Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde

by Max Phillips

  “She is, too,” he told me.

  He looked like a whuppin’ from Rebecca was what he’d prayed for as a child on Christmas morning.

  I watched them play for a couple of minutes, each turning over the cards very intently. Finally Rebecca laid down a card and said contentedly, “That’s gin. Lorrie, I’d like you to meet Ray Corson. Mr. Corson, Lorin Shade.”

  Shade got up at once to shake hands with me. Just when I thought he was done standing up, he’d stand up some more. He shook my hand carefully, like he’d learned that hands break easy. He had a short nose and a pocked round face, and he really was a size. I’d put roofs on smaller things than Lorin Shade. She said, “Mr. Corson and I might be doing a little business together, Lorrie. Mr. Corson used to be a boxer.”

  “A boxer! I like that,” he said. He put up his fists, smiling, and I obligingly put up mine, and he faked a few hooks and jabs at me. I was annoyed to find I could barely keep them off me. He was fast, along with the rest of it. He dropped his hands. “I like that,” he said wistfully.

  “You could do the work,” I told him.

  I wondered what she wanted with me if she had a big boy like Shade on a string.

  “Lorrie’s from Warren City, Oklahoma,” she said. “But he lives right down the hall. He’s a stunt rider for the movies.”

  “Well, that’s my plan,” he said. “That’s my long-range plan. Right now I’m at the Ever-Brite Car Wash over on Del Amo.”

  “Got to start somewhere,” I said.

  “That’s right. We’re over on Del Amo, just near Anza. You keep going like you’s headin’ for the beach? You’ll see us on the right, just before Anza. Cain’t miss it. You a friend a Becky’s, come by some time and I’ll give you a shine. Make your car like new. On the house, if you’re a friend a Becky’s”

  “I thought your car looked pretty nice,” I told her.

  “I said I couldn’t afford to wash it,” she said merrily. “I didn’t say I wasn’t washing it.”

  “You come on down to the car wash and I’ll fix you up, too,” Shade said. “Make you shine. It’s right before Anza. Cain’t miss it.”

  “Lorrie hasn’t gotten his break yet, but he really is something in the saddle. Lorrie rides,” she said sweetly and emphatically, “like a dream.” Shade flushed with pleasure. Then he thought about it a little and began to look panicky. But Rebecca was moving smoothly onward: “He’s a real ride-em cowboy. But I keep telling him, no stunt director’s going to put a fellow his size on one of his horses.”

  “Aw, I told you, Becky,” he said. “I sit real light. You know how to sit light, you can ride any size a horse.”

  “You did tell me that. So you did. But right now I have to talk to Mr. Corson, Lorrie. Could you be a honey right now and give us a few minutes?”

  Shade stood up at once and gave my hand another careful squeeze. He told me it had been a real pleasure, and that he hoped to see me around, and maybe we could all three have us a game of poker sometime, because Becky there was quite a hand with the cards, don’t think she wasn’t, you might not think so but you’d be wrong, at which point Rebecca smiled at him again with almost terrifying brightness and he shut up as if he’d been kicked. “Well, so long,” he said, and left, closing the door softly behind him. Rebecca smiled distractedly at the door and said, “Lorrie is the sweetest man in the world, and he’s been a true friend to me. So no remarks.”

  “No remarks,” I said.

  As she had been the other day, she was dressed neatly and primly in good-quality clothes that were a little dressy for the middle of a weekday. This time it was a dark oatmeal dress, high-necked, with tiny brass buttons shaped like knots down the front and one on the cuff of each short sleeve. She took a powder-blue engagement book from her bedside table, the kind that closes with a zipper, and unzipped it. I saw she’d been using it as a notebook. What looked like a draft of a letter or an essay ran straight down the page, the words sidling around the numbers of the days like surf rolling around rocks. She opened it to a fresh page, took a pen from the little loop inside the cover, and uncapped it. Then she was ready for business. She patted the bed beside her and I sat down in Shade’s place.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said, her eyes shining. “You have every cent I own in the world, and you could have just taken off and no one the wiser. Or you could have just laughed at me and said what money, because what proof would I have? But Mattie told me you were honest.”

  “Old Mattie,” I said.

  “I knew I picked the right man. And now I guess you deserve a little information.”

  “I do,” I said. “First off, are we talking about Lance Halliday?”

  She went completely still. She looked almost resentful. Then she leaned forward and gave me a sharp little punch in the leg. It hurt. “You’ve been busy,” she said, beaming. “I knew I picked the right man.”

  “All I did was what you did,” I said. “Talk to Mattie. What’s Halliday been doing?”

  “He’s going to burn my face with lye,” she said.

  “Seems a perfectly nice face. What for?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “It’s too early for believe and don’t believe. Why’s Halliday want to hurt you?”

  “He’s in love with me,” she said, eyes downcast. “No, I won’t use that word. He’s obsessed with me. I’m, I suppose it sounds arrogant to say it, but I’m someone men get obsessed over, sometimes. Many times. I met him when I was a hat check girl at Ciro’s. He’s a very good-looking man, tall and very good-looking, I guess Mattie told you he was supposed to be a leading man. But I guess he was like me. He couldn’t act. And he strikes everyone who meets him as awfully nice, and he was nice to me. I told him I’d have dinner with him, and then we had another dinner after that, but by then I’d found out a few things about him. He’s a gangster,” she said.

  She said gangster as if it were her vocabulary word for the week.

  “He makes pornographic movies,” she said, “and sells them, or charges money to show them, I guess is the way it works.”

  “He the one you made the movies for?”

  “No. Not him. And I told you, I don’t ever want any more of that. Not ever. That’s why it was so horrible when I found out. I didn’t know if he liked me or if he was just trying to get me into one of his movies. I didn’t care. I told him I didn’t want to see him again. And he, he just went crazy. He just, do I have to tell you the sorts of things he said?”

  “I don’t know yet. You’d had two dinners?”

  “I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean. I’m no virgin, Mr. Corson. I suppose anyone who wanted to has a right to call me a whore. And that’s why I want to get out of all this, and start over, and have a life where no one has any right to call me that.”

  “So he went crazy. What did you do?”

  “I ran out of the place. I didn’t know what to do. He’d made all sorts of threats, and I knew he was someone who could have people hurt, have anybody hurt he wanted. So I went back in, and I told him I was sorry I’d hurt him, and that I never meant to. I told him I’d stay with him all weekend and do anything he wanted, and that way he could see I was no one to be obsessed over and get me out of his system, and afterward he’d let me go. Everyone always thinks I’m going to be so wonderful, and then they find out I’m not at all. I don’t ever, well, I’m just not very good. You can see I’m telling you everything, Mr. Corson.”

  “What did he think of your offer?”

  “Oh, it was awful. It was worse than before. For a minute I almost thought he’d started beating me, hitting with his fists, but he was just talking, saying things to me I didn’t think anyone could ever say to anyone. Wild things. And that’s when he said about the lye. He said if I didn’t want him, he’d make it so no one ever wanted me. Oh, it was horrible.”

  “How’d you get free?”

  “I just walked out. He didn’t try to stop me. I didn’t know what I was doing.
I felt he’d already thrown acid in my face, that he’d burned me all away. I was shaking, and on the way home I almost had a wreck.”

  “When did you sell him your car?”

  She blinked. “That was on our first date. I told him I was worried about money, and he said I shouldn’t ever have to worry about anything, and he gave me a check right then and there, and by the next time I saw him he’d talked to one of his lawyers and fixed the whole thing up. That’s why I didn’t go to bed with him, the first night. Because he’d just given me money.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Nine days ago. I spent the rest of the night just shaking, with a chair jammed under the doorknob, and the next morning I packed a bag and left. I was way up in Pasadena, in a much nicer house than this, but I thought I’d better go way across town and find someplace really cheap, because I wasn’t going to go back to work either. I just never went back to Ciro’s.”

  “What name do you use here?”

  “Rebecca Stevens. Do you think that’s too close?”

  “No, I think that’s all right. He’s not going to go house to house looking for Rebeccas.”

  “Do you believe me a little now?”

  “That about describes it. What were you thinking I could do about it?”

  “Well,” she said, looking happier, and set her pen to the paper. “First of all, he owns a nightclub.”

  “Part of one. The Centaur.”

  “That’s right. What if you told him he’d better leave me alone, because otherwise you were going to do something to his nightclub?” As she spoke, she wrote Threaten Nightclub very neatly at the top of the page.

  “That puts me against all his partners, too,” I said. “Rebecca, unless you’ve got an organization, you don’t threaten gangsters. That’s like biting a shark. What else?”

  She neatly crossed out Threaten Nightclub. “Well. You know the big boss of all the gangsters around there is a man named Fausto Burri. And he’s supposed to be a very old-fashioned old man. What if you told Halliday that if he didn’t leave me alone, you’d tell Burri that he was making pornographic movies?” She’d written: Smut.

  “You’re not serious.”

  She flushed. “I know my ideas probably aren’t very good. I don’t actually do this kind of thing, the way you probably do.”

  “If Halliday’s making blue movies, Burri has a cut. His business is Burri’s business too.”

  “All right, all right. But listen, what if you told Burri Halliday was going to burn me with lye? Because that’s not making Burri any money. That’s just a big stink for everybody, and probably bad for business, and so I suppose he wouldn’t like that.” She crossed out Smut and wrote Bad Business.

  “You’ve got something there,” I admitted. “Just tell Burri, and Burri would tell Halliday to lay off. Yeah, that might do it. But you don’t need me for that. It’s a lot better coming from you.”

  “I won’t go to see that man,” she said firmly.

  “Even if it would solve your problems?”

  “I won’t go see him,” she said, shaking her head back and forth.

  “Rebecca,” I said. “You’re not serious. None of this is serious.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve never been so—”

  “I mean you’re not suggesting things you think will work. You’re suggesting things you think won’t work. You want me to knock your ideas down one by one until there’s just one thing left to do. The one you wanted done all along.”

  She was silent.

  “You don’t really want Halliday talked to,” I said. “Do you. You want him killed.”

  “I never said that,” she said.

  “It was the first thing you ever said to me.”

  “All right. I was being a little dramatic.”

  “I’m not a choirboy. But murder’s a lot of trouble, and it brings a lot of trouble. Maybe we can find a smarter way. You haven’t given me enough money to do murder, anyway. Or much of anything else, frankly.”

  “I know I haven’t. I’ll get you more money. That’s just a first payment. I just have to think how to raise it. All I meant was, he has to leave me alone, Mr. Corson.”

  “Rebecca, are we going to have this witless Oh-Mister-Corson schoolgirl bit from now on? You weren’t this stupid yesterday.”

  She smiled faintly and said, “All right, Ray, my mistake. Most men like a woman stupid.” She’d been holding the engagement book like a hymnal, her knees and heels primly together, and now she eased one foot a bit backward, shifted her weight fractionally, and became the woman in the blue convertible again, wary and a bit sly.

  “Maybe we do,” I said, “but I can’t use it now. What else do you know about Halliday?”

  “I’ve told you what I know. I know what old movies he likes. Do you want to know what old movies he likes?”

  “Not especially. Where’s he from?”

  “We never got to that.”

  “Any family here?”

  “We never got to that. Do you want to hear about his old football team? Do you want to hear what he thinks of the color of my eyes?”

  “What does he do for fun?”

  “I think he has lots of girls. If he’s serious about anyone, except, I suppose, me, he didn’t say. I guess he likes a drink or two, but just like anyone else. If he drugs, I don’t know about it. Look, I have a picture for you.” She pulled a row of snapshots from a pocket in the back of her engagement book. It was a strip of four little pictures, the kind you get from a coin-operated photo booth, and it showed Rebecca posing with a fair-haired young man in front of a pleated gray curtain. She seemed to be sitting on his knee. In the first shot, they were displaying their right profiles together, their chins lifted. In the second, it was left profiles. In the third, they were both giving the camera sultry looks, their eyes narrowed. In the last, Halliday was lifting a hand to declaim and Rebecca was dissolving in laughter, her eyes squeezed shut and a lock of hair falling across her face and her broad, delicate mouth open. Halliday was certainly a very good-looking boy. I tucked the photos in my breast pocket and sat tapping my forefinger on my knee.

  “I need a lever,” I said.

  “You may not find one.”

  “You’re not too eager to see Halliday hurt, are you?”

  “You didn’t hear the things he said to me,” she said levelly. “What he’d do, and what he’d do after that. I need to be able to walk down the street again. Ray, if your conscience won’t let you do whatever this turns out to be, well, that’s all very splendid, but I think I might need to talk to someone else.”

  “My conscience’s fine,” I said. “But you can talk to who you like. You want your money back?”

  “You still have it?”

  “No. I paid off my car with it this morning. I could get it again easy enough. Just go back and sell some of the car. You want it?”

  “No. I don’t. Last night I slept well for the first time since I saw Halliday. I felt I’d finally done something. I do think I picked the right man, Ray.”

  “I’ll do what I can. Meanwhile, see about getting me some more money.”

  “All right about the money. I heard you. I’ll get some money. Unless you’d rather be paid in this?” she said, flicking at one of her buttons. “I told you, it’s not very good.”

  “I wouldn’t mind finding out for myself,” I said, “but whether it’s good or lousy, it won’t pay my rent. How about giving some to my landlord once a week?”

  “How ugly a man’s your landlord?”

  “About like me.”

  “I’ll get some money.”

  I grinned. “Better. Much better. It was a dirty crack, anyway. You’re worth at least a month’s rent at that dump.”

  “Why Mr. Corson, you say the sweetest things.”

  “What’s Halliday’s address?”

  She began writing it out below Bad Business. “Promise,” she said, “that you’ll talk to me first before going over there.
”

  “Sure, I promise. Write your phone number, too. I guess there’s a phone down the hall somewhere?”

  “It’s not reliable, but yes.” She finished writing, pulled the page from the book and handed it to me.

  We stood and I looked at the page. An address, a phone number, and a row of pictures in my pocket. Nice-looking guy and his girl. And as soon as he got a clear shot, he was supposed to be throwing acid on her.

  It was all thinner than tap water. It could have been true. It could have been bunkum. There wasn’t any place to get a grip.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  I took her by the shoulders and sat her back down on the bed. There was a straight chair by the closet, and I pulled it over and turned it around. I straddled it and sat down facing her.

  “You’re leaving something out,” I said. “Go back to the beginning and tell it again.”

  5

  Hat Check

  The hat check room at Ciro’s is shaped like an L, or so Rebecca said. The short leg of the L leads straight back from the hat check window, and they hang the coats there, near the front, because when women check furs they want to watch how you put them on the hanger. Behind the coats, you turn right and there are rows of numbered cubbyholes for the hats. When the hangers are full, you have to squeeze between the fur coats to get back there, and the coats press against you like field animals in a stall.

  It was three months since Rebecca had made her second movie. By now it was out there, and somewhere men were looking at it. She knew she couldn’t do that ever again, so she’d gone back to Ciro’s, where she’d always had a pretty good time, but she couldn’t seem to enjoy working there anymore. It was hard to stand all evening in a low-cut dress that didn’t fit her, framed in the hat check window as crowds of well-dressed people went by. It was hard standing there and being looked at. It was hard to smile at men when they tipped you. She felt as if they all must have seen her movies. She felt as if she were in the stocks in the village square. There was a broken café chair at the back of the hat check room, and for ten minutes every two hours she got to sit there and rest her feet. The walls back there were unpainted, and busboys had scrawled them over with filthy drawings and suggestions, some of them mentioning her by name. She’d sit there wriggling her sore feet in her shoes and read them each over carefully, because she felt she’d lost the right to be offended by anything.