I entered a large ornate vestibule. A hat-check girl, clad in a frilly thing that showed her knees, hipswayed towards me, showing her even white teeth in a smile of welcome. The smile slipped a little when she saw I had no hat and had nothing to leave with her for her to earn a possible dollar tip.
I moved around her, giving her one of nay boyish smiles, but for the impression it made on her, I might be offering a beggar the time of day. She turned and hip-swayed back to her station. For build, she and Marilyn Monroe had a lot in common.
I went up the red-carpeted stairs to a passage lit by ceiling lights and headed towards a pale-blue neon light that flashed Bar at me.
I paused in the doorway and surveyed the scene.
The room was big, with a horseshoe-shaped bar at the far end, and a lot of tables and chairs to cope with the hundred odd people who were getting liquored up for the night.
It wasn’t what I would call a smart crowd. None of the men were in tuxedos. The women were a mixed lot: some of them looked like businessmen’s secretaries out for the night in return for past services rendered; some of them looked like slightly soiled young ladies from the back row of unsuccessful musicals; some of them were obviously professionals, and they sat alone at various tables, discreetly distant from each other, and there were a few elderly women waiting impatiently for their gigolos: the usual crowd you can see any night of the week in the less smart nightclubs of Palm City.
I looked over the bar. There were two barmen coping with the rush: neither of them was Ross: two small men, Mexicans to judge by their sleek, black hair, their dark oily skins and their servile, flashing smiles.
I didn’t expect to find Ross serving behind the bar. I guessed it was his night off.
As I looked around I was aware that at least ten of the women on their own were staring pointedly at me. I took care not to meet their inviting eyes.
I wandered over to the bar and waited my turn beside a fat man in a slightly creased, tropical white suit who was being served with a rum and lime juice and who looked three parts drunk.
When my turn came, I ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and while the barman was fixing the drink, I asked him what time the cabaret started.
‘Half past eleven, sir,’ he said, sliding the drink over to me. ‘In the restaurant, second on the left down the passage.’
He went away to serve a tall, bony blonde in a sea-green evening dress whose elderly escort seemed to begrudge her the champagne cocktail she was whining for.
I glanced at my wrist watch. The time was twenty minutes past eleven.
The fat drunk next to me turned and grinned sheepishly as if to apologize for intruding. He said on a rum-ladened breath: ‘You don’t want to waste good money on the cabaret, friend. It’s the worst swindle in town, and that’s saying a lot.’
‘No girls?’
He made a face.
‘Well, yes, there are girls, if you can call them girls.’
I twiddled my glass.
‘I heard this Lane dish is worth catching.’
He sucked up some of his rum and lime juice, and then closed a heavy eyelid.
‘If you could catch her, I’d say she would be pretty satisfactory, but she’s hard to catch. I’ve tried, and all I’ve got out of it is a couple of evenings listening to her sing, and that’s something she can’t do.’
‘So what’s good about this joint?’
He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening, then leaning close and lowering his voice, he said: ‘Between friends, they have a roulette table upstairs. The table stakes are up to the ceiling. All the rest of the muck here is just a front. But keep it under your hat, friend. I’m doing you a favour, telling you.’
‘Maybe I might see what I can lose.’
He lifted his fat shoulders.
‘They’re pretty strict who they let up there. It’s strictly illegal. You might have a word with Claude: he manages the joint. You can mention my name if you like: Phil Welliver.’
‘Thanks. Where do I find him?’
He nodded across to the bar to a door.
‘In there.’ Then he pushed himself away from the bar. ‘I’ve got to move along. I promised the wife I’d take her out tonight. Went right out of my mind until five minutes ago. I’d better not be too late.’
I watched him lurch across the bar, and when I was sure he had gone, I went the same way, again aware of the twenty staring eyes on me as I walked to the exit.
I found the restaurant on the left of the passage: an oval-shaped room with dim lighting, rose-pink mirrors and blue decor. There were about sixty people finishing dinner, and the room was full of the hum of voices and cigarette smoke.
The head waiter, a jaded young man with red-gold wavy hair, came up to me, his face set in a professional smile.
‘I wanted to catch the cabaret,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want the dinner.’
‘Certainly, sir: perhaps a drink and a sandwich…?’ He let his voice die away as he waved his hands apologetically.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a whisky sour and a chicken on rye bread.’
He led me around the back of the tables to a small table a little too near the band for comfort, but I didn’t argue about it.
He went away and I sat down.
The band was a four-piece job: four well-built Negroes: a trumpet, drums, double bass and a saxophone. They played as if they needed a vacation and were going to strike at any moment if they didn’t get it.
After a while the waiter brought my chicken sandwich and my drink. The rye bread was a little dry and the chicken looked as if it had had a sharp attack of jaundice before departing the earth. I let the sandwich lie. I’ve drunk worse whisky sours in my time, but not much worse.
Around quarter to twelve, the floor was cleared and four girls came prancing in. They wore Gstrings, halters and guards-men’s hats. They were pretty terrible, and there was one of them who had dirty knees. They were strictly for the drunks, and after they had shown themselves off and made eyes at the habitués they bounced out more enthusiastically than they had bounced in. As my rum and lime juice friend had said: as a cabaret, it was a swindle.
A little after midnight, Dolores Lane came in and stood holding a microphone the way a drowning man hangs on to a life-belt.
She was wearing a gold lame dress that fitted her like a second skin, and she looked pretty good as she stood there under a white spotlight. She sang two Latin-American songs. Her voice was small, but at least she could sing in tune. Without a microphone, no one would have heard her. She sang listlessly as if she were bored with the whole thing, and the applause she collected could have been packed into a thimble without overflowing.
She went away, her eyes glittering, and then the crowd began to dance again.
I found a scrap of paper in my wallet and wrote the following message:
Will you have a drink with me? I hope you didn’t get sand in your shoes this morning.
A nutty note to send her; but I had an idea it might book her. I grabbed a passing waiter, gave him the note and a five-dollar bill and told him to get some action. He made sure the bill was for five dollars before he said he would fix it.
I was working on my second whisky sour when the waiter came back.
‘She’ll see you in her dressing-room,’ he said and gave me a curious stare. ‘Through that door, turn left, and it’s the door ahead with a star on it.’
I thanked him.
He paused just long enough for me to reach for my wallet if I felt inclined, but as I didn’t, he moved off.
I finished my drink, settled the check which was three times too much, and then, made my way through the door the waiter had indicated into a typical behind-the-scenes passage.
Facing me was a shabby door with a faded, gold star on it. I rapped and a woman’s voice said: ‘Come on in.’