Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (18 page)

When I didn’t come over, that didn’t surprise Estella either. There’d be lots of men who didn’t think they needed to wash. She walked back to me, sank to her knees, and took hold of my belt. I picked her up and set her on her feet again.

“No,” I said. “Let me think.”

She waited. She had a deep belly button and a round dark belly. I wanted to rest my face against it. I caught myself thinking that twenty minutes wouldn’t make any difference. That she probably wouldn’t even mind. But that was the point. She ought to have been able to mind. “You don’t speak English, do you,” I said.

She was silent.

“Put your nightgown on,” I said. “Here. Sit down. Here, next to me. Listen. Some bad things are going to happen now. Some, some unpleasant things. But not to
you. And when they’re done happening, you’ll be able to leave. Out.” I gestured.
“Afuera. Libre.”

She began to have a look in her eyes, one of fright. She still didn’t move.

I took her by the elbow and led her around to the far side of the bed. “Lie down,” I said, gesturing. “Down. On the floor, here. And whatever you do, whatever you hear, don’t move, don’t say anything, until I come for you. I’m going to come for you.” She didn’t like any of this a bit, but it had been a long time since she’d even thought of trying to stop what she didn’t like, and she lay down on the floor. I pulled the spread from the bed and covered her up head to toe. “Okay,” I told her.
“Silencio. Siempre silencio.”
I went to the door and pressed the buzzer.

I leaned on it a while, and then gave it a few petulant jabs, and by that time I heard heavy footsteps down the hall and the pimp saying, “Easy, easy. I hear you.”

“What the hell kind of joint is this?” I shouted querulously through the door.

“Easy, friend. Just give me a minute,” he said, putting the key in the lock.

“I want you to see something,” I snapped. “I want you to have a look at this.” The door opened and the pimp came in. His left hand held a ring of keys and right hand was up near his gun, just in case. He wasn’t entirely stupid. I gave him the edge of my forearm across his throat, then opened my hand and yanked him foreward and off balance by the back of the neck, while my left hand slipped in ahead of his right and closed on his gun. It was a big fella, and I held on as he dropped away from it. By the time he hit the floor, I’d switched it to my right hand. He tried to sit up, choking, and I leveled the barrel at his mouth.

“You make a loud noise with that,” I said, “and I’ll make a loud noise with this.”

“Don’t shoot me,” he whispered raggedly. “Don’t shoot me.”

I pressed the door closed with my rear.

“Delores has the day’s take,” he whispered rapidly. “It’s just in a pouch. The safe’s in the pantry, but I swear to God we don’t have the key. I swear to God. They send a guy with the key to transfer the money a couple times a week. Don’t shoot me.”

“Get down on all fours,” I said. “Like that. Good. Does that key open all the rooms?”

“All the girls’ rooms.”

“Same key for all of them? Show me which. Slowly.”

“This one. Don’t shoot me, I swear to God.”

“Push it closer. How many customers right now?”

“Four. You and three others. In Two, Five, and Six. Two’s downstairs.”

“Where do you get the girls?” I said.

“What?”

“Where do you get the girls? Ads for singers and cleaning ladies, like that?”

I wanted him to tell me I had it wrong, that this was a plain old cathouse.

“Sure,” he said. “Some from bars. I get a commission. Please, guy.”

“How often do the girls get to go out?” I said.

“They get supper in the kitchen and a bath down the hall twice a week.”

“I mean leave the house.”

“Jesus Christ, they don’t leave the
house
! Jesus, buddy, don’t shoot me.”

“What about when they get sick? Or too old?”

He didn’t say anything.

I said, “How often does Halliday come by?”

“Who the hell is Holiday?”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, isn’t
this Halliday’s joint? Whose is it, Scarpa’s?”

“He’ll kill me.”

“I’ll kill you. Is this place Scarpa’s?”

“You moron,” he said, weeping, “you crazy goddamn moron, everything in this valley is Scarpa’s. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me.”

“No he won’t,” I said, and shot him.

I put it in his forehead. It was probably cleaner than he deserved. He rocked back and then flopped down on his face and there was a little shriek from under the bedspread, but then she was still again, like I’d told her. I put another in the back of his head for insurance and then stood there a minute, rubbing my face with my free hand and muttering, “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.” But I’d known it was a dumb play before I pushed the buzzer. I pulled the sheet from the bed and dropped it over the pimp, so Estrella wouldn’t have to see him on her way out. I was getting goofier by the minute. “Be right back,” I said, and reached over the bed to pat the hump in the bedspread. Then I ran downstairs three steps at a time. There was a lot of hollering behind the locked doors as I went by.

Delores was standing in the middle of the living room, looking wildly up the stairs, clutching a sawed-off shotgun by the barrel and stock. When I appeared, she flung it away with a little yip and ran. I caught her at the door. “Give me your purse,” I said. She nodded enthusiastically and lunged for the door again. I hauled her back. “Purse,” I reminded her. She nodded again and lunged the other way, toward the writing table. Her dress bared her back to the coccyx, and all the skinny muscles were twitching like cut worms as she hunkered and snatched up her purse, which had been sitting by a table leg in plain sight. She held it out to me and I tossed it on the sofa.

“The day’s take,” I said. She yanked open the top
drawer of the table and scrabbled inside. The money was in a long canvas wallet with a zipper, the kind bank messengers use. I tossed it next to her purse. I grabbed her by the middle, slung her over my shoulder, and headed out the door as she kicked her legs around above my head. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to kick me or just keep from falling off. Halfway across the road I started fumbling for my car keys. It’s hard to do while you’re running, especially with a woman on your shoulder. I opened the trunk. “Hey,” she said. “Hey listen.” I dumped her inside and slammed the lid.

When I got back upstairs it was pandemonium, the doorknobs rattling, a riot of frightened or angry voices behind them. I could stop running now. The doors didn’t have to hold much longer. I went back into Estrella’s room and said “Time to go,” and she threw off the bedspread and sat up, her impassive face slick with tears. I held out my hand. She took it, stepping around the pimp’s body without looking down, and we went next door. I put the key in the lock lefty, the way the pimp had, with the gun in my right hand. Inside was a Negro girl wearing just a middy blouse and one pink ankle sock, and a thin handsome man with his shirt buttoned up wrong. He thrust a gold watch and a wad of cash at me, blinking wildly. I took the money and put it in my pocket. “Get going,” I said, and he belted past clutching his shoes and jacket. I caught the girl by the arm as she tried to follow and said, “Not yet.” She tried to kick me with the foot wearing the sock, and I grabbed her ankle and lifted, then scooped her up in my gun arm as she fell backward. She lay in my arms and gazed up at me as if I’d said a rude word. “Behave,” I said, and set her on her feet beside Estrella. I had them join hands, then took Estrella by the hand and led the procession over to the next room.

After the first two rooms, Estrella got the idea and
started grabbing the women herself as they came out and adding them to the daisy chain. It worked better that way. We finished the four upstairs rooms and then trooped downstairs to do the other three. One other customer offered me his money, and I took it. One had to be dragged from under the bed. Then I threw them both out. I led the girls back into the parlor and surveyed my haul. Seven women of various colors, shapes, and ages, naked or half-naked, standing in a row before me. They were still holding hands, waiting. For a moment I wanted to raise my arms and lead them in a chorus of
Silent Night
. “Okay,” I said, “who speaks English?”

“I speak,” said one of the Mexicans.

She was olive-skinned, built like a tree stump, and old enough to be most of their mothers. Naked as she was, she stared at me as if she were in a suit of armor. I liked the looks of her. I said, “What’s your name?”

She said, “Soledad.”

“What are you going to do if I turn you loose?”

“Gonna run.”

“What about these girls?”

“Gonna take ’em.”

“Where?”

“My cousin farm.”

“What’ll they do there?”

“Work.”

“Where’s your cousin’s farm?”

“I’m no tell you,” she said.

“Good girl,” I said. “Have ’em back here, dressed and ready to go, in five minutes. Not six. Five.” I held up five fingers.

She nodded, and as I went into the kitchen I heard her snapping a lot of words I didn’t understand, and feet thumping up the stairs and down the back hall.

The kitchen door was standing open. Jeeves and his
wife were long gone. The safe was in the pantry, as advertised. It wasn’t a safe, but a steel lockbox, which made me feel lucky. Two shots from the pimp’s .45 did for the lock, and I pried the mangled lid open with a knife from the silverware drawer, mashing my thumb while I was at it. There was about eleven hundred dollars inside and nearly three hundred in the canvas wallet, plus around a hundred from the customers. I divided the pile roughly seven ways. There was eighteen bucks in Delores’s purse. I stuffed it in my pocket, along with her car keys and driver’s license, then trotted back to the parlor. The girls were all there, holding pocketbooks or bulging pillowcases, dressed in everything from torch singers’ gowns to a suit of men’s pajamas, and Soledad was standing in front of them with folded arms. I handed them each their cut and gave the car keys to Soledad. “There are three cars outside,” I told her. “A beat-up brown Hudson across the street and two others next to the house. The keys will fit one of the two by the house. Get as far as you can before morning, but don’t drive to your cousin’s farm, or anywhere near. They can trace the car.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Buy bus tickets. You’ve got plenty for that. Don’t try selling the car, either. Just park it on a side street with the key in the ignition and walk away.”

“I’m no stupi’,” she said.

“Good. Go.”

She came over, took hold of my shoulders and tugged until I stooped, then rose on tiptoe and pressed her hard lips against my cheek. Then she turned, flicked a stubby hand at the others, and led them out the front door.

Estrella didn’t move. She stood there, staring with her black-dot eyes. She wore the hacked-up communion dress again. It didn’t fit any better. In her fists she held a silvery beaded purse and the wad of money. She still
hadn’t opened the purse and put the money in. On her feet she wore heavy leather sandals. “I’ll go with you,” she said.

Her voice was tiny but clear.

I shook my head.

“I’ll go with you,” Estrella said again.

I stood there.

Soledad marched back inside and grabbed her arm.
“No con eso, chica,”
she said crisply.
“Eso es un malo.”
She gave me a hard, brilliant smile and dragged Estrella stumbling out the door, staring back over her shoulder all the way.

I went over to the window. They were disappearing around the corner of the house.

I opened the window and began working my way through the ground floor, opening windows as I went. If they were stuck, I kicked them in. I heard a car start up and drive off. There was an old tin of silver polish and a small can of kerosene under the sink, a half-full can of gasoline by the back stoop, and a pile of Spanish newspapers in the corner. I used the kerosene and gas to soak down the parlor sofa, drapes, and rug, scattered the newspapers around, and set the tin of silver polish on the coffee table. I opened the front door and fumbled in my pockets for matches. All out. I flicked my cigarette lighter until it caught, tossed it underhand at the sofa, and ran, pulling my jacket up around my face. There was a great
whump
, as if someone had struck me with an enormous scalding pillow, and I felt a few bits of glass strike my back. I kept trotting across the street to my car and opened the trunk. Delores tried to scramble back into the corner behind the spare. “Get up,” I said.

“Please,”
she hissed, weeping.
“Please.”

I hauled her out by the arms, and she staggered and braced herself against the back fender. She’d left a shoe
in the trunk. She looked wildly at the burning house behind me, and then at my face. She seemed to be all white eyes, in which the fire danced and shook in little sparks. I took her by the throat and stuck the pimp’s gun in her mouth. She closed her lips around it for a moment by instinct, then stood there holding the barrel in her bared teeth.

I said, “When you heard the shots, you started running. You didn’t even stop to grab your purse. You’ve got no idea who it could have been. Nobody came by tonight but the regulars. What did I just say?”

I took the gun from her mouth.

She gasped, “I didn’t see nothing.”

It was pretty corny stuff, the gun in the mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything better and I stuck it back in. There was a noise like a cannon shot behind me — the tin of polish — and she jerked and bit down on the barrel. I guess that hurt her teeth. It would have hurt mine. She began weeping again. There were two sharp cracks as her shotgun went off. I pulled her driver’s license from my pocket and held it so she could see her picture and read her name and address. “If anyone comes to see me, I’ll come to see you. If they come see me, I’ll come see you. What did I just say?” I pulled the gun from her mouth again.

“You’ll kill me,” she said. “You’ll kill me if I talk. You’ll kill me.”

“Get going,” I said, and she kicked off her other shoe and started running barefoot across the field. There was nothing middle-aged about the way she ran. She moved like a high school sprinter.