The Black-Eyed Blonde

2

She was right: Napier Street didn’t exactly advertise itself, but I saw it in time and swung in off the boulevard. The road was on a slight rise, heading up toward the hills that stood in a smoke-blue haze way off at the far end. I cruised along slowly, counting off the house numbers. Peterson’s place looked a bit like a Japanese teahouse, or what I imagined a Japanese teahouse would look like. It consisted of a single story and was built of dark red pine, with a wraparound porch and a shingled roof that rose in four shallow slopes to a point in the middle with a weather vane on it. The windows were narrow and the shades were drawn. Everything about it told me no one had lived here for quite a while, though the newspapers had stopped piling up. I parked the car and climbed three wooden steps to the porch. The walls with the sun on them were giving off an oily smell of creosote. I pressed the bell but it didn’t ring inside the house, so I tried the knocker. An empty house has a way of swallowing sounds, like a dry creek sucking down water. I put an eye to the glass panel in the door, trying to see through the lace curtain behind it. I couldn’t make out much — just an ordinary living room, with ordinary things in it.

A voice spoke behind me. “He ain’t home, brother.”

I turned. He was an old guy, in faded blue overalls and a collarless shirt. His head was shaped like a peanut shell, a big skull and big chin with caved-in cheeks in between, and a toothless mouth that hung open a little. On his jaw was a week’s silvery stubble, the tips of it glittering in the sunlight. Sort of a Gabby Hayes gone badly to seed. One eye was shut and with the other he was squinting up at me, moving that hanging jaw slowly from side to side like a cow working on a piece of cud.

“I’m looking for Mr. Peterson,” I said.

He turned his head aside and spat drily. “And I told you, he ain’t home.”

I came down the steps. I could see him waver a bit, wondering who I was and how much trouble I might represent. I brought out my cigarettes and offered him one. He took it eagerly and stuck it to his lower lip. I lit a match on my thumbnail and passed him the flame.

A cricket soared out of the dry grass beside us like a clown being shot from the mouth of a cannon. The sun was strong and there was a hot dry breeze blowing, and I was glad of my hat. The old boy was bareheaded but seemed not to notice the heat. He took in a big draw of cigarette smoke, held it, and expelled a few gray wisps.

I tossed the spent match into the grass. “You didn’t ought to do that,” the old man said. “Start a fire here, the whole of West Hollywood goes up in smoke.”

“You know Mr. Peterson?” I asked.

“Sure do.” He gestured behind him to a tumbledown shack on the far side of the street. “That’s my place there. He used to come over sometimes, pass the time of day, give me a smoke.”

“How long’s he been gone?”

“Let me see.” He thought about it, doing some more squinting. “I guess I last seen him six, seven weeks ago.”

“Didn’t mention where he was off to, I suppose.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t even see him go. Just one day I noticed he was gone.”

“How?”

He peered up at me and gave his head a shake, as if he had water in his ear. “How what?”

“How did you know he was gone?”

“He wasn’t there anymore, is all.” He paused. “You a cop?”

“Sort of.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Private dick.”

He chuckled, stirring up the phlegm. “A private dick ain’t a sort of cop, except in your dreams, maybe.”

I sighed. When they hear you’re private, they think they can say anything to you. I guess they can, too. The old man was grinning at me, smug as a hen that’s just laid an egg.

I looked up and down the street. Joe’s Diner. Kwik Kleen launderers. A body shop where a grease monkey was tinkering in the innards of a very unwell-looking Chevy. I imagined Clare Cavendish stepping out of something low and sporty and wrinkling her nose at all this. “What sort of people did he bring here?” I asked.

“People?”

“Friends. Drinking buddies. Associates from the world of the movies.”

“Movies?”

He was beginning to sound like Little Sir Echo. “What about lady friends?” I said. “He have any?”

This produced a full-blown laugh. It was not a pleasant thing to hear. “Any?” he crowed. “Listen, mister, that guy had more broads than he knew what to do with. Every night, nearly, he come home with a different one.”

“You must have been keeping a sharp eye on him and his comings and goings.”

“I seen him, that’s all,” he said, in a sulkily defensive tone. “They used to wake me up, with all the ruckus they made. One of them dropped a bottle of something on the sidewalk one night — champagne, I think it was. Sounded like a shell exploding. The broad just laughed.”

“The neighbors didn’t complain about these shenanigans?”

He gave me a pitying look. “What neighbors?” he said with contempt.

I nodded. The sun wasn’t getting any cooler. I took out a handkerchief and swabbed the back of my neck. Around here there are days in high summer when the sun works on you like a gorilla peeling a banana.

“Well, thanks anyway,” I said and stepped past him. The air rippled above the roof of my car. I was thinking how hot to the touch the steering wheel was going to be. Sometimes I tell myself I’ll move to England, where they say it’s cool even in the dog days.

“You ain’t the first one asking after him,” the old man said behind me.

I turned. “Oh, yeah?”

“Pair of wetbacks come ’round last week.”

“Mexicans?”

“That’s what I said. Two of them. They was all gussied up, but a wetback in a suit and a fancy necktie is still a wetback, right?”

The sun had been shining on my back and was now shining on my front. I could feel my upper lip getting damp. “You speak to them?” I asked.

“Naw. They drove up in some kind of car I never seen the likes of before, must have been made down there. High and wide as a whorehouse bed, and a canvas roof with holes in it.”

“When was this?”

“Two, three days ago. They prowled around the place for a while, looking in the windows like you did, then got in the car again and moseyed off.” Another dry spit. “I don’t care for wetbacks.”

“You don’t say.”

He gave me a surly look, then sniffed.

I turned away again and started toward my hot car. Again he spoke—“You think he’s coming back?”—and again I stopped. I felt like the wedding guest trying to unhook himself from the Ancient Mariner.

“Doubt it,” I said.

He gave another sniff. “Well, he ain’t much missed, I guess. Still, I liked him.”

He had smoked the cigarette down to about a quarter inch of stub, which now he dropped into the grass. “You didn’t ought to do that,” I said, getting into the car.

When my fingers touched the steering wheel, I was surprised they didn’t sizzle.