I drove down to the Blue Cave. It was a joint. They’d closed up most of the burlesque houses, and those that hadn’t been closed had been disinfected so they had virtually no alcoholic content. The Blue Cave was one of the joints which had sprung up in the neighbourhood to fill the bill.
The place wasn’t particularly wicked as far as anything anyone actually did, but it was plenty wicked so far as intimations of what would be done or could be done or would like to be done were concerned.
I found a table back in a corner and ordered a drink. An entertainer was putting on an expurgated version of a chemically pure strip-tease. She had more clothes on when she’d finished than most of the performers had when they started, but it was the manner in which she took them off that appealed to the audience: a surreptitious, be-sure-the-doors-and-windows-are-closed-boys attitude that made the customers feel partners in something very, very naughty. When the applause started getting really loud, she looked questioningly at the manager and put up a hand to the clothes that were left as though asking him if she dared make a clean sweep. He came running forward shaking his head, grabbed her hand, started to jerk her off the stage, then apparently, getting his presence of mind, turned for two or three bows at the audience, and led her towards the dressing-room, walking hand in hand.
Shortly after that, the strip-tease dancer was back in circulation, and four noisy men at an adjoining table were very patiently trying to get enough liquor under her belt so that she wouldn’t look to the manager for that final signal when the next performance came along.
A woman in the late forties with coal black hair and eyes that were so avaricious I was reminded with each blink of the celluloid tags which shoot up when a sale is rung up in a cash register strolled past my table and said, “Good evening.”
“Hello,” I said.
“You look lonesome.”
“I am.”
“On the loose?” she asked.
“Loose as ashes,” I said.
She smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
What she could do was indicated by a crook of her finger and a jerk of her head in my direction. In no time at all, a brunette with lots of make-up slid into the chair opposite and said, “Hello. How are you tonight?”
“Fine,” I said. “Have a drink?”
She nodded.
The waiter might have been hiding under the table from the promptness with which he answered that nod.
“Whisky straight,” she said.
“Rye highball,” I ordered.
The waiter went away. The girl across the table put her elbows on the tablecloth, interlaced her finger tips under her chin, gave me the benefit of a stare from two very large dark eyes, and said, “My name’s Carmen.”
“I’m Donald.”
“Live here?”
“I’m on the road. I get in once every three or four months.”
“Oh.”
The waiter brought her whisky glass full of cold tea, gave me a rye highball, and a check for a dollar and twenty-five cents. I nicked Bertha Cool’s roll for a dollar and a half, waved him away, and said to Carmen, “Here’s happy days.”
“Looking at you,” she said and tossed the cold tea down her throat, reached quickly for her glass of water as though the stuff was unusually potent, and then, after a couple of gulps, said, “Gosh, I shouldn’t drink. I get funny when I get tight.”
“How funny?” I asked.
She giggled and said, “Plenty funny. You haven’t been here before, have you?”
“Once,” I said. “My last trip into town — and boy, did I have a time.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Girl by the name of Evaline,” I said. “I guess she isn’t here any more.”
She pulled a curtain over her eyes and said, in an expressionless voice, “You knew Evaline?”
“Uh-huh.”
She looked me over, then leaned across the table a little closer and said, “Okay, buddy. Forget it.”
“Why should I forget it?” I asked.
She nodded vaguely towards the back of the room. “Couple of plain-clothes men,” she said in an undertone, “making the rounds, asking about the men who knew Evaline.”
“Why all the commotion?” I asked.
“Somebody bumped her off this afternoon.”
I sat bolt upright in my chair. “This afternoon?”
“Yes. Take it easy, Donald. Don’t telegraph the conversation. I’m tipping you off, that’s all.”
I thought a minute, then surreptitiously slid a five-dollar bill out of my pocket and said, “Thanks, baby. Stick your hand under the tablecloth. I have something I want to say.”
I felt her fingers contacting mine, and then the five-dollar bill being gently withdrawn. Carmen’s shoulders hunched forward almost even with the table as she slipped the bill down her stocking.
“And my thanks go with it. I have a wife in San Francisco. I couldn’t afford to be questioned.”
“I figured that,” she said. “Evaline was a nice kid. It’s a shame. I guess she was two-timing someone who didn’t like it.”
“How did it happen?”
She said, “Someone got in her apartment, slipped a cord around her neck, pulled it tight.”
“That,” I said, “is no way to treat a lady.”
There was feeling in her voice. “Are you telling me? Hell, when you think of what men are, what they take from a girl, and what they do— Oh, well.” She shrugged her shoulders, twisted her red lips into a smile, and said, “This is no way to do. Be happy and keep smiling, or you won’t get any customers.”
I said, “I guess that’s right. You don’t get any business being sorry for yourself.”
“Not in this racket. You have to put up a smiling front. The boys like girls who are drifting through life without a care in the world. Try and tell them you’re in this game trying to support a kid, and she’s at home with a bad cough and a fever, and you’re worried, and you don’t even get a tumble.”
“Got a kid?” I asked.
For a moment her eyes moistened, then she blinked back the tears and said, “For God’s sake, quit it! You’ll make my mascara run... How about another drink? No, wait a minute. Forget it. You slipped me enough so I can afford to give you a break.”
“The waiter’s looking this way,” I said.
“Let him look,” she said. “We’re entitled to twenty minutes on a drink, more if we want to take it.”
“You get a commission?”
“Sure.”
“And drink what?” I asked.
Her eyes were defiant. “Whisky,” she said, “and don’t let anybody kid you on that score.”
“You do a turn?” I asked.
“Yes. A song, and a few kick steps.”
“Who’s the woman with the funny eyes?” I asked.
She laughed and said, “That’s Dora, the new hostess. I guess Flo was here when you were here before, wasn’t she?”
I nodded.
Carmen said, “Dora’s a kick, but don’t ever kid yourself she isn’t on the job. She has eyes in the back of her head. She knows everything that’s going on. She’s good that way.”
“What happened to Flo?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She drifted away. I don’t know what did happen. Trouble with the boss perhaps. Dora’s only been here about a week, but she’s taking a hold. Listen, you didn’t come here to talk about me and my troubles or about the business. How about a little dance?”
I nodded. The music had swung into a dance. The small strip of floor was crowded with people jostling each other around. Carmen pressed up close against me, opened her eyes wide, slightly raised her head, smirked her lips into a smile, and kept the same expression all the time we were dancing. She danced skilfully, intimately, and with her mind on the child at home who had a cough and a fever. I didn’t say anything to change the direction of her thoughts.
After a while the music quit, and we went back to the table. I said to Carmen, “That waiter’s looking us over. I have an idea you’d better get commission on another drink.”
“Thanks,” she said.
I nodded to the waiter, and he came over on the double quick. “Fill them up,” I said, and when he had taken the glass, I said to Carmen, “How about Evaline? Did you know her well?”
She shook her head.
“She told me she had some relatives up in the northern part of the state. I can’t remember the name of the town.”
“No relatives in this state,” Carmen said. “She came from the East.”
“Ever been married?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Was she going steady?”
“Hell, I don’t know!” she said, suddenly bringing her eyes to focus on mine. “You talk like a damn dick. How the hell should I know about her? I got troubles of my own.”
I said, “You forget that I fell for her pretty hard.”
She studied me and said, “You shouldn’t have done it. You’re too nice a kid to fall for any B girl. Not that we ain’t just as good as anybody else, but we have to play our men for what we can get out of them. But hell, you’re married and stepping out on your wife, so I guess it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.
“That’s a funny thing about people. You’ve got a home, and you want to step out and sit around where there’s music and drinking and entertainment. I have to work in this joint, and I’d give my right arm for a home, a husband, and a lot of housework.”
“Why not get the husband?” I asked. “It shouldn’t be hard — for you.”
She laughed bitterly and said, “Me with a five-year-old daughter. Don’t kid yourself, Mister.”
“Five years old,” I said, putting surprise in my voice.
“You heard me. Cripes, look at Evaline. She was a kid. She had freshness and charm. I can turn on the personality, and put on the warpaint, and— Say, for God’s sake, who started this anyway? If you’ve got the blues, go ahead and get drunk. Start making passes at me and telling stories, but turn off this dark-blue faucet or I’ll go nuts.”
“Okay, Carmen,” I said.
The waiter brought our drinks.
“The plain-clothes men talk with you?” I asked.
“Did they!” she said. “They turned me inside out. I couldn’t tell them anything. My God, look at us. We play the game on a percentage basis. I’ll drift around to a dozen tables in the course of a night. Maybe if I’m lucky, someone will fall for me hard enough to buy me a flock of drinks, and after he gets tight he’ll maybe pay for them with a five-dollar bill, tip the waiter, and push the change over to me. That’s gravy. Probably he won’t.
“There are ten of us girls here, and all of them working the same racket. Evaline was part of that racket. How should I know what men shed been playing up to? I’ve got troubles of my own. Wait a minute, I’m going to put through a phone call. You don’t care, do you, Donald?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
She went over to the phone booth and called. She came back a little later and said, “Well, the kid’s resting easier. The cough doesn’t seem to be any worse.”
“She’ll be all right,” I said. “Kids run a high temperature over nothing in particular, and snap out of it.”
She nodded, “I know, but when it’s your kid, it’s different.”
“Any plans for her future, Carmen?”
She laughed bitterly. “I should make plans for her future. I can’t even figure my own.”
I said, “One more question about Evaline. Who was the big beefy guy about six feet tall with the black hair and grey eyes that had such a crush on her? He had a little mole on his cheek. She told me that if he happened to be in the place when I came back not to make any play for her but to pick one of the other girls and—”
Her eyes stared at me with the fascination of a bird watching a snake. Slowly she pushed her chair back. Her voice, hardly above a whisper, said, “So you know that, do you? Well, you know just too damn much.”
I said, “No. Honest. I—”
“And to think I didn’t spot you,” she said. “I thought I could tell a flatfoot as far as I could see him.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Carmen,” I said. “I’m not.”
She kept studying me as though I’d been a queer-looking fish in an aquarium. After a moment, she said, “By God, I don’t believe you are. And if you aren’t— Excuse me a minute. I’ll be right back.”
She got up and went into the women’s room. I saw her flash a high-sign to the hostess when she went in. In less than a minute the hostess went into the rest room. After a while the hostess came out and went over to talk with the manager. A few moments later, the manager came strolling casually by.
He paused at my table and looked at the two glasses and at Carmen’s empty place. “Being taken care of?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He stood there at the table, looking me over. “One of the entertainers?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“She run out on you?”
“No. She’s putting a little powder on her nose.”
“Been gone long?”
“Not very.”
He said, “I have to keep an eye on these girls. They — well, you know. I thought you’d been sitting here some little time.”
“I have,” I said.
“I mean alone.”
I didn’t say anything.
He said, “You’ll understand that I’m trying to look out for your best interests. Let’s just take a look and see that your watch and wallet are all right.”
“They are,” I said.
He stood looking at me with eyes that drooped a little. He was a dark, dapper man with a close-clipped moustache. He wore a double-breasted grey suit, was a little above average height, and had supple hands with long, thin fingers. He said, “I’d like to have you make sure.”
“I am sure.”
He hesitated a moment. “I don’t seem to place you,” he said. “You aren’t one of the regular customers.”
“I’ve been here before.”
“When?”
“Oh, two or three months ago.”
“Have one of the girls at your table?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t remember her name, do you?”
I said, “No.”
“Carmen was over here, wasn’t she — tonight?”
“Yes.”
He drew up a chair, sat down, and said. “She’s a great girl, Carmen. Winthrop’s my name.” He shoved his hand across the table at me.
I shook his hand and said, “My name is Donald.”
He smiled and said, “I understand. Glad to know you, Donald. My first name is Bartsmouth. My friends call me Bart. How about another drink — this one on the house?”
I said, “That would be swell.”
He nodded to a waiter and said, “Fill the gentleman’s glass. I’ll take straight whisky. Did we treat you all right here before, Donald?”
“Yes.”
He said, “I try to run a place which keeps within the law, but the men who come here like action, and I like to see that they get it, as much as I can give them and keep open. You know, I have to depend on customer good will and word-of-mouth advertising.”
“That’s right.”
“How long ago did you say it was?”
“Two or three months.”
“I like to have my customers come back — oftener than that.”
“I’m out of San Francisco,” I said, “a travelling man.”
“Oh, I see. What line do you handle?”
“Office safes,” I said.
He thought a moment and then smacked his hand on the table. “By George,” he said, “that’s a coincidence! The safe in my office is an obsolete old bread box, and sometimes our cash receipts run rather high. I’ve been figuring on getting a new safe. There’s nothing I’d like better than to do business with a customer.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He said, “My business office is on the second floor. There’s a flight of stairs back of that door behind the cash register. How about coming up and taking a look at the safe?”
I said, “I wouldn’t want to run out on Carmen.”
“Oh, I can send word to Carmen.”
“No. I would prefer to handle it my way. Suppose I come up in about ten minutes? I think I’m going to get Carmen s telephone number.”
“I can give you her telephone number,” he said, “and see that she’s there when you call.”
“Thanks. I’d prefer to handle it my way — the personal touch, you know.”
The waiter brought our drinks. I said, “Here’s how,” and raised my glass. I didn’t drink it all, just sipped a bit off the top.
He thought for a minute, then pushed back his chair and gave me his hand again. “All right, I’ll be seeing you in about ten minutes. You climb the stairs. It’s the first door on the right. Just walk in.”
“Thanks. I will.”
His fingers were lean, hard, and strong. His smile was affable. He said, “If you have any trouble with Carmen, let me know.”
“Thanks. I don’t think I’ll have any.”
“Neither do I. Okay, Donald, be seeing you later.”
He started to walk away, then, after three steps, turned on his heel and came back. He said, “I’ll want a pretty elaborate safe, something that’s good. I suppose I can get a real good one for around two thousand dollars, can’t I?”
“A peach,” I said.
“That’s fine. You come up and look the place over and appraise my safe. I’ll want to turn it in for a trade, you know. But it’s an old bread box, and I won’t expect too much for it. I’ll be reasonable.”
“That’s fine.”
He walked over and said something to the hostess, then walked back of the cash register, pushed open the door, and went upstairs.
I got up and sauntered back towards, the kitchen. A waiter said, “The men’s room is over there to the left.”
I said, “Thanks,” and pushed my way out into the kitchen. A Negro cook looked up. I said, “Buddy, the wife just came in the front door. How do I get out?”
“You-all ain’t beating a check?” he asked.
“Twenty bucks says I’m not.”
“This way,” he told me, pocketing the bill.
I followed him past a range out through a narrow, smelly corridor, past the stench of a latrine which said, Employees Only, and out into an alley lined with garbage cans. I said to him, “It’s going to help a lot if you don’t know anything about this afterward.”
“Is you,” he asked, “tellin’ me? ”
I swung around the alley, back to the street, and walked down to the parking place where I’d left the agency car.