I forked over all the cash in my wallet, holding back a fivespot for mad money. Maggie said, “Eight-eighty-one Calle Verdugo. Play it _pianissimo_, doll. Nice and slow.”
* * *
I blew my last finnsky at a used clothing store, picking up a chalk-stripe suit like the one Bogart wore in _The Maltese Falcon_. The trousers were too short and the jacket was too tight, but overall the thing worked. I dry-shaved in a gas station men’s room, spritzed some soap at my armpits, and robbed a kiddie flower vendor of the rest of his daffodils. Thus armed, I went to meet my lost love.
Knock, knock, knock on the door of a tidy little adobe hut; boom, boom, boom, as my overwrought heart drummed a big band beat. The door opened–and I almost screamed.
The four years since I’d seen Lorna had put forty thousand hard miles on her face. It was sun-soured–seams, pits, and scales; her laugh lines had changed to frown lines as deep as the San Andreas Fault. The body that was once voluptuous in white satin was now bloated in a Mex charwoman’s serape. From the deep recesses of what we once had, I dredged a greeting.
“What’s shakin’, baby?”
Lorna smiled, exposing enough dental gold to front a revolution. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened, Spade?”
I stayed game. “What happened, baby?”
Lorna sighed. “Your interpretation first, Spade. I’m curious.”
I smoothed my lapels. “You couldn’t take a good thing. You couldn’t take the dangerous life I led. You couldn’t take the danger, romance, the heartache and vulnerability inherent in a meanstreet-treading knight like me. Face it, baby: I was too much man for you.”
Lorna smiled–more cracks appeared in the relief map of her face. She said, “Your theatrics exhausted me more than my own. I joined a Mexican nunnery, got a tan that went bad, started writing music again, and found myself a man of the earth–Pedro, my husband. I make tortillas, wash my clothes in a stream, and dry them on a rock. Sometimes, if Pedro and I need extra jack, I mix Margaritas and work the bar at the Blue Fox. It’s a good, simple life.”
I played my ace. “But maggie said you wanted to see me–‘one more time,’ like–”
“Yeah, like in the movies. Well, Hearns, it’s like this. I sold ‘Prison of Love’ to about three dozen bistro belters who passed it off as their own. It’s ASCAP’d under at least thirty-five titles, and I’ve made a cool five grand on it. And, well, I wrote the song for you back in our salad days, and in the interest of what we had together for about two seconds, I’m offering you ten percent– you inspired the damn thing, after all.”
I slumped into the doorway–exhausted by four years of torching, three days of mayhem and killing. “Hit me, baby.”
Lorna walked to a cabinet and returned with a roll of Yankee greenbacks. I winked, pocketed the wad, and walked down the street to a cantina. The interior was dark and cool; Mex cuties danced nude on the bar top. I bought a bottle of tequila and slugged it straight, fed the jukebox nickels and pushed every button listing a female vocalist. When the booze kicked in and the music started, I sat down, watched the nudie gash gyrate, and tried to get obsessed.