The Song Is You

She straightened her shoulders and took a breath. With an attempt at a smile, she said, “You want something to drink?”

  He folded his arms and took a breath, too. Stay calm, kid. Nothing’s ever gained from getting hot. “How about ten gallons of black coffee?”

  He followed her into the kitchen. As she worked the percolator, he peered across the hallway into the bedroom. Doily lamp. Twin pictures of ballerinas.

  “Scene of the crime,” Peggy said, almost smiling, then cringing at the bad joke.

  What’s your angle?” he repeated.

  The percolator began to bubble.

  “My angle?” she almost barked. “I’m a war widow from the Midwest. I admit it: I got tangled up in this because of my own vanity. I wanted to have a little fun.”

  “Fun, huh? Fun for your beloved cousin to take a flying leap into nowhere?”

  This time, she did flinch. “How did I know? And how is it my fault? I went along that night to enjoy myself for once. I figured, why should Jean get all the good times? My figure’s just as fine.” She ran a hand along the tops of her breasts. “I can laugh and dance and, well, other things, too. You know.” She nodded her head toward the bedroom.

  Hop didn’t smile. For the first time he could recall, he passed on a cue.

  Abashed, she dropped her arms to her sides. “I wanted to join her on one of her nights. Is that so awful?”

  “So you were playacting?” Hop felt worn through with patience. “The country-cousin routine, huh? Okay, got it. Now, Mrs. Spangler, what I need to know is what the hell your game is.”

  She visibly bristled, even backing up a little.

  “I’ve got no game, Mr. Hopkins,” she said. “Oh, yes, I remembered your name.”

  “Because I actually gave you mine, Miss Hotcha.”

  Peggy touched her cheek, slightly red, with the back of her hand. “That was Jean’s idea of a joke. In her own way, she was full of jokes.”

  “What about Iolene?”

  “Who?” She looked at him.

  “Iolene. The colored girl. Jean’s friend.”

  “Oh, her. I don’t know. Never saw her before that night. Or after.

  Jean didn’t mix us, her family, in any of that.”

  “Any of what?”

  “Showbiz. Whatever biz.”

  “It’s funny because I really don’t believe you.”

  “That’s not my problem,” she said briskly. Then she began looking at him closely, setting out two cups and saucers. This one’s raw and ready, Hop thought. She’s running out of chances to play this card and she knows it.

  “So I know her,” she blurted out. “Iolene. She called a few times after Jean disappeared. Wanted some long green.”

  “For what?”

  “How should I know? I told her she was barking up the wrong war widow.”

  “When was the last time you heard from her?”

  “I don’t know. A while ago.”

  Hop squirmed in his chair with irritation. “Listen, I’m losing my patience. I never lose my patience. Do you want to join me in seeing what it looks like?”

  “She was mixed up in some schemes with Jean, okay? She was getting Jean involved in some things Jean had no business in.”

  “Like what?”

  “What else? Parties. Good times.” Peggy paused, then added, “Photographs.”

  “Photographs?”

  ‘Yeah, photos.”

  “Blackmail.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Can this be new to you, Mr. Hopkins? You seemed to know Iolene.”

  “Not really.”

  Well, she’s bad news. You should just count your lucky stars. It looks like she’s beat town.”

  How do you know she’s beat town?”

  “I’m guessing that’s why I stopped hearing from her,” Peggy said waveringly.

  “You might think about this, Miss Hotcha. Iolene was awfully scared last time I saw her. Scared enough to run. Hope whoever she’s scared of isn’t thinking of you next.”

  She crumpled into a chair. Looking up at him, eyes turning pink, she poured Hop a cup of coffee and one for herself. He could see it all in her face. He could see it happening to her as she told it to him. The whole sad affair. She told him everything. All those evenings stuck in that apartment, watching her twenties pass by. So when Jean called home to check on Christine, Peggy tricked Jean into giving her the number of where she was, in case of emergency. Since Jean’s mom was in Kentucky visiting family, Peggy got the next-door neighbor, Beryl, to look after Christine. She put on one of Jean’s dresses, a pair of her stockings, even her perfume. She took a bus as far as she could and then hitched a ride to the Eight Ball, her heart pounding the whole way.

  “And you,” Peggy told Hop, not quite looking him in the eye. “You with your shiny hair and the way you talked to me close. As soon as I got there, Jean whispered to me, ‘He’s all yours, sweetie. Eat him up.’ I thought you were an actor.”

  ‘You must have been disappointed.”

  She shrugged, still not looking him in the eye.

  “So you don’t know anything about what happened to them after

  we left?”

  “Sure I do. Iolene told me. She said Sutton and Merrel put Jean in a room and things got wild. Iolene snapped photos of them. The two men, they took turns on her. I think there are even pictures of both of ‘em taking her at once.”

  My, she’s a cold one, Hop thought. Tells me this like she’s telling me what she had for lunch. “For their private delectation?” he said.

  She stared at him blankly. He tried again. “For kicks?”

  “I guess. But Iolene’s no fool.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What, you think she’s the heroine of this little story? Those fellas can’t even control themselves enough to know that whatever jollies they get from the snapshots aren’t worth having those pictures fall into someone else’s hands.”

  “Iolene peddled these pictures?”

  “Sure, kid, sure. She wasn’t about to let the game end with Jean’s disappearing act.”

  Hop looked at her, trying to see if, or how much, she was lying. “Sutton and Merrel paid?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how it played out, Mr. Hopkins. Iolene played it long, far as I could tell. She’s a confident one,” Peggy said.

  “Did you see the pictures?”

  “No. No, I never did. But… but from what Iolene said, those pictures…” Her eyes unfocused. For the first time, Hop thought he saw something happening. Something Peggy hadn’t copied from the Saturday matinee. She paused for a moment. “They tied a leather strap around her mouth,” she said, voice trembling. “The pictures, they must be awful. Iolene, she said she couldn’t get them out of her head. She wanted to get rid of them. They were starting to get to her. She said she kept seeing them in her sleep. She said they were in all her dreams.”

  Her eyes turned red. Neither of them said anything for a minute. Then she looked up at him and there was a fierceness in her eyes.

  Fleetingly, he thought of Midge.

  ‘You still working for the movie magazines?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Hop lied.

  “Then you must be looking to make some sugar yourself.” There

  was something unloosed in her face. It was unspooling and unspooling.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “I know where the golden egg is. A stash even hotter than this big names in what they call compromising positions. You and me,” she said, setting her hand over the top of her coffee cup, the steam turning her fingers pink. “We could go partners.”

  “Oh yeah? If it’s so hot, what do you need me for?”

  “Connections. Muscle—”

  “How much muscle you see on me, Ace?”

  “Enough,” she said, releasing her hand and pressing it on the counter. “I figure you can peddle ‘em. To the studios. The chancier gossip rags. Split the take. Get me the hell out of this four-square for good. I’ve served my fifty-tw
o months. Life’s rough all over. Why should Iolene get all the honey?”

  “That’s your angle, huh?”

  “Could be.”

  “I’ll bite. Where’s the stash?”

  Satin Doll

  He told the studio he needed a day—two days max—off. Barbara Payton needed nursing. He was flying out to Chicago and then hopping a train up to Minnesota to babysit the newlyweds. It’d be worth it, honest. Of course he was more than pushing his luck. He really wasn’t in that kind of league. And the chances of getting caught showed this was a sucker’s bet.

  The sound of his own voice on the phone with the studio made him sick.

  How could he turn it on so fast, that hot, easy pit-a-pat?

  What was wrong with him? He touched his face and it was shiny-smooth, cool, like molded plastic, and if you tapped it, there was the soft sound of a perfectly hollow center.

  On his way to what he hoped would be Iolene’s hideaway, Hop stopped at a dismal-looking diner on Fountain Avenue. He realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a meal. Was it with Bix Noonan the previous afternoon? Or had he just had coffee? All he could remember for sure was the stale pretzel grounds and stray peanuts he’d scooped up at the Eight Ball.

  He sat at a corner table swabbed with coffee stains and made his way through a plate of runny eggs and crushed potatoes, scraping up the last slick yolk with a brittle slice of bacon.

  The waiter, a hatchet-faced old fellow with arms like a scarecrow, picked up his dishes with surprising care.

  “I could tell you was hungry,” he said. “Coming from a funeral?”

  “No,” Hop said. “Why?”

  “You got that look.”

  Hop tried to summon a friendly rejoinder, even a wisecrack, but nothing came, other than the sour taste of the coffee clinging to his teeth. And the rind of grease coating his mouth.

  He paid in a hurry and walked to the five-and-dime next door. He bought a toothbrush and a packet of tooth powder. Without bothering to ask, he pushed into the employee restroom and washed his teeth briskly, messily. Then he ran water over his stubbled face.

  He looked into the mirror, and as he did …

  As he did, he felt something was slowly slipping off him, some silky veneer, a loosening and dropping to the floor of a something—a something he had worn so well.

  The waiter was right. There was something in his face. And something missing from it, too.

  Oh, fuck, Hop, you just need a good eight hours of sack time a

  shower, and a shave.

  Maybe a nice alcohol rubdown at the fancy place in Beverly Hills.

  Fuck, Hop, you’re taking it all too hard.

  Now he was snaking his way through random side streets in Hollywood, trying to find Perdida Court. He imagined seeing Iolene again, if she was still there, and how he would handle it. He also wondered how to dance with Peggy Spangler just close enough to avoid making her mad—mad enough to call Frannie Adair, for instance. Or the police.

  Poor Jean. Life isn’t tough enough for you, you gotta have a green-eyed cuz who stomps over your—dare he think it aloud— your grave to try to make a buck off you.

  But then the thoughts of what Iolene and Jean may have been up to started to irk him. Less than ten hours ago, he’d been staring at that stained blanket and thinking of Jean Spangler as the wretched victim of a studio-protected sex maniac who, at some point, had veered into bloodlust. Now… What could those girls expect, playing this kind of game? They must have had big-league backers. If so, maybe they were strong-armed into it, walking the plank for Mickey Cohen’s crew, who were known for running operations like this all over town. And always with starlets on their way up and down and out. But Iolene, really? And if they were so hooked in, how come Cohen couldn’t protect them from the likes of Gene Merrel? Maybe they weren’t worth the trouble.

  He thought about all the things Peggy had said. And the last thing: “Iolene’s been sitting on this golden egg for long enough.

  Too scared to do anything about it after Jean … Somebody might as well skim off that cream.”

  “How do you know she’s not perched on it when I get there?”

  “Don’t you reporters do stakeouts?”

  “Do I look like that kind of reporter?”

  “Today? A little bit.” She’d smirked, eyeing his crumpled suit and stubble.

  She’d handed him a piece of paper with a Hollywood address. Hop had stopped himself from saying that he thought Iolene lived in Lincoln Heights. Why let her know? Clearly, Iolene was not sticking to one place but was darting around, circling and tiptoeing, jumping and running all over town.

  “So you’ll bring the photos back here? Or should I come to you?” Peggy had said, moving so close to Hop he could smell her coffeed breath, sweet with milk.

  “I’ll call you,” he’d said. “Let me get the lowdown and call you.

  “Guess I better give you my number,” she’d said, writing it down on the same paper as the address. “You wouldn’t double-shuffle me,

  would you?”

  “Me?” He’d tried to put his winning face back on. It wasn’t easy.

  “You came here looking to outscoop your fellow reporter and look what you get,” she’d said, smiling. Hop smiled back so hard his face hurt.

  Perdida Court was a series of small, tidy bungalows. The house in question was batter-white with a green roof jutting out over a

  modest front porch. There was no driveway and the street was dotted with cars, so Hop couldn’t be sure if anyone was at home.

  Faded green curtains were pulled shut across the front window.

  He stepped out of his car and walked up the front path, ignoring a slight wobbly feeling in his legs. Before he could think about what it would mean to see Iolene, or not to, he rang the bell.

  No answer.

  His collar itched, His hair felt oily, like the pelt of an otter. His feet were swelling in his crocodile shoes. And damn if he didn’t want to toss Peggy Spangler out the nearest window for making him lose his temper back there, so rare an act it surprised him.

  So, he decided, I go in like the sneak thief I am. How low can you sink, Hop? But then he remembered back in his newspaper days he’d once looked through a councilman’s trash cans, the heel of his hand sinking uncomfortably into old spaghetti and coffee grounds.

  Broad daylight on a Sunday. Better not try the front windows. He walked toward the back of the house, keeping an eye out for random neighbors watering lawns or hanging laundry. Luckily, a tall fence blocked the view between this lot and the one next door.

  As he turned the corner, his leg hit a trash can and the clatter nearly made him jump out of his skin. Christ, Hop, pull it together.

  Every window was shut and a quick scan of the latches showed them to be locked tight, despite the warm weather. Come back at night when you might have a shot at breaking one? Could he really wait? Frustrated, he walked up two steps to a back entrance. The screen door squeaked open on its hinge and Hop, for the hell of it, tried the knob on the inner, wooden door. He felt a lock engage but barely. Turning to his side, he began leaning and turning the knob, jiggling it and pressing the door with his shoulder as hard as he could.

  He could feel the lock nearly spinning around, just about to give way. He turned with his back to it and gave a quick kick to the spot directly to the left of it. The door flew open.

  He felt a gust of something blast in his face, up his nostrils. Walking into a bright white kitchen, he immediately spotted a trash can sitting by the window. The top was slightly tilted and Hop guessed it must’ve been filled to the brim to give off that smell. Left town in a hurry, Hop figured. Sure looked like it.

  Deciding he better not open the windows, he placed a handkerchief over his face. He walked through the kitchen and into a small dining room, which led to a living room straight ahead. The furnishings were simple. A round table and chairs, muslin curtains, a gold-green damask sofa with two matching chairs
. Dust motes in the air. A highball glass sat in an evaporated ring on the dining-room table as if someone had set it there for a moment to get a coaster.

  He saw a small stack of mail fanned across the sofa cushion. Utility bills. A grocery-store circular. An advertisement for a modeling agency. Hop peered more closely at the address labels. Not Iolene Harper. Not Jean Spangler. The name was Merry Lake. Previous tenant or nom de hideout, Hop wondered.

  Then, it hit him. The smell—it was familiar. It was a smell he knew. From back hospital corridors. From a long-ago hunting trip with his father by Lake Ontario. The stench from the center of the enormous devil’s tongue flower he stood over at the traveling sideshow his pop took him to when he was five years old. An organic smell, sweeter and heavier and … he walked quickly toward the only room left: the bedroom.

  The first thing he saw was a neat curl of tan patent leather, the tip of a shoe, jutting out on the floor from behind the ajar bedroom door. As he moved closer, he could see a full-wedge sandal and the bronze stocking foot, graceful, elegant. Lovely Iolene.

  At first the stocking looked patterned, but as he squinted and stepped closer to the door, it was as though her leg itself were marbled, green and black wisps winding around her limbs which looked puffy, straining the seams. Hop felt his body rise out of his skin, hover there a second, and then thud back down to earth.

  He pressed his fingers on the door and the smell lunged into his mouth and nose so strongly he saw stars, felt his tongue swell, dry and sludgy at the same time.

  As he entered the room, the room seemed to enter him, swallowing him up with the stench, the balm, the sound of the flies buzzing, the sight of Iolene, her graceful, lissome body in a rust-colored dress with black trim, her copper-tinted hair piled high on her head, her wrists and arms patterned with tortoiseshell bracelets, and her face … her face he couldn’t see. It was turned away, nearly covered by the edge of the bedspread, cheek facing the wooly, worn carpet.

  He crouched down, hands covering his face and mouth, still a good six feet from her. No more coffee-with-cream skin. He tilted his head to one side and took a deep breath before peering at her head. That was when he saw the piece of plaster on the floor.