Part 18 (1/2)

”What?”

The address strikes me suddenly. Lois lived so transiently that I didn't expect it to have any significance, but it does.

”Where is that?”

”h.e.l.l if I know.” Mike shrugs. ”Not my part of town.”

”Could that be Manchester and La Cienega?”

”I don't know, why?” His eyes look strangely bright, his hand on the folder I'm still holding.

”Just wondering,” I say. I look at the name listed next to the address, the spot usually reserved for landlords or landladies. It reads, ”Olive MacMurray.”

”What are you looking at?” Mike asks, placing his other hand on my shoulder.

”Nothing,” I say. I wonder if she is the woman I saw when I dropped Lois off at the house on Manchester after picking her up at the Rest E-Z Motel.

But somehow I don't want to tell Mike that. The more he asks, the less inclined I feel to tell. He seems too eager to leave, to wrap things up.

He takes the folder from my hands.

”Sorry this wasn't more help,” he says, opening the drawer and slipping the folder back in its place. ”That's okay.”

”Let's go grab a nightcap, King. Sit on this a little.” ”I'm tired. Maybe we'd just better call it a night.”

The next day, I leave work early and drive the same route I had with Lois, along La Cienega, all the way to the large display donut, its slightly rusting candy sprinkles nearly shaking from it.

At the door, I take a deep breath and ring the shrill, over-sprung bell.

It is the same tall woman with the crimson cone of curls on top of her head, her brows pinch-knitted red on her forehead. She appraises me with cool suspicion through the screen door.

”Miss MacMurray?”

Squinting, a cigarette wedged in her scarlet-edged lips, she mutters, ”It's Mrs. What do you want?”

”I wondered if I might have a moment of your time.”

She surveys me, from the pale, custard-colored hat on my head to my pigskin pumps.

”No G.o.d stuff here,” she finally says, starting to shut the door.

There doesn't seem to be any way to get into that house much less get the information I want. In the basted pocket of my dress, I grasp my only bargaining chip.

”Oh,” I say, waving my hand. ”I'm not one of those. I just have some questions for you.”

”That's how it always starts.”

”It's about Lois Slattery,” I blurt out, just as the closing door nearly blocks my view of her.

She pulls the door back with a jerk, raising an eyebrow in a way that looks painful, like risking the opening of a wound.

”Don't know who you're talking about.”

”But you do.” I try to fix a stare.

She pauses, then says, with a faint snarl, ”Who are you to me, anyway? I don't talk at all and I don't talk to just anybody.”

”I'm an acquaintance of Joe Avalon.”

She smirks so bodily that the powder on her chalky bosom rises, hangs in the air for a minute, and then falls again.

”I don't think so, honey, but that's just funny enough to get you inside.”

She props open the door with one acid green slipper. I hurry past it and into the darkened living room.

”Twenty and I'll listen,” she says, sitting down on a worn velvet armchair much like the one on the front lawn.

I can barely see in the dim s.p.a.ce, but what I can discern seems strangely unlived in. A sofa that matches the armchair, a large radio of the kind common before the war, a fringed lamp wrapped in dust. Otherwise, the room is bare.

Through an open door I can see a bedroom empty save a bed with a bare mattress on top and a pile of towels at the foot.

n.o.body lives here. They pa.s.s through.

”Twenty,” she repeats.

”Pardon?” I sit down on the low edge of the sagging sofa, my knees nearly reaching my chin. ”Oh, of course.”

I reach into my purse and hand Mrs. MacMurray a bill, hoping that money won't be her sole bartering interest. If so, the meeting will be over soon after it starts.

”You don't know Joe Avalon,” she says, sliding the bill into the pocket of her robe and folding her maroon-tipped talons in her lap.

”I do.”

”How?”

”That's not important.”

”I'll be the judge of that,” she says, hard as the edges of the bulbous jade on her right hand. The ring looks real.

”You don't live here,” I say. Her eyebrows pitch up suddenly.

”No.” She shrugs, as if deciding that this particular fact bears no weight. ”Of course not.”

Leaning forward, the dust in the air mingling with the powder on her chest, she fixes me with a steely stare. ”I'm losing interest. Tell me who you are and what you want or I'll make things ugly. You don't throw that name around lightly.”

As she speaks, she moves her face so close I can see the bleeding edge of her painted mouth. Inexplicably, it makes me shudder.

”Lois Slattery,” I say quickly. ”She worked for you?”