Fade to Blonde

maybe you can come into my town and tell me what I can and can’t do, but you haven’t proved it yet. All you’ve proved is, you can talk. And I’m done talking.”

“You know, that’s true,” Scarpa said.

If I’d known what was coming, I still might not have been quick enough to stop it. There was a stiletto in Scarpa’s right hand, as if it had always been there, the kind with hardly any handle to it, and while I was noticing it, Scarpa was swinging his left hand up and sinking his thumb and forefinger into the soft flesh under Metz’s jaw. Metz’s mouth popped open and Scarpa whipped the stiletto up and over and buried it in Metz’s tongue, to the handle, rising up on his toes and falling back again in one movement, like a bullfighter. Metz dropped gagging to the grass. It was the kind of thing you half see and half figure out later. And then I was standing between them, facing Scarpa, and I think I was shaking my head no.

“Don’t worry,” Scarpa told me. “All done. You didn’t used to be so delicate.”

I looked back. Metz was on his knees, the blood streaming over his chin. He was trying to hold it in with his hands.

“Step aside,” Scarpa said gently. “I want to say goodnight to our date.”

I stepped aside, and Scarpa hunkered down next to Metz. Metz was trying to stick his fingers back in where the wound began and press it shut, and then gagging and coughing them out, then trying again. His yellow shirt was red. He’d rolled his eyes down, trying to see into his own mouth. He looked to be split open in there, right back to the root. Scarpa began wiping the stiletto clean on the grass. “You’re done now, Billy,” he said. “You were too snowed-in to hear a kind word. So you’re out of the business. I got a little list of people who used to buy from me. They don’t buy from me again in the next couple weeks, I’ll come kill you. I ever hear you’ve sold anything to anyone else, anywhere, I’ll kill you. I ever get bored and need cheering up, I’ll kill you.” He examined the knife, turning it in the moonlight, then stood and tucked it away in his jacket. Metz vomited through his fingers, and we both stepped back quickly. “You’re done, Billy,” Scarpa said, looking down at him. “Tell me you understand.”

Metz nodded vigorously.

I took out my handkerchief and gave it to him. “Here,” I said. “It’s clean. Fold it in half and press it down on the wound, hard. Make it hurt. Go sit in my car. I’ll get you to the hospital.”

Metz staggered to his feet, stuffing my handkerchief into his mouth. That was all he was going to do now, what someone told him.

Scarpa smiled faintly. “I didn’t figure you for the Florence Nightingale type.”

“You can bleed out through the tongue as easy as anyplace else,” I said. “You want headlines? Dope King Sought in Tongue Slay?”

“What’re you so wrought up about, anyway? You did good.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah, that’s what was good.”

“What do you think you taught him?” I said.

“Hell with what I taught him,” Scarpa said. “It’s what I taught you. I taught you you don’t hurt ’em when you’re angry. You hurt ’em when you’re not angry.”

“Uh huh. Where’s my pay?”

“For a day’s work? You’re wearing it.”

“Fair enough.” I opened my wallet, took out seventy-one dollars and the gold packet and held it out to him.

“What’s this?” he said.

“What’s left of your expense money, and a bindle of Billy’s dope.”

He stared at it a moment, then said, “Thanks,” and slipped it in his pocket. “You did good. Go on home. We’ll have something else for you in a couple days.”

I turned to go. Metz was leaning against my car, holding my handkerchief in with both hands.

“Ray,” Scarpa said softly, and I stopped. “You got a look on your face. You’re trying not to, but you do.”

“What do you care what I look like, Lenny?”

“Oh, I care,” he said. “I care. Cause now, Ray? Now you work for me.”

18

Farmhouse

I’m not often up early, especially when I’ve been out that late the night before, but next morning I was awake, coldly awake, as soon as a little light seeped around the curtains. I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to convince myself I was still asleep. I’d had the kind of dreams you wake up from tired. I was trying not to think about the night before. I’d stopped the car at St. John’s, watched Metz stagger through the emergency room doors, and taken off. When I got home, I’d brought a pan of water out to the car and washed off the seat and door and fender. Then I’d washed my own hands, twice, in water almost hot enough to blister, but this morning they still didn’t feel clean. I guessed they weren’t. I got out of bed and walked around the apartment, picking stuff up and putting it down again. There still wasn’t a thing in the house, not even coffee. I didn’t have much appetite anyway, so I showered, dressed, and read yesterday’s papers until noon, when I went to meet Joanie from the probate office.

Joan Healey was the most generous and least worried person I knew. She was about thirty-five and looked ten years younger and acted like a high-school girl who’d just discovered malteds. I never figured out whether she thought she was ugly enough that she had to take what she could get or beautiful enough that she had a civic duty to spread it around, but she’d pretty much throw a leg over anybody who asked. Her boyfriends tended to be the kind of men you find with women like that. Her roommates stole from her. This interested her, the stealing, and she’d speculate about how they did it and how much they got. She was a big, soft-looking girl with energetic brown eyes, and she still trusted everybody she met and believed every story she heard. I was always glad to see Joanie, because it meant nobody had killed her yet.

I took her to the Gold Medal. She always had the fried chicken platter, and it never died a lingering death. Between bites, she said, “Honey, I feel so awful and I hope you won’t be upset, but I couldn’t find you hardly anything. Halliday’s Halliday’s legal name. I know it sounds phony but he could’ve changed it anywhere in the country and we wouldn’t have the records. He bought the Shippie place in that name three years ago for thirteen five and he’s already got a second mortgage on it. I’d love to have listened to him talk somebody into that one. The Lincoln’s his, all right, but he’s way behind on it. He’s got two other nice cars, a Buick and a Stude baker, and he’s way behind on them, and I’ve written them down with their license numbers, um, come on now, oh, here.” She handed me a little scrap of paper with potato salad on the corner. “And he’s been arrested twice for pandering, and, are you ready? The charges were dropped both times with no trial. Isn’t that interesting?”

“How’d you get the pandering bit?”

“Oh, honey, I know so many cops, I could murder somebody every Tuesday and get off with a warning. Jay Russert, you know Jay? Well, he’s not Organized but he is Vice, and he says they’re very interested in your Mr. Halliday. Not because he does so much, but because he’s all over the lot doing everything and he doesn’t seem to have good sense.”

“Joanie, this is terrific. You’ve really done a job for me.”

“I haven’t done hardly anything, and here’s the worst. As far as L.A. County’s concerned, there’s no such thing as Rebecca LaFontaine at all. We don’t have a thing on her, not a thing. I want you to tell me the truth about Miss LaFontaine.”

“I’m in love with her, Joanie.”

“I knew it. I knew it.”

“I’m going to take her away from him. He’s not good enough for her.”

“I should say not. Is she really beautiful? Where did you meet?” Joanie settled in with her face in her palms and her eyes shining and for a while I said whatever came to mind. Joanie loved stories — she probably lived her life the way she did because she loved stories — but she didn’t necessarily listen to them that closely.

After I settled the bill Joanie had a bit of a dilemma, since she couldn’t take me to her new place, because she’d just moved way out to Baldwin Park and it was still all boxes and depressing, and she couldn’t go back to my place because she needed to do some shopping while she was downtown. You could see her getting upset at the