Blonde Faith

21

Saul Lynx often said that he thought of me as the unwilling detective. When I asked him what he meant, he said, “It’s not a profession for you. You’re out there to help people because you hate what’s happened. But really you’d rather be reading a book.”

“Wouldn’t everybody rather be rich than workin’?” I asked.

“They tell you that, but most people in a job like ours are driven to be here, peeking through keyholes and mixing with scum.”

Well, I was no longer an unwilling detective. I was voluntarily moving toward a destination even though I had no idea where or what that was.

FOR SOME TIME, Mouse had had a sidetrack girlfriend named Lynne Hua, a Chinese beauty who had appeared in various films and TV shows. She never had more than a line or two, sometimes not even that, but she was gorgeous and worked pretty steadily. She didn’t want to get married or live with anyone, so she was the perfect girlfriend for Mouse, who had the perennial problem of his temporary lovers’ wanting to displace EttaMae to become Mrs. Mouse.

Jesus’s common-law wife, Benita, had been one of these. When she wanted more of Mouse’s attention, he dropped her and she swallowed forty-seven sleeping pills. After taking her to the hospital to pump out the chemicals and restart her heart, I brought her home, where Jesus took care of her like he did all the strays I took in.

I was on my way from downtown LA to Santa Monica when I thought of Lynne. I got off the freeway at La Brea and rode north to Olympic, where Lynne lived on the third floor of a mission-style apartment building.

I had been to Lynne’s before with Ray. I’d drink a glass of club soda with them before they left for some fancy Hollywood party. Lynne couldn’t be a star, but neither did she have to worry about people in the movie business being nonplussed by her being with a black man. No one but her Chinese aunts would be concerned about her dating Ray.

The stairway was rust colored and external, leading upward in a tight spiral. When I got to her door, I stopped and wondered what I’d say if Mouse was there. He wouldn’t like it that I was trying to find him for Etta. No, that wouldn’t be the approach. I needed help because of Christmas, that’s what I would say.

Lynne answered wearing a short red silk kimono with nothing underneath. Her face was made up, and there was a martini glass in her hand. For a moment I thought I had found my wayward friend.

Her lips said, “Hi, Easy,” but the tone in her voice and the way she smiled said, “I wondered when you’d come by alone.”

“Hey, Lynne,” I said, addressing her words, and then added, “Lookin’ for Mouse” to reply to her insinuation.

“He’s not here. But why don’t you come in? I hate drinking alone.”

The centerpiece of Lynne’s apartment was her living room, a large octagonal space with a big, almost wall-size window looking toward the Hollywood Hills. There were bookcases on every wall and a perfectly round yellow sofa, eight feet in diameter, set deliciously off center.

“Watermelon juice and vodka?” she offered.

“Not drinking these days,” I said, but I sure wanted to.

“Come sit.”

She lay on the sofa enticingly, and I sat next to her, a schoolboy with an obvious itch.

“I haven’t seen Raymond in a week,” Lynne said, pouting a little.

“You know where he’s been?”

“No. He said it was serious business. That meant he didn’t want me to ask where he was going or when he was coming back.”

“Was he worried?”

“Ray never worries. He’s never scared of anything. But I know better than to fall in love with a man like that.” She was on her back, looking up into my eyes. I could see her left breast clearly, and she could see me looking.

“Has your girlfriend come back?” she asked, sitting up. Her black hair fell down around the sides of her face.

“She’s getting married.”

A combination of mischief and sadness formed itself on Lynne’s perfect face.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Can I do anything for you?”

She touched my left forearm with her fingertips.

“Yeah. Yeah, you could.”

“What?” she asked through a knowing smile.

“Go put on something so I don’t lose my mind and get us both killed.”

This brought about a series of changes in the actress. First her face straightened out, then she stood and nodded. As she walked from the room, I wondered if I understood anything about women . . . or men.

I went over to the bookshelf and pondered the titles, which were eclectic. There was a physics textbook and Moby Dick, books in French, Chinese, and Spanish, a guide to knitting. After seeing all the different titles and languages, I thought that the books were just a designer’s decoration, a counterbalance for the erotic charge of the room, but then I realized that they were placed in alphabetical order, by title.

While I was pondering Lynne Hua’s library, she returned. Now she was wearing a schoolgirl’s green-and-white plaid skirt and a white blouse buttoned up to her throat. She even wore black shoes and white ankle socks.

Her smile seemed to be suppressing a sneer.

She sat and I did too.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been working, and Raymond is gone for I don’t know how long. And . . . and sometimes I drink too much.”

I had all the information I needed from her, but I couldn’t just walk out after making her get dressed.

“You haven’t been working?” I asked.

“I’ve been waiting for a job to start.”

“What’s that?”

The hidden sneer receded.

“There’s a new TV show called My Dad the Bachelor that’s supposed to air in the fall. I have a recurring role.”

“What is it?”

“You’re a funny man, Mr. Rawlins. I a Chinee girl speakee funny, lookee like ugly duck next to beautiful white swan.” She mimed the last part for me, and I smiled in condolence.

“Oh.”

“They pay okay,” she said. “The bachelor dad has a Chinese houseboy who takes care of the kids. The houseboy, Ralph, has a girlfriend who’s always yelling at him and cursing in Chinese. That’s all she does. He tells her something and then she screams. Once every three weeks I’ll go in to do that and they’ll pay my rent.”

“But why would they make a woman as beautiful as you into an ugly woman?” I asked.

“You think I’m ugly,” she said.

“You know that’s not true, girl. You look so good to me I have to cross my legs to keep decent. It’s just that Ray’s my friend and, as you said, he’s serious.”

The smile she showed at the hint of death was everything I needed to know about Lynne Hua.

“Blow jobs,” she said.

“Say what?”

“I give great blow jobs. There’s one guy casts for commercials, acts like he’s my agent because he knows that if I get a job he does too.”

She was trying to shock me and succeeding. It’s not that I was surprised what a man would do to get a woman down on her knees in front of him, but I was amazed that she would admit it so blithely.

“Have I scandalized you, Mr. Rawlins?”

“No . . . I mean, yes.”

“You don’t think a woman has to do these things to get by?”

“Oh, no, yes, yes, of course they do. It’s not that,” I said. “It’s you telling me about it.”

“You think I should tell Raymond what I do to get work?”

“No. I’m just wondering why tell me?”

“I have to tell somebody.” Her face was completely straight and honest looking. The words she spoke, I was sure, were the absolute truth.

“But why me?”

“Because,” Lynne said, “Raymond says that you are the most trustworthy man he has ever known. He says that you can tell Easy anything. He says that it’s like dropping a killing gun in the deepest part of the ocean.”

Watermelon juice and vodka were the prescription for her moments alone. I had just happened along when she was under the sway of her medicine.

“That’s why I wanted to make love to you,” she said.

“Because why?”

“I thought afterward I could tell you what I did and you would forgive me and I would keep our secret. But I didn’t even have to do that, did I?”

I held out a hand to her, and she wrapped her arms around me. We stood there a moment in that embrace. I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her shoulder.

When we let go, I asked, “How would you go about finding Mouse if you had to, Lynne?”

“Mama Jo.”

Of course.