Too complicated.
Too complicated for the standard commission at any rate.
He’d renegotiate at the first chance.
Up aheadsomething appeared on the horizon that wasn’t part of the landscape. It looked like a rusty metal remnant of some type.
Another appeared.
Then another.
There were dozens of them.
It was some kind of machinery graveyard, mostly old farm machinery and truck hulks from the looks of it.
Interesting.
He picked up the pace.
As he walked a thought came to him. If the woman did end up seeing his face, he could have her die by a rattlesnake bite. He could say it wasn’t his fault, just nature at work.
7
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
The dead woman in the red dress was someone named Charley-Anna Blackridge. The phone book had her listed at 1331 Clayton in near-east Denver. Wilde headed over in the MG, parked two blocks away and doubled back on foot, intending to break in and find out who was in her life before the night in question. The house was a small brick bungalow with no driveway or garage, jammed in the middle of an endless sea of the same. Wilde knocked on the front door to be sure no one was home before heading around back.
Something happened he didn’t expect.
The door opened.
A woman in her early twenties appeared. The knock had woken her up. Her hair was tossed. Sleep was thick in her eyes. She wore a pink T-shirt that covered her ass but not by much.
“Sorry to wake you,” Wilde said.
She studied him.
“Are you a cop?”
“No, a P.I.”
“Are you here about Charley-Anna?”
He was.
“Come on in but don’t expect much,” she said. “I don’t know anything. You got a cigarette?”
He did.
He did indeed.
The woman turned out to be 22-year-old Alley Bender, the dead woman’s roommate who was, in fact, wearing something under the T, namely white panties that flashed with regularity. She reminded Wilde a little of Night Neveraux, his high school squeeze.
“We were out dancing Friday night at a couple of clubs,” she said. “The last one we were at was a place called the El Ray Club. I met a guy a little after midnight and we ended up leaving. Charley-Anna had her eye on a guy and said she was going to stick around. That was the last I saw of her.”
“Who was the guy?”
“That I left with?”
“No, the one Charley-Anna had her eye on.”
The woman shrugged.
“I didn’t know him,” she said.
“Did she point him out?”
“Yeah but he wasn’t anyone I knew.”
“Describe him.”
Her eyes faded to the distance then back.
“He reminded me of Robert Mitchum. He had that same dimple in the chin and those same bedroom eyes.”
“Robert Mitchum, huh?”
Right.
Robert Mitchum.
“He was nice looking,” she said. “Too nice looking. He had more than his fair share of women gawking at him. There was no danger he was going to end up going home alone, that’s for sure.”
“Did he talk to Charley-Anna?”
She shrugged.
“Not while I was there,” she said. “What happened after I left, I don’t know. Do you want to hear something strange?”
Yes.
He did.
“When they found her she was wearing a short red dress,” she said. “That’s not what she had on that night though. She was wearing a black dress, a longer one with a slit up the side.”
“Well that’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
She brightened.
“Actually, I think I have a picture of her wearing the dress she had on that night. Do you want me to see if I can find it?”
“That would be great.”
She drained the last of the coffee and stood up.
“I like your eyes,” she said. “I’ve always been a sucker for green eyes.”
Wilde watched the woman with a half-eye as she dug through a metal cookie tin jammed with photos. Her knees were slightly open and her panties peeked out.
It wasn’t an accident.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
Wilde pictured the two of them in bed.
The picture didn’t last long though. It got squeezed out by Secret St. Rain.
8
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
Shelby Tilt didn’t remember much about the San Francisco case other than the red dress. He didn’t even remember the dead woman’s name. His file, if you could even call it that, was long gone.
“If you’re serious about breaking this story,” Waverly said, “then I’m going to say something that you’re not going to want to hear.”
“Like what?”
“Like I think I need to go to San Francisco.”
Tilt frowned.
“Go there?”
“Right.”
“That costs money,” he said.
“I’ll take the bus,” she said.
Tilt shook his head.
“Stay here and work the Denver angle,” he said. “The Denver stuff’s fresh.”
“Let the cops work the Denver angle,” she said. “I’ll get Johnnie Pants to feed it to me.”
Tilt knew the name.
Pants was one of the homicide detectives.
“How are you going to get him to do that?”
“I’ll give him a blowjob or something,” Waverly said. “The point I’m trying to make is that if we’re going to find a common denominator, we need to run down the San Francisco case. There’s no way to do that except to go there.”
Tilt puffed the cigar and blew a ring.
“If I get totally stupid and say okay, you’d need to do it on a shoestring,” he said. “You’d need to stay at the cheapest flophouse in town and not even think about eating anything more fancy than peanut butter and jelly. No cabs when you get there either. Take the trolley or the bus. Or better yet, walk.” A pause then, “There’s a Chinese girl I know there named Su-Moon. Maybe you could stay with her. I’ll give her a call.”
“Who is she, an old girlfriend?”
“Sort of,” he said. “She gives massages.”
“She’s a massage girl?”
“Don’t say it like that,” he said. “It’s a legitimate profession.”
“Does she give happy endings?”
He smiled.
“I’m taking the fifth on that.” He got serious and added, “I’m going to go ahead with your plan partly because you’re right that we need to run down the San Francisco connection and we can’t do that from Denver. That’s only 10 percent of it though. The other 90 is because you’ll be safer there. I’m still deciding whether I really have the right to put you at risk.”
“The world’s a risky place,” she said. “We should be glad. Otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to report.”
Two hours later Waverly was sitting in the window seat of a shaky airliner as it left Denver in the rearview mirror and headed west over the mountains.
A small hastily-packed suitcase was in the overhead bin.
In her purse was all the money Tilt could spare, a banana and the phone number of a Chinese woman who gave happy endings.
9
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
The graveyard of rusty hulks had an eerie patina even in the daylight. Everything was ancient-thirty, forty maybe even fifty years old. There was no evidence that anyone had visited the place in a long time. There were no pop cans or cigarette butts or empty rifle shells. It would be a great place for target practice or bonfires or to scare the high school girls after dark with ghost stories. If anything like that had happened in the last decade there was no evidence of it.