Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde (23 page)

“The Army teach you to make a bed like that? Your mother?”

“She didn’t teach us to make the bed.”

“Why not?”

“She was busy. There. In you go now.”

“That’s right,” she said, her eyes closed. “I forgot you were masterful.”

The radio was playing some slow Nelson Eddy thing.

“Come on,” I said. I came over and took her hands, and she let me pull her to her feet.

“I’m so tired,” she said, and leaned against me. She put her arms around my neck and hung from it like a necklace, rocking a little. We started rocking from foot to foot together to the music.

“You got yourself all snug in here,” she said. “A real little nest.”

“I like having a nice place to stay.”

“Sure. You were on the tramp once. I forgot.”

“That’s okay.”

“Weren’t you afraid? Out there?”

“Of what?”

“I dunno. Getting hurt.”

“A little. Not much. Hurt never lasts. What doesn’t last doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then I guess you think nothing means anything much, because I don’t know anything that lasts. I don’t even think death’ll last. I think when it comes, it’ll be as crappy and slipshod as everything else.”

“Yeah?”

“I think it’ll fall apart in an afternoon like a pair of cheap stockings.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. What are you trying to do, foxtrot?”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“Why are you even listening to me?”

“Who says I’m listening?”

It was a new song now, and we weren’t even trying to keep time anymore, just shuffling in circles.

“Yeah,” I said, “I was afraid. When I was on the road. That’s why I joined up. I was afraid if I kept rattling around like that, I’d die.”

“Were you that starving?”

“I ate fine,” I said impatiently. “Sometimes I went a day or two without, but that doesn’t kill you. I don’t mean starve, I mean just die. Just go rattling around from town to town for years and years until you’re too sorry to waste a bullet on. Just go on forever. That’s what I mean by dying. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“All right. Don’t get excited.”

“All right,” I said.

“You’re not dead yet. We’re not dead yet.”

“No.”

“Let’s go to bed,” she said.

“All right.”

We kept circling around.

“It was little different this morning,” I said.

“Uh huh.”

“You were trying to get a little... ”

“I guess,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“I listen to the same songs on the radio as everyone else,” she said. “Sometimes I still want those things, too. You’ve got a lot. I thought maybe you might have something for me.”

“I wish I did.”

“I wish somebody did,” she said.

It was hard to hear that ‘somebody.’

“All right,” I said. “Then I hope somebody does, too.”

She kissed me. She wasn’t kissing me because she thought I might like a kiss, or because she thought it’d be
a good idea to kiss me just then, or because she knew a lot about kissing and she’d figured out just how I wanted it, or anything like that. She just kissed me. It went on for quite a while, and then she laid her head against my chest.

“Uh huh,” she said.

“I guess,” I said.

“Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“You think you’ll ever marry?”

“I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t marry me? If you could?”

I shook my head. She felt my chin going back and forth against her hair.

“No?” she said.

“You’ve got the best little jungle-gym in the world, honey. But I’d get bored climbing around on it all by myself.”

“And yesterday you thought you loved me.”

“What if I do? Love doesn’t help boredom.”

“What does it help?” she said. “You’d think it’d help something.”

I kissed the tip of her nose. It was delicate and finely made. I thought again how, if someone had really punched her there last night, it would’ve been swollen twice the size now, and too painful to touch. I supposed she’d poked a stick or something up there to make it bleed. And Shade’s shirt had been powder-scorched. I couldn’t see him letting Halliday in close enough for that. But getting in close would be no problem for Rebecca. I could see her taking Shade by the hand, leading him round back of the pump house, looking up at him soft-eyed, the way she was looking at me now. Her gun, when I’d checked it last night, had been freshly cleaned. That morning, it’d been full of crud. I guessed there wasn’t
much doubt that she’d killed Shade herself. There probably wasn’t too much doubt as to why, either.

“Becky?” I said. “You sure you want to go through with this?”

She said, “I’ve never been so sure.”

I kissed her hair and closed my eyes. We kept dancing.

Rebecca said she was hungry again that evening and, like I said, I made us a big spaghetti dinner, but she didn’t do much to it. She chewed her lip as much as she chewed anything else. She was getting nervy. I wasn’t too pleased with things myself. I had fourteen hours left, about, and no traveling money to speak of. I did the washing up and then sat her down beside me and said, “Look. If we’re going to do this, we’d better do it.”

“Oh, now he’s in a hurry,” she said airily. “I guess he’s tired of this.”

She was coming unraveled, all right.

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Don’t keep asking me that.”

“If it’s what you want, sooner is better.”

“You’re tired of me. You’re all tired out. You’re a tired old man,” she said, climbing into my lap and making herself small.

“When’s the next time the safe will be full?” I said, and kissed her shoulder.

“I could find out,” she said.

“Could you find out tonight?”

She thought. “Yes. Sure. I know who to see. I’ll go see
them tonight. I guess you want to get me out of here and get some sleep.”

“I’m going to find a car we can use.”

“You’ve got a car,” she said.

“I’m not going to use my own car, Rebecca.”

“Where are you going to get a car?”

“There are a lot of cars in Los Angeles.”

“You know how to do that?”

“It’s not hard.”

“What if somebody notices it in the lot?”

“Rebecca, it’s not going to be in the lot. Let me earn my money, all right?”

Clothes were a problem. All she had left was that brassiere. It had a few speckles of blood on it, but it was a real work of engineering and I don’t know what you’d have had to do to really hurt it. I offered to drive over to her room and fetch her some clothes, but she said no. She put on the brassiere and posed.

“There,” she said. “Now I think I’m all ready to go out. I think I look very nice now. Very stylish. How do I look?”

“Overdressed.”

I picked my old shirt off the floor and buttoned her into it as she beamed up to me.

“Now,” she said. “Now I know I’m ready to go out. What, you don’t like it? You want to put more clothes on me? Mister Corson, I wonder if you really like girls.”

“Why don’t I go get some of your clothes?”

“No. No, I’d rather you didn’t go back there.”

I got out a pair of my dungarees. She was pretty much all legs, so the length wasn’t a problem once we’d cuffed them, but each pants leg was big enough for all of her. I had a coil of rope in my closet next to my tools, and I cut a length and slipped it through the belt loops and pretty much tied her into my clothes. There was nothing to do about shoes. I gave her a few pairs of heavy socks and she
put them on. “How’re your feet?” I asked.

“They’re fine,” she said.

They were pretty torn up, but she’d forgotten about them. Her body was just something she hauled around like a suitcase. She went over to the mirror on my dresser and twisted around, trying to get a good look at herself.

“This is wonderful,” she said. “I’m like a scarecrow. It’s like Halloween. Look, you can’t see anything,” she said, and gave herself a little shake.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“This is wonderful. I’m going to dress like this all the time from now on.”

“Think so?”

“I’m sure of it. I’ve decided.”

“I’m going to miss you,” I told her.

“Well. I wish you hadn’t said that. I don’t know what to say to that.”

“I didn’t say it for you to say anything back to,” I said, getting a little hot.

“I’m sorry, Ray.” She lay her palm on my cheek. “You were good to me. You’ve been good to me.”

So I figured I had those two things now: that kiss from before, and her hand on my cheek. And maybe the dance. Three things.

She kissed me again when the taxi came, like I was her best beau but she had other things to think about, and gave me a little toodle-oo wave from the back window as the cab pulled out. I went back in, packed a suitcase, and put it in the trunk of my car, along with my tools. I took my gun from the desk and put it in my holster. I looked around the room. The dishes were still stacked up in the drainer by the sink. I put them away in the cabinet and left. This time I didn’t bother locking the door.

The place I wanted was on Sunset. I remembered it as just a couple blocks west of Western, but they’re never
where you remember them and I spent a while cruising back and forth before I clicked. The sign just said
SUPPLIES
&
NOVELTIES
. The show window was a little on the empty side. In front of a purple velvet curtain someone had set out a row of different-shaped candles in holders, a row of goblets set with glass jewels, and a figurine of a kneeling woman with a cat’s head.

Inside the place was a lot cheerier. The woman at the cash register was a little witchy-looking, which might have been what gave her the idea to get into the business. She was in her thirties somewhere, dressed in beat chick clothes, a black turtleneck and a peasant skirt, and she smiled when I came in. The place smelled pretty strong of incense.

“Quite a place here,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Pretty good business?”

“I’m not in it for the fresh air and sunshine,” she said contentedly. “I do okay.”

“Your place?”

“That’s right.”

“You keep it nice,” I said truthfully. It was all spic and span. She had rows of Mason jars full of powders and dried leaves, all neatly labeled: Shave Grass, Hyssop, Hemlock Bark, Borage, Hibiscus. There was a box full of horseshoes. There was a glass case full of incense burners stamped out of brass and tin, and everything with pentagrams on it, even what looked like table napkins, and Ouija boards and Junior Ouija Boards with big colored letters. I said, “I guess people want answers, huh?”

“Guess they do.”

“You do this kind of thing yourself? Foretell the future?” I set my hand down in front of her, palm up, and looked hopeful.

She slapped lightly at my arm. “Now, you’d better be
nice,” she said. “That kind of stuff is just out of books, anyway. It’s not what’s in the lines, it’s what’s in the person who reads them. What she sees.”

“What she sees? Just by looking?”

“Sure. If you’re good.”

“You can just look at someone and see how he’ll wind up?”

“Well, it’s more you see a sort of light around someone. And in that light, certain pictures come to you, or ideas. And sometimes they’re what’s going to happen.”

She’d been gazing like I was something far off she was trying to get into focus.

“What do you see right now?” I said.

She looked away. “I don’t mean I can see things, personally. I mean, maybe you’ve got a talent, or think you do, but you still have to develop it,” she said uncomfortably.

“No time, huh? Business keeps you hopping?”

“That’s right.”

“You have any books on the Tarot?”

“Sure. Back over there by the antlers. Third shelf.”

She was watching me again. She didn’t seem as jaunty somehow.

I went where she said and took down a book called
The Silver Horn Guide to the Tarot
. It was by one “Third Dreamer,” complete with double quotes around the name. On the jacket there was something that looked sort of like a diagram of a molecule labeled with numbers and Hebrew letters, and beneath a line in tiny type:
And I saw a strong Angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the Books and loose the seals thereof?
I opened it and flipped the pages until I found a picture of the upside-down guy in the tree.

I read:

MAJOR ARCANA

{K
EY
12}

T
HE
H
ANGED
M
AN

A Man is hanged by his foot from a Tau-cross of Living Wood. His arms form a Triangle pointing Downward; his legs a Cross. He nears but has not attained the Freedom of the World {Key 21}; his task is Surrender to Death and Resurrection. Through the Cycle from 1 to 10 God guides His Child’s Hands, now the chisel is placed in the hands of the Matured Youth who must shape the Man To Be. Correspondences: the Moon {Key 18}, the Brow Chakra, the High Self, the 12 Signs of the Zodiac, the 12 Labors of Hercules. Viz. the mediæval custom of
BAFFLING
by which Debtors were hanged by the Foot sometimes prior to Execution.

§
The suspended Mind, governed by the Law of Reversal. Material Temptation. Paradox, difficulty. Remote Intervention. A Sacrifice may be required for Redemption. Punishment, Loss. Fatal and not voluntary. Suffering generally.

Reversed:
Arrogance. Willfulness. Resistance to Wisdom, sunken in physical Matters. Wasted Effort. False Prophecy.

Let not the waters on which thou journeyest wet thee. —
A. C
ROWLEY

I closed the book and stood there rubbing my nose. The gal at the cash register hadn’t stopped watching me. By now her eyes were about as sad as eyes get. “Do you want that book,” she said, almost whispering.

I shook my head and put it back on the shelf.

“Can I do anything for you.”

“No,” I said.

She whispered, “Then I think I’d like you out of my store now, please.”