Noir(ish) (9781101610053) by Guilford-blake Evan

Author:Guilford-blake, Evan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2012-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Wednesday, June 25th, 1947, 10:30 p.m.

Brown Hat had been waiting. He was standing and smoking a cigar a dozen feet from The Pickup’s entrance, hidden in the shadows beneath the awning of a pawnshop whose three bronze balls were just visible through the smog that had begun to smatter the streets. The tip of the cigar glowed in the dark, a little red beacon. Even if it hadn’t, I would have known he was there: I could have smelled the cheap cheroot twice that far away. I felt sorry for him, standing all this time in the heat. I figured he had to be thirsty and he probably had to pee unless he’d ducked into an alley and risked my sudden exit. Well, that was his problem. Mine was Lizabeth Duryea.

It had been nice and cool in The Pickup, but on the streets it was still eighty-something and damp as a locker room after a tag-team wrestling match. And the air smelled just as musty. In Indianapolis, hot summer nights smelled like carnivals and new-mown grass. In San Francisco, the fragrance was fish. In Los Angeles, the scent was more like moldering dreams.

I felt sweat trickling thirty seconds after I set foot on the cement. I looked for a taxi; there wasn’t one to be found, so I walked. In the first two minutes I’d sweated out whatever alcohol Scott hadn’t shocked out of me. Halfway to the Criss Cross I was reminded about the something in my shoe; I didn’t feel like stopping to shake it out, even though I was sure Brown Hat and his metal heels would keep their distance.

It took almost twenty-five minutes on foot. Brown Hat stayed a dozen paces behind me, and I continued to ignore him. The trickle had turned to a rushing stream by ten thirty, the time I got to the Criss Cross. The place was empty except for Lizabeth Duryea. I saw her through the window, huddled, knees up like a little girl who’d lost her favorite doll, against the wall of a three-sided red plastic booth toward the rear of the place, stirring a cup of what I supposed was coffee and holding a Sobranie. The tip of its black tube oozed gray smoke.

Like most places in L.A., the diner was air-conditioned. Restaurant and club owners thought air-conditioning was the greatest invention since the cash register. At times like this, so did I. Lizabeth didn’t: She was wearing her gloves and coat and, I imagined, another ankle-length dress underneath its buttoned wool. What was underneath the dress . . . well, I was curious, which was curious in itself: It would be a year, next Thursday, since I’d had that sort of curiosity.

When I opened the door, Ed, the counterman, was placing a full sugar bottle on Lizabeth’s table. The first thing I heard was the radio: Johnnie Johnston singing “Laura.”

Lizabeth blew on her cup, then set it quietly back on the saucer. “Thank you,” she said.

“Anything else?” Ed ventured in his lanky, friendly manner.

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