Two scantily clad waitresses worked the tables, neither of them very busy. I went over to the bar, paid too much for a bottle of beer-flavored water, and waited for one of the waitresses to come up to her station. She wasn’t Ginger Benn. “You want me to send Ginger over?” she asked. I said yes, and she went away, and pretty soon the other waitress sidled up.
Mid-twenties, blond, busty, big without being fat. Old, cynical eyes sized me up, decided I was nobody she knew, and took on the same blank look as the male customers. Her smile was thin and professional. “I’m Ginger,” she said.
“I’m Bill.”
“We don’t know each other. Somebody give you my name?”
“Not exactly. I’m looking for Janice Stanley.”
The smile didn’t quite go away. “She doesn’t work here.”
“I know. But she’s a friend of yours.”
“Who told you that? I hardly know her.”
“Then how come you let her move in with you a month ago?”
Now the smile was gone; the overpainted mouth was drawn tight. “Look, mister, you want to make a date with Janice, go ask somebody else.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to make a date with her.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I told you. I’m trying to find her.”
“Why?” Then, warily, “You some kind of cop?”
“A friend of her husband’s.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know where she is.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Few days ago. Friday.”
“Heard from her since?”
“No.”
“Not even curious why she disappeared all of a sudden?”
“None of my business. I got enough troubles of my own.”
“The two of you didn’t get along, is that it?”
“We got along. She was just crashing with me for a while, okay? Now why don’t you leave me alone, let me do my job?”
“Somebody beat her up on the weekend,” I said.
The words stung her enough to make her head jerk, her eyes widen. “Beat her up?”
“That’s right. Badly enough to send her back home for a couple of days. Only now she’s disappeared again, under suspicious circumstances.”
“… What’s that mean, suspicious circumstances?”
“You have any idea who smacked her around?”
“No. How would I know?”
“Or where she might be now?”
“No.”
“Friends of hers, people she might go to?”
“We didn’t talk much. Didn’t see each other much.”
“What did she do when she wasn’t staying in your apartment?”
Shrug. “Her business, not mine.”
“You ever do anything together?”
“Like what? Double dates? No.”
“How about gambling?”
“Her thing, not mine. I don’t gamble.” The shape of her mouth around the word was bitter. “I hate gambling.”
“But you took in a compulsive gambler as a roommate.”
“I told you-Never mind, forget it. You all done taking up my time now?”
“Not yet.” I made a little show of opening my wallet, taking out a twenty, letting her see it before I creased it down the middle lengthwise. “A few more questions.”
She licked her lips, her eyes fixed on the creased bill. Waitresses in places like this don’t make much money, rely heavily on tips. Call girls don’t get to keep a large percentage of their fees, either, unless they run their own service, and Ginger Benn didn’t look shrewd enough for that. She wanted that twenty. What she didn’t want was to get herself in trouble by talking too much to a stranger.
“I told you, man,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Janice getting beat up.”
“I believe you. But you didn’t answer my question about her being your roommate. How’d that come about, if you’re not friends?”
“Oh, shit. Okay. A favor, okay?”
“But not to her.”
“A friend. A favor for somebody we both know.”
“What’s the friend’s name?”
“Hey, Ginger.” That was the bartender; he’d moved down and was leaning across the bar. “Drinks waiting, customers waiting. Shag your ass.”
“Yeah, I’m on it.” She didn’t look at him; her eyes were still coveting the twenty. “Wait here,” she said to me. “I’ll be right back.”
I waited while she put a pair of drinks on her tray, delivered them to one of the tables. The bartender glared at me. So did a young, beefy type with a shaved head at the far end of the bar. Bouncer. I ignored both of them.
Ginger came back with a clutch of bills, handed them over to the bartender. Nobody was allowed to run a tab in a place like this. She hesitated before she came back to where I half-sat on one of the stools. Reluctant, but unable to resist the lure of the twenty dollars.
Her eyes made sure I still had the bill in my hand. Then she moved around so that her back was to the bartender and the bouncer. “You going to give me that? Better do it now if you are.”
I dropped it onto her tray. She made it disappear into the shadow between her breasts in a movement as quick and deft as a magician’s.
“Okay. But make it quick.”
“You were going to tell me the name of the friend of yours and Janice’s you did the favor for.”
“No, I wasn’t. It’s none of your business.”
“It might be if he knows something about what happened to her.”
“What makes you think it was a guy? It wasn’t.”
A lie. I said, “Carl Lassiter?”
“I don’t know any Carl Lassiter.” That came out fast-too fast. He was somebody she knew, all right. And the tightening of muscles around her mouth, the flicker of emotion in her eyes, said he was somebody she was afraid of.
“How about a man named Quilmes, Jorge Quilmes?”
“Who?” The puzzlement sounded genuine. “Never heard of him.”
“Like you never heard of Carl Lassiter.”
“That’s right.”
“How about QCL, Inc.?”
She couldn’t quite stop herself from flinching. QCL, Inc. was something else she was afraid of. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “Lassiter, Janice, you-all connected to QCL.”
“No. You’re wrong.” Her voice had risen. “Look, why don’t you just leave me alone?”
“Let’s talk about QCL. I’ve got another twenty in my wallet-”
“I don’t want any more of your money. I don’t want any more of you!”
Half shriek, that last sentence. As loud as the music was in there, the bartender heard her and hand-signaled the bald-headed guy. The bouncer came our way, not too fast, in a kind of hard glide. At the same time Ginger backed off from me. I took a step toward her, saying, “Wait,” but she turned and hurried away into the section where the Asian dancer was simulating sex with the brass pole on her platform. In the next second the bouncer was between us and not quite in my face, like a wall.
“You don’t want to bother the girls,” he said, low-key.
“I wasn’t bothering her. Just a friendly conversation.”
“Didn’t look so friendly to me. Suppose you have a seat, buy yourself another beer, enjoy the show.”
“I’ve had enough warm beer.”
He said, with iron in his voice this time, “Then why don’t you go someplace else, pops.”
“Yeah, sonny, why don’t I.” I stayed put, locking gazes with him, just long enough to let him know he wasn’t intimidating me, and then took my time walking out of there.
11
The Hotel La Farge, just off Union Square, was one of the city’s more venerable hostelries, built in the twenties and renovated at least twice since. Sedate, expensive, respectable. That last, respectable, had a somewhat different meaning these days. Hotels no longer police the morals of their guests, unless something happens that forces the issue. If a guest wants to entertain a member of the opposite sex in his room at any hour, day or night, and the visitor is reasonably presentable, hotel staffs are trained to look the other way. None of their business, and that’s as it should be. The worst thing any institution, public or private, can do is to try to dictate morality on any level.