Hollywood Nocturnes (21 page)

  Deep shit without a depth gauge.

  I hauled Jenks to his Plymouth, stuffed him in the front seat, stood back and shot the gas tank. The car exploded; the ex-cop sizzled like french-fried guacamole. I walked over the cliff and looked down. Bob Murikami was spread-eagled on the rocks and shitloads of sunbathers were scooping up cash, fighting each other for it, dancing jigs of greed and howling like hyenas.

  *   *   *

          I tailspinned down to Tijuana, found a flop and a bottle of drugstore hop, and went prowling for Maggie Cordova. A fat white lezbo songbird would stick out, even in a pus pocket like T.J.-- and I knew the heart of T.J. lowlife was the place to start.

  The hop edged down my nerves and gave me a _savoir faire_ my three-day beard and raggedy-assed state needed. I hit the mule act strip and asked questions; I hit the whorehouse strip and the strip that featured live fuck shows twenty-four hours a day. Child beggars swarmed me; my feet got sore from kicking them away. I asked, asked, asked about Maggie Cordova, passing out bribe pesos up the wazoo. Then--right on the street--there she was, turning up a set of stairs adjoining a bottle liquor joint.

  I watched her go up, a sudden jolt of nerves obliterating my dope edge. I watched a light go on above the bottle shop--and Lorna Kafesjian doing "Goody, Goody" wafted down at me.

  Pursuing the dream, I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door.

  Footsteps tapped toward me--and suddenly I felt naked, like a litany of everything I didn't have was underlining the sound of heels over wood.

  No eighty-one-grand reunion stash.

  No Sy Devore suits to make a suitably grand Hollywood entrance.

  No curfew papers for late-night Hollywood spins.

  No P.I. buzzer for _the_ dramatic image of the twentieth century.

  No world-weary, tough-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside sensitive code of honor shtick to score backup pussy with in case Lorna shot me down.

  The door opened; fat Maggie Cordova was standing there. She said, "Spade Hearns. Right?"

  I stood there--dumbstruck beyond dumbstruck. "How did you know that?"

  Maggie sighed--like I was old news barely warmed over. "Years ago I bought some tunes from Lorna Kafesjian. She needed a stake to buy her way out of a shack job with a corny guy who had a wicked bad case on her. She told me the guy was a sewer crawler, and since I was a sewer crawler performing her songs, I might run into him. Here's your ray of hope, Hearns. Lorna said she always wanted to see you one more time. Lor and I have kept in touch, so I've got a line on her. She said I should make you pay for the info. You want it? Then _give_."

  Maggie ended her pitch by drawing a dollar sign in the air. I said, "You fingered the B of A heist. You're dead meat."

  "Nix, gumshoe. You're all over the L.A. papers for the raps you brought down looking for me, and the Mexes won't extradite. _Givesky_."

  I forked over all the cash in my wallet, holding back a fivespot for mad money. Maggie said, "Eight-eighty-one Calle Verdugo. Play it _pianissimo_, doll. Nice and slow."

  *   *   *

          I blew my last finnsky at a used clothing store, picking up a chalk-stripe suit like the one Bogart wore in _The Maltese Falcon_. The trousers were too short and the jacket was too tight, but overall the thing worked. I dry-shaved in a gas station men's room, spritzed some soap at my armpits, and robbed a kiddie flower vendor of the rest of his daffodils. Thus armed, I went to meet my lost love.

  Knock, knock, knock on the door of a tidy little adobe hut; boom, boom, boom, as my overwrought heart drummed a big band beat. The door opened--and I almost screamed.

  The four years since I'd seen Lorna had put forty thousand hard miles on her face. It was sun-soured--seams, pits, and scales; her laugh lines had changed to frown lines as deep as the San Andreas Fault. The body that was once voluptuous in white satin was now bloated in a Mex charwoman's serape. From the deep recesses of what we once had, I dredged a greeting.

  "What's shakin', baby?"

  Lorna smiled, exposing enough dental gold to front a revolution. "Aren't you going to ask me what happened, Spade?"

  I stayed game. "What happened, baby?"

  Lorna sighed. "Your interpretation first, Spade. I'm curious."

  I smoothed my lapels. "You couldn't take a good thing. You couldn't take the dangerous life I led. You couldn't take the danger, romance, the heartache and vulnerability inherent in a meanstreet-treading knight like me. Face it, baby: I was too much man for you."

  Lorna smiled--more cracks appeared in the relief map of her face. She said, "Your theatrics exhausted me more than my own. I joined a Mexican nunnery, got a tan that went bad, started writing music again, and found myself a man of the earth--Pedro, my husband. I make tortillas, wash my clothes in a stream, and dry them on a rock. Sometimes, if Pedro and I need extra jack, I mix Margaritas and work the bar at the Blue Fox. It's a good, simple life."

  I played my ace. "But maggie said you wanted to see me--'one more time,' like--"

  "Yeah, like in the movies. Well, Hearns, it's like this. I sold 'Prison of Love' to about three dozen bistro belters who passed it off as their own. It's ASCAP'd under at least thirty-five titles, and I've made a cool five grand on it. And, well, I wrote the song for you back in our salad days, and in the interest of what we had together for about two seconds, I'm offering you ten percent-- you inspired the damn thing, after all."

  I slumped into the doorway--exhausted by four years of torching, three days of mayhem and killing. "Hit me, baby."

  Lorna walked to a cabinet and returned with a roll of Yankee greenbacks. I winked, pocketed the wad, and walked down the street to a cantina. The interior was dark and cool; Mex cuties danced nude on the bar top. I bought a bottle of tequila and slugged it straight, fed the jukebox nickels and pushed every button listing a female vocalist. When the booze kicked in and the music started, I sat down, watched the nudie gash gyrate, and tried to get obsessed.