Skinflick (17 page)

“Hold the expression,” Odum said through unmoving lips. “Camera—zoom in on him tight and wait.” The camera kept on whirring. “Okay,” Odum said. “Cut. Turn on the lights.”

The lights came on and the boy with the Adam’s apple threw off the sheet and sat up. “I’m a star,” he said, and jumped down off the table. He had on only jockey shorts. He kicked into jeans, flapped into a shirt.

“Quite fucked to death!” Odum laughed.

“What a way to go,” the boy said.

“Where the hell have you been?” Odum sounded like an outraged parent He was asking Randy, who stood with Dave just inside the door, next to the washrooms. “And what the hell do you want?” This he said to Dave. He came to them, walrus moustache bristling, billy club swinging at his belt “I’m trying, for Chrissake, to get a cheap, trashy movie in the cans here.” To Randy: “I needed you.” To Dave: “You I didn’t need.”

“He doesn’t take me to Fatburger,” Randy said. “He takes me to places with tablecloths, where the waiters wear velvet jackets, and I can’t pronounce the names on the menu, and the check is fifty dollars.”

“Yes, but is it art?” Odum said. “I give you a chance to act, to express your deepest feelings. I offer you immortality. And you talk bout food.”

“I want to talk about murder,” Dave said.

“Later.” Odum swung away. “Harold? Junie? Bedtime.” He went toward the corner with the shiny brass sleeping arrangement and the wallpaper. “Inspector Hardcock? You get outside the window, please.”

The tweedy man, pipe in his teeth, leafed over a script “Page forty? ‘Registers shock, amazement, delight, pops eyes, licks lips’?”

“Did I write that?” Odum said. “Beautiful prose.”

The naked boy and girl trudged to the bed. Junie reached for the gold velour coverlet.

“Don’t touch that Are you cold or something? You don’t get under the covers, for Godsake. You’re not doing this for love and human warmth. You’re doing it for the camera. Anyway, there aren’t any sheets on there.”

“Cheap, cheap!” chanted the camera boy, the sound boy, the prop boy.

“Set the camera low so you can shoot over them while they writhe around erotically,” Odum said, “and aim it at Hardcock’s face in the window, okay?” He turned back suddenly and bumped into Dave, who had followed him. “What did you say you want?”

“First, you lied to me about Charleen Sims,” Dave said. “You signed her for a picture. You’re writing the script. You even have a photo of her. You know who she is and you knew it when I asked you before. Where is she?”

“I saw her once, yes,” Odum said. “How important could that be? You looked like trouble. I don’t need it”

“It was important to Gerald Dawson,” Dave said. “The murdered man I mentioned? Why don’t you tell me where exactly you fit in this?”

“I don’t fit anywhere,” Odum said. “I am completely out of it. The girl’s gone? Great. I promised Jack Fullbright I’d star her in a picture. He promised he’d let me have raw film and equipment, no charge. He wanted her. I guess that was her price. I didn’t object. I had this idea for a sexpot schoolgirl flick. They’re doing good business in the cities these days. I’m sick of the farm-town mentality.” He frowned under the little bill of the domed bobby’s helmet. “Did you ask Fullbright where she is?”

“He claims he never saw her,” Dave said, “never heard of her, never came near her.”

“What? It was him who brought her here. What the hell does he mean?” Odum took a step backward. “Oh, now, wait. That son of a bitch. Did he send you here tonight?”

“You see?” Dave said. “You do fit into this, don’t you? And tightly, too. Where is she, Odum?”

“No, I swear. Fullbright brought her in here and put his proposition to me and I said okay and I never saw her again. It didn’t surprise me. I asked him for time. To raise the money. To write the script.”

“She wasn’t sleeping with Fullbright,” Dave said. “She was sleeping with Dawson. She was with him when he was killed. Now, what do you know about Dawson?”

“He was a religious maniac,” Odum said.

Junie and Harold were sitting side by side on the bed, like good children waiting for their bath. Their nakedness made them look more innocent than children. Junie said, “Wasn’t he the one that came in and ripped down the sets and threw stuff around?”

“When was this?” Dave asked.

“Who knows?” Odum shrugged big, soft, round shoulders inside the bulky bobby’s jacket. “This was a sinkhole of vice and corruption.”

“A stench in the nostrils of decent people.” Harold went past them into a washroom and came out with two cans of Coke. “A plague spot of filth, an open sore.”

“Jesus was coming,” Junie said, “with a flaming sword.”

“Not a spray can of Lysol?” Randy said. “When is he due? I’d like to look my best.”

“The little man didn’t give us a date,” Junie said. Harold sat down beside her and handed her a Coke.

“Funny voice,” Odum said. “He wanted to roar, but the madder he got, the more strangled he sounded.”

“You couldn’t stop him?” Dave asked.

“Spence ran and hid in the van,” Harold said.

“I wanted a different perspective,” Odum said. “He wasn’t having his stuff used to make dirty movies. He hauled it all out of here—lights, cameras, the works. He was throwing it into the Superstar truck when Fullbright drove up. They had a big brawl, pushing, yelling, grabbing. Dawson threatened him all over the place. The police. The IRS. I don’t know what all. Fullbright looked pretty sick. Dawson slammed the truck doors and took off.”

“No words about Charleen?” Dave asked.

“You’ve got a one-track mind,” Odum said. “Look, can I shoot my picture now, please?”

“Losing your sets must have slowed you down.”

“Fullbright was back the next morning. With the equipment. He knocked the damages off the bill and he gave me cash to cover the extra day’s studio rent. He apologized. I thought he meant it. Now suddenly he’s trying to wreck me.”

“He isn’t,” Dave said. “He never mentioned his deal with you. He claims he hasn’t seen you in weeks.”

“He hasn’t,” Odum said, “and neither has the girl. I wasn’t mixed up with her. The only kind of girls I’m interested in turn out to be boys when they take their clothes off.” Maybe it would have sounded funny anyway. It certainly sounded funny coming from a big, stolid symbol of British law and order. The only thing that saved it was that the uniform smelled of mothballs. “Fullbright was mixed up with her—that I can tell you. You can tell me Dawson was mixed up with her. I wasn’t. I don’t want any part of it.”

“I don’t know yet what Fullbright’s part was,” Dave said. “But Dawson’s was to die. And so was yours.”

“What?” Odum went pale. His big pudgy fingers shook as they worked loose the buckle on his chin strap. He took off the helmet His hair sprang up frizzy again. He half turned away his head, watching Dave from the corners of his eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

“That Herman Ludwig was killed by mistake,” Dave said. “Did you two ever stand and look into a mirror together? That parking lot out there is dark. Somebody was waiting in the dark with a shotgun. The same somebody who killed Gerald Dawson. On the same night. He saw a big, overweight, middle-aged man with thick hair standing up all over his head come out that door”—Dave pointed—“and he thought it was you, and he blew Herman Ludwig’s brains out.”

“No.” Odum touched his lips with his tongue. He swallowed. His voice came hoarse, stammering. “It—it was the—the communists. From Hungary. He was always talking—talking about how they were following him, trying to kill him.”

“The same night Dawson was killed? Dawson, who, like you, was a friend of Charleen Sims—if friend is the word? You see why I seem to have a one-track mind? You see why I have to find her?”

“If whoever it was tried to kill me for messing with her,” Spence Odum said, “he had the wrong man. I swear to you I never saw her but that one time, that one time only.” He looked away, was silent for a moment in a silence kept by everyone else in the big room. He gazed around at the room, the stretches of brick wall painted different colors, the torture instruments, the body in the barber chair, the glass-jeweled chest of costumes, the mummy case in a far corner. It was as if he were inventorying his life. He turned back to Dave. “Why not Fullbright, then?”

“I guess I’d better go ask him,” Dave said.

T
HE MANAGEMENT DIDN’T WASTE
a lot of money lighting up the Sea Spray Motel at night. It was a bleak pair of oblong stucco boxes facing each other across a blacktop parking lot. The wooden stairs swayed as Dave climbed them. At the top, he squinted up at the white plastic circles set in the roof overhang. He gauged the power of the bulbs they hid to be twenty watts. The gallery he walked along sagged. The merry blue paint on the wooden railings was peeling. The varnish was scaling off the door of unit Twelve. Curtains were across the aluminum-framed window, blue-and-white weave with an anchor. Light was not leaking around the outside of the curtains. But Delgado’s wreck of a car was parked below. Dave knocked. Someplace a small dog barked. No one stirred beyond the door. Dave knocked again louder. A door opened across the way. Television sounds came out. The door closed. Dave knocked again. And was rewarded by moans. He felt footsteps thud. The door jerked open.

“What the hell?” Delgado blinked. “Oh, shit. Dave?”

“I’m sorry.” Dave looked at his watch. It was nine. “Were you asleep?”

“Yeah, well—informally.” Delgado tried for a laugh. “I, uh, dozed off with the television on.” He’d lost the crisp, clean look he’d had this morning. There was an orange stain on the front of the white shirt. Pizza sauce? The jeans Dave had lent him day before yesterday were crumpled. “Something on your mind? Something I can do?”

“You thought I didn’t mean it,” Dave said. Delgado stank of whiskey. The air that came out of the shut-up unit stank of whiskey. “You thought I’d paid your rent and thrown you away. What made you think that?”

“You said the case was over,” Delgado said. “You’ve got your house to fix up. You’ve got Amanda. You don’t have to work—only when you want. How did I know you’d ever have another case? I haven’t got forever.”

“It will seem like forever,” Dave said, “on skid row, sleeping under newspapers in doorways.”

“Yeah, well, I can take the stuff or leave it alone. What happened? The son didn’t do it after all?”

“I don’t know what he did. I need that girl to tell me. And I still can’t find her. Odum doesn’t know where she is. I’m going to see a man I think maybe does. The last time I saw him, he fell over my foot and broke his nose. I’m about to act very nasty to him. It came to me it might be a good idea to have someone along. Strange as it seems, I thought of you. Are you sober?”

Delgado half turned to peer back into the unit. For a clock? “I don’t remember anything after the four-thirty news. That makes four hours. I must be sober, yeah.” He looked down at himself. He brushed with a hand at the stain. “I need a shower and a change.” His brown dog eyes begged Dave. “Can you wait?”

“You going to let me in?” Dave said.

“It’s a mess,” Delgado warned him, “a pigpen.” But he turned resignedly and Dave followed him inside. The bed was unmade. Soiled T-shirts, shorts, socks, were strewn around. The peeled-back lids of sardine tins glinted in the weak lamplight, the ragged lids of half-empty bean cans, soup cans, crowding a coffee table with merry blue legs and a glass top. A big pizza with one slice out of it drooped in its tin on the television set. A whiskey bottle rolled from under Dave’s foot. Its label said it was a cheap supermarket house brand. It clinked against another bottle in the shadows. Delgado said, “I’ll make it as fast as I can so you don’t have to sit around looking at it.” He rattled blue paper laundry bundles on a merry blue chest of drawers and went away into the bathroom.

In a cupboard in the kitchenette, Dave found a dusty box of trash bags. He flapped open one of the big green plastic things and went around the place with it, picking up greasy hamburger, hot-dog, french-fry wrappers, fried chicken boxes, pizza tins, half-eaten candy bars, half-eaten slices of dried-out bread. There were two ashtrays. Both of them overflowed. He emptied them into the bag and with the edge of his hand scraped into the bag the butts and ashes strewn around them. More junk littered the kitchen, beside the sink, under the sink. He stuffed this into the bag too, twisted the neck of the bag, and looped it with the yellow plastic collar the bag-maker furnished. He set the bag on the gallery outside the door.

Food-crusty plates, cups of abandoned coffee, smeared glasses were heaped in the sink. He poked around till he found a bent box of elderly soap powder. Maybe he would startle Delgado in the shower when he ran hot water into the sink, but he took the chance. He didn’t hear a yelp, so maybe Delgado was out of the shower by now. Or maybe the management of Sea Spray was more generous with hot water than with wattage. He had to explore again to find a rinse rack. A spider was living in it. He opened the window over the sink and let the spider go down outside on a strand of web. He splashed dust off the rinse rack, set it on the counter, and began drowning glasses in suds and steam. Delgado let out a long low whistle of surprise. He came fast into the kitchenette.

“Hey!” he said. “You didn’t have to clean up for me. You don’t have to wash my dishes. What is this?”

“You cooked my breakfast,” Dave said. “Several times.” He shook dust out of a blue dish towel and held it out. “You can dry, if it will make you feel better.”

“I never played cleaning woman for you,” Delgado said.

“I didn’t need it.” Dave began setting glasses in the rack. Delgado reached for a glass. Dave stopped him. “You don’t know how to be a cleaning woman. Those have to be rinsed, first. Marie spoiled you. And your mother before her, I expect. Just wait a minute.”

“Who is this guy we’re going to see?”

Dave found a saucepan, ran hot water into it, poured the water over the glasses. “Now you can wipe,” he said. He put the pan down and went back to washing dishes. “His name is Fullbright. He and Dawson were partners.”

“Where do I put these?” Delgado said.

“On the shelf where you found them when you moved in,” Dave said. Delgado looked helpless. Dave opened a cupboard. “There. That should put them in easy reach.”