THE BIG NOWHERE by James Ellroy

“You don’t trust anybody, Mick.”

“Yeah? How’s this for trust. February eighth at the haberdashery, my deal with Jack D. Twenty-five pounds of Mex brown, cash split, food and booze. All my men, all Jack’s. Nobody heeled. That is trust.”

Buzz said, “I don’t believe it.”

“The deal?”

“The nobody heeled. Are you fuckin’ insane?”

Mickey put an arm around Buzz’s shoulders. “Jack wants four neutral triggers. He’s got two City bulls, I got this Sheriff’s dick won the Golden Gloves last year, and I’m still one short. You want the job? Five hundred for the day?”

He’d spend the money on Audrey: tight cashmere sweaters, red and pink and green and white, a size too small to show off her uplift. “Sure, Mick.”

Mickey’s grip tightened. “I got a storefront on the Southside. County juice, a little sharking, a little book. Half a dozen runners. Audrey’s keeping the ledgers for me, and she says I’m getting eaten alive.”

“The runners?”

“Everything tallies, but the daily take-in’s been short. I pay salary, the guys enforce their own stuff. Short of shaking down the guys, I got no way to know.”

Buzz slid free of Mickey’s arm, thinking of lioness larceny: Audrey with a hot pencil and a wet brain. “You want me to ask around on the QT? Get the squad boss at Firestone to shake down the locals, find out who’s bettin’ what?”

“Trust, Buzzchik. You nail who’s doing me, I’ll throw some bones your way.”

Buzz grabbed his coat. Mickey said, “Hot date?”

“The hottest.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Rita Hayworth.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, trust me.”

“She red downstairs?”

“Black at the roots, Mick. There’s no business like show business.”

o o o

His date was for 10:00 at Howard’s spot near the Hollywood Bowl; Mickey and Johnny’s no-take and the skim story had him running jumpy, his watch set to Audrey standard time, which made killing an hour somewhere pure horseshit. Buzz drove to the lion woman’s house, parked behind her Packard ragtop and rang the bell.

Audrey answered the door, slacks, sweater and no makeup. “You said you didn’t even want to know where I lived.”

Buzz shuffled his feet, making like a swain on a prom date. “I checked your driver’s license while you were asleep.”

“Meeks, that’s not something you do to somebody you’re sleeping with.”

“You’re sleepin’ with Mickey, ain’t you?”

“Yes, but what does–”

Buzz slid past Audrey, into a bargain basement front room. “Savin’ money on furnishings to bankroll your shopping center?”

“Yes. Since you ask, I am.”

“Sweetie, you know what Mickey did to the ginzo killed Hooky Rothman?”

Audrey slammed the door and wrapped her arms around herself. “He beat the man senseless and had Fritzie what’s his name drive him over the state line and warn him never to come back. Meeks, what is this? I can’t stand you this way.”

Buzz shoved her against the door, pinned her there and put his hands on her face, holding her still, his hands going gentle when he saw she wasn’t going to fight him. “You’re skimmin’ off Mickey ‘cause you think he won’t find out and he wouldn’t hurt you if he did and now I’m the one that has to fuckin’ protect you because you are so fuckin’ dumb about the fuckin’ guys you fuck and I’m in way over my fuckin’ head with you so you get fuckin’ smart because if Mickey hurts you I’ll fuckin’ kill him and all his fuckin’ kike guinea pigshut–”

He stopped when Audrey started bawling and trying to get out words. He stroked her hair, bending down to listen better, turning to jelly when he heard, “I love you, too.”

o o o

They made love on the bargain basement living room floor and in the bedroom and in the shower, Buzz pulling the curtain loose, Audrey admitting she cheapskated on the bathroom fixtures, too. He told her he’d check with an ex-Dragna paper man he knew and show her how to redoctor Mickey’s books–or fix an angle to lay the onus off on some nonexistent welcher; she said she’d quit skimming, straighten up, fly right, and play the stock market like a squarejohn woman who didn’t screw gangsters or Red Squad bagmen. He said, “I love you” fifty times to make up for her saying it first; he got her sizes so he could blow all his kickback take on clothes for her; they went down on each other to seal a pact: nobody was supposed to mention Mickey unless absolutely necessary, nobody was to talk about their future or lack of it, two dates a week was their limit, Howard’s fuck pads rotated, her place or his place as a treat once in a while, their cars stashed where the bad guys wouldn’t see them. No outside dates, no trips together, no telling friends what they had going. Buzz asked Audrey to do the tassel trick for him; she did; she went on to model her stripper outfits, then all the clothes in her wardrobe. Buzz figured that if he spent his gambling output on threads he wanted to see her in, he’d never be bored staying inside with her: he could take the clothes off, make love to her, watch her dress again. He thought that if they stayed inside forever, he’d tell her everything about himself, all the shitty stuff included, but he’d lay it out slowly, so she’d get to know him, not get scared and run. He talked a blue streak; she talked a blue streak; he let slip about the Doberman pinscher he killed when he burglarized a lumberyard in Tulsa in 1921, and she didn’t care. Toward dawn, Audrey started falling asleep and he started thinking about Mickey and got scared. He thought about moving his car, but didn’t want to upset the perfect way his lioness had her head tucked against his collarbone. The scare got worse, so he reached to the floor, grabbed his .38 and stuck it under the pillow.

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