have a drink and scope the place. But when he enters and walks to the back, Claire Lee is already there, sitting alone at the little bar and working on something green in a stemmed glass.
The only other people in the dim restaurant are six waiters having their late lunch at a big table up front. Cone takes off his cap and slides onto the barstool next to Claire. She gives him a thousand-watt smile.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t show up;” she says.
“I told you I would,” he says gruffly. “What do I have to do to get a drink in this joint?”
She swings around to face the table of waiters. “Carlos,” she calls. “Please. Just for a minute.”
One of the guys rises, throws down his napkin, comes back to the bar. He isn’t happy at having his lunch interrupted.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Could I have another of these, please. And my guest will have-what?”
“Vodka rocks,” Cone says. “And you better give me a double so you don’t have to stop eating again.”
Carlos shoots him a surly look but serves them, then returns to the noisy table up front.
“A real charmer,” Cone says.
“Carlos isn’t angry at waiting on us during his lunch. He just doesn’t like seeing me with another man.”
“Oh-ho,” Cone says. “It’s like that, is it?”
She takes a cigarette from a platinum case. He holds a match for that and his own Camel, noticing that her fingers are trembling slightly.
She looks smashing in a printed silk shirtwaist with a rope belt. Her hat is enormous: a horizontal white linen spinnaker. It would look ridiculous on a smaller woman, but she wears it with all the aplomb of a nun in a starched wimple.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” she says.
“Oh, my, yes,” Cone says. “And here it is Wednesday, and don’t the weeks just fly by.”
She stares at him, outraged, then tries a weak grin. “I guess I deserved that. But it’s hard to explain why I asked you to meet me.”
“Just say it. Get it over with.”
“Yes, well, I’m afraid it’s a confession. I hope I can trust you, Mr. Cone. If not, I’m dead.”
“I don’t blab.”
“First of all, I want to hire you, Mr. Cone.”
“I told you,” he says patiently, “I’ve got a job. Financial investigations. If what you want comes under that heading, then you’ll have to make a deal with my boss.”
“Then I want your advice,” she says, looking at him directly. “Will you give me that?”
“Sure. Advice is free.”
“Before I married my husband, I was living in California. I was very young and hadn’t been around much. I went to Los Angeles hoping to get in the movies or television.”
“You and a zillion others.”
“I found that out. Everyone told me I had the looks. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I thought I did, too. Prettier than a lot of girls who made it. And a better figure.”
“I’ll buy that,” he says.
“What I didn’t have,” she goes on, “and don’t have, is talent. I did one test and it was a disaster. My aunt, my closest relative, sent me the money for acting school. I tried, I really did, but it didn’t help. I just couldn’t act or sing or dance. Have you ever been to southern California, Mr. Cone?”
“Yeah, I spent some time there.”
“Then you know what it’s like. Life in the fast lane. Sunshine. Beaches. Partying. Twenty-four-hour fun.”
“If you’ve got the loot.”
She drains her first green drink and takes a little sip of the second. “Exactly,” she says. “If you’ve got the loot. I ran out. And I couldn’t ask my aunt for more.”
“Why didn’t you go home?”
“To Toledo? No, thanks. No surfing in Toledo. And it would have been admitting defeat, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ve done that,” he tells her. “It’s not so bad.”
“Well, I couldn’t. So, to make a long story short, I ended up in a house in San Francisco. Not a home-a house. You understand?”
“I get the picture,” he says.
“Don’t tell me there were a lot of other things I could have done: sell lingerie in a department store, marry a nebbish, go on welfare. I know all that, and knew it then. But I wanted big bucks.”
He doesn’t reply.
She is silent a moment, and he stares at her, wondering how much of her story is for real and how much is bullshit. Her face reflects the innocence of Little Orphan Annie, but he suspects that inside she’s got a good dollop of Madame Defarge.
Her nose is small and pert. A short upper lip reveals a flash of white teeth. The complexion is satiny, and if she’s wearing makeup it’s scantily applied. He finds something curiously dated in her beauty; she could be a flapper: She’s got that vibrant look as if at any moment she might climb atop the bar and launch into a wild Charleston that would shiver his timbers.
“So?” he says, wanting to hear all of it. “Now you’re in a house in San Francisco. A cathouse.”
“That’s right,” she says, lifting her chin. “In Chinatown. It was called the Pleasure Dome. Very expensive. It catered mostly to Oriental gentlemen. It was run very strictly. No drugs, believe it or not, and no drunks tolerated. We accepted credit cards.”
“Beautiful. Were you the only white in the place?”
“There were two of us. The other girls were mostly Chinese, some very young, from Taiwan.”
“And you made the big bucks?”
“I surely did. I had my own apartment, a gorgeous wardrobe, and for the first time in my life I had money in the bank. I even filed a tax return. In the place where you have to put in your occupation, I wrote Physical Therapist.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Cone says, and does. “How long were you there?”
“Almost two years. Then the place was raided and closed down.”
“Oh? Local cops?”
“No, FBI. According to the newspaper stories, the Pleasure Dome was part of a chain of fancy houses owned and operated by some Chinese gang.”
“Uh-huh. Were you charged?”
“I wasn’t caught. I lucked out. On the weekend the place was busted, I was up in Seattle with a Chinese gentleman who was on a business trip. They let us do that occasionally-take short trips with some of the wealthier clients. The tips were great. Anyway, I got back to Frisco on Monday and discovered I was out of a job. More important, the other girls who had been picked up during the raid were still in jail. It turned out that most of them were here illegally and would be deported. I decided the smart thing would be to put distance between me and the Pleasure Dome. In one day I closed out my bank account, packed my favorite clothes, and got a plane to New York.”
He looks up at her admiringly. “No flies on you,” he says.
“I’ve learned,” she says. “The hard way. But I did all right. I had some names to look up in New York.”
“Chinese gentlemen?”
She looks at him sharply but can see no irony in his face or hear sarcasm in his voice. “That’s right,” she says. “Old friends. Then, about three years ago, I was introduced to Chin Tung Lee. He was and is the sweetest, dearest, most sympathetic and understanding man I’ve ever met. His wife had died, and he didn’t want to live out his life with just that miserable son of his for company. Chin is almost three times my age, but when he asked me to marry him, I said yes.”
“You were tired of the game?” Cone guesses.
“Yes, I was tired.”
“And Chin was wealthy.”
She shows anger for the first time. “What the hell did that have to do with it? All my friends were wealthy, but I had enough money in the bank to tell any one of them to get lost-and I did it, too, on a couple of occasions. I
