around like this. Let’s go sit in the car.”
She turned and walked off. After a moment, I followed. She got in on the driver’s side, and I rode shotgun, if we were riding. The seats were white vinyl and already hotting up in the sun. She took hold of the steering wheel, closed her eyes, and let her breath out through her nostrils. Then she gave the wheel a little pat and dropped her hands in her lap. “So. You’re a screenwriter, an actor, a bodyguard. And a roofer, too.”
“I do odd jobs.”
She said, “I want a man killed.”
“Not that odd.”
“I didn’t mean that. Not killed, really. Just hurt.”
“I’d think you could do that work yourself.”
“Or scared.”
“Like I said.”
“I’m serious. There’s a man who’s, who’s got to leave me alone. I don’t know what to do about him. I need someone to help me.”
“What’s he doing?”
“I can’t tell you that unless I know you’ll help me.”
“Does it have to do with those movies?”
“It has to do with a lot of things. I can’t tell you unless I know you’re with me.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“Like you. Odd jobs.”
“Such as.”
“Sales clerk, lifeguard — I swim pretty well. Hatcheck girl. Perfume girl. One of those girls who stands around department stores smiling, with a bottle of perfume, and asks if you want a little puff. I tried modeling, but clothes don’t fit me.”
“Where’d you meet this man?”
“I was a hat check girl.”
“That pay pretty well?”
“No.”
“Nice car.”
“He didn’t buy it for me, if that’s what you mean. My folks left me a little money, and I came out here and got a place and bought a car, because I thought it would help, you know, to look right. The car’s what’s left. I can’t even afford to have it washed.”
“Why don’t you sell it?”
“I did. To him. He holds the note on it now.”
“But he lets you go on driving it.”
“He says one night when I’m out miles from anywhere, he’ll pull up behind me at a light and make me get out and give him the keys. And then I’ll have to walk home. In my high heels and little dress. So that by the time I get home, my feet will be bleeding and my stockings will be torn and my legs will be black with dust, and my face, and I’ll stink with sweat like a farm animal, like a cow, which, you see, is all I am, and I won’t be pretty anymore. Except he knows I’ll hike up my skirt to get a ride from somebody, some, um, farm hands — yeah, that’s about right — and be taken into some field and, and raped by the whole bunch of them, one after another, raped to death, which I’ll love, because that’s the kind of skinny bony filthy whore I am.”
“Nice,” I said.
“He really is crazy, but he’s got a business and I don’t suppose he wants that interfered with, so there must be some way to reach him. Don’t you know how to do things like that? Mattie seems to think so. He’s got to leave me alone. He’s got to stop threatening me. Just when I’m beginning to get somewhere and get myself normal for once.”
“You could’ve picked someone else to sell your car to.”
She let her head flop back against the seat. “Well. You know. He used to be very sweet.” She reached out a knuckle and rapped me softly on the chest. “I’ve been hit a few times, too,” she said.
Her eyes were large, pale, and set wide beneath a broad, low forehead. Her chin was pointed, but her fine- lipped mouth was wide. There wasn’t really room for it on her face, any more than there was room for that chest on her skinny frame. Her arms and legs were too long. Sitting there behind the wheel, she looked like she’d folded them up the wrong way, the way you’ll fold a road map the wrong way. I could see why she’d flopped in pictures. She was disturbing-looking. Ten thousand guys had made a play for her, but I don’t guess any of them kidded himself it was a good idea at the time. I rubbed my face and said, “Let’s see what we’ve got. There’s a man, you’d rather not say who, and you want me to make him stop doing something, you’d rather not say what. Kill him, threaten him, you’d rather not say. And you’d rather not tell me your real name. And you’re broke.”
She opened her purse, took out what was in it, and gave it to me.
I counted it. “It’s not much,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“But you’ll take it?”
Way out on the freeway, I heard a car horn, very faintly. Somebody was losing his temper. Then the traffic was whispering along smoothly again. The sun felt good on my face. I could smell the hot vinyl seat and the girl sitting beside me with her fists in her lap, waiting. She didn’t use perfume, just regular soap. I got out my wallet and tucked her money inside.
“Don’t they always?” I said.
I watched her car out of sight, and then climbed back on the roof and finished the row. I didn’t like to leave it all cranksided like that. To pass the time I thought what I sometimes do. I think, What if it was my house I was working on. I think about how I’d finish the roof, or the driveway or what have you, and how I’d get a truck then and move some nice furniture in, and hang up some curtains, and some pictures, and put some dishes in the cabinets and some food in the fridge, and how it’d be done then, my house, and how me and some nice woman would move in and live our lives. I didn’t think about moving in with Rebecca while I was finishing the last row. I wasn’t that dumb, not yet. So the little woman didn’t have a face or name, but I’ll admit she did wind up on the tall side. When I was done I stacked up the loose tiles for the next guy, if there was one, and gave each of my tools a wipe with an oily rag as I put it away. I like a good set of tools. I closed the toolbox and climbed back down, leaving the ladder where it was. There was supposed to be a truck coming by each evening for things like that. I put my tools in the trunk of my car and went to see the boss.
Ortiz & Son had a little office in Inglewood. It was basically just a gravel parking lot with a wire fence around it, big enough for a couple of cement mixers and a few cars and, in the corner of the lot, a two-room shack. One of the rooms was so the laborers would have somewhere to wait for the truck. The other was for Nestor Ortiz. From what I hear, old Ortiz had always been a stand-up guy, but he was gone now and if anyone had a good word to say about his son, they hadn’t said it to me. Nestor Ortiz always wore a jaunty little porkpie hat with the brim turned down in front like a fedora. He was a dapper little guy, and he knew every man on every one of his sites by name, and their families’ names, and he’d go around asking all the guys, How’s your family. I don’t have a family and it didn’t sweeten me. When I opened the door, he spread his hands and said, “My friend! My friend, I know all about it.”
“Hello, Nestor,” I said.
“Raymond, my friend,” he said. “I know all about it and is terrible. I stand before you this moment in shame. In shame.”
“It’s been three weeks, Nestor.”
“I know and is an awful thing. Awful. Everybody coming to see me, all good men like you, who work hard, and they need their pay, and what can I tell them? What? I’m not getting any money, I can’t give any money, and I don’t blame you one moment if you quit.”
“I am quitting, Nestor.”
