Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘I don’t think I will.’

‘He doesn’t think he will,’ the old man said to Gino.

‘I think you better let me out of here. Kidnapping is a tough rap. You don’t want to die in the pen.’

He smiled at me, with a tolerance more terrible than anger. His eyes were like thin stab-wounds filled with watery blood. Shuffling unhurriedly to the head of the mahogany table behind him, he pressed a spot in the rug with the toe of one felt slipper. Two men in blue serge suits entered the room and stepped towards me briskly. They belonged to the race of giants it had been built for.

Gino moved behind me and reached to pin my arms. I pivoted, landed one short punch, and took a very hard counter below the belt. Something behind me slammed my kidneys with the heft of a trailer truck bumper. I turned on weakening legs and caught a chin with my elbow. Gino’s fist, or one of the beams from the ceiling, landed on my neck. My head rang like a gong. Under its clangour, Angel was saying pleasantly:

‘Where was Fern last night?’

I didn’t say.

The men in blue serge held me upright by the arms while Gino used my head as a punching bag. I rolled with his lefts and rights as well as I could but his timing improved and mine deteriorated. His face wavered and receded. At intervals Angel enquired politely if I was willing to assist him now. I asked myself confusedly in the hail of fists what I was holding out for or who I was protecting. Probably I was holding out for myself. It seemed important to me not to give in to violence. But my identity was dissolving and receding like the face in front of me.

I concentrated on hating Gino’s face. That kept it clear and steady for a while: a stupid square-jawed face barred by a single black brow, two close-set brown eyes staring glassily. His fist continued to rock me like an air-hammer.

Finally Angel placed a clawed hand on his shoulder, and nodded to my handlers. They deposited me in the chair. It swung on an invisible wire from the ceiling in great circles. It swung out wide over the desert, across a bleak horizon, into darkness.

I came to cursing. Gino was standing over me again. There was an empty water-glass in his hand, and my face was dripping. Angel spoke up beside him, with a trace of irritation in his voice:

‘You stand up good under punishment. Why go to all the trouble, though? I want a little information, that is all. My friend, my little girlfriend, ran away. I’m impatient to get her back.’

‘You’re going about it the wrong way.’

Gino leaned close, and laughed harshly. He shattered the glass on the arm of my chair, held the jagged base up to my eyes. Fear ran through me, cold and light in my veins. My eyes were my connection with everything. Blindness would be the end of me. I closed my eyes, shutting out the cruel edges of the broken thing in his hand.

‘Nix, Gino,’ the old man said. ‘I have a better idea, as usual. There is heat on, remember.’

They retreated to the far side of the table and conferred there in low voices. The young man left the room. The old man came back to me. His storm troopers stood one on each side of me, looking down at him in ignorant awe.

‘What is your name, young fellow?’

I told him. My mouth was puffed and lisping, tongue tangled in ropes of blood.

‘I like a young fellow who can take it, Mr Archer. You say that you’re a detective. You find people for a living, is that right?’

‘I have a client,’ I said.

‘Now you have another. Whoever he is, I can buy and sell him, believe me. Fifty times over.’ His thin blue hands scoured each other. They made a sound like two dry sticks rubbing together on a dead tree.

‘Narcotics?’ I said. ‘Are you the wheel in the heroin racket? I’ve heard of you.’

His watery eyes veiled themselves like a bird’s. ‘Now don’t ask foolish questions, or I will lose my respect for you entirely.’

‘That would break my heart.’

‘Then comfort yourself with this.’ He brought an old-fashioned purse out of his hip pocket, abstracted a crumpled bill and smoothed it out on my knee. It was a five-hundred-dollar bill.

‘This girl of mine you are going to find for me, she is young and foolish. I am old and foolish, to have trusted her. No matter. Find her for me and bring her back and I will give you another bill like this one. Take it.’

‘Take it,’ one of my guards repeated. ‘Mr Funk said for you to take it.’

I took it. ‘You’re wasting your money. I don’t even know what she looks like. I don’t know anything about her.’

‘Gino is bringing a picture. He came across her last fall at a recording studio in Hollywood where Alfie had a date. He gave her an audition and took her on at the club, more for her looks than for the talent she had. As a singer she flopped. But she is a pretty little thing, about five foot four, nice figure, dark brown hair, big hazel eyes. I found a use for her.’ Lechery flickered briefly in his eyes and went out.

‘You find a use for everything.’

‘That is good economics. I often think if I wasn’t what I am, I would make a good economist. Nothing would go to waste.’ He paused, and dragged his dying old mind back to the subject: ‘She was here for a couple of months, then she ran out on me, silly girl. I heard last week that she was in Acapulco, and the federal Grand Jury was going to subpoena her. I have tax troubles, Mr Archer, all my life I have tax troubles. Unfortunately I let Fern help with my books a little bit. She could do me great harm. So I sent Bart to Mexico to bring her back. But I meant no harm to her. I still intend her no harm, even now. A little talk, a little realistic discussion with Fern, that is all that will be necessary. So even the shooting of my good friend Bart serves its purpose. Where did it happen, by the way?’

The question flicked out like a hook on the end of a long line.

‘In San Diego,’ I said, ‘at a place near the airport: the Mission Motel.’

He smiled paternally. ‘Now you are showing good sense.’

Gino came back with a silver-framed photograph in his hand. He handed it to Angel, who passed it on to me. It was a studio portrait, of the kind intended for publicity cheesecake. On a black velvet divan, against an artificial night sky, a young woman reclined in a gossamer robe that was split to show one bent leg. Shadows accented the lines of her body and the fine bones in her face. Under the heavy make-up which widened the mouth and darkened the half-closed eyes, I recognised Ella Salanda. The picture was signed in white, in the lower right-hand corner: ‘To my Angel, with all my love, Fern.’

A sickness assailed me, worse than the sickness induced by Gino’s fists. Angel breathed into my face: ‘Fern Dee is a stage name. Her real name I never learned. She told me one time that if her family knew where she was they would die of shame.’ He chuckled. ‘She will not want them to know that she killed a man.’

I drew away from his charnel-house breath. My guards escorted me out. Gino started to follow, but Angel called him back.

‘Don’t wait to hear from me,’ the old man said after me. ‘I expect to hear from you.’

The building stood on a rise in the open desert. It was huge and turreted, like somebody’s idea of a castle in Spain. The last rays of the sun washed its walls in purple light and cast long shadows across its barren acreage. It was surrounded by a ten-foot hurricane fence topped with three strands of barbed wire.

Palm Springs was a clutter of white stones in the distance, diamonded by an occasional light. The dull red sun was balanced like a glowing cigar-butt on the rim of the hills above the town. A man with a bulky shoulder harness under his brown suede windbreaker drove me towards it. The sun fell out of sight, and darkness gathered like an impalpable ash on the desert, like a column of blue-grey smoke towering into the sky.