Long Island, outside little Sidon.
Nobody knew anything, but they’d poke around for me.
The headache was getting worse and I washed down half a dozen aspirin with some bourbon. Then I did what any brave, two-fisted detective would do in this situation.
I took a nap on the couch.
I woke around nine and fifteen minutes later I was down on the street, heading for the garage. But a cab cruised by and I impulsively hailed it.
I gave the driver an uptown address and settled back in the cushions. The neon-draped city certainly looked good to me. Why the hell anyone wanted to go to the sticks for a vacation was more than I could figure. Right here in Manhattan was the works-shows, bars, dancing. In Sidon, you hibernated.
Or maybe ran down a murderer.
My cab pulled up in front of a cellar bar that was stuck in the front of a boarded-up three-story building that looked ready to fall apart. The ramshackle appearance was merely a front. Behind that deteriorated stone-and-brick veneer lurked one of the city’s top gambling dumps.
Louie Marone ran it. In that shady racket, he was as on the up-and-up as they came. The house took its percentage and nothing more. When you sat in a game at Louie’s, you could be sure the cards weren’t fixed and no wires were attached to the wheels.
Instead of steps, a ridged gangplank led to the bar and I mostly slid down it and plodded through the sawdust to the counter and parked on a stool at the end. The place wasn’t hopping. Well, it was Sunday.
The bartender, a whiskered Greek right out of the Gay Nineties, quit polishing glasses long enough to set a beer up in front of me, then went back to his wiping. Besides myself, the only other occupants of the joint were a pair of rough-looking gents knocking off boiler-makers as fast as the bartender could pour. Then I noticed a pair of luscious-looking legs extending from a booth.
The legs made me curious. And I was ready to bet that the package they were part of would be just as nice as they were. This seemed to me a bet worth making, and after all, Louie was the most honest gambling joint in the city, so my odds were good.
I didn’t have to reflect on my potential bet very long. A tousled head of blonde hair poked around the backrest and a very lovely body uncoiled itself from the seat and walked itself toward me. There was a lot of animal in her stride. Under the close-fitting jersey of her dress, each little muscle in her stomach and legs rippled coaxingly. If she had anything on under that thing, you could stuff it in a thimble.
She parked a glorious fanny on the stool next to me and flashed a smile in my direction.
“Why, hello, Mike,” she said. She poured it out like melted butter.
Now what? I couldn’t place her at all. Maybe I had taken one to the head harder than I thought…
“What do you say, kid?” I said, faking it.
“Remember me?”
I don’t usually forget pretty faces, even after getting clobbered. This one belonged to a fabulous piece of fluff of about twenty-one, though she looked as though she had been around some.
“Nope,” I said, deciding to keep it honest, like Louie. “Can’t say I do. Not proud of it, either.”
She smiled and this time it was not a come-on, but the smile of a real person, not some dame on the make.
“Marion Ruston,” she said, red-nailed fingers brushing her full bosom. Lucky fingers. “Billy’s little sister? I was just a kid when you got him out of that scrape that time.”
Then I got it.
Billy Ruston was a kid who had started life pointed in the wrong direction. I had used him for a messenger sometimes, trying to make less of a dead-end kid out of him; but he had become involved with the law when the gang he ran with robbed a warehouse. Both Pat and I had intervened and arranged for him to join the army. Doing that, the judge had suspended sentence on him while his former pals did their stretch upstate.
Marion had been just a kid then, as she said. I remembered her crying at the trial, a pretty little flat-chested teenager. I was wondering if-like her brother-her rough background had sent her tumbling off the straight-and- narrow.
The bartender brought her a Manhattan without being asked, and I ordered up a highball.
There was a disapproving tone in my voice when I said, “What are you doing in this place?”
“A place like this? Nice girl like me?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Her mouth made a sort of smug kiss when she smiled that certain way. “Don’t get me wrong, Mike. I work here.”
I frowned.
“Not a B-girl! I’m Louie’s bookkeeper.”
I eyed the curves assembled on the stool next to me, pretending I didn’t approve of them. “Then why don’t you dress for the job? In that outfit…”
I let it go at that.
She laughed and it had a mocking edge. “I just like to have a little fun, that’s all. I’ve taken such a beating all my life, it’s nice to do some pushing back myself for a change. Besides, I bring a lot a business in here.”
“Doing what?”
“Being eye candy.” She gave me that laugh again. “Men seem to like to look at me. I saw the way you looked at me, Mike, till you found out who I was.”
She had me there.
“But if Louie caught me being serious with any of the goons that come in here? Why, he’d spank me but good.”
If I were Louie, I’d have been looking for an excuse.
I asked, “No steady boyfriend on the outside?”
“No dice. I don’t like men… not that much. I just like to tease ’em.”
My highball arrived and I sipped it. “Dangerous game, honey. You’re going to get caught short someday.”
She shook her head and blonde curls bounced. “Not a chance. I make ’em sweat, then chase ’em home, like the scared little boys they are.”
“Maybe you just haven’t met the right guy.”
“Get out! They’re all after the same thing. Hardly a variation in technique. They put up a big show, spin a line a yard long, and then offer to show you their stamp collections.”
“It used to be etchings.”
“Sometimes it still is.”
I was torn between my attraction to this knowing beauty and the memory of the sweet innocent kid she’d been.
“Just look out, Marion,” I said softly. “Some guy is going to bust up that little game of yours, and you’re going to be left holding the bag.”
“Pooh.”
“Some guys take a tease too serious. A girl can get manhandled.”
“A guy can get kneed in the nads.”
She had a point.
“Where’s Louie?” I asked her.
“Upstairs,” she said with a nod in that direction. “Want me to get him?”
“Do that.”
Marion slid from the stool and swayed down the bar, trying a little too hard to impress me now, and disappeared into a tiny alcove. A few minutes later she was back with her boss in tow.
Louie was a big Italian with a smile for everyone, a tuxedo that dated to Prohibition, and an ardent hatred for crooks. There was nothing to say about Louie except that he was square and a swell guy, always good for a touch.
He spied me and beamed all over. “Mike! How do you do!” I never knew whether this was in imitation of the
