I had been playing the piano in Rusty’s bar for four months or so when I met Rima Marshall.
She came into the bar one wild night with the rain pounding down on the tin roof and thunder rumbling in the distance.
There were only two customers at the bar, both drunks. There was Rusty behind the bar, aimlessly polishing glasses. Across the way in a booth, Sam the negro waiter, was reading a racing sheet. There was me at the piano.
I was playing a nocturne by Chopin. My back was turned to the entrance. I didn’t see or hear her come in.
Later, Rusty told me she had come in out of the drowning rain around twenty minutes to nine. She was soaking wet, and she sat down in one of the booths to my right and behind me.
Rusty didn’t like having lone women in his bar. Usually he chased them out, but as the bar was practically empty and it was raining fit to drown a duck, he let her be.
She ordered a coke, and then lighting a cigarette, she rested her elbows on the table and stared broodingly at the two drunks at the bar.
After she had been sitting there for maybe ten minutes, things began to happen.
All of a sudden the bar door crashed open and a man came in. He took four plunging steps into the bar, the way a man walks on a rolling ship, and then came to an abrupt standstill.
It was then Rima began to scream, and it was then I became aware of her and the man who had entered.
Her scream made me jerk around to stare at her.
I’ll always remember my first sight of her. She was around eighteen years of age. Her hair was the colour of polished silver and her wide, large eyes were cobalt blue. She had on a scarlet light-weight sweater that set off her breasts and a pair of black, tight-fitting slacks. There was a grubby unkempt look about her as if she had been living rough. On a chair by her side lay a plastic mac that had a rip in the sleeve and looked on its last legs.
In repose she would have been pretty the way so many girls her age are pretty who clutter up the sidewalks of Hollywood, hunting for film work, but she wasn’t in repose right at that moment.
The terror on her face was ugly to see. Her wide open mouth as it formed her continuous scream was an ugly hole in her face. She was pressing her body against the wall like an animal trying to get back into its burrow, and from her finger nails came a nerve jarring sound of scratching as she clawed at the panelling in a futile, panic-stricken quest for escape.
The man who had come in looked like something straight out of a nightmare. He was around twenty-four, small, fine-boned with a thin, pointed face that was as white as cold mutton fat. His black hair was long and plastered to his head by the rain. It hung down either side of his face in limp strands. It was his eyes that gave him his nightmare appearance. The pupils were enormous, nearly filling the entire iris, and for a moment I got the impression that he was blind. But he wasn’t blind. He was looking at the screaming girl, and there was an expression on his face that had me scared.
He had on a shabby blue suit, a dirty shirt and a black tie that looked like a shoe string. His clothes were soaking wet, and from the cuffs of his trousers water dripped, forming two little puddles on the floor.
For about three or four seconds, he stood motionless, looking at Rima, then out of his thin, vicious mouth came a steady hissing sound.
Rusty, the two drunks and I stared at him. His right hand groped into his hip pocket. He pulled a wicked looking flick-knife. It had a long pointed blade that glittered in the light. Holding the knife, its blade pointing at the screaming girl, he began to move forward, the way a spider moves, quickly, slightly crabwise and the hissing grew in sound.
‘Hey, you!’ Rusty bawled. ‘Drop it!’
But he was careful to stay right where he was behind the bar. The two drunks didn’t move. They sat on the bar stools and watched, their mouths hanging open.
Sam, his face suddenly grey with fear, slid under the table and out of sight.
That left me.
A hay head with a knife is about the most dangerous thing anyone can tackle, but I couldn’t sit there and watch him stab the girl, and I knew that was what he was going to do.
I kicked my chair away and started for him.
Rima had stopped screaming. She pushed the table sideways so it blocked the entrance to the booth.
She held onto the table, staring with blind terror at the man as he came at her.
All this took less than five seconds.
I reached him as he reached the booth.
He seemed completely unaware of me. His concentration on the girl was terrifying.
The knife flashed as I hit him.
It was a wild panicky punch, but there was plenty of weight behind it. It landed on the side of his head and sent him reeling, but it was a fraction late.
The knife slashed her arm. I saw the sleeve of her sweater turn dark, and she slumped back against the wall, then slid down out of sight behind the table.
This I saw out of the corner of my eye. I was watching him all the time. He staggered back until he had got his balance then he came forward again, not looking at me, his owl-like eyes on the booth.
As he reached the table, I set myself and really belted him. My fist connected with the side of his jaw.
The impact lifted him clean off his feet and sent him sprawling on the floor.
He lay on his back, stunned, but he still held onto the blood-stained knife. I jumped forward and stamped on his wrist. I had to stamp twice before he released his grip. I grabbed the knife and threw it across the room.
Hissing like a snake, he bounced to his feet and came at me in a horrible, purposeful rush. He was all over me before I could punch him away. His finger nails raked my face and his teeth snapped at my throat.
Somehow I flung him off, then as he came at me again, I hung one on the point of his chin that sent a jarring pain up my arm and practically tore his head off his shoulders.
He went skittling across the bar, his arms flung wide, to land up against the wall, upsetting a table and smashing a number of glasses.
He lay there, his chin pointing towards the ceiling, his breathing rasping and quick.
As I pulled the table out of the booth, I heard Rusty yelling into the telephone for the police.
Rima was bleeding. She sat huddled up on the floor, blood making a pool by her side, her face chalk-white, her big eyes staring at me.
I must have looked a pretty sight. The hay head’s finger nails had ripped four furrows down the side of my face and I was bleeding nearly as badly as she was.
‘Are you badly hurt?’ I asked, squatting at her side.
She shook her head.
‘I’m all right.’
Her voice was surprisingly steady, and there was no longer that ugly look of terror on her face. She was looking past me at the hay head as he lay unconscious against the wall. She looked at him the way you would look at a hairy-legged spider that suddenly appears at the foot of your bed.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said. ‘He’ll be quiet for hours. Can you stand?’
‘You are bleeding…’
‘And don’t worry about me…’
I offered her my hand. Hers was cold as she put it into mine. I got her to her feet and she leaned against me.
Then the bar door kicked open and a couple of patrolmen stormed in.
They looked at me, bleeding onto the floor and Rima leaning against me, her sweater sleeve blood soaked, and one of them pulled his club and started across towards me.
‘Hey! He’s the guy you want.’ I said.
The cop looked as if he were going to take a swing at my head. He paused, then looked over his shoulder at the hay head on the floor, then back at me.
‘Okay, okay,’ the other patrolman said. ‘Don’t rush it, Tom. Let’s get it all straightened out, shall we?’
Rima gave a sudden sighing moan and fainted. I just had time to take her weight before she slid to the floor.
I knelt by her, supporting her head. I felt pretty bad myself.
‘Can’t you do something?’ I bawled at the patrolman. ‘She’s bleeding!’
The calm cop came over. He took out a pocket knife and cut away her sleeve. He inspected the long, deep cut on her arm. He produced a first-aid pack and in less than a minute, he had strapped her arm, stopping the bleeding.
By then Rusty had explained to the other cop what it was all about, and the cop went over to the hay head and stirred him with his foot.
‘Watch it!’ I said, still supporting Rima. ‘He’s a muggle smoker and he’s hopped to the eyeballs.’
The cop sneered at me.
‘Yeah? Think I don’t know how to handle a junky?’
The hay head came alive. He shot to his feet, snatched up a carafe of water from the bar and before the cop could dodge, he slammed it down on his head. The carafe burst like a bomb and the impact drove the cop onto his knees.
The hay head turned. His owl-like eyes found Rima who was just coming out of her faint. Holding the broken neck of the carafe like a spear, he charged at her and he really had me scared.
I was holding her and kneeling, and in that position I was helpless. If it hadn’t been for the calm cop, both she and I would have been butchered.
He let the hay head go past him, then he slammed his club down on the back of his head.
The hay head shot forward on his face, rolled away from us and the jagged neck of the bottle fell out of his hand.
The cop bent over him and snapped on the handcuffs. The other cop, cursing, leaned weakly against the bar, holding his head between his hands.
The calm cop told Rusty to call the Station House for an ambulance.
I helped Rima to her feet and sat her on a chair well away from where the hay head lay. She was shivering, and I could see the shock was hitting her. I stood by her, holding her against me while with my free hand I kept a handkerchief to my face.
In about five minutes the ambulance and a police car arrived. A couple of guys in white coats bustled in. They strapped the hay head to a stretcher and took him out, then one of them came back and fixed my face.
While this was going on, a big, red-faced plain-clothes man who had come with the ambulance and who had introduced himself as Sergeant Hammond talked to Rusty. Then he came over to Rima.
She sat limply, nursing her arm and staring at the floor.
‘Let’s have it, sister,’ Hammond said. ‘What’s your name?’
I listened because I was curious about her.
She said her name was Rima Marshall.
‘Address?’
‘Simmonds Hotel,’ naming a fifth rate joint along the waterfront.
‘Occupation?’
She glanced up at him, then away. There was a sullen expression on her face as she said, ‘I’m an extra at the Pacific Studios.’
‘Who is the junky?’
‘He calls himself Wilbur. I don’t know his other name.’
‘Why did he try to cut you?’
She hesitated for a split second.
‘We lived together once. I walked out on him.’
‘Why?’
She stared at him.
‘You saw him, didn’t you? Wouldn’t you walk out on him?’
‘Maybe.’ Hammond scowled, pushing his hat to the back of his head. ‘Well, okay. You’ll be wanted in court tomorrow.’
She got unsteadily to her feet.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yeah.’ Hammond turned to one of the cops standing by the door. ‘Drive her to her hotel, Jack.’
Rima said, ‘You’d better check with the New York police. They want him.’
Hammond’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know but they want him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He told me.’
Hammond hesitated, then shrugged. He waved to the cop.
‘Take her to her hotel.’
Rima walked out into the rain, the cop following her. I watched her go. I was a little surprised she didn’t even look at me. I had saved her life, hadn’t I?
Hammond waved me to a chair.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jeff Gordon.’
It wasn’t my real name, but a name I had been using while out in Hollywood.
‘Address?’
I told him. I had a room in a rooming-house at the back of Rusty’s bar.
‘Let’s have your version of the shindig.’
I gave it to him.
‘Do you think he meant business?’
‘If you mean was he going to kill her, I think he was.’
He blew out his cheeks.
‘Well, okay. We’ll want you in court tomorrow at eleven sharp.’ He stared at me. ‘You’d better take care of that face of yours. Have you ever seen her in here before?’
‘No.’
‘It beats me how a good looking girl like her could think of living with a rat like him.’ He grimaced.
‘Girls… thank God, I’ve got a boy.’
He jerked his head at the remaining cop, and together they went out into the rain.
All this I’m telling you about took place a year after Hitler’s war. Pearl Harbour seems a long way in the past now, but at that time I was twenty-one and at college, working hard to qualify as a Consulting Engineer. I was in grabbing distance of my degree when the pace of war hotted up and I couldn’t resist the call to arms. My father nearly hit the ceiling when I told him I was going to volunteer. He tried to persuade me to get my degree before joining up but the thought of another six months in college while there was fighting to be done was something I couldn’t face up to.
Four months later at the age of twenty-two I was one of the first to land on the beaches of Okinawa. I got an inch of red hot shrapnel in my face as I started towards the swaying palm trees that hid the Japanese guns, and that was the end of the war so far as I was concerned.
For the next six months I lay in a hospital bed while the plastic experts remodelled my face.
They made a reasonably good job of it except they left me with a slight droop in my right eyelid and a scar like a silver thread along the right side of my jaw. They told me they could fix that if I cared to stay with them for another three months, but I had had enough. The horrors I had seen in that hospital ward remain with me even now. I couldn’t get out fast enough.
I went home.
My father was a manager of a bank. He hadn’t much money, but he was more than ready to finance me until I had completed my studies as a consulting engineer.
To please him I went back to college, but those months in the battle unit and the months in hospital had done something to me. I found I hadn’t any more interest in Engineering. I just couldn’t concentrate.
After a week’s work, I quit. I told my father how it was. He listened, and he was sympathetic.
‘So what will you do?’
I said I didn’t know, but I did know I couldn’t settle to book work anyway for some time.
His eyes moved from my drooping right eyelid to the scar on my jaw and then he smiled at me.
‘All right, Jeff. You’re still young. Why don’t you go off somewhere and take a look around? I can spare you two hundred dollars. Take a vacation, then come back and settle to work.’
I took the money. I wasn’t proud of taking it because I knew he couldn’t spare it, but right then I was in such a rotten mental state I felt I had to get away or I would crack up.
I arrived in Los Angeles with the vague idea that I might get a job on the movies. That came unstuck pretty fast.
I didn’t care. I didn’t want to work anyway. I hung around the waterfront for a month doing nothing and drinking too much. At that time there were a lot of guys in reserved occupations with uneasy consciences because they hadn’t done any fighting, who were ready to buy drinks for guys in return for battle stories, but this didn’t last long. Pretty soon my money began to run out and I began to wonder what I was going to do for the next meal.
I had got into the habit of going every night to Rusty Mac-Gowan’s bar. It was a bar with a certain amount of character and it faced the bay where the gambling ships are moored. Rusty had got the place up to look like a ship’s cabin with port holes for windows and a lot of brasswork that drove Sam, the negro waiter, crazy to keep polished.
Rusty had been a top sergeant and he had fought the Japs. He knew what I had been up against, and he took an interest in me. He was a very good guy. He was tough and as hard as teak, but there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for me. When he heard I was out of a job, he said he was planning to buy a piano if he could find someone to play it, then he grinned at me.
He had come to the right man. The only thing I could do reasonably well was to play the piano. I told him to go ahead and buy the piano and he bought it.
I played the piano in his bar from eight o’clock in the evening to midnight for thirty bucks a week. It suited me all right. The money paid for my room, my cigarettes and my food. Rusty kept me in liquor.
Every so often he would ask me how much longer I was going to stay with him. He said with my education I should be doing something a lot better than thumping a piano night after night. I told him if it suited me, it was none of his business what I did. Every so often he would ask me again, and I would give him the same answer.
Well, that was the setup when Rima walked in out of the storm. That’s the background. I was twenty-three and no good to anyone. When she walked in, trouble for me walked in with her. I didn’t know it then, but I found out fast enough.
A little after ten o’clock the following morning, Mrs. Millard who ran the rooming-house where I lived, yelled up the stairs that I was wanted on the telephone.
I was trying to shave around the claw marks on my face which had puffed up in the night and now looked terrible. I cursed under my breath as I wiped off the soap.
I went down the three flights of stairs to the booth in the hall and picked up the receiver.
It was Sergeant Hammond.
‘We won’t be wanting you in court, Gordon,’ he said. ‘We’re not going ahead with the assault rap against Wilbur.’
I was surprised.
‘You’re not?’
‘No. That silver wig is certainly the kiss of death. She’s fingered him into a twenty year rap.’
‘What was that?’
‘A fact. We contacted the New York police. They welcomed the news that we had him like a mother finding her long lost child. They have enough on him to put him away for twenty years.’
I whistled.
‘That’s quite a stretch.’
‘Isn’t it?’ He paused. I could hear his heavy slow breathing over the line. ‘She wanted your address.’
‘She did? Well, it’s no secret. Did you give it to her?’
‘No, in spite of the fact she said she just wanted to thank you for saving her life. Take my tip, Gordon, keep out of her way. I have an idea she would be poison to any man.’
That annoyed me. I didn’t take any advice easily.
‘I’ll judge that,’ I said.
‘I expect you will. So long,’ and he hung up.
That evening, around nine o’clock, Rima came into the bar. She was wearing a black sweater and a grey skirt. The black sweater set off her silver hair pretty well.
The bar was crowded. Rusty was so busy he didn’t notice her come in.
She sat at a table right by my side. I was playing an étude by Chopin. No one was listening. I was playing to please myself.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘How’s the arm?’
‘It’s all right.’ She opened her shabby little bag and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Thanks for the rescue act last night.’
‘Think nothing of it. I’ve always been a hero.’ I slid my hands off the keys and turned so I faced her.
‘I know I look terrible, but it won’t last long.’
She cocked her head on one side as she stared at me.
‘From the look of you, you seem to make a habit of getting your face into trouble.’
‘That’s a fact.’ I turned and began to pick out the melody of It Had To Be You. Remarks about my face embarrassed me. ‘I hear Wilbur is going away for twenty years.’
‘Good riddance!’ She wrinkled her nose, grimacing. ‘I hope I’ve lost him for good now. He stabbed two policemen in New York. He was lucky they didn’t die. He’s a great little stabber.’
‘He certainly must be.’
Sam, the waiter, came up and looked enquiringly at her.
‘You’d better order something,’ I said to her, ‘or you’ll get thrown out.’
‘Is that an invitation?’ she asked, lifting her eyebrows at me.
‘No. If you can’t buy your own drinks you shouldn’t come in here.’
She told Sam to bring her a coke.
‘While we are on the subject,’ I said to her, ‘I don’t reckon to have attachments. I can’t afford them.’
She stared at me blankly.
‘Well, you’re frank even if you are stingy.’
‘That’s the idea. Frank Stingy, that’s the name, baby.’
I began to play Body and Soul.
Since I had got that lump of shrapnel in my face, I had lost interest in women the way I had lost interest in work. There had been a time when I went for the girls the way most college boys go for them, but I couldn’t be bothered now. Those six months in the plastic surgery ward had drained everything out of me: I was a sexless zombie, and I liked it.
Suddenly I became aware that Rima was singing softly to my playing, and after five or six bars, I felt a creepy sensation crawl up my spine.
This was no ordinary voice. It was dead on pitch, slightly off-beat on the rhythm as it should be, and as clear as a silver bell. It was the clearness that got me after listening for so long to the husky torch singers who moan at you from the discs.
I played on and listened to her. She stopped abruptly when Sam came with the coke. When he had gone I swung around and stared at her.
‘Who taught you to sing like that?’
‘Sing? Why, nobody. Do you call that singing?’
‘Yes, I call it singing. What are you like with the throttle wide open?’
‘You mean loud?’
‘That’s what I mean.’
She hunched her shoulders.
‘I can be loud.’
‘Then go ahead and be loud. Body and Soul. As loud as you damn well like.’
She looked startled.
‘I’ll be thrown out.’
‘You go ahead and be loud. I’ll take care of it if it’s any good. If it isn’t, I don’t care if you are thrown out.’
I began to play.
I had told her to be loud, but what came out of her throat shook me. I expected it to be something, but not this volume of silver sound, with a knife edge that cut through the uproar around the bar like a razor slicing through silk.
The first three bars killed the uproar. Even the drunks stopped yammering. They turned to stare.
Rusty, his eyes popping, leaned across the bar, his ham-like hands knotted into fists.
She didn’t even have to stand up. Leaning back, and slightly swelling her deep chest, she let it come out of her as effortlessly as water out of a tap. The sound moved into the room and filled it. It hit everyone between the eyes: it snagged them the way a hook snags a fish. It was on pitch; it was swing; it was blues; it was magnificent!
We did a verse and a chorus, then I signalled to her to cut it. The last note came out of her and rolled up my spine and up the spines of the drunks right into their hair. It hung for a moment filling the room before she cut it off and let the glasses on the bar shelf settle down and stop rattling.
I sat motionless, my hands resting on the keys and waited.
It was as I imagined it would be. It was too much for them. No one clapped or cheered. No one looked her way. Rusty picked up a glass and began to polish it, his face embarrassed. Three or four of the regulars drifted to the door and went out. The conversation started to buzz again, although on an uneasy note. It had been too good for them; they just couldn’t take it.
I looked at Rima and she wrinkled her nose at me. I got to know that expression of hers: it meant: ‘So what? Do you think I care?’
‘Pearls before swine,’ I said. ‘With a voice like that you can’t fail to go places. You could sing yourself into a fortune. You could be a major sensation!’
‘Do you think so?’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘Tell me something: where can I find a cheap room to live in? I’m nearly out of money.’
I laughed at her.
‘You should worry about money. Don’t you realise your voice is pure gold?’
‘One thing at the time,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to economise.’
‘Come to my place,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing cheaper, and nothing more horrible. 25 Lexon Avenue: first turning on the right as you leave here.’
She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up.
‘Thanks. I’ll go and fix it.’
She walked out of the bar, her hips swaying slightly, her silver head held high.
All the lushes up the bar stared after her. One of them was stupid enough to whistle after her.
It wasn’t until Sam nudged me that I realised she had gone without paying for the coke.
I paid for it.
I felt it was the least I could do after listening to that wonderful voice.
I got back to my room just after midnight. As I unlocked my door, the door opposite opened and Rima looked at me.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You see: I’ve moved in.’
‘I warned you it wasn’t much,’ I said, opening my door and turning on the light, ‘but at least it’s cheap.’
‘Did you really mean that about my singing?’
I went into my room, leaving the door wide open and I sat on the bed.
‘I meant it. You could make money with that voice.’
‘There are thousands of singers out here starving to death.’ She crossed the passage and leaned against my door post. ‘I hadn’t thought of competing. I think it would be easier to make money as a movie extra.’
I hadn’t been able to work up any enthusiasm about anything since I had come out of the Army, but I was enthusiastic about her voice.
I had already talked to Rusty about her. I had suggested she should sing in the joint, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He had agreed she could sing, but he was emphatic that he wasn’t having any woman singing in his bar. He said it was certain to lead to trouble sooner or later. He had enough trouble now running the bar without looking for more.
‘There’s a guy I know,’ I said to Rima, ‘who might do something for you. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.
He runs a night club on 10th Street. It’s not much, but it could be a start.’
‘Well, thanks…’
Her voice sounded so flat I looked sharply at her.
‘Don’t you want to sing professionally?’
‘I’d do anything to make some money.’
‘Well, I’ll talk to him.’
I kicked off my shoes, giving her the hint to go back to her room, but she still stood there watching me with her big cobalt blue eyes.
‘I’m going to hit the sack,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow sometime. I’ll talk to this guy.’
‘Thanks.’ She still stood there. ‘Thanks a lot.’ Then after a pause, she said, ‘I hate to ask you. Could you lend me five dollars? I’m flat broke.’
I took off my coat and tossed it on a chair.
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘I’ve been flat broke for the past six months. Don’t worry your head about it. You’ll get used to it.’
‘I haven’t had anything to eat all day.’
I began to undo my tie.
‘Sorry. I’m broke too. I haven’t anything to spare. Go to bed. You’ll forget to be hungry when you are asleep.’
She suddenly arched her chest at me. Her face was completely expressionless as she said, ‘I must have some money. I’ll spend the night with you if you will lend me five bucks. I’ll pay you back.’
I hung up my coat in the closet. With my back turned to her I said, ‘Beat it. I told you: I don’t have attachments. Get out of here, will you?’
I heard my bedroom door shut and I grimaced. Then I turned the key. After I had washed in the tin bowl on the dressing-table and changed the plaster on my face I got into bed.
I wondered about her, and this was the first time for months that I had even thought about a woman. I wondered why she hadn’t got going as a singer before now. With a voice like hers, her looks and her apparent willingness, it was hard to imagine why she hadn’t become a success.
I thought about her voice. Maybe this guy I knew who ran the Blue Rose night club and whose name was Willy Floyd might be interested.
There was a time when Willy had been interested in me. He had wanted me to play the piano in a three piece combination, working from eight to three o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t bring myself to work with the other guys, and that was why I had thrown in with Rusty. Willy had offered me twice as much money as Rusty paid me, but the thought of having to play with the other guys choked me off.
Every now and then I got a violent itch to make more money, but the effort to get it discouraged me. I would have liked to have moved out of this room which was pretty lousy. I would have liked to have bought a second-hand car so I could go off on my own when I felt like it.
I wondered now, as I lay in the darkness, if I couldn’t pick up some easy money by acting as this girl’s agent. With a voice like hers, properly handled, she might eventually make big money. She might even make a fortune if she could break into the disc racket. A steady ten per cent of whatever she made might give me the extra things I wanted to have.
I heard the sudden sound of sneezing coming from her room. I remembered how soaked she had been the other night when she had come into Rusty’s bar. It would be her luck and mine too if she had caught cold and couldn’t sing.
She was still sneezing when I fell asleep.
The next morning, a little after eleven o’clock, when I came out of my room, she was right there in her doorway, waiting for me.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I heard you sneezing last night. Have you caught cold?’
‘No.’
In the hard light of the sun coming through the passage window, she looked terrible. Her dark ringed eyes were watery, her nose was red and her face was white and pinched looking.
‘I’m going to talk to Willy Floyd right now,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’d better rest up. You look like something the cat’s dragged in. Willy won’t be interested if he sees you like this.’
‘I’m all right.’ She passed a limp hand across her face. ‘Could you spare me half a dollar for some coffee?’
‘For the love of Mike! Cut it out, will you? I told you: I have nothing to spare.’
Her face began to sag. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
‘But I’ve had nothing to eat for two days! I don’t know what I’m going to do! Can’t you spare me something… anything…?’
‘I’m broke like you!’ I yelled at her, losing my temper. ‘I’m trying to get you a job! I can’t do more than that, can I?’
‘I’m starving!’ She leaned weakly against the wall and began to wring her hands. ‘Please lend me something…’
‘For Pete’s sake! All right! I’ll lend you half a buck, but you’ve got to pay me back!’
It had suddenly occurred to me that if she was to make any kind of impression on Willy, if she was to get a job with him, and if I were going to pick up ten per cent cut, I’d have to see she didn’t starve.
I went back into my room, unlocked my dressing-table drawer and found half a dollar. In this drawer I kept my week’s wages I had just received from Rusty; thirty dollars. I kept my back turned so she couldn’t see what was in the drawer, and I was careful to close and lock the drawer before giving her the half dollar.
She took it and I saw her hand was shaking.
‘Thanks. I’ll pay it back. Honest I will.’
‘You’d better pay it back,’ I said. ‘I’ve just enough to live on, and I don’t reckon to finance anyone and that includes you.’
I moved out of the room, shut the door and locked it and put the key in my pocket.
‘I’ll be right in my room if you want me,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go down to the café across the way for a cup of coffee, then I’ll be back.’
‘Try to brighten yourself up, will you? If Willy wants to see you tonight, he’s got to see you looking a lot better than you are now. Sure you can sing?’
She nodded.
‘I can sing all right.’
‘Be seeing you,’ I said and went down the stairs and out into the sunshine.
I found Willy in his office with a pile of twenty dollar bills in front of him. He was counting them: every now and then he would lick a dirty finger to get a better purchase.
He nodded to me, then went on counting while I propped up the wall and waited.
His office wasn’t much, but neither was the night club.
Willy was always a loud dresser. His pale blue flannel suit and his hand painted tie with the phony diamond stick pin set my teeth on edge.
He put the money in his desk drawer, then leaned back and looked at me inquiringly.
‘What’s biting you, Jeff?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve found a girl who can sing,’ I said. ‘You’ll rave about her, Willy. She’s just what you’ve been looking for.’
His round pasty face showed boredom. He was fat, short and going bald. He had a small mouth, small eyes and a small mind.
‘I’m not looking for any dames who can sing. If I wanted them they are a dime a dozen, but I don’t want them. When are you going to play the piano for me? It’s time you got wise to yourself, Jeff. You’re wasting your life.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’m all right where I am. You’ve got to hear this girl, Willy. You could get her pretty cheap and she would be a sensation. She’s got looks and she’s got a voice that will stand your lousy customers right on their ears.’
He took a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end and spat it across the room.
‘I didn’t think you went for women.’
‘I don’t. This is strictly business. I’m acting as her agent. Let me bring her around tonight. It won’t cost you a dime. I want you to hear her, then we can talk business.’
He shrugged his fat shoulders.
‘Well, okay. I’m not promising anything, but if she’s as good as you say she is I might possibly find something for her.’
‘She’s better than I say.’
He lit his cigar and blew smoke at me.
‘Look, Jeff, why don’t you get smart? When are you going to throw up this way of living? A guy with your education should be doing something better…’
‘Skip it,’ I said impatiently. ‘I’m happy as I am. See you tonight,’ and I walked out.
I was pretty sure once Willy had heard her, he would give her a job. Maybe I could get him to pay her seventy-five a week. That would be seven and a half dollars extra in my pocket. I was also pretty sure that after she had been singing at Willy’s joint for a couple of weeks, people would begin to talk about her, then I could ease her into one of the plush niteries where the pay-off would mean something.
I got quite worked up about this idea. I began to imagine myself as a big-shot agent with a swank office, and in time, interviewing and fixing up the big stars.
I went straight back to my rooming-house. Now was the time to tell Rima I was going to be her agent.
I wouldn’t introduce her to Willy until I had her under contract. I wasn’t going to be mug enough to introduce her to Willy, and then for some other guy to grab her.
I went up the three flights of stairs two at a time and walked into her room Carrie, the maid of all work, was stripping the bed. There was no sign of Rima.
Carrie stared at me. She was a big, fat woman who had a drunken, out-of-work husband.
She and I got along fine together. When she did my room, we talked over our troubles. She had many more than I, but she always managed to keep cheerful and she was always urging me to throw up the life I was living and go home.
‘Where’s Miss Marshall?’ I said, pausing in the doorway.
‘She checked out half an hour ago.’
‘Checked out? You mean she’s left?’
‘Why, yes. She’s gone.’
I felt horribly deflated.
‘Didn’t she leave a message for me? Didn’t she say where she was going?’
‘No, and she didn’t leave anything for you.’
‘Did she pay for her room, Carrie?’
Carrie grinned, showing her big yellow teeth. The idea of anyone walking out of Mrs. Millard’s establishment without paying amused her.
‘She paid.’
‘How much?’
‘Two bucks.’
I drew in a long, slow breath. It looked as if I had been taken for a ride for half a dollar. She must have had money all the time. The starvation story had been an act and I had fallen for it.
I went over to my door, took out the key, put it in the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t turn. I tried the handle and the door swung open. It wasn’t locked. I remembered locking it before I left to see Willy, and now it was unlocked.
I had a sudden feeling of uneasiness as I went to my dressing-table drawer. That was unlocked too, and the thirty dollars that had to last me for a week had vanished.
I had been taken for a ride all right.
I had a pretty thin week. Rusty staked me to a couple of meals a day, but he wouldn’t finance my cigarettes. Mrs. Millard let the rent ride after I had promised to pay extra the following week. I got through the next seven days somehow, and I thought a lot about Rima. I told myself if ever I ran into her, I’d give her something to remember me by. I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to break into the agency racket. But after a couple of weeks, I forgot about her, and my routine, non-productive life went on as before.
Then one day, a month after she had walked out on me, taking my money, Rusty asked me if I would go into Hollywood and collect a neon sign he had ordered. He said I could borrow his car and he’d give me a couple of bucks for my trouble.
I hadn’t anything better to do so I went. I collected the sign which I put in the back of the battered Oldsmobile. Then I took a drive around the film studios for something better to do.
I saw Rima outside the entrance to the Paramount Studios, arguing with the guard. I recognised her silver head as soon as I saw it.
She was wearing black skin tight jeans, a red shirt and red ballet type slippers. She looked uncared for and grubby.
I slid the car into a vacant place between a Buick and a Cadillac and walked over to her.
As I approached her, the guard went into his office and slammed the door. Rima turned and started towards me, without noticing me.
She only became aware of me when she was within three or four feet of me. She came to an abrupt stop and stared at me. Recognition jumped into her eyes and a hot flush rose to her face.
She looked furtively to right and left, but there was nowhere for her to run to, so she decided to brazen it out.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Hello.’
I moved slightly forward so I was within grabbing distance of her if she tried to make a bolt for it.
‘You owe me thirty dollars,’ I said and smiled at her.
‘What’s that supposed to be — a joke?’ Her cobalt blue eyes looked everywhere but at me. ‘Thirty dollars for what?’
‘The thirty dollars you stole from me,’ I said. ‘Come on, baby, let’s have it or you and I will go to the Station house and let them sort it out.’
‘I didn’t steal anything from you. I owe you half a dollar: no more.’
My hand closed around her thin arm.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Don’t make a scene. I’m a lot stronger than you. You’re coming to the Station House and we’ll get them to say who is lying and who isn’t.’
She made a feeble effort to break loose, but my fingers biting into her arm must have told her she didn’t stand a chance for with a sudden shrug of her shoulders, she walked with me to the Oldsmobile. I pushed her in and got in beside her.
As I started the engine, she said, a sudden note of interest in her voice, ‘Is this yours?’
‘No, baby, I’ve borrowed it. I’m still broke, and I’m still going to get my money out of you. How have you been getting on since the last time we met?’
She wrinkled her nose, slumping down in her seat.
‘Not so good. I’m flat broke.’
‘Well, a little stretch in jail will help out. At least, they feed you for free in jail.’
‘You wouldn’t send me to jail.’
‘That’s right, I wouldn’t providing you give me back my thirty dollars.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She turned, arching her chest at me and putting her hand on my arm. ‘I just had to have the money. I’ll pay it back. I swear I will.’
‘Don’t swear about it. Just give it to me.’
‘I haven’t got it now. I’ve spent it.’
‘Give me your purse.’
Her hand closed over the shabby little handbag.
‘No!’
I swung the car to the kerb and pulled up.
‘You heard what I said! Give me your purse or I’ll run you to the nearest Station House.’
She glared at me, her cobalt blue eyes glittering.
‘Leave me alone! I haven’t any money! I’ve spent it all.’
‘Look baby, I’m not interested. Give me your purse or you’ll talk to the cops!’
‘You’ll be sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean that. I don’t forget easily.’
‘I don’t give a damn how fast you forget,’ I said. ‘Give me your purse!’
She dropped her shabby handbag into my lap.
I opened it. There were five dollars and eight cents in it, a pack of cigarettes, a room key and a soiled handkerchief.
I took the money, put it in my pocket and then shutting the bag, I tossed it back to her.
As she clutched it, she said softly, ‘That’s something I’ll never forget.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’ll teach you not to steal from me in the future. Where are you living?’
Her face a hard mask, her tone sullen, she told me: a rooming-house not far from where we were.
‘That’s where we are going.’
Following her sullen directions, I drove to the rooming house that was a shade dirtier and a shade more dilapidated than the one I lived in, and we got out of the car.
‘You are coming to live with me, baby,’ I told her. ‘You’re going to earn some money singing, and you’re going to pay me back what you stole from me. From now on I’m going to be your agent, and you’re paying me ten per cent of whatever you make. We’re going to get it down in writing, but first, you’re going to pack and get out of this joint.’
‘I’ll never make any money out of singing.’
‘You leave me to worry about that,’ I said. ‘You’re going to do what I tell you or you’ll go to jail.
Please yourself what you do, only hurry up and make up your mind.’
‘Why don’t you leave me alone? I tell you I won’t earn anything by singing.’
‘Are you coming with me or are you going to jail?’
She stared at me for a long moment. The smouldering look of hate in her eyes didn’t bother me. I had her where I wanted her and she could hate me as much as she liked. She was going to pay me back my money.
Shrugging, she said, ‘All right, I’ll come with you.’
It didn’t take her long to pack. I had to part with four of her dollars to take care of the room, then I drove her back to my rooming-house.
The room she had had was still empty so she moved back in. While she was unpacking, I wrote out an agreement, full of legal phrases that didn’t mean a thing but looked impressive and made me her agent on a ten per cent basis.
I took it into her room.
‘Sign here,’ I said, pointing to the dotted line.
‘I’m not signing anything,’ she said sullenly.
‘Sign this or we’ll take a walk to the Station House.’
Again that look of smouldering hate came into her eyes, but she signed.
‘Okay,’ I said, putting the paper in my pocket, ‘tonight we’re going to the Blue Rose and you’re going to sing. You’re going to sing as you’ve never sung before, and you’ll get an engagement worth seventy five bucks a week. I take ten per cent of that and the thirty bucks you owe me. From now on, baby, you’re working first for me, then for yourself.’
‘I’m not going to earn anything: you wait and see.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ I stared at her. ‘With that voice you could make a fortune.’
She lit a cigarette and drew smoke down into her lungs. She suddenly seemed listless and she slumped in the chair as if her backbone had melted.
‘Okay. Anything you say.’
‘What are you going to wear?’
Making an obvious effort, she got up and opened the wardrobe. She had only one dress and that wasn’t much, but I knew the Blue Rose didn’t go in for bright lights, and I thought the dress would get by in a pinch. It would have to.
‘Couldn’t I have something to eat?’ she asked, flopping on the chair again. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’
‘That’s all you think about — eating. You’ll eat after you’ve got the job and not before. What did you do with all that money you stole from me?’
‘I lived on it.’ Her face was sullen again. ‘How else do you imagine I’ve lived this past month?’
‘Don’t you ever work?’
‘When I can.’
I asked her what I had been wondering about ever since I first met her.
‘How did you get hooked up with that junky, Wilbur?’
‘He had money. He wasn’t stingy like you.’
I sat on the bed.
‘Where did he get it from?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. There was a time when he ran a Packard. If he hadn’t had trouble with the cops we’d be still riding in it.’
‘When he ran into trouble, you walked out on him?’
She put her hand inside her shirt and adjusted her bra strap.
‘Why not? The cops were after him. It was nothing to do with me so I skipped.’
‘That was in New York?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you get the fare down here?’
Her eyes shifted.
‘I had some money. What’s it to you?’
‘I bet you helped yourself to his money as you helped yourself to mine.’
‘Anything you say,’ she said indifferently. ‘Think what you like.’
‘What are you going to sing tonight? You’d better start with Body and Soul. What do you know for an encore?’
‘What makes you think there will be an encore?’ she said, her expression sullen again.
I controlled the urge to slap her.
‘We’ll keep to the old ones. Do you know Can’t Help Loving That Man?’
‘Yes.’
That was the one. With that loud, silver tone she would really knock them with that.
‘Fine.’ I looked at my watch. It was getting on for quarter past seven. ‘I’ll be right back. You get changed. See you in about an hour.’
I went over to the door and took the key.
‘Just so you don’t get ideas of running away, baby, I’m going to lock you in.’
‘I won’t run away.’
‘I’ll take care you don’t.’
Going out, I shut the door and locked it.
I delivered the neon sign to Rusty and told him I wouldn’t be in that evening.
He stared at me and began scratching his head in an embarrassed way.
‘Look, Jeff, it’s time we had a little talk. Your piano playing isn’t appreciated here. I can’t go on paying you thirty bucks a week. Look, be sensible and go home. The life you’re leading here is no good to you. Anyway, I can’t keep you on. I’m getting a juke box. This is your last week.’
I grinned at him.
‘Okay, Rusty. I know you mean well, but I’m not going home. The next time you see me I’ll be riding in a Cadillac.’
I wasn’t worried about losing the thirty bucks a week. I was certain Rima would be in the money in a few weeks. With that voice she couldn’t miss. I was sure of it.
I called up Willy Floyd and told him I was bringing Rima for him to hear around half past nine.
He said all right, but he didn’t sound enthusiastic. Then I went back to the rooming-house, unlocked Rima’s door, and looked in.
She was lying on the bed, asleep.
There was plenty of time so I let her sleep and going into my room, I shaved and put on a clean shirt.
I took my tuxedo from the closet and spent a little time sponging and pressing it. It was on its last legs, but it would have to do until I got enough money to buy another.
At a quarter to nine I went into her room and woke her up.
‘Okay, champ,’ I said. ‘Get moving. You have half an hour.’
She seemed pretty listless, and I could see it was an effort for her to drag herself off the bed.
Maybe she really was hungry, I thought. I couldn’t expect her to give a performance if she was as bad as she looked.
‘I’ll send Carrie out for a sandwich,’ I said. ‘It’ll be up here by the time you’re dressed.’
‘Anything you say.’
Her indifference began to worry me. I left her as she began to strip off her jeans. I went down to where Carrie was airing herself on the doorstep.
I asked her to get me a chicken sandwich.
She came back with it in a paper bag about ten minutes later and I took it into Rima’s room.
Rima had got her dress on and was sitting staring at herself in the fly blown mirror. I dropped the bag into her lap, but she brushed it off, grimacing.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘For the love of Mike…!’
I caught hold of her arms and hauled her to her feet and gave her a hard little shake.
‘Snap out of it, will you! You’re going to sing tonight! This is your big chance! Come on! Eat this goddam sandwich. You’re always moaning about your hunger! Well, go ahead and eat it!’
She picked up the bag, took out the sandwich and began to nibble at it. When she got to the chicken she hurriedly put the sandwich down.
‘If I eat any more, I’ll throw up.’
I ate the sandwich myself.
‘You make me tired,’ I said with my mouth full. ‘There are times when I wish I’d never met you.
Well, come on! Let’s go. I told Willy we would be there at half past nine.’
Still eating, I stepped back and looked at her. She looked like a fragile ghost as white as old ivory with dark smudges under her eyes, but in spite of that, she did manage to look interesting and sexy.
We went down the stairs and out onto the street.
It was a hot night, but as she brushed against me, walking down the street, I could feel she was trembling.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ I demanded. ‘Are you cold? What is it?’
‘Nothing.’
She suddenly sneezed violently.
‘Cut that out, will you?’ I yelled at hex. ‘You’ve got to sing tonight!’
‘Anything you say.’
I was getting fed up with her, but I kept thinking of that voice. If she began to sneeze all over Willy Floyd, she would make one hell of a hit with him.
We got on a street car and rode down to 10th Street. The car was full and she was pressed up hard against me. Every now and then I felt her thin body quiver into a shaking fit. She began to worry me.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked her. ‘You’ll be able to sing, won’t you?’
‘I’m all right. Leave me alone!’
The Blue Rose was crammed with the usual hard-bitten bunch of near-successful, near-honest business men, the near-beautiful floosies, the bit players from the Studios and a sprinkling of gangsters out for an evening’s relaxation.
The band was playing a slick line of hot swing. Waiters were chasing and sweating, and the atmosphere was thick enough to lean on.
I shoved Rima ahead of me until we reached Willy’s office. I knocked, opened the door and moved her inside.
Willy was cleaning his nails, his feet on his desk. He looked up and scowled at us.
‘Hi, Willy,’ I said. ‘Here we are. Meet Rima Marshall.’
Willy stared at her and nodded. His small eyes went over her and he grimaced.
‘When do we go on?’ I asked.
He shrugged.
‘I don’t care. Now, if you like.’ He lowered his feet to the floor. ‘Are you sure she’s good? She doesn’t look all that hot to me.’
With an unexpected flash of spirit, Rima said, ‘I didn’t ask to come here…’
‘Pipe down,’ I said. ‘I’m handling this.’ To Willy, I said, ‘Just wait. For that crack, she’s going to cost you a hundred.’
Willy laughed.
‘Boy! She would have to be something for me to part with that kind of money. Well, come on. Let’s hear what she can do.’
We went out into the restaurant and stood around in the semi-darkness until the band stopped playing.
Then Willy went up onto the dias. He told the boys to take a rest, and then he announced Rima.
He didn’t give her much of a build up. He said here was a little girl who would like to sing a couple of songs. Then he waved his hands to us, and we were set to go.
‘As loud as you like,’ I said to Rima and I sat down at the piano.
Most of the people hadn’t even bothered to stop talking. None of them gave her a hand.
I didn’t care. I knew the moment she opened her mouth and let out that stream of silver sound she would stun them fast enough into silence.
Willy stood near me, frowning. He kept looking at Rima. He seemed worried about something.
Rima stood by the piano, staring expressionlessly into the smoke laden darkness. She seemed completely at ease.
I began to play.
She came in dead on pitch. She sang the first six or seven bars like a professional. The tone was there.
The sound was pure silver. The rhythm was right.
I was watching her. Then it began to go sour. I saw her face begin to sag. She lost pitch. The tone turned brassy. Then abruptly she stopped singing and she began to sneeze. She leaned forward, sneezing, her hands hiding her face, her body shaking.
There was a horrible silence except for her sneezing. Then a buzz of voices.
I stopped playing, feeling cold chills chasing up and down my spine.
I heard Willy yelling at me: ‘Get that junky out of here! What the hell do you mean bringing a hop head into my place! Get her out! You hear me? Get this damned junky out of here!’
Rima lay on her bed, her face half hidden by the pillow, her body shaking, and every now and then she sneezed.
I stood at the foot of the bed and watched her.
I should have known, I told myself. I should have recognised the symptoms. It just hadn’t occurred to me that she was a junky, although the writing was up on the wall that night when I had heard her sneezing by the hour.
Willy Floyd had been mad at me. Before he had thrown us out, he had told me if I ever showed my face inside his club again he’d get his bouncer to fix me, and he meant it.
I had had a hell of a time getting Rima back to her room. She was in such a state I hadn’t dared to take her in a street car. I had had to half carry her, half drag her through the back alleys until I had got her to her room.
She was quietening down now.
I watched and I felt pretty sick.
I had lost my job with Rusty and I had got in bad with Willy Floyd. All I had got out of the evening was a drug addict in my hair.
I should have packed my bag and walked out on her. I wished I had, but I kept hearing that silver voice of hers, knowing that it could make a fortune, that I had her under contract and some of the fortune could be mine.
Suddenly she rolled over and stared at me.
‘I warned you,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Now get out of here and leave me alone!’
‘Okay, you warned me,’ I said, resting my arms on the bedrail and staring back at her. ‘But you didn’t tell me what was wrong. How long have you been on the stuff?’
‘Three years. I’ve got the habit.’ She sat up and taking out her handkerchief, she began to mop her eyes. She looked as romantic as a dirty bath towel.
‘Three years? How old are you then?’
‘Eighteen. What’s it to you how old I am?’
‘You started on the stuff when you were fifteen?’ I said, horrified.
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘Did Wilbur feed you the stuff?’
‘What if he did?’ She blew her nose. ‘Do you want me to sing? Do you want me to be a big success?
If you do, give me some money. When I’ve had a big enough shot, I’m wonderful. You haven’t heard anything yet. Give me some money. That’s all I want.’
I sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Talk sense. I haven’t any money. If I had, I wouldn’t give it to you. Listen, with that voice of yours, you could go places. I know it. I’m sure of it. We’re going to get you a cure. Then when the habit’s broken, you’ll be okay and in the money.’
‘That’s stale news. It doesn’t work. Give me some money. Five dollars will do. I know a guy…’
‘You’re going to a hospital…’
She sneered at me.
‘Hospital? They’re full up with junkies like me, and they don’t cure you anyway. I’ve been to hospital. Give me five dollars. I’ll sing for you. I’ll be terrific. Just give me five dollars.’
I couldn’t take any more of it. The look in her eyes sickened me. I had had all I wanted for one night.
I made for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded.
‘I’m going to bed. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about it. I’ve had enough for tonight.’
I went into my room and locked the door.
I couldn’t sleep. Soon after two o’clock I heard her door open and I heard her tip-toe down the passage. Right then I didn’t care if she had jacked and gone. I had had as much of her as I could take for one night.
Around ten o’clock the next morning, I got up, dressed, and went to her room, opened the door and looked in.
She was in bed, sleeping. I had only to look at her relaxed expression to know she had got a shot from somewhere. She looked pretty, with her silver hair spread out on the pillow: pretty, without that awful, scraped bony look. Somehow, she had found a sucker to part with his money.
I closed the door and went down and out into the sunshine. I walked over to Rusty’s bar.
Rusty looked surprised when he saw me come in.
‘I want to talk to you,’ I said. ‘This is serious, Rusty.’
‘Okay: talk away. What is it?’
‘This girl can sing. She has a fortune in her voice. I have her under contract. This could be my big chance, Rusty. She really could make a fortune.’
Rusty studied me, puzzled.
‘Okay. Where’s the catch? If she could, why hasn’t she?’
‘She’s a junky.’
Rusty’s face wrinkled in disgust.
‘So?’
‘I’ve got to get her cured. Who do I go to? What do I do?’
‘You’re asking me what to do? I’ll tell you.’ He poked my chest with a finger the size of a banana.
‘You get rid of her, and you get rid of her fast. You can’t do a thing with a junky, Jeff. I know: I’m telling you. Okay, the quacks claim they can cure them, but for how long? A month, maybe two months, maybe even three months, then the peddlers smell them out and sell them the stuff and they start all over again. Listen, son, I like you and I’m interested in you. You have brains and education. Don’t mix yourself up with trash. A girl like her isn’t worth bothering about. Never mind if she can sing. Get rid of her. All she’ll ever bring you is grief.’
I wish I had listened to him. He was right, but nobody would have convinced me at that time. I was sure she had a fortune in her voice. All I had to do was to get her cured, and the money would roll in. I was sure of it.
‘Who do I take her to, Rusty? Do you know anyone who could cure her?’
Rusty ran the back of his hand under his nose: a gesture that showed his irritation.
‘Cure her? No one can cure her! What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?’
I held onto my temper. This was important to me. If I could get her cured, she would be a gold mine. I knew it. I was absolutely sure of it.
‘You’ve been around, Rusty. You get to hear things. Who’s the guy who really fixes these junkies?
There must be someone. The movie world is crammed with junkies. They get cured. Who’s the guy who fixes them?’
Rusty rubbed the back of his neck, scowling.
‘Sure, but those folk have money. A cure costs money. There is a guy, but from what I hear he costs plenty.’
‘Well, okay, maybe I can borrow the money. I’ve got to get her cured. Who is he?’
‘Dr. Klinzi,’ Rusty said. He suddenly grinned. ‘You’re killing me. He’s way out of your class, but he’s the boy. He’s the one who cured Mona Gissing and Frankie Ledder,’ naming two of Pacific Studio’s biggest stars. ‘They were muggle smokers, but he fixed them.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘He’s in the book,’ Rusty said. ‘Look, Jeff, you’re making a fool of yourself. This guy costs the earth.’
‘I don’t care what he costs so long as he can cure her. I’ll sell him a piece of her. She’s going to make a fortune. I feel it in my bones. With that voice, she can’t go wrong.’
‘You’re nuts.’
‘Okay, so I’m nuts.’
I got Dr. Klinzi’s address from the telephone book. He had a place on Beverley Glyn Boulevard.
Watching me, Rusty said, ‘Listen to me, Jeff. I know what I’m talking about. The worst thing anyone can do is to get tangled with a junky. You can never trust them. They are dangerous. They haven’t the sense of responsibility sane people have. They are crazy in the head. You have got to face that fact. It’s not like dealing with normal people. They will do anything and they don’t count the cost. Get rid of this girl. She’ll only bring you grief. You just can’t mix yourself up with a girl like her.’
‘Save it,’ I said. ‘What are you worrying about? I’m not asking you for any donation.’
I walked out and caught the street car back to my rooming-house.
Rima was sitting up in bed when I walked into her room. She had on a pair of black pyjamas. With her silver hair and her cobalt blue eyes, she really looked something.
‘I’m hungry.’
‘I’ll have those words engraved on your head stone. Never mind how hungry you are. Who gave you the money for a shot last night?’
Her eyes shifted away from mine.
‘I didn’t have a shot. I’m starving. Will you lend me…?’
‘Oh, shut up! If I can fix it, will you take a cure?’
Her expression became sullen.
‘I’ve got beyond a cure. I know. It’s no good talking about a cure.’
‘There’s a guy who really can fix it. If I can persuade him to take you, will you go?’
‘Who is he?’
‘Dr. Klinzi. He fixes all the big-shot film stars. I might be able to talk him into fixing you.’
‘Some chance! It’d be cheaper to give me some money. I don’t want much…’
I grabbed hold of her and shook her. Her breath against my face made me feel sick.
‘Will you go to him if I can fix it?’ I yelled at her.
She jerked away from me.
‘Anything you say.’
I felt I was going out of my head myself, but I kept control of myself.
‘Okay, I’ll talk to him. Stay right where you are. I’ll tell Carrie to bring you a cup of coffee and something to eat.’
I left her.
At the head of the stairs, I called down to Carrie to get a hamburger and a coffee and take it to Rima.
Then I went into my room and put on my best suit. It wasn’t much. It was shiny in places, but by the time I had slicked down my hair, brushed my shoes, I didn’t look too much of a bum.
I went back into Rima’s room.
She was sitting up in bed, sipping the coffee. She wrinkled her nose at me.
‘Gee! You look sharp.’
‘Never mind how I look. Sing. Go on: sing anything, but sing.’
She stared at me.
‘Anything?’
‘Yes — sing!’
She began to sing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
The melody came out of her mouth effortlessly, like a silver stream. It crawled up my spine and into the roots of my hair. It filled the room with a clear, bell-like sound. It was better than I thought it could be.
I stood there listening, and when she had gone through the chorus, I stopped her.
‘Okay, okay,’ I said, my heart thumping. ‘You stay right here. I’ll be back.’
I went down the stairs three at a time.
Dr. Klinzi’s residence stood in an acre and a half of ornamental gardens, surrounded by high walls, the tops of which were studded with sharp iron spikes.
I walked up the long drive. It took me three or four minutes of fast walking before I caught sight of a house that looked like a movie set for Cosimo Medici’s palace in Florence.
There was a big terrace with fifty or so steps leading up to it. The top rooms had bars to the windows.
Everything about the house and the grounds was sombre and very, very quiet. Even the roses and the begonias seemed depressed.
Well away from the drive, under the shade of the elm trees, I could see several people sitting in wheel chairs. Three or four nurses, in gleaming white overalls, fluttered around them.
I climbed the steps and rang the front door bell.
After a moment or so, the door was opened by a grey man with grey hair, grey eyes, grey clothes and a grey manner.
I gave him my name.
Wordlessly, he led me over a gleaming parquet floor to a side-room where a slim, blonde nurse sat at a desk, busy with pencil and paper.
‘Mr. Gordon,’ the grey man said.
He pushed a chair against the back of my knees so I sat down abruptly and then went away, shutting the door after him as gently as if it were made of spun glass.
The nurse laid down her pen and said in a gentle voice and with a sad smile in her eyes, ‘Yes, Mr. Gordon? Is there something we can do for you?’
‘I hope so.’ I said. ‘I want to talk to Dr. Klinzi about a possible patient.’
‘It could be arranged.’ I was aware that her eyes were going over my suit. ‘Who is the patient, Mr. Gordon?’
‘I’ll explain al that to Dr. Klinzi.’
‘I’m afraid the doctor is engaged at the moment. You can have complete confidence in me. I arrange who comes here and who doesn’t.’
‘That must be pret y nice for you,’ I said, ‘but this happens to be a special case. I want to talk to Dr. Klinzi.’
‘Why is it a special case, Mr. Gordon?’
I could see I wasn’t making any impression on her. Her eyes had lost their sad smile: they now looked merely bored.
‘I’m an agent and my client who is a singer is a very valuable property. Unless I deal directly with Dr. Klinzi, I must go elsewhere.’
That seemed to arouse her interest. She hesitated briefly, then she got to her feet.
‘If you will wait a moment, Mr. Gordon, I’l see…’
She crossed the room, opened the door and disappeared from sight. There was a longish pause, then she reappeared, holding open the door.
‘Wil you come in?’
I entered an enormous room full of modern furniture, a surgical table and desk by a window behind which sat a man in a white coat.
‘Mr. Gordon?’
Somehow he made it sound as if he were very pleased to see me.
He got to his feet. He was short, not more than thirty years of age, with a lot of blond wavy hair, slate grey eyes and a bedside manner.
‘That’s right. Dr. Klinzi?’ I said.
‘Certainly.’ He waved a hand to a chair. ‘What can I do for you, Mr. Gordon?’
I sat down, waiting until the nurse had gone away.
‘I have a singer with a three year morphine habit,’ I said. ‘I want her cured. What wil it cost?’
The slate grey eyes ran over me none too hopefully.
‘Our charge for a guaranteed cure would be five thousand dol ars, Mr. Gordon. We are in the happy position here to guarantee results.’
I drew in a long, slow breath.
‘For that kind of money I would expect results.’
He smiled sadly. They seemed to specialise in sad smiles in this place.
‘It may seem expensive to you, Mr. Gordon, but we deal only with the very best people.’
‘How long would it take?’
‘That would depend largely on the patient. Five weeks perhaps, but if it is a very stubborn case, eight weeks: not longer.’
‘Guaranteed?’
‘Naturally.’
There was no one I knew who would be crazy enough to lend me five thousand dollars, and there was no way I could think of to raise such a sum.
I turned on the soft soap faucet.
‘It’s slightly more than I can afford, doctor. This girl has a great singing voice. If I can get her cured, she’s going to make a lot of money. Suppose you take a piece of her? Twenty per cent of whatever she makes until the five thousand is taken care of, then three thousand on top as interest.’
As soon as I had uttered the words I knew it was a mistake. His face suddenly went blank, and his eyes turned remote.
‘I’m afraid we don’t do that kind of business here, Mr. Gordon. We are very booked up. Our terms are, and have always been, cash. Three thousand on entry, and two thousand when the patient leaves.’
‘This is a very special case…’
His well-cared-for finger moved to a button on his desk.
‘I’m sorry. Those are our terms.’
The finger pressed the button lovingly.
‘If I can raise the money, the guarantee is real y guaranteed?’
‘You mean the cure? Of course.’
He was standing now as the door opened and the nurse drifted in. They both gave me sad smiles.
‘Should your client want to come to us, Mr. Gordon, please let us know soon. We have many commitments and it may be difficult, if not impossible, to fit her in.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’l think it over.’
He gave me his cool white hand as if he was conferring a favour on me, then I was ushered out by the nurse.
On my way back to the rooming-house, I thought about what he had said, and for the first time in my life I really felt the urge for some money. But what hope had I of laying my hands on five thousand dollars? If I could raise that sum by some miracle, if I could get Rima cured, I was absolutely certain she would go to the top and I would go with her.
As I was walking along, brooding, I passed a big store that sold gramophone and radio equipment. I paused to look at the brightly coloured sleeves of the long play discs, imagining how Rima’s photograph would look on one of those sleeves.
A notice in the window caught my attention.
Record Your Voice on Tape. A three minute recording for only $2.50. Take your voice home in your pocket and surprise your friends.
That gave me an idea.
If I could get Rima’s voice recorded, I wouldn’t have the worry of wondering when I got her an audition that she would blow up as she had done at the Blue Rose. I could hawk the tape around, and maybe get someone interested enough to advance the money for her cure.
I hurried back to the rooming-house.
Rima was up and dressed when I walked into her room. She was sitting by the window, smoking. She turned and looked expectantly at me.
‘Dr. Klinzi says he can cure you,’ I said, sit ing on the bed, ‘but it costs. He wants five thousand bucks.’
She wrinkled her nose, then shrugging, she turned back to stare out of the window.
‘Nothing is impossible,’ I said. ‘I have an idea. We’re going to record your voice. There’s a chance someone in the business will put up the money if he hears what you can do. Come on, let’s go.’
‘You’re crazy. No one wil pay out that kind of money.’
‘Leave me to worry about that. Let’s go.’
On the way to the store, I said, ‘We’l do Some of these Days. Do you know it?’
She said she knew it.
‘As loud and as fast as you can.’
The salesman who took us into the recording room was supercilious and bored. It was pretty obvious he looked on us as a couple of bums with nothing better to do than to squander two dollars fifty and waste his time.
‘We’ll have a run through first,’ I said, sitting down at the piano. ‘Loud and fast.’
The salesman switched on the recorder.
‘We don’t reckon to have rehearsals,’ he said. ‘I’ll fix it as she goes.’
‘We’ll have a run through first,’ I said. ‘This may not be important to you, but it is to us.’
I began to play, keeping the tempo a shade faster than it is usually taken. Rima came in loud and fast.
I looked across at the salesman. Her clear silver notes seemed to have stunned him. He stood motionless, gaping at her.
I’ve never heard her sing better. It was real y something to hear.
We did a verse and a chorus, then I stopped her.
‘Sweet grief!’ the salesman said in a hushed whisper. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it!’
Rima looked at him indifferently and said nothing.
‘Now we’ll record it. Okay for sound?’ I said.
‘Go ahead,’ the salesman said, adjusting the recording knob. ‘Ready when you are,’ and he started the tape running through the recording head.
Rima, if anything, was a shade better this time. She certainly had all the professional tricks, but that didn’t matter. What counted was her tone. The notes came out of her throat with the clearness of a silver bell.
When the recording was finished, the salesman offered to play it back over an electrostatic speaker.
We sat down and listened.
With the volume right up and the filters on to cut out the valve hiss, her voice sounded larger than life and terrific. It was the most exciting recording I have ever listened to.
‘Phew!’ the salesman said as he took off the tape, ‘how you can sing! You should let Al Shirely hear this recording. He would go crazy about it.’
‘Al Shirely? Who is he?’ I asked.
‘Shirely?’ The salesman looked amazed. ‘Why, he’s the boss of the Californian Recording Company.
He’s the guy who discovered Joy Miller. Last year she made five discs. Know what she made from them? A half a million! And let me tell you something! She doesn’t know how to sing if you compare her with this kid, I’m telling you! I’ve been in the business for years. I’ve never heard anyone to touch this kid. You talk to Shirely. He’l fix her when he hears this tape.’
I thanked him. When I offered him the two dollars fifty for the recording, he waved it aside.
‘Forget it. If s been an experience and a pleasure. You talk to Shirely. It would give me a big bang if he took her up.’ He shook hands with me. ‘Good luck. You can’t fail to go places.’
I was pretty worked up as we walked back along the waterfront to the rooming-house. If Rima was a better singer than Joy Miller, and this salesman should know what he was talking about then she could earn enormous money. Suppose in her first year she did click, and made half a million! Ten per cent of half a million sounded pretty good to me.
I looked at her as we walked along, side by side. She moved listlessly, her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans.
‘This afternoon I’ll talk to Shirely,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’ll spring the five thousand for your cure. You heard what the guy said. You could go right to the top.’
‘I’m hungry,’ she said sul enly. ‘Can’t I have something to eat?’
‘Are you listening to what I’m saying?’ I stopped and pulled her around so she faced me. ‘You could make a fortune with that voice of yours. All you want is a cure.’
‘You’re kidding yourself,’ she said, jerking free. ‘I’ve had a cure. It doesn’t work. How about something to eat?’
‘Dr. Klinzi could fix you. Maybe Shirely would advance the money when he hears the recording.’
‘Maybe I’ll grow wings and fly away. No one is going to lend us that kind of money.’
Around three o’clock that afternoon, I borrowed Rusty’s car and drove over to Hollywood. I had the tape in my pocket and I was really worked up.
I knew it would be fatal to tell Shirely that Rima was a junky. I felt sure, if he knew, he wouldn’t touch her.
Somehow I had to persuade him to part with a five thousand dollar advance. I had no idea how I was going to do it. Everything depended on how he reacted to the tape. If he was really enthusiastic, then I might get him to part with the money.
The Californian Recording Company was housed within a stone’s throw of the M.G.M. Studios. It was a two-storey building that covered practically an acre of ground. There was the usual reception office outside the gates with two tough-looking, uniformed guards to take care of the unwelcomed visitors.
It was when I saw the size of the place, I realised what I was up against. This was big-time, and I had an abrupt loss of confidence. I was suddenly aware of my shabby suit and my scruffy shoes.
One of the guards moved forward as I came up. He looked me over, decided I was of no importance and asked in a rough-tough voice what I wanted.
I said I wanted to talk to Mr. Shirely.
That seemed to kill him.
‘So do twenty mil ion others. You got a appointment?’
‘No.’
‘Then you don’t see him.’
This was the moment for a bluff. I was desperate enough to swear my father had been a negro.
‘Well, okay. I’ll tel him how efficient you are,’ I said. ‘He told me to look in when I was passing, but if you won’t let me in, that’s his loss, not mine.’
He did a quick double-take.
‘He said that?’
‘Why not? He and my father were at col ege together.’
He lost his aggressive look.
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Jeff Gordon.’
‘Just hang on a moment.’
He went into the reception office and talked on the telephone. He came out after a while, unlocked the gates and waved me in.
‘Ask for Miss Weseen.’
At least that was one step forward.
Dry mouthed and with my heart thumping, I walked up the drive to the imposing entrance hall where a boy in a sky blue uniform and brass buttons that glittered like diamonds, conducted me along a corridor lined on either side by polished mahogany doors to a door marked with a brass plate: Mr. Harry Knight and Miss Henrietta Weseen.
The boy opened the door and waved me in.
I walked into a large room decorated in dove grey where about fifteen people sat around in lounging chairs looking like the legion of the lost.
I had no time to concentrate on them before I found myself staring into emerald green eyes that were as hard as glass and just as expressionless.
The owner of the eyes was a girl of about twenty four, a red-head with a Munro bust, a Bardot hip line and an expression that would have frozen an Eskimo.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr. Shirely, please.’
She patted her hair and regarded me as if I were something out of a zoo.
‘Mr. Shirely never sees anyone. Mr. Knight is engaged. Al these people are waiting for him.’ She waved a languid hand at the lost legion. ‘If you will give me your name and tel me your business I’l try to fit you in at the end of the week.’
I could see the lie I had told the guard wouldn’t cut any ice with her. She was smart, wise and lie-proof.
If I couldn’t bluff her I was fixed.
I said carelessly, ‘A week? Too late. If Knight can’t see me right now, he’s going to lose money and Mr. Shirely will be annoyed with him.’
Feeble stuff, but it was the best I could do.
At least everyone in the room was listening, leaning forward and pointing like gundogs.
If they were impressed, Miss Weseen wasn’t. She gave me a small, bored smile.
‘Perhaps you would write in. If Mr. Knight is interested he’ll let you know.’
At that moment the door opened behind her and a fat man, balding, nudging forty, in a fawn coloured seersucker suit, looked around the room with a hostile air and said, ‘Next,’ the way a dentist’s nurse calls to the flock.
I was right by him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tall youth with Elvis Presley sideboards drag himself out of an armchair, clutching a guitar, but he was much too late.
I walked forward, driving the fat man back into his office, giving him a wide, confident smile.
‘Hello, there, Mr. Knight,’ I said. ‘I have something for you to listen to, and when you’ve heard it, you’ll want Mr. Shirely to hear it too.’
By then I was inside the room and had shut the door with my heel.
On his desk was a tape recorder. Moving around him, I put the tape on the machine and turned the machine on.
‘This is something you’ll be glad to listen to,’ I said, talking hard, and fast. ‘Of course, it isn’t going to sound so hot on a machine like this, but hear it on an electrostatic speaker and you’l hit the ceiling.’
He stood watching me, a startled expression on his fat face.
I pushed down the start button and Rima’s voice came out of the speaker and hit him.
I was watching him and I saw the muscles of his face tighten as the first notes filled the room.
He heard the tape right through, then as I pressed the re-wind button, he said, ‘Who is she?’
‘My client,’ I said. ‘How about Mr. Shirely hearing her?’
He looked me over.
‘And who are you?’
‘Jeff Gordon’s the name. I’m in a hurry to do a deal. It’s either Mr. Shirely or R.C.A. Please yourself.
I came here first because R.C.A. is just that much further away.’
But he was too old a hand for that kind of bluff. He grinned, and sat down behind his desk.
‘Don’t get so intense, Mr. Gordon,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying she isn’t good. She is, but I’ve heard better voices. We might be interested. Bring her around towards the end of the week. We’l give her an audition.’
‘She’s not available, and she is under contract to me.’
‘Wel , al right, then when she is available.’
‘The idea was for me to get a contract from you right away,’ I said. ‘If you don’t want her, I’l try R.C.A.’
‘I didn’t say we don’t want her,’ Knight said. ‘I said we want to hear her in person.’
‘Sorry.’ I tried to sound tough and business-like, but I knew I was making a poor show of it. ‘The fact is she isn’t wel . She needs toning up. If you don’t want her, say so and I’l get out of here.’
The door opened on the far side of the room and a small, white haired Jewish gentleman wandered in.
Knight got hurriedly to his feet.
‘I won’t be one moment, Mr. Shirely…’
There was my cue and I didn’t miss it. I pressed the play back but on on the recorder and turned the volume up.
Rima’s voice filled the room.
Knight made to turn the recorder off, but Shirely waved him away. He stood listening, his head cocked on one side, his dark little eyes moved from me to Knight and then to the recorder.
When the tape finished and I had stopped the machine, Shirely said, ‘Exceptional y good. Who is she?’
‘Just an unknown,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t know her name. I want a contract for her.’
‘I’ll give you one. Have her here tomorrow morning. She could be a valuable property,’ and he started for the door.
‘Mr. Shirely…’
He paused to look over his shoulder.
‘This girl isn’t wel ,’ I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. ‘I need five thousand dollars to get her fit. When she is fit, she’l sing even bet er than that record. I’ll guarantee it. She could be the sensation of the year, but she has to be got fit. Is her voice, as it is, good enough for you to gamble on a five thousand advance?’
He stared at me, his small eyes going glassy.
‘What’s the mat er with her?’
‘Nothing a good doctor can’t fix.’
‘Did you say five thousand?’
The sweat was running down my face as I said, ‘She needs special treatment.’
‘From Dr. Klinzi?’
There seemed no point in lying to him. He wasn’t the kind of man you could lie to.
‘Yes.’
He shook his head.
‘I’m not interested. I would be interested if she was quite fit and ready to go to work. I would give you a very good contract, but I am not interested in anyone who has to go first to Dr. Klinzi before they can sing.’
He went out, closing the door behind him.
I took the tape off the recorder, put it in its box and dropped the box into my pocket.
‘There it is,’ Knight said awkwardly. ‘You played it wrong. The old man has a horror of junkies. His own daughter is one.’
‘If I can get her cured, would he be interested?’
‘No doubt about it, but he would have to be sure she was cured.’
He opened the door and eased me out.
When I finally got home, Rima was out. I went into my bedroom and lay on the bed. I was completely bushed.
I hadn’t felt so depressed in years. From the Californian Recording Studios, I had driven to R.C.A.
There they had admired Rima’s voice, but when I began to talk about a five thousand dol ar advance they eased me out so fast I hadn’t a chance to argue with them.
I had gone to two of the bigger agents who also showed interest, but when they heard Rima was under contract to me they brushed me off in a way that made my ears burn.
The fact that Rima had gone out depressed me further. She had known I was going to see Shirely, and yet she hadn’t bothered to wait in to find out the result of the interview. She had been certain nothing would come of it. Bleak experience had already taught her that any effort of mine to get her somewhere was so much waste of time. That thought depressed me even more.
I now had to face the problem of what I was going to do.
I was out of a job and I had only enough money to last me until the end of the week. I didn’t even have my fare home.
I didn’t want to do it, but I final y decided I would have to go home. I knew my father would be sympathetic enough not to throw my failure in my face. I would have to get Rusty to lend me the fare and persuade my father to pay him back.
I was so frustrated and depressed I felt like banging my head against the wall.
Five thousand dollars.
If I could only get Rima cured, I knew she would make a hit. In a year she could make half a million and that would be fifty thousand dollars in my pocket: a lot better than crawling home and having to tell my father I had flopped.
I lay on the bed thinking like this until it got dark. Then just when I had finally made up my mind to go down and talk Rusty into lending me the money, I heard Rima come up the stairs and go into her bedroom.
I waited.
After a while she wandered in and stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at me.
‘Hello,’ she said.
I didn’t say anything.
‘How about something to eat?’ she said. ‘Have you any money?’
‘Don’t you want to hear what Shirely said?’
She yawned, rubbing her eyes.
‘Shirely?’
‘Yes. The boss of the Californian Recording Company. I went to see him this afternoon about you –
remember?’
She shrugged indifferently.
‘I don’t want to know what he said. They all say the same thing. Let’s go somewhere and eat.’
‘He said if you took a cure, he’d make a fortune for you.’
‘So what? Have you any money?’
I got off the bed and went over to the mirror on the wall and combed my hair. If I hadn’t done something with my hands, I would have hit her.
‘No, I haven’t any money, and we don’t eat. Clear out! The sight of you makes me sick to my stomach.’
She sat on the edge of the bed. She put her hand inside her shirt and began to scratch her ribs.
‘I’ve got some money,’ she said. ‘I’ll treat you to dinner. I’m not stingy like you. We’ll have spaghetti and veal.’
I turned to stare at her.
‘You have money? Where did you get it from?’
‘The Pacific Studios. They ’phoned just after you left. I had three hours crowd work.’
‘I bet you are lying. I bet you went down some dark alley with an old man with a beard.’
She giggled.
‘It was crowd work. I’ll tel you something else. I know where we can get that five thousand you’re worrying about.’ I put down the comb and faced her.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
She studied her finger nails. Her hands were grubby and her nails black rimmed.
‘The five thousand for the cure.’
‘What about it?’
‘I know where we can get it.’
I drew in a long slow breath.
‘There are times when I would like to beat you,’ I said. ‘You exasperate me so much one of these days I’ll slap your bottom until you scream blue murder.’
She giggled again.
‘I know where we can get it,’ she repeated.
‘That’s wonderful. Where can we get it?’
‘Larry Lowenstien told me.’
I thrust my hands deep into my trousers pockets.
‘Don’t act cute, you dope! Who’s Larry Lowenstien?’
‘A friend of mine.’ She leaned back on her elbows, arching her chest at me. She looked as seductive as a plate of lukewarm soup. ‘He works for the casting director. He told me they keep more than ten thousand dollars in the casting office. They have to have it in cash to pay the extras. The lock on the door is nothing.’
I lit a cigarette: my hands began to shake.
‘What’s it to me how much money they keep in the casting office?’
‘I thought we could get in there and help ourselves.’
‘That’s quite a bright idea coming from you. What makes you imagine they wouldn’t object to us taking it? Hasn’t anyone told you that taking someone’s money is stealing?’
She wrinkled her nose and shrugged.
‘It was just an idea. If you feel that way about it, forget it.’
‘Thanks for the advice. That’s just what I’m going to do.’
‘Well, all right. Anything you say, but I thought you were so keen to get that money.’
‘I am, but not that keen.’
She got up.
‘Let’s go and eat.’
‘You go. I have something to do.’
She wandered to the door.
‘Oh, come on. I’m not stingy. I’ll treat you. You’re not too proud to be treated by me, are you?’
‘I’m not proud. I’ve something else to do: I’m going to talk to Rusty. I’m borrowing my fare home from him. I’m quit ing.’
She stared at me.
‘What do you want to do that for?’
‘I’m out of a job,’ I said patiently. ‘I can’t live on air so I’m going home.’
‘You can get a job at the Pacific Studios. There’s a big crowd scene tomorrow. They want people.’
‘They do? How do I get a job like that then?’
‘I’ll fix it. Come with me tomorrow. They’ll give you a job. Now let’s go and eat: I’m starving.’
I went with her because I was hungry and I couldn’t be bothered to argue with her any more.
We went to a small Italian restaurant and ate spaghetti which was very good and thin slices of veal fried in butter.
Half way through the meal, she said. ‘Did Shirely real y say I could sing?’
‘That’s what he said. He said when you had a cure and when you were a hundred per cent fit, he would give you a contract.’
She pushed aside her plate and lit a cigarette.
‘It would be easy to take that money. There would be nothing to it.’
‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that for you nor anyone else!’
‘I thought you wanted me to have a cure?’
‘Oh, shut up! To hel with your cure and to hell with you!’
Someone put a nickel into the juke box. Joy Miller began to sing Some of these Days. We both listened intently. She was loud and brassy and often off-pitch. The tape I had in my pocket was much, much better than this disc.
‘Half a million a year,’ Rima said dreamily. ‘She isn’t so hot, is she?’
‘No, but she’s a lot hotter than you. She doesn’t need a cure. Let’s get out of here. I’m going to bed.’
When we got back to the rooming-house, Rima came to the door of my room.
‘You can sleep with me tonight if you like,’ she said. ‘I feel in the mood.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ I said, and I shut the door in her face.
I lay in bed in the darkness and thought about what she had said about all that money in the casting director’s office. I kept telling myself that I had to get the idea of stealing the money out of my mind. I had sunk pretty low, but I hadn’t sunk that low, but the idea kept nagging at me. If I could get her cured… I was still pecking at the idea when I fell asleep.
The next morning, soon after eight o’clock, we took the bus into Hollywood. There was a big crowd moving through the main gates of the Pacific Studios and we tagged along behind.
‘There’s plenty of time,’ Rima said. ‘They won’t start shooting until ten. You come with me. I’ll get Larry to book you.’
I went along with her.
Away from the main studio block was a number of bungalow type buildings. Outside one of them stood a tall, thin man wearing corduroy trousers and a blue shirt.
I hated the sight of him as soon as I saw him. His white puffy face was badly shaven. His eyes were close set and cunning. He looked like a pimp alert for business.
He gave Rima a jeering grin.
‘Hello, sugar, coming to work your stint?’ he said and then he looked at me. ‘Who’s this?’
‘A friend,’ Rima said. ‘Can he be one of the crowd, Larry?’
‘Why not? The more the merrier. What’s his name?’ ‘Jeff Gordon,’ Rima said.
‘Okay. I’ll book him.’ To me, he went on, ‘Get over to Number three studio, pal. Down the alley, second on your right.’
Rima said to me, ‘You go ahead. I want to talk to Larry.’
Lowenstien winked at me.
‘They all want to talk to me.’
I went off down the alley. Half way down, I looked back. Rima was going into the office with Lowenstien. He had his arm around her shoulders and he was leaning close, talking to her.
I stood in the hot sunshine and waited. After a while, Rima came out and joined me.
‘I was taking a look at that lock. There’s nothing to it. The lock on the drawer where the money is kept is tricky, but I could open it, given a little time.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘We could do it tonight. We could get lost here,’ she went on. ‘I know a place where we can hide.
We’d have to stay the night here and get out in the morning. It would be easy.’
I hesitated for perhaps half a second. I knew if I didn’t take this risk I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I realised I would have to go home and admit defeat. Once I got her cured, both of us would be in the money.
Right at that moment, all I could think of was what ten per cent of half a million dollars would mean to me.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to do it, I’ll do it with you.’
We lay side by side in the darkness, under the big stage of Studio Three. We had been lying like that for the past three hours, listening to the tramp of feet overhead, the shouting of the technicians as they prepared the new set for tomorrow’s shooting, the professional cursing of the director as they didn’t do what he told them to do and did what he told them not to do.
All the morning and the afternoon, we had worked in the heat of the arc lights until dusk with three hundred other extras: that regiment of the lost who hang on to Hollywood in the hope, some day, someone will notice them and turn them into stars, and we had sweated with them and hated them.
We had been part of a crowd supposed to be watching a Championship fight. We had stood and yelled when the director had signalled to us. We had sat and booed. We had leaned forward with horror on our faces. We had jeered, and finally we had lifted the roof when the pale, thin looking kid in the ring who didn’t look as if he could punch his way out of a paper bag, had brought the champion down on his knees and forced him to quit.
We had done all that over and over again from eleven o’clock until seven o’clock in the evening, and it was the hardest day’s work I have ever done in my life.
Finally, the director had broken it up.
‘Okay, boys and girls,’ he had bawled over the loudspeaker system. ‘I want you all here tomorrow at nine sharp. Wear what you are wearing now.’
Rima put her hand on my arm.
‘Keep close to me and move fast when I tel you.’
We tagged along just behind the long line of sweating extras. My heart was thumping, but I wouldn’t let myself think what was ahead of me.
Rima said, ‘Through here,’ and gave me a little push.
We slipped down an alley that brought us to the back entrance of Studio Three.
It was easy to get under the stage. For the first three hours we remained like mice, scared that someone might find us, but after a while, around ten o’clock, the technicians knocked off and we had the place to ourselves.
By then I was aching for a cigarette and so was Rima. We lit up. In the feeble light of the match’s flame, I saw her stretched out beside me in the dust, her eyes glittering, and she wrinkled her nose at me.
‘It’s going to be al right. In another half hour, we can do it.’ It was then I began real y to get scared.
I told myself I must be out of my mind to get involved in a thing like this. If we were caught…
To get my mind off it, I said, ‘What’s this guy Lowenstien to you?’
She shifted. I had an idea I had touched a sore point.
‘He’s nothing to me.’
‘Don’t tel me! How did you get to know a rat like him? He takes after your pal Wilbur.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk with your scarred face! Who do you imagine you are?’
I clenched my fist and punched her hard on her thigh.
‘Shut up about my face!’
‘Then shut up about my friends!’
I had a sudden idea.
‘Of course — you get the stuff from him! He’s got peddler writ en al over him.’
‘You hurt me!’
‘There are times when I could strangle you. He’s the rat you get your drugs from, isn’t he?’
‘What if he is? I have to get it from someone, don’t I?’
‘I must be nuts to have anything to do with you!’
‘You hate me, don’t you?’
‘Hate doesn’t come into it.’
‘You’re the first man who hasn’t wanted to sleep with me,’ she said, her tone bit er.
‘I’m not interested in women.’
‘You’re in as much a mess as I am only you don’t seem to know it.’
‘Oh, go to hell!’ I said, furious with her. I knew she was right. I had been in a mess ever since I had come out of hospital, and what was more, I had grown to like being in a mess.
‘I’ll tel you something now,’ she said softly. ‘I hate you. I know you are good for me: I know you could save me, but all the same I hate you. I’ll never forget how you treated me when you blackmailed me about the police. Watch out, Jeff. I’l get my own back for that even if we go into business together.’
‘You try anything funny with me,’ I said, glaring in her direction in the darkness, ‘and I’l give you a hiding. That’s what you want: a damn good hiding.’
She suddenly giggled.
‘Maybe I do. Wilbur used to beat me.’
I moved away from her. She was so corrupt and horrible it made me sick to be close to her.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked.
I looked at the luminous hands of my watch.
‘Half past ten.’
‘Let’s go.’
That set my heart thumping.
‘Do they have guards here?’
‘Guards? What for?’
She was already crawling away from me, and I went after her. A few seconds later we were standing together in the darkness, near the exit of the Studio. We paused to listen.
There wasn’t a sound.
‘I’ll lead the way,’ she said. ‘Keep close to me.’
We moved out of the Studio into the hot, dark night. There were stars, but the moon hadn’t come up yet. I could just see her as she paused to look into the darkness, the way I was looking.
‘Are you scared?’ she asked, moving close to me. I hated the feel of her slight, hot body, but my back was against the wall of the studio and I couldn’t get away from her. ‘I’m not. This sort of job never scares me, but I think you’re scared.’
‘Okay, so I’m scared,’ I said, shoving her away. ‘Does that satisfy you?’
‘You don’t have to be. They can’t do anything to you worse than you have already done to yourself.
That’s something I’m always tel ing myself.’
‘You’re nuts! What kind of talk is that supposed to be?’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get the money. It’l be easy.’
She moved away into the darkness and I followed her.
All day, she had been carrying a sling bag over her shoulder. When she paused outside the casting director’s bungalow, I heard her zip the bag open.
I stood close to her, listening, aware of the thudding of my heart beats, feeling my blood pounding through my veins and I was scared silly.
I heard her fiddling with the lock. She must have been very expert. In a few seconds, I heard the lock snap back.
Together we entered the dark office. We paused, waiting for our eyes to become used to the faint light from the stars we could see through the uncurtained window. After a few seconds we could see the outline of the desk across the room.
We went over to it and Rima knelt beside it.
‘You keep watch,’ she said. ‘This shouldn’t take long.’
I was shaking with fright by now.
‘I don’t want to go ahead with this,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
‘Don’t be a quit er!’ she said sharply. ‘I’m not giving up now.’
There was a sudden gleam of light as she turned the beam of a flashlight on the lock of the drawer.
Then she sat on the floor and began to hum softly under her breath.
I waited, my heart thumping, listening to the tiny scratching noise she was making as she worked on the lock.
‘It’s tricky,’ she said, ‘but I’l fix it in a moment.’
But she didn’t. The minutes dragged by: the scratching noise began to get on my nerves. Now she had stopped humming and I could hear her swearing under her breath.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, moving away from the window to stare over the desk at her.
‘It’s a toughie, but I’l beat it.’ She sounded quite calm. ‘Leave me alone. Let me concentrate.’
‘Let’s get out of here!’
‘Oh, quiet down!’
I turned back to the window, then my heart gave a sudden bound, leaving me breathless.
Outlined against the starlit darkness I could see the head and shoulders of a man who was looking through the window.
I didn’t know if he could see me. It was dark in the office, but he seemed to be staring directly at me.
His shoulders looked immense, and on his head was a flat peaked cap that turned me cold.
‘There’s someone out there,’ I said, but the words didn’t get beyond my dry lips.
Rima said, ‘I’ve fixed it!’
‘There’s someone out there!’
‘I’ve got it open!’
‘Didn’t you hear me? Someone’s outside!’
‘Get under cover!’
I looked wildly around the dark room. Sweat, as cold as ice, was running down my face. I started across the room as the door was flung open. The light clicked on.
The impact of the hard, bright light on me was like a blow on the head.
‘Make a move and I’l blast you!’
A cop voice: tough, hard and full of confidence. I looked towards the door.
He stood in the open doorway, a .45 in his brown muscular hand, pointing at me. He was all-cop: big, broad and terrifying.
‘What are you doing in here?’
Slowly, I put up my shaking hands. I had a horrible feeling he was going to shoot me.
‘I — I — I…’
‘Keep your hands like that!’
He didn’t know Rima was crouching behind the desk. My one thought now was to cover her: to get out of the office before he found her.
Somehow I managed to get some control over my shaking nerves.
‘I lost my way,’ I said. ‘I was going to sleep here.’
‘Yeah? You’l sleep somewhere a lot safer than here. Come on. Move slowly and keep your hands up.’
I moved towards him.
‘Hold it!’ He was staring at the desk. ‘Have you been trying to bust into that?’
‘No… I tel you…’
‘Back up against the wall! Move!’
I backed up against the wall.
‘Turn around!’
I faced the wall.
There was a long moment of complete silence.
The only sound in my ears was the thud-thud-thud of my heart beats: then there came a violent, shattering crash of gunfire.
The sound, enormous in the room made me cringe. I looked over my shoulder, thinking the guard had walked right into Rima and had killed her.
He was standing by the desk, bent double. His smart cap had fallen off, showing a bald spot at the back of his head. His gauntlet gloves were pressed to his stomach, his gun lay on the floor.
From between the fingers of his gloves, blood began to leak, then there was a second bang of gunfire.
I saw the flash of the gun coming from behind the desk.
The guard gave a strangled grunt: the sound a fighter makes when his opponent has sunk in one that really cripples. Then, slowly, he tipped over and spread out on the floor.
I stood there, staring, my hands still in the air, sick enough to throw up.
Rima straightened up from behind the desk. In her hand was a smoking .38. She looked indifferently at the guard. She hadn’t even lost colour.
‘There’s no money,’ she said savagely. ‘The drawer’s empty.’
I scarcely heard what she was saying.
I stared at the guard, watching the trickle of blood move out of him in a thin thread across the polished parquet floor.
‘Let’s get out of here!’
The urgent rasp in her voice brought me to my senses.
‘You’ve kil ed him!’
‘He would have kil ed me, wouldn’t he?’ She stared coldly at me. ‘Come on, you fool! Someone will have heard the shooting!’
She started across the room, but I grabbed her arm, jerking her around.
‘Where did you get that gun?’
She wrenched free.
‘Oh, come on! They’l be here in a moment!’
Her indifferent, glittering eyes horrified me.
Then somewhere in the outer darkness I heard a siren start up. Its moaning note chilled me.
‘Come on! Come on!’
She ran out into the darkness and I went after her.
Lights were coming on all over the Studios. Men’s voices shouted.
I felt her hand on my arm as she shoved me down a dark alley. We ran blindly as the siren continued to moan into the night.
‘Here!’
She pulled me into a dark doorway. For a brief moment her flashlight made a puddle of light, then turned off. She pulled me down behind a big wooden crate.
We heard racing, heavy footsteps go by. We heard men shouting to each other. Someone began to blow a shrill whistle that set my nerves jangling.
‘Come on!’
If it hadn’t been for her, I would never have got out of the place. She was terribly cool and controlled.
She steered me through the dark alleys. She seemed to know when we were about to run into danger and when it was clear to go ahead.
As we ran past the endless buildings and the vast Studio sheds, the whistles and the voices grew fainter, and at last, panting, we stopped in the shadow of a building to listen.
There was silence now except the still moaning siren.
‘We’ve got to get out of here before the cops arrive,’ Rima said.
‘You kil ed him!’
‘Oh, shut up! We can get over the wall at the end of this alley.’
I went with her until we came to a ten-foot wall. We paused beside it and looked up at it.
‘Help me up.’
I took her foot in both my hands and heaved her up. She swung one leg over the wall, bending low and stared down into the darkness.
‘It’s okay. Can you get up?’
I walked back, ran at the wall, jumped and grabbed at the top. I got a grip, hung for a moment, then heaved myself up. We both rolled over the wall and dropped onto the dirt road that ran alongside the Studio.
We walked quickly to the main road. Along this road was parked a line of cars belonging to people in a night club across the way.
‘There should be a bus in five minutes or so,’ Rima said.
I heard the approaching sound of police sirens.
Rima grabbed my arm and shoved me to a Skyliner Ford.
‘Get in — quick!’
I slid in and she followed.
She had just time to close the door when two police cars went storming past, heading for the main entrance to the Studio.
‘We’l wait here,’ Rima said. ‘There’l be more coming. They mustn’t see us on the street.’
This made sense although I was aching to get away.
‘Larry!’ Rima said, disgust in her voice. ‘I should have known he would get it all wrong. They must bank the money or put it in a safe when they close down.’
‘Do you realise you’ve killed a man?’ I said. ‘They can send us to the gas chamber. You mad bitch! I wish I had never had anything to do with you!’
‘It was in self-defence,’ she said hotly. ‘I had to do it!’
‘It wasn’t! You shot him down in cold blood. You shot him twice!’
‘I would have been a fool to let him shoot me, wouldn’t I? He had a gun in his hand. It was self-defence!’
‘It was murder!’
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘I’m through with you. I never want to see you again so long as I live!’
‘You’re yel ow! You wanted the money as much as I did! You wanted to make money out of me!
Now, when things turn sour…’
‘You cal kil ing a man turning sour?’
‘Oh, quiet down!’
I sat still, my hands gripping the steering wheel. I was panic stricken. I told myself I must have been out of my mind to have got mixed up with her. If I got away I would go home and I would start my studies again. I would never do a bad thing again so long as I lived.
We heard more sirens. Another police car packed with plain clothes men went past, and a few seconds later, an ambulance.
‘That’s the end of the procession,’ Rima said. ‘Let’s go.’
She got out of the car and I followed her.
We walked fast to the bus stop. After two or three minutes the bus arrived.
We sat at the back. No one paid us any attention. Rima smoked, staring out of the window. As we came down the main road to the waterfront, she began to sneeze.
Soon after seven o’clock the next morning, I woke out of a restless sleep, and staring up at the ceiling, I thought back on the previous night. I felt pretty bad.
I had had only three or four hours’ sleep. Most of the night I had thought of the guard and how Rima had shot him.
She had gone to her room when we had got back, and I had heard her snivelling and sneezing for an hour until I thought the sound would drive me crazy. Then I heard her go out and I guessed she was going to hunt for some sucker to buy her a shot.
I was asleep when she came in. I was aware of her door shutting but I was so tired, I turned over and went off to sleep again.
Now, lying in bed, with the sun coming around the edges of the blind, I wondered what I had best do.
I had to leave town. I didn’t dare stay here any longer. I would see Rusty, borrow the fare from him, and I’d leave this morning.
There was a train out around eleven o’clock.
My bedroom door opened abruptly and Rima came in. She was dressed, wearing her red shirt and her skin tight jeans. She looked pale and her eyes were glittering unnaturally. She had had her shot all right.
She stood at the foot of the bed, looking at me.
‘What do you want?’ I said. ‘Get out of here!’
‘I’m going to the Studios. Aren’t you coming?’
‘Are you crazy? I wouldn’t go back there for al the money in the world.’
She wrinkled her nose at me, her eyes contemptuous.
‘I’m not going to pass up that job. If I do, it’l be the last I’l get. What are you going to do then?’
‘I’m leaving town. Have you forgot en you killed a man last night or is it just one of those things you can brush off?’
She smiled.
‘They think you did it.’
That brought me bolt upright in bed.
‘Me? What do you mean?’
‘Relax. No one killed anyone. He’s not dead.’
I threw off the sheet and swung my feet to the floor.
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s in the paper.’
‘Where is it?’
‘It was outside one of the rooms.’
‘Well, don’t stand there! Get it!’
‘It’s gone now.’
I felt like strangling her.
‘They real y say he isn’t dead?’
She nodded, her eyes bored.
‘Yes.’
I reached for a cigarette and lit it with a shaking hand. The surge of relief that ran through me left me breathless.
‘Where do you get that line about me kil ing him?’ I demanded.
‘He’s given the cops a description of you. They’re looking for a man with a scarred face.’
‘Don’t give me that! It was you who shot him!’
‘He didn’t see me! He saw you!’
‘He knows I didn’t shoot him,’ I said, trying to keep my voice down. ‘He knows I was facing the wall when you shot at him! He must know I didn’t do it!’
She shrugged her shoulders indifferently.
‘Al I know is the police are looking for a man with a scar. You’d bet er watch out.’
By now I was ready to hit the ceiling.
‘Get me a paper! Do you hear? Get me a paper!’
‘Stop shouting. Do you want everyone to hear you? I’ve got to catch the bus to the Studio. Maybe you’d bet er stay here and not show yourself.’
I grabbed hold of her arm.
‘Where did you get the gun from?’
‘It belonged to Wilbur. Let go of me!’ She jerked free. ‘Don’t lose your nerve. I’ve been in worse jams than this. If you keep under cover for a couple of days, you’l be al right. Then you can get out of town, but don’t try to go before.’
‘Once they get a lead on me, this will be the first place they’ll come to!’
‘Oh, quiet down!’ Her tone of contempt maddened me. ‘You’re yellow. Keep your nerve and you’ll be all right. Just relax, can’t you? You’re boring me.’
I caught her by the throat and slammed her against the wall. Then I slapped her face: bang!… bang!…
bang! I wasn’t proud of myself for hitting her, but I had to. She was so rotten I had no answer to her attitude but to hit her.
I let go of her and stood away from her, panting.
‘I’m scared!’ I said. ‘I’m scared because I have some decency left in me. You! You have nothing.
You’re rot en through and through! I wish I never had anything to do with you! Get out!’
She leaned against the wall, her face where I had hit her red as fire, her eyes glowing with hate.
‘I won’t forget that, you skunk,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot to remember you by. One of these days, I’l even the score. I hope he dies and I hope you go to the gas chamber!’
I threw the bedroom door open.
‘Get out!’ I yelled at her.
She went out and I slammed the door after her.
For a long moment I stood motionless, trying to control my breathing. Then I went over to the mirror and stared at my white, frightened face. I looked at the thin scar that ran down the side of my jaw. If the guard had described that to the police I was cooked.
I was stiff with panic. My one thought now was to get away and go home, but if the police were already looking for me, it would be asking for trouble to show myself on the streets in daylight.
I heard Carrie come thumping up the stairs. I opened the door.
‘Do me a favour,’ I said. ‘I’m staying in today. Get me a paper, will you?’
She looked sharply at me.
‘I ain’t got time, Mr. Jeff. I’ve got work to do.’
‘It’s important. Can’t you borrow one for me?’ I had to make an effort to keep calm. ‘Try and get me one, Carrie.’
‘I’ll see. Are you sick?’
‘I’m not feeling too bright. Get that paper for me.’
She nodded and went off downstairs.
I got back into bed, lit another cigarette and waited. I had to wait half an hour, and by then I was in a terrible state of nerves. Then I heard her lumbering up the stairs again. I jumped out of bed and went to the door.
She pushed a paper at me and a cup of coffee.
‘Thanks, Carrie.’
‘The missus was reading it.’
‘That’s okay. Thanks.’
I shut the door, set down the coffee and looked at the front page of the paper.
The usual war headlines took priority. The date was August 5th, 1945. Super Fortresses, so the headlines told me, had been continually flying over Japan, plastering eleven Japanese cities with leaflets, warning the people of intensive bombing to come.
The threat to Japan didn’t interest me. What I was hunting for was a threat to myself.
I found it finally on the back page.
A guard at the Pacific Studios had surprised an intruder and been shot, the report said. The guard, an ex-policeman, well liked when on the force, was now in the Los Angeles State hospital. He had given the police a description of the gunman before lapsing into a coma. The police were hunting for a man with a scar on his face.
That was all, but it was bad enough.
I felt so bad, I had to sit on the bed, my legs refusing to support me.
Maybe this guard was going to die after all.
After a while, I got dressed. I had a feeling that I might have to make a bolt for it, and I had the urge to be ready. I packed my suitcase, and I checked my money. I had only ten dollars and fifty cents left in the world.
Then I sat by the window, watching the street below.
A little after midday, I saw a police car pull up at the far end of the street and four plain clothes men spill out. The sight of them set my heart hammering so violently I could scarcely breathe.
In this street were four rooming-houses. The detectives split up and walked rapidly towards the various houses.
The one who headed for mine was a big man with a pork pie hat on the back of his head and a dead cigar butt gripped between his teeth.
I watched him walk up the steps and I heard the bell ring as he thumbed the bell push.
I left the window and went out onto the landing. I looked down over the banisters, three flights into the hall.
I saw Carrie cross the hall and heard her open the front door.
I heard the hard cop voice bark, ‘City police. We’re looking for a man, youngish with a scar on his face. Anyone like that living here?’
I had my hands on the banister rail. I gripped the rail so tightly, the heat of my hands made the varnish sticky.
‘A scar?’ Carrie sounded bewildered. ‘No, sir. No one is here with any scar.’
I leaned against the rail, blessing her.
‘You sure about that?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m sure. I’d know if there was anyone here with a scar. There ain’t.’
‘This guy is wanted for murder. You stil sure?’
‘No one living here with a scar, sir.’
Wanted for murder!
So he had died!
I went back to my room and lay on the bed. I was cold, sweating and shaking.
Time stood still.
I lay there, sweating it out, maybe for ten or maybe twenty minutes, then there came a hesitant knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
Carrie opened the door and stared at me. Her fat, lined face was anxious.
‘There was a police officer…’
‘I was listening. Come in, Carrie, and shut the door.’
She came in, closing the door.
I sat up on the bed.
‘Thanks. It’s nothing to do with me, but you saved me some trouble.’
I went over to the dressing-table for my wallet.
‘That cop could have made things tricky for me,’ I went on, taking out a five-dollar bill. ‘I want you to have this, Carrie.’
She wouldn’t take it.
‘I don’t want it, Mr. Jeff. I lied because we are friends.’
I had a sudden wave of emotion that nearly made me cry. I sat abruptly on the bed.
‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’ she said, looking searchingly at me.
‘Yes. I didn’t have anything to do with the shooting, Carrie. I wouldn’t shoot anyone.’
‘You don’t have to tel me. You stay quiet. Would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘I don’t want anything, thanks.’
‘Don’t worry. I’l get you a paper later on,’ she opened the door, then paused. ‘She’s gone.’ She nodded in the direction of Rima’s door.
‘She told me.’
‘Good riddance. You take it easy,’ and she went away.
Soon after five o’clock, she came into my room and dropped the evening paper on the bed. She looked pale and bothered, and she gave me a long, uneasy stare before she went out.
As soon as she had shut the door, I grabbed the paper.
The guard had died without coming out of his coma.
The paragraph was small beside the war headlines, but the words hit me like a punch in the face.
The police were still looking for a youngish man with a scar on his face: an arrest was expected at any moment.
As soon as it was dark, I told myself, I would get out. The thought of staying in this box of a room was hard to take, but I knew I didn’t dare go onto the streets as long as it was light.
Leaving the room, I went down the stairs to the pay booth and called Rusty.
It was good to hear the sound of his hard, rough voice.
‘I’m in trouble, Rusty. Wil you come over to my place when it’s dark?’
‘Who do you imagine is going to keep the bar open if I do that?’ he growled.
I hadn’t thought of that.
‘Maybe I could come to you…’
‘How bad is the trouble?’
‘As bad as it can be.’
He must have picked up the panic in my voice for he said soothingly, ‘Keep your shirt on. I’l get Sam to handle it. When it’s dark, huh?’
‘Not before.’
‘Okay. I’ll be over,’ and he hung up.
I went back to my room and waited. It was a long wait, and I was in a pretty bad way by the time the sun went down over the bay and the lights went on in the honky-tonk bars and on the gambling ships. At least there now seemed safety out there in the growing darkness.
A little after nine o’clock I saw Rusty’s Oldsmobile come around the corner, and I went down the stairs and had the front door open as he came up the steps.
We climbed the three flights of stairs in silence. It was only when he was in my room and I had shut the door that the tension in me eased a little.
‘Thanks, Rusty, for coming.’
He sat on the bed, his fat, blue jowled face shiny with sweat, his eyes anxious.
‘What’s the trouble? That girl?’
‘Yes.’
I picked up the evening paper and gave it to him, pointing to the paragraph with a shaking finger.
He read it, his face screwed up, his expression blank.
Then he looked up and stared at me.
‘For Pete’s sake! You didn’t do it, did you?’
‘No, but she did. I must have been out of my mind. I wanted five thousand dol ars for her cure. She told me we could find the money in the casting director’s office. I fel for it. We went out there, broke in, but there was no money. The guard caught me. She was behind the desk, out of sight. She shot him.’ I sat on the upright chair and hid my face in my hands. ‘I was against the wal , with my back turned to him. Listen. Rusty, I swear I didn’t do it.’
He put the paper down, took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, shook one out into his large hand and lit it.
‘So you’re in trouble. Wel , I warned you, didn’t I? I told you she’d be a load of grief to you.’
‘You told me.’
‘Wel ? What are you going to do?’
‘I want to get out of here. I want to go home.’
‘That’s about the first sensible thing you have said since I’ve known you.’ He put his hand inside his coat and took out a shabby wallet. ‘Here you are: as soon as I heard the state you were in, I raided the till.’
He offered me five twenty dollar bills.
‘I don’t want al that, Rusty.’
‘Take it and shut up.’
‘No. Al I want is my fare home. It’l be ten bucks. I’m not taking any more.’
He got to his feet, cramming the bills back into his wallet.
‘You’d bet er not travel from L.A. Station. They may have the joint pegged out. I’l drive you to
’Frisco. You can get a train from there.’
‘If they stop us and find me with you…’
‘Forget it! Come on: let’s go.’
He went to the door and started down the stairs. Picking up my suitcase, I followed him.
In the lobby, Carrie was waiting.
‘I’m going home, Carrie,’ I said.
Rusty moved on into the street, leaving us together.
‘Here.’ I offered her my last two five-dollar bins. ‘I want you to have these…’
She took one of the bills.
‘That’ll take care of the room, Mr. Jeff. You keep the rest. You’l need it. Good luck.’
‘I didn’t do it, Carrie. No mat er what they say, I didn’t do it.’
Her smile was weary as she patted my arm.
‘Good luck, Mr. Jeff.’
I went out into the darkness and got into the Oldsmobile. As I slammed the door, Rusty shot the car away from the kerb.
We had been driving for ten minutes or so in silence, when I said, ‘It’s a funny thing, Rusty, but al I can think of now is to get home. I’ve learned my lesson. If I get away with this mess, I’m going to start my studies again. I’m through with this kind of life — through with it for good.’
Rusty grunted.
‘It’s about time.’
‘You heard her sing. She had a voice in a mil ion. If only she hadn’t been a junky…’
‘If she hadn’t been a junky, you would never have met her. That’s the way it is. If you ever see her again, you run for your life.’
‘I’ll do that. I hope I’l never see her again.’
We reached San Francisco around three o’clock in the morning. Rusty parked by the station while I waited in the car, he went to check on the trains.
When he came back, I could see he was worried.
‘There’s a train to Hol and City just after eight: eight ten,’ he said. ‘There are two cops at the booking office. Maybe they aren’t looking for you, but they’re there. You can by-pass them. I bought your ticket.’
I took the ticket and put it in my wallet.
‘Thanks. You leave me now, Rusty. I’l go and sit in a café and wait. I’l pay you back. You’ve been a real pal to me.’
‘You go home and settle down to a job of work. I don’t want the money back. You keep clear of Los Angeles from now on. The way to pay me back is to settle down and do a real job of work.’
We sat side by side in his car, smoking, dozing and talking while the hours crept by.
A little after seven o’clock, Rusty said, ‘We have time for a coffee, then you can get off.’
We left the car and walked over to a coffee bar. We had coffee and doughnuts.
The time came when my train was due. I took Rusty’s hand in mine and squeezed it.
‘Thanks.’.
‘Forget it. Let me know how you make out.’
He gave me a slap on my shoulder, then walked fast to his car.
I walked into the station, holding my handkerchief to my face to hide my scar.
No one paid any attention to me.
Long before the train got me home, something happened that made the murder of a film studio guard no news at all: an event that had such a tremendous impact that the hunt for a man with a scar on his face became something of no importance.
An atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Under cover of this momentous news, I got home in safety.
By the time Japan had surrendered, I was back in college. By the time the world began the tricky business of peace making, I was qualified as a consulting engineer: two years exactly from the first time I had met Rima.
I wasn’t to meet her again for another eleven years.