The Little Men (4 page)

I wonder if your wife knows the kinds
of books you keep in your office, the girls
you keep there and make do shameful
things?

I know Larry would agree with me
about you. He was a sensitive man and I
live where he did and sleep in his bed and
all of you ruined him, drove him to drink
and to a perilous act.

How dare you try to take my money
away. And you with a wife with ermine,
mink, lynx dripping from her plump,
sunk shoulders.

Your wife at 312 North Faring Road,
Holmby Hills.

Let's be adults, sophisticates. After all,
we might not know what we might do if
backed against the wall.

—yr lucky penny

It had made more sense when she wrote it
than it did now, reading it to them.
Benny patted her shoulder. “So he called
the cops on ya, huh?”

“The studio cops. Which is bad enough,”
Penny said.

They had escorted her from the makeup
department. Everyone had watched, a few of
the girls smiling.

“Sorry, Pen,” Gordon had said, taking the
powder brush from her hand. “What gives in
this business is what takes away.”

When he'd hired her two months ago,
she'd watched as he wrote on her personnel
file: M
R
. D.

“Your man, he took this as a threat, you
see,” Mr. Flant said, shaking his head as he
looked at the letter. “He is a hard man. Those
men are. They are hard men and you are soft.
Like Larry was soft.”

Penny knew it was true. She'd never been
hard enough, at least not in the right way. The
smart way.

It was very late when she left the two men.

She paused before Number Four and found
herself unable to move, cold fingertips pressed
between her breasts, pushing her back.

That was when she spotted Mrs. Stahl inside
the bungalow, fluttering past the picture
window in her evening coat.

“Stop!” Penny called out. “I see you!”

And Mrs. Stahl froze. Then, slowly, she
turned to face Penny, her face warped through
the glass, as if she were under water.

“Dear,” a voice came from behind Penny. A
voice just like Mrs. Stahl's.
Could she throw her
voice?

Swiveling around, she saw the landlady
standing in the courtyard, a few feet away.

It was as if she were a witch, a shapeshifter
from one of the fairytales she'd read as a
child.

“Dear,” she said again.

“I thought you were inside,” Penny said,
trying to catch her breath. “But it was just
your reflection.”

Mrs. Stahl did not say anything for a moment,
her hands cupped in front of herself.

Penny saw she was holding a scarlet-covered
book in her palms.

“I often sit out here at night,” she said, voice
loose and tipsy, “reading under the stars. Larry
used to do that, you know.”

She invited Penny into her bungalow, the
smallest one, in back.

“I'd like us to talk,” she said.

Penny did not pause. She wanted to see it.
Wanted to understand.

Walking inside, she realized at last what the
strongest smell in the courtyard was. All
around were pots of night-blooming jasmine,
climbing and vining up the built-in bookshelves,
around the window frame, even trained over the arched doorway into the dining
room.

They drank jasmine tea, iced. The room was
close and Penny had never seen so many books.
None of them looked like they'd ever been
opened, their spines cool and immaculate.

“I have more,” Mrs. Stahl said, waving toward
the mint-walled hallway, some space beyond,
the air itself so thick with the breath of
the jasmine, Penny couldn't see it. “I love
books. Larry taught me how. He knew what
ones I'd like.”

Penny nodded. “At night, I read the books
in the bungalow. I never read so much.”

“I wanted to keep them there. It only
seemed right. And I didn't believe what the
other tenants said, about the paper smelling
like gas.”

At that, Penny had a grim thought. What if
everything smelled like gas and she didn't
know it? The strong scent of apricot, of eucalyptus,
a perpetual perfume suffusing everything.
How would one know?

“Dear, do you enjoy living in Larry's bungalow?”

Penny didn't know what to say, so she only
nodded, taking a long sip of the tea. Was it
rum? Some kind of liqueur? It was very sweet
and tingled on her tongue.

“He was my favorite tenant. Even after …”
she paused, her head shaking, “what he did.”

“And you found him,” Penny said. “That
must have been awful.”

She held up the red-covered book she'd
been reading in the courtyard.

“This was found on … on his person. He
must've been planning on giving it to me. He
gave me so many things. See how it's red, like
a heart?”

“What kind of book is it?” Penny asked,
leaning closer.

Mrs. Stahl looked at her, but didn't seem to
be listening, clasping the book with one hand
while with the other stroked her neck, long
and unlined.

“Every book he gave me showed how much
he understood me. He gave me many things
and never asked for anything. That was when
my mother was dying from Bright's, her face
puffed up like a carnival balloon. Nasty
woman.”

“Mrs. Stahl,” Penny started, her fingers tingling
unbearably, the smell so strong, Mrs.
Stahl's plants, her strong perfume—sandalwood?

“He just liked everyone. You'd think it was
just you. The care he took. Once, he brought
me a brass rouge pot from Paramount studios. He told me it belonged to Paulette Goddard.
I still have it.”

“Mrs. Stahl,” Penny tried again, bolder now,
“were you in love with him?”

The woman looked at her, and Penny felt
her focus loosen, like in those old detective
movies, right before the screen went black.

“He really only wanted the stars,” Mrs.
Stahl said, running her fingers across her décolletage,
the satin of her dressing robe, a
dragon painted up the front. “He said their
skin felt different. They smelled different. He
was strange about smells. Sounds. Light. He
was very sensitive.”

“But you loved him, didn't you?” Penny's
voice more insistent now.

Her eyes narrowed. “Everyone loved him.
Everyone. He said yes to everybody. He gave
himself to everybody.”

“But why did he do it, Mrs. Stahl?”

“He put his head in the oven and died,” she
said, straightening her back ever so slightly.
“He was mad in a way only Southerners and
artistic souls are mad. And he was both. You're
too young, too simple, to understand.”

“Mrs. Stahl, did you do something to
Larry?” This is what Penny was trying to say,
but the words weren't coming. And Mrs. Stahl
kept growing larger and larger, the dragon on
her robe, it seemed, somehow, to be speaking
to Penny, whispering things to her.

“What's in this tea?”

“What do you mean, dear?”

But the woman's face had gone strange,
stretched out. There was a scurrying sound
from somewhere, like little paws, animal
claws, the sharp feet of sharp-footed men. A
gold watch chain swinging and that neighbor
hanging from the pear tree.

She woke to the purple creep of dawn.
Slumped in the same rattan chair in Mrs.
Stahl's living room. Her finger still crooked in
the tea cup handle, her arm hanging to one
side.

“Mrs. Stahl,” she whispered.

But the woman was no longer on the sofa
across from her.

Somehow, Penny was on her feet, inching
across the room.

The bedroom door was ajar, Mrs. Stahl
sprawled on the mattress, the painted dragon
on her robe sprawled on top of her.

On the bed beside her was the book she'd
been reading in the courtyard. Scarlet red,
with a lurid title.

Gaudy Night
, it was called.

Opening it with great care, Penny saw the
inscription:

To Mrs. Stahl, my dirty murderess.

Love, Lawrence.

She took the book, and the tea cup.

She slept for a few hours in her living room,
curled on the zebra print sofa.

She had stopped going into the kitchen two
days ago, tacking an old bath towel over the
doorway so she couldn't even see inside. The
gleaming porcelain of the oven.

She was sure she smelled gas radiating
from it. Spotted blue light flickering behind
the towel.

But still she didn't go inside.

And now she was afraid the smell was coming
through the walls.

It was all connected, you see, and Mrs. Stahl
was behind all of it. The lightspots, the shadows
on the baseboard, the noises in the walls
and now the hiss of the gas.

Mr. Flant looked at the inscription, shaking
his head.

“My god, is it possible? He wasn't making
much sense those final days. Holed up in
Number Four. Maybe he was hiding from her.
Because he knew.”

“It was found on his body,” Penny said,
voice trembling. “That's what she told me.”

“Then this inscription,” he said, reaching
out for Penny's wrist, “was meant to be our
clue. Like pointing a finger from beyond the
grave.”

Penny nodded. She knew what she had to
do.

“I know how it sounds. But someone needs to
do something.”

The police detective nodded, drinking
from his Coca-Cola, his white shirt bright. He
had gray hair at the temples and he said his
name was Noble, which seemed impossible.

“Well, Miss, let's see what we can do. That
was a long time ago. After you called, I had to
get the case file from the crypt. I can't say I
even remember it.” Licking his index finger, he
flicked open the file folder, then beginning
turning pages. “A gas job, right? We got a lot
of them back then. Those months before the
war.”

“Yes. In the kitchen. My kitchen now.”
Looking through the slim folder, he pursed
his lips a moment, then came a grim smile.
“Ah, I remember. I remember. The little men.”

“The little men?” Penny felt her spine
tighten.

“One of our patrolmen had been out there
the week before on a noise complaint. Your
bookseller was screaming in the courtyard.
Claimed there were little men coming out of
the walls to kill him.”

Penny didn't say anything at all. Something
deep inside herself seemed to be screaming
and it took all her effort just to sit there and
listen.

“DTs. Said he'd been trying to kick the
sauce,” he said, reading the report. “He was a
drunk, miss. Sounds like it was a whole courtyard
full of 'em.”

“No,” Penny said, head shaking back and
forth. “That's not it. Larry wasn't like that.”

“Well,” he said, “I'll tell what Larry was like.
In his bedside table we found a half-dozen
catcher's mitts.” He stopped himself, looked at
her. “Pardon. Female contraceptive devices.
Each one with the name of a different woman.
A few big stars. At least they were big then. I
can't remember now.”

Penny was still thinking about the wall. The
little men. And her mice on their hindfeet.
Pixies, dancing fairies.

“There you go,” the detective said, closing
the folder. “Guy's a dipso, one of his high-class affairs turned sour. Suicide. Pretty clear
cut.”

“No,” Penny said.

“No?” Eyebrows raised. “He was in that
oven waist deep, Miss. He even had a hunting
knife in his hand for good measure.”

“A knife?” Penny said, her fingers pressing
her forehead. “Of course. Don't you see? He
was trying to protect himself. I told you on the
phone, detective. It's imperative that you look
into Mrs. Stahl.”

“The landlady. Your landlady?”

“She was in love with him. And he rejected
her, you see.”

“A woman scorned, eh?” he said, leaning
back. “Once saw a jilted lady over on Cheremoya
take a clothes iron to her fellow's face
while he slept.”

“Look at this,” Penny said, pulling Mrs.
Stahl's little red book from her purse.

“
Gaudy Night
,” he said, pronouncing the
first word in a funny way.

“I think it's a dirty book.”

He looked at her, squinting. “My wife owns
this book.”

Penny didn't say anything.

“Have you even read it?” he asked, wearily.

Opening the front to the inscription, she
held it in front of him.

“‘Dirty murderess.'” He shrugged. “So
you're saying this fella knew she was going to
kill him and, instead of going to, say, the police,
he writes this little inscription, then lets
himself get killed?”

Everything sounded so different when he
said it aloud, different than the way everything
joined in perfect and horrible symmetry in
her head.

“I don't know how it happened. Maybe he
was going to go to the police and she beat
him to it. And I don't know how she did it,”
Penny said. “But she's dangerous, don't you
get it?”

It was clear he did not.

“I'm telling you, I see her out there at night,
doing things,” Penny said, her breath coming
faster and faster. “She's doing something with
the natural gas. If you check the gas jets maybe
you can figure it out.”

She was aware that she was talking very
loudly, and her chest felt damp. Lowering her
voice, she leaned toward him.

“I think there might be a clue in my oven,”
she said.

“Do you?” he said, rubbing his chin. “Any
little men in there?”

“It's not like that. It's not. I see them, yes.”

She couldn't look him in the eye or she would lose her nerve. “But I know they're not
really little men. It's something she's doing.
It always starts at two. Two a.m. She's doing
something. She did it to Larry and she's
doing it to me.”