sitting behind a pair of big feet, a burning cigarette, and a pair of sharp black eyebrows. A rickety little man in a rumpled suit. He never seemed to take his feet off his desk, but somehow everything at Republic always ran smooth and tight. He could have left Poverty Row for a big job at the majors, but then he might’ve had to take his feet off the desk. “’Lo, Mattie,” I said.
“Hello, Ray. Come in and take a load off.”
“Thanks,” I said, sitting down.
“Getting a little gut there, soldier.”
I shook my head.
“I can see it from here,” he said.
I shook my head again. “I’ve had that gut for years. I don’t blame you for trying to ignore it.”
“Shame on you, getting out of shape like that. What if you wanted to get back in the ring?”
“I had it when I was fighting. My dance card was still pretty full. Who’s this lulu you wished on me?”
“Isn’t she a specimen?” he said. “I give you a week to get in. One week, you son of a bitch, if you haven’t already. Tell me, how does an ugly bastard like you get in all the time?”
“A friendly smile and a firm handshake. What do you think of her?”
He opened his eyes wide. “Can you imagine posture like that on such a flimsy little thing? It’s like she borrowed ’em off a fat girl.” He gave a little shiver. “She wrecks me.”
“Anything else?”
“Why would there be anything else?”
“She says she’s being threatened.”
“Ah, no,” he said, concerned. “You’re not coming here to ask me about her
“Sure. She’s hired me to help her.”
“You simple son of a bitch. I didn’t give her to you to work for. I gave her to you to
“I already took her money.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure that’ll be a novel experience for her.”
“Any idea who the guy is?”
“The guy.” He waved away a smell. “What makes you think there’s a guy? Outside of her shaggy little head? Listen, Ray, I’m serious. You only know the girls you poke. I know every girl who ever tried to work in this town, and I’m telling you, this one’s nuts. Strictly wigsville. You don’t want to hop her, don’t hop her, but whatever you do, don’t become part of her
“I already took her money. Who’s she been hanging around with? I assume she’ll simmer down and tell me, but I’d like to hear it from you.”
“She don’t hang, that I know of. It looks like she gave up the starlet bit a while back. I’ll give her that, she’s smart enough to give up. Since then she works in stores and so forth, you know, little pretty-girl jobs. I hear she might have posed for some, ah, pictures. As for guys, she’s been seen around with Lance Halliday.”
“Jesus, the names out here. Who’s he?”
“An ‘independent producer.’ Isn’t that nice? He’s a little hood who makes stag movies. Maybe that’s what he wanted with your nut job, he heard she’d done nudie stuff. He came out here to be the new Hot Diggity, and it wasn’t such a crazy idea, because he’s got the face, the voice, he even moves nice, but he’s one of those you get where, under the lights... ” Mattie slowly raised his hands, wiggling his fingers. “It all fizzles away. Like ice on a radiator. He’s a big blonde dreamboat and he’s always got a ring on every finger. You know, the debonair Lance Halliday was in attendance, wearing his trademark rings. I guess he played around with your nut job a little, like he does with a lot of ’em, but I can’t see him getting obsessed. He’s too queer for himself. But no, yeah, if she bounced him hard enough I guess he could turn nasty. He’s a very vain guy with not a lot to be vain about, and you don’t want to kid some of those too hard.”
“Could he be blackmailing her?”
“With what, for what? She’s nobody.”
“She says she’s done stag movies. Could he be blackmailing her with that?”
“Nah. In his line of work, that’s just cutting his own throat. It gets around he does that, how’s he gonna get girls?”
“Where would he spend time?”
“All over. He owns part of a place called the Centaur, out in Thousand Oaks.”
“I think I know it. Where does he live?”
“Palms somewhere. Come to think of it, he must have an OK from Burri to peddle his movies.”
“I thought what’s-his-name ran that neighborhood. Scarpa. Lenny Scarpa.”
“Sure. And Burri runs Scarpa. Wake up, beautiful. Burri runs half the West Side.”
“Jesus, still? I thought he was one of those old Twenties guys.”
“He ran it in the Twenties, he runs it now, he’ll run it when we’re both in Puppy Heaven. You want to get mixed up in something Fausto Burri’s maybe part of? That what you want, Ray?”
“Listen, Mattie, I appreciate this.”
“Why do I waste time on you?” Reece said without joy.
“Ah, c’mon, Mattie. Cheer up.”
“Why do I waste my time?”
“I buy you drinks.”
“So you say.”
“C’mon, I’ll buy you one now. You’ve done enough damage for one day.”
He took his feet down off the desk one by one, like an old man, and sat there. “I hope you enjoy it when you get it,” he said.
“Let’s go get a drink,” I said. “I just got paid.”
In the morning I went to see the manager and squared myself on the rent. He didn’t kiss me. Then I got in the car and drove over to Torrance New & Used and saw Joey Moos, who couldn’t believe his luck, Ray Corson himself, right there in his own office. I’d just wanted to get myself up to date, but on impulse I decided to pay off the rest of the car. I liked the idea of having something no one could take from me without stealing. It must have been a stupid move, because it delighted Joey, and as a token of our new friendship he tried to trade me up to a gray ’50 Merc. After that I just drove around enjoying the sunshine. I didn’t have much money left, but I owned my car outright and I felt too good to go see Rebecca LaFontaine. Guys probably didn’t feel good around her for very long.
She’d given me the address of a boarding house on Flower Avenue in Venice. It was a low two-story building with a surf shop and a hardware store on the ground floor and, above, what once must have been a floor of cheap offices, and of course that’s where I wound up. I pushed through a cracked plate glass door and went upstairs. The stairs were covered with a runner of green carpet, black and shiny with dirt and worn down to the silvery cords underneath. They were greasy. What the hell do you have to do to get stairs greasy? At the top was a corridor lined with doors with pebbled glass panels, each of which was crudely painted with a number in black, some of which still bore old company names in flaking black paint or gold leaf. At the end of the corridor was a Dutch door daubed in black with the word MGR. The top half was open. Inside, a woman in a housedress was watching TV. She looked up at me and then back at the set.
I walked down the hall to Number 6. I couldn’t make out what had once been lettered on the glass. Someone had scraped most of it off except for the word APPRAISED. I knocked and heard Rebecca call, “It’s open.”
There wasn’t room inside for much but a bed, which Rebecca was just then sharing with the biggest old cowboy I’d ever seen. He had the boots, the stovepipe jeans, the shirt with pearl snaps, and his hat was on the pillow and wasn’t a disappointment. He and Rebecca were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed with a card game laid out between them. He started to get up, but Rebecca said, “Sit there and take your punishment, Lorrie.
