Phryne dismissed her taxi in Gertrude Street and emerged into the cold, wrapping her furs around her and snuggling her chin into the sumptuous collar of red fox. She was uncertain as to where she should begin in this rough place, in search of Gabrielle Hart.
She had a photograph of the girl. She looked again on the thin, unsensual, plain face, beaky nose and deep eye-sockets, a generous mouth. This young woman was not pretty, and would be consequently easy to seduce by flattery. She was sixteen.
By arrangement, Phryne met the unsettling Klara in a tea and sly-grog shop on the corner.
‘Phryne! Come and buy me some tea,’ called Klara. She was a small, thin woman dressed in a gym slip. Her hips and breasts had never developed adult curves; she looked like a pre-pubescent school girl. She was twenty-three, lesbian, and very acute.
Tea was purchased. Phryne liked Klara, but found her company worrying. No one hated the whole male sex, absolutely and without exceptions, like Klara. She was a very successful whore, and her tax returns usually came in above three thousand pounds a year.
The tea-shop was cold. Klara was wearing only her gym slip and a ratty overcoat; her skinny legs were bare and muddy. Phryne huddled into her coat.
‘Aren’t you cold, Klara? Have some of this disgusting tea.’
‘Oh, I’m cold all right, but that’s what the punters pay for, ain’t it? I’ll be warm enough when I get home. Show me the photo.’
Klara drank the luke-warm tea and considered.
‘I ain’t seen her, but that don’t mean she ain’t here. We’ll start at the end of the street and work our way down. Lucky it’s such a crook night; no one’ll be out pounding the pavements if they can avoid it. You equipped for trouble, Phryne?’
Phryne nodded. Her little gun was loaded and in her pocket.
‘All right. Come on, love. Bye, Jack!’
A figure shining with grease looked up from the chip fryer and grinned.
‘This is the first. The other two only deal in chinks. Hello, Alice. Got a friend with me tonight. Seen this girl?’
‘Hello, Klara,’ said the big woman in purple satin uneasily, shooting a sidelong glance at Phryne. ‘No, I ain’t seen her, she ain’t one of mine.’
A languid girl, wearing only a stained silk petticoat, looked in on the mistress.
‘The gent in number four is passed out,’ she said casually. ‘Better call the boys and put him out. I don’t like his breathing; he’s gone purple and is puffing like a grampus. Hello, Klara! What are you doing in this abode of vice?’
‘Hello, Sylvia. Looking for this girl.’
Sylvia pushed back a mop of bleached curly hair and considered Phryne.
‘You don’t look like one of them Soul Rescue people,’ she commented. ‘What do you want her for?’
‘I want to take her home,’ said Phryne. ‘Her father is worried about her.’
‘Jeez, I wish I had a father to worry about me.’
‘Do you know her, Syl?’
‘Is there a reward?’
‘There might be.’ Klara consulted Phryne with a look.
‘Yair. Well, she’s the new one in Chicago Pete’s. Better watch out, Klara. They ain’t nice people. Saw her this arvo. Seemed dazed. She ain’t been there long. Chicago Pete’s girls always look like that.’
‘Drugged?’
Syl shrugged admirable shoulders under the drooping silk. ‘Maybe.’
Phryne folded a five-pound note and thrust it into Sylvia’s hand. She and Klara regained the street.
‘Chicago Pete?’
‘Yair. A yank. They say he was a gangster, but they’ll say anything on this road. Come along, there’s the entrance.’
Phryne and Klara lurked, surveying the respectable dark-stone entry of a two-storey house.
‘How do we get in? And can we get her out?’
Klara grinned, showing unexpectedly white teeth between blistered lips. She felt in her shabby pocket and produced a knife.
‘Even Chicago Pete knows not to muck about with me,’ she hissed. Phryne wondered what elemental force she had let loose on Gertrude Street and decided that Gertrude Street could look after itself.
‘Which way shall we go in?’ asked Phryne.
‘Front door,’ decided Klara, and led the way up the respectable stone steps to a thick, closed door.
On this she knocked what was evidently a coded series of taps and it creaked open. A flat-faced individual was behind the door and stared unspeaking at the guttersnipe and Phryne in her furs.
‘Well?’ he asked in an American rasp.
‘You new?’ asked Klara scornfully. She came up to his second waistcoat button.
‘Yeah, I just got off the boat, why?’
‘I’m Klara, get Chicago Pete for me, willya?’
‘Now why should I do that?’
‘Because if you don’t know me, Pete does, and he’ll knock your block off if he misses me; we’re pals, Pete and me.’
The doorkeeper let them into a well-kept hall and lumbered off up the stairs.
‘Pals?’ asked Phryne, noticing that the street-side windows were barred.
‘Yair, pals. He says I remind him of his little sister. He’s as queer as a nine dollar bill, Pete is. Here he comes. Gimme that photo and let me do the talking.’
Chicago Pete was a ruin; huge, damaged. His face might originally have been comely, but it had been beaten and twisted out of true as though an angry child had wrung a wet clay head between temperamental fingers. His eyes were dark, and as flat and cold as a slate tombstone.
‘Klara! Why haven’t you been here for a week, little Miss?’ The voice was lovely, soft and rich with a Southern accent.
‘I been busy,’ said Klara. ‘I got a proposition for you, Pete, and I want to do you a favour.’
‘Come in here,’ he ushered them into a room which was frilled and shirred in pastel shades, like a Victorian boudoir. ‘I know you don’t drink, little Miss, but I have lemonade. And maybe a good Kentucky bourbon for your friend, eh?’
Phryne accepted a glass and Klara sat on the edge of a table, exhibiting her thin legs splashed with mudstains. They affected Chicago Pete strangely.
‘Why don’t you wear some of them nice clothes I bought you, Missie? You make me sad, looking so bare.’
‘Business,’ snapped Klara. ‘Listen. We want to buy one of your girls. This is my friend Phryne; she’s acting for another party, and we don’t want no trouble.’
‘Which one?’
Klara handed him the picture. Chicago Pete’s eyes narrowed.
‘Her? You can have her. The cook reckons she’s under a spell.’
‘What, that black monster in your kitchen? What would he know?’
‘You mind your tongue, Miss. The doctor, he’s a New Orleans man, a jazz-man, a voodoo priest. He knows a spell when he sees one. She ain’t worth nothing, that doll. And I paid. .’
He stopped, calculating what the market might bear. Phryne smiled. She did not mind what she paid. Mr Hart could afford it. And she was interested in the spell.
‘Dope?’ she asked, and Chicago Pete shook his awful head.
‘No. Or if it is, it ain’t like no dope I’ve ever seen. I’ll get them to bring her down. Wait a moment.’
He stepped to the door, gave an order to the doorkeeper, and said to Phryne, ‘She ain’t been used much. And she ain’t been damaged. Much. What will you offer?’
‘How much did she cost you?’
‘Ten bills.’
‘Twelve.’
‘Twenty.’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Nineteen. Here she is. Say hello to the nice lady, doll.’
The girl was limp, her gaze vacant. She was dressed in a nightgown far too big for her and her feet were bare. She was bruised over all of her body that Phryne could see.