And the opposite. Decent-looking men playing around with tramps.
I just put it down to Reno and let it go.
Kewpie and I quit at four and there was still a crowd. My arms and hands ached from whaling away at the box and my head ached worse from hearing Kewpie sing and play consistently out of tune. He had damned little more idea of pitch than an alley tom-cat. And Rucci had kept on bringing gals over and introducing me but hadn’t brought any of the Wendel crowd.
He’d tried to please; I’ll give him that. He kept sending out to the bar for drinks for Kewpie and me until I told him plenty. I hadn’t lied; one hell of a lot of the customers had done the same and we didn’t want to take a shingle from the roof and tell them no. Kewpie and I cut thirty-one dollars and sixty cents, which wasn’t bad for a week night, and he said: “You see, Shean! I told you this was a good spot and it is. Kewpie knows, by God! We’ll do better over the week-end always, and when we get a live one in we’ll really go to town. Wait until Monday night.”
“Why wait until Monday?” I asked.
He grinned and said: “It ain’t any different than any other sporting town, Shean. A bunch of the gals lay off on Monday, because it’s a slack night for them, and they give the spot a play. A lot of them will hustle a John who’s good for dough and bring him along. And any dumb prostitute will spend as much as a dozen business men herself. You know that.”
I said I had that recollection, even though I’d been out of the business for a little while. We ate, then drove back to the hotel, and Kewpie walked on to the rooming house he was honoring, after telling me he’d drop up and see me around noon the next day.
I parked the car and went up to the room and didn’t find Lester. He’d left the club around two and he’d told me he was going to take the big bum home, then go to bed. He’d had about five more drinks than he could really hold and I’d told him it was a good idea. Just about the time I’d decided to call the desk and find out if the big gal was registered in the hotel, he came in.
He’d been pretty well plastered when he left the club and now he really had a load. I looked at him and said:
“Well, well! And you the boy that doesn’t believe in drinking. Maybe it was something you ate.”
He didn’t answer me. He just waved his hands in front of his face and stumbled for the bathroom. I followed him in and kept him from taking a header while he heaved, then said: “This ought to be a lesson, kid. You’re just one of the kind that can’t take it. This ought to show you.”
He said, in an all-gone voice: “I couldn’t help it, Shean. She kept saying ‘Let’s have another one, honey’ and what could I say? I couldn’t very well tell her I didn’t believe in drinking.”
“Why not?”
He managed to straighten up a little. “It wouldn’t have been polite.”
I’d been trying to keep from laughing, but this was too much. I asked: “Did you slap her face, or were you too drunk?”
He looked puzzled and asked what that meant. I said: “Hell! Usually when I’m trying to make a gal and get her too drunk she passes out on me. If she don’t get that drunk, she’s still sober enough to slap my face. Did you give in?”
He said: “My God, Shean! I’m sick! Don’t rib me now. I can’t stand it!”
I said: “That’s just your notion,” and proved him wrong during the time it took him to get to bed. This was about an hour. He’d get a shoe off and then have to make another run. He undressed in sections, as it were. I felt sorry for him, but I laid the lash on his back just the same.
He’d bawled me out for hangovers too many times. Though, of course, always in a polite way.
Chapter Seven
Kirby called me at ten the next morning. I answered the phone and he said: “This is John Kirby. How about coming down for a little while?”
I said I could, as soon as I was dressed. He said that was fine and hung up, and Lester rolled over in bed and groaned:
“Who was that?”
I said: “The Chief, is all. Your Mrs. Heber has gone down and lodged a complaint against you.”
He came wide awake. He sat up in bed and said:
“WHAT!”
“Sure! You might have known. You can’t get tough with a woman in this town and get away with it.”
“But Shean! I didn’t do anything.”
“How in hell do you know you didn’t? You were so stiff when you got home I could have propped you up against the wall. That happens lots of times, Lester. A man will do things and not remember them.”
I kept this up while I got dressed and I just about had him believing me by the time I’d finished. He was almost crying by then, and he said, just when I went out:
“Shean, I didn’t do anything. Honest, I didn’t.”
I said: “That’s the beef, you clown,” and slammed the door. It was a shame to ride him but too good a chance to miss.
Kirby wasn’t alone when I got to the station. He had a lantern-jawed, gabled-shouldered man with him whom he introduced as Len Macintosh. He added: “Len’s with the Sheriff, Connell. We work together pretty well.”
I said I was glad to meet Mr. Macintosh, even though I didn’t know whether I meant it or not, and took a seat across the desk from the two of them. Kirby tossed a telegram across to me and said:
“From New York. They get action back there, those boys do. Twenty-four hours for this is all.”
The wire read:
FRANCINE DEBREAUX ARRIVED JULY THIRTY-TWO STOP TWICE MARRIED STOP WORKED FOR G L STODDARD STOP DISMISSED FOR THEFT STOP WORKED FOR GEORGE ARMBRUSTER STOP ARRESTED FOR THEFT STOP TWO YEAR TERM IN BEDFORD STOP SERVED FIFTEEN MONTHS STOP NO FURTHER RECORD STOP REFERENCES GIVEN US FALSE STOP
It was signed by somebody in the Identification Bureau. I said: “That’s nice work, Chief. It’s a wonder she wasn’t deported.”
“They don’t deport them that easily,” he said. “Chances are, nobody thought it was worth the bother. D’ya notice that bit about references?”
I said: “That would be a cinch for her. She probably made some connection while she was in the gow. Forged references would be a cinch and the average person doesn’t bother to check them.”
Kirby picked up the phone and called a number. He asked to speak to Mrs. Ruth Wendel, got her after a wait, and asked: “Mrs. Wendel. Did you bother to check your maid’s references before you hired her a year ago? I have a reason for asking.”
There was another wait, then I could hear tinny sounds coming from the phone. Kirby said: “Thank you!” hung up the receiver and told me:
“She says she didn’t bother. That the girl seemed careful and competent and she just didn’t bother.”
I said: “Okey, then you’ve got it. She had fake references. But now you got it what does it mean?”
He said slowly: “It means this. This French maid was a crook. Or at least she’d been one. Maybe some person she’d crossed back in New York followed her out here and knifed her. Maybe she’d had an affair with the knife man back there and the guy followed her. It’s something to go on.”
“I can’t see it,” I argued. “I don’t blame you for passing the buck back to New York but I can’t see it. It’s a local mess, I think.”
“We’ve checked that woman for the time she’s been here and she wasn’t out with a soul. That’s out. She made no contacts that could lead to murder. Isn’t that right, Len?”
Len Macintosh said that was right; that his office had assisted in the check and the Debreaux woman had met no one and had gone out with no one. He reached in his pocket for cigarettes, passed the package to me and said:
“Have one?”
I looked and saw they were Turkish, the kind the young gals smoke when they want to be devilish. I said no, that I always smoked my own kind, and the long lean hungry-looking bird said: “I can’t stand those. I have to have them mild like these. Never smoke any other kind.”