Skinflick

by Joseph Hansen

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.” She looked at Fullbright. “Do I have to tell him anything?”

  Dave said, “Only if your name is Charleen. And, if you’d really like to be helpful, where you come from.”

  “From Santa Monica.” She jerked her head under all that heavy blond hair. “Two miles from here. All my life. And it’s not Charleen.” She made a face. “Yuck. It’s not just Ribbons, either. It’s—get ready for this—Scarlet Ribbons. From an old Harry Belafonte record my mom had when she was about ten or something. When she grew up she was going to have a little girl and call her Scarlet Ribbons. Believe it. Then she went and married a man named Schultz. And it didn’t make any difference. Her name was Hathaway. Now that would have been almost all right, right? But Scarlet Ribbons Schultz? That’s too much, isn’t it?”

  Dave smiled. “It’s quite a bit.” He asked Fullbright, “Feeling better?”

  Fullbright pushed the towel into Ribbons’s lap and stood up, hitching the blanket around him with one hand, the other one hanging onto the empty glass. “I felt fine until you showed up. I still would the fuck like to know what you want with me.”

  “Dawson was sleeping with a kid about like this one.” Dave nodded at Ribbons. “In a top-level apartment above the Sunset Strip. She’s not there anymore. I’m looking for someone to tell me where she is.”

  “Jerry? Sleeping with a teenage girl?” Fullbright laughed. “You have to be out of your mind.”

  “I don’t believe he was murdered on his street,” Dave said. “I believe he was murdered in that apartment and transported across town after he was dead and dumped there for his wife to stumble over in the morning. His wife and son.”

  “And you think Charleen—that’s the girl, right? You expected me to have her here?” Fullbright took the brandy bottle off the bar and poured another shot into his glass. To do this he had to let the blanket fall but he didn’t care. He drank from the glass before he picked the blanket up again. “I don’t have her here. I never had her here. I never heard of her. If Jerry was really sleeping with her, you can bet he wouldn’t tell anybody, least of all me. He had his moral superiority to maintain.” He grinned. Very gingerly he touched his nose. Blood had stopped coming out of it but it was swelling. So was the flesh around his eyes. And turning dark red. “That’s a wild idea. I mean, the wildest.”

  “Somebody’s got her someplace,” Dave said. “Unless she was killed the same night as Dawson, as Ludwig.”

  “Ludwig?” Fullbright’s head came forward, scowling. “Herman Ludwig, the cameraman?”

  “Shotgun,” Dave said. “You didn’t know?”

  Fullbright looked stunned. He shook his head. “They got him, then—the commies?”

  “That’s what his wife thinks,” Dave said.

  “Jesus,” Fullbright whispered and drank more brandy.

  Ribbons took the wet and bloody towel back to the head.

  “What about Spence Odum?” Dave said. “He never mentioned this Charleen child to you?”

  “I haven’t talked to Spence in—hell; how long? I find him when I want to get paid. That’s about it.”

  “Take care of yourself,” Dave said, and went up the companionway into what was left of daylight.

  13

  THE HEADLIGHTS OF THE Triumph showed cut brush heaped high next to the driveway, almost covering the mailbox. The Triumph jolted down into the yard. Where limbs had been sawed off shrubs and trees, the wounds showed white. Under the naked-looking trees, sand was heaped, sacks of cement, stacked two-by-fours, bundles of wood shingles. The headlights shone back at him, multiplied in the panes of the French doors. He wanted the natural cover back.

  He yanked the wheel of the Triumph to park it and the lights gleamed off a yellow motorbike. A youth sat with his back against it. He winced in the light and stood up. He seemed to unfold forever. He had to be seven feet tall. Reedy, all knuckles, wrists, joints, he came toward the car. Clean white Levi’s, clean white T-shirt, clean fair hair cut short. Dave shut off the engine. Crickets. The boy leaned down to peer inside. He looked worried.

  “Mr. Brandstetter? Can I talk to you, sir?”

  “Not if you’re selling magazines,” Dave said.

  “What?” The boy sounded ready to cry. “Oh, no. No, it’s important. It’s about—the case you’re working on. Bucky Dawson’s father? The one who was murdered, you know?”

  “What’s your name?” Dave pushed the door handle and the boy backed a step and Dave got out of the Triumph.

  “Engstrom,” the boy said, “Dwight.” In the dark, his voice sounded too young for the size of him. “I saw you yesterday, when you came to see Bucky, and I heard you talking to his mom. I live across the street.”

  “In the house with the noisy window latches,” Dave said. “Come on.” He headed for the cookhouse. What he took to be bricks loomed in the courtyard under the oak. He said, “How did you find me?”

  “I got worried. I asked Bucky. He said it was about the insurance and if you asked me I should just tell you the same thing I told the police.”

  Dave found the light switch this time without guessing. “You’re on the basketball team at Bethel Church, right?” He opened the refrigerator and peered into the dark. “All I’ve got here that’s nonalcoholic is milk.” He looked up into the boy’s scared blue eyes. “Will milk be all right?”

  “Thank you. That’s very kind.” Engstrom stared around him. The kitchen was plainly stranger than he liked. It made him uneasy but he didn’t run. “Yes, I’m on the team. I’m not a good athlete but I’m tall.”

  “I noticed.” Dave unwrapped a glass, rinsed it at the tap, and filled it with milk. Engstrom took it, drank from it, and left a little-kid milk line on his upper lip.

  He said, “Bucky said it was Sequoia Insurance, so I called them and they gave me this address. They gave me the phone too, but no one answered.”

  The plastic-bagged ice cubes in the freezer compartment had clumped. Dave took the bag out and banged it on the tile counter. He put the cubes that came loose into a glass and pushed the bag away again. “And what did you say to the police?” He measured gin over the ice cubes. He flavored the gin with vermouth. “That Bucky was with you in the church basement till eleven-thirty or twelve the night his father was killed?” He got olives from the refrigerator, dropped two into the drink, recapped the little bottle, shut it up in the dark again. Pushing the ice cubes clockwise with a finger, he turned to face the tall boy, eyebrows raised.

  “Bucky said that was best. It wouldn’t do any harm. They had the man that killed him. It would only confuse things and make a lot of useless trouble for his mother.”

  “But it wasn’t true?” Dave tasted the drink. Warm.

  “Reverend Shumate came down and said there was a phone call for him. Around nine. He went and didn’t come back. I’ve been very—I felt bad about lying. Worried. Then when you came and started asking stuff, and Bucky was scared and begged me not to tell you anything different—well, I thought I better tell you the way it really was.”

  “Why not the police?” Dave lit a cigarette. “If you want to clear your conscience—they’re the ones you lied to.”

  Dwight Engstrom’s childlike face turned red. “Do I have to? I hate for them to know I lied before.”

  “It hardly ever works out,” Dave said.

  “I won’t do it again,” Engstrom said earnestly, “never in my life. I wouldn’t have done it then for anybody else. But Bucky—I guess you don’t know him too well. But Bucky would never do anything wrong.”

  “There aren’t any human beings like that,” Dave said.

  “He just wanted to protect his mother,” Engstrom said. “They had enough trouble already, didn’t they?”

  “How much is enough?” Dave said. “What did Bucky do with those three hours?”

  “I don’t know. I asked him. He said it didn’t matter.”

  “It matters.” Dave took jack cheese out of the fridge and cut
squares off it. He held the small bright new cutting board out to the boy. “Eat. Did you get home at midnight?” Engstrom’s big clean hand fumbled little cheese cubes into his mouth. “Did you see Gerald Dawson, Senior, lying dead in front of his garage doors?”

  Engstrom swallowed. “No, I came home the back way.”

  Dave took a bite of cheese. It had bits of jalapeno in it. Fiery. He nodded for the boy to eat some more. Engstrom shook his head. Dave set the board down and tried his drink again. It had chilled. He said, “But it was Shumate who came to get Bucky?”

  “He was back in ten minutes. Reverend Shumate, I mean. That’s why practice went on so late.” Engstrom gave a wry little smile. “He’s a basketball freak. He never wants to quit.” He finished off the milk, set the glass down with a click on the counter tiles, and looked anxious. “It’ll be all right, now, will it? You won’t have to tell the police I lied, will you?”

  “It won’t be all right,” Dave said, “you know that. But I thank you for coming and telling me. It will help. Not Bucky Dawson and his mother. It will help me.” He put a hand in the middle of Engstrom’s long bony back and steered him to the kitchen door. “Maybe I won’t have to tell the police. But if I do, you won’t feel too bad about it.”

  “Oh, yes, I will,” Engstrom said, sounding again as if he might cry. He took three steps into the darkness and turned back. “Why won’t I?”

  “You’ll be among friends,” Dave said.

  His legs ached, not from the climb but from sitting on the floor at Noguchi’s. Also he was a little drunk from the flame-warmed sake. But the black-lacquer surroundings had been pleasant and the food had been all right. He’d kept away from vinegar and raw fish. Mel Fleischer had been amiable enough and his young friend Makoto had been good to look at. He hadn’t worn a happy coat. He’d worn torn-off Levi’s and a tank top printed with the USC Trojan helmet. In the candlelight, he’d looked carved out of some fine-grained brown wood rubbed to a flawless finish. He had a terrible accent but his smile made up for it. Dave hoped he’d understood as little English as he spoke, because most of Mel’s talk had been about boys he’d had before Makoto. The stories were witty even if you’d already heard them, and Dave had. But he doubted they’d inspire fidelity.

  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?”