“Lolita?” he said. Then he grinned knowingly. “Oh, si, that one.” He nodded toward the tabaqueros. “The little one with the pointed chibabbies.” He took a frayed cigar out of his wet mouth and spit on the floor. “Somebody tell you about her...?”
But I was already moving down the long rows of double tables. Here, the men and women bent over their monotonous tasks, with slim, skillful fingers whipping the tobacco into shape. A radio was on, giving the news in Spanish.
I stopped behind the woman, Lolita. She was young, about twenty and her skin was the color of a dusky rose. Perspiration made her forehead shiny, soaked through her blouse, and ran in tiny drops down the shadowy valley of her bosom. The straps of her brassiere cut into the soft flesh of her shoulders under the filmy blouse.
She worked with a steady, detached rhythm.
An oscillating fan revolved in my direction, carrying to my nostrils a heavy, familiar perfume. And I knew I had the right woman.
“Lolita,” I said softly, and put a hand on her shoulder.
She gave a little jump, and her head twisted around. I got the full force of her huge black eyes.
She stared at me for a moment, with her wide black eyes, and then she took my hand off her shoulder. “I’ll have you fired, you bastard,” she told me softly.
“I don’t work here. I came up to ask you for a date.”
She looked me over speculatively. Her lips curled. “You wouldn’t have the price of a drink.”
“I thought maybe we could talk. You know, about the little game you were playing in the alley last night...”
As I said that, very softly, I dropped the lipstick in her lap. No one around heard what I said, but she heard all right. Her face lost its color. A drop of sweat ran down her cheek. She spread her fingers fanwise over her thigh, covering the lipstick, and she shivered. I bent over her and put my hand back on her shoulder, rubbing the soft flesh under the blouse with my fingers. I let my fingers trail around to the front of her blouse. “You want to tell me where you live, honey?”
She stared up into my eyes as if fascinated by them. Her lips drew back in a stiff grimace, showing the gleam of even, white teeth behind them. I thought for a moment she was going to be sick right there. But she gave me the address in a husky whisper.
“I’ll see you there tonight after you get off work,” I said. “And I wouldn’t mention it to anybody, honey. There’s no telling how much trouble it might cause you...” I smiled at her, and then I turned and walked out of the place.
I went down the street and found myself a bar. I sat there, drinking steadily, looking somberly at the glass and nothing else.
I sat there until dark and then I went up to Lolita’s room. I hugged the gun under my left arm, feeling the good, hard outline of it.
She opened the door. Now, she had bathed and there was a flower in her dark hair. She looked fresh in a clean skirt, stockings, ankle-strap shoes and a crisp blouse with a low neck.
She was a hell of a good-looking woman, and they were pointed.
“Hello, honey,” I said.
She looked at me.
I pushed her aside and went into the room. “I don’t guess you mind if I look around.” Hand on my gun, I went into the kitchen, a cubicle of a room with a pile of dirty dishes on the tile sink. One of them was a plate with yellow egg stains; the other, a half empty cup of coffee with a cigarette butt floating soggily in the cold, black liquid. I looked into her closets, the bedroom, the bath. Then I returned to the living room.
She sat on the couch and lit a cigarette nervously. Her skirt was tight across her thighs and an inch above her knees.
I helped myself to a can of beer.
Her sombre eyes flicked across my face. “So you were there... in the alley last night?” she asked. “What did you see?”
“I saw a man die,” I told her, sipping the beer.
Her face was like a poker player’s now, stiff and pale with nothing inside showing. It might have been carved out of wax. She raised one dark, plucked eyebrow. “That was important to you? Men die all the time.” She waited.
“I know,” I answered her.
“This one was a friend of yours?”
“He was nothing to me.”
She snubbed out her cigarette in a cracked saucer on the table. Then she moved closer to me on the couch. Her fingers touched my arm and her thighs pressed against mine. “Maybe you will forget this — this little thing you saw in the alley? Maybe,” she said softly, “Lolita can make you forget?”
“Maybe you can,” I said. I put the beer down.
She was suddenly breathing hard, her sharp bosom straining against the flimsy covering.
I touched her thigh, feeling the roll of her stocking top under the tight skirt. A little moan escaped her lips. “Wait, honey...” she whispered. She caught the “V” collar of her blouse in each hand and opened the buttons down to her waist. Then I reached for her and felt warm, satin-smooth flesh quivering under my hands. I pressed her back against the arm of the couch. She was twisting and moaning under me, damp with perspiration.
Then, suddenly, I wrenched her over, so that I had her right hand pinned under me. I grasped for her wrist, twisted it until I heard the clatter of steel on the floor.
I jumped up and kicked the little knife under the couch.
She sat up and buried her face in her hands. Her black hair fell over her finger tips. In the struggle, her dress had been torn and shoved up to her hips. Her bare thighs gleamed whitely above the stocking rolls that dug into soft flesh.
I grabbed a handful of her hair and threw her head back. “So he told you to handle it alone,” I said. “The man in the alley with you last night — you told him I'd talked to you. So he told you to get me busy on the couch and stick a knife in my back.”
She looked up at me with her sweat-slick face, a pulse in her throat fluttering wildly, and said nothing.
I hit her across the face, twice, back and forth, so hard that her teeth clicked together and blood splattered on her naked breasts.
“I want his name, Lolita. You’ll give it to me if you want to have any face left.”
She panted with a hoarse animal sound. “Vellutini. Mike Vellutini.”
The name the restaurant owner had mentioned.
“He your boy friend?”
She nodded.
“The dead man,” I went on. “He was working for Vellutini, but he was just the errand boy, right? He collected the money from Grace Perring. But your Mike Vellutini is the real blackmailer. He’s got the pictures that are making this Perring dame pay off. Yes?” I gave her hair another twist.
She cried out with pain. “Yes,” she said. “Mike found out Joe was going to double-cross us. He was going to tell Mrs. Perring, or somebody she sent, where the negatives were and who the real blackmailer was — for a sum. We followed him to the alley and got to him first—”
“And your sweetheart — Mike Vellutini? Where will I find him?”
“He has a little night club. He runs a bolita game in the back room.” She told me an address.
I threw her back on the couch and started for the door, but she caught up with me.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait. Don’t leave me now.” Her fingers clawed at me. She started crying, her mouth working. “Mike made me stand there and watch while he stuck a knife in Joe’s back last night so I’d see what happens to anybody who crosses him.”
She said, “I’m scared of him. God, I’m scared of him. He’s a fat, stinking pig. I hate him and I’m afraid of him.”
Then her arms went around me, tightly, pressing her breasts against me so hard they burned through my shirt. “You’re not afraid of him,” she whispered, “or you wouldn’t be tracking him down like this. Please, please take me away from that fat pig before he kills me. Take me out of Ybor City. I’ll do anything for you...”