Noir(ish) (9781101610053) (7 page)

“Hello, Grahame,” a voice I recognized said.

I looked up and saw the familiar face. Stanwyck. I wasn't surprised. She was a regular.

“Waiting for someone?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone I know?” she asked.

“No one
I
know.”

Stanwyck snorted: her version of a laugh. She looked tired, probably because she was: She usually showed up for work at six a.m. and left after midnight. Sometimes, especially when she was stuck in the office, she didn't take a break; Bacall brought her a bologna sandwich. When she did take a break, it was after dark and The Pickup was where she went. It was only a few blocks from the station. I'd been there often enough to wonder if she knew what sunlight looked like without the filter of a dirty window. The department didn't spend much on getting them washed.

“You don't usually do blind dates,” she said, looking down at me.

“I don't usually meet missing persons in The Pickup, either.”

“This about Mr. Seattle?”

“Uh-huh.” Stanwyck whistled. “You know,” I said, “I love the way you do that. Just put your lips together and—blow.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I've been known to do other things with them, too. Or have you had too much of that”—she pointed at my glass—“to remember.”

I snickered. “That's the trouble with this stuff. You remember in spite of it.”

“Good.” She set her purse on the table. “What time's he coming?”

I finished the drink. That made it time to go home. “An hour ago.”

“So you're alone.”

“Except for the ghosts.” From the jukebox, a fresh version began. Rosemary Clooney carefully enunciated all the words. “I gave them the night off, but they like hanging around.”

Stanwyck
mm
-ed and shook her head. “Can I sit. Till he comes.”

I pointed to a chair. “Suit yourself.”

“How can I pass up such a gracious invitation.” She sat. “Anyway, you owe me a drink.”

Stanwyck works hard at being hard-boiled. She is, but she's not as hard-set as she thinks everyone else thinks she is. Her center's a little soft. There's a smidge of underdone yolk inside the shell she can't quite solidify. I used to peek at it when we were making a go at being scrambled eggs. She used to peek at mine, too.

She's also no-nonsense attractive. She's got the pageboy, and every strand of her hair is still the natural mahogany she was born with. It's a little darker than her eyes and her skin: They're biscuit, like Rosa's, her Mexican mother. She's my age, give or take a year, but while I've got enough lines and crannies to look like something out of a Boris Karloff picture, Stanwyck's skin is as smooth as twenty-year-old bourbon. She doesn't wear makeup, and she doesn't need to. Not even lipstick.

Vivian sailed into my line of sight like the flagship of a cruise line of small, over-priced yachts. “Good evening, Lieutenant,” she purred with a lovely and casual-but-professional smile. “What can I get you?”

“A Blonde Ice.” Vivian looked blank. “Gin and limoncello on the rocks,” Stanwyck explained, and looked at my empty glass. “Robert? Refill?”

This is the last drink, then I'm going home to bed
, I told myself again. “Sure, why not.” Vivian reached for the empty. “Never mind,” I said. “I'll suck on the cubes till you get back.”

“If that's what you want to”—she glanced at Stanwyck—“do,” she finished, and winked. “One minute, hon.” She quivered toward the bar. One more drink and I probably wouldn't notice that, either.

Stanwyck looked in her direction and
hmph
-ed. “She looks like Little Bo Peep. Or maybe one of her sheep on the way home.” She opened her purse, took out a tissue, and blotted her forehead. “Feels like it's ninety-nine out there.” I nodded. She wadded the tissue and shoved it back into her purse. “You look lousy, Grahame. And it's not just the booze. You run into a door full speed?”

“More like one ran into me. By accident.” Stanwyck didn't need the details. She'd only start an investigation.

“I hope
ít's
worse for the wear, too.”

I nodded again. “I'd like to think so. They don't make doors like they used to.”

Stanwyck didn't smile. “They don't make private investigators like they used to, either. How's the drowning business these days.” She tapped my glass.

“Probably not much different than the homicide business.”

“Yeah, we both got our corpses.” She sighed.

I shook my head. “Unh-uh,” I said as the music swelled. “You got corpses.
I
got ghosts. At least corpses just lie there.”

“Ever think about leaving L.A.?”

“You mean ghosts don't travel?” I dripped melted ice into my mouth. It didn't taste like bourbon. I wanted it to taste like bourbon.

“I
mean
you can find slimeball husbands and wives anywhere in the great forty-eight. You don't have to wait around here,
looking
for them.” She waved her hand in the direction of the jukebox.

“‘Them'?”

“
Her
.” She scanned the bar. Vivian was nowhere in sight. “It's been a year, Grahame.”

“Next Thursday.”

“Robert.” Stanwyck grabbed my chin and held it up so I'd have to look her straight in the eye. I did, though mine were a little watery. “She's long gone,” she said. “She left the City of Angels for a little bit of hell called Chicago.”

I chuckled. She let go of my chin. “Huh. City of Angels. You ever see any angels here, Stanwyck?”

“Not a one.”

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. They went for a swim in my brain.

“I did. She had a mouth like the
Mona Lisa
, eyes like black smoke, and hair as long as the first day of summer. Perfect. Not a thing in the world wrong with her.”

“Except she
had
wings and decided to use them.”

“Yeah. Angels. Who needs 'em.” I opened my eyes and drained the melted ice. It still didn't taste like bourbon. “Hey,” I called to no one in particular, “where's our drinks?”

“They'll get here. How's Greenstreet?”

“Fat. Loud. Lazy.”

She snorted her laugh. “Like always.”

“You
can
come by and say hello to him, y' know. He'd remember you, too.”

“Some of these days.”

I
snorted, a snort. “You sound like Sophie Tucker.”

Vivian appeared, black tray in hand. She set Stanwyck's drink before her—“Here you go. A Blonde Ice.”—then leaned over and carefully placed mine. “And,” she said into my eyes, “a double bourbon. On the rocks.” She stirred it for me, slowly.

“Thanks,” I said, and took the swizzle stick. “Don't hurt your wrist. You might need it later.” I lifted the glass. When I put it down, it was half empty.

“Something to eat?”

Stanwyck looked at me. “I don't think so,” she said. “That'd be
good
for him.”

Vivian gave her the professional smile. “Okay,” she said, and picked up the empty. “I'll be—around.”

Stanwyck watched her go with an amused smile. I just avoided the whole thing and lifted my glass again. “To your health, Lieutenant Stanwyck.”

“And yours.” She took a deep swallow.

The jukebox finally had a change of heart. Sophie Tucker's stentorian voice burst forth with “After You've Gone.”

Not my first choice either, but . . . “Hallelujah,” I muttered.

“She's not comin' back, Robert.”

“Who, Sophie Tucker?”

“Yeah.”

I looked into the glass. Just bourbon and ice. Not an answer in sight. “Nice of you to bring her up.”

“But
I
might. If you ever make a serious effort to climb out of the deep end.” I looked at her: Her yolk was showing.

I grinned. “Well, here's to the deep end.” I clinked her glass and took another slug from mine.

Now she snorted a snort. “I've got a good mind to take you home and put you under the shower.”

“Be a terrible waste of a good mind.” I was still grinning. “I'd just dry out again.” I waved the glass. “'Sides, this is keeping me good and—”

“Evening, gumshoe.”

I recognized that voice, too. It belonged to the short, skinny man standing beside the table. I hadn't seen him in two or three years, and I'd missed him like I'd missed another bullet in my gut. He was wearing a stylishly wide-brimmed panama that covered his thinning hair and mashed his lettuce leaf–sized ears, between which there was a bulbous-nosed, acne-scarred face. The rest of his outfit would have landed him on Hedda Hopper's Ten Worst Dressed list. The jacket of his pin-striped, navy-blue, double-breasted suit was open. Underneath it there was a light-blue fifty-dollar silk shirt and a three-inch-wide lavender-and-goldfinch-striped tie that only clashed a little with the two-inch-wide purple-and-mustard suspender straps it hung between. There was a slightly brown-at-the-edges white carnation in his lapel.

His name was Moe Sedway, a crook whose smell made even other crooks hold their noses. He had been a friend of Bugsy Siegel. A close friend. And he was not smiling at me. “Moe,” I said, as happy to see him as I would have been to see the beach at Normandy the day after D-Day. “What cesspool did you climb out of?”

Stanwyck looked up, too. “Well, if it isn't Bugsy Siegel's faithful sidekick Dumbo,” she said. “Twice in one week!” He'd been among the first people she'd interviewed in the investigation. I wondered if he'd exhausted her patience. Probably not. Moe was a “friend” of the Chief, too. Just like Bugsy'd been. “To what do we owe the honor?”

“If that's a reference to my ears, I'll choose to ignore it, Lieutenant.”

She shook her head. “Your ears are the least of your problems, Moe. It's a reference to your brain.”

“I'll choose to ignore it anyway,” he said, keeping his eyes on me.

“Still in L.A.! Huh. Slumming, Moe? Or is life in Vegas getting boring,” she added.

“As you already know, Miss Stanwyck, I came here with my good friend Benjamin for a visit.”

“That's Lieutenant Stanwyck to you, Sedway.” Her tone could have cracked boulders.

He continued to stare at me. “Unfortunately, something happened to him Friday night.”

I took a drink. “Alas, poor Bugsy. You knew him well. A fellow of infinite wits—which got spread all over the room.”

Sedway glared at me. “Hate” was a mild word for what was in his eyes. “Putz,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “You want
more
trouble, keep goin' in that direction.” He turned to Stanwyck and his voice changed. “How's the investigation comin', Lieutenant Stanwyck?” he asked affably.

She shrugged. “You oughta know. Chief tells me you two had a—conversation this afternoon. He said you knew a couple things even
he
didn't know.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I heard some things.”

“Gonna share 'em with
me
?”

“Maybe.” He glared at me again. “Maybe someplace else. Where it smells a little less like rat.”

“I'm gonna get hurt feelings, Moe,” I said. “You don't like my perfume? Tell you what: You can buy me something different. I hear Chanel Number Five is good. But maybe you'd prefer
eau de
Bugsy. That's the kind of toilet water I hear your kind bathes in. In fact, I can smell it on you now.”

Sedway took a deep breath and held it. His face turned red, and his collar swelled; it looked like it was going to burst.
Or he will,
I thought. Or maybe hoped.

He let it out in a gust. Then he squeezed his face together like he was trying to crack open a walnut with it, and spoke softly. “Just you watch yourself, gumshoe. Or maybe you're gonna get somethin' hurt besides your feelings—and your jaw. Or
maybe
they're gonna be pickin' more lead out of your liver.”

“It was my stomach, Sedway,” I said, “and you're making me sick to it.”

Stanwyck took out her shield. “You threatening him, Sedway?”

He smiled. I'd never seen one that leaked snake oil before. “Nah, Lieutenant: You know me. I don't threaten guys. I just give 'em good advice.” He wiped away the oil and the smile along with it. “You got that, putz?”

I nodded. “Oh, I got it. I don't know what you're talking about, Moe, but I got it.”

He pulled himself up to his full five feet five inches. “Just you remember—both of ya: Me and Benny, we were pals. And
I
ain't gonna forget what happened.”

“Nobody's forgetting anything, Moe,” Stanwyck said. “We'll find the guy who did it.”

Sedway looked straight into my eyes, the way that Lizabeth Duryea had the night before. I looked straight back. Hers were much prettier. “Yeah,” he said, the knife in his voice fully honed and a little frustrated at not having a convenient apple, or throat, to slice. “You will. And I don't think you're gonna have to look too hard.” He tipped his hat. “G' night, Lieutenant.” He glared at me one last time. “G' night. Putz,” he said, and walked out.

Stanwyck whistled. “What was that all about?”

I shrugged. “Search me. I've known the guy for ten years.”

“Well?”

“I've seen him around a few times. Not recently, though.”

“And Siegel?” Stanwyck asked.

“I met him once or twice. That's—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Grahame.”

I glanced up. Sydney was standing there. “Yeah?”

Sydney smiled. “I believe your party is here.”

“He is?” I probably sounded surprised. I was. He was only an hour and a half late.

“A Mr. Scott,” Sydney said. “Shall I bring him to the table?”