Everything but the Squeal

“Well,” I said, getting down on my hands and knees, “that's nothing to brag about.”

Feeling fat and middle-aged, I started to wiggle under the fence. The smell of wet dirt was thick and heavy in my nostrils. Then the chain link grazed the back of my scalp, and I ducked. The taste of wet dirt made my nose superfluous. “Pfui,” I said, feeling like Nero Wolfe. Jessica laughed. I found myself on the other side of the fence, looking out at them. “Come on,” I said, looking at her. “If you're so smart, let's see you do it.”

Well, of course, she did. “Piece of cake,” she said, standing up and brushing herself off.

“Back there,” the Mountain said, pointing. “Give him money. He'll tell you anything for money.” He turned away and lumbered back up the street. Halfway up, he began to sing “Melancholy Baby.”

“He's such a cutie,” Jessica said as we skirted the remains of the blackened house. “I don't think all fat guys are unattractive.”

“Oh, shut up,” I whispered, recalling that one of the points of the exercise had been to scare her. She was less scared than I was.

Scraggly junipers lined the driveway on the left. To the right, ghost-ridden and black, was the skeleton of the house. The driveway was washing away from neglect, and I had turned my ankle twice by the time the garage rose in silhouette in front of us. Like the house, it was sagging. Unlike the house, it was intact. It was a two-car garage with a large single door. High in the door, two filthy panes of glass flickered in a jumpy fashion. Candles, I guessed, or maybe a kerosene lantern. Putting my finger to my lips to make sure that Jessica wasn't going to start a chat, I bent down, seized the handle in the center of the door, and yanked up.

The door shuddered, groaned metallically, and then jerked itself upward, almost carrying me with it. “Ouch,” I said, looking down at my scraped knuckle.

Inside the garage something scurried. It resolved itself into Donnie, traveling backward like a crab until his back hit a corner. “What the fuck” he said.

“You,” I said, pointing at him. I spoiled some of the impact of the gesture by sucking on my knuckle. “Not a word until I say so. Where's the little girl?”

He sat crouched in the corner, rubbing his left forearm with his right hand. Closer up, his skin was sallow and no cleaner than it absolutely needed to be. There were half-moons of dirt beneath his fingernails. The nails on his right hand were longer than those on his left, and for the first time I realized that maybe he actually did play the guitar. After a moment he said, “Am I supposed to talk now?”

“I asked you a question, didn't I?”

He nodded.

“So talk.”

“She got a trick,” he said. “Some fat citizen in a Buick. He honked at us before we got off Santa Monica.” His left eye had a minuscule twitch that made him look nervous and furtive.

“What's she going to do to him?” Jessica asked in a fascinated tone.

“I don't know,” he said, noticing her for the first time. “Give him a blow-job, I suppose.”

“Is that what the citizens usually want?” I said, closing the door behind us. With the door closed, the candles calmed down, and Donnie's multiple shadows gradually overlapped into one. It was a very skinny shadow.

“The easy ones,” he said resentfully.

“Will he pay her?” Jessica asked.

“What are you, from Mars?” Donnie said. “Why do you think she does it, to keep her mouth in practice?”

“How much?” I said, for Jessica's benefit.

“Twenty, twenty-five. Maybe, if he's really stupid, fifty.” He shifted his eyes from her to me. “You're the cop,” he said accusingly.

“No, Donnie, I'm not a cop. I'm a private detective.”

“Big difference,” he said. But he sat up a little straighter. “How do you know my name?”

“Twenty?” Jessica said. Jessica spent twenty on gym shorts.

“It doesn't matter how I know your name,” I said. “As long as you're straight with me, you've got no problem.”

“Straight about what?”

“About her.” I crossed the garage and held out the picture of Aimee. He ducked back as though he thought I was going to hit him, and then he slowly took the picture from my hand. He looked at it and then back at me, and something very much like a cash register clanged in his brain. His eyes slotted. “Never seen her,” he said.

“How about a hundred dollars?” I said.

“How about five?” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Five dollars.”

“Hold it,” he said, standing up. “You said a hundred.”

“And you bargained me down to five,” I said. “Sit.”

He sat. “Two hundred,” he said sullenly.

“Fine,” I said.

He looked startled and slightly regretful, as though he wished he'd asked for more. “Let me see the bread.”

I took a couple of hundred-dollar bills out of my pocket and waved them around. The garage was lighted by only two candles, but they were bright enough for Donnie to register the denomination of the bills. He'd had practice seeing money in the dark. I handed them to Jessica, who looked vaguely alarmed. “She'll hold it,” I said, “until we're through.”

“Her name is Aimee,” he said grudgingly, “but she calls herself Dorothy. Most of us call her Dottie.”

“Good start,” I said.

He gestured at Jessica. “Who's she?”

“You don't need to worry about that. She's obviously not a cop.”

“She could make a fortune on the Boulevard,” he said speculatively, every inch the young pimp in training.

“No, thanks,” Jessica said at once.

He shrugged. “Up to you,” he said.

I squatted down in front of him. “Listen, Donnie,” I said. “You're going to tell me everything you know about her. If I find out later that anything you told me wasn't true, I'm going to sic the cops on you. After I break your nose and sit on your guitar. Are we clear?”

“Hey,” he said, the picture of affronted innocence, “whatever you say.”

I looked around the garage. It had been spray-painted black, and over the black, designs and graffiti had been sprayed freehand. One large graffito said fuck the citizens (but not unless you have to). Another one said home is where the check is mailed from. The ceiling was hazy with cobwebs and the air was sharp with the smell of mice.

The filthy, cracked concrete slab that served as a floor was largely bare, except for a cardboard box on which the candles guttered in motel ashtrays, a sleeping bag, and a rumpled heap of blankets. Donnie's imitation Stratocaster leaned upright in a corner. A plastic trash bag held a few items of girls' clothing and, on top of them, a small hair dryer.

“Tell me about Aimee,” I said. Jessica sat on the sleeping bag, and I folded one of the blankets under me.

“Like what? What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Where'd you meet her? Where is she?”

“Can I smoke?”

“You can shoot speed for all I care.”

“Got any?” He looked eager.

“Have a cigarette.”

He lit up with a disappointed air. “I met her on the street,” he said. “She'd hitched a ride with some truck driver.”

“And?”

“And this faggot named Willie picked her up in the street and steered her to the Oki-Burger. You've seen Willie, he was there tonight. Real big and real black. Very popular with bankers.”

“Skip Willie.”