Before I finished my drink, which was pretty fast, she was back. I’d heard a drawer or two slam, and some soft rustling noises, and then she stuck her head around the door and peeked at me. I peeked at her.
She said, Close your eyes, will you?
Close my eyes? That’s sort of defeating —
Just at first. So I can get, oh, into the swing of it.
O-h-h-h, I said, sort of long drawn out.
Promise?
Okay, I promise.
And I closed my eyes. On a case like this, I was thinking, I suppose something like this was bound to happen. I heard her walking around, but I didn’t peek. I had given my word. And I wanted it back.
After what seemed a long, long time, when she still hadn’t told me I could open my eyes, I said, Well, hell, you could at least describe it to me.
Well, its just like I said, Shell. I’ve got on the turtleneck sweater — its blue, by the way.
Blue.
Uh-huh. And high-heeled pumps. Theyre blue, too. And that’s all. You know, Shell, it really feels good, too. You can feel the breeze and all.
Ill bet.
She sighed. I guess Im ready now.
I guess Im ready now, too.
You can open your eyes.
They were already halfway up. And then they went the rest of the way, almost with a snap, like defective window shades go and spin about. Blackie had just passed in front of me, going from my right to my left. She walked across the room, clear to the wall, hips swinging in the graceful, sinuous movement as old as woman and as new as I felt.
She started to turn.
Blackie, in tight blue jeans and that old sweater, had been gorgeous, shapely, more woman all by herself than in most complete chorus lines — but now, in her costume, she was undulatory adrenalin, an ambulatory coronary. I looked at her as she walked back across the room and past me, hips moving with that infinitely provocative sway and swing, big breasts trembling beneath the sweater.
Twice she walked the length of the room and then as she reached the far wall again I said, Blackie, I’d better tell you something.
She turned, her back against the wall, laughing.
You don’t have to tell me.
And this time she walked toward me.
Six
I made it to the Club Parisienne just in time for the second show.
After leaving Blackie I had almost decided to let the Club Parisienne go hang. At least until tomorrow night. But time was of the essence. With guys shooting at me and getting close, I couldn’t wait for the grand conclusion of my search until the Anniversary Party a week away. I couldn’t lie down on the job at this point.
No, I had to keep plugging ahead, nose to that old grindstone. Work, work, work. Ah, the life of a private eye — its rough. But after all, I thought, you’ve got to go sometime, and its a wonderful way to die. Hell, its a wonderful way to live!
But I was a little worried. Blackie was now positively crossed off my list. But if I kept eliminating girls this way, the girls would eliminate me. Such were the philosophical thoughts dancing in my head as I parked the Cad and started walking the half block to the Club Parisienne. And because of those thoughts I was more preoccupied than I would normally have been.
The memory of that wicked slug snapping past my head this afternoon had almost been shoved clear out of my head. I wasn’t even thinking about guns, or tough guys. So I walked right into them. Later I would wonder how it had happened that they were there, in the alley close by the Club Parisienne. Later — there wasn’t time for that kind of thinking then.
I saw the first guy, lounging against the brick of the building. It didn’t mean anything. Just a guy to me.
I was walking along Highland, and the club was thirty or forty feet ahead. Hot, loud music pulsed inside the Parisienne, loud enough to be dearly heard even here. The gaudy neon sign above the entrance spilled pale colors over the sidewalk, on the man leaning against the building; reached out softly to touch me. I was walking across the alleys mouth. The man was just past the alley, a cigarette hanging from his lips. The alleys darkness grew into deeper blackness on my right.
When I was centered before the alley, foot swinging forward in a step, somebody out of sight in the alleys blackness said sharply, Scott! Shell Scott.
I turned to look, peered into the darkness. I felt, more than heard, the man move away from the wall on my left.
Im an old hand at this business. I have been jumped a time or two, and if I do say so myself, I’ve learned. The hard way, maybe, but I’ve learned. Even on top of all the unarmed defense and judo training and bloody rip-gut fighting I got saturated with in my years as a Marine, I’ve had cons and muscle men and punk hoodlums in my hair, and picked up some new tricks from them. But this time I was as wide open as a Vassar sophomore. My thoughts hadn’t come back from that lotus land where they’d been floating in perfumed pastures — not, at least, as far as a dark alley and a swinging sap.
I stared into the alley. The man moved on my left. I heard him. But dimly, dully. I kept staring too long — almost too long. The sap must have been swinging down, almost against my skull, before I woke up. I moved then, in a hell of a hurry, down and to the side, legs bending and then the muscles tightening hard and tensed to spring. It helped. Not enough to get me out of the way.
The sap landed, slammed the side of my head. My movement had kept the leather-wrapped bat from hitting me solidly, squarely. The blow struck as my skull was moving away from it and I didn’t go out. But it was enough. The muscles in my legs just wouldnt spring.
I felt my knee hit the cement beneath me. I had no memory of falling, just the sudden sharp pain in my knee. For a moment I couldn’t move. A hand slapped my coat pockets. Got it, the guy said softly. I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was lifting the sap again. I heard him grunt. And I heard the quick shuffling of feet deeper in the alley.
Sudden alarm sent a current of energy through my body. Somehow I knew — the quiet, swift attack from the side, the quick purposeful movement of those others toward me — that this wasn’t just a beating or mugging. These guys were out to kill me.
It gave me enough strength to fall prone on the cement and roll. The sap came down silently again, but barely slapped my back as I fell. I rolled farther — into the alley. As I came over onto my knees I thudded against the legs of a man. I got one hand against the asphalt below, swung the other balled into a fist up between those legs.
The guy vomited noise, and I rolled again. This time I got onto my feet. Something flashed in the dim light, slashed toward my face. I jerked my head and it scraped my chin. I could see the man before me, not clearly, but well enough to set him up. I slapped my left hand across my body, grabbed the hard object he’d tried to fait me with, yanked up. His arm went into the air.
He was wide open for a split second. It was all the time I needed. I swung in toward him, right hand open, palm up and fingers stiff, driving for the soft, unprotected solar plexus, that vital little spot beneath the inverted V of the ribs. My fingers went in hard. Hard enough.
One soft sound he made, and then he fell. The man I’d first hit with my fist was bent double, staggering along the sidewalk, half trotting. As my eye caught him he went out of sight. I got barely a glimpse of him — past the bulk of the third man, close on my left now. I didn’t see the sap, but that third man must still have had it in his hand. The movement of his body, the dropped shoulder, told me he had it, was slamming it toward me again.
I fell backwards, kicked his kneecap. He slammed down over my other foot. I rolled to my feet, slapping the .38s butt under my coat as he got to one knee, nipped the gun out. As he started up again, toward me, I moved my right foot out to steady myself, aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger.
The gun cracked, but the shot went past him. When I’d moved my foot it had thumped into the m
an lying unmoving on the asphalt, jarring me and ruining my aim. I missed, but that was enough for him. He turned and ran. I jumped to the alleys entrance, but he was almost at a car parked down the street past the Parisiennes neon sign. I heard the engine roar as he jumped through the cars already open door.
The staggering guy must have made it to the car, started it, while that third man and I were still scuffling. I leveled my gun at the car, then let it drop as two men came out of the Parisiennes entrance, weaving drunkenly. The car sped away.
I stepped back into the alley, leaned against its brick wall. Three of them there’d been. Waiting for me. Not a shot had been fired except for the one I’d triggered at the last man. Nobody seemed to have noticed the single sharp sound, half muffled in music from the club. The three who’d been here must have wanted this to be done silently, without attracting attention. It could have been handled that way. If that first blow had landed squarely, the second and third and fourth from the sap or a gun butt would have spilled my brains from the shattered skull case.
And why? Not a sound during the whole time except the scuffling, the grunts, the scrape of feet on asphalt. And the mans yell when I’d hit him. Then I remembered the two soft words, Got it. I felt in my pockets.
The photo was gone. That little four-by-five color photo. I couldn’t figure it. This cold-blooded — and professional — attempt at beating a man to death? For that picture? Maybe. But there was sure more to this than I’d guessed.
I’d got a glimpse of one mans face, the guy who’d tried to sap me, the one I’d fired at and missed. A stupid face, big loose lips. A big guy. I’d seen that face before and after a few seconds I remembered who he was. Slobbers OBrien was his name. He was a mugg. I didn’t know who he worked for, but I knew the kind of work he did. Especially now I knew.
The two people who’d come from the Parisienne were passing the alley now, a yard or two from me. One of them stopped, stabbed his mouth with a cigarette and flicked on a lighter. The glow warmed the alleys mouth. I looked down at the man still near my feet. He didn’t move. Probably he was dead. He had fallen hard on his face, and blood had spilled from his mouth. It lay in a glistening black pool touching his lips. There would be a lot more blood, from his burst aorta, spilled inside him. The lighter flicked out and the two men walked away.
I knelt, felt for the mans pulse. But he was dead. I grabbed his arms, dragged him far down the alley, dumped him by a trash can. Then in the flickering fire from my lighter I looked at his face. Somewhere in my mind memory stirred. I’d seen those features, too, but I couldn’t place them. I went through his pockets. A sheaf of bills held with a metal clip, that was all. Nothing else, no identification.
I left him there, walked to the front of the club. In the brighter light at the entrance I checked my clothes, couldn’t find any rips, or smears of blood. My bead throbbed painfully, a grinding ache pulsing against my skull.
Inside the club a high-voiced master of ceremonies was saying something in a tone of sheer happiness. Then the music swelled again. I heard some whistles. Slow, draggy music with a heavy beat that’s like a trademark for a certain kind of dance, vibrated in the air.
On my right was a signboard telling some of the exciting things to be seen inside. On my left was one of the exciting things. It was a life-size photo of a lovely girl wearing, as far as I could tell, only a white-fox stole. It covered up enough of her so that you could see only that there was quite a bit of her. Slanting across the front of the photo was the name: Jeannette Duré.
Jeannette. October.
And into my mind, bang, a long-limbed, lissome, lovely lass lying on her side — back to the camera, of course — front to the leaping red flames in an open fireplace. Everything was red, the fire, the highlights in her rusty brown hair, the sheen of her skin, even the shadows of the dusky room were suffused with the reddish glow. It was the kind of item the devil would keep in a separate room of hell — adjoining his own.
I lit a cigarette, dragged the smoke deep, and went inside.
Seven
The Club Parisienne looked about as much like Paris as I look like Whistlers Mother.
I think it was one of those deals where the new management takes over and keeps the old sign to save on expenses. Though I’d not previously visited the Parisienne, I had heard about it. That’s why I hadn’t visited it.
This had come to be the end of the line for gals who had stripped, and stripped, and stripped, until it just wasn’t worth it any more, whereupon they had taken their sock full of money and retired to a farm someplace with their old G-strings and memories. Once in a while it was even suspected that some of the gals had come back to the Parisienne from the farm. It got so bad that when a girl came out to dance the customers didn’t yell, Take it off! but Keep it on!
Until about three months ago, that is. Then the management had inaugurated the policy of paying one good gal good money to put on an act which would at least take a customers eyes off the ice in his glass. The reason? Nobody was coming to the Club Parisienne any more. So, innovation. Nothing else had changed, the usual gals stomped about and cracked their joints waggishly, but now there was something, not just to listen to, but to see.
Three months ago, I’d heard: good. Two months ago: great. Last month: terrific. And now: Jeannette Duré. Jeannette Duré, the prize of the pack, the pick of the peelers, the peak of the peek. Jeannette Duré — October.
Here, the girls danced on the bar. Here, whatever the girls did, they did it on the bar. The ceiling was low, and when the gals really got wound up they could put their arms over their heads and press their hands on the ceiling for leverage. It was, understandably, a pretty wide bar. It was also U-shaped, and there was a lot of it. But not a stool was empty. And to see what I had come to see, it wouldnt do to be way off at one of the tables. I found the headwaiter.
Yes, I wanted a seat at the bar; no, I didn’t want to kick some poor devotee of the dance away; yes, I had ten dollars. Lovely, an extra stool squeezed in at the bar would be lovely.
So I sat at the bar between two guys who may not even have known I’d squeezed in, and ordered a drink. The two guys were looking, not at the gal dancing, but at the entrance through which — soon, now, their hopefully bugging gazes told me — Jeannette would sinuously glide.
I could understand why they werent watching the current performer. The current performer was about out of current. She had by now taken off all her clothes except for the bare minimum required by law, but even without it this gal would have had the bare minimum required by law. She was acting pretty sporty up there, but she had no visible means of sport; and she didn’t look nude, she just looked bald.
I closed my eyes, gulped some bourbon, thinking: heres not looking at you, baby; and when I opened them she was gone. Down went the music, on came the happy M. C., on with him and up with the music.
From the draped curtain yards to my left, and onto the bar, came a woman. Jeannette? No, not Jeannette. This was not October. Or if it was, it was October of 1897, which was a bad year to begin with. She sidled around with a sort of Oh, pfui! attitude, to the strains of Oriental music. She started out in an Egyptian costume, and she should have left while she was merely behind. This one looked like Big Egypt. I figured her measurements were about 40-30-40, but, unfortunately, not in that order.
It ended. All things pass. It seemed to take a hell of a time, though. And then down with the music, on with the M. C., off with him. And up with the music.
But this time there was a difference.
Even the music had a different beat. It was a slow, sweet melody I’d never heard before. Sweet, but with. a hot gut-bucket rasp barely audible, weaving through it like whispers in a bedroom; the sweetness of sex, the rasp of a voice tight in a soft throat. The curtains parted on my left, and Jeannette was there. Still in shadow, dim, not dearly visible. But the white fox wrap bloomed in the dark.
>
Then she came on. Slowly, proudly, with a flair and an air of unconcern, almost as if she were alone and these hundreds of hot eyes were not upon her. She strutted, nude flesh gleaming where the white stole didn’t hide it, long brown hair forward over one shoulder, long lovely legs flashing with each strong step.
You wouldnt think a woman could do what she was doing. Could step out onto a bar — not a stage or dance floor — a bar, ringed with guys breathing beerily through open mouths, lusting for her even now when shed not completed even a quarter circuit of the track, in a dive, a dump, following the women who’d just been out here before her, and still look like a queen. But she did it. There were no yells, no whistles. The men sat quietly, just looking.
She was beautiful, with high cheekbones and full parted lips, she had a marvelous figure, yes; but she had something more. She had authority, command. And she liked what she was doing. I liked it, too.
She walked once around the bar, moving the white fox over her skin like a caress, as if it gave her a sensual pleasure that thrilled her from head to toes, and in between, especially in between. Then her movements quickened a little, the white wrap moved farther from her body, more daringly. I’d have sworn she had nothing on under the wrap, nothing at all, but I might have been wrong. She never completely got rid of the white fox stile, but at the end it was only a prop, a flailing white blur in the soft lights. Jeannette seemed to tremble, to quiver, more an emotion than a movement, as if a shudder started inside her, reached her flesh, reached all of us watching her.
She was out there quite a while. She was the star, what everyone had come to see. At the end she was motionless for a moment, limp, appearing exhausted. But then she straightened up, the firm breasts thrust forward, light caught the smoothly flaring hips, and she walked off. Unconcerned again, trailing the white fur behind her.
The place started thinning out fast. I’d seen what I’d come to see, and there had been a spotlight on part of Jeannette part of the time. She was in the clear. But I went back and talked to her, to be sure. No, she hadn’t married Webley Alden. No, she hadn’t posed for a picture lately. Of course, I’d already known that. But it was a lovely talk.
Dance with the Dead (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 7
