I turned at an intersection cluttered with cheap-john stores and made my way up Pacific, which ran through the heart of the Coast. Things grew even seamier, with rows of groggeries and deadfalls—dives selling the cheapest rotgut alcohol. The denizens here could have crawled out of A Rake’s Progress. I asked several grizzled sailors how to get to the Bull Run Saloon. One spat and said, “Don’t go there, mate.”
“Why not?”
He looked me over. “You like fights with eyeballs rolling on the deck?”
“Not my favorite,” I said. “Where is it?”
“Got a quarter?”
I flipped him one.
“Portside on Dupont, then again to Sullivan Alley. Big three-story joint.”
“Thanks.”
“Your funeral, mate.”
One sign on the door said ALLEN'S BULL RUN, another, HELL'S KITCHEN & DANCE HALL. Even from the outside it reeked of stale beer. Inside, the sawdust was drenched, the humanity unwashed, and there were unmasked odors of urine and vomit. Dance stages were crowded in the cellar and on the main floor. Women headed upstairs frequently with customers.
At the bar on the street floor a sign proclaimed, anything goes here. I tried to get a beer and was informed by a burly bartender that I’d have to order from a waiter girl.
So I moved to a small table and was accosted by an ill-smelling woman in her fifties who, calling herself Lydia, smoothed my lapels and draped a fleshy arm around my neck.
“Champagne?” It came out like a rasp.“How much?”
“Five dollars.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t be stingy, a smash gent like you,” she said, pouting. “A bottle of claret, then?”
“No.” The bartender was watching us. “Just a beer.”
Her fingers stroked my thigh. “At least a whiskey, honey? Maybe a little game of cards?”
“Lydia, how about me just sitting here, okay?”
Something ugly flitted across her face; I didn’t like the glance she exchanged with the bartender. It occurred to me suddenly that leaving Sullivan’s Alley might be a good deal more problematic than entering.
“While I’m waiting to see my friend,” I told her, “maybe I could make it worthwhile for you to sit with me.”
“How worthwhile?”
“What do you make here?”
She gazed at me for a long moment. “Beer for two!” she shouted, then, “Fifteen a week plus a quarter every turn upstairs.” Her mouth turned down. “Used to get a damn sight more when I had my looks.”
“I’ll slip you twenty right now—you personally, not the house—if you’ll just sit here and be a . . . companion.”
She whooped and jumped to her feet. Raising a booted foot to my chair, she pulled up her skirts and exposed a flabby leg. Men around us hooted. I saw something resembling a diaper wrapped around her upper thighs.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” she said huskily.
“Sit, then.”
She sat down slowly. “You a cop?”
Again the bartender was watching. “No, I just want to get out of here in one piece.”
“Gimme the money, don’t let it show.”
I surreptitiously extracted a gold coin from my belt. It disappeared into her clothing.
“You gotta be more interested.” Lydia replaced her arm around my neck. Her breath stank. “Else they’ll know I’m not doin’ my job. It’d go hard on me. On you, too.”
“How so?”
“A flush gent’s got to spend. Else he takes a club to the noggin when he leaves.” She rested her head on my shoulder. “You’re lucky I’m squarer’n most or I’d keep your twenty and set you for rollin’ anyhow.”
The beers arrived, a dollar each.
“Sniff it,” Lydia whispered.
I tipped it to my mouth, pretended to drink, caught a faint tobacco odor.
“They put snuff in beer, plug juice in whiskey, morphine sulphate in mixed drinks, an’ that ain’t the half. Here, you gotta be interested!” She cupped my hand over her right breast, and then, giggling and snorting and writhing, made a show of pushing it away as if I’d gotten fresh. I glanced down at her. The caked makeup didn’t hide pock-marks on her face. “Sure you won’t go upstairs with ol’ Lydia?” she cooed.
I shook my head. Old Lydia smelled like a stable.
“They throw in Spanish fly, too,” she said. “My beer’s got it, and surely yours.”
“Spanish fly?” I recalled high-school tales. “Are you joking?”
“Cantharides,” she said. “Makes folks jumpier’n goats. Thank the stars it don’t affect me like some. But there’s enough times they carried me upstairs drunk, to be screwed by fifty or sixty, one after t’other—and me not paid for even the first half dozen!”
She looked indignant. I took a deep breath. Rough trade here.
“All part of their damn hog show,” she went on. “Get us out of our senses so we’ll carry on like animals. Make us drink all night, don’t even let us go to the joe.”
Which explained the diaper, I thought. We watched dancing couples topple to the floor. Part of the sport. Men ringing the dance floor groped the women, yanking their skirts high.
“Things’re heatin’ up,” Lydia said offhandedly. “Here, empty your beer in that spittoon on the sly and I’ll order more. Then you tell me about your friend.”
I managed it without the bartender seeing and began to describe Johnny.
“A nigger with red hair? Works here? You mean Johnny?” Scowling, she pointed toward the rear of the room. “That one back there?”
I peered into the gloom. Sure enough, Johnny had emerged with a push broom and dustpan. “That’s him,” I said.
“You’re here to see the nigger clean-up boy?” Lydia looked me
