This was a back bedroom with a frilly cream-colored bedspread. The walls were painted peacock blue and almost bare. The night table held an inlaid jewelry box, but there was nothing in it but a few pieces of costume stuff. I opened the closet and found low-cut evening dresses on hangers. I took down a couple of hatboxes and found hats. I opened the lingerie drawer and found lingerie. I went into the next room, which seemed to be the master bedroom. The curtains were closed, and I turned on my flash again.
In the middle of the room was a queen-sized bed. At the foot was a projector on a stand. The bed’s headboard had been removed, and a white rectangle painted on the wall behind it. I went over to the projector and switched it on. There was that grinding ticking noise, and then a short length of number leader, and then the following appeared on the wall over the bed:
Prestige Enterprises Presents
THREE ON A MATCH
The next frame read:
Starring
BIG BETSY
ESMERALDA
THE SHEIK
Then:
ANOTHER DULL SUMMER AFTER NOON
BIG BETSY IS BORED WHAT TO DO?
Then Rebecca was sitting in the big flowered armchair in the living room I’d just left, with light pouring through the windows. It made her eyelids look translucent. She wore a dressing gown and high heels. Aside from that, she seemed to be waiting for a train. Someone behind the camera must have told her to smile, so she smiled at the camera, then stopped. Then she got up and slipped out of the gown. She lifted her breasts with her hands and then stood there bouncing them in her palms as if wondering what they’d fetch by the pound.
The door to the side room opened and a small dark woman entered, wearing only buckled shoes and those little ooh-la-la black ankle-stockings, and beaming like a prom queen on a parade float. Rebecca stooped to kiss her and Esmeralda began massaging her vigorously with both hands. I watched for a minute more, then switched off my flash, put it in my pocket, and stuck my gun in its holster. I began searching the room in the flickering light from the projector.
In the night table I found a small flat case with some silver cufflinks. I put it in my pocket. I found a cigarette lighter that was probably just nickel, but I’d lost mine and I took it and closed the drawer. There didn’t seem to be anything in the dresser but clothes. The closet was a big one. I’d search it last. There was a small picture on the wall of a sailboat slipping past a lighthouse, heading out to sea. I looked behind it, looked at the back of it. I checked all the pictures and found a key taped to the back of one of them. I put it in my pocket. I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed.
When I stood up, I saw that Esmeralda was gone and The Sheik was on the job. He was a bit of a runt, and wore an actual black mask across his eyes. It looked like he’d cut two holes in a black necktie. He was doing what he could to earn his pay, giving it his all, the cords in his neck jerking, and I saw that beneath him, Rebecca’s face had smoothed out, the way a cat’s face smoothes out when you stroke back the fur on its head, and that her body was rippling like a flag in a high wind. I wondered sadly what he had that I didn’t. Just then I smelled that scent of plain harsh soap, the kind you’d do the laundry with, and slowly turned around. Rebecca stood just behind me in a simple pale evening gown, cut steeply down the front. Her mouth was slightly loose, and you could see the gleam of her teeth. Her face was still. Her little chrome .32 was staring at me, but she was staring at her own image on the screen. Her nipples stood out like a pair of steel pegs. Well, I thought, there’s your answer.
Halliday stepped out of the shadows behind her.
“Put your hands in your back pockets,” he said. “All the way, palms in. That’s good.” He sidled over without hurry and slipped the gun out of my holster. He did it right, and there wasn’t a moment when he was blocking Rebecca’s shot. Then he walked around the bed and flopped into an armchair with the gun in his lap. He rubbed his eyes and didn’t say anything more.
“Huh,” I said. “I thought I’d hear if somebody came in.”
“The room’s soundproof,” he said. “You should’ve left the door open.”
“I thought I did.”
“It swings shut.”
“Live and learn,” I said.
“Learn, anyway,” he said. “Any luck finding the safe full of gold?”
“Ah, I wouldn’t know how to open a safe, anyway. I was hoping for something more like the silverware. I needed traveling money and I figured you two owed me something.”
“It’s just stainless. How come you didn’t come kill me with Becky like you were supposed to?”
“I got tired of your sister’s stories, Jimmy.”
We listened to the projector whir.
“Your sister Rebecca,” I said. “She tells too many stories.”
Rebecca stirred and took her eyes off the movie. She gazed at me like I was the sky and somebody told her there was a ring around the moon.
I said, “I’ve got a few cop connections, and they got me James Lee Marron. And the thing about Marron, he’s got a kid sister. One Rebecca Anne Marron, a local beauty queen and, ah.” I looked at her. “Championship swimmer. You can see the resemblance if you look. You’ve both got the same color hair. I’m gonna scratch my nose now.”
I took my hand from my pocket, slowly, scratched my nose, and gave my face a good rub. Then I put my hand back in my pocket.
“Here’s how I see it,” I said. “You’re sick of smut. You’re sick of the small time. This place is mortgaged to the doorknobs. You’ve been hoping to move a little powder — just hoping, so far — but around here, that’s all Scarpa’s. Maybe if you killed him, you could get a piece, but why would Burri let you? Well, let’s think. Everyone knows Scarpa hates your guts. What if he had some goon try to chill you? Only you got lucky and chilled the goon instead, and then ran to Burri and said, Grampa, look, a dead goon, don’t we get to hit Scarpa back? You’ve been putting together a little army — the one you tried recruiting me for, the one I saw meeting here Wednesday night. You were just about ready. All you needed was Burri’s okay. And your sister wanted her big brother to have his day in the sun. So she left her nice little peacock-blue room here, checked into a boarding house, and started looking around for someone to play Scarpa’s goon. Somebody who wouldn’t be missed.”
“I’d put my baby sister in the middle like that?”
“Halliday, you useless son of a bitch,” I said. “You never put anything anywhere. The only idea you ever had is ask a girl to take her drawers down. Rebecca’s the one with the ideas. This was her play. Shade was her first pick for my spot, but she found he wouldn’t kill, even for her. So she scratched around until she got me, and then I even signed on with Scarpa, which made the setup nice and tight. But somehow I didn’t seem too eager, either. So now she’s got two of us. She had to get rid of one and move the other off the dime. So she took Shade for a drive, put four beans under his breast pocket with her shiny little gun, ripped up her dress, and came pounding on my door, crying, You wouldn’t kill the bad man, and now look. But Jesus, Becky, remember? I’m the boy who’s always going through your purse.”
“If you checked my gun,” she said dully, “you saw it hadn’t been fired.”
I shook my head. “Next time, don’t just clean the barrel. Next time, break the gun and clean the block. And don’t leave a lace hanky stained with gun oil not twenty feet from the body.”
Halliday sighed. “I said you were getting too fancy, Beck.”
“Fancy, hell. Incompetent. Like driving up in a new blue Stude and explaining to me how you were broke. Maybe you thought I was nearsighted. Maybe you just didn’t know where to get a cheap car.”