by Max Phillips
“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.
Rebecca stared straight ahead, still holding the gun, a black streak of blood down her belly. Gradually, she lowered her shadowed face and looked down at her brother. She looked at him for maybe a minute. Then she looked back up at the wall again and gazed at that little sailboat sailing past the lighthouse.
I elbowed the bedside lamp onto the floor. Rebecca didn’t seem to hear it smash. I sat down on the bed and twisted around on my rear, to get the covers mussed, and then I got up and took hold of Rebecca’s shoulders and shook her. She dropped the gun. I took hold of a shoulder strap and ripped it down. She blinked and stopped looking at the little sailboat. Palms isn’t Beverly Hills, but if you call the police, they come, and I heard sirens now, very faint in the distance.
Her hair still didn’t look right, so I ruffled it with my fingers. She was looking at me now.
“You,” she said. “You’ve.”
She licked her lips and blinked.
“I don’t,” she said.
She reached out slowly with both hands, as if she wasn’t sure where I was, and found my chest. She sort of petted it.
“We,” she said.
She ran out of breath and licked her lips. “We could... “
I once saw a cat half-squashed on the side of the road, the front half still trying to crawl. I turned from her and went over to the projector, which was grinding away on the floor and smelling hot. I nudged the cord with my foot until the light went out. I didn’t want a fire. The room seemed very quiet now. The sirens were faint, but getting louder. “I know,” I said, not looking at her. “I know you weren’t just acting the other night. The night that Shade, the night you killed him. I kept telling y
ou. Murder isn’t a lark. I guess you know now. I know, I know it was difficult.”
I had no idea what I was talking about, and I stopped.
I turned and, without looking at her, went over and knelt by Halliday’s body. I started taking off his rings.
“You were robbed,” I said, keeping my eyes on what I was doing. “You’re very beautiful. And you’re, you’re a good actress. You could’ve made me think you loved me, could’ve done it easily. But you didn’t. Thank you for that, anyway.”
I stopped again. I was sweating pretty badly.
She hunkered down and began petting my back, clumsily, with both hands.
I got up and she flinched away from me. Her eyes were wide and senseless. I took her by the shoulders and led her over to where she’d been standing. The sirens were getting louder. I pulled off my right glove and started to put on Halliday’s rings.
“All right,” I said. My mouth didn’t want to work properly. I was trying to keep in mind which order he wore his rings in. “I think that about does it,” I said. “The police’ll be able to tell someone else was here, if they look hard enough. I don’t think they’ll look too hard. Between Halliday’s record, the movies, the match between the bullets in Shade’s body and his, the mark of his rings on your face... “
“... my face... “ she said.
“Maybe you can sell them on the idea of looking,” I said. “It’s possible. You’re a good little saleswoman.”
She licked her lips and set her hands on my chest.
“You’ve got a fighting chance,” I told her. “That’s more than you gave Lorin Shade. It’s more than you were going to give me. Goodbye, Rebecca.”
By then I’d worked the last of his rings onto my right hand. I made a fist and drove it into her jaw.
I’d meant to just let her drop, but I couldn’t stop myself from catching her halfway and easing her down. I looked at her lying there and decided I hadn’t spoiled it. The way the gun had fallen looked about right. I bent over Halliday again and put the rings back on his fingers, giving each one a wipe as I did. I tugged his lapels around a bit and cuffed his dead face hard, frontways and backhand. The sirens were pretty loud now. I picked up my own gun and flashlight and had a last look around. It all seemed okay. Halliday was right: it’s best not to get too fancy. I slipped out the back door, locking it behind me, and was in my car, pulling out onto Remsen, by the time the police turned onto Shippie. It all went about as well as you could have hoped for.
26
The Special
The guy with the load of avocados was nice to me and went a few miles out of his way to let me off at a diner he knew outside Gault, Nevada, where it was cheap, he said, and they treated you all right. I thanked him and got down, and he started up again with a roar like you’d pressed all the keys on a church organ at once. He made a big U-turn that took him way off the shoulder on either side and headed back the way he came. Then there was nothing but the smell of diesel exhaust. It was a smell I knew. The diner wasn’t the kind gotten up to look like a railroad car. It wasn’t gotten up to look like anything, and I couldn’t help noticing the shape the roof was in. I was tired enough that everything I looked at seemed to be grainy and crawling. It was just past dawn, and the desert was cold. The cold felt clean. I picked up my toolbox and suitcase. My typewriter was still on my desk at the Harmon Court. Round Head could give it to his kids to play with. The door jingled as I pushed through, awkwardly because of my bag and toolkit, and the waitress looked up. It was just me and her in the place.
We said good morning and I asked if there was somewhere I could wash my face.
When I got back she came over and I ordered the thirty-cent breakfast special. There wasn’t even a cook. Once she had my order, she went behind the counter to fix it herself. She moved without hurrying. Twenty years ago she’d been the prettiest girl in Gault or some other little town. Now she had a little extra around the hips and still no ring that I could see. The ceiling sagged pretty badly by the steam table, and looked like it had for a while. I wondered where I was going to sleep.
She came back and set my order down: three eggs up, home fries, four link sausages, and rye toast, all on thick, chipped plates, plus a big glass of orange juice and a coffee in a cup with a blue stripe around it. She gave me the rag end of a smile as I tucked in.
It was all good, and the coffee was better. When I finished it I ordered the same all over again.
“You can eat,” she said.
“When they let me,” I said.
I put down the second breakfast and wiped my plate with bread, and she refilled my cup.
Then she stood beside me holding the pot. I was looking into my wallet. “Can you make it?” she said gently.
It seemed a long time since I’d heard anyone speak gently.
“Just about,” I said.
She set the pot on the heater and came back over. She sat herself down across from me. You could tell it felt good for her to get off her feet. I put down my wallet.
“Looks like you work with your hands,” she said.
I looked down at them myself. That when I noticed it, a dark gold hair on the sleeve of my jacket.
She watched me pick it off and drop it on the floor.
“What do you need done?” I said.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Rave Reviews for Max Phillips
High Praise for Fade to Blonde
Excerpt
Other Hard Case Crime Books
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1. Blue Convertible
Chapter 2. Chain
Chapter 3. Reece
Chapter 4. Shade
Chapter 5. Hat Check
Chapter 6. The Centaur
Chapter 7. Jade Mountain
Chapter 8. Scarpa
Chapter 9. Business Card
Chapter 10. Office
Chapter 11. Pool
Chapter 12. Suit
Chapter 13. Coast Highway
Chapter 14. Iron
Chapter 15. Two Dozen Roses
Chapter 16. Gold Clouds
Chapter 17. Metz
Chapter 18. Farmhouse
Chapter 19. Estrella
Chapter 20. Letter
Chapter 21. Difference
Chapter 22. Dead
Chapter 23. Bed
Chapter 24. Hanged Man