Money Shot (Hard Case Crime)

by Christa Faust

  “Fuck off, Lalo,” Didi said. “If I had it, don’t you think I would have mentioned it by now?”

  Malloy shrugged.

  “Just asking,” he said.

  “So who all was in the office that day?” I asked. “It was pretty busy wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Didi said. “I’m so frazzled right now, though, I can barely remember.”

  “Got a surveillance system in your office?” Malloy asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s a security camera in the lobby,” Didi said. “I have no idea who keeps the tapes.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Malloy said.

  No one said anything for several minutes. Malloy and Didi smoked. I looked at the image of Jesse Black on the screen. My head hurt.

  “Okay, look,” Malloy said, crushing out his cigarette. “I think we oughta call it a night. Didi, remember what I said. Spread the word that you’re paying me to look for Angel.”

  “Sure,” Didi said, taking my hand. “I just hate to leave you alone, honey, what with everything that’s happened.”

  “I’m not alone,” I said. “I got Malloy.”

  “Okay,” Didi said, “But the next time I come by, I’ll bring some ginger snaps or something.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come by again,” Malloy said, shaking his head. “It’s too risky.”

  “Are you sure?” Didi asked. “I mean...”

  “I’ll stay in contact by phone,” Malloy replied, gently taking Didi’s arm and maneuvering her toward the door.

  “I’ll be fine, Didi,” I said, wondering if that were really true.

  “Okay then, honey,” Didi said. She reached out and grabbed Malloy’s wrist. “You watch over her good, you big lug, or you’ll have me to answer to.”

  “You got it,” Malloy said.

  I stayed in Malloy’s bedroom while he let Didi out. After a few minutes of doing things I couldn’t see, Malloy came back into the bedroom with a Thai takeout menu. It felt weird to be alone with him again and I felt strangely self-conscious about sitting on his bed. The cover image for Naughty Teens 17 was still on the screen of his laptop.

  “You want me to order some food for you?” he asked.

  I looked up at him standing there holding the menu and I was hit with a sudden powerful urge to pull him down on the bed with me. It was a bad idea and I knew it, but I always react to stress that way. I looked down at my hands.

  “What about you?” I asked. “You’re not hungry?”

  “I don’t want to order enough food for two people now that Didi’s gone,” Malloy said “It would look suspicious.” I’ve got stuff to eat in the fridge. You know, guy food. Lunch meat. Frozen stuff. Nothing I’d offer to a guest.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You oughta have something,” Malloy said.

  I wanted him to put down the menu and put those big, calloused hands up my skirt. I wanted him to get rough, to make me forget.

  But I was still pretty sore from my date with Jesse. It was good to have that as an excuse not to make a pass because I really didn’t want to think about the fact that I wasn’t all that sexy anymore. The fact that Malloy would probably be totally turned off if I came on to him. At best he’d feel sorry for me.

  “No thanks,” I said instead. “I’m fine.”

  Malloy nodded.

  “Well,” he said. “If you change your mind later you can go ahead and help yourself.”

  I wondered if he was still talking about food.

  13.

  Although I was exhausted, I was way too jittery to really sleep. I dozed on and off on Malloy’s couch all night, flickering television inanity unable to compete with the jumbled emotions in my head. It didn’t help that I seemed to be on virtually every channel, more so on the flashy, shallow “entertainment” news shows than the supposedly legit outlets, but even the almighty CNN seemed to be unable to resist running a few carefully cropped clips from Double Dare and footage of me at the AVN awards with a very young Jenna Jameson. They also showed a ton of footage of the two cops who seemed to be in charge of bringing me to justice. One was black and a little nerdy-looking and tended to keep his mouth shut. The other was white, blond and athletic and looked like an actor playing a cop. The camera loved him.

  But the footage that really got under my skin was a quick shot of Sam’s wife Georgie looking pale and numb as she was hustled from a car to some dull, official-looking building. Sweet, busty, hippy-dippy Georgie who wouldn’t hurt a fly and really honestly believed that love could change the world. I guess she had learned the hard way that the opposite number was much more efficient. Not hate of course, which is sort of like love’s twisted sibling, but cold, heartless disregard for human life.

  Sam had told me that the man who set up the phony shoot “had Georgie” but he clearly didn’t have her anymore. Had he just let her go after he had her husband killed? I suddenly wanted desperately to find Georgie and talk to her, find out what she knew, what had really happened, but the fact that she probably believed I had killed Sam left a hollow ache under my ribs.

  I searched around the channels for an old movie with no commercials. Something sweet and silly with no guns. I found a musical with Cyd Charisse and turned the sound down low, trying not to think. It didn’t work.

  I couldn’t get a fix on how to feel about Malloy. I wanted to slug him and fuck him and get away from him and be rescued by him all at the same time. I felt surrounded by him, here in his place where everything smelled like he did. I wondered why he was going out of his way like this to help me—he didn’t know me that well and certainly didn’t owe me anything. I wondered if he was sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, or lying awake like me. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to creep into his bedroom or sneak out the door, so I just stayed on the couch and pulled my knees up to my chin.

  I didn’t know if I wanted Malloy or not, but I did know the one thing I really wanted. Sure, I wanted revenge and I wanted to clear my name, but more than anything else, I just wanted to go home.

  If I had lost everything in a flood or an earthquake, I would be sad, but I could eventually let it all go and find a way to start over. But my things weren’t destroyed. They were sitting there in my house, just the way I left them. The coffee cup I hadn’t washed. Fruit from the farmer’s market that would just go bad. The book I was reading. My dirty laundry. My vibrator—God, did I leave it on the bed or put it back in the drawer? Would the cops staking out the place bother to water my plants?

  Worse, what was going to happen to my little house on Morrison Street now that I was a fugitive, wanted for murder? I’d never had a relationship that lasted even a tenth as long as my relationship with my house, my own private sanctuary where everything was just the way I liked it. When I bought that house, it was a cheap 70s fixer-upper with ugly shag carpet and a leaky chimney. I gutted the place and redid everything from the ground up, made it my own. My mortgage was less than three years from being fully paid off. And didn’t the cops seize your property if you were involved in a criminal investigation? I wasn’t sure, but it killed me to think that after all the money and hard work I’d put into that place, those bastards could take it away just like that. Somehow, that hurt much more than what Jesse had done to me.

  When the sun finally came up, Malloy came out of the bedroom. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a clean white t-shirt and he didn’t look tired or rumpled or like he had just woken up. He looked the same as ever. I must have looked awful with my hair all snarled and sticky black eyes squinting against the sun. I felt like deep-fried shit.

  “Coffee?” he asked, unfazed as he ambled into the kitchen. “Sorry, I don’t have any Sweet’N Low.”

  “Black is fine,” I said. “Do you mind if I jump in the shower?”

  “Go right ahead,” Malloy said, his wide back to me as he filled the carafe of the coffeemaker with bottled wat
er. “You’ll find clean towels in the cabinet to the left of the sink.”

  Malloy’s bathroom was pristine and nearly empty. I carefully avoided looking into the mirror and concentrated on snooping around instead. You can tell a lot about a bachelor by his bathroom. Apparently Malloy was completely immune to the latest craze for marketing XXXTREME ultra-studly chick-magnet grooming products to insecure men. The last bachelor bathroom that I had been in had been cluttered with body spray and shower gel and crotch deodorant with names like JACKHAMMER, MAGMA FORCE, or BLAST OFF. Not here. Beside the faucet on the tiny sink was a bottle of store-brand antibacterial hand soap. Nothing else. Malloy’s medicine cabinet contained no surprises. There was nothing odd, unique or amusing anywhere to be found. No Viagra or Rogaine or Preparation H. No Vicodin or Prozac or AZT. He could have been anybody.

  Inside the shower stall, the white tile looked as sterile as an operating theater. The stainless steel gleamed. On a narrow, built-in shelf sat a bottle of dandruff shampoo and a plain white soap dish containing a large green-and-white bar of Irish fucking Spring. I didn’t realize they still made that shit.

  I stripped down and turned on the hot water in the shower. While I waited for it to warm up, I lost the battle to avoid looking in the mirror.

  I guess you could say it was getting better, but it was still horrible. The swelling had gone down and my right eye, which had been swollen almost completely shut, was now open. The color palette of my bruises had shifted from lurid purple to more muted tones of ochre and bile. I wasn’t going to be winning any beauty contests any time soon.

  The water was hot by then so I slipped in and goddamn, that was good. It was the first real shower I’d had since Jesse and it did wonders to improve my mood. By the time I was done, I almost felt like I could beat the bastards who did this to me. I felt like I could win. Must have been the Irish Spring.

  When I got out I found a black mug of black coffee waiting for me on the coffee table. Malloy was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper.

  “Hey,” I said softly, pulling the white towel tighter around my body and picking up the mug. “What should I wear? The dress or the jeans?”

  I don’t know why I asked. I was a big girl and I’d been dressing myself without Malloy’s advice for more than 35 years. In spite of everything, it was still way too easy to cast Malloy in the hero/Daddy role. I really needed to watch that.

  He looked up at me and the fact that I was only wearing a towel registered in his eyes. He looked back down at the paper. I scanned his face for any reaction at all, any tiny hint of a response to my near nakedness. He hid it well, but there was an undeniable tension in his jaw and shoulders. It could have been any number of things, but I desperately wanted it to be desire. It was as if I needed some kind of proof that I was still just a little bit sexy in spite of everything. Realizing that I had been fishing for a reaction, I felt suddenly pathetic, like a junkie combing the carpet for a dropped crumb of dope.

  “For now just put the jeans and tank top from yesterday morning back on,” he said, sipping his coffee without looking up, giving away nothing. “I have an idea.”

  That’s how I wound up dressed like a boy.

  14.

  Malloy pulled the SUV into the lot of a shabby North Hollywood mini-mall that contained a purified water retailer, a 98-cent store, a restaurant that offered “especialidades Oaxaqueños,” and a tiny barbershop. Malloy took a spot in front of the barber.

  There was a Spanish sign above the door. The window featured a sinister, weirdly proportioned painting depicting a pair of floating scissors hovering behind the small, disembodied head of what looked like a child with a mustache.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked, running my fingers nervously through my hair. Malloy had made me cut off my long nails at his apartment and my newly blunt fingers felt foreign against my scalp. “You know, I’m about as far from a boy as you can get without being pregnant.”

  “Sure I’m sure,” Malloy said, taking my arm. “Come on.”

  “It’s closed,” I said, pointing to a hand-lettered sign that read CERRADO. “It’s a Sunday, isn’t everyone supposed to be at church?”

  “I called ahead,” Malloy said. “He’s expecting us.”

  Inside, the shop smelled like the air had been sealed in a jar since 1947. Cigarettes and pomade and Clubman shaving talc and that blue stuff the combs sit in to kill germs. The barber himself was an ancient brown gnome with a face like a dried apple and a shiny bald head. He wore an immaculate white short-sleeved guayabera and white shorts that showed off bandy little rooster legs with large knobby knees. I wondered briefly about the wisdom of trusting a bald barber, but Malloy seemed to think the guy was all right.

  “Jarocho’s been cutting my hair for twenty years,” Malloy said, patting the barber’s stooped shoulder. “He’s solid.”

  The barber grinned, flashing a set of dazzlingly fake white choppers and said something to Malloy in rapid-fire Spanish. Malloy replied and the two of them went back and forth for a few minutes. I had no idea what they were talking about. I studied a large faded travel poster for Veracruz, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. I noticed another even older guy snoring softly in a cheap kitchen chair in the far corner of the shop. He looked like a mummy, but he had a full, luxurious head of snow-white hair done up in a mile-high 50’s era pompadour that probably hadn’t changed since it was invented.

  The barber leaned over and fingered my hair, shaking his head. I figured he was telling Malloy it was a shame to cut such pretty hair. Didn’t I know it.

  “I told him you were hiding out from an abusive boyfriend,” Malloy told me. “He’ll take good care of you.”

  I nodded, still unable to calm a chilly electric anxiety that wouldn’t leave me alone.

  “I’m gonna hit the thrift store across the street and get you some clothes,” Malloy said, not waiting for an answer before he turned to leave.

  I shook my head. After the initial surprise of the nice jeans, I was starting to get a little tired of having Malloy as my personal shopper.

  The barber sat me down in one of two ancient red vinyl barber chairs, whipping a blue plastic cape around my shoulders with dramatic flair.

  “You no worry,” he told me with a wink.

  “Right,” I said.

  Jarocho made with the scissors and when my thick dark tresses started falling to the scuffed green linoleum I had a moment of irrational panic. I wanted to call the whole thing off. Wasn’t I already ugly enough? But it was too late. The barber thumbed on a bulky old electric clipper that looked like something they’d use to shave dogs before neutering and started running it up the back of my head. Before I knew it I had a buzz cut identical to Malloy’s. All of the dyed chocolate-cherry curls were gone, leaving behind only a quarter inch of natural salt and pepper roots. I was horrified by how much gray I had.

  Malloy returned then with two cheap plastic shopping bags. I was almost afraid to look inside.

  I guess I had been hoping for some kind of classy, androgynous Marlene Dietrich sort of suit or something, but Malloy had other ideas.

  The first bag contained several extra large t-shirts, including a Lakers shirt, and a pair of baggy men’s jeans. I hadn’t told Malloy that Lia had been wearing a Lakers shirt the last time I saw her and although this one was a different style, it made me feel a little weird. I decided I would wear one of the other ones.

  “The big mistake people make when they do drag is going too far.” Malloy said. “Overcompensating. Too girly. Too macho. If you want to be believable, you have to keep it simple. Nothing for the eye to catch on.”

  I wondered if Malloy had ever done drag. I tried to imagine some elaborate Ed Wood-style sting operation that would require him to go undercover in angora, but somehow I just couldn’t picture it. He handed me the other bag. It contained two large Ace bandages.

  “Use one of those bandages to bind your chest,” Malloy told me. “And wrap the other loosely
around your waist.”

  “Around my waist?” I asked. “What for?”

  “You’ve got a very small waist,” he told me. “You need to bulk it up and make it closer to the size of your hips and chest. Make your shape less feminine.” He looked down at my feet. “Your sneakers are fine.”

  I ducked into the closet-sized john, skinned out of my tank top and bra, and went to work battening down the twins. It was uncomfortable and I started sweating right away. I wrapped the other bandage around my waist until I wound up with a sort of dumpy sausage shape from the armpits to the hips.

  Was it possible to make me feel less attractive? I knew being attractive was a liability on the lam but I missed it like a dry drunk misses that warm, happy Saturday night buzz. I was so used to the appreciative glances of men that I felt lost without that constant validation. I hardly knew who I was anymore.

  When I was dressed, I came out of the tiny bathroom and glanced in the wall of mirrors at the boy I had become.

  It almost worked. The hair was perfect, the silhouette unobtrusive beneath the loose clothing. The double shiner helped, too, and so did the broken nose. The big problem was my eyebrows.

  I normally go through a good amount of monthly suffering in the ongoing war against my hairy Mediterranean genes. In addition to lip waxing (to keep me from sporting a mustache like Nonna Vincenza) and bikini waxing (I get the Playboy, not the Brazilian, since I know you’re wondering), I also regularly wax my heavy eyebrows into slender, delicate arches. Very femme and very not-a-boy.

  “I could try filling my eyebrows in thicker with an eye pencil,” I said.

  Malloy looked at my reflection in the mirror and shrugged.

  “I’ll just tell people you’re gay,” he said. “That you’re my nephew who just moved out to L.A. and got bashed by a bunch of douchebags right in front of his apartment. I’ll tell ’em I promised my sister I’d let you stay with me until they catch the guys who did it. That you’re scared to be alone so I let you tag along.”