Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde

by Max Phillips

  Ortiz & Son had a little office in Inglewood. It was basically just a gravel parking lot with a wire fence around it, big enough for a couple of cement mixers and a few cars and, in the corner of the lot, a two-room shack. One of the rooms was so the laborers would have somewhere to wait for the truck. The other was for Nestor Ortiz. From what I hear, old Ortiz had always been a stand-up guy, but he was gone now and if anyone had a good word to say about his son, they hadn’t said it to me. Nestor Ortiz always wore a jaunty little porkpie hat with the brim turned down in front like a fedora. He was a dapper little guy, and he knew every man on every one of his sites by name, and their families’ names, and he’d go around asking all the guys, How’s your family. I don’t have a family and it didn’t sweeten me. When I opened the door, he spread his hands and said, “My friend! My friend, I know all about it.”

  “Hello, Nestor,” I said.

  “Raymond, my friend,” he said. “I know all about it and is terrible. I stand before you this moment in shame. In shame.”

  “It’s been three weeks, Nestor.”

  “I know and is an awful thing. Awful. Everybody coming to see me, all good men like you, who work hard, and they need their pay, and what can I tell them? What? I’m not getting any money, I can’t give any money, and I don’t blame you one moment if you quit.”

  “I am quitting, Nestor.”

  “I don’t blame you a moment.”

  “I still need my pay.”

  “And you gonna get it, every cent. But right now you got to be a little patient because it isn’t so good. I can’t pay I don’t get the money from Olindas Estates. And where is Olindas now? Do they pay me? No.”

  “Nestor, you are Olindas. You’re forty percent of Olindas.”

  “That’s only forty percent,” he said. “My friend, I assure you I am completely and totally and absolutely broke at this moment we’re speaking.”

  “I’ve seen where you live, Nestor. Have you seen where I live?”

  “I assure you it is impossible right now for me to pay everybody asking.”

  “I’m not asking you to pay everybody,” I said, trying to get my breathing under control. “I’m asking you to pay me. Seventeen dollars a day times thirteen days. No, I quit early today. Call it twelve days. Two hundred and four dollars. This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to short me, Nestor.”

  “I hear,” he said patiently, “what you are saying. Do you hear what I am saying?”

  “I did the work, Nestor. I want to be paid for it.”

  “Is that all you can say the same thing over again? I heard you already, your pay. I am trying to talk to you like a reasonable civilize human being. Can I do that, you think?”

  “Nestor,” I said.

  The first time you use a jackhammer, your hands are so swollen at night that you can’t close them. You can barely pick a fork up off the table. That’s the way my whole head felt just then. That’s how it takes me. It’s as if the front of my brain was swelling, locking up, and all I could think was, I want my pay. I want my pay. I didn’t blame Nestor for being sick of it. I was sick of it myself. I told myself to turn around and walk out. I wasn’t listening. I leaned forward on my hands and took a breath. Nestor looked up at me, unimpressed. I said, “Nestor.”

  “Lissen, what do you want,” he said. “Think about what you really want. You want me to call the cops, that what you want?”

  “Yeah, you want the cops here, Nestor. You want them here real bad. Nestor, I’m telling you. Give me my goddamn money, all right?”

  “And I am telling you, you are a goddamn big stupid cabrón of an ape. And you gonna wait for your pay a long time. And how ’bout that?”

  All right. It was out of my hands now. Anyway, that’s what I usually tell myself. The room was crammed full with rolls of tarpaper, coils of wire, cartons of bathroom tile. There was a two-foot length of heavy chain on the corner of Nestor’s desk, an open padlock hooked into the last link. I unhooked the padlock, picked up the chain, and came around the desk. “Oh, now you’re gonna be a big tough guy,” he said. “Now you’re gonna scare me. Big tough guy. Now you’re gonna threaten.” I scooped him out of his chair, mashed him one-handed against the wall, and wound the chain around his neck. His little hat fell to the floor. I slipped my fingers in between the chain and the side of his neck, gripped the chain, and twisted. Nestor made a squeaking noise back in his throat, and then he made no noise at all except for the scuffling of his feet against the floor and the clacking of his teeth as he opened and closed his jaws. His bulging eyes didn’t leave mine. They seemed to be searching for some sign that I was somehow kidding. I loosened the chain and said, “I want my pay, Nestor.”

  “You’re crazy!” he croaked. His voice whistled in his throat. “Crazy!”

  I tightened the chain again and he was quiet. He was staring into my eyes, and then he was staring past them. His little belly heaved convulsively and his fingers scratched at my chest. “I want my pay,” I said.

  I loosened the chain again.

  “Crazy! Crazy!” he whispered.

  “Two-hundred and four dollars,” I said, towing him over to the desk by the chain. He scrabbled in a drawer and pulled out a checkbook. I took it and dropped it back in the drawer. “Checks can be stopped, Nestor.”

  He pulled his wallet from his breast pocket and threw it on the desk. He began to curse me in his whistling, broken voice. I tightened up a little and he stopped. “Count it for me,” I said.

  He had a hundred and thirteen dollars. I put it in my pocket. “All I got!” he shrieked. “ž’S all I got!”

  “Ninety-one dollars more, Nestor. Halfway there. Where’s the petty cash?”

  He jerked open a desk drawer and threw a small lock-box on the desk. He pulled out a small key, unlocked it with trembling fingers, and thrust the box toward me. It skidded off the desk and spilled onto the floor.

  “Pick it up,” I told him.

  He got down on his hands and knees and began scooping the money up and flinging it on the desk and chair, cursing me all the while in Spanish and English and maybe a few other languages. He was terrified of me, but he couldn’t seem to stop cursing me. I knew how he felt. I let go of the chain and it slithered to the floor and landed with a clunk. I didn’t see any singles on the desk, so I picked up four twenties and three fives and put them in my pocket. “Okay,” I said. “Now we’re quits.”

  He just sat there in a scatter of money, holding his throat and weeping. I’d expected a bald spot under the hat, but he had a nice head of hair. I set his hat back on his head. “See you, Nestor,” I said.

  He didn’t look at me as I left. He was busy weeping. I’m not sure he knew I’d been there anymore. I’m not sure he remembered what had hurt him.

  3

  Reece

  Back then I lived at the Harmon Court Motel, out on Harmon, near Paige. The place was right behind the Sun-Glo billboard, which was something of a local landmark. The Sun-Glo Girl was seventy-five feet long and lay around all day on an elbow and a hip. Her job was to lie there, smiling and brushing back her hair. From the front she was an awfully healthy-looking girl, but from my window all you could see was the plywood back of her, propped up by iron struts. It was still a pretty healthy profile. The Court was usually half-empty, but it didn’t cost much to keep open, and I guess tearing the place down was more work than somebody was in the mood to do. My room was the last one past the pool. It was one of two deluxe rooms that had a kitchenette in the corner, and I got a percentage off my rent in exchange for handyman work. That was the theory, anyway.

  When I got home from Nestor’s office, I sorted the money out on the dresser: twenties, tens, fives, and ones. Two hundred and eight dollars. I added the money Rebecca had given me and counted again. It made a decent little pile. It wouldn’t last, because I was behind seven weeks’ rent and two payments on my car, but it still felt nice between my fingers. It’s always good to get your pay. There was a mirror over the dresse
r, and I watched myself tuck the bills neatly in my wallet, and then I stood and looked at myself. I looked like the kind of guy who strangles contractors. I pulled off my clothes, turned the shower up as hot as I could bear, and stood under it awhile. I toweled off and had a drink from the bottle in the desk. I looked in the mirror again. Better. I put on some pants. Better all the time.

  Aside from my clothes and groceries, the only things in that room I owned were the typewriter on the desk and a trunk where I kept my books. I didn’t keep the books out on shelves because I didn’t have any shelves, and because if girls saw them they wanted to talk about the pug who reads and wasn’t that wonderful.

  I only buy books by people I wish I wrote like. I had some Hawthorne, some Irwin Shaw, and some John Dos Passos. I had some Hemingway, but he tires me, and if we knew each other we’d have to fight. I had some Flannery O’Connor, but she makes me want to put my head in the oven. I had some Chekhov. I don’t care about who’s a Russky. If Chekhov’s a Commie, then I wish I was one, too. But let me tell you, when it comes to writing about war, give me Stephen Crane. You can have Tolstoy. You can keep him. The son of a bitch never crossed out a sentence in his life.

  I bought the typewriter with my mustering-out pay. My drafts and carbons I kept in the bottom left drawer. One drawer was enough, because I didn’t let them pile up. Every six months or so, I’d go through and read two or three pages at random of everything in the drawer, and if I didn’t see anything I liked, I’d chuck them. At any given time there’d be two or three screenplays, half a dozen treatments, and one or two short stories or pieces of stories. I threw most of it away, but I did keep a log with the names of everything I’d written and who I’d sent it to, so if I ever wanted to I could see what I’d been doing for the last nine years.

  I had another drink, put on a sport shirt and loafers, and went to see Mattie Reece.

  Reece’s office was a Quonset hut just inside the Republic studio gates. I found him where I always did, sitting behind a pair of big feet, a burning cigarette, and a pair of sharp black eyebrows. A rickety little man in a rumpled suit. He never seemed to take his feet off his desk, but somehow everything at Republic always ran smooth and tight. He could have left Poverty Row for a big job at the majors, but then he might’ve had to take his feet off the desk. “’Lo, Mattie,” I said.

  “Hello, Ray. Come in and take a load off.”

  “Thanks,” I said, sitting down.

  “Getting a little gut there, soldier.”

  I shook my head.

  “I can see it from here,” he said.

  I shook my head again. “I’ve had that gut for years. I don’t blame you for trying to ignore it.”

  “Shame on you, getting out of shape like that. What if you wanted to get back in the ring?”

  “I had it when I was fighting. My dance card was still pretty full. Who’s this lulu you wished on me?”

  “Isn’t she a specimen?” he said. “I give you a week to get in. One week, you son of a bitch, if you haven’t already. Tell me, how does an ugly bastard like you get in all the time?”

  “A friendly smile and a firm handshake. What do you think of her?”

  He opened his eyes wide. “Can you imagine posture like that on such a flimsy little thing? It’s like she borrowed ’em off a fat girl.” He gave a little shiver. “She wrecks me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Why would there be anything else?”

  “She says she’s being threatened.”

  “Ah, no,” he said, concerned. “You’re not coming here to ask me about her story, are you? The mysterious man who’s gonna do mysterious bad things?”

  “Sure. She’s hired me to help her.”

  “You simple son of a bitch. I didn’t give her to you to work for. I gave her to you to boff. I couldn’t even get a glove on it, and, you know, I didn’t want her going to waste.”

  “I already took her money.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure that’ll be a novel experience for her.”

  “Any idea who the guy is?”

  “The guy.” He waved away a smell. “What makes you think there’s a guy? Outside of her shaggy little head? Listen, Ray, I’m serious. You only know the girls you poke. I know every girl who ever tried to work in this town, and I’m telling you, this one’s nuts. Strictly wigsville. You don’t want to hop her, don’t hop her, but whatever you do, don’t become part of her plans.”

  “I already took her money. Who’s she been hanging around with? I assume she’ll simmer down and tell me, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

  “She don’t hang, that I know of. It looks like she gave up the starlet bit a while back. I’ll give her that, she’s smart enough to give up. Since then she works in stores and so forth, you know, little pretty-girl jobs. I hear she might have posed for some, ah, pictures. As for guys, she’s been seen around with Lance Halliday.”

  “Jesus, the names out here. Who’s he?”

  “An ‘independent producer.’ Isn’t that nice? He’s a little hood who makes stag movies. Maybe that’s what he wanted with your nut job, he heard she’d done nudie stuff. He came out here to be the new Hot Diggity, and it wasn’t such a crazy idea, because he’s got the face, the voice, he even moves nice, but he’s one of those you get where, under the lights... ” Mattie slowly raised his hands, wiggling his fingers. “It all fizzles away. Like ice on a radiator. He’s a big blonde dreamboat and he’s always got a ring on every finger. You know, the debonair Lance Halliday was in attendance, wearing his trademark rings. I guess he played around with your nut job a little, like he does with a lot of ’em, but I can’t see him getting obsessed. He’s too queer for himself. But no, yeah, if she bounced him hard enough I guess he could turn nasty. He’s a very vain guy with not a lot to be vain about, and you don’t want to kid some of those too hard.”

  “Could he be blackmailing her?”

  “With what, for what? She’s nobody.”

  “She says she’s done stag movies. Could he be blackmailing her with that?”

  “Nah. In his line of work, that’s just cutting his own throat. It gets around he does that, how’s he gonna get girls?”

  “Where would he spend time?”

  “All over. He owns part of a place called the Centaur, out in Thousand Oaks.”

  “I think I know it. Where does he live?”

  “Palms somewhere. Come to think of it, he must have an OK from Burri to peddle his movies.”

  “I thought what’s-his-name ran that neighborhood. Scarpa. Lenny Scarpa.”

  “Sure. And Burri runs Scarpa. Wake up, beautiful. Burri runs half the West Side.”

  “Jesus, still? I thought he was one of those old Twenties guys.”

  “He ran it in the Twenties, he runs it now, he’ll run it when we’re both in Puppy Heaven. You want to get mixed up in something Fausto Burri’s maybe part of? That what you want, Ray?”

  “Listen, Mattie, I appreciate this.”

  “Why do I waste time on you?” Reece said without joy.

  “Ah, c’mon, Mattie. Cheer up.”

  “Why do I waste my time?”

  “I buy you drinks.”

  “So you say.”

  “C’mon, I’ll buy you one now. You’ve done enough damage for one day.”

  He took his feet down off the desk one by one, like an old man, and sat there. “I hope you enjoy it when you get it,” he said.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” I said. “I just got paid.”

  4

  Shade

  In the morning I went to see the manager and squared myself on the rent. He didn’t kiss me. Then I got in the car and drove over to Torrance New & Used and saw Joey Moos, who couldn’t believe his luck, Ray Corson himself, right there in his own office. I’d just wanted to get myself up to date, but on impulse I decided to pay off the rest of the car. I liked the idea of having something no one could take from me without stealing. It must have been a stupid move, because it deligh
ted Joey, and as a token of our new friendship he tried to trade me up to a gray ’50 Merc. After that I just drove around enjoying the sunshine. I didn’t have much money left, but I owned my car outright and I felt too good to go see Rebecca LaFontaine. Guys probably didn’t feel good around her for very long.

  She’d given me the address of a boarding house on Flower Avenue in Venice. It was a low two-story building with a surf shop and a hardware store on the ground floor and, above, what once must have been a floor of cheap offices, and of course that’s where I wound up. I pushed through a cracked plate glass door and went upstairs. The stairs were covered with a runner of green carpet, black and shiny with dirt and worn down to the silvery cords underneath. They were greasy. What the hell do you have to do to get stairs greasy? At the top was a corridor lined with doors with pebbled glass panels, each of which was crudely painted with a number in black, some of which still bore old company names in flaking black paint or gold leaf. At the end of the corridor was a Dutch door daubed in black with the word MGR. The top half was open. Inside, a woman in a housedress was watching TV. She looked up at me and then back at the set.

  I walked down the hall to Number 6. I couldn’t make out what had once been lettered on the glass. Someone had scraped most of it off except for the word APPRAISED. I knocked and heard Rebecca call, “It’s open.”

  There wasn’t room inside for much but a bed, which Rebecca was just then sharing with the biggest old cowboy I’d ever seen. He had the boots, the stovepipe jeans, the shirt with pearl snaps, and his hat was on the pillow and wasn’t a disappointment. He and Rebecca were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed with a card game laid out between them. He started to get up, but Rebecca said, “Sit there and take your punishment, Lorrie. Excuse my manners, Mr. Corson, but I’m almost done giving this fellow a whuppin’.”