Skinflick (13 page)

He tried the buzzer at number thirty-six but no one came, and he worked the lock with the blade from his key case again. He rolled the glass door quietly aside and didn’t turn on the lamps. He used the cord to pull the curtains across and went through the place with a small flashlight. Nobody’d been here. It was all the same as before. He checked the closet again, poked around among the little shoes. He didn’t know why there should be so much grit under them. You didn’t pick up dirt like this cruising sidewalks, sitting in the Strip Joint, doing the boogaloo. It wasn’t sand from a beach. It was soil. It looked and crumbled between his fingers like crop-growing earth.

He went back into the main room and worked the cord so the drapes came open. Out there, Los Angeles sloped sparkling to the sea. The surf sound came again from the traffic along the Strip. And there was the sound of a stereo through a wall. More than simply the thud of bass. He could almost make out the tune. He stepped past the shadowy shapes of the velveteen couches and put his ear to the wall. It was that late Billie Holliday album, the one with too much orchestra. She’d had almost no voice left by then.
I’ll hold out my hand, and my heart will be in it …

He pressed the buzzer next door. The glass panel was open and the music came out clear and sad. A voice yelped over it. He thought what it meant was that he was supposed to come in so he went in. The unit was the same as thirty-six except for the bulky case of one of those television sets that projects its images on a wall, and modular shelves weighed down with sound equipment, amplifier, receiver, open-reel and cassette tape decks, record player, equalizer, all of it black-faced and very new. Big black waffle-front monitor speakers hung angled from the melon-color ceiling.

A young man’s shaggy head appeared over the back of a couch. The face was familiar. From TV commercials—savings-and-loan, deodorant soap, dogfood. He had a wide mouth that curled up attractively at the corners. It didn’t do that now. He frowned and stood up quickly. He was wearing a shower coat in narrow rainbow stripes. A fat paperback book was in his hand. He frowned and said something the music didn’t let Dave hear. Dave looked blank. The young man went to the shelves. Billie Holliday sang
You brought me violets for my furs
… Then she wasn’t singing anymore.

“That what you wanted? Too much noise?”

“It’s not noise,” Dave said, “and I didn’t come to complain. I came to ask about the girl next door.” He crossed the shag carpet to show his open wallet to the young man. “It’s an insurance matter. Death claims.”

“Is she dead? Is that what happened to her?”

“What makes you think something happened to her?”

The book was still in his hand. He took it to the coffee table where there was a stack of shiny books. He laid it on the stack and picked up a cigarette pack and a lighter. He offered Dave a cigarette and lit one for him and for himself. He shrugged. “She hasn’t been around lately. And I always knew when she was around. Believe it.”

“The walls are thin,” Dave said.

“I’m not secretive and I like the view.” He picked up an empty mug from the table. “She never complained about my stereo. I never complained about her tricks. A drink? Coffee? What?”

“Coffee’s fine,” Dave said, “if it’s no trouble.”

“Sit down.” He went into a kitchen beyond a breakfast bar like Charleen’s. Dave sat down and heard him pour coffee. “My name’s Cowan, Russ Cowan.” He came back with two mugs and set them down. The coffee in them steamed. “It must be interesting work.” He didn’t sit down.

“So must yours,” Dave said.

Cowan grimaced. “Except I never know if there’s going to be any more.” He went back to the breakfast bar.

“I always know there’ll be more,” Dave said. “She brought pickups here?”

“You wouldn’t think Sylvia would let her get away with that, would you?” Cowan poured brandy into a little globe glasses and came back with them. “But Sylvia concentrates on her cards. There’s a lot she misses if it doesn’t go on at an octagonal table.” He handed Dave one of the little glasses, kept the other for himself, and sat down.

“Thank you.” Dave passed the glass under his nose. It was Martel’s. “Nice. When was the last time you saw the girl?”

Cowan squinched up his eyes and looked at the ceiling. “A week?” he asked himself. “No. It was longer than that.” He snapped his fingers and grinned at Dave. “I know when it was.” He named the date. “That’s eleven days ago, right? The reason I remember is, my agent called. I had to buy him lunch at Scandia. He’d signed me for a big part in
Quincy.
”

“A good day for you.” Dave set down the brandy glass and tried the coffee. It was rich and strong. “A bad day for Gerald Dawson. Somebody broke his neck.”

“And that’s what you’re investigating?”

“He rented that unit for the girl. If Sylvia would have been upset about the tricks, think how he’d have felt. Did you ever meet him?”

“A little, dark, wiry guy in his forties? I never met him but he was in and out so much I figured he must be the one paying the bills. Who killed him? Why?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.” Dave drank some more coffee and followed it with a taste of the brandy. “That’s very nice. Was she noisy as usual that night? Or”—he glanced at the sound equipment—“were you listening to music?”

“I was sleeping. That was a long lunch. All afternoon. I was boozed stupid. I had a date for later.” He wagged his head with a forlorn smile. “I wanted to wake up fresh and sober. Fat chance. My bedroom’s next to her bedroom. All hell broke loose in there. Her yelling, him yelling, some old woman yelling.”

“What time would this have been?” Dave asked.

“You bet I looked at the clock. Resentfully. You know how lousy you can feel when you wake up too soon after you pass out drunk? Early. What—eight, ten after?” He snorted a laugh, stubbed out his cigarette in a brown pottery ashtray. “I lay there thinking it was going to end soon. It didn’t. So I got up and crawled into the shower. When I came out, I guess I heard the tag end of it.”

“Could you make out any of the words?” Dave asked.

Cowan tilted his shaggy head, blinked thoughtfully, eyes twinkling. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I did. From the wedding service. ‘For richer, for poorer, in sickness, in health.’ Only not like at a wedding service. She was yelling it and she was broken up, you could tell, furious, desperate, everything.” He raised his hands and wagged them.

“The girl? Charleen?”

“No, no. The old woman. Then it sounded like somebody fell down. I mean, this place is built very flimsily. I felt it in the floor under my feet. I thought I better go see. But I only got to the door there. And out this old woman comes. A big old woman, tall.”

“Walking with a cane,” Dave said, “dragging one foot.”

“That one.” Cowan nodded. “And then it settled down. I was clean but I still didn’t feel good. I went back to bed. Maybe I got an hour’s sleep, and then it started again. Only this time there were two men. It wasn’t that loud. Except for Charleen screeching ‘Get out of here and leave us alone,’ I couldn’t make out any words. The men didn’t shout.” Cowan took a cigarette from the pack Dave offered. Dave did the lighting up this time. Cowan said, “I guess I felt a little better by then. Anyway, I was curious. I heard her door slide and I went to see who this one was. A gangly dude in a suit that looked like J. C. Penney in Fresno.”

“You didn’t see his face?”

“I only see their backs. They have to go thataway to get to the stairs, remember?”

Dave worked on the coffee and brandy again. “What do you think was going on?”

Cowan shrugged. “She was Dawson’s old lady, wasn’t she? Man must’ve been her lawyer. Anyway, it wasn’t over. Around nine-thirty, it started up again. Men shouting. I went to snoop and Dawson shoves this kid out. I mean hard. He hit that iron railing out there and I thought he’d go over it. But he didn’t. Stocky kid, very black eyebrows. He was crying. He went and hammered on the door awhile but they didn’t let him back in, and next time I looked, he was gone.” Cowan nodded to himself, drank coffee, sipped brandy, blew out smoke. “Yeah, lively night.”

“No developments beyond that?” Dave wondered. “Or did you lose interest?”

“I scrambled some eggs and watched some TV. I had a late date. My girl friend was house-sitting in Beverly Hills, kid-sitting, dog-sitting. The people were going to be home at midnight. We planned to hit the discos. So around eleven I started getting ready. And all hell broke loose next door again. I was shaving, so I didn’t go look right away. But when I did, the kid was back. Charleen came running out on the gallery and he came out after her and dragged her back inside. She must have been drunk as hell. She was just barely able to stand up. He practically carried her.”

“And Dawson?” Dave said. “Where was he?”

“I didn’t see him,” Cowan said.

O
LD NAILS SHRIEKED, OLD
lumber cracked. He lay face down, eyes shut tight, wanting to sleep again. He’d been too many places yesterday, all of them too far apart. The Triumph didn’t ride easy. He felt bruised. That he could probably soak out in the shower. What wouldn’t soak out were the faces, the voices, the sad facts. The trouble with life was, nobody ever got enough rehearsal. He groped out for the stereo and didn’t find it. He turned his head and opened an eye. Knots in the pine wall stared at him. He pushed the power button. Harpsichord, Bach, Wanda Landowska. He blew out air, threw back the sweat-soaked sheet, sat up. He ran a hand down over his face, tottered to his feet, staggered to the bathroom.

“What a treat!” Amanda said when he came out.

He stepped back inside and took an old blue corduroy robe off a hook on the bathroom door. He put it on and tied the sash and came out again. He took the mug of coffee she offered and said, “The thing that is going to make you a success is that you get everything to happen right away. Nobody gets building materials delivered in two days. Nobody gets workmen on the job that fast.” He went out into the courtyard. The big speechless sons were on the roof of the front building ripping up shingles and kicking them off the eaves. Showers of dry leaves, seeds, dirt, fell with each kick. The one-armed father sat under the oak grouchily knocking old mortar off bricks with a trowel.

“Did you want it to happen later?” Amanda asked.

“Only if they invent a way to do it without sound.”

“If they don’t start early, they don’t start.” She studied him over the rim of her coffee mug. “Are you all right? I could send them away.”

“No, I’m all right.” From the cookhouse came the smell of bacon, the sound of bacon sizzling. He went that way. “It’s the case that’s all wrong. I said yesterday that if I were the man’s wife and kid I’d run away.”

“I remember,” she said. “Have they?”

“I doubt it.” Dave stopped at the cookhouse door. Delgado was in there. He looked rested and clean. He was turning bacon with a fork. Dave smelled coffee, heard the drip of it in the pot. Delgado smiled at him. It made Dave unhappy. Unhappier. He’d forgotten Delgado. He said to Amanda, “But now I
know
they should have.”

She stared. “You don’t mean they killed him.”

“Respectability.” Dave stepped into the cookhouse. “You remember respectability? No, you’re too young. Everybody lived by it once. It never meant much, it hardly means anything anymore. It didn’t bear any relation to reality. Today most people know that. But not everybody. Gerald Dawson found it out and it killed him. Now it’s going to destroy his wife and son.”

“Decency,” Amanda began.

“Not decency. Respectability.” Dave watched Delgado lay the bacon slices on paper toweling on the stove, watched him pour beaten eggs from a yellow bowl into a frying pan where butter sizzled. “What the neighbors think of you. Only there aren’t any neighbors anymore. And if they think, they don’t think about you, they think about themselves.”

She gave him one of her long, thin brown cigarettes. The pack came out of a pocket in a chambray workshirt with pearl buttons. She lit it for him. “It’s more widespread than you think,” she said. “People pretend not, but it is.”

Delgado said, “I located him for you.” His glance at Dave was brief. He got busy laying toast on plates, bacon strips, spooning out the eggs. But the look was that of a kid wanting praise, needing praise, lots of it. “Nothing orthodox went far. Driver’s license, I mean, that stuff.” He turned and held out plates to Dave and Amanda. “But I thought about his business. And I started around places where they develop movies and record sound and that kind of thing. I didn’t pick the big ones.”

They went out into the heat and brightness of the morning. They trailed back across to the fencing room. They didn’t sit on the bed today. They sat on the floor, backs against the wall, in a row, Amanda in the middle. Delgado looked past her, eager, pleased with himself. “I picked the little ones. And, sure enough, down Wilcox, across from the park, there’s this dark little doorway kind of hidden next to one that opens into an honest-to-god shop—knitting? lamps? sandals? something. Anyway, behind the other door is a place where you can edit film and dub sound tracks and all that. Two, three rooms jammed with equipment, run by this little wall-eyed guy. And he wasn’t going to give me shit.” Delgado broke off, flushed, and said “Excuse me,” to Amanda. He said to Dave, “Only there was this poster on the wall. A Spence Odum production, no less.” Delgado washed down a big fast bite of toast with coffee.

“
All the Way Down
?” Dave asked.

“
Sisters in Leather,
” Delgado said. “A lot of pudgy broads in nothing but crash helmets and boots on big black badass motorcycles. Dikey.”

“Watch it,” Dave said.

“So Odum’s got this place he usually shoots,” Delgado said. “He runs around to locations in a white van. He doesn’t pay for permits. He shoots and runs. But the thing he calls his studio is out on the Strip. Back of a real-estate office. One room. Some producer.”

“You didn’t go there,” Dave said.

“I banged on the door,” Delgado said. “Nobody came. In the real-estate office, they never heard of Spence Odum. Talk about respectable. It could have been a church.” He poked into the pocket of a very crisp white short-sleeve shirt—he must have redeemed a bundle of laundry someplace—and handed Dave a slip of paper. “There’s the address.”