blue-and-white striped slacks, a canary silk shirt, and a troubled frown. “You’re gettin’ to be a regular,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s such a good idea. Bein’ as you’re underage and all.”
“I showed proof of age last night,” I reminded him. “I can’t afford another ten.”
“Oh, I wasn’t lookin’ for that. All it is, the boss might get tired of seein’ you. Say, you happen to know when Tulip’s gonna be workin’ again? The two bimbos we got on tonight are strictly from Doggie Heaven.”
I told him Tulip wasn’t sure when she’d be returning to work. He let me through and I went up to the bar and ordered a bottle of beer. Jan uncapped it and poured it into a glass for me. “How’s Tulip?” she wanted to know. “Is it true she was arrested? Are you really a detective? Do they know who murdered Cherry?”
I said, “She’s fine. Yes, I am. No, they don’t, but Leo Haig is working on it.”
She squinted for a moment and assigned the three answers to the three questions. She started to say something else but some clown from Iowa was tapping his glass impatiently on the bar to indicate that it was empty. She moved off to take care of him. I looked up at the stage and watched a rather skinny blonde move around. She had a vacant expression on her face and whatever music she was dancing to was not the music they were playing. I guessed that she was tripping on something, either mescaline or speed. Whichever it was she probably did a lot of it, which would help to explain why she looked like she was suffering from terminal starvation. Her ribcage was more prominent than her breasts.
“Jesus, you again.” I turned around and it was Gus Leemy and he still looked like a bald penguin, except now he looked like a constipated bald penguin. “Finish the beer and move on,” he said. “Guys like you could cost me my license. No hard feelings, but I want to stay in business.” He accompanied this last sentence with the most unconvincing smile anyone has ever flashed at me.
“I could cost you your license anyway,” I said. “How long do you think you’d stay open if Leo Haig decided to go after you? There’s a racket going on in your own club and you don’t even know about it. You should be more worried about that than about me drinking a beer.”
His eyes widened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Of course you don’t. That’s the whole point. I think you’d better show up at Leo Haig’s office tomorrow at three-thirty in the afternoon.”
“What’s it all about?”
“Three-thirty tomorrow,” I said. “That’s when you’ll find out.”
He started to say something else but changed his mind. He gave me a long look. I held his eyes for a few seconds, then turned back to my beer. If he’d kept up a barrage of questions I don’t know exactly where I would have gone with them. It’s easy to say
I moved down the bar to where the waitresses came to pick up their drinks. I sat there nursing my beer Maeve O’Connor came over after a few minutes to order three whiskey sours and a pousse-cafe. Jan said she didn’t know how to make a pousse-cafe and it was no time for her to experiment. Maeve said she’d see what else they’d settle for and went away. She hadn’t noticed me, which was sad. She came back and said to change the pousse- cafe to a stinger, and I said hello, and she smiled as if genuinely pleased to see me. Which was nice.
I asked if her boss was around. She said he’d dropped in earlier but had left about an hour and a half ago.
“The other waitress,” I said. “Is that Rita Cubbage?
The girl who was working last night?” Maeve nodded. I’d like to talk with her,” I said. “Ask her to stop by for a minute.”
Rita Cubbage turned out to be a black girl wearing a blond wig. I hoped she took it off when she left the club; most of the Times Square hookers wear wigs like that, and if Rita walked down the street with it on she probably got a lot of offers.
I said, “Hello. My name’s Chip Harrison and I work for Leo Haig.”
“The detective,” she said. “Maeve told me. You were here last night, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but were you? Not with that wig.”
“No, I left it off last night. Do you like it?”
“It’s striking,” I said.
“You don’t like it.” She grinned. “That’s all right. Neither do I. But it boosts the tips, if you can dig it. My hair’s normally in an Afro and it puts the dudes uptight because they figure I must be terribly militant. This way they figure I put out.”
I asked her about what she had seen last night, and what she knew about Cherry and Tulip and the other people involved in the case. She didn’t seem to know very much. There wasn’t much point to it, as far as I could see, but I invited her to come to Haig’s house at three-thirty. If he wanted a party, the least I could do was provide a full list of guests. She copied down the street address and put the tip of the pencil between her lips, a sudden frown of concentration on her face.
“Something,” she said.
“You can’t make it?”
“Oh, I guess I can. Something just on the tip of my tongue and now I can’t get hold of it. You know how that’ll happen?”
“Something about last night?”
“No, goes back a few days. Damn.”
“Maybe it’ll come to you.”
“I just know it will,” she said. “What I’ll do, I’ll sleep on it. Then in the middle of the night it’ll come to me.”
“Keep paper and pencil on the table next to your bed so you can write it down.”
“Oh, that’s what I always do. I’ll be sleeping, and all of a sudden something’ll pop into my head, and I’ll write it down. Only thing is half the time the next morning I won’t know what it means. Like one time I woke up and there was the pad of paper on the bedside table, and what it said on it was, ‘Every silver lining has a cloud.’ ”
“That’s really far out.”
“Yeah, but what did I have in mind? Never did figure that one out.” She winked. “See you tomorrow, Chip.”
I went back to my beer. When Maeve came to pick up an order of drinks I gave her the same invitation. “And tell your boss it would be a good idea for him to show up, too. Three-thirty at Haig’s place.”
A few minutes later I got to extend the invitation to Jan Remo. I waited until she was pouring me a second beer and then I told her the time and place. If her hand shook any, I didn’t notice it.
“Three-thirty,” she said. “I suppose I can make it. I’m having my hair done earlier but I should be through in plenty of time. But what’s it all about?”
“Mr. Haig doesn’t tell me everything,” I said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he intends to trap a murderer.”
“I thought the police solve murders.”
“They do, occasionally. So does Leo Haig.”
“And you’re his assistant.”
“That’s right.”
“Does Mr. Haig know who killed Cherry?”
“I told you he doesn’t tell me everything. That’s one of the things he hasn’t told me.”
She broke off the conversation to fill a drink order, then got Maeve’s attention and asked her to handle the bar while she took a break. “You won’t have to do much,” she said. “If you don’t push drinks at them they don’t order much. Just cover for me while I go to the head.”
I chatted with Maeve for a few minutes. Not about murder or other nasty things but about her career in show business and how she had a driving need to make a success of herself. I was pleased to hear this. Ifs a theory of mine that women with one driving need have other driving needs as well, which tends to make them more interesting company than other women. I don’t know how valid this is, but I guess it’ll do until a better theory comes along.
We didn’t have all that much time to talk before Jan was back. They stood side by side for a moment, both of them rather spectacular to look at and both of them redheads, and a part of my mind started thinking idly in troilistic terms, which I gather is a fairly standard male fantasy. I suppose it’s something I’ll have to try sooner or
