radio catch-phrase or just a greeting. “Glad to see a you. Whatcha know?”
We shook hands, and he ushered me over to a table in one corner.
A smile blossomed under a Clark Gable mustache in a J. Carrol Naish face. “What are you drinking, my friend?”
“Highball. There’s plenty of this one left.”
“That glass has no bottom, Mike. And your money, she’s no good here.”
“Thanks, Louie. How’s business?”
“Good, Mike, verra good. Everybody, they spend plenty of dough. Sunday, a little slow. We have to close early, Sunday.”
Right. Three a.m., instead of four a.m.
I lifted a thumb. “I mean upstairs.”
“Yeah, good up there too. I spin a straight wheel. Plenty of people come to Louie’s. Plenty of people, but not you, Mike. Where you been forever?”
“You know me, Louie. I’m not much of a gambler.”
A grave expression took over the jovial face. “You are the great gambler, Mike. You gamble your life.”
“Ah nuts,” I grinned at him. “Got a few questions for you, Louie. Think you can help out?”
“Maybe so. Let’s a go to my back room. Leave the glass. We can do better.”
Marion, seated on a stool at the bar, saw us heading to the rear and hopped off and tagged after. She fell in just behind me.
Louie noticed, halted the procession, and gave her a long look. Then he said, “You wait out here, Marion.”
“I’m with Mike.”
He shook a finger at her, Daddy scolding. “This Hammer guy, he’s not like them other bums. No games with him now. He’ll poke you one.”
She gave that ambiguous remark a short snort and threw a lush, taunting lipstick smile my direction.
“I don’t think he’s man enough,” she said, then laughed as she walked away.
I could see where she might need a spanking at that. Later maybe.
“Little devil,” Louie said, trying not to smile as he nodded toward the lithe figure. “Some a day she go too far.”
“That’s what I told her. You know, Louie, not all men are as gallant as I am.”
He had no response to that.
The back room was a comfortable little den used exclusively to entertain Louie’s prime guests between rounds of losing money. The chairs were like those in an exclusive old-time men’s club-leather, studded with buttons, but very comfortable. Framed paintings adorned the walls, all winter scenes, except for a huge hand-tinted photo of the Coliseum in Rome. One corner held a cabinet lined with books, not leather-bound, but well-read volumes, from classics to bestsellers, with half a dozen books on government in the collection. You couldn’t say that Louie didn’t take his citizenship seriously.
Louie went to a small bar in the opposite corner, got behind it and drew out a bottle of good Scotch. He laid out two glasses and poured a stiff one in each. We held them in a mutual toast, took a long pull, and sat down facing each other, him on his side of the bar, me on mine.
“Now, wotta questions you got, Mike?”
“I got a murder on my hands, Louie. Out on the Island. A cookie named Sharron Wesley got herself knocked off. She ran a gambling joint out of a mansion she inherited.”
“Yeah, I know this cookie. Didn’t know she gotta bumped. I pay no attention to the papers much. When did she catch it?”
“A little over a week ago. The body was just discovered yesterday, though. I’m sure it’s been in the papers here, because the reporters were thick as flies last night, and her body turned up in an unusual way.”
“Oh?”
I told him about the Lady Godiva routine.
“So you think… are you saying…?” His voice was querulous. Louie was trying to see where her death had any connection with him.
I hurried to reassure him. “Wipe off the long face, pal. You’re not in on this. I know that. But it so happens that you may have some customers that patronized the Wesley dame’s joint, and I want to find out who they are. They could stand talking to.”
He raised his palms, like the victim of a hold-up. “Mike, please. You my friend, I like a to tell you these things, but I don’t want to be no pigeon. This is a my business, Mike. It is not strictly legal, I know, but it’s all I got to make a dollar. Now, maybe I lose a the business if I rat.”
I understood where he was coming from. But I still wanted the inside dope, and I wasn’t asking him to finger any gambling bosses-just customers. Pat was sure to dig up some names for me, but it might take too long. And with bullets flying and goons shaking down my office, not to mention knocking me on my can, well… time wasn’t something to be spent so leisurely.
Louie interrupted my thoughts with, “Didn’t this Wesley woman leave a some books?”
“I thought of that, Louie, but the operation seems to be backed by a syndicate of a sort. If she did, you can bet your boots those ledgers are damn well hidden. I’m going to let you in on something, kiddo. This isn’t to go farther than this room.”
“Hokay, Mike. I keep a my mouth shut. Shoot.”
Nice choice of words.
“Louie, if I’m not mistaken, there was one hell of a take from Sharron’s dump. She was the one who ran the place and presumably she took care of the income. The books I’m not too worried about. It’s the dough that somebody will be after. The equipment in there cost in the six-digit range-possibly seven, so you can approximate the entire take, especially if the place was crooked.”
“But each week, they must a bank the take in the city.”
“That casino was strictly open on weekends. She got murdered the last night of the last party, so at least that much dough may be stashed somewhere on those grounds. She may have been keeping her own share of the proceeds there, as well. If not all of it.”
Louie nodded. “I catch. She stash a the cash, then a she die, now nobody knows where to look. Everybody searching for it and more people, they get bumped off. And you in the middle, making life miserable. Yeah.”
I nodded. “That’s how I see it. Now, here’s what I can do. Either you can put me wise to a few people who make the rounds of the gambling joints, with my word it goes no farther… or I can play upstairs here a while myself on the Q.T., and snoop around. What’ll it be?”
He pondered that a moment. “I a tell you, Mike. Do both.”
He dragged a pad out from somewhere and unscrewed the top of a fountain pen. For a minute he wrote, then tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to me. “These are some names. I don’t know where they live. You find a that out. Come here and play, watch a these people, and speak to them. Like one gambler speaks to another gambler. Just friendly. Maybe you learn something.”
I thanked him and stood up.
But a voice nagged at me that this approach still would take too long, and I couldn’t afford being away from Sidon any length of time. And anyway, I was well-known enough to get made.
“I’ll do what I can, Louie,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you tonight, upstairs.”
“I’ll be looking for you, Mike.”
He escorted me to the mouth of the alcove and stayed behind as I headed back into the outer bar. That’s when I had a swell idea, one that might prove a good shortcut.
I slid into the booth where the lovely legs had taken up residence again. On the same side as those legs, bumping their owner over.
“Just can’t resist me, can you?” Marion said. Her tongue flicked out, the little snake.
I grinned at her. “Nope. You are irresistible, dolly. Like me.”
She laughed once, high up. “I’m just dying to hear your approach. Is it any different than the rest of the he- men?”
“Some girls find it that way, baby. Do you have an apartment around here?”
