Fade to Blonde

I nodded and reached for the other breast with my free hand. She pushed it away. “I said you could touch one.”

I dug in my pocket left-handed and held out another dollar.

“The second one,” she said seriously, “is twenty dollars.”

I stared, then said, “The hell with it. It’s probably just like the first one.”

She stepped back and tucked herself away.

“I’ve been hiding in my room for two days,” she said, “not knowing what in God’s name was going on, my heart in my mouth every time I had to open my door and walk down to the phone, while you ran around town playing Private Eye and Daring Daylight Burglar.” She turned away from me and pulled on her slacks. Dark marks like peonies bloomed on the seat. She slipped into a white blouse and knotted it savagely at the waist. “I never was too good at picking ‘em, and I guess I’m still not. But what I do know how to do is cut my losses. You’ve got twenty-four hours, Ray. Twenty-four hours to do something. To bring me something better than some theory — a plan, a solid plan — or admit you’re just another false alarm.”

She yanked on her sandals and stalked away from me without a backward look.

I stood there, rubbing my right palm with my left thumb.

12

Suit

I arrived at the Centaur that night a bit before nine, because I’d arrived there just before nine on Tuesday and found Burri in his banquette. He was there again. Scarpa was with him. Burri’s bodyguards were at the bar. They watched me walk up with no special interest, but they watched. I didn’t see Green Eyes or Round Head anywhere. Then Scarpa saw me, and then Burri did, and opened his hands in a big look-who’s-here gesture, and I walked over to the table. Burri raised a bony finger and a waitress trotted over in another little gold dress. She was a chubby little sweetie with coppery hair. She needed a lot more cloth of gold than the gazelle did to keep her decent. She wasn’t getting it. Burri pointed at me and said, “This young man requires a gimlet. A gimlet, do I seem to recall that this is your drink?”

I never wanted to see another goddamned stinking gimlet as long as I lived.

I sat down, saying, “Thanks.”

“Now,” Burri said. “This is nice. You came to keep an old man company.”

“No, sir,” I said.

“No?”

“No. I’m taking your advice, Mr. Burri, and passing up that other opportunity we were discussing. You mentioned the possibility of a job. I came to see if I could get it.”

“There,” Burri said, smiling at Scarpa. “You see? God provides.”

“Nice of Him,” Scarpa said woodenly.

“I would like to introduce you to a fine young man of my acquaintance, a Mr. Corson, but why do I have this feeling that I don’t need to?”

“We’ve met,” Scarpa said.

“Is this so?” Burri asked me. “This is what you do, go around meeting everybody?”

“I get lonesome,” I said.

“Well, then everybody knows everybody,” Burri said. “Very good. Now, I should admit that I have already seen enough of you, young man, to form for myself a preliminary opinion of your character. And I believe you might be suitable for a small matter Mr. Scarpa and I were discussing. Lenny, you agree?”

“Padrone, this is the man from the Jade Mountain. That I was telling you about.”

“This?” Burri said wonderingly. “This is the guy?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said.

Burri began to giggle. “You’re the one? The one with Lance’s people? You’re in the Chink place, and they both got guns, and you got nothing, just your bare fanny, and you go in there and you put them both in the hospital?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“This tickles me,” Burri said, wheezing. “This tickles me. I don’t believe I’m mistaken in saying that this is quite something. What, Leonardo, you don’t like it? You don’t think it’s funny?”

“You can have my share,” Scarpa said.

“Ah, Leonardo, it’s a terrible thing, to be such a young man and already so serious. You mustn’t lose your sense of humor, Leonardo. Because really, we’re all just a little joke God is having. Ah? The nuns didn’t teach you that? You didn’t ask them the right questions.”

Burri grinned at me, and for just a moment, I saw Scarpa examining him. It was a calm look, a look I’d seen before. Like a butcher with his cleaver raised, measuring by eye.

By the time Burri turned back to Scarpa, still grinning, the look was gone.

Burri said, “Now, you two are both fine, able young men, and I’m sure you can work together constructively.”

“I can work with anybody,” Scarpa said.

“That’s fine now,” Burri said.

I said, “If—”

“I think that we’re all in agreement now,” Burri said.

I said, “Thanks, Mr. Burri.”

Scarpa stood and said, “Come into the office.”

“But he hasn’t gotten his drink!” Burri said.

“I’ll get him a drink,” Scarpa said. “Let’s go.”

I followed him across the big room and through a door at the end of the bar. As it swung shut behind me, the music and the roar of the big nightclub fell away to a whisper. Soundproofed. To our right was a narrow staircase, windowless and two stories tall, covered with spotless ivory carpeting, and Scarpa motioned me ahead. I started climbing the stairs ahead of him. At the top was another door, one with no knob. “Push it,” Scarpa said behind me. I pressed on the door. After a moment, there was a click and it swung inwards, and we stepped into a good-sized office, carpeted in taupe, with milk-glass sconces along the walls. The door swung silently shut behind us and the faint noise of the club abruptly ceased. It was quiet enough that I could hear the hum of the electric clock. Before me was a big desk of bird’s-eye maple and black glass, and beside it, a row of tall windows looking out over a dark, wooded slope. Three comfortable armchairs faced the desk, each with a small glass table beside it. A sofa took up the wall across from the windows. I looked behind me and saw a counter with a row of circular grilles along it, a small red stud and a black number next to each. On the wall above it was a numbered floor plan of the club. I strolled over to the window and looked down at a sunken loading dock. It was about fifty feet down to the cement. Scarpa seated himself behind the desk and sighed.

“I guess I was born to be a babysitter,” he said.

There was another grille set into his desk, and he leaned toward it, pressed a stud, and said, “Two gins.” He leaned back. “I hate gimlets. I hate goddamn lime juice. You like gimlets?”

“Not anymore. I was drinking them that night at the Jade Mountain.”

He let out a little huff of laughter. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?”

I shrugged, looking out the window. “I’ll find out.”

“Getting ready to jump?”

“Not till I’ve had my drink.”

“What would you’ve done if you came in here and met Halliday instead?”

“Smiled pretty.” I dropped into one of the armchairs.

“You know,” Scarpa said. “The old man likes to talk like a fool. He enjoys it. But if he was really such an old fool, somebody would have taken care of him by now.”

The door behind Scarpa’s desk opened and the gazelle stepped through it, carrying a tray with two tall gins. Through the door as she closed it, I glimpsed what looked like an apartment decorated in ivory and taupe. She set a drink on a coaster at Scarpa’s elbow, then came around the desk, and I saw that she wore no shoes or stockings,