He spent the next hour going from bar to bar, casing the B-girls in each of them and fending off the streetwalkers.
In an alley called Pigalle he found the place he wanted: Le Club Poupee. Girls, Girls, Girls and Floor Show danced in garish lights on the marquee, and there was a steady stream of couples going out the door and single girls going in.
"Ten francs, monsieur… cover."
Carter passed a bill through the grill work, got a stamp on the back of his hand, and moved through the doors. The room was narrow and about fifty yards deep, with a bar the length of one side and tables along the other. A very bored-looking trio played loud music on a back bar stage, and most of the tables were occupied with women.
One tall, long-haired blonde had removed a very large breast from the front of her dress and was carefully applying rouge to the areola when Carter hit the doors.
She looked up and grinned widely as Carter passed her table. "Hallo, buy me a drink?"
"Sure."
She returned the breast to momentary safekeeping and followed Carter to a rear, unoccupied table.
He ordered whiskey. She ordered champagne that, when it came, looked like tea. He tasted it.
"Tea."
She shrugged. "I drink all night. I can't afford to get drunk. Don't worry, you'll get your money's worth."
To prove it, she reached for his crotch with a smile. Carter managed to catch her wrist and guide it back to the tabletop.
"Later."
"Good. We'll go to my place after I get off, okay?"
"Maybe.
"You a sailor?" Carter nodded, making a face as he swallowed half the whiskey. "Good, I like sailors. You'll see, I'm terrific."
Carter only smiled. It was the oldest line in the B-girl bar business. The girls never got off until three in the morning. By that time the sucker was drunk and the girl had imbibed a hundred bucks' worth of tea.
But Carter went along with it.
He partied for the next two hours, sipping whiskey and buying tea. In that time, nearly every girl in the bar had passed through the booth. He had just about given up finding the right one, when she suddenly showed up.
"I am Lily. Buy me a drink?"
In fifteen minutes the others had floated away. It was obvious that the handsome, drunken sailor had made his choice for the evening.
Carter toned down his jovial manner and loud laughter long enough to get particulars.
Her name was Lily Luciani. She was twenty-two, born in Avignon, and she was not a whore.
"I will entertain you, talk with you, drink with you… but I will not go to bed with you. I am a student, and this is the only job I could get."
"I think that's bloody marvelous," Carter said in low, unaccented English that made her head snap around.
"You are English?" she asked, her mouth agape.
"American, to be exact."
"But…"
"My French is perfect. Thank you. How much money would you ordinarily make tonight?"
"About one hundred francs… maybe," she stammered.
"I'll pay you that to leave with me now and have a cup of coffee."
"I told you…"
"A cup of coffee."
She leaned forward and, for the first time since she had sat down, stared directly into Carter's eyes. "You are sober."
"Yes, I am," he replied. "Coffee?"
"All right."
"Good, let's go. And, by the way, your English is very good."
She was petite, with a small figure that looked out of place in the tacky, cheap dress she wore. In the less garish light of the café. Carter could see that she had intelligent eyes, an upturned nose, and an almost elfin face.
Right now her neat eyebrows were arranged in a very quizzical vee.
"Let me see if I understand this. You want me to go to Marseille with you. You want it to look like a party, a seaman on his last date with his girl friend before he goes to sea."
"That's right."
"And you want me to take along two sets of clothes."
Carter nodded. "One student set. one bar girl set. Not quite as tacky as you have on. If you need anything to fill out the wardrobe. "I'll buy it."
She shook her head and asked for a cigarette. Carter took one from his pack and held his lighter as she puffed awkwardly.
"You don't smoke," he said with a smile.
"I know, but I have to have something to do with my hands. I do not understand. If you need a girl for your business, why don't you hire one in Marseille?"
"Simple. What I want done won't be dangerous for you while I'm around. It could be when I'm gone. A girl in Marseille might be found after I'm gone. You won't be found in Avignon."
"Why me? Why not one of the other girls?"
Carter's grin broadened. "Do you think you're smarter than those other girls?"
She hesitated but finally replied. "Yes."
"There's your answer. I need someone who needs the money and is willing to go to certain lengths to get it."
"And any girl who would work in Le Club Poupee would go to certain lengths?"
"I think so," Carter said.
Another long pause, and then Lily leaned forward and spoke in a low, throaty voice. "Are you a policeman?"
"No."
"A crook?"
"No."
"But this business you are talking about… it is… illegal."
That's what you're going to help me find out."
She leaned back and sighed in exasperation. "You are not a sailor."
"No."
"Then why…?"
"If I had walked into your club in a business suit, thrown my money around, and walked out with you, how many of those girls would have remembered me?"
"All of them!" she said firmly and then swallowed. "Ten thousand francs?"
"Half now, if you want it."
"No, I… I don't know why, but I trust you."
He grinned. "It's probably because I'm an American. Get your things. I'll meet you at the train station in two hours."
"All right, I'll go. But, remember, I won't screw you!"
The Hotel Vincennes on the Quai Port was cheap, and the management paid very little attention to its patrons as long as the rent was paid in advance.
Carter stayed well behind her from the train station to the port, then killed an hour over breakfast and harsh coffee after she checked in. When he was sure there would be little connection between them, he made his way into the old-fashioned but fairly clean lobby of the hotel.
A bored concierge-desk clerk-bellboy answered the bell and barely glanced at Carter as he whirled the register around.
"Without bath?"
"With," Carter replied, signing "Napoleon Bonaparte III" to the register with a flourish.
The man spun the big book back around, glanced down, and then looked up at Carter with a scowl.
"Monsieur is in the entertainment business?… A comedian, perhaps?"
"Monsieur is trying to get a ship after he became slightly drunk and missed the sailing of his last one."
"I see. Then you have no passport?"
It was a fairly common thing among seamen, but nevertheless dangerous. If a merchant seaman missed his ship and was without papers, he had to apply to the Francois Maritime National for new ones and be incarcerated until he was on another ship.
"Passport?" Carter smiled. "Of course… right here!"
He laid two one-hundred-franc notes on the desk between them. The man's hand came out like a mongoose striking and the notes disappeared.
"The room is two hundred and forty francs a night, monsieur… in advance, of course."
"Of course."
Carter laid out three more big ones. They went into a drawer and no change was offered.
"Merci, monsieur. Room five-oh-one."