Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (24 page)

Halliday’s house still didn’t look like much house for a gangster. But one good thing about it, no one seemed to be home. No lights, no cars in the driveway. I’m not sure what I’d have done if someone had been there. I turned left at the corner and left again onto Remsen Avenue, which ran parallel to Shippie and one block over, and decided on a house that was being renovated, not quite back to back with Halliday’s but only three doors down, with a few trees in between. I pulled into the driveway, and got my toolkit from the trunk, making no special attempt to be quiet. I went into the new garage, which had no door yet. It was just half-naked studs letting in the moonlight. I set down my tools and put on some gloves. I wiped down my flashlight and gun, in case I had to leave them inside. I put the flashlight in my pocket and my gun in my holster, then slipped out through the open studs at the back of the garage and made my way through the trees to Halliday’s back door.

I was prepared to go back and get my bolt-cutters, but he hadn’t put the chain on and my little strips of Samoan lagoon were all I needed. I stopped inside the door and held my breath. The house was still. If there was anyone there, they were asleep and not snoring. Or else holding their breaths and waiting for me with guns. I stood there
with my eyes closed, letting Rebecca’s map come back to me. When I had it clear in my mind and my eyes were used to blackness, I opened them. It’s good to have a flashlight, but it’s better not to use it, and I walked through the dark kitchen into what I knew was the dining room.

Rebecca’s map seemed to be pretty damn good. I peeked through a side door and flashed my light in, just to check, and there were rows of 16mm projectors in carrying cases, just as she’d said. I closed the door softly and went through an archway into the front parlor. In the middle was a big armchair with antimacassars. I flicked the flash on it. It was upholstered in roses and green leaves. I looked through the side door there, not using the light. I saw a small room with a single bed and a movie camera in the corner on a stand.

I got out my gun and went slowly upstairs, stepping on the edges of the risers beside the wall. I still made little noises. You always do. Near the top of the stairs I peered through the banister and found all the doors open. The rooms seemed empty. I strode up the rest of the stairs, not caring about what noise I made, and stalked from room to room, gun first. Nobody. I decided I was probably okay and began going over the rooms in earnest.

The one near the head of the stairs was a bathroom, and there was nothing in it out of the ordinary. Next to it was a small room someone had fitted out with metal shelves. There were cans of film on the shelves, each can neatly labeled. I closed the curtain on the window and put on the flash.
Surprise for Auntie
, with Big Betsy, Rita, and Ramón
. Just A Beginner
, with Sandra and Ramón
. Penny’s Punishment,
with Marilyn and The Sheik.
Betsy Gets It Good
, with Ramón, The Sheik, and Big Betsy. There was a row of big looseleaf books that
seemed to record which copies of which film had been checked out to whom. I closed them and went into the next room.

This was a back bedroom with a frilly cream-colored bedspread. The walls were painted peacock blue and almost bare. The night table held an inlaid jewelry box, but there was nothing in it but a few pieces of costume stuff. I opened the closet and found low-cut evening dresses on hangers. I took down a couple of hatboxes and found hats. I opened the lingerie drawer and found lingerie. I went into the next room, which seemed to be the master bedroom. The curtains were closed, and I turned on my flash again.

In the middle of the room was a queen-sized bed. At the foot was a projector on a stand. The bed’s headboard had been removed, and a white rectangle painted on the wall behind it. I went over to the projector and switched it on. There was that grinding ticking noise, and then a short length of number leader, and then the following appeared on the wall over the bed:

Prestige Enterprises Presents

T
HREE ON A
M
ATCH

The next frame read:

Starring

B
IG
B
ETSY

E
SMERALDA

T
HE
S
HEIK

Then:

A
NOTHER DULL SUMMER AFTER NOON
BIG BETSY IS BORED WHAT TO DO
?

Then Rebecca was sitting in the big flowered armchair in the living room I’d just left, with light pouring through
the windows. It made her eyelids look translucent. She wore a dressing gown and high heels. Aside from that, she seemed to be waiting for a train. Someone behind the camera must have told her to smile, so she smiled at the camera, then stopped. Then she got up and slipped out of the gown. She lifted her breasts with her hands and then stood there bouncing them in her palms as if wondering what they’d fetch by the pound.

The door to the side room opened and a small dark woman entered, wearing only buckled shoes and those little ooh-la-la black ankle-stockings, and beaming like a prom queen on a parade float. Rebecca stooped to kiss her and Esmeralda began massaging her vigorously with both hands. I watched for a minute more, then switched off my flash, put it in my pocket, and stuck my gun in its holster. I began searching the room in the flickering light from the projector.

In the night table I found a small flat case with some silver cufflinks. I put it in my pocket. I found a cigarette lighter that was probably just nickel, but I’d lost mine and I took it and closed the drawer. There didn’t seem to be anything in the dresser but clothes. The closet was a big one. I’d search it last. There was a small picture on the wall of a sailboat slipping past a lighthouse, heading out to sea. I looked behind it, looked at the back of it. I checked all the pictures and found a key taped to the back of one of them. I put it in my pocket. I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed.

When I stood up, I saw that Esmeralda was gone and The Sheik was on the job. He was a bit of a runt, and wore an actual black mask across his eyes. It looked like he’d cut two holes in a black necktie. He was doing what he could to earn his pay, giving it his all, the cords in his neck jerking, and I saw that beneath him, Rebecca’s face had smoothed out, the way a cat’s face smoothes out
when you stroke back the fur on its head, and that her body was rippling like a flag in a high wind. I wondered sadly what he had that I didn’t. Just then I smelled that scent of plain harsh soap, the kind you’d do the laundry with, and slowly turned around. Rebecca stood just behind me in a simple pale evening gown, cut steeply down the front. Her mouth was slightly loose, and you could see the gleam of her teeth. Her face was still. Her little chrome .32 was staring at me, but she was staring at her own image on the screen. Her nipples stood out like a pair of steel pegs. Well, I thought, there’s your answer.

Halliday stepped out of the shadows behind her.

“Put your hands in your back pockets,” he said. “All the way, palms in. That’s good.” He sidled over without hurry and slipped the gun out of my holster. He did it right, and there wasn’t a moment when he was blocking Rebecca’s shot. Then he walked around the bed and flopped into an armchair with the gun in his lap. He rubbed his eyes and didn’t say anything more.

“Huh,” I said. “I thought I’d hear if somebody came in.”

“The room’s soundproof,” he said. “You should’ve left the door open.”

“I thought I did.”

“It swings shut.”

“Live and learn,” I said.

“Learn, anyway,” he said. “Any luck finding the safe full of gold?”

“Ah, I wouldn’t know how to open a safe, anyway. I was hoping for something more like the silverware. I needed traveling money and I figured you two owed me something.”

“It’s just stainless. How come you didn’t come kill me with Becky like you were supposed to?”

“I got tired of your sister’s stories, Jimmy.”

We listened to the projector whir.

“Your sister Rebecca,” I said. “She tells too many stories.”

Rebecca stirred and took her eyes off the movie. She gazed at me like I was the sky and somebody told her there was a ring around the moon.

I said, “I’ve got a few cop connections, and they got me James Lee Marron. And the thing about Marron, he’s got a kid sister. One Rebecca Anne Marron, a local beauty queen and, ah.” I looked at her. “Championship swimmer. You can see the resemblance if you look. You’ve both got the same color hair. I’m gonna scratch my nose now.”

I took my hand from my pocket, slowly, scratched my nose, and gave my face a good rub. Then I put my hand back in my pocket.

“Here’s how I see it,” I said. “You’re sick of smut. You’re sick of the small time. This place is mortgaged to the doorknobs. You’ve been hoping to move a little powder — just hoping, so far — but around here, that’s all Scarpa’s. Maybe if you killed him, you could get a piece, but why would Burri let you? Well, let’s think. Everyone knows Scarpa hates your guts. What if he had some goon try to chill you? Only you got lucky and chilled the goon instead, and then ran to Burri and said, Grampa, look, a dead goon, don’t we get to hit Scarpa back? You’ve been putting together a little army — the one you tried recruiting me for, the one I saw meeting here Wednesday night. You were just about ready. All you needed was Burri’s okay. And your sister wanted her big brother to have his day in the sun. So she left her nice little peacock-blue room here, checked into a boarding house, and started looking around for someone to play Scarpa’s goon. Somebody who wouldn’t be missed.”

“I’d put my baby sister in the middle like that?”

“Halliday, you useless son of a bitch,” I said. “You never put anything anywhere. The only idea you ever had is ask a girl to take her drawers down. Rebecca’s the one with the ideas. This was her play. Shade was her first pick for my spot, but she found he wouldn’t kill, even for her. So she scratched around until she got me, and then I even signed on with Scarpa, which made the setup nice and tight. But somehow I didn’t seem too eager, either. So now she’s got two of us. She had to get rid of one and move the other off the dime. So she took Shade for a drive, put four beans under his breast pocket with her shiny little gun, ripped up her dress, and came pounding on my door, crying, You wouldn’t kill the bad man, and now look. But Jesus, Becky, remember? I’m the boy who’s always going through your purse.”

“If you checked my gun,” she said dully, “you saw it hadn’t been fired.”

I shook my head. “Next time, don’t just clean the barrel. Next time, break the gun and clean the block. And don’t leave a lace hanky stained with gun oil not twenty feet from the body.”

Halliday sighed. “I said you were getting too fancy, Beck.”

“Fancy, hell. Incompetent. Like driving up in a new blue Stude and explaining to me how you were broke. Maybe you thought I was nearsighted. Maybe you just didn’t know where to get a cheap car.”

“There is no right side of the tracks in Porter,” Rebecca said slowly. “I know where to get cheap things. I knew where to get you.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m cheap. But I’m not sloppy. All this vaudeville, and how were you thinking of selling it to Burri? If Scarpa wanted to kill you, Halliday, he’d get Burri’s blessing in advance. Burri’s not giving you Scarpa’s territory. Burri thinks you’re an animal. He
wouldn’t give you your own watch as a graduation present. Jesus, I feel sorry for you two. You’ve both flopped at everything you ever tried since high school, and now you’re flopping at this. And you know it. And all you could think of to do, honey, is take me to bed and hope I’d quit asking questions. I practically had to push you out the door tonight, but I figured if I gave you half an excuse, you’d go see your brother.”

“Why’s that?” Halliday said.

“You were lonely for each other. You hadn’t seen each other in days.” I shrugged. “You were lonely for each other.”

It was quiet again, except for the ticking of the projector. Halliday was massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. All the hoods watch gangster movies, and that’s where most of them get the bored and weary bit, but he really did look beat. I guess we were all pretty tired. “We’re the second and third of six,” he said dreamily. “And you know? The others turned out straight as a goddamn die.”

He looked over at Rebecca. She was watching the movie.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “will you turn that crap off?”

I stooped obediently and reached for the power cord. Halliday said, “Not you,” and Rebecca screamed, “You’ll break it,” and I yanked on the cord, sending the projector teetering on its stand.

They still weren’t that far from Porter, and one of those Bell & Howells costs money. For a moment, it’s all they were looking at.

Then I was behind Rebecca, hugging her hard around the ribs, her gun hand in mine.

She woke up when the projector hit the floor. She was a hundred and twenty pounds of wildcat then. But she was only a hundred and twenty pounds of wildcat, and I
had a good grip on her by the time Halliday came round the bed. I knew he wouldn’t risk a shot. A .44 goes right on through. He held my gun by the barrel, ready to club. The projector was grinding against the rug, lighting our legs and the dust ruffle of the bed. Our faces were shadows. When Halliday got next to us, I spun Rebecca around, brought her gun hand up, and pressed her finger down on the trigger.

The muzzle was against his ribs. The shot was no louder than a book slamming shut.

Halliday looked at me, as if he wanted to ask what I’d just done, but didn’t know quite how to put it. Then he looked at Rebecca and his lips moved, and his eyes seemed to want to reassure her.

Then his knees went, and his face dipped forward onto her breast.

He slid down her body to the floor.

I spun Rebecca around again and shot out the window. “Help!” I screeched, “Police! Help! Help!” It wasn’t very good, but it didn’t have to be. I fired into the ceiling, floor, walls, and bed until the hammer clicked. Then I let her go.