Die A Little Part 19

I hand her the book, as happy to be rid of it as she is to be rid of Lois's things. She opens it immediately. As far as she is concerned tucking, I'm already gone.

"Thank you, Mrs. MacMurray," I say, rising, the shoe box under my arm. "I'll show myself out."

Her eyes tear across the pages as I head toward the door. As I open it, I decide to take one last shot. From over my shoulder, I call out, "Oh, and where's Alice Steele's box?"

Without looking up, ravenously consuming each mystifying page, she mutters, "She picked that up long ago."

It is hours later, with the box set on my tufted bedspread, that I understand why I was so struck by Lois's name on the top. It had been tingling in the back of my head ever since.

The writing in the pad did not match. It had been written by someone else-maybe Joe Avalon, or likely Mrs. MacMurray herself. As for the scrawled name on the box, I suddenly recognize the hand. The same looping, wavering, slanted scribble.

Your brothers wife is a tramp, she's no good and she'll rune him. If you dont beleve me, ask at the Red room lounge in Holywd.

The postcard of the Santa Monica Pier that had led me to the Red Room Lounge.

Lois had been trying to tell me something. Maybe she lost her nerve once I arrived. Or maybe she was just seeing if I'd bite. Maybe she was showing Alice how close she could get to me. Or maybe, maybe she was looking for help.

If WS was Walter Schor and he was the man who had beaten up Lois, it wasn't hard to believe he was the type of man who could also have killed her. I wonder if Alice knew and if she did, why she didn't do anything about it. And if she didn't, then why she was content to let Lois just disappear.

I think of Lois's torn body at the Rest E-Z Motel. I think of the look in her eyes, of despair and wry defeat, or provocation and surrender. She wanted me to see, to know the kind of world she-and by extension, Alice-lived in. Was she blackmailing Alice or just refusing Alice her own escape?

Pus.h.i.+ng aside my doubts from the night before, I call Mike.

"Can you tell me something about Walter Schor?"

"Sure. What are you looking for, sweetheart?"

"Would he be the type who would hurt women?"

He doesn't even pause. "No, no. He's not the one you're looking for, Lora. You're on the wrong track. Besides, I heard that Lois was running up and down Central Avenue every night. Far more likely this has to do with drugs and a bad scene."

The feeling I had in the file room as he snapped up Lois's file folder returns, but with more intensity-a bristling up my spine, rough as a razor. "When did you hear this?"

"Asking around. She was moving in a very rough crowd. These things happen."

"What's wrong?" I nearly gulp, straining for air. When Mike saw Olive MacMurray's name in Lois's file, he somehow figured it all out. Figured out that this wasn't just about Alice and a two-bit thug like Joe Avalon, an easily replaceable pimp. This went higher, sunk deeper. He is lost to me.

"Wrong?"

'You sound different from last night, at my apartment."

"Different? No, baby, not different. Listen, I had an idea. How about you and me and a drive up the coast this weekend? Or Catalina and all that? Get our minds off all this. Forget about it."

I try to get some control of my voice. I want to sound casual.; I want to sound like nothing is wrong.

"That sounds wonderful, Mike. But I've got a lot of work to do this weekend, stacks of student papers and lesson plans. Listen, I'll call you later."

"Okay. What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Just cleaning house," I say as I hang up. I am going to have to do it alone.

Lois lying, facedown, in dark water. Born only to die and to die like this, lost, forgotten, brutalized, released, left faceless, nameless, alone. Somebody had to speak for her. That night, I dream of her. Of her speaking to me. Hair twisted with seaweed, face swimming out of dark water, eyes imploring, mouth coiled darkly, queerly into a smile. Lora, she would say, Lord, you know more than you think. You know everything.

These are the things I barely remember: Calling in sick. Driving to my bank. Waiting twenty minutes for it to open. Withdrawing my savings-only four hundred dollars, but a world of effort for me. Driving back to the ghostly house on Manchester, the long, long drive past countless streets baroque and scarred, nondescript and ominous.

The next thing I know I am looking at Olive MacMurray's startled expression as she peers at me from around the corner of the sofa, ten feet and a screen door separating us.

There must be something in my eyes, something hanging there, dangling dangerously, because she stands, not moving closer, only hissing faintly, "What are you doing here?"

"I need to see you."

"We finished our business," she says in clipped, hushed tones, stripped of the prior day's wile.

"I have money. I need to know some things about Alice Steele."

She rushes to the door, her face stretched tight, and hastily ushers me in with trembling hands. "Listen, you, you don't know what you've gotten yourself into. I don't want any part of this."

"What do you mean? What happened?"

"How much do you have?" She twists her fingers anxiously.

"Four hundred dollars. But only if you can answer all my questions."

She waves me over to the sofa. Someone has gotten to her. Joe Avalon has gotten to her. I feel my teeth set on edge.

"I'll take that money. I need that money now." The powdered flesh of her bosom mottled today, her hands clenching.

"Who wrote Lois's schedule of dates? Was that you?"

"No. It was your sister-in-law," she snaps.

"Why?" I snap back, only then realizing what she has said: Your sister-in-law. She knows who I am, maybe has known all along. But there is no time for this revelation. I repeat, "Why?"

She takes a deep breath, then, "She was one of the girls, fancy ambitions but dangerous habits. She had an arrangement with Avalon. She helped control Lois. Helped keep her jumping-Lois and her big mouth. Joe wanted to dump her or worse, and Alice kept her alive. She was her lucky piece, as they say."

"I guess she couldn't keep her alive forever," I murmur, my head throbbing.

"Once Alice hooked up with her lawman, she had more of an interest in keeping herself in the pink. Lois was a drag on her. It turned out pretty lucky for Alice in the end. But her loose ends may trip us all up yet," she says, wringing her hands over and over.

I pull the Santa Monica Pier postcard from my pocket.

"Did Lois write this?"

"How should I know?"

"The handwriting?"

"Could be. Lots of the girls write like that." She reads the card more closely. "Ah, I get it. She was looking to have something over Alice's head. A bargaining chip."

"You think Walter Schor killed Lois."

"I cleaned her up enough times after dates with him," she says, voice lowering. "And this sure is worth that four hundred: He sent another one of my girls to the hospital after a night of monkeys.h.i.+nes."

"Because ... because ..." I wonder if I can ask it. "Because Alice would never ... never hurt Lois." I couldn't look the woman in the eye.

"I gave up long ago guessing what people were capable of," she says. "But my money's on Schor. Question is, How many times did Alice need to put Lois in harm's way before the party girl turned up cold? And I do know this. And then I'm done. Joe Avalon isn't about to be a patsy. And he's capable of just about anything when his back is against the wall."

Her eyes meet mine, and I feel something very weighty has been communicated to me-but its full meaning is as yet unclear.

"It was Joe Avalon?"

She shakes her head. "You're missing it. Listen close, and then I'm closing the shutters on the information booth. Joe Avalon isn't about to be a patsy. And, right now, he's capable of just about anything.

"By the way," she adds, rising. "It was Alice Steele, couple years back, who got put in the hospital at Walter Schor's hands. You don't forget that kind of dinner date.

"Before we took her in to County, she spent two days in there"- she gestures to the bedroom-"filling it with blood."

I park my car three doors down from Olive MacMurray's house, trying to unravel all she said for my four hundred dollars. I don't trust myself to drive yet.

I sit for about twenty minutes thinking about Lois and why she let herself fall into Walter Schor's poisonous arms over and over again- one long death scene. "The kind of dance you're lucky to make it out of," she'd said, not so lucky herself.

And I think of Alice, Alice serving herself up to countless men and now sunk deep, heels dug in, in my brother's home. And Alice once lying on that bed in that fetid house, lying there, body twitching, more blood with each spasm, more pain with every move. Lying there in a doomed attempt to hide, to hide this, to hide all this. And it was to hide, to conceal, to bury, that she sent Lois up to the pyre and watched as the flames ate her alive.

My G.o.d, Bill, what you've let crawl into your bed ... you poor, hapless thing ... must you pay so much for your fine innocence?

I sit for about twenty minutes I sit for about twenty minutes and then It is then and there it is. There is no one there, and suddenly, blinking back at the house, I see him flicker up Olive MacMurray's porch steps out of the corner of my eye.

I have his picture in my head and then he is there. And me Like a sleepwalker As someone hypnotized And there I am, now out of my car, fast and without thinking, slinking past the three houses Back to 551706 Manchester Walking in a silence so deep it is as if all sound has been sucked out of the world I walk along the side of the house lean up against the wall, against the pitted s.h.i.+ngles along the window, open, paint-flecked through all this I pretend I didn't see who I saw, pretend it was just a trick of the light, the eye all ike the old adage, Speak of the devil, and he shall appear I press my hand, my palm against the heat-curled s.h.i.+ngles I might have even whispered it aloud not Bill it couldn't be Bill not my brother not then I hear the voice through the screen window "We're talking a lot of money here," he says. "And all the protection you could want."

Could that hard, anxious sound possibly be my brother's voice? "How much money? My life wouldn't be worth a plug nickel, Detective."

"He wouldn't be able to touch you, Mrs. MacMurray. I can promise that. We're talking serious money." "I'd need five grand."

"Fine. I'll arrange to have it wired to your bank account this afternoon."

"Do I look like a landlady? I don't have a bank account."

"I'll get it to you." A quaver tilts into his voice, and it is Bill and my G.o.d- "He's going to find out I gave him up to you."

"He won't. And if he does, it won't matter. He'll be in county jail and then prison for life. Murder first-degree conviction for Avalon. I promise."

"And I get all his girls. And I get all his studio Johns."

"Right. Who else but you?"

"I suppose even Walter Schor, if I want him."

"Because you've got what I need to pin this on Avalon?" Hot desperation in his voice.

"We can make it work. He's dirty enough for any frame to work."

"He's an animal." Quaver gone and now a hard bark. "I got into the law to beat guys like this." Oh, it is horrible.

"Whatever you say, copper," a low, amused drawl. A loud noise, a sound like a blood howl and it is me As I watch him walk rapidly out of the house, my body begins moving too. He pa.s.ses his car and keeps going until he reaches the donut shop. I follow at a distance. Don't think about it now, don't think about it now, just find out how, why, anything you can.

Looking furtively to his right and left-my brother, like a criminal- he ducks into the phone booth out front. I move quickly around the back of the shop and then sidle along the far wall, inching as close as I can to the front of the building while still remaining hidden by both the corner and the meager hedgerow that wraps around it. He has shut the phone booth door, but I can still hear.

His voice is loud, raked raw. "I did it. Don't worry. I took care of it. I told you I would." His effort to control his voice, sound strong is painful.

"No," he says. "It's just like I promised. She'll pin him for it. She'll claim he came to her that night talking about how he'd dumped her in the canyon. She'll say he did it to keep her in line. She'll say Lois was terrified of him. Once she has the money, she'll tell more."

He pauses for a moment, listening. Listening and, I can hear it, jabbing his fist rhythmically against the door of the booth.

"Yes, yes. I did it all. You know, Alice, you know, he's done enough bad things he never got caught for. So he can pay by paying for this. He can pay for this. He should pay. This is about the kind of man he is and those things he made you do. He can't hurt you anymore."

He can't stop. He isn't talking to her. He doesn't know it, but he's talking to me.

"He's going to pay for the things he made you do."

I want to protect you from all that, my brother Bill once said to me. I had returned home crying. Some boy who had cornered me in his car, pressed himself so close, so roughly his watch had caught on my sweater and snagged it from collarbone to waist. The sweater was a favorite, was the perfect aquamarine. It was the softest thing I'd ever owned. It felt like p.u.s.s.y willows against my skin. It was the ruined sweater that brought me home with tears stinging. But my brother a.s.sumed it was the boy.

-Did he hurt you? Did he force himself on you?

-He tried to. He kept ... trying.

It was true, after all.

It took nearly an hour to persuade him not to go to this boy's house. I knew he wouldn't hurt the boy, just frighten him, scold him. But I was too embarra.s.sed. And part of me would rather listen to him. Listen to him say things like -I want to protect you from all that. I don't want you to have to know these things. About men. I want you to be safe forever. I will make you safe forever.

I want to protect you.

From somewhere in the dark murk of my head, the phone jumps at me.

"Lora? It's Bill. I'm glad you're there. We've been kind of worried about you. Alice says you missed school today."

Images of my brother at Olive MacMurray's that very afternoon crackle through my head. I can't remember anything else I have done in the last six hours. Did I really drive home, park my car, walk up the stairs to my apartment, pour the gla.s.s of water in front of me, light the cigarette-whose cigarette?-I seem to be smoking now?

Gathering myself, stopping my pounding heart with my hand, putting on a face, a voice, I say: "I wasn't feeling well."

"Well, we thought maybe you forgot about the party. It starts soon."

"Party?"

"The charity event Alice is hosting, remember? For the Police Benevolent League?"