Skinflick (7 page)

He went back into the bedroom and frowned around at it. What was missing was a jacket to keep her warm nights. The closet had showed him caps, hats, a couple of flimsy scarves and a tumble of shoes. He blinked. A poster was Scotch-taped to the wall over the bed. A naked young man knelt, face pressed into the belly of a standing girl whose head was thrown back, lips parted, eyes closed. She was naked too. His hands gripped her buttocks. The background was black. The lettering was red.
ALL THE WAY DOWN.
That was at the top. At the foot was
A SPENCE ODUM PRODUCTION.
The girl had big breasts and didn’t appear to be blond.

Out in the room with the view, he looked again at the glasses on the breakfast bar. Each of the abandoned soft drinks had a plastic swizzle stick angling down into it. One was a sickly yellow, the other a sickly blue. He bent close but the light was bad. He found a switch and bulbs went on inside brown, hard-finish lamp shades over pottery bases around the room. They gave feeble light but it was enough. Lettering was stamped into the sticks. He put on his glasses and bent close again, trying not to breathe the stink of the decayed food. The lettering read
THE STRIP JOINT
and gave an address on Sunset.

He tucked his glasses away, rubbed at the aluminum plate around the door lock with a handkerchief, and rolled the door shut with the handkerchief covering his fingers. The lock clicked. He pushed the handkerchief away in a pocket and pressed the button at thirty-five. No one came. No one came when he pressed the other buttons down the line. All the units on this level watched the soiled and poisonous air blind, deaf, and lifeless. It didn’t matter. He already had too many answers. What he needed now were the questions to go with them.

C
INZANO WAS STENCILED LARGE
on the red-and-blue umbrellas over the tables in front of the Strip Joint. At the tables, youngsters in bikinis and surfer trunks, ragged straw hats and armless shirts, breathed the exhaust fumes of the close-packed homebound traffic on the street, and washed down avocado-burgers with Cokes, Seven-Ups, Perrier water. Scuba-diving goggles set in black rubber rested on top of the long wet golden hair of a suntanned youth. Edging between the crowded tables, Dave stumbled over swim fins. There was the cocoa-butter smell of Skol.

Inside, the smell was of bourbon and smoke—not all of it tobacco smoke. The lights, if there were any, hadn’t been turned on. If you wanted to see, you saw by what filtered in from the dying day outside through bamboo-blinded plate glass. The crowd in here appeared older, and Peter Frampton wasn’t blaring from loudspeakers as he was outside. Dave sat on a bamboo stool beside a plump, chattering man in a checked linen jacket, and told a vague shape in skin-tight coveralls behind the bar that he wanted a gin and tonic. In the gloom at the room’s end, a pair of angular lads in black, not-very-crisp shirts and jeans was puttering with microphones, amplifiers, speakers, on a small platform. Feedback screamed. Everyone looked at the corner. The feedback stopped. The bartender set the gin and tonic in front of Dave but didn’t go away. He stood leaning with his hands on the bar.

“You want something else?”

“What more could I possibly want?”

“It’s always something,” the bartender said. “What is it this time? Who’s supposed to be dealing in here now? Who’s supposed to be snorting in the men’s room?”

“I’m not a cop,” Dave told him.

“You’re something like that,” the bartender said. He had a drooping, corn-color moustache and his hair was going thin, but his skin had a youthful sheen to it and his eyes were clear and healthy. They blinked, speculative. “Maybe you’re a deprogrammer, except I can’t smell greed on you. You can’t be a private eye. They don’t have those anymore. And when they had them, they didn’t look like you.”

“Insurance,” Dave said. “Have you seen a thin girl child named Charleen? Blond, about five-four, no breasts to speak of, no hips to speak of, maybe in company with a small, dark, intense church-deacon type in his forties?”

“The kids can’t come inside during the day,” the bartender said, “and that’s when I work so I wouldn’t see a kid.” He looked past Dave. He called, “Priss?”

The young woman who came wore the same sort of baby-blue bib coveralls as the bartender, except the legs of hers were cut very short and with little splits at the sides. She had loose poodle hair like the secretary at Superstar Rentals. Her smile was bright, brisk, professional. The bartender asked her about Charleen.

“She came here,” Dave said. “She had swizzle sticks with the name of this place on them.”

“Oh, honey.” The girl laid a hand with open fingers on her forehead. “They come by the gross. Is that all you’ve got? Haven’t you got a picture?”

“They were an odd couple,” Dave said. He described Dawson again.

“What’s odd?” Priss wagged her head with a wan smile. “Sweetheart, a girl could come here with a two-toed sloth and nobody would notice.”

“The kids do come in here at night, right?” Dave said to the bartender. “You’ve got a band. Not for us tone-deaf old drunks, surely. So they must dance, no?”

“That wall slides back. On the other side. Soft drinks only. Eight-thirty. Also junk food, okay?”

“That all?” Priss wondered.

Dave lifted his glass to her. “Remember me to the two-toed sloths.”

She went away. So did the bartender. Dave worked his way through clusters of balding men talking talent, talking albums, talking contracts, to the little platform. One of the angular youths had gone off. The other one sat at the keyboard, fiddling with switches, playing runs. Dave stepped up onto the platform. Drumsticks lay crossed on a snare. He picked one up and tapped a cymbal. The youth at the keyboard turned to him, flinching.

“Mustn’t touch,” he said.

Dave put the stick down carefully and told him about Charleen and Gerald Dawson.

“He’s a bad dancer,” the skinny youth said. “The worst she ever brought. But she only brought the other ones once. They liked it. He hated it. It figured she’d bring him back over and over.”

“Sensitive to others, was she?” Dave said.

“He was a jerk. He deserved it. What did he need with her? She was like a ten-year-old. No boobs, no nothing. But he fell all over himself. She could make him do anything. And she wasn’t even smart.”

“You sound like you knew her,” Dave said.

His hair was black and lank, lusterless, uncombed. It went inside the greasy collar of his shirt when he shook his head. He ran long, knuckly fingers under it to free it. “You sit up here and run through the same sets night after night it gets mechanical and boring,” he said. “So I watch, you know? What you see isn’t Aldrich or Coppola or Scorsese, and it’s only clips, but I make up the rest of the script. She’s this turkey-ranch hick, right? And she runs away from Gobbler Gulch to the bright lights, and the town preacher comes to fetch her and it’s Sadie Thompson all over again. You know that old Joan Crawford flick? That was John Huston’s father in that, did you know? John Huston is old as God himself. That was a long time ago, man.”

“You made this up,” Dave said. “But you never talked to her?”

“Did I say that?” The knuckly fingers played a phrase from “The Maid with the Flaxen Hair.” The electronic sounds came out tinkling, silvery. “I talked to her. She was a talker. Anybody she could grab. She was going to get into films. She was peddling her scrawny little ass up and down the Strip all night. And the Johns she got all told her the same thing. They were agents, directors, producers. They’d get her into films. And she believed them. They told her she had beautiful facial planes, all right?” Woodwinds faked themselves inside the circuitry. What came from under his fingers sounded tender, yearning. It contradicted the sourness of his words.

“What did you tell her?” Dave asked. “That you could get her a recording contract?”

“My sheets needed changing,” he said. “My decor is piles of dirty laundry. She liked my cock very much but I don’t think my life-style convinced her I had the clout to help her with her career.” He snapped off a little what-the-hell laugh but the music kept on sounding sentimental.

“Dawson wasn’t an agent, a director, a producer,” Dave said. “He couldn’t get her into pictures.”

“I don’t know.” The shoulders went up and down without affecting the smooth work the fingers were doing. “He sure as hell didn’t look it. Him I’d have figured to be paying the rent or something, you know? But about the time I saw him with her first, a little before, she said she’d made it. She had a part. A big part. She was going to be a movie star. She’d even met the producer.”

“Did she name him?” Dave said.

“How could she name him? Somebody drives a new Seville along here waving an open door at the girls on the sidewalk—he’s going to give his real name?” The Debussy piece came to an end. He looked at Dave. “Who are you and what do you want with her?”

“You said the man would do anything for her,” Dave told him. “I think he died for her. He died, that’s for sure. If I can find her, maybe she can tell me why.”

“She hasn’t been around,” the musician said.

“For how long?” Dave said. He named the date of Gerald Dawson’s death. “Would that be the last time?”

“You think she’s dead?” His skin never saw sunlight. The darkness of his hair and moustache, the intensity of the little light glaring off the sheet music on the instrument, reflecting into his face, made it look like ivory. Now it turned to chalk. “Christ, she was only sixteen.”

“Is the date right?” Dave said.

“Yeah. No. I don’t know. Who reads calendars all the time? Every night is the same in here.” His mouth trembled. He sounded as if he were going to cry. “Jesus. I guess that’s right. Ten days ago, right? Yeah, it must have been about that long.”

“She hasn’t been back to her apartment,” Dave said. “Where else would she go?”

“I don’t know, man. She slept around, right? For bread. I mean, nobody’s ever going to get her into that glass slipper. A pumpkin is always going to be a pumpkin for her. What a dumb, crazy little kid.”

“Do you write your own lyrics?” Dave said.

He grinned wanly. “That’s a quote from some flick.” But the tune under his fingers now was “Pavane for a Dead Princess,” the celesta sound giving it a toy-shop aptness. “Who knows? You could check who’s suddenly signed million-dollar contracts and moved into Beverly Hills mansions.”

“Million-dollar contracts I don’t think she’d get,” Dave said. “Did you ever hear of a producer called Odum? Spence Odum?”

“They keep making those pictures about that Little League baseball team. The Bad News Bears. She could be in the next one.
The Bad News Bears Meet the Dirty Old Men
?”

“She didn’t tell you this producer who signed her was named Spence Odum?”

“She didn’t give me the name,” he said. “She stuck out her tongue when I asked her. She flounced away, right? Grammar-school stuff. ‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.’” He made his voice simpering. His hand flipped switches. Ravel mourned. Then stopped. The cover came down over the keyboards. “I’ve got to eat.”

Dave gave him a card. “If you remember anything about her that you haven’t told me, call me, will you?”

The card went into a shirt pocket where there were ball-point pens and cigarettes. The skeletal thighs slid off the high bench. “Later,” he said, and dropped off the platform and wove in and out through the knots of talkers, and after a pause to put on dark glasses, out into what was left of the daylight. Dave set down his unfinished drink and followed. Eating still went on. So did Peter Frampton. The temperature had cooled and shirts had come from nowhere to cover the suntan-oiled shoulders. Priss came at him, empty tray at her side.

“Charleen Sims,” she said. “A big, dumb kid was here with a picture. Scrawny little blond. In a high-school yearbook from some tacky little town in the boonies. Showing her picture to everybody. Had anybody seen Charleen? I forgot before.”

“Now is a good time,” Dave said. “What did this big, dumb kid look like? Did he have a name? What was the name on the yearbook? What tacky little town in the boonies?”

“You know what you could take him for?” she asked.

“A two-toed sloth?” Dave said.

“Big Foot,” she said. “The monster that’s supposed to run the woods in Oregon or Washington or someplace? You’ve seen those fake movies, haven’t you? Bad, grainy, eight-millimeter shots of some naked guy with a lot of hair and beard tromping through the underbrush? They don’t have sound but you can hear the grunts?”

“He didn’t grunt his name for you?”

“He was very paranoid. No names.” She clasped the empty tray to her chest with crossed arms. “He hung onto that book like this, wouldn’t let anybody see the cover, only her picture. He didn’t want questions, just answers: where was she. A week later he was back. It was sad. He’d lost the book. It figured. Charleen was dumb but she’d wised up a little here. He was childish. Naturally somebody ripped him off. He was lucky they left him his undershorts. He cried about the book, really cried, like a little kid. It was the only picture of Charleen he owned.” She looked past Dave, frowned and nodded. “I’ve got to pick up an order. Look, I’m sorry I forgot before.”

“One more second,” Dave said. “Have you seen him lately? Big Foot?”

“No, it’s been, what, two weeks? He was frantic. About the book. Thought he might have left it here. He hadn’t.” She tried to go inside. Dave stepped between her and the door.

“You never saw her with him? He didn’t find her?”

“There are nine million people in this town. How could he find her? He was lost, himself.” She tried to edge around him. “Look, I have to—”

“What about Spence Odum? Did you see her with him?”

“What’s a Spence Odum?”

“A movie producer. You get film people in here.”

“Did he tell you he was a producer?” she said. “They lie a lot, you know.”

“A poster told me,” Dave said. “In Charleen’s apartment. Over her bed. He makes the kind of movies she might just luck into.”

“I don’t get told people’s names much.” A shout came from the dusky sunset room. “Sorry—I have to go,” she said, and this time he let her.