Free Hard Case Crime: Money Shot by Christa Faust

wanted to go rampaging through the club with a baseball bat, smashing every pretty face in the place.
    I didn’t. I waited.
    Cars came and went. Men went in and out, both in groups and alone. Time passed and even though Malloy had chosen a shady parking spot, it still got real hot inside the car. I had all the windows down but there was no breeze at all. I peeled off the damp pink cardigan and fanned myself with a California roadmap.
    About a hundred years later, Malloy came out. There was a fuchsia smear of lipstick on his unshaven cheek.
    “Got it,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper, tossing the baseball cap into the back seat and starting up the engine. “Know anyone who can read Romanian?”
    I looked down at the paper. It was a faxed copy of Lia’s handwritten note.
    “How’d you get them to give this to you?”
    “I didn’t,” Malloy replied as he pulled out of the lot. “I got lucky. While I was waiting in the office for the manager to show up and talk to me, I scrolled through the memory on the fax machine. Looks like they haven’t erased it in ages. They probably don’t even know how. Anyway, the fax from your office was still in there so I just reprinted it.”
    “What did you tell the manager when you saw him?” I asked. “When the cops find out that Zandora is dead, won’t you be in trouble for asking about her?”
    Malloy shook his head.
    “Nah,” he said, turning onto the freeway. “I just asked if Zandora was there. I said I wanted to talk to your models about you, that I was investigating your disappearance. The manager said Zandora wasn’t in till the night shift and told me to come back later. I thanked him and left. Anybody see you?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    “Hope you’re right,” Malloy replied. “I got a bad feeling this is gonna get pretty ugly.”

11.
    “Do you trust Didi?” Malloy asked me, pulling off the freeway and into the quiet streets of Burbank.
    I had been asleep for most of the ride back from Vegas. Well, maybe asleep wasn’t the right word. Dazed, out of it, shell-shocked and incapable of processing everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I hadn’t noticed the sun going down and felt disoriented to wake and find it fully dark outside. Malloy had gotten another cheap suit jacket out of the gym bag back in Vegas and at some point during the ride he must have taken it off and used it to cover me. It was warm and smelled like him, cigarettes and supermarket aftershave. I pulled it tighter around myself, bunching it up under my chin.
    “Of course I trust Didi,” I said. “I’d trust her with my life.”
    He nodded and took the turn into the car rental place across from the Burbank Airport. I huddled inside his big jacket as I waited outside the office. When he pulled around front in his own SUV, he got out, walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for me.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    He punched some buttons on his cell phone, slipping on a hands-free rig as he pulled out of the rental place.
    “Didi?” he said into the mike. “Malloy.” He paused. “Yeah I know.” He looked at me and then back at the road. “It’s terrible. Listen, Didi, I’d like to talk to you about the case. Tonight. Get a pen.”
    He gave Didi his address just as we turned the corner onto his block.
    “Twenty minutes,” he said and ended the call.
    Malloy’s place was one of those little rundown fifties-era bungalow complexes in a so-so neighborhood, just off Hollywood Way. He drove past twice to make sure there was no surveillance before he pulled into the alley behind the complex and let me out, leaving the engine running.
    “Go on,” Malloy said, unlocking the door to his apartment and ushering me inside with one hand on the small of my back. “I’m gonna go park the car.”
    Inside his place it was immaculate and generic, like an IKEA showroom or a midrange hotel. No personal photos. No funny magnets on the fridge. No clutter