idea that an old friend like me might have to go home unbedded, but I reminded her that I was in love now and she lit up again. She gave me a five-minute goodbye kiss and said she’d have to have me over soon when she was settled, some afternoon or maybe some evening when Lewis, had I met Lewis? was on the late shift. Then she gave me a wave and headed off to Bullock’s. If nobody killed Joanie she’d make someone a wonderful little wife.
When I got home I called Mattie Reece and asked if he had anything yet. He suggested I cultivate patience. He didn’t use those words. I stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling for a while. Then I rolled over and looked at the blanket. I was supposed to sit tight and wait for Scarpa to call. He’d call when he had more work.
Work like last night’s.
I went to the closet and looked over my new suit again. Somehow there wasn’t any blood on it. You’d think there would be.
I wandered around the place some more, then sat down at the desk. I took out four sheets of paper and marked them SCARPA, BURRI, HALLIDAY, and REBECCA. Then I got out a fifth and marked it METZ, but that was silly. Metz was done, and I crossed out METZ and wrote in THE SITUATION. I laid them out in a row and started noodling names and facts and connecting them with arrows and generally smoking my meerschaum and playing my violin. When evening came, what looked best was the business card I’d found in Halliday’s desk, the one with no name on it. The address was way out in Calabasas, and I got in the car and went there.
It was mostly ranches and farms out there, and the place I wanted looked to be a regular old farmhouse in the middle of an orchard, but they’d knocked down the barn in back and instead there was a gravel parking lot with seven cars in it. On impulse I kept out of the lot and parked on the shoulder across the road from the front door, facing back toward town. The orchard stretched out in the dark around me, a working orchard from the look of it, grapefruit from the smell, but I guessed whoever used to live in the house had sold out to a bigger concern and someone else was farming it now. There wasn’t another house within a mile. I chewed my lip a little, then took off my holster and gun and put them in the glove compartment. I got out of the car and went to ring the doorbell.
The door was opened by a thin woman of fifty or so in a party dress that showed too much of her and tried to push around what it didn’t show. She smiled at me and said hello honey. I nodded and said hello back. Behind and to the side of her was what looked like an ordinary front parlor in somebody’s house, except they’d set an antique writing desk facing the door. When I didn’t say anything more, she turned and walked back to the desk and sat down behind it with her ankles gracefully crossed and her fingers laced and her nails gleaming. They were some nails. Her hair was done Kim Novak-style and blonde enough to hurt. You could have sterilized a cut by running your fingers through that hair. The desk had a fake marble top and ball-and-claw feet, and was open in front to show off her legs. Her arms and legs were smooth and young-looking, the way you’ll see sometimes with women who earn a living by physical labor. She’d probably done her share of what I guessed went on upstairs, before she moved over to management, and whatever else you want to call it, it is hard labor. “Why, I don’t think I know you, honey,” she said.
“I don’t think you do.”
“I’m Miss Delores,” she said. “How’re you doing tonight?”
“I’m Bill Jones,” I said. “Fine.”
She thought about that and decided it was a joke. She laughed. It didn’t bother her hair any. “Well, I think we can get you relaxed now after your hard day, Mr. Jones. How does that sound?”
I said it sounded fine. She asked me if I wanted a drink and I said I was fine, then changed my mind and said gin and lime. She tapped the little bell at her elbow. Off to my left was a small arched doorway that must have led to the kitchen, and I heard footsteps and the clack of dishes being washed. There’d be someone there to make food and do the laundry. Especially laundry, there’d be lots of that. A short dark man in a white shirt and black trousers appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Delores told him to get me a gin and lime and he went silently away. He came back almost at once and set the drink on the writing table without looking at me. The kitchen noises hadn’t stopped. I guessed it was him and a wife to do the chores, with maybe a shack out in the yard where they lived. I picked up the drink and had a taste. It was strong.
On the desk was the kind of little photo album grandparents carry around to show off their grandchildren. It had only seven pages inside, and on each was a full-length snapshot of a woman. Two of them were white, three were Mexican or Filipino, one was a Jap, and one was colored. Beneath each picture someone had written a name and three figures separated by asterisks: 9–* 15–* 25– or 12–* 18–* 40–. Each woman had been posed in a formal dress, standing in front of the same pine-paneled wall. One plump brown girl wore what looked like a communion dress someone had gone over with scissors and thread, scooping out the neckline and splitting it up the side. She was coming out of it like toothpaste from a tube. Her name was Estrella and her rates were ten, sixteen, and thirty.
“A
“Uh huh?” I said.
“Uh huh,” she said.
“She looks young,” I said.
Miss Delores leaned closer and murmured, “Only fifteen.”
“Is that right.”
“You’re shy,” she said. “But there’s no need to be shy.” There was a small bakelite tray at her elbow, and she nudged it forward with a fingernail. I put two fives into it and she looked disappointed, then smiled. “You’ll want more,” she said, and tapped the bell again, twice.
“What do I owe for the drink?” I said.
“Oh,” she said, “let’s leave it on the tab for now. Because I do believe Mr. Jones will be wanting more.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I heard heavy footsteps and a young man in a blazer came down the stairs. He had muscles and big shiny movie-star eyes, but his face was too short. It was like the face of a chisel, sloping down fast toward a sharp flat chin, with just a little slot of a mouth right above it. He was the kind of guy whose chest hair grows right up his neck. So am I, but I keep my shirt buttoned, and when I wear a gun I don’t let it bulge out all over the place.
His eyes flicked down on the book of photos and he said, “Good to meet you, buddy. You’re in luck, as it happens. Estrella’s free. She’s waiting for you.”
I went to tip back my drink.
“No, no, take the drink, take the drink. We got coasters in the rooms.”
I followed him up the stairs, holding my drink. It was just an old farmhouse up there. A big farm family had lived here once. It was silly to let that throw me. The world was full of whorehouses, and most of them had been something else first. Then I saw what had been bothering me.
There was a new Yale lock on every one of the upstairs doors.
The pimp got out a ring of keys, opened one of the doors, and motioned me inside. “Here you go,” he said. “I’m gonna lock the door now, so you got your privacy. But you’re ready to go, or you need anything? You just ring that little buzzer over here, and I’ll come fix you up. Okay? Have a good time,” he said.
A new Yale lock.
There’s never anything to steal in a whore’s room.
He closed the door behind me. I heard it click.
It wasn’t a bad-sized room. I guessed it had been a son’s or daughter’s bedroom. In the corner there was a little sink and a stack of towels, and on the bed a short brown girl was sitting in a translucent nightgown, knees together. As soon as the lock clicked, Estrella pulled her nightgown over her head, got up, and walked toward me. She was a little thing with a satiny heart-shaped face and eyes like black dots, and well upholstered everywhere you looked. If you ran into her, you’d never bruise yourself on a sharp corner. Halfway to me, she gave each brown nipple a businesslike twist with thumb and forefinger, to make them look festive for the customer, and when she reached me, she took the drink from my hand and set it on a coaster on the dresser. Then she draped her arms around my neck and turned up her face to kiss me. No one had told her this was the one thing that wouldn’t be
