Fade to Blonde

“No,” I said. “You’re taking me.”

Lisa Rae Bellinger was a skinny little thing, but what she ate was prime rib and peas, and what she drank was champagne, and where she did it was Musso & Frank’s, and how I knew is, she told me so as soon as she got in the car at eight. Then I took her there and she demonstrated. She wore a steel-blue pleated dress with one of those three-inch patent leather belts you use to show how little your waist is. She looked awfully nice when she was eating, and just as nice when I was following her out to the car. When I pulled up in front of 1625 Marine she still looked nice, but she didn’t look happy anymore. It had been a pretty house once, a rambling brick one-story with a winding flagstone walk and a couple big mullioned bay windows, but the shutters needed paint and the weeds were coming up between the flagstones and waisthigh in the flowerbeds. There were cars parked all over what was left of the lawn. “Where are we,” she said.

“Nita Paley used to live here.”

“Uh huh,” she said slowly. “Uh ... huh.”

“I guess you’ve heard about this place.”

“I guess I have.”

“You’re not a china doll, Miss Bellinger, or I didn’t think you were. But I can run you home now if you’d rather.”

“Do you know, Mr. Corson, do you know how foolish I can be? Why, when you called me up this afternoon, I actually permitted myself to imagine you weren’t just working.”

“I am working,” I said. “I’m not just working.”

“That’s a little subtle for me.”

“I’m sorry. I need in over there. You know people and you’re a looker. They’d be happier to see you than me. I’d like to see you myself some night when I’m not working, but this is a working night.”

“Does it have to be?”

“Yeah.”

“How come?”

“Because you can’t do the work when it suits you. You’ve got to do it when they give it to you.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” she said. “Well. I s’pose this is the sort of thing a girl should see at least once in her life. Like the Grand Canyon.”

“I can run you home now if you’d rather. I’ll find another way in.”

“No. No, I believe my curiosity’s getting the better of me.”

“Lucky curiosity.”

“Tomorrow, Mr. Corson, you can go back to the library and get a book on manners. With pictures. I imagine that’s a parking spot over there.”

The fellow on the door was wide enough that if you had to walk all the way around him you’d be tired. They’d brought out a bar stool for him to sit on. He was sort of half-sitting on it with one foot on the ground in case he had to move quick. He looked comfortable, like he was used to sitting that way. He wore a black turtleneck, old khaki slacks, and the kind of big straw hat you usually see on a horse. He watched us come up the walk as if he thought we might not be the Royal Couple, but he was polite enough when he said, “Sorry, friends. Private party.”

“Oh,” Lisa Rae said, “but we’re very private people.”

“Wish I could help you,” he told her, sounding like he meant it.

He was enjoying looking at her.

“Dear me how mortifyin’,” Lisa Rae said. “And here I thought I was expected.”

“Expected by... ?”

“If Grammy’s arrived, would you mind awfully much telling him that Lisa Rae’s out waitin’ on the front walk?”

“Mr. Neale’s expecting you?”

“If he can still recall what he expects,” she said sweetly. “It’s early enough in the evenin’ for that, wouldn’t you think?”

The doorman considered, then reached out a big arm and opened the door for us. “Beg your pardon, Miss Bellinger,” he said. “But I’m sure you understand. Mr. Neale hasn’t been by yet this evening. I’ll tell him you’re here when he comes.”

“Oh, I’m Miss Bellinger now, am I?” she said.

“You wouldn’t remember, but last fall you told me my face was too round to play gladiators.”

“Well, come by the office sometime, cuz, and I’ll be happy to forget you again.”

“It’s a date,” he said affably as we went by.

The door opened into a living room. It was a big square room and looked bigger because it was half-empty. There were two sofas, and someone had taken the legs off one of them so it sat right on the floor. A young man in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts was asleep on it facedown, a beach towel wrapped around his legs. There was an enormous fireplace on the far wall with two racing bicycles in it instead of logs. There were a couple big paintings on the wall with no frames, but they were longhair stuff that didn’t look like anything and you’ll have to ask someone else about them. There was a hi-fi in the corner, a good one, and piles of records on the floor and leaning up against the wall, and a trim gray-haired man in a blue blazer was down on one knee, going through the records with a disappointed look. I said, “Graham Neale comes here?”

“It’s the sort of place he’d be. He’s a sorry critter. Well, Mr. Corson, here you are like you wanted. Have I earned my dinner yet, or do you want Mr. Neale’s autograph, too?”

I shook my head. “Can it. It’s the doorman’s job to be bitched at. It isn’t mine. I asked you, in or out. You said in.”

“Well,” she said.

“Can it. I don’t want to have your moping all night on top of everything else.”

She squinched her eyes and put up her pointy little fists. She held the pose, looking mean.

“Well I’m damned. You pulled my file,” I said.

She dropped her fists and nodded, grinning. She looked almost embarrassed. “That’s right, Rocky Marciano. I read your file.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” I said. “I’d thought all that’d be thrown away by now.”

“Ollie never throws anything away,” she said. “That’s why he’s rich.”

“I’ll be goddamned.”

“I do apologize, Mr. Corson. I hate a mopey girl too. I hate a girl who says, oh, maybe I will and maybe I won’t, but remember, whatever happens’ll be all your fault. And now I will behave. And become a perfect delight. So. What brings the great gumshoe and his girl assistant to this low haunt?”

“Dope.”

“My my. I’d say we came to the right place.”

“I want to know who supplies this party. Not the people who sell here, but the man they get it from.”

“That’s easy enough. Lenny Scarpa, or one of his fellas.”

“No. Somebody new.”

“Says who?”

“Says Scarpa.”

“My my my.”

“Guess we’re a little early, though. It’ll be better when there’s more people and they’re drunker.”

“We’re way too early, Mr. Corson. It’s not even ten-thirty. If you’d asked me I could’ve told you that, and we could’ve gone someplace nice a couple hours first and I could’ve taught you to dance.”

“What makes you think I can’t dance?”

“I don’t care if you can. I like teaching you things.”

Behind us, the man in the blazer must have found something he approved of, because the hi-fi let out a big blat of music, and then he adjusted the volume and a bossa nova started playing. He stood up and did a few steps by himself, nodding. He had a little bristly mustache. He was good.

Lisa Rae took my arm and said, “Let’s go see what we can see.”