“You’ve got something there,” I admitted. “Just tell Burri, and Burri would tell Halliday to lay off. Yeah, that might do it. But you don’t need me for that. It’s a lot better coming from you.”
“I won’t go to see that man,” she said firmly.
“Even if it would solve your problems?”
“I won’t go see him,” she said, shaking her head back and forth.
“Rebecca,” I said. “You’re not serious. None of this is serious.”
“What do you mean? I’ve never been so—”
“I mean you’re not suggesting things you think will work. You’re suggesting things you think won’t work. You want me to knock your ideas down one by one until there’s just one thing left to do. The one you wanted done all along.”
She was silent.
“You don’t really want Halliday talked to,” I said. “Do you. You want him killed.”
“I never said that,” she said.
“It was the first thing you ever said to me.”
“All right. I was being a little dramatic.”
“I’m not a choirboy. But murder’s a lot of trouble, and it brings a lot of trouble. Maybe we can find a smarter way. You haven’t given me enough money to do murder, anyway. Or much of anything else, frankly.”
“I know I haven’t. I’ll get you more money. That’s just a first payment. I just have to think how to raise it. All I meant was, he has to leave me alone, Mr. Corson.”
“Rebecca, are we going to have this witless Oh-Mister-Corson schoolgirl bit from now on? You weren’t this stupid yesterday.”
She smiled faintly and said, “All right, Ray, my mistake. Most men like a woman stupid.” She’d been holding the engagement book like a hymnal, her knees and heels primly together, and now she eased one foot a bit backward, shifted her weight fractionally, and became the woman in the blue convertible again, wary and a bit sly.
“Maybe we do,” I said, “but I can’t use it now. What else do you know about Halliday?”
“I’ve told you what I know. I know what old movies he likes. Do you want to know what old movies he likes?”
“Not especially. Where’s he from?”
“We never got to that.”
“Any family here?”
“We never got to that. Do you want to hear about his old football team? Do you want to hear what he thinks of the color of my eyes?”
“What does he do for fun?”
“I think he has lots of girls. If he’s serious about anyone, except, I suppose, me, he didn’t say. I guess he likes a drink or two, but just like anyone else. If he drugs, I don’t know about it. Look, I have a picture for you.” She pulled a row of snapshots from a pocket in the back of her engagement book. It was a strip of four little pictures, the kind you get from a coin-operated photo booth, and it showed Rebecca posing with a fair-haired young man in front of a pleated gray curtain. She seemed to be sitting on his knee. In the first shot, they were displaying their right profiles together, their chins lifted. In the second, it was left profiles. In the third, they were both giving the camera sultry looks, their eyes narrowed. In the last, Halliday was lifting a hand to declaim and Rebecca was dissolving in laughter, her eyes squeezed shut and a lock of hair falling across her face and her broad, delicate mouth open. Halliday was certainly a very good-looking boy. I tucked the photos in my breast pocket and sat tapping my forefinger on my knee.
“I need a lever,” I said.
“You may not find one.”
“You’re not too eager to see Halliday hurt, are you?”
“You didn’t hear the things he said to me,” she said levelly. “What he’d do, and what he’d do after that. I need to be able to walk down the street again. Ray, if your conscience won’t let you do whatever this turns out to be, well, that’s all very splendid, but I think I might need to talk to someone else.”
“My conscience’s fine,” I said. “But you can talk to who you like. You want your money back?”
“You still have it?”
“No. I paid off my car with it this morning. I could get it again easy enough. Just go back and sell some of the car. You want it?”
“No. I don’t. Last night I slept well for the first time since I saw Halliday. I felt I’d finally done something. I do think I picked the right man, Ray.”
“I’ll do what I can. Meanwhile, see about getting me some more money.”
“All right about the money. I heard you. I’ll get some money. Unless you’d rather be paid in this?” she said, flicking at one of her buttons. “I told you, it’s not very good.”
“I wouldn’t mind finding out for myself,” I said, “but whether it’s good or lousy, it won’t pay my rent. How about giving some to my landlord once a week?”
“How ugly a man’s your landlord?”
“About like me.”
“I’ll get some money.”
I grinned. “Better. Much better. It was a dirty crack, anyway. You’re worth at least a month’s rent at that dump.”
“Why Mr. Corson, you say the sweetest things.”
“What’s Halliday’s address?”
She began writing it out below Bad Business. “Promise,” she said, “that you’ll talk to me first before going over there.”
“Sure, I promise. Write your phone number, too. I guess there’s a phone down the hall somewhere?”
“It’s not reliable, but yes.” She finished writing, pulled the page from the book and handed it to me.
We stood and I looked at the page. An address, a phone number, and a row of pictures in my pocket. Nice-looking guy and his girl. And as soon as he got a clear shot, he was supposed to be throwing acid on her.
It was all thinner than tap water. It could have been true. It could have been bunkum. There wasn’t any place to get a grip.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
I took her by the shoulders and sat her back down on the bed. There was a straight chair by the closet, and I pulled it over and turned it around. I straddled it and sat down facing her.
“You’re leaving something out,” I said. “Go back to the beginning and tell it again.”
5
Hat Check
The hat check room at Ciro’s is shaped like an L, or so Rebecca said. The short leg of the L leads straight back from the hat check window, and they hang the coats there, near the front, because when women check furs they want to watch how you put them on the hanger. Behind the coats, you turn right and there are rows of numbered cubbyholes for the hats. When the hangers are full, you have to squeeze between the fur coats to get back there, and the coats press against you like field animals in a stall.
It was three months since Rebecca had made her second movie. By now it was out there, and somewhere men were looking at it. She knew she couldn’t do that ever again, so she’d gone back to Ciro’s, where she’d always had a pretty good time, but she couldn’t seem to enjoy working there anymore. It was hard to stand all evening in a low-cut dress that didn’t fit her, framed in the hat check window as crowds of well-dressed people went by. It was hard standing there and being looked at. It was hard to smile at men when they tipped you. She felt as if they all must have seen her movies. She felt as if she were in the stocks in the village square. There was a broken café chair at the back of the hat check room, and for ten minutes every two hours she got to sit there and rest her feet. The walls back there were unpainted, and busboys had scrawled them over with filthy drawings and suggestions, some of them mentioning her by name. She’d sit there wriggling her sore feet in her shoes and read them each over carefully, because she felt she’d lost the right to be offended by anything.