Chapter 13
"I'm not quitting, and that's all there is to it," she shouted over the music. "You may have gotten me into this, but I'll get me out of it, when and if I want to. You think I've got an On and Off switch that you can flick whenever you want?"
"Jesus," I said. "You mean there's an On switch too?"
"Of course there is," Eleanor said in as silken a tone as the volume level in the Red Dog would allow. "You used to know where it was, as I recall."
I hoisted my whiskey. "That seems like a very long time ago," I said. The whiskey burned its way down toward my stomach like a gunpowder fuse.
"Not to me, it doesn't. Time flies when you're enjoying yourself."
Off-duty cops and cop groupies boogied like white people in a little clear area in front of the jukebox. I'd never seen a cop who could dance. Under different circumstances I would have shared that insight with Eleanor.
As it was, we glared at each other over the dirty table. We'd been squabbling ever since we left Brooks's office. She picked up a handful of peanuts, started to eat one, changed her mind, and threw them angrily onto the sawdust-covered floor.
"Fooey," she said.
"What was that for?"
"The bunny rabbits," she said, curling her inverted upper lip. Normally, her upper lip was one of the prettiest things in an unreasonably pretty face. Now it looked like she was trying to imitate Ricky Nelson trying to imitate Elvis Presley.
"There aren't any rabbits here, and if there are, they eat red meat."
"Then I've been misinformed," she said, sipping at her fourth club soda. "I thought this was bunny rabbit central. It's so cute."
Her fourth club soda, my third whiskey. Not anything as good as the stuff in Skippy's hip flask, just crappy old rotgut guaranteed to give you ulcers when you were sober enough to notice. I signaled for another, then reached over and picked up her glass. "Cheers," I said, pouring the club soda vengefully on the floor. "For the bunny rabbits."
"Okey-dokey," she said between her teeth, just as a weatherbeaten, miniskirted waitress threaded her way between dancing cops to reach the table, staring down at the splash of club soda in the sawdust. "I'll take a whiskey too."
"Oh, no, you won't," I said.
"Hey, bub," the waitress said in a well-smoked basso profundo, "the lady'll take anything she wants."
"Fine," I said. "You get her home."
"It'd be a pleasure," the waitress said, looking appreciatively at Eleanor. "Where do you live, honey?"
"Solvang," Eleanor lied.
"Stick with the club soda," the waitress said, picking up our glasses. "Unless you'd like to stay in Hollywood tonight, that is."
"I can't," Eleanor said sweetly. "Cats, you know."
"Let 'em eat mice," said the waitress, paraphrasing Marie Antoinette. "We could go to Duke's for breakfast in the morning."
"Two whiskeys," I said. "If I'm not intruding, that is."
The waitress looked longingly at Eleanor, who stared obliviously through the window onto Hollywood Boulevard. "Any special kind?"
"Bottled," I said.
"With a label," Eleanor added.
"I get it," the waitress said. "Well, you can't blame me for trying." She winked at Eleanor and sashayed toward the bar.
"You certainly can't," I said bitterly.
"You certainly can," she said with feminine illogic. "What if I'd accepted?"
"You'd have something to write about for the Times," I said.
"I already do. And I'm going to stick with it."
"Eleanor," I said. "Darling. This isn't Parcheesi. This is murder, and a couple of particularly unpleasant murders to boot. I saw the way they went through Sally's house. We're dealing with professionals here."
"What this isn't," she said, "is 'Style.' This is front-page stuff, and you're not going to cut me out at this late date. You may be passing yourself off as Algernon Swinburne," she added, apparently forgetting that she was the one who'd given me the name, "but I'm plain old Eleanor Chan, and all these professionally murderous individuals know it. I'm in the darned phone book, Simeon," she said, lapsing into what was, for her, profanity. "Anyone who's managed to memorize the alphabet and learned how to use Information can find me. And where can they find Algernon Swinburne? In Norton's Anthology, that's where. So who's more exposed, you or I?"
"So quit already."
"Too late. Anyway, I'm having fun. The cookbook, with all due thanks to you," she said, "is a drag. A cup of organic tofu, two tablespoons of grated kelp, a teaspoon of soy sauce, and don't let it boil." I shuddered at the thought of eating whatever it was. "This is something I can get my teeth into."
"We're talking about murder," I said as the waitress plunked down our drinks.
"These shoes are murder," the waitress said winningly to Eleanor. "Arch support is a doctor's delusion. I need a massage."
"So find a masseur," I said shortly.
"A woman's touch is what I had in mind."
"Find a woman, then," Eleanor said.
"Well, excuse me," the waitress said in an aggrieved voice. "I thought maybe I had. Enjoy your whiskey."
She retreated toward the bar. "I hate it when someone tells me to enjoy something," Eleanor said. "Enjoy your dinner, enjoy your trip. Either I can enjoy it by myself or not at all."
We both drank. On the jukebox the Monkees, sounding even younger and more ragged than I remembered, shrilled the schedule for the last train to Clarksville, wherever that was. It was old cop's night at the Red Dog; they were too old to have the mustaches that seem to be issued with the uniforms to all cops under forty. I suddenly realized that Eleanor and I were probably the youngest people in the place. Even counting the cop groupies. A couple of them did have mustaches.
"Lovely establishment," Eleanor said. "So romantic."
"We're not here to bill and coo. This is a cops' bar and we're here to talk to a cop."
"Not I," she said. "I'm here to listen. And your cooer broke years ago."
"Yeah, but my bill's in great shape."
"I'll take your word. So where's this cop of yours?" She took a tough journalist's slug off the whiskey, real Front Page stuff, and gave me the pleasure of watching her choke slightly as it went down. "All of three years old," she said when she could talk.
A beefy, red-faced cop with white hair cut military-close and blue eyes so close together that he could have worked undercover as a flounder appeared at the table. "Wanna dance?" he said.
"I can't," I said. "Old war injury. It's sweet of you to ask, though."
"I'd love to," Eleanor said, getting up. "Nothing too fancy. I've got a pulled hamstring."
"You're going to break the waitress's heart," I said.
"So comfort her. She looks like she depends on the kindness of strangers."
"Have a nice twirl, Miss Dubois," I said to her back. "Try not to step on his feet."
I picked up my drink, thought better of it, and drank hers instead. It was decidedly better than what I'd been drinking, which tasted like something you'd use to start a barbecue. The hopeful waitress had upgraded Eleanor free of charge.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, startling me. "Yo, as that musclebound asshole always says in the movies," Al Hammond said. "One for me? Good planning."
He picked up my drink and downed it. His eyes started to water "Holy shit," he said. "You must have been mean to Peppi."
"Peppi?" I said, watching Eleanor sway in the arms of the beefy cop. An old Dionne Warwick song was on the jukebox. "Who the hell is Peppi?"
"The dyke who served you this stuff." Hammond was a vehement homophobe. If he weren't, he wouldn't have been in Records. The alleged perp whose rights he'd neglected to recite before breaking his nose had been of the gay persuasion.