Part 41 (1/2)

”Go home, Sophie.” It was getting hard to talk again, the teeth were coming out.

Shophie, I mangled her name the first time I ever said it. ”You're a doll. A real doll.”

”What are you going to do?” She had never asked me that before. Plenty of questions, like, where did you put that file and do you want coffee and what should I tell Boyleston when he calls about the rent? But that particular one she'd never asked.

”I'm going to finish the Kendall job.” I slid out of the car and closed the door softly, headed down the street. She waited, just like I'd told her, for me to reach the corner. Then the Ford's engine woke and she pulled away. I could hear the car, but the biggest relief came when I couldn't hear her pulse anymore.

Instead, I heard everyone else's. The drumbeats were a jungle, and here I was, the thirst burning a hole in me and the rain smacking at the top of my unprotected head. I flipped up the collar of my coat, wished like h.e.l.l a bottle of Scotch could take the edge off the burning, and headed for Chinatown.

You can find anything in Chinatown. They eat anything down there, and I have a few friends. Still, it's amazing how a man who won't balk when you ask him to hide a dead body or a stack of bloodstained clothes might get funny ideas when you ask him to help you find...blood.

That's what butchers are for. And after a while I found what I was looking for. I had my nineteen dollars and the thirty in pin money from Miss Dale's- Sophie's-kitchen jar. She said I was good for it, and she would take it on her next paycheck.

I would worry about getting her another paycheck as soon as I finished this out. It might take a little doing.

After two bouts of heaving as my body rebelled, the thirst took over and I drank nearly a bucket of steaming copper, and then I fell down and moaned like a doper on the floor of a filthy Chinatown slaughterhouse. It felt good, slamming into the thirst in my gut and spreading in waves of warmth until I almost cried.

I paid for another bucket. Then I got the h.e.l.l out of there, because even yellow men will stop looking the other way for some things.

It's amazing what you can do once a dame in a green dress kills you and pins you for murder.

The next thing I needed was a car. On the edge of Chinatown sits Benny's Garage, and I rousted Benny by the simple expedient of jimmying his lock and dragging him out of bed. He didn't know why I wanted the busted-down pickup and twelve jerrycans of kerosene. ”I don't want to know,” he whined at me. ”Why'd'ja have to bust the door down? Jeez, Becker, you-”

”Shut up.” I peeled a ten-spot off my diminis.h.i.+ng bankroll and held it in front of him, made it disappear when he s.n.a.t.c.hed at it. ”You never saw me, Benny.”

He grabbed the ten once I made it reappear. ”I never G.o.dd.a.m.n see you, Jack. I never wanta see you again, neither.” He rubbed at his stubble, the rasp of every hair audible to me, and the sound of his pulse was a whack-whack instead of the sweet music of Sophie's. How long would his heart work through all the blubber he had piled on?

I didn't care. I drove away and hoped like h.e.l.l Benny wouldn't call the cops. With a yard full of stolen cars and up to his a.s.s in hock to Papa Ginette, it would be a bad move for him.

But still, I worried. I worried all the way up into Garden Heights and the quiet manicured mansions of the rich, where I found the house I wanted and had to figure out how to get twelve jerrycans over a nine-foot stone wall.

The house was beautiful. I almost felt bad, splis.h.i.+ng and splas.h.i.+ng over parquet floors, priceless antiques, and a bed that smelled faintly of copper and talc.u.m powder. There was a whole closetful of green dresses. I soaked every G.o.dd.a.m.n one of them. Rain pounded the roof, gurgled through the gutters, hissed against the walls.

I carried two jerrycans downstairs to the foyer-a ma.s.sive expanse of checkered black and white soon swimming in the nose-cleaning sting of kerosene-and settled myself to wait by the door to a study that probably had been Arthur Kendall's favorite place. I could smell him in there, cigars and fatheaded, expensive cologne. I ran my hands down the shaft of the shovel while I waited, swung it a few experimental times, and tapped it on the floor. It was a flathead shovel, handily available in any garden shed-and every immaculate lawn needs a garden shed, even if you get brown or yellow people out to clean it up for you.

I'm good at waiting, and I waited a long time. The fumes got into my nose and made me lightheaded, but when the Packard came purring up the drive I was pouring the last half of a jerrycan, lit a match and a thin trail of flame raced away up the stairs like it was trying to outrun time. Even if her nose was as acute as mine she might not smell the smoke through the rain, and I bolted through the study, which had a floor-length window I'd been thoughtful enough to unlock. Around the corner, moving so fast it was like being back in the war again, hardly noticing where either foot landed as long as I kept moving, and the shovel whistled as I crunched across the gravel drive and smacked s.h.i.+fty Malloy right in the face with it, a good hit with all my muscle behind it. He had gotten out of the car, the stupid b.u.m, and he went down like a ton of bricks while Let.i.tia Kendall fumbled at the doorhandle inside, scratching like a mad hen.

The house began to whoosh and crackle. Twelve jerries is a lot of fuel, and there was a lot to burn in there. Even if it was raining like G.o.d had opened every d.a.m.n tap in the sky.

She fell out of the Packard, the black dress immediately soaked and flashes of fishbelly flesh showing as she scrabbled on gravel. Her crimson mouth worked like a landed fish's, and if I was a nice guy I suppose I might have given her a chance to explain. Maybe I might have even let her get away by being a stupid d.i.c.k like you see in the movies, who lets the bad guy make his speech.

But I'm not a good guy. The shovel sang again, and the sound she made when the flat blade chopped three-quarters of the way through her neck was between a gurgle and a scream. The rain masked it, and she was off the gravel and on the lawn now, on mud as I followed, jabbing with the shovel while her head flopped like a defective Kewpie doll's. I chopped the way we used to chop rattlers back on the farm, and when her body stopped flopping and the gouts and gouts of fresh steaming blood had soaked a wide swatch of rain-flattened gra.s.s I dropped the shovel and dragged her strangely heavy carca.s.s back toward the house. I tossed it in the foyer, where the flames were rising merrily in defiance of the downpour, and I tossed the shovel in too. Then I had to stumble back, eyes blurring and skin peeling, and I figured out right then and there that fire was a bad thing for me, whatever I was now.

She was wet and white where the black dress was torn, and the flames wanted to cringe away. I didn't stick around to see if she went up, because the house began to burn in earnest, the heat scratching at my skin with thousands of sc.r.a.ping gold pins, and there was a rosy glow in the east that had nothing to do with kerosene.

It was dawn, and I didn't know exactly what had happened to me, but I knew I didn't want to be outside much longer.

Of course she hadn't gone to sleep. As soon as I got near her door, trying to tread softly on the worn carpet and smelling the burned food and dust smell of working folks in her apartment building, it opened a crack and Sophie peered through. She was chalk-white, trembling, and she retreated down the hall as I shambled in. It was still raining and I was tired. The thirst was back, and my entire body was shot through with lead. The pinp.r.i.c.ks on my throat throbbed like they were infected, but the divot above my right eye wasn't inflamed anymore. But my skin cracked and crackled with the burning, still, and the thirst was back, burrowing in my veins.

I shut her door and locked it. I stood dripping on her welcome mat and looked at her.

She hadn't changed out of the blue dress. She had nice legs, by G.o.d, and those cat-tilted eyes weren't really dark. They were hazel. And her wrist was still bruised where I'd grabbed her, she had peeled the Ace off and it was a nice dark purple. It probably hurt like h.e.l.l.

Her hands hung limp at her sides.

I searched for something to say. The rain hissed and gurgled. Puddles in the street outside were reflecting old neon and newer light edging through gray mist. ”It's dawn.”

She just stood there.

”You're a real doll, Sophie. If I didn't have-”

”How did it happen?” She swallowed, the muscles in her throat working. Under that high collar her pulse was still like music. ”Your...you...” She fluttered one hand helplessly. For the first time since she walked into my office three years ago and announced the place was a dump, my Miss Dale seemed nonplussed.

”I got bit, sugar.” I peeled my sodden s.h.i.+rt collar away. ”I don't want to make any trouble for you. I'll figure something out tomorrow night.”

Thirty of the longest seconds of my life pa.s.sed in her front hallway. I dripped, and I felt the sun coming the way I used to feel storms moving in on the farm, back when I was a jugeared kid and the big bad city was a place I only heard about in church.

”Jack, you a.s.s,” Sophie said. ”So it's a bite?”

”And a little more.”

Miss Dale lifted her chin and eyed me. ”I don't have any more steak.” Her pulse was back. It was thundering. It was hot and heavy in my ears and I already knew I wasn't a nice guy. Wasn't that why I'd come here?

”I'll go.” I reached behind me and fumbled for the k.n.o.b.

”Oh, no you will not.” It was Miss Dale again, with all her crisp efficiency. She reached up with trembling fingers, and unb.u.t.toned the very top b.u.t.ton of her collar.

”Sophie-”

”How long have I been working for you, Jack?” She undid another b.u.t.ton, slender fingers working, and I took a single step forward. Burned skin crackled, and my clothes were so heavy they could have stood up by themselves. ”Three years. And it wasn't for the pay, and certainly not because you've a personality that recommends itself.”

Coming from her, that was a compliment. ”You've got a real sweet mouth there, Miss Dale.”

She undid her third b.u.t.ton, and that pulse of hers was a beacon. Now I knew what the thirst wanted, now I knew what it felt like, now I knew what it could do- ”Mr. Becker, shut up. If you don't, I'll lose my nerve.”

Sophie is on her pink frilly bed. The shades are drawn, and the apartment's quiet. It's so quiet. Time to think about everything.

When a man wakes up in his own grave, he can reconsider his choice of jobs. He can do a whole lot of things.

It's so G.o.dd.a.m.n quiet. I'm here with my back to the bedroom door and my knees drawn up. Sophie is so still, so pale. I've had time to look over every inch of her face and I wonder how a stupid b.u.m like me could have overlooked such a doll right under his nose.

It took three days for me. Two days ago the dame in the black dress choked her last and her lovely mansion burned. It was in all the papers as a tragedy, and s.h.i.+fty Malloy choked on his own blood out in the rain too. I think it's time to find another city to gumshoe in. There's Los Angeles, after all, and that place does three-quarters of its business after dark.

Soon the sun's going to go down. Sophie's got her hands crossed on her chest and she's all tucked in nice and warm, the coverlet up to her chin and the lamp on so she won't wake up like I did, in the dark and the mud.

The rain has stopped beating the roof. I can hear heartbeats moving around in the building.