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Gerstein whipped three long cigars out of his slacks and stuck them in Da
Da
A check of the local papers and more phone work were next. Da
A pay phone stood next to the newsstand. Da
Janice Modine was not waitressing that night, but John Lembeck was drinking at the bar. Da
Da
With one dime and one nickel left in his pocket, Da
Da
Da
That close, he got distortion blur, Man Camera malfunctions. He pulled back so that his eyes could capture a larger frame, saw tuxedos entwined in movement, cheek-to-cheek tangos, all male. The faces were up against each other so that they couldn’t be distinguished individually; Da
More blur, blips of arms, legs, a cart being pushed and a man in white carrying a punch bowl. Out, in, out, better focus, no faces, then Tim and Coleman the alto together, swaying to hard jazz. The pins and needles hurting; Tim gone, replaced by a blond ingenu. Then shadows killing his vision, his lens cleared by a step backward—and a perfectly framed view of two fat, ugly wallflowers tongue-kissing, all oily skin and razor burn and hair pomade glistening.
Da
He went straight to the bottle then, quality sourmash burning like rotgut, Man-Cameraing women, women, women. Karen Hiltscher, Janice Modine, strippers he’d questioned about a stickup at the Club Largo, tits and cunt on display in the dressing room, inured to men looking at their stuff. Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, the hat check girl at Dave’s Blue Room, his mother stepping out of the bathtub before she got fat and became a Jehovah’s Witness. All ugly and wrong, just like the two wallflowers at the Marmont.
Da
Chapter Sixteen
Mal got his lies straight on the doorstep and rang the bell. Heels over hardwood echoed inside the house; he pulled his vest down to cover his slack waistband— too many meals forgotten. The door opened and the Red Queen was standing there, perfectly coiffed, elegantly dressed in silk and tweed—at 9:30 in the morning.
“Yes? Are you a salesman? There’s a Beverly Hills ordinance against soliciting, you know.”
Mal knew she knew otherwise. “I’m with the District Attorney’s Office.”
“Beverly Hills?”
“The City of Los Angeles.”
Claire De Haven smiled—movie star quality. “My accumulation of jaywalking tickets?”
Cop-quality dissembling—Mal knew she had him pegged as the nice guy in the Lopez/Duarte/Benavides questioning. “The City needs your help.”
The woman chuckled—elegantly—and held the door open. “Come in and tell me about it, Mr….”
“Considine.”
Claire repeated the name and stood aside; Mal walked into a large living room furnished in a floral motif: gardenia-patterned divans, tufted orchid chairs, little tables and bookstands inlaid with wooden daisies. The walls were solid movie posters—anti-Nazi pictures popular in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. Mal strolled up to a garish job ballyhooing Dawn of the Righteous—a noble Russki facing off a drooling blackshirt brandishing a Luger. Sunshine haloed the good guy; the German was shadowed in darkness. With Claire De Haven watching him, he counterpunched. “Subtle.”