letter carefully and tucked it away where it had been and zipped up the book.

She gripped the book in both hands.

“I know,” she said. “I know I’ve lied to you. But I haven’t lied about anything important, Ray. Not important to you. Only to me.”

“Uh huh.”

“If you’re going to hit me,” she said, “then go on and hit me, but please don’t just keep standing over me like this.”

I sat down on the bed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Take it from ‘important,’ž” I said.

“Please,” she said.

“Becky,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I didn’t lie, really,” she said. “Everything important was true. From your end. I do need to get away from him. He did say he’d burn my face. The only thing different is that I didn’t just meet him because he wanted
girls for his movies. The only thing is that I’ve known him, that we grew up together, in the same little town. And I loved him very much. And there was only him, and he loved me too. If you read the letter — back then he loved me too. He wrote such wonderful letters, and he was going to send for me, and he did send for me. And when I got here I couldn’t understand anything, because back home everyone liked us, and wished us well, because we were such nice kids. We were. We were athletes and we were nice kids. And for a while, when I was here, I thought everything he was doing must be all right, because it was him doing it. And then I thought, if the other things, if he wasn’t right according to those things, then I’d have to get rid of everything else that said he was wrong. Because I loved him. And I made movies for him. And I did other things. And I began turning, I’ve turned into something horrible. I had to get away. I have to get away. Because I don’t even have his love anymore. But he can’t stand to lose anything, even if he has all the others, and he said he’d ruin me if I went, and then I took some money to make a new start with, and that made it worse. Ray?” she said, tears trickling down her face. “Didn’t you ever have something so precious, what a stupid word. Something that seemed to justify the whole world, and it went ugly, so ugly. And afterward, you wanted to pretend it had never been. That you’d never been that wrong, or hurt that badly.”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

“I did,” she said. “And I thought I was so lucky. And I still don’t know how it happened. And I don’t even believe it’s him anymore. You’re so surprised I want him hurt, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s already dead. He must be, dead for years, and now it’s somebody else, someone horrible. Because in high school he was so lovely and there was only each other.”

“And what high school was this?”

“Do you really need to know that, too?”

“Jesus
Christ,
” I roared, and lurched to my feet.

She shrank back against the wall.

“Too many goddamned stories,” I said, almost choking. “Too many goddamned people telling me too many goddamned things. Something so precious — you don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’re doing. Here.” I was digging money from my pocket. There was almost nothing left. I threw it all on the bed. “Here. Here’s what’s left. It’s what I’ve got left. For fifteen bucks a day I’m anybody’s chump, but not yours anymore. Not yours. Get yourself another. I’m out. I’m out.” I turned and headed for the door.

“Where are you
going
?” she wailed.

“I’m out,” I said, and wrenched open the door.

“You can’t go,” she said, and was across the room and her arms were around me. She clutched at my shoulder and somehow got me facing her again, and got herself plastered against me like a windblown scarf, and got the door closed. We stumbled back against it. “Don’t go,” she said. “You can’t go.” Her voice was flat with terror. I couldn’t see her face. She was rubbing it, open-mouthed, against my neck, and hauling my shirttails out of my pants and scraping at the small of my back with her fingers. “You can’t go,” she hissed. “You can’t. You can’t. Don’t go.” She was rubbing the whole front of herself against me from chin to knees, back and forth, as if my name were written in chalk on a wall and she needed to rub it out, and I smelled again the scent of harsh white soap, the kind you wash the laundry with, not your own body.

Over her shoulder, I was counting the money on the bed. “It doesn’t figure,” I said thickly. “If a buck gets me one of them, and twenty-one bucks gets me two, are you
telling me twenty-six dollars and forty cents buys the whole package?”

“Don’t go,” she said.

I shut up.

I never told Mattie what it was like. I wouldn’t have known how, anyway. Rebecca knew an awful lot, and she did an awful lot, and for a while I thought I must be a hell of a fellow. Then I saw that the noises she made and the things she said and did were just that, things she said and did. And then I saw they weren’t even meant to fool me. She was just trying to show me a good time. I stopped.

“What,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see her face in the shadows.

“I warned you,” she said softly.

“No. What you said was you weren’t very good.”

“I meant that I don’t want anything. I never want anything. It’s okay,” she said, touching my face. “Don’t stop. It’s okay.”

“Was it—”

“It’s never been any different with anybody. But I was happy when it was him. It’s okay. Don’t stop. Come here. It’s okay.”

What got to me most, I think, was that I couldn’t do anything to get her nipples up. They were just pale disks, sometimes a little nubbly. Of course, some women are like that, even if they’re having a fine time. Anyway, it was stupid to take it personally.

Shade tapped on the door once near midnight, softly calling Becky’s name, and once a few hours later. The first time Rebecca screamed at him to go away, and the second time she just made the noises she was already making, but a little louder. I heard him weeping and stumbling heavily away down the hall.

His hat was on the floor near the window, behind the bed. That’s why I hadn’t seen it earlier.

When I woke at dawn, Rebecca was on the other side of the bed and facing away from me, curled up in a
C
, all shoulder blades and lion-colored hair. Every now and again she let out a delicate little snore. They were lovely sounds. She didn’t smell like soap now. She smelled like bed. I had forty-eight hours left now until Scarpa sent his men, but it’s funny how lying with a woman makes you feel safe for a little while anyway. Still, forty-eight hours isn’t much, no matter how good Rebecca smelled, and I got up carefully, knelt down on the floor, and started going through her clothes. There was some pale light coming in under the blinds, and I held up each label and read it. They were just labels. I don’t know anything about women’s clothes. I didn’t think I could do her closet or dresser without waking her, so I got her purse off the night table, gripped the clasp in my fist to muffle the click, and slowly twisted it open. Her purse was nice and tidy. She had a clean lace handkerchief in there, a change purse with about a dollar in change, six singles held together with a paper clip, two shades of lipstick, and a compact I didn’t open. There was no driver’s license. There was a little chrome .32 automatic with a fake pearl grip. I could have hidden the whole thing in my hand. I broke it and sniffed, looked down the barrel, then popped out the magazine and counted six bullets. Full, and hadn’t been fired in a long while. I slid the magazine back in. It went home with a faint click, and I heard
Rebecca stop mid-snore. She was watching me from her nest of fair hair. “Don’t you ever stop,” she said, without love.

“Morning,” I said.

“Morning. If you wanted to see what was in my purse, why didn’t you ask?”

“I’m shy.”

“I’ve given you this,” she said, patting the sheet over her middle. “I’ve given you all this. You think I wouldn’t’ve given you what’s in my purse? Go on. Take it.”

“I’d look pretty silly with a gun like this,” I said. “I’ve never understood why anybody would put chrome on a gun.” I pulled out a corner of the sheet and began wiping it down.

“What’re you doing?”

“Someday, when you do something stupid with this, I don’t want them to find any of my prints on it.”

“I thought I’d better get one,” she said. “You’re probably going to tell me I got the wrong kind.”

I examined the gun on both sides in the light from under the blinds, holding it by the sheet, then dropped it back into her purse and set her purse back on the night table. I flopped down beside her. She lay on her back with the blanket drawn up to her chin, the edge of it bunched loosely in her fists, but when I took hold of it myself she let go at once, and I slowly drew it down to the foot of the bed. I propped myself on one elbow and just looked. There wasn’t an inch of her that was unfamiliar now. In one way I felt as if we’d been lying around naked all our lives, but in another way I felt I’d just stolen my first peek at her through some bathroom window, as if I was some lucky dirty lad alone in an alley. She lay there gazing at the ceiling, arms at her sides.

“You could say something nice,” she said bleakly. “You could tell me I’m beautiful.”

“You look ridiculous,” I said. “You look like two balloons on a string.”

“Thank you. I know. And
you
,” she went on savagely, “look
awful
. You did look stupid with my gun. You looked like some big horrible stupid hairy animal. And so
pleased
with yourself. You don’t look a bit like a bear. Bears look nice.”

“Nice? We had some bears where I’m from. Browns and a few grizzlies. They say people are the only animals that kill for fun. It’s not true. A grizzly will do it just to pass the time.”

“I know about bears but they still look nice. They have little eyes, and they always look like they’re looking around, trying to figure things out.”

“Well, that’s me in a nutshell. How did we got onto bears?”

“I don’t know. It was something I thought of.”

We lay there a while in silence. Her breasts and thighs were beginning to goose-pimple, but she didn’t try to pull up the blanket. There was a hard flat spot in the center of her chest, and I touched it with a forefinger, then traced my finger down her narrow belly. I picked up one of her legs by the calf, gave it a little shake, let it drop. Her legs didn’t touch except at the knee, the way some skinny women’s don’t, but also, her shoulders were wide enough that her arms didn’t touch her sides. There was a clean pale hollow under her arm, and I stroked it with my thumb. She wasn’t ticklish. Her muscles were long, flat, and delicate, and braided together like the muscles in a doe’s flank. Most pretty women look better with their clothes on, but you had to see all of that goofy body for it to make sense.

“Yes you’re beautiful,” I said, defeated. “Of course you’re beautiful. Why the hell do beautiful women need to keep hearing it?”

She snickered.

“Why do de dames need to hear it?”
she growled.
“Why do dey put chrome on de gun?”

“You like ‘em big and dumb, like me and Shade?”

“I don’t like ’em any way at all,” she said seriously. “When we get the money and I can feel safe again, I’m going to get out of here and go someplace no one’s ever heard of me, and get a nice house, with everything nice, and live like a lady. And never have anyone bothering me again.”

“What money was that?”

She rolled up on one elbow, and now we were face to face. “We’re going to kill him,” she said. “We’re going to kill him and take his money. It’s the only way. He’s not going to stop otherwise. He’s not ever going to stop. Ray, the smut’s old stuff. Halliday’s been selling drugs for almost a year. He’s been selling cocaine, and you can’t imagine the money. Ray, sometimes there’s half a million dollars in his safe. We’ll split it sixty-forty. That’s two hundred grand for you.”

“Where do you get sixty-forty?”

“It’s my idea and my information. You’re just along for the strong-arm work.”

“I’d be taking all the risk for my forty. Someone catches me in the house, you never heard of me.”

“I’ll be there with you,” she said. “You think I’m going to tell you how to do it and where the money is, and when, and then have you do the job alone and take off? We’ll be there together. You’ll make him open the safe. He can’t bear pain. We split the money right there. We leave by separate doors and never see each other again.”

“I don’t mind the money a bit, but it’s fifty-fifty. And let’s think whether we can’t get it without killing. I told you, murder’s not easy. There might be a way that makes a little less mess.”

“All right, fifty-fifty, but there’s no other way. You have to kill him. You have to. What’s the matter, haven’t you ever killed anyone?”

“I try not to make a habit of it.”

“You’ve got to do it. It’s the only way. It’s the only way he’ll ever leave me alone. You don’t know what it’s like, when anyone can get at you and do anything. No, that’s stupid, of course you do, of course you know. But you’re tough, and you can take it, and you know how to do things. I don’t know how to do anything. I can’t even swim that well anymore. If it wasn’t for how I look, I’d make people sick. I make them sick now, but they still have to have me. But when my looks are gone no one will even talk to me. I’m twenty-eight, Ray. They’re already half-gone. I was beautiful in high school, I had some meat on my bones. But now I’m just two balloons on a string, and in ten years I’ll be two empty balloons on a string, and I have to have money then, I have to have a little money and a place, where people can’t get at me, and I can live. I won’t ever be married, Ray, you know why. And he’s taken so much from me. And now he wants to take my face. I can’t be someone no one can stand to look at, and maybe blind, sitting in a room where they bring me a tray and set it down without looking at me. Ray, I need that money. I need him dead. You’ve got to do it.”