The Dragon Done It (22 page)

"Let's take a look," said Max. "He threatened to turn me into a decorative piece for a fountain. Maybe he did the same with Joan."

Ken found her. "Hey, Max. Over here."

Joan and Val Willsey were on a pedestal, turned to stone. "Very funny," said Max.

"This used to be a satyr chasing a nymph."

"And never getting his hands on her," said Max. "LJ was a whimsical guy." Max looked at the rows of stone figures.

"It just occurred to me," said Ken. "I was so happy finding Joan I forgot. LJ's destroyed and Joan is turned to stone. How do we break this spell?"

Max walked once around the two figures and then leaned back against a stone Venus. "Try kissing her. That works sometimes."

"What about Val."

"Try Joan first."

Ken pulled a stool over and reached up. He leaned out and kissed the statue Joan. "Once enough?" he asked.

"Once enough for what?" said Joan, stepping down off the pedestal. "Ken, what happened?" She glanced at the stone Val Willsey. "Is that Val?"

Ken hesitated. "Kiss him."

"The statue?"

"Go ahead."

Joan did. It brought Val back. "What an odd thing to have happen over breakfast," he said. "Excuse me. Mother's probably having eight kinds of fits." He nodded at them and hurried away.

"I guess I misunderstood you," said Ken.

"Me, too, with you," said Joan.

Ken looked at Max. "I bet lots of people would be interested in that spray we made to use on LJ. There are probably other elementals around."

"LJ?" Joan asked.

"Tell you back at the house," Ken said, taking her hand. "Coming, Max?"

"In a minute. You go ahead."

"Thanks, Max," said Joan as she and Ken walked out of the warehouse.

Max lit a cigarette. He watched the stone Venus over his shoulder. Not a bad-looking girl.

When he finished the cigarette Max walked down the row of statues and out into the daylight.

It was a hot, humid, L.A. afternoon, a day when the ceiling fan just stirs the air around slow, like a witch's brew, the kind of day that makes me ask myself why I ever left the cool shade of the German forests for this city, this office, this job. Lucky for me, all I had to do to find the answer was open the paper and see Hitler's smiling face. There are worse things in this world than muggy weather, hard-nosed cops, and overdue dentist bills.

I was about to meet another one.

I knew she was trouble the minute she ankled into my office. They always are, if they're coming to see me. Somehow I never seem to attract the sweet young things trying to get their own back from some kiss-and-tell toad or the frumpy
hausfraus
out to nail Prince Charming for getting horizontal in someone else's glass coffin; just the dames.

This dame I knew. I watched her baby blues go wide when she recognized me. I kind of enjoyed it. Yeah, we had a past, and if they ever wrote it up in the history books it'd make Waterloo, Pearl Harbor, and Custer's Last Stand read like
The House at Pooh Corner
.

"Hello, gorgeous," I said, taking my feet off the desk. I accidentally stepped on the cat's tail. He screeched, but things are tough all over. "It's been a long time. What's a nice kid like you doing in a dump like this?"

She had the class to lower her eyes. You come face-to-face with the person you think you bumped off years ago and a little embarrassment's only good manners. That's what I always say.

"I'm—I'm sorry," she mumbled. "When I saw the name on the door, I never thought—"

"—that it was me? Why should you? Give your mind the five-cent tour down Memory Lane, sweets. Aside from shacking up with me, leading me on, running out on me and leaving me for dead, you didn't once think to ask my name. Never formally introduced, and us nearly a lifetime item. Tsk-tsk, what would Emily Post say?" I grinned until I could feel the tip of my nose touch the tip of my chin.

She gave me a hard stare. "Like
that
would make a difference." She always was feisty, more snap to her than a box of rubber bands. That's okay: I like them feisty. "That's a
man's
name on your door."

"It's a man's world, sugar."

"You're operating under false pretenses."

"You should feel right at home." The cat jumped into my lap. I petted him until he started shedding, then I dropped him to the floor. I don't give a damn what they say: Black fur
does
show on a black dress. "So, now you know it's me, I guess you'll be going. Drink before you leave? For old times' sake?" I opened the bottom drawer and took out the bottle and a pair of glasses.

She shook her head.

"Mind if I indulge?" I didn't wait for an answer; I poured a tall one and knocked it back fast and smooth.

She gave me the fish-eye. "How can you drink that stuff?"

"In case you haven't noticed, cupcake, I'm sitting down. You can do the same, or you can leave. The door works both ways."

She sat down on the only other chair in my office, looking about as comfortable as a beautiful princess at a wicked stepmothers' convention. Her hands closed tight over the clasp of a cheap red plastic pocketbook balanced on her nyloned knees. Her whole outfit screamed two-bit canary with a sideline in grifting. I gave her the once-over, saw how she'd changed. The years had been pretty good to her. Last time I saw her, she was a skinny little piece of cheesecake;
too
skinny for my taste.

Tastes change; so had she. She'd filled out nice, real nice. She was still trying to play the innocent, though. That was a laugh. If there was ever a tough cookie, she was it, and believe me, I know tough cookies.

She finally found her tongue. It was right there in her own mouth. For a change.

"I'm not going to lie to you," she said. I managed not to laugh. "Even if you are . . . who you are, I still want you to take my case. I came here because a friend of mine—one of the other girls down at the La Zazz Club—gave me your name. The one on your door, I mean."

"The La Zazz Club," I repeated. The name rang a bell—it was a notorious jive joint—but that was all. I tried to think if I ever had a client who worked there.

I get quiet when I'm thinking. My visitor didn't like things quiet. She started yakking to fill up the silence: "My friend said you helped her out of a tough bind. She said you got the job done and you didn't ask the wrong kind of questions to do it. She said she'd trust you with her life, that you're the best in the business."

"Flatterer."

"I mean it!" She slammed a fist down on my desktop so hard it made my glass clink against the bottle. I took this as a sign to fill it up so it wouldn't make too much noise and upset the neighbors. "I've got a real problem. I need help."

This time I sipped my drink slow. "Keep talking."

"It's my brother. He's disappeared."

I thumbed back the brim of my hat and set down the empty glass. "Some reason the cops can't handle this?"

She didn't say anything. That said it all. "In case it's slipped your pretty little mind, sweets, my past association with your family hasn't exactly been a romp in the forest. I wasn't looking for you to show up on my doorstep, but Destiny's a funny dame. She's got a way of giving you the brass ring with one hand and ripping your heart out with the other. You want me to go out there, pound shoe leather and get my Sunday-go-to-meeting broom all dusty looking for your brother?
Trying
to find him? I'm about as interested in finding that scrawny little bastard as Japan is in giving back Mongolia. Find yourself another sucker."

That was when she turned on the faucets. I watched her smear her mascara into skid marks for a while, and when I saw she was crying real tears I reached up my sleeve and tossed her a handkerchief.

"Please, don't turn me down," she begged, dabbing at her eyes. "You can't; you're my last hope."

"That so?" I thumbed my hat back again, only this time I pushed it too far. It fell off my head and rolled around on its point until the cat jumped on it and crushed the brim. I lost my patience and turned him into a toad. He gave me this ominous croak that as good as told me he was going to accidentally-on-purpose use my shoes for a litter box as soon as I turned him back. I've lived with worse threats.

"Your last hope, well, well," I repeated as I grabbed my hat off the floor and put it back on. The toad hopped away to sulk in a corner. "And here you were just now, saying I was your first choice. Either the honeymoon's over already, or you're not playing it square with me, sugar. I wouldn't recommend that."

"I'm sorry." She took a deep breath. It did things. "I lied."

"I'd like to say I'm surprised, cupcake, but since it's you . . ." I shrugged. "Tell you what, you give me the facts in the case, I listen, and maybe I take it. Maybe not. No promises. Okay, one: You lie to me again, you're out of here on your cute little bustle. Got it?"

"Got it." She sniffled one last time, but the fire was back in her eyes. She got out her compact and started repairing the damage while she told me the whole story:

"It's been two weeks since I heard from Hansel. That's not normal; we're close. Usually he calls me every other day, or I call him. We get together on the weekends, catch a movie, maybe take a drive up the coast."

"With the war on?" I gave her a warning look. "What's your car run on, Coca-Cola? Even I can't make gasoline out of thin air."

She shrugged, but she didn't backpedal. "It's his car. I guess I never thought to ask him where he got the fuel for it. It's a fancy ride, powder blue Packard sedan, white leather seats."

I snorted. "The Easter Bunny bring it? No one makes cars that look like that!"

"You got enough money, you can always find someone to make you anything you want," she said. She talked like a woman who knew.

"So your little brother did all right for himself, and pretty fast, too. The pair of you couldn't have been in this country much longer than me."

"We came over in '38."

I whistled, low and long. "That
is
fast for someone to make good; especially for a johnny-come-lately punk like your brother. I'm impressed. What's his racket?"

"I don't know. He never told me."

I got up and went for the office door. I threw it open and told her: "Get out."

She didn't move a muscle. "It's the truth. The one time I asked, he gave me the brushoff. Said something about being in public relations."

"The kind the cops run you in for when they catch you trying it in Griffith Park?" I would've laughed, but I sort of forgot how.

She stood up. "You said you'd listen. I said I'd tell the truth. So far I'm keeping up my end of the deal."

If she was waiting for an apology, she was going to be twice as gray and wrinkled as me before she got it. Still, I closed the office door. "All right, sweets, you made your point. I'll listen."

She gave me a look like ex-wives give their husbands when the bastards swear the check is in the mail. "Like I said, my brother and I have always been very close, but that doesn't mean we're all over each other's business. Ever since our mother died, we looked out for one another. Daddy never had time for us; he had to earn a living, put food in our mouths. Being a woodchopper's no ball."

"Can the sob story and cut to the chase," I told her.

"I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

She had me there. Last time our paths crossed, she almost took care of
me
. Permanently. I went back to my desk and motioned for her to go on.

"Like I said, he calls me a lot, so when I didn't hear from him for two weeks straight, I got worried. I went over to his place, the Chez Moderne apartments."

The Chez Moderne . . . Ritzy name for what was basically a rundown old hotel so far downtown that the cockroaches had to take the streetcar. Not the address I'd expect of the man who owns his own powder blue Packard. I shot her a searching look but it bounced right off. If she'd ever wondered about why her brother drove
that
but lived
there
, she didn't let on.

"I had the extra key, so when no one answered my knock, I let myself in." She shuddered, remembering. "The place looked like an earthquake hit it. Someone had been there before me and they tore it up, top to bottom."

"You sure? Maybe your brother just wasn't a very good housekeeper." Her eyes poured me a double dose of arsenic, straight up, so I stopped trying to pass for one of the Marx Brothers.

"Everything was ruined. Whoever'd done it even sliced up the mattress and ripped the lining out of the drapes. The bathroom floor was wall-to-wall pills, all the empty bottles smashed in the bathtub."

I didn't like to bring up what could be a pretty ugly possibility, but I had to ask: "Any blood?"

She shook her head. "I was thankful for that much. My first instinct was to go to the cops, but when I got home, there was a letter waiting for me. It was from my brother."

I held out my hand, waiting for her to cough it up. I kept on waiting.

"I burned it," she explained.

"How convenient."

"You don't understand: I had to!"

"Why?"

"Because he told me to. He didn't want me getting involved. It was too dangerous. If they got their hands on that letter—"

"Not so fast. Who's 'they'?"

"He didn't name names. The same creeps who wrecked his place, I suppose."

"Tough call. What else did the letter say?"

"It said that he was going away for a few weeks, maybe a few months, on business. He didn't come right out and say so, but he hinted that this was it, the big score, something that was going to put the two of us on Easy Street for the rest of our lives. He said he'd be in touch, and for me to sit tight until I heard from him again."

"Did he say how he'd contact you?"

She shook her head.

"So tell me this, cupcake: If you're such a
good
little girl—keeping your nose out of your brother's business, not asking questions, burning that letter strictly on his say-so—then why are you here? Why aren't you back in your own place, sitting tight like he told you?"