Benjamin Black: The Black-Eyed Blonde

“On account of being so shy,” I said.

She stood up, while I stayed sitting. I smelled her perfume again. Not Chanel, then, but Langrishe, the name or number of which I would dedicate myself to finding out. “I’ll need a contact for you, too,” I said.

She pointed to the piece of paper in my hand. “I’ve put my telephone number on there. Call me whenever you need to.”

I read her address: 444 Ocean Heights. Had I been alone, I would have whistled. Only the cream get to live out there, on private streets right by the waves.

“I don’t know your name,” I said. “I mean your first name.”

For some reason this brought a mild flush to her cheeks, and she looked down, then quickly up again. “Clare,” she said. “Without an i . I’m called after our native county, in Ireland.” She made a slight, mock-doleful grimace. “My mother is something of a sentimentalist where the old country is concerned.”

I put the notebook page into my wallet, rose, and came from behind the desk. No matter how tall you might be, there are certain women who make you feel shorter than they are. I was looking down on Clare Cavendish, but it felt as if I were looking up. She offered me her hand, and I shook it. It really is something, the first touch between two people, no matter how brief.

I saw her to the elevator, where she gave me a last quick smile and was gone.

* * *

Back in my office, I took up my station at the window. Miss Remington was tap-tappeting still, diligent girl that she was. I willed her to look up and see me, but in vain. What would I have done, anyway — waved, like an idiot?

I thought about Clare Cavendish. Something didn’t add up. As a private eye I’m not completely unknown, but why would a daughter of Dorothea Langrishe of Ocean Heights and who knew how many other swell spots choose me to find her missing man? And why, in the first place, had she got herself involved with Nico Peterson, who, if her description of him was accurate, would turn out to be nothing but a cheap grifter in a sharp suit? Long and convoluted questions, and hard to concentrate on while remembering Clare Cavendish’s candid eyes and the amused, knowing light that shone in them.

When I turned, I saw the cigarette holder on the corner of my desk, where she had left it. The ebony was the same glossy blackness as her eyes. She’d forgotten to pay me my retainer, too. It didn’t seem to matter.

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.