Free Hard Case Crime: Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips

about?” I took another swallow of my drink. “I remember this guy. I didn’t know his name, but he was in our company. We were rotating to the front after ten days back, and everybody was stopping overnight in a place called Vise, in Belgium, and trucks’d been coming in all day. And I guess this guy had gotten himself a Belgian girl, but he wasn’t pleased with her. He had her by the arm, even though she wasn’t trying to go anywhere, and he was slapping away with his free hand, grinning down at her. He’d stop and wait for her to lift her head, and then give her another one. He was enjoying himself. I guess he was pretty lit up.”
    “And that stayed with you.”
    “I know, it was just a few slaps. He wasn’t even closing his fist.”
    “But it stayed with you.”
    “I’m not getting to the point of this. They werefeeding us good. They were treating us all right. He didn’t have any call to act that way. I don’t care how drunk he was. But that isn’t it, either. It’s the way she was standing there taking it. Like everybody had a perfect right to step up and do whatever they liked to her. Like that’s what she was born for. You know what I’m talking about.”
    “Sure,” he said. “Gavin.”
    “That’s right, Gavin. No one’s got a right to lean on somebody like that, who can’t help themselves, who can’t even cover up, because they think they must deserve it.”
    “All right, Rose,” he said mildly. “We were just kids.”
    “It’s not just kids. Everybody does. Everybody. I’ll never forget it, any part of it. She’d curled her hair, and now it was all down over her face, and she wasn’t a beauty, and she was wearing man’s shoes too big for her. His blouse was coming untucked over his hip. The guy next to me in the truck was eating an orange, and he’d just given me some, and my fingers were wet with it. And this man was whaling on this woman who’d been born to take it. I’d seen it all my life, but just then’s when I realized, I’d always be seeing it. Because that was the world.”
    I took a breath and finally managed to shut up. Halliday had something, all right. You wanted to talk to him.
    He waited a minute, then said, “What did you do?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What did you do to the guy when you found him?” Halliday said.
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Okay. Fair enough,” he said. “We just met.”
    At last I said, “I didn’t do anything he wouldn’t get better from someday.”
    “Galahad, huh?” he said lightly.
    “No,” I said slowly. “I’m not a Galahad. I’m a bully,too. I guess that’s why I hate ‘em so much.”
    After a moment, he laughed.
    It was pretty nice of him, actually. He knew what I was talking about. But we just sat there laughing, like I’d been joking.
    “Listen, Rose,” he said when he’d stopped. “Tell me something. What sort of things scare you?”
    “What? Jesus, I don’t know. Lots of things. I’m not stupid.”
    “What kinds of things?”
    “Your little Lotus Blossom, like I said.”
    He laughed. “Wise man. Me too, boy. Ever hear of a guy named Lenny Scarpa?”
    “Sure.”
    “He make you nervous?”
    “He’s just a guy.”
    “Who can kill you.”
    “Anyone can kill you, if you let them. What are we talking about here?”
    “What are you doing with yourself these days?”
    “Not enough. I work construction when I can.”
    “And?”
    “I’ve done a little bodyguarding. What are we talking about?”
    “A little bodyguarding, maybe, to start. I don’t know. I’m thinking it through. I might be able to use a guy like you in my business.”
    “The movie business,” I said.
    “I think you know what kind of movies I make,” he said.
    “I guess I do. Much money in that?”
    “Enough,” he said. “Worried about your pay?”
    “Not yet,” I said. “Sounds like an entertaining business. What other lines of work you in?”
    “Why should there be anything else?” he said.
    “I dunno. I guess