Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (7 page)

“I’d rather not say, sir. He was candid with me, and we may work together, and he deserves a certain amount of discretion.”

“You’d rather not say.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You’d rather not say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I couldn’t persuade you?”

I looked from the little gunman to the big one. “With both your boys working? Yeah. But it would take a while, and you couldn’t do it here.”

“Now,” he said cozily, “this is nice. Keeping the mouth shut, this is something not everybody understands. Very admirable,
if
your business is not my business.
But.
What if your business is my business after all?”

“Then I’m out of that business. That’s why I came here.”

“You gotta speak slow for an old man. You came to find out, is it okay.”

“Yes.”

“This mysterious business.”

“That’s right.”

“With Mr. Halliday.”

“I don’t think I mentioned a name.”

“That’s very true. I must be making a mistake.”

“Isn’t Lance Halliday a partner of yours?”

Burri pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “I must admit to you now, I never heard him referred to like that before.”

“I mean a partner in this club.”

“Oh. Yeah, we gave Mr. Halliday a little interest in our undertaking.”

“I heard him described as the club’s owner,” I said, smiling faintly.

“People talk,” Burri said sadly. “You’ve nearly finished your drink. Now, this time I truly hope — Ah. No. Here it comes.” The gazelle reappeared at a canter, looking a bit alarmed, and set down another gimlet in front of me. As she was about to leave, Burri lay a brown hand on her bare back. “Young lady,” he said.

“Yes Mr. Burri,” she said tensely.

“You are taking very nice care of us, young lady.”

“Thank you Mr. Burri,” she said. He lifted his hand
and watched fondly as she walked on taut legs back to the bar with her tray against her hip. The tray covered more of her than the dress did.

“They’re a regular plague, these naked women,” I agreed.

Burri and his torpedos all turned to look at me at once.

Then Burri smiled, showing a beautiful set of false teeth. “Mr. Corson. I gotta admit. You seem to have your wits about you, but at the same time you are not what I would call a nervous gentleman.” I smiled back and said nothing. “Mr. Grasso,” he said, “what do you think of Mr. Corson here?”

“You never can tell,” the little gunman said judiciously.

“Big one,” offered the big one.

“Mr. Corson, if you weren’t so busy with your mysterious friend, I might even think of something to discuss with a capable young man like yourself.”

“Thanks, Mr. Burri. But I should warn you, I’m not Sicilian.”

He chuckled. “Sicilian I don’t care so much anymore. I’m not old-fashioned. I’ll do business with any man if he’s a gentleman and can make me a nice proposition. I’ll do business with a nigger. I got a Negro gentleman works for me and he is a fine gentleman. His name is Hubie Howard the bandleader, and I must admit he has my admiration as a businessman. Because here is a man who works with animals, with
animals
— and yet, there’s never a problem, and things are always very orderly with Mr. Howard, and he gives me my nice music, all right, it’s not nice music, but it’s the kind you got to have and he gives it to me with no fuss. And this interests me very much. Because this colored fellow is solving the identical, exact same problem I got myself every day.”

“Of working with animals,” I said.

“Animals,” he said. “People who got ambition and
that’s all they got. People with no discipline, who don’t know to ask, Is this okay. And these are not people you can reside your trust in. They are people you always got to be watching. And you know, nothing so very nice happens to these people in the end.”

There must have been some signal I missed, because the big pug was standing and lifting away Burri’s table, and Burri started getting up on his long rickety legs. I stood too, and Burri gave me his hand to shake. It was cool and dry. “Mr. Corson, you strike me as a fine young gentleman, and I’d like you to have a good time tonight at the bar with the compliments of the house. And maybe some evening you’ll come by again and we’ll have another nice talk.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“And about our friend,” he said. “So you know. Our friend has an okay to do a few little things. But if you are interested in this,” — he displayed his thumb again — “ this is not a good business to be in with him.”

“But it is a good business to be in with you?”

“Ah ha hah!” he said, waggling a finger at me. “Now I see.
Now
I see. You want your mouth shut and my mouth open, anh?” Laughing merrily, he turned and swayed off on his long legs, a gunman on either side.

I sipped my drink and watched him go. The gazelle reappeared to take Burri’s glass and dish of cookies. She smiled and asked if I needed anything else. It was a friendly smile, but it did convey that just because I was Mister Burri’s new friend didn’t mean I could go sitting in Mister Burri’s booth when he wasn’t there. I drained my drink, set the glass on her tray with a dollar, and went back to the bar. By the time I got there, the bartender had another gimlet waiting. I’d be doing well to get home that night with my liver still attached.

I sat down, saying, “For a minute back there, you
seemed to forget all about me. I was lonely.”

“Friend,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing. But you know what I’m doing. I’m working for a living.”

“I didn’t take it personally.”

“I wouldn’t care if you did. Actually, though, now you’re part of the family, I guess I got to care. What’s your magic, anyway? I never seen the old man fall in love so fast.”

“You pour a good drink,” I told him.

“Thanks. That’s one thing here, they let you pour ‘em right. It’s why I’ve stayed so long.”

“Thinking of going?”

“Been saving up for my own place. Another year should do it. I got my eye on a property in Culver City.”

“Yeah? Which? If you’re behind the bar, I’ll have to make a note of it.”

“Friend, don’t take this wrong, especially since you’re Burri’s new nephew. But when I get my place? I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

I left him with a smile and no tip and went to get my hat back. Outside, I gave my ticket to the valet. He still treated me like I didn’t smell, and I gave him two bucks, his and the bartender’s, and pulled out the circular drive and headed north. A quarter mile up the road, I made a U-turn and drove back. There was a liquor store, a florist, and a late-night drugstore across the road from the Centaur, and I pulled into the parking lot, where I could see the club’s entrance, and killed the lights. They might have a man watching the road, just on general principles, but unless he was on the roof with binoculars I didn’t see where they could put him, and I figured I was probably clear.

My watch said about 9:40. I decided I’d wait an hour to see if Halliday showed. They had strong lights under
the port cochère, I’d seen his picture, and there’s nothing wrong with my eyes. In the army, I was company sniper. It’s interesting what snipers do. When your company retreats, you’re supposed to cover them by climbing a tree or something and firing on the approaching enemy. They don’t say what you’re supposed to do when the Germans arrive and you’re still up the tree. I didn’t mind. By the time I joined up I was twenty-six and had been on the bum for eight years, just rattling around loose from town to town, and I was ready for someone to tell me what to do, even if they were telling me to go climb a tree and wait to be shot. Anyway, we didn’t retreat much and I made it to the Elbe without so much as a skinned knee. Around ten past, a dark blue Lincoln pulled up with two suits in front and a blonde head in back. The blonde head got out and became a big young guy with sort of sparkly hands and what looked like Halliday’s chin. He breezed right by the valets with his hard boys and breezed back out at 10:25. By then I had my engine running, and I slipped into traffic two cars behind him.

We headed back toward town on the Golden State. The radio was broken, so I was singing
That’s Amore
. I had the window open and was letting my hand fill with cool wind and molding it like clay. Late as it was, there was a bar of dull blue light floating over the western horizon somehow, and the glow you always see over downtown, and all the lights, spreading out to the mountains. When they turned east onto 10 I was right behind them, and a
good thing, too, because they turned off right away onto Soto and if I’d been bashful I’d have lost them. We cruised through Boyle Heights for a few blocks and then they pulled into a big Chinese place called Jade Mountain. I pulled into a supermarket two blocks further on, got the car turned around, and waited.

The market had a big neon sign of a performing seal. It had a red ball balanced on its nose, and then the ball was floating a little above its nose, and then higher, and then gone. Then it reappeared on the nose again. After five minutes I drove back to the Jade Mountain. The blue Lincoln was in the back corner of the lot, almost out of sight behind the restaurant. I got out of the car, locked my door, and went inside.

The bar was off to the right as you come in the front door, one of those grotto things with a low ceiling, all the light coming from behind the bottles. There was an old Chinese gent in a short jacket behind it, and Halliday at the far end, chatting with the cocktail waitress. She wore a snug brocade dress and had a smooth cool face you wanted to cup in your hands. Her waist was about as big as my neck. He had big rings on every finger, as advertised. They must have been pure hell during piano lessons.

I guessed his lugs were still out in the car. Aside from us, the bar was empty. I sat down at the other end and ordered my fifth gimlet. I hoped there weren’t going to be too many more. The waitress was neat and smooth. She had everything a man could want, only little. She and Halliday looked awfully pretty together, and I watched them talk and tried not to get sad. People talk a lot of crap about the Chinese being inscrutable, but there was nothing mysterious there. She was looking up at him as if she thought he was just fine. He gave her a business card, and she did a little series of head-bobs over it and
admired it and tucked it away somewhere in her dress. Then he kept talking, looking friendly and reasonable, and you could see her wondering if she might not be understanding him right. Then her face went slowly dead, and then she said something brief and walked steadily out of the bar. Halliday looked after her ruefully. When he turned, he found me grinning at him. I raised my glass.

He came over in no hurry and said, “Laughing at me, friend?” It was a nice voice, medium deep and not trying too hard.

I shook my head, still grinning. “Toasting you. You got more nerve than I do.”

“For whatever good it did,” he said, sitting down next to me. “I guess I got told.”

“I guess. What were you told?”

“Actually, I couldn’t make it out. But whatever it was, I got told, all right.”

“Honorable wound, anyway. Let me buy you a drink. Make up for my bad manners.”

“The hell you’ll buy me a drink,” he said amiably. “I just got trimmed down to nothing. I need to feel like a big shot again. I’ll buy.”

Halliday was about the best-looking man I’ve seen. He had thick, dull blonde hair swept straight back from a broad forehead, thick straight brows, a straight nose that wasn’t too small, and a small, sensible-looking mouth. He might’ve had a little more jaw than he needed, but it had a good shape. He wore a tan mohair jacket with shoulders padded out to here, but he had plenty of his own shoulders underneath. He wasn’t sissy-looking, either, like some of these perfect types. His eyes were calm and he looked friendly. You found yourself thinking it wasn’t his fault he was gorgeous. You almost thought the rings weren’t his fault, either.

He asked me my name and I told him Stuart Rose, and we shook hands. I don’t look much like a Yid, but neither did Rosey. We’d gotten to be pretty good friends at Camp Claiborne and stayed that way until halfway through the Ardennes. He wouldn’t have minded me using his name. He didn’t need it anymore. Halliday told me his name was Halliday and I said “Huh.”

“Heard of me?” he said.

I said, “Director, right?”

“More of a producer.”

“You thought little Lotus Blossom was your next big star?”

“That’s right.”

“Must be the only woman in L.A. who doesn’t want to be in the movies.”

“Well,” he said lightly, “maybe she doesn’t like the kind of movies I make.”

“What kind are those?”

“Well, you know. We strive to entertain.”

“Guy with your looks, how come you’re not in front of the camera instead?”

“Tried it,” he said. “Stank up the joint. Now I produce.”

“Landed on your feet, huh?”

“Hope so, anyway. You look like you might’ve played a little ball sometime.”

I shook my head. “I come from a pretty small town, and pretty much all the guys were on all the teams. But I never cared for it much.”

“I was a tailback,” he said. “I wasn’t bad, either. I could hit a little and run a lot, and we had a quarterback with an arm and some guys on the line who could chase off the riff-raff. We did all right. That was a good time. That was about as good a time as I’ve had. Of course, when I was acting, my press bio said I was the quarterback.”

“Where was this?”

He shook his head. “I’m funny about that, I guess. I’d rather not say.”

“Ashamed of your old home town?”

“Other way round, friend,” he said. “Other way round. I don’t think everybody there would be too pleased with some of the things I’ve done out here. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway, but like I said, I’m funny about it. Anyway, the press kit said Tarzana, which sounds better than the real thing would’ve, anyhow.”

“Quarterback from Tarzana.”

He grinned. “I wouldn’t’ve been quarterback, even if I’d had the arm. I was having too much fun where I was. You never played football? You must’ve done something. I don’t meet that many guys who make me look dainty.”