Doc Williams was delighted with the club. It gave him tremendous satisfaction to wear a tuxedo and act the genial host at the bar where he drank himself into happy oblivion night after night.
Eddie was also pleased with the club. He ran the gambling room while Flynn kept an eye on the restaurant. Ma seldom put in an appearance. She remained in her office, handling the catering, the books and the money.
The one fish completely out of water was Slim. He still crept about looking dirty and disheveled. He still wore the greasy black suit he had worn for years. He kept away from the activities of the club, spending most of his time with Miss Blandish.
He had insisted that Miss Blandish should have not only a bedroom but also a sitting room. Ma had let him have his way. Having the girl on the premises worried her. She was well aware of the risk they were all running, having the girl there. Miss Blandish was the only surviving evidence that the Grisson gang had done the kidnapping. If ever she was found there, all Ma’s hopes, her plans for the future would go up in smoke. She hoped before long that Slim would get bored with the girl. When that happened, Ma would get rid of her.
While Fenner and Paula were driving home, the Paradise Club was just coming alive.
Maisey, the hat check girl, was busy taking wraps, hats and coats from the steady stream of arriving customers. Maisey, hired by Ma because of her outrageous figure, was a sable-haired teenager with a vapid, characterless prettiness, a docile attitude towards exploring male hands, and an eye for the fast buck.
Her working uniform consisted of a scarlet, tight fitting jacket and white satin shorts. Her long attractive legs were in black net tights and on her head was perched a white pillbox, cocked over one saucy eye.
Maisey was responsible for two jobs: to look after the cloakrooms and to see no unauthorized person went upstairs.
For some minutes she worked hard and fast, then there was a lull in the arrivals and for a moment or so the lobby was empty.
She saw Slim come in, carrying a brown paper parcel.
Slim gave Maisey the creeps. She hurriedly turned her back on him, pretending to straighten the line of coats and wraps so she could avoid looking at him.
Slim went up the stairs and along the passage to Miss Blandish’s room. He paused outside the door to look back along the passage, then taking out a key, he unlocked the door and entered the big, airy sitting room.
Every time he entered the room, he liked it better. He had never seen such a beautiful room. Decorated in grey and blue, furnished with grey leather lounging chairs, a blue carpet and a big television set, it was to him, the most wonderful room in the world. The only thing it lacked was windows, but even Slim realized it would have been too dangerous to keep the girl in a room with windows.
He walked into the bedroom and paused in the doorway.
This room he liked as well as the sitting room. It was decorated in off-white and rose. The large double bed dominated the room with its rose quilted head board. There was another big television set at the end of the bed. Slim was a television addict. He never grew tired of watching the moving pictures on the twenty-one inch screen.
Miss Blandish sat before the dressing table. She had on a rose-colored wrap which had fallen open to show her long, beautiful legs. Her bare feet were thrust into rose-colored mules. She was manicuring her nails lifelessly, and although she heard Slim come in, she didn’t look up.
“Hello,” Slim said. “I’ve got a present for you.” He moved over to her. “You’re lucky. No one gives me presents.”
Miss Blandish laid down the nail file and dropped her hands in her lap. There was a blank, hypnotized expression on her face that now constantly irritated Slim.
“It cost a lot of money,” Slim said, watching her closely to see if she was listening. “But money means nothing to me now. I can buy you anything I want. I have all the money in the world. Look — what do you think this is?” He pushed the parcel toward her, but Miss Blandish ignored it. Muttering, Slim put his cold, damp hand on her arm and pinched her flesh. She didn’t move. She grimaced and closed her eyes. “Wake up!” Slim said angrily. “What’s the matter with you? Here, open the parcel.”
The drugged girl made a feeble attempt to untie the string, but seeing her fumbling, Slim snatched the parcel away from her.
“I’ll do it! I like opening packages.” He began to unknot the string. “You seen Ma today?”
“No.” Miss Blandish spoke hesitatingly. “I haven’t seen her.”
“She doesn’t like you. She wants to get rid of you. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be at the bottom of the river by now. You don’t know how well off you are. When I was a kid, I saw them take a woman out of the river. She was all blown up. One of the cops vomited. I didn’t. I wanted to see, but they drove me away. She had hair just like yours.” He suddenly lost patience with the string and pulling out his knife, he cut the string, tearing off the paper. “It’s a picture. It’s pretty. When I saw it, I thought of you.” He examined the small oil painting, smiling at it. There was no form to the picture, but the colors were hard and violent. “Do you like it?” He thrust the picture at Miss Blandish who stared sightlessly at it and then looked away.
There was a long pause while Slim stared at her. There were moments, Slim found himself thinking, when he wished this girl wasn’t a puppet. Now after three months when he had done everything his perverted mind could devise to her, her drugged lack of resistance began to pall. He would have liked some opposition. He would have liked her to struggle against his advances so that he could exercise his talent for cruelty.
“Don’t you like it?” he demanded, glaring at her. “It cost a lot of money. Say something, can’t you? Don’t sit there staring like a goddamn dummy! Say something!”
Miss Blandish shuddered. She got up and went over to the bed. She lay down, covering her face with her hands.
Slim looked at the picture. He suddenly hated it.
“It cost a hundred bucks,” he said viciously. “Do you think I care? If you don’t like it — say so! I can buy you something else!” He suddenly slashed the canvas with his knife, hacking and slashing while he poured out a stream of filthy curses. “Now you’re not having it!” he shouted, flinging the ruined picture across the room. “I’m too good to you. You want to suffer! People who have never suffered, never appreciate anything!” He got up and went over to her. “You hear me? You ought to suffer!”
Miss Blandish lay still, her eyes closed. She might have been dead.
Slim bent over her. He pricked her throat with the tip of his knife.
“I could kill you,” he snarled. “Do you hear? I could kill you.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. A spot of blood appeared on her white skin where the knife had cut her. Her dazed, enlarged pupils sickened him. He drew away. She wasn’t his, he was thinking; he was kidding himself. She was nothing — a dead body. His mind switched to Ma and Doc. They were responsible. He fingered his knife. They had spoiled his pleasure. They had turned his beautiful picture-book dream into a lifeless nightmare.
Muttering to himself, he went into the sitting room. He turned on the television. In a few seconds he was staring with fixed attention at the picture of a man and a woman passionately embracing.
Among the customers who came in a steady stream into the reception lobby was a short, stockily built man wearing a tuxedo that didn’t quite fit him.
Eddie, lounging by the cloakroom, eyed this man suspiciously. Eddie thought he looked like a cop and as soon the man had entered the restaurant, Eddie went down the doorman, a husky bouncer named MacGowan.