She was a small, well-formed package of dynamite. A pocket edition Venus — high-breasted, thin-waisted, smooth-hipped with large, brown eyes and taffy-coloured hair. She couldn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds, but she was perfect, and she was buzzing like an angry hornet.
The suave individual who ran the cocktail lounge was trying to explain.
A girl as perfect as she was, and as small, could write her own ticket. The manufacturers of the automobiles that used to be called ‘medium priced’ would have worshipped her as a photographic model. She’d have made an airline stewardess whose large brown eyes would have transferred the butterflies from a passenger’s stomach to his heart.
Those eyes were blazing now. She said, “What do you think I am, a street-walker?”
“It isn’t that,” the manager of the cocktail lounge assured her. “It’s a policy, a rule, a law. Unescorted women are simply not allowed in here.”
“You make me sick!” she said. “I’ve heard that unescorted-woman-business until I am absolutely nauseated.”
He had been walking as he talked, his hand placed with deferential gallantry on her arm, and now she was in the hotel lobby, safely removed from the confines of the cocktail lounge. The manager didn’t have to take any more, and he didn’t. He merely bowed, smiled, turned and got out of there, fast.
She stood for a moment in the hotel lobby, undecided and angry.
I had looked up over the top of my paper at the sound of voices. Her roving, angry eyes shifted in my direction.
I started to return to my newspaper, but I wasn’t in time. Her eyes caught mine and held them for a long moment. Then she turned away.
Her face became thoughtful.
I folded my newspaper.
She sank into one of the chairs across from me, and, knowing she was about to make a detailed appraisal, I started to study the folded section of the newspaper intently until I felt the big brown eyes had seen all there was to see. Then I put the paper down. She hastily averted her glance and crossed her knee.
I made what appraisal the circumstances permitted.
All of a sudden she switched her eyes to mine, tilted up her chin and smiled. It was a nice smile that showed teeth.
“Hello, escort,” she said.
“Hello,” I replied, and grinned.
She said, “Frankly, I was debating whether to drop a handkerchief or get up and leave my purse in the chair, or ask you if you had the time. I rejected them all. I don’t like beating around the bush.”
I said, “So you went in the cocktail lounge?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps I want a drink.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“Perhaps I like your looks.”
“How nice.”
She opened her purse, took out a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Naturally, I’d expect to finance the expedition.”
“Will it be that expensive?”
“I don’t know.”
I said, “We’ll talk about that later.” I got up and offered her my arm.
She said, “Will this be difficult?”
“I don’t think so.”
We went back to the cocktail lounge. The manager was waiting right behind the door.
I said, “What’s the idea of telling my sister she can’t come in here?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s a custom, a rule and a law. Unescorted women are not allowed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know. I asked her to meet me here.”
He bowed frigidly and escorted us to a table. Then he went over and said something to the bar-tender.
A waiter came and took our orders.
“Dry Martini,” she said.
“The same,” I told him.
The waiter bowed and withdrew.
She looked across the table at me and said, “You’re nice.”
I said, “I may prey on women. Your body may be found all cut up in a vacant lot tomorrow morning. You shouldn’t pick up strangers.”
“I know,” she said. “My mother told me.”
She was silent for a few seconds, then said, “I tried to get into an auto camp, and they told me they didn’t cater for unescorted women.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It is,” she observed, “practically impossible for a woman to be guilty of immorality without an escort.”
“You shouldn’t have much trouble finding an escort,” I told her.
“I didn’t,” she said, and then added hastily, “but I didn’t want to do it that way. You’re nice. What’s your name?”
“Lam,” I said. “Donald Lam.”
“I’m Lucille Hart. Since we’re brother and sister, we’d better dispense with formality.”
The waiter returned and put two drinks down on the table. He also deposited a check and stood waiting.
She pushed the twenty-dollar note at me under the table. I paid no attention to it, but took my notecase from my coat pocket and put out two one-dollar notes. The waiter promptly reached into his pocket and took out two twenty-five cent pieces. I picked one up. The waiter picked up the other.
Lucille lifted her glass, looked at me and said, “Here’s to crime.”
I extended my glass towards hers, then sipped it.
The drink consisted of sixty per cent ice-water with perhaps a teaspoonful of gin, a few drops of dry Vermouth, and an olive.
Lucille put the drink down, winked at me, made a little face and said, “I guess they don’t want us here.”
“Apparently not,” I said.
“In any event, they don’t want us to become intoxicated.”
“That’s right.”
I sat back and sipped the cocktail, looking over the interior of the cocktail lounge casually, trying to find out why it was she had been so anxious to get into the place, yet not really caring.
It was Saturday afternoon. I had tailed the man I was shadowing to this hotel and had been waiting for the night shift to come on, to see if I could pick up more information, but that could wait. I had all night.
They were doing a fair business. A heavy-set, beefy man in the late fifties was having the time of his life, putting his personality across with a platinum blonde in the dubious twenties and hard as a diamond. She hadn’t quite made up her mind what to do about him yet, and, while she was smiling at his sallies, her eyes were hard with appraisal.
A foursome was proceeding to wade through the preliminaries of a Saturday night drunk. A young chap with long hair and soulful eyes was pouring forth his political views in an impassioned oration to a good-looking chick who had evidently heard it all before but who admired him enough to keep on listening. A middle-aged man and his wife were making an effort to relieve the monotony of matrimony by ‘dining out’ on Saturday night. Their attempt to be interested in each other was a conscious effort which slipped back occasionally into routine boredom, only to be rescued by a sudden burst of conscious animation.
Then I saw the couple she was interested in.
The man was thirty-two or thirty-three, with an air of grave responsibility about him. His mouth showed that he was accustomed to making decisions. His manner had that certain deferential insistence which characterizes the salesman, and his appearance was worried. He might have been intent upon sedition rather than seduction, from the gravely apprehensive aura with which he surrounded himself.
The girl was five or six years younger, red-headed, grey-eyed, and thoughtful. She wasn’t too good-looking, but there was character about her face, and her manner was that of one who has decided to undergo a critical operation. There was affection in her eyes as she looked at the man, but it was the quiet affection of respect. There wasn’t any passion in it.
I took two more sips of the pallid ice-water in the cocktail glass. It was so weak I could taste the flavour of the olive rather than that of the gin. I decided that it was the woman who interested Lucille.
I pushed the cocktail glass back across the table.
“And I can’t go mine,” Lucille said. “It’s nauseating.”
The waiter hovered over us and coughed significantly.
“Two more Martinis,” I said. “We were interested, talking, and let these get a little warm. I can’t stand a warm Martini.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, picking up the glasses.
“Why do you do that, Donald?” she asked.
“What?”
“Give them a chance to rub it in.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’m built that way.”
She said abruptly, “Would you have tried to pick me up and be my escort if I hadn’t made the break?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“You’re wondering why I wanted to come in here, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“What?” she asked, startled. “Of course you are.”
I said, “It’s the redhead, isn’t it? The one with the grey eyes?”
She looked at me with just the faintest suggestion of a scowl. Her eyes were big. “Say, who are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Oh, forget it,” I said. “I’m sorry I said anything.”
“Say, what kind of a frame-up is this?” she demanded.
“Skip it,” I told her.
The waiter brought two more Martinis, together with a check. I pulled out two dollar notes from my pocket. He scooped up the two dollars and put down two quarters. I took a dime and two pennies from my pocket, and put the assortment on the table and picked up the two quarters.
As the waiter glowered at the twelve cents, I said, “Eat your olive before the water gets to it, Lucille.”
The waiter scooped up the money, walked over and said something to the manager.
The manager came over to the table. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Did you drive down, Lucille?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then you shouldn’t drink more than ten or fifteen of these cocktails.”
She smiled and we drank.
The manager waited for me to say something after I’d tasted the cocktail. I smacked my lips, put it down and said, “Delicious!”
He reluctantly moved away.
“Come on,” Lucille said. “Come through with the lowdown.”
I said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Don’t be coy. What’s the answer?”
I took the notecase from my pocket, took out one of my business cards and handed it to her.
She read it, “Coot & Lam Private Detectives, Presented by Donald Lam.”
She started to get to her feet.
“Take it easy,” I said. “It’s purely coincidental.”
“What is?”
I said. “It’s Saturday afternoon. I’d finished the last job I was working on and sat down to read the racing news before I went out to dinner. I’m unmarried, unattached, and there’s nothing romantic about my job. It’s a business. I’ve never seen you before, and, as far as I know, I don’t think we have a client that has either. No one’s paying for this and I’m not sending in any report on you. You wanted an escort and you’re the one who picked a detective. I didn’t even give you the eye.”
“You looked — at my legs.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Who’s this Cool?” she asked.
“Bertha Cool,” I said.
“A woman partner?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Oh,” she said, elevating her eyebrows, “it’s like that, eh?”
“Not like that,” I explained. “Bertha Cool is middle-aged, weighs a hundred and sixty-five pounds, has a broad beam, a bulldog jaw, little glittering, greedy eyes, and is just as hard and tough and difficult to handle as a roll of barbed wire.
“She was running the business several years ago, when I was up against it for almost any kind of a job. I’ve had legal training, and Bertha hired me and worked the hell out of me. Later on I graduated into a full partnership.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
I said, “Bertha Cool used to do divorce work, automobile accident stuff, and in addition to that a lot of little things that most of the agencies wouldn’t bother with. Now I haven’t any way of describing exactly what we do. I’m an opportunist and we’ve been lucky.”
“You mean you’ve made money?” she asked.
“Yes. That’s only part of it. We sharp-shoot.”
“What kind of cases?”
“All kinds.”
She said, “You’re a rotten detective.”
I said, “You should know Bertha Cool. You have a lot in common.”
“I like that!” she flared. “Broad of beam — bulldog jaw—!”
“Mentally,” I said. “When it comes to judging my qualifications as a detective.”
She said, “You think I’m interested in the red-head with the grey eyes?”
“Yes.”
Her laugh was scornful. “Let’s get out of this dump. The only reason I wanted to come in here was because they told me I couldn’t. If you want to know it, I’ve had a heartbreak and had decided to get drunk. The man I was carrying the torch for turned out to be a rat, and the only other man I knew well enough to go out and get cock-eyed with would have felt I was trying to make him a second choice. I didn’t want him to do that because if I can wait a few weeks he’ll start coming around of his own accord and then I’m going to give him a break. I’ve been a little fool and the taste of my folly is as bitter in my mouth as a chicken liver when the gall bladder has been ruptured by a poor cook.”
“The trouble with you detectives is that you have to see murder cases lurking behind every lamp-post. When I found I had to have an escort, I thought you looked good. Now you bore me.”
“So you’re going out and get tight alone?” I asked.
“You’re damn right. And as far as you’re concerned... No, wait a minute, guess I’ll have to vamp you to make up for this outburst. Apparently I can’t get tight without an escort. I... come on, let’s get out of this dump.”
We got up and started for the street door.
“Everything all right?” the manager asked suavely.
“Fine,” I assured him. “Two of the best olives I’ve ever tasted.”
“Come back any time you want more of the same,” he said.
“I might surprise you,” I told him.
We walked past the table where the salesman was talking to the girl with the grey eyes. She gave us a flicker of disinterested appraisal, then suddenly looked at me — hard. The grave man kept on talking.
Lucille didn’t show the faintest interest as she swept by.
Out on the street I said, “Well, Lucille, have a good time.”
She said impulsively, “Let’s go to a place where we can get a real drink. My mouth tastes like a cocktail shaker smells the next morning.”
I hesitated.
She put her hand on my arm, said, “It’s my party, you know.”
“Will you tell me all about your broken romance?”
“Every word,” she said. “I’ll withhold nothing. I’ll be like the girl in the Arabian Nights who told stories to keep her lord and master amused. I lost my temper and shot off my big mouth about you being a lousy detective and now your professional pride is insulted. But I need an escort and if I let you go, the other one may be terrible. You’re nice as an individual. It’s only your detective ability that has a slight odour. So I’ll tell you about my shattered romance and broken heart. Do you want the spicy, intimate version of my romantic entanglement, or would you prefer the psychological reaction motif?”
“The psychological reaction motif,” I said.
“Good heavens, you are different!” she exclaimed.
“I’m not. You are. Remember, it’s entertainment. I was going to a movie but this should be more fun.”
“More romantic,” she promised. “You see, I won’t have to submit the script to the Breen office. The movies would.”
We went a block and a half to another cocktail bar. These cocktails had liquor in them. Lucille drew on her imagination for a story of lurid romance. The details didn’t always fit here and there, but she took great pains to let me know that, when she went, she went all the way.
She was a nice girl with a good figure, swell eyes, and after the second cocktail I could see she had a plan.
We went to dinner. Lucille wanted more cocktails. Then she wanted Scotch and soda.
She went to the powder-room and I saw her manage to slip the waiter a note and a few words.
I called the waiter over to the table. “What did the girl want?” I asked.
He looked innocent. “Nothing,” he said.
“She gave you five dollars,” I told him. “For what?”
He coughed apologetically.
I took out my wallet and pulled out a ten-dollar note.
He grinned and said, “Whenever she ordered Scotch and soda, I was to bring her plain pale ginger ale.”
I handed him the ten and said, “Double it.”
“You mean you want pale ginger ale too?”
“Yes.”
“The prices will have to be those of Scotch and sodas,” he warned.
“Certainly,” I told him.
We finished dinner and consumed pale ginger ale. She drank hers and pretended to get a little tipsy, watching me like a hawk when she thought I wasn’t looking.
I drank my pale ginger ale and pretended to get a little tipsy, watching her when I knew damn well she wasn’t looking.
It was a Saturday night. While this was more expensive than a movie, it had more suspense, and, as she had so aptly pointed out, the script hadn’t been passed on by the Breen office.
When the floor show started, she started for the rest-room, detoured, glided out of the door and was gone for twenty minutes.
When she came back, she said, “Miss me? I’ve been ill. I get that way when I try to pour it in too fast.”
“Sure I missed you,” I assured her, “but there was a striptease on. I liked it. She was beautiful.”
“Oh, so you fall for the striptease numbers.”
“Yes.”
“The strip or the tease?”
“I guess it’s the tease, but I wouldn’t like to be teased if they didn’t strip.”
“However, I suppose you could stand the strip if they didn’t tease.”
I pondered that. “Frankly, I hadn’t given the matter that much consideration.”
“You would if you were a woman,” she said. “Let’s have some more dizzy water. I’m getting sober. I won’t drink so fast now.”