This should be good, I thought.
It was-in only about five minutes, she appeared poised at the hallway entry in the sheerest dressing gown imaginable. And that was all. That and red finger-and-toenail polish.
“My temptation togs,” she explained with a tah dah hand gesture, her smile turning up at both ends.
She went over to a standing lamp to switch it off and, when she did, moved past a window where the drapes were back, letting the glow of the city at night turn her into a curvaceous silhouette. Her form had the kind of lines usual in pin-ups but unusual in life, plump firm behind, full impertinently tipped breasts, a waist you could put your hands around, and legs that followed gentle, supple curves on their way to the toes she posed provocatively upon.
“You can take that spider web off, too,” I said, fishing out my deck of Luckies from my suit coat pocket, “for all I care.”
As I lit up the cig, she moved toward me with a dancer’s grace, and this was a sort of dance, wasn’t it? I blew out smoke, away from her, gentleman that I am.
She raised her eyebrows and slid onto the arm of my chair with studied ease. When she crossed her legs she let as much skin show as possible. Very nice skin, creamy and white, but hardly necessary. It wasn’t like that gown was making an attempt to conceal anything.
I looked up at her the way a scientist studies a slide. “I liked you better in the dress. At least I could let my imagination do a little work.”
She gestured to herself. “What’s the matter with this?” Her expression was more curious than hurt.
“Nothing, but it just shows what every woman has. The equipment is pretty much the same, though I admit yours is well arranged.” I shrugged and blew a smoke ring. “A guy just gets tired seeing the same show over and over again. Why don’t you sit over there so we can talk?”
I pointed my Lucky at the sofa across the room.
She slipped off the arm of the chair and stood with her fists at her waist and her pretty face crinkled. “The hell with you, Mac. Who do you think you’re fooling with that lousy line? It’s nothing new. Your technique stinks.”
“Look,” I said, trying not to get sore, “I’m not pulling your own kind of hard-to-get routine, I’m being serious.”
“You are, huh?”
“You brought me here to tease me and then pull the rug out from under me and give me the horse laugh. Fine. Everybody needs a hobby. But I came up here to spend a little time with a nice kid I used to know, back when your brother Billy was a pal of mine.”
She sighed and I’d be lying if I said what those breasts did under the sheer nightie didn’t rate a trouser salute.
But she abandoned the sex dolly persona and smirked like a real human gal and said, “Okay, okay, Mike Hammer-you win.”
She moved quite naturally over to the couch, and the truth was, it was more appealing than the sashaying routine. “What the hell did you come up here for?”
“Anything but that. It’s too early in our renewed friendship.”
She smirked. “Not for some people, it wouldn’t be.”
“It is for me. Ready to talk a while?”
She threw her painted-toed feet up on the coffee table, then reached over to the end table and withdrew a cigarette from a silver box. I tossed her my matches and she caught them like she was playing first base, smiled her thanks, and batted her eyelashes at me.
“Stop that,” I said.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
I returned to the armchair and got on with my talk. “You ever been out to Sidon, Marion? Little tourist trap out on Long Island?”
A match stopped halfway to the cigarette and she stared at me a moment.
Then she said, “Yes. Well, not Sidon, but a place outside there. Why?”
Interesting that she’d had to think that over before answering.
“A place outside Sidon,” I said. “Wouldn’t be Sharron Wesley’s gambling den, would it?”
“Well… actually, yes. I was there several times. It was really very nice, very pretty perched there on the ocean.”
“Who took you out there?”
“A… just a fellow… Why, does it matter who?”
“It might.”
“Why?”
“Sharron Wesley’s been killed.”
She said nothing, but her eyes were wide and the cigarette froze halfway to her lips. She was batting her eyelashes again but I didn’t figure it had anything to do with trying to look sexy.
“Who took you there, Marion?”
“I’m… I’m sorry to hear that about Sharron. She could be fun.”
Obviously Marion didn’t want to answer my question. I tried another: “Did this… fellow of yours spend much money while you were at the casino?”
She shook her head. “On the contrary. He won about three hundred.”
“That was the first time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that joint wasn’t as straight as Louie’s. How did your ‘fellow’ fare after that?”
“Oh, the next time he dropped a little. Not much.”
“Then?”
“I was only there with him twice, if you’re trying to make the point that they suckered him up to that point. Who killed her?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Was she a friend of yours, Mike?”
“No.”
“You never… made her?”
“No.”
“Well, do you have a client?”
“No. Now back to my questions, Marion-was there much money in the joint? I mean hard cash on the tables?”
She tried to blow a smoke ring and muffed it. “Yup,” she said, “enough to make our friend Louie look like a piker.”
“Estimate it.”
She frowned in thought, then: “Well, I watched a poker game where they used chips. The whites cost five hundred. Nobody bothered with those. The play was all with the blue. One guy had a pile as big as his belly in front of him. And he had a good-size belly.”
“Any important people from the city there?”
“A few politicians. Local types. Maybe some state officials. I don’t pay much attention to that kind of thing.”
“What did you pay attention to?”
She shrugged. “Some out-of-town money from Chicago seemed to carry things that night. There were one or two society-page playboys treating some phony blondes to a showy time, too. You know, trying to impress.”
“Were you impressed at all? I mean… what was your opinion of the place?”
“Say, you really did want to talk, didn’t you?”
“I told you that.”
“All right. To me it looked big-time. There was as much money there as you’ll ever see out in the open, and nobody was worried about it, so the fix was in. In a town the size of that Sidon, it wouldn’t be hard to do. A few hundred handed out to the bulls, and everything’d be jake.”
Miss Marion Ruston really had been working for Louie Marone a while.
She went on: “It was an elegant joint, all right, with enough attractions to pull a crowd from as far away as the Midwest. I’ve seen some of the players in Louie’s, but they weren’t the real spenders. These playboys and rich johns, they think they roll high, but the boys with the real dough at the Wesley joint were guys who made gambling their business. I could mention a few names, but it would be better if I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“You may not like me, Mike. But I like me, Mike. I like me so much I’d hate like hell to be put on the spot.”
“I like you just fine, kid. And anyway, getting put on the spot went out with Prohibition.”
“Oh, did it? That’s what you think! Why, only the other day I was reading a magazine article where a mobster went in for a haircut and shave and got his throat cut, instead.”
I stabbed out my cigarette in a tray, and waved that off. “Nuts. Like Bugsy Siegel said, those boys only kill each other.”
“You think? Didn’t he wind up shot to hell?”
“All I mean is, they have their own fix in. As long as they pay their income tax, they have nothing to worry about. Sharron’s place wasn’t underground. If anybody catches hell, it’ll be the operators, not the players. Giving me their names won’t get them or you in any kind of hot water.”