I hung up and staggered out into the fresh air. I went down the hill. The guy in the riding breeches was still hanging out of the Lancia but one of the Cadillacs was gone and two Buick convertibles had joined the cars in front. I pushed the bell to number fourteen, went on through the patio where scarlet Chinese honeysuckle was lit by a peanut spotlight. Another light glowed down on the big ornamental pool full of fat goldfish and silent lily pads, the lilies folded tight for the night. There were a couple of stone seats and a lawn swing. The place didn’t look very expensive except that every place was expensive that year. The apartment was on the second floor, one of two doors facing across a wide landing.
The bell chimed and a tall dark girl in jodhpurs opened the door. Sexy was very faint praise for her. The jodhpurs, like her hair, were coal black. She wore a white silk shirt with a scarlet scarf loose around her throat. It was not as vivid as her mouth. She held a long brown cigarette in a pair of tiny golden tweezers. The fingers holding it were more than adequately jeweled. Her black hair was parted in the middle and a line of scalp as white as snow went over the top of her head and dropped out of sight behind. Two thick braids of her shining black hair lay one on each side of her slim brown neck. Each was tied with a small scarlet bow. But it was a long time since she was a little girl.
She looked sharply down at my empty hands. Studio stills are usually a little too big to put in your pocket.
I said: “Miss Weld please.”
“You can give me the stills.” The voice was cool, drawling and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked almost as hard to get as a haircut.
“For Miss Weld personally. Sorry.”
“I told you she was taking a bath.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Are you quite sure you have the stills, amigo?”
“As sure as I’ll ever be. Why?”
“Your name?” Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake.
“Your last picture was wonderful, Miss Gonzales.”
The smile flashed like lightning and changed her whole face. The body came erect and vibrant with delight. “But it was stinking,” she glowed. “Positively God-damned stinking, you sweet lovely man. You know but positively God- damn well it was stinking.”
“Nothing with you in it stinks for me, Miss Gonzales.”
She stood away from the door and waved me in. “We will have a drink,” she said. “The God-damnest drink we will have. I adore flattery, however dishonest.”
I went in. A gun in the kidney wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. She stood so that I had to practically push her mammaries out of the way to get through the door. She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. She closed the door and danced over to a small portable bar.
“Scotch? Or would you prefer a mixed drink? I mix a perfectly loathsome Martini,” she said.
“Scotch is fine, thanks.”
She made a couple of drinks in a couple of glasses you could almost have stood umbrellas in. I sat down in a chintz chair and looked around. The place was old-fashioned. It had a false fireplace with gas logs and a marble mantel, cracks in the plaster, a couple of vigorously colored daubs on the walls that looked lousy enough to have cost money, an old black chipped Steinway and for once no Spanish shawl on it. There were a lot of new-looking books in bright jackets scattered around and a double-barreled shotgun with a handsomely carved stock stood in the corner with a white satin bow tied around the barrels. Hollywood wit.
The dark lady in the jodhpurs handed me a glass and perched on the arm of my chair. “You may call me Dolores if you wish,” she said, taking a hearty swig out of her own tumbler.
“Thanks.”
“And what may I call you?”
I grinned.
“Of course,” she said, “I am most fully aware that you are a God-damn liar and that you have no stills in your pockets. Not that I wish to inquire into your no doubt very private business.”
“Yeah?” I inhaled a couple of inches of my liquor. “Just what kind of bath is Miss Weld taking? An old-fashioned soap or something with Arabian spices in it?”
She waved the remains of the brown cigarette in the small gold clasp. “Perhaps you would like to help her. The bathroom is over there—through the arch and to the right. Most probably the door is not locked.”
“Not if it’s that easy,” I said.
“Oh,” she gave me the brilliant smile again. “You like to do the difficult things in life. I must remember to be less approachable, must I not?” She removed herself elegantly from the arm of my chair and ditched her cigarette, bending over enough so that I could trace the outline of her hips.
“Don’t bother, Miss Gonzales. I’m just a guy who came here on business. I don’t have any idea of raping anybody.”
“No?” The smile became soft, lazy and, if you can’t think of a better word, provocative.
“But I’m sure as hell working up to it,” I said.
“You are an amusing son-of-a-bitch,” she said with a shrug and went off through the arch, carrying her half- quart of Scotch and water with her. I heard a gentle tapping on a door and her voice: “Darling, there’s a man here who says he has some stills from the studio. He says. Muy simpatico. Muy guapo tambien. Con cojones.”
