Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde Read Free Page A

added the money Rebecca had given me and counted again. It made a decent little pile. It wouldn’t last, because I was behind seven weeks’ rent and two payments on my car, but it still felt nice between my fingers. It’s always good to get your pay. There was a mirror over the dresser, and I watched myself tuck the bills neatly in my wallet, and then I stood and looked at myself. I looked like the kind of guy who strangles contractors. I pulled off my clothes, turned the shower up as hot as I could bear, and stood under it awhile. I toweled off and had a drink from the bottle in the desk. I looked in the mirror again. Better. I put on some pants. Better all the time.
    Aside from my clothes and groceries, the only things in that room I owned were the typewriter on the desk and a trunk where I kept my books. I didn’t keep the books out on shelves because I didn’t have any shelves, and because if girls saw them they wanted to talk about the pug who reads and wasn’t that wonderful.
    I only buy books by people I wish I wrote like. I had some Hawthorne, some Irwin Shaw, and some John Dos Passos. I had some Hemingway, but he tires me, and if we knew each other we’d have to fight. I had some Flannery O’Connor, but she makes me want to put my head in the oven. I had some Chekhov. I don’t care about who’s a Russky. If Chekhov’s a Commie, then I wish I was one, too. But let me tell you, when it comes to writing about war, give me Stephen Crane. You can have Tolstoy. You can keep him. The son of a bitch never crossed out a sentence in his life.
    I bought the typewriter with my mustering-out pay. My drafts and carbons I kept in the bottom left drawer.One drawer was enough, because I didn’t let them pile up. Every six months or so, I’d go through and read two or three pages at random of everything in the drawer, and if I didn’t see anything I liked, I’d chuck them. At any given time there’d be two or three screenplays, half a dozen treatments, and one or two short stories or pieces of stories. I threw most of it away, but I did keep a log with the names of everything I’d written and who I’d sent it to, so if I ever wanted to I could see what I’d been doing for the last nine years.
    I had another drink, put on a sport shirt and loafers, and went to see Mattie Reece.
    Reece’s office was a Quonset hut just inside the Republic studio gates. I found him where I always did, sitting behind a pair of big feet, a burning cigarette, and a pair of sharp black eyebrows. A rickety little man in a rumpled suit. He never seemed to take his feet off his desk, but somehow everything at Republic always ran smooth and tight. He could have left Poverty Row for a big job at the majors, but then he might’ve had to take his feet off the desk. “’Lo, Mattie,” I said.
    “Hello, Ray. Come in and take a load off.”
    “Thanks,” I said, sitting down.
    “Getting a little gut there, soldier.”
    I shook my head.
    “I can see it from here,” he said.
    I shook my head again. “I’ve had that gut for years. I don’t blame you for trying to ignore it.”
    “Shame on you, getting out of shape like that. What if you wanted to get back in the ring?”
    “I had it when I was fighting. My dance card was still pretty full. Who’s this lulu you wished on me?”
    “Isn’t she a specimen?” he said. “I give you a week to get in. One week, you son of a bitch, if you haven’talready. Tell me, how does an ugly bastard like you get in all the time?”
    “A friendly smile and a firm handshake. What do you think of her?”
    He opened his eyes wide. “Can you imagine posture like that on such a flimsy little thing? It’s like she borrowed ’em off a fat girl.” He gave a little shiver. “She wrecks me.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Why would there be anything else?”
    “She says she’s being threatened.”
    “Ah, no,” he said, concerned. “You’re not coming here to ask me about her story , are you? The mysterious