Read Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde Online
Authors: Max Phillips
Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde
Rave Reviews
for MAX PHILLIPS!
“A rip-roaring page-turner.”
—New York Newsday
“Snappy dialogue, caustic characterizations, hot descriptive passages.”
—Esquire
“A graphic satire of bedroom mores.”
—The New Yorker
“Deft satiric wit.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Masterfully told... Phillips keeps it compelling to the end.”
—The Seattle Times
“Irresistible.”
—J.D. Landis, author of
Longing
“Inventive, vividly written... highly entertaining.”
—Kirkus Reviews
High Praise for
‘FADE to BLONDE’!
“Sharp, savvy, and unapologetically raunchy... this taut, hard novel is a winner.”
—January Magazine
“A dark, dangerous style.”
—The New York Times Sunday Magazine
“A sleek ride... note-perfect noir.”
—The Haddon Herald
“It’s been said that
Fade to Blonde
could have been a Gold Medal novel. It certainly could have. It’s easily one of the best books I’ve read this year.”
—James Reasoner
“A smash from beginning to end.”
—Pop Thought
“Sure to thrill... They
do
write ’em like they used to.”
—Publishers Weekly
The one with the big watch put a hand on my chest, and I stopped and looked down at it.
“That’s a mistake,” I said. “Undo it.”
“We need to talk a minute, Mr. Rose,” he said.
“You don’t look like much of a conversationalist. Take that hand away.”
“Listen, friend,” he said. “We need to talk about how you talk to people.”
Maybe it’s because I was such a lousy boxer, but I don’t see the point of going move and countermove with people who ought to know the moves as well as you do. What I’d rather do is upset the board. I gave out a sort of groan and began to sit down, as if I were tired or having an attack, and without thinking the pug tried to pull me back up again by the tie. All two hundred forty-odd pounds of me, one-handed. I almost felt sorry for him. But I came up again fast, grabbing the back of his neck as I went, and broke his nose with my forehead. The pug fell back clutching his face and screaming way back in his throat, and his buddy moved in, but glancing over at his friend instead of tending to business, and I kicked out sideways and broke the buddy’s knee. That would have settled me for a while, but he looked like he wanted to get up again somehow, and I kicked him in the belly, which made him more introspective. By this time the first guy had gotten out his gun and lit off a couple, clutching his face and firing half-blind...
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ZERO COOL
by John Lange
SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB
by Robert Bloch
THE MURDERER VINE
by Shepard Rifkin
SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY
by Donald E. Westlake
NO HOUSE LIMIT
by Steve Fisher
BABY MOLL
by John Farris
THE MAX
by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr
THE FIRST QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
GUN WORK
by David J. Schow
FIFTY-TO-ONE
by Charles Ardai
KILLING CASTRO
by Lawrence Block
THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER
by Roger Zelazny
THE CUTIE
by Donald E. Westlake
HOUSE DICK
by E. Howard Hunt
CASINO MOON
by Peter Blauner
FAKE I.D.
by Jason Starr
PASSPORT TO PERIL
by Robert B. Parker
STOP THIS MAN!
by Peter Rabe
LOSERS LIVE LONGER
by Russell Atwood
HONEY IN HIS MOUTH
by Lester Dent
QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE
by Max Allan Collins
THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES
by Jonny Porkpie
BLONDE
by
Max Phillips
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-002)
First Hard Case Crime edition: September 2004
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 2004 by Max Phillips
Cover painting copyright © 2004 by Gregory Manchess
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-313-7
E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-763-0
Design direction by Max Phillips
www.maxphillips.net
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime Books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
For K, the most dangerous blonde of all
1
Blue Convertible
Well, maybe she wasn’t all that blonde, but it’d be a crime to call hair like that light brown. It was more sort of lion-colored. Lioness. It was heavy, shiny hair, and it fell straight down to her shoulders from a central part. She hadn’t done much to it. She didn’t have to. She got out of the big Studebaker convertible and walked across the red dirt where someday there was supposed to be a front lawn. I was up on the roof, laying tile for one of those little hacienda-looking breadboxes. The whole street was full of them, all half-built. She wore a pale blue dress with cream piping, a dark blue belt, and a silly little schoolgirlish collar. She had nice straight shoulders. There was nothing wrong between them and her open-toed shoes, so I guess the trouble must have been somewhere behind those blue-gray eyes. There’d be trouble, of course. She looked up and called, “Is your name Corson?”
I said it was.
“Are you busy?”
I didn’t think she could be an actual movie star. She didn’t walk right, and she was too thin for the work, with two notable exceptions. She looked up at me, shading her eyes. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“You are,” I said.
“I might have some work for you.”
“What kind?”
She just stood there, looking up at me. “Well, you’re big enough,” she said at last.
I kept waiting.
“I hear you did some boxing,” she said.
I kept waiting.
“It looks like you got hit.”
“Not really,” I said. “I went nine and two. I broke the nose falling out of a tree in third grade. The rest of the face has just always been that way.”
I was annoyed with myself. No one needed to hear any of that.
“I still think you’ve been hit a few times,” she said, smiling faintly.
It was actually a pretty nice smile.
I walked over toward the carport to where the roof swooped down low, and sat myself down on the edge. She came and stood below me, between my feet. She was a tall one, all right.
“I’ve been hit a few times,” I said.
“Nine and two’s not bad. Why’d you stop?”
I shrugged. “They started to match me with guys who knew how to box. And it wasn’t what I came here to do.”
“What did you come here to do?”
“Why don’t you keep telling it?”
“You came here to write. For pictures. But you didn’t have any luck. You did a few treatments for Republic and Severin gave you a few scripts to read. He liked you, there were a few of them who did, but he didn’t know quite what to do with you. He gave you extra work and a few bit parts. You even had a line in one. You were the palooka the promising young boxer knocked out in the first reel. What was your line, by the way? If you don’t mind my asking?”
After a minute, I said, “ž’So you’re the Kid. They tell me you’re pretty good.’ž”
She smiled again, still faintly. She was still looking up from between my feet, shading her eyes. When one arm got tired, she’d use the other hand. “I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
“I’m comfortable.”
She patted my boot. “I just don’t want you to kick me in the face. At least not until we’ve been properly introduced.”
I slowly pushed my boot out toward her chin, and she walked backward to keep ahead of it, her hands clasped behind her hips, smiling faintly up at me the whole while. When she was back far enough, I jumped down. “Thanks,” she said. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
“This is private,” I said.
She looked up the street. “Yes. I guess it is. You seem to be the only one working this morning.”
“The contractor’s going bust. Our pay’s been late.”
“But you’re still here.”
“I like to keep busy. Who’s been singing my praises?”
“A man named Reece who does security at Republic.”
“How do you come to know Mattie?”
“He’s not difficult for a girl to know,” she said. “When the acting didn’t work out, you tried a little bodyguarding.”
“If you want to call it that. I put on a suit and stood around behind some guys. Every once in a while I’d lay my hand on someone’s shoulder and give him the look.”
“Show me,” she said.
The hell, if that’s what she wanted. I reached out and let my hand fall on her shoulder. I gave her the look.
She clasped her hands together and laughed delightedly. “I take it all back. You
are
an actor. Unless you really want to beat my head in with a pipe wrench and dump my body in a ravine?”
“Not until we’ve been properly introduced,” I said. “Anyway, that’s not what the look says. The look says, Are you sure you want me to kill you with a pipe wrench and dump you in a ravine? Because I’d really rather not be bothered.”
“Yes. You’re right. That’s what the look says.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rebecca LaFontaine.”
“What’s your real name?”
“It’s not very pretty.”
“Yeah, well. Still.”
“Out here, I go by Rebecca LaFontaine.”
“Where are you from? Middle West someplace?”
“That’s close enough.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“Why does anybody come here?” She shrugged. “It didn’t work out. I can’t act. I got some offers. Of a certain kind.”
“But not for movies.”
“I got offers for movies of a certain kind.”
“But none you wanted to do.”
“No,” she said steadily. “I did a couple. I don’t want to do that again.”
