The blades of the fan tumbled over and over, falling down a plane propeller but somehow not moving the stale air in my office. It smelled like cigarettes, typing paper turned to sepia and air that didn’t seem to move.
On the corner of my desk, folded backwards and in thirds, the picture stared up at me like a corpse nobody had closed the eyes on. Only the body in the picture – swaddled in thick silk charmeuse, expertly swirled and draped by some fancy French couturier – was only metaphorically dead.
Clutching a cascade of roses and orchids like an offering to the gods, there was a pearl necklace around her throat and a flashing pearl smile across her face. Spilling out of the sweetheart neckline, well, it was obviously the propped up for the moment mammary sweepstakes on display.
Some dame! A veil poured down her back, platinum blond hair curled up and falling down around a jawline meant for stronger things. All of it some show of virtue; the trappings of brokered virginity at a high dollar, high class wedding.
If the priest knew, most likely the church would collapse in on itself. Burst into flames or snakes when this dolly walked down the aisle to respectability and a three Cadillac garage. Not that anyone at Our Lady Queen of Angels had a clue about who she was before she convinced that fat cat used car dealer with lots all over the Southland that she was something special.
He had the money to clean up whatever stains on her reputation might sully his standing as community leader with the Knights of Columbus and what other civic organizations he decided to throw those rolls of bills at. Or maybe he didn’t.
Virginia Martha Davis the paper called her. No family to speak of or stand up for her. Just a girl from back East, no whereabout listed. The gleam in her eyes, pouring out like some angelic glow, inverted like the fake pearly shine on certain kinds of fading glamour girls facing the reality of a future they never saw coming.
Tomorrow morning. 11 a.m. Fancy downtown church. They probably pack it with flowers, burn all kinds of incense. Organ music, stately march down the aisle. Classy doings, elegant stuff all around.
Tomorrow at 11. High mass. Notice in the paper suggests they don’t have the bodies to fill the Queen of Angels. The curious and the creepers, people who lurk around this kind of pomp can just slide in the side door, watch the show go down. Big fancy $3,000 wedding. Fancy doings. See how the other half lives.
But I know Ginny Davis from the inside out. Rolling out of the tank in a black pencil skirt, skintight cardigan sweater carefully not buttoned all the way, barely holding in the creamy ample breasts. Her lips were a smear of Cherries in the Snow, false eyelashes curling upwards like inverted spiders.
Blinking in the harsh light of morning, her pimp had sent me down to bail her out. Had a trick go very wrong, the john turned up dead which happens when the girl’s too young and muscular. Fun and games becomes rigor mortis – and an extraction becomes necessary.
Trouble is the customer was a senator’s right-hand man, the fixer, the make it right guy. Just the kind of person who turns up missing, or worse in the worst kind of fleabag hotel, people ask questions. Even worse, he turns up ventilated with .38 size holes – and the damned girl was still there when the cops arrived.
Cowering in the closet, claiming someone had got in the room. Only problem: there was no struggle, his boxers were at his ankles and his manhood was still engorged. Oh, and the hundred dollars was on the dresser.
My job was to bail her out, get her out of town... cover her tracks so she could just disappear. The senator wanted it that way, and I made sure the senator’s wishes came true.
Only I hadn’t counted on that heart-shaped face, those whiplash curves or the way she struck a match. She played innocent, but she knew her way around the block. Figured maybe I could day or two inside some hotel, watching the draperies hanging heavy, almost thinking about moving in the breeze, running chips of ice over her body in the dry heat from the Santa Ana winds.
Who’d know? Why would it matter?
“Who’re you?” she asked from the bottom of her solar plexus.
“The guy sent to take you away from alla this.”
“You safe?”
“Safe enough for a girl who aerated her last customer.”
“Well, okay then.”
“Okay, then.” I escorted her to the car, opened the door and let her slide in.
“Where are we going?” she asked, clearly a rhetorical question.
“A shitty hotel for a couple days to cool you off, then let you get out of town.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“You will. Couple days of bad booze, worse food and me, you’ll be ready.”
“You sure know how to charm the ladies.”
She had no idea. She still doesn’t. But at the Shangri-La Motel in the decaying part of Venice, we registered as the Brownings from Solvang, a couple traveling without bags. We hit the room; I hit the ice machine – and retrieved the bottle from my car.
For three days, it was cheap whiskey, a rayon slip that kept slipping off her body and the kinds of full body searches reserved for women’s prisons. It passed the time in moans and spasms. She knew how to pulverize a man, wring every bit of whatever was inside him out. She blew smoke rings towards the ceiling, and lost count of how many she’d floated into the abyss.
Never tried to tell me she didn’t do it, or sell me it was self-defense. Just floated the hours and minutes like I was some kind of carnal scratching poll, and once her claws were right, she’d leave.
Funny thing about that. On the fourth day, I got the call at my service. Time’s Up. Project’s done. Get her on a Greyhound to Reno with $400 cash, no forwarding address.
“I don’t have any clothes,” she protested when I put her in the car.
“That’s what the money’s for. You get to Reno, with that face, you can set yourself up good.
“The Senator’s gonna get the file buried, but you can’t be hanging around. You gotta get lost for the case to get lost...”
Bought her that one way ticket when we got to the station. Stood and watched her get on the bus. She did the whole lower lip tremble, eyes filling up with tears Bambi and Thumper show. Even keeping that pencil skirt and sweater in the closet, they were a little limper than when I got her from the can.
She looked like trouble deflated, but I didn’t care. I knew better.
“Can’t I just stay with you?” she asked, thinking all that hay rolling meant something. Or at least the way she backed up mighta made me want some more.
“No, doll. Senator says you gotta go. Reno’s lovely this time of year.”
I saw the door to the bus close, saw it back up, then pull out of the lot. I watched that blond head in the window disappear down the road, just stood there until the back end was gone. Stood there a little bit more, just to make sure there was no return for repairs.
She knew the score. She knew what she needed to do. How to disappear.
Somehow Ginny Davis just couldn’t make leaving Los Angeles stick. Not that she sent me a fruit basket, or a note to say thank you for three days in the sack when her trail needed cooling. She never even called to say “I’m back in town.”
Girls that pretty are ice cold. Can shoot a man for God knows why. Who knows how long that sap who put her in the French cream silk’s gonna last? Not for me – or the Senator – to say.
But should you see Virginia, go ahead and give my best to the bride.