exists at all. They say she’s done business in every major city here and overseas. That she can give you girls you can whip and screw and even kill if you want. Whatever your perverted pleasure, whatever your sicko taste might desire.”
I made an appreciative face. “Well, she accomplishes a hell of a lot, for somebody who maybe doesn’t exist. Is she in town?”
He got coy; it didn’t become him. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard.”
“But you’ll ask?”
“I’d rather not, Morgan.”
“But you will.” I tossed a couple of bills on the desktop. “That’s a retainer. Enough?”
His sigh was long-suffering. “I guess it’ll do for a start. I suppose I don’t contact you.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m in the book,” Muddy told me.
I was just going out when he said, “Morgan!”
I turned. “Yeah?”
“You already got enough problems, with Crowley and that federal bunch. This Consummata dame, that whole whipsand- chains crowd, and the freaks who dig that crazy pain scene? I’d advise against going anywhere near it or her.”
“You would, huh? Why?”
Muddy’s smile was a nasty thing lurking in the folds of flesh. “Oh, don’t know, Morg. Maybe ’cause you might get a spanking.”
At ten-forty, I tucked into a phone booth alongside a gas station and dialed the office number of the Mandor Club, but the line was busy.
I had a cup of coffee at the diner across the street, used their payphone for my second try—another busy signal. A slice of Key Lime pie later, I headed back across the street to the gas station booth, and this time I got Bunny.
Not wanting to chance a phone tap, I let her identify me by voice, then—before she could say anything but hello— said, “The truck with the shipment of cutlery you ordered just came in. I know it’s late, ma’am, but you said call when it arrived. You ready to take delivery?”
Her hesitation was just right—a businesswoman thinking, not a conspirator covering. “Yeah, Jonesy—you might as well bring the stuff on over. Wait, on second thought, send it over to my apartment at the Hillside. Have your guy give the package to the doorman. He’ll sign for it.”
“Sure thing, ma’am,” I said, and hung up.
In its day, the Hillside had been one of the better apartment buildings, one of those pink stucco
From my spot in the shadows, I could cover both ends of the street, a boring wait because anybody who lived here was already in bed, and most of the cars cruising through were taxis going back to their stands. The .45 was in a shoulder rig now—not a great one, but passable, considering it had come from a pawn shop. Anyway, the rod felt nice and snug under my arm, and was far less conspicuous than just being shoved in my waistband.
At twenty after twelve, a white Ford station wagon rounded the corner, and turned in just past the entrance of the Hillside, into a small side lot, and found an open stall.
Moments later, I heard the car door slam, but wasn’t sure it was Bunny till she came around and paused under a streetlight. She might have been a veteran streetwalker if her white fur coat and blue velour pantsuit hadn’t put her in a whole other class. She was getting keys out of a purse, but not for the front door of the place—there was a uniformed doorman just inside who tipped his hat and opened one of the two glass doors for her. The entryway was well lighted and I could easily make out Bunny’s activities within.
The gal knew the ropes, all right. She took her time looking in her mailbox, sorting out a few envelopes, reading a letter, giving anybody who might have been following her a chance to show themselves, not so much to her as to me.
I waited maybe three minutes, then left my shadows and walked across. You’d never know her eyes had left the letter she was reading—or pretending to read—as she stood there in the foyer in no hurry at all.
But I knew she had spotted me crossing the street when she approached the doorman, granted him a lovely smile, and said something to him, gesturing behind her as she did.
Then the doorman nodded, tipped his hat to her, and disappeared into a room across the mini-lobby marked storage just as I was approaching the front doors. She quickly let me in, whispered “Two A, one floor up,” and I left her in the foyer to deal with the doorman and the fool’s errand she’d sent him on.
I took the stairs and waited at the top of the landing. I could hear some muffled conversation between her and the doorman below, then maybe thirty seconds later, she emerged from the self-service elevator down the hall.
Bunny was a good-looking broad for her age—what, fortyfive? Fifty? One of those larger-than-life dames, the sort that went out with Mae West, Jean Harlow, and Jane Russell. She’d held up well, had all her curves and no apparent flab; whether she exercised or just drew decent genes, I had no idea. But she was the kind of older woman who could give a guy lessons, purple-streaked blonde bouffant and all.
I let her open the door, stepped inside while she closed it and flipped on the light switch. She started to say something, but I tapped my mouth with one forefinger and my ear with the other.
She returned the nod, motioning me to tag along.
Taking time out only to hang up her white fur coat in the front closet, she gave the apartment a professional systematic search, starting with the windows onto the street.
The pad was small, considering how important and wealthy a woman Bunny was, just a living room, bedroom, small kitchen, and bath; but she probably had other residences. This was one appointed in white with sleek, rounded, off-white furnishings that fit the
We wound up back in the living room.
“No bugs,” she said. “You’re sure a suspicious bastard.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? How secure is your office?”
“I have it swept once a month,” she said, “and I don’t mean the rugs. The law can’t legally tap the phones, but it gets done anyway, and I’m not exactly in a business where I could lodge a complaint.”
“Understood. Guess the phone game I played was unnecessary.”
“No, with what’s been going on, there’s no sense taking chances. Now sit down and take a load off. Want a drink?”
I plopped onto a plump couch that proved as comfy as it looked. “Got a cold beer handy?”
“Coming right up.”
She hip-swayed out to the kitchen—no come-on, just the kind of natural gait that’s made the world go round since Eve was a rib.
I heard her pop a pair of cans in there, and she came back in, sat beside me and passed me a very cold Schlitz.
“That’s some smart cookie,” she said, “they got heading up the outfit that almost busted your ass.”
“Walter Crowley.”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, he wasn’t smart enough to hold onto me the first time around.” I sipped icy beer. Nectar of the gods. “Bastard may have had a lead that’ll take him to Gaita.”
Bunny studied me over the top of her beer can. “You do get around,” she told me.
“Think so?”
She nodded. “I heard the same thing. So we covered for her. Rounded up a trustworthy lookalike who filled in for her, and a good-size Cuban who could make it stick by admitting he was the guy caught rolling around in the dark with her.”
