Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (16 page)

“Now we been introduced,” Billy said.

He led me back out to the pool. There were twice as many people out there as I’d seen at midnight. Someone had lit the patio torches and turned off the colored floodlights, and all you could see was shadows. When the shadows talked they looked like they were conspiring, and when they danced they looked like black flames. Billy led me to a bench by a fitted fieldstone wall that ran along the back of the property. We sat and watched the
dancers. “Pretty good brawl, huh?” he said.

“I’ve seen worse,” I said.

“You’re looking for two three pounds.”

“No.”

“That’s what Maddy said. Her hearing’s usually pretty good.”

“That’s what I told her. I came to talk to you, Billy, not your women. My name’s Rose.”

“Yeah? That the punch line?”

“Jesus, what’re they teaching you kids these days? Stu Rose.”

“I never heard of you.”

I shook my head, amused. “Well, let’s just say if you were running this luau anywhere up the Valley, you’d’ve heard of me a while ago.”

“Yeah? Well, we’re not up the Valley, dad, and you’re not buying, you say. So what’s the grift?”

“You picked an interesting spot, Billy. Right in Scarpa’s back garden. Or haven’t you heard of Lenny Scarpa either?”

“I hear way too goddamn much about Lenny Scarpa. You and him good buddies?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“I’m not a sociable boy, dad. Why’re we talking?”

“Maybe we’ve got nothing to talk about,” I said. “Maybe you’ve got all the supply you want. All the organization you want. Maybe you’re never short of kale when you get a shot at a nice score. Maybe you want to stay small forever.”

“You raise a lot of dust, don’t you, daddy?”

“Talk English. And wipe your upper lip.”

He didn’t wipe it, but he had to stop himself.

I said, “I’m on your patch now, so I guess I’ll let you call me daddy once in a while. But your patch ends where the driveway does. And at high tide my patch might slop
right over yours. Why don’t we try a little manners and see how it goes?”

He didn’t say anything. We watched the dancers.

“You’re Billy Metz,” I said.

“Who’d you think I was?”

“All I knew was Billy, but I make you now. William R. Metz. Production design at Paramount. You were really up there for a while. They bounced you last fall and nobody liked to say why.”

“I walked,” he said.

“Catherine the Great’s palace in
Scarlet Monarch
. That big, ah, that kind of desert fortress in
A Sound of Distant Drums
. Lemme think.”

“I was there seven years, dad. I did a lot of stuff.”

“You were good,” I said. “Really good. I could do something like that, I wouldn’t fool with anything else.”

“Time comes you get tired of drawing little pictures.”

“We might agree on one thing, Billy. Scarpa’s had it his own way in Santa Monica an awful long time.”

“I’m not looking to be adopted. I like it on my own.”

“You’re brand-new, son. Fresh out of the cellophane. It doesn’t work that way, not without a setup. You got to come in with somebody. Why not me?”

“You talk a lot.”

“I like to talk, don’t you?”

Metz stood.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said.

We walked toward the house. When we came through the French doors, I looked around and said. “Gimme a minute. Jesus, I should’ve dropped bread crumbs.”

“One off each bedroom,” he said, waving. “Take your pick. I’ll be out front.”

I nodded and headed off down the hall. The first bedroom had some folks getting acquainted on the bed, but I didn’t feel like excusing myself and I kicked the heel of
his shoe. He looked around. “Out,” I said, and they buttoned up and got out. I picked up the phone on the bedside table. It was past two in the morning. Scarpa answered on the first ring. “Yeah,” he said.

“Where do you want him?” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Santa Monica.”

He thought a moment. “There’s a little park, just south of the pier, called Crescent or something. Right by the end of Pico, where it meets the water. Half an hour.”

He hung up, and I went out to find Metz. He was at the front door, ready to go.

I’d spoken too soon. He had the hat, too.

We walked outside without a word. He nodded when he saw my car. “Nice ride,” he said.

“There’s a story behind it,” I told him. “Tell you on the way. You know a place called Franco’s, down by the pier?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t like bars.”

I swung out the driveway and headed for Lincoln Boulevard. “It’s a decent little shack, for after hours.”

“I don’t give a goddamn. You run the Valley, why’re you driving this wreck?”

“Long story, Billy. Long story, but I don’t mind telling.”

“I mind listening. Look, let’s just pull into the first place we see.”

“You’re a jumpy fella, Billy. You should sniff less and drink more. We’re going to Franco’s.”

“I don’t need to go to Franco’s. What, the house give you a percentage?”

“It’s a good place to talk.”

“We’re talking now.”

“I want you to meet an associate of mine.”

“Aw, hell,” he said disgustedly, “you’re one of Scarpa’s
boys,” and slipped his hand into his jacket.

You’d expect a powder hound to be quick, and he was, but quick doesn’t mean good, and I had a hold on his right wrist by the time he’d got a hold on his iron. We were on Lincoln by then, doing maybe forty. I eased it up past fifty. I didn’t want anybody getting giddy and jumping out. I could tell he had his finger on the trigger, but I wouldn’t let him draw, so his finger wasn’t much good to him unless he felt like shooting a chunk off his hip. I jammed my thumb in between the tendons in his wrist and started working it around. He let out a thin noise between his teeth. “I never broke a guy’s wrist this way,” I said. “Want me to try?”

He backhanded me a few times lefty in the face. It wasn’t worth writing down in my diary. “You’re a jumpy fella, Billy,” I said again. “Let go the gun.”

“You want to cool me, dad, you’ll have to work for it,” he hissed. He tried kicking me.

“He wants to talk, Billy.”

“Sure, talk. That’s why the old heap. You leave it in a field somewhere and me in the trunk.”

“Let go the gun, Billy,” I said, working my thumb around. He let go, and I pulled his gun out and leveled it at his knee. “He wants to talk. That means I can’t kill you, but he won’t mind a little hole in your leg. So simmer down.”

“I know his talk.”

I sighed. “Scarpa doesn’t kill punks like you himself. He doesn’t mow his own lawn, either. Why don’t you use that thing under your hat? You set up shop on Scarpa’s patch. You must’ve known it was coming one day, a talk or a bullet. If it was a bullet, I’d give it to you now and save myself some aggravation. So it’s talk, and you ought to be glad you’re getting a chance to.”

He made me a brief recommendation.

“Manners, Billy,” I said, and tapped him in the mouth with his gun. “Turn around and face me with your back to the door and your hands on your knees.” He repeated his recommendation, then did what I said. “And if you start feeling frisky, remember I don’t need the gun to make you wish you were playing dress-up in some other town.”

I put his gun down in my lap and finally shifted into third. He made another recommendation. I was beginning to worry. For a guy who thought he was about to be killed, Metz was more petulant than anything else, like someone was trying to take his scooter away. I said, “You really have been tampering with yourself, haven’t you, Billy? Listen. When we get there, try and straighten up. Don’t talk to him like you’re talking to me.”

He was trying to get his hat level on his head again.

I said. “Billy. I’m serious. Don’t talk to Scarpa like this.”

“I talk like I want to,” he said.

“Jesus. All right. Sure,” I said. “Talk like you want to to Lenny Scarpa. I won’t have to learn any new tricks. I already know how to use a shovel.”

Scarpa’s car was a dark green Maserati with wire-spoke wheels. It looked fast, and it must have been, because he was waiting in it when we pulled up. The park was on a little grassy bluff overlooking the sea. You could see the pier, half a mile up the beach, the minarets on the ballroom still lit up, even that late. I heard they’d turned it into a roller rink. In the daytime you wouldn’t be able to see the sand for the colored umbrellas, but it was empty now and black, and the black waves moved over it and back again like the shuttle of a loom. “Don’t open your door,” I told Metz. “Crawl out mine, so I can cover you.” He did what I said, holding his hat steady with one hand, and then I walked him around to the front of Scarpa’s car, where we had a little privacy from the
houses behind. “Lenny,” I said, “this is Mr. William R. Metz, formerly of Paramount, currently doing business at 1625 Marine.”

Scarpa looked him over, then lifted the hat off Metz’s head, holding it with two fingers.

“No,” he said, and tossed it away.

Metz went on staring into Scarpa’s face.

“Hello, Billy,” Scarpa said. “You know who I am.”

“I know who you think you are,” Metz said.

“You didn’t tell me he was C’d to the eyes,” Scarpa said to me.

“Did I need to?”

“I guess not. Okay, Billy. Listen, all right?”

“I’m not hurting you any,” Metz said.

“Billy. Santa Monica’s my town. You can’t do like this in my town. You can’t come into my store, and spread out your merchandise on my counter, and start selling. All right? So that’s done, but I’ll tell you what might happen. You managed to pry off a nice little bit of my business. I like a guy who goes after what he wants. I like him better if he can get it. Long’s he’s not too crazy. Long’s he can be told. I can always use a good salesman in my store, Billy. Movie people buy from me, sure, but they’d like it a lot better buying from one of their own. So that could be nice for me, and I could make it nice for you, too. Better supply than you got right now, fewer worries. More business. Things go well, I could set you up in a shop of your own.”

“I already got my own shop.”

“No. Ten minutes ago you did. Now you don’t. Billy, are you listening?”

“What else’ve I got to do, dad? You talk more’n your gorilla.”

“He saw your gun, right?” Scarpa asked me.

“It’s his gun,” I said.

“If it’s his gun, he ought to know what it does.”

“It doesn’t do a damn thing,” Metz said. He’d stopped blinking and his eyes were steady as glass eyes. “Not here in the middle of all these houses, it doesn’t, and I’m not worried about anything else you can do to me here. And I’ll worry about what you do tomorrow tomorrow. You’re telling me you want a war? Okay. It’s war.”

Scarpa was shaking his head.

“Billy — ” I said.

“Less mouth,” Scarpa told me. He turned back to Metz. “You got the wrong map, son, and no light to read it by.”

“Your town,” Metz said. “You coming around and telling me this is your town. Listen, ginzo. My people’ve been here since before they paved the roads. When they built that pier, my great-grand-uncle had six and a quarter percent of it. My father was Sandy Metz and if they had movies wherever you come from, you been looking at his costumes since you first stole a nickel for a ticket. We were in Hollywood before there was any such thing. Now, I don’t know what your town is. Chicago, maybe, or Palermo, but it isn’t here. It isn’t here. This is my town. And maybe you can come into my town and tell me what I can and can’t do, but you haven’t proved it yet. All you’ve proved is, you can talk. And I’m done talking.”

“You know, that’s true,” Scarpa said.

If I’d known what was coming, I still might not have been quick enough to stop it. There was a stiletto in Scarpa’s right hand, as if it had always been there, the kind with hardly any handle to it, and while I was noticing it, Scarpa was swinging his left hand up and sinking his thumb and forefinger into the soft flesh under Metz’s jaw. Metz’s mouth popped open and Scarpa whipped the stiletto up and over and buried it in Metz’s tongue, to the handle, rising up on his toes and falling
back again in one movement, like a bullfighter. Metz dropped gagging to the grass. It was the kind of thing you half see and half figure out later. And then I was standing between them, facing Scarpa, and I think I was shaking my head no.

“Don’t worry,” Scarpa told me. “All done. You didn’t used to be so delicate.”

I looked back. Metz was on his knees, the blood streaming over his chin. He was trying to hold it in with his hands.

“Step aside,” Scarpa said gently. “I want to say goodnight to our date.”

I stepped aside, and Scarpa hunkered down next to Metz. Metz was trying to stick his fingers back in where the wound began and press it shut, and then gagging and coughing them out, then trying again. His yellow shirt was red. He’d rolled his eyes down, trying to see into his own mouth. He looked to be split open in there, right back to the root. Scarpa began wiping the stiletto clean on the grass. “You’re done now, Billy,” he said. “You were too snowed-in to hear a kind word. So you’re out of the business. I got a little list of people who used to buy from me. They don’t buy from me again in the next couple weeks, I’ll come kill you. I ever hear you’ve sold anything to anyone else, anywhere, I’ll kill you. I ever get bored and need cheering up, I’ll kill you.” He examined the knife, turning it in the moonlight, then stood and tucked it away in his jacket. Metz vomited through his fingers, and we both stepped back quickly. “You’re done, Billy,” Scarpa said, looking down at him. “Tell me you understand.”

Metz nodded vigorously.

I took out my handkerchief and gave it to him. “Here,” I said. “It’s clean. Fold it in half and press it down on the wound, hard. Make it hurt. Go sit in my car.
I’ll get you to the hospital.”

Metz staggered to his feet, stuffing my handkerchief into his mouth. That was all he was going to do now, what someone told him.

Scarpa smiled faintly. “I didn’t figure you for the Florence Nightingale type.”

“You can bleed out through the tongue as easy as anyplace else,” I said. “You want headlines? Dope King Sought in Tongue Slay?”