Belle Dee lived on the third floor, up steep and newly painted creaking stairs. The still-drying paint overpowered some of the normal apartment scents of cooking, and lingering disinfectant. I found the door with Belle Dee's number on it and knocked, experiencing my 'nobody home' feeling.
No answer.
When I knocked again, louder, the door across the hall opened and a stocky man with a bushy head of hair and a large brown mustache looked out at me. Aside from the fact that he was barefoot, he was fully dressed in tan slacks and a silky shirt with swirling orange designs all over it.
'You looking for Belle Dee?' he asked, smiling.
I told him I was.
The smile got wider. He was justifiably proud of his teeth. 'You're not a process server or anything, are you?'
'No, I was told to look her up by a mutual friend.' I let him make what he wanted of that. He decided he wanted to believe me.
'She's probably working at the Poptop Club,' he said, stroking his brown mustache, 'about four blocks east on Delorel. Easy to find.'
He was right about the Poptop Club's being easy to find. It dominated the block of seedy buildings with a tall sign that proclaimed it to be the home of 'the biggest and the best.'
There was no sign of either of those as I entered and looked around. I was in a long room, bar to the right, tables and chairs to the left and booths along one wall. At the end opposite the door was a raised stage with a purple-curtained backdrop and some speakers aimed out over the tables so that no one could escape the sound. There was another platform, about eight feet off the floor, behind the bar and supported from the raised ceiling by heavy silver-colored chains.
The Poptop must not have had much day trade. It was peopled only by a bearded, purple-shirted bartender and two customers morosely sipping beer in one of the booths. I walked to the bar and ordered a bourbon and water, which I needed.
'I was told I could find Belle Dee here,' I said to the bartender when he set my drink on its coaster.
'You can, but it'll have to be after five.'
'She wait tables here?'
'That and dances,' the bartender said. 'All the girls here double up.'
'I checked her apartment. Any idea where I can find her now? It's important to her.'
'She might be at the beach. Spends a lot of warm days there.'
'Which part of the beach?'
'Why? You going to look for her?'
'Probably.' I sipped my drink, which was on the weak side.
'Wish I was going with you,' he said.
While I finished my drink, he described Belle Dee as a tall, blue-eyed blonde with dark eyebrows and long hair, and he gave me easily understood if overstated directions to her favorite strip of beach.
'You can't miss her,' he said, as I got down off my bar stool to leave. 'She's got… you know.' He cupped both hands about six inches from his chest. 'Outstanding!' he added.
I nodded knowingly.
It was a warm day and there were a lot of outstanding 'you knows' at the beach. I stood for a while and watched but could not determine which belonged to Belle Dee.
I gave up trying to figure it out, bought myself a hamburger and Coke for lunch and sat watching a young boy trying vainly to bury his overweight father in the sand. The boy was about the age my own son would be. I pushed away the maudlin mood that threatened to envelope me, leaned back and watched wisps of white cloud over the sparkling lake water.
The breeze off the lake was a soothing massage, and the shouts and laughter of the bathers were pleasantly muted by vastness. I could understand why Belle Dee liked it here. I stayed longer than I should have.
It cost me a two-dollar cover charge when I returned to the Poptop Club that evening. The personality of the club seemed to have changed with the setting sun. Now it was crowded, the only light coming from candles on each table and flickering purple flashes of brilliance in time to the frenzied music bursting from the band on the rear stage. Dancers writhed about the small, crowded dance floor between tables and bar, and several fantastically built waitresses in skimpy but unimaginative costumes wove among the tables with trays of drinks. I took a table near the booths, and one of the waitresses appeared immediately to take my order.
When she returned with my bourbon and water I told her I wanted to talk to Belle Dee, repeating it several times so she could read my lips.
'You'll have to wait!' she shouted through the din. '… dances next!' She pointed toward the suspended platform behind the bar.
I sipped my weak drink and waited, and within a few minutes there was a blast of music, the suspended platform was spotlighted and Belle Dee danced.
She was tall, and her long blonde hair swaying in rhythm to the music made her seem more graceful than she was. Her spectacular, gyrating body was probably the siliconed product of science, and the amazing thing was that she managed to keep everything from going in the same direction at once, maybe for fear the building would shift.
She finished her dance to loud, enthusiastic applause punctuated by shouts, whistles and a few remarks she pretended not to hear. Ten minutes later she appeared at my table in street clothes, a surprisingly plain blue dress with a sash belt and flat shoes. 'I don't know you,' she said.
'You know Victor Talbert. I'd like to talk to you about him.' I waved a hand for her to sit down.
'Police?'
'No.' I caught the attention of a waitress and bought Belle Dee a drink-one I'd never seen before, tall and tropical and made with gin. 'My name's Alo Nudger,' I said. 'I'm a private detective, and I promise that nothing you tell me will be used to harm Victor.'
'He's not married, is he?'
'No. He's involved indirectly in what I'm working on. How long's it been since you've seen him?'
She trained almond-shaped blue eyes on me as if she'd just noticed me across the table; there was an emptiness in them; they were doll's eyes. I didn't think she was going to answer, but she did. 'It's been… three, four months, maybe.'
'You were seriously involved with him, weren't you?'
'We had it going between us, but we weren't serious.'
I thought about asking her what the hell that meant, but decided against it. She must have seen the puzzlement in my eyes.
'Vic wasn't serious about me,' she said, 'and he knew I wasn't about him. I was interested in fun and he was interested in what interests all men.'
I nodded. 'An honest arrangement. Did Talbert have any enemies you can remember?'
She laughed-a musical laugh, but it was the blues. 'Vic was too much of a square head to have any enemies. He played life right out of the rule book, an upstanding, ambitious citizen. If you cut him he'd bleed apple pie.'
'Then he wasn't into drugs, that sort of thing?'
'Too straight for that, straight but nice. He didn't even drink heavy.'
'How'd you meet him?'
'Oh, something like the way I met you. He came in here one night, wanted to talk to me. Next night he was back. I liked him, but I saw he was gonna get hurt. He was too afraid of failing at anything-he wanted to be a success so bad it burned. The hell with that kind of stuff.'
I smiled at her. 'He doesn't sound like your type.'
When she smiled back I could understand what Talbert had seen in her. She had that bony symmetry beneath velvet skin that inspires casting directors. 'Don't get the idea Vic doesn't know how to have a good time,' she said. 'I think he has to cut loose now and then, uptight as he is.'
'Did he come in here often?'
'Quite a bit. But not in the last few months.'
'Didn't you wonder where he was?'
