Talking wasn't part of their makeup. They had taken too many lumps from Jones and their customers over the years and there was no way to lean on them.
But the fourth one wasn't like that. Her name was Roberta Slade and she was the last one Jones had added to his firm. I found her in a place they called Billy's Cave sipping a martini and studying herself in the mirror over the back bar.
When I sat down her eyes caught mine in the glass and she said with a voice the gin had thickened just a little bit, "Move to the rear of the bus, mister."
She turned insolently and I could see that one time she had been a pretty girl. The makeup was heavy, her eyes tired, but there was still some sparkle in her hair and a little bit of determination in the set of her mouth. "Do I know you?"
I waved for a beer and pushed some money across the bar. "Nope."
"Well, I'm taking the day off." She turned back and twirled the glass in her hand.
"Good for you," I said.
I finished half the beer and put the glass down. "Shove off," she said softly.
I took twenty bucks out and laid it down between us. "Will that buy some conversation?"
A little grin split her lips and she glanced at me, her eyebrows raised. "You don't look like one of those nuts, mister. I've given a hundred different versions of my life history embellished with lurid details to guys who get their kicks that way and I can spot them a city block away."
"I'm not paying for that kind of talk."
Quickening interest showed in her face. "You a cop? Damn, you look like one, but any more you can't tell what a cop looks like. The vice squad runs college boys who look like babies; dames you take for schoolteachers turn out to be policewomen. It's rough."
"I'm a private cop, if you want to know."
"Oh boy," she laughed. "Big deal. Whose poor husband is going to get handed divorce papers for grabbing some outside stuff?" She laughed again and shook her head. "I don't know names, I'm lousy at remembering faces and all your twenty bucks could buy you would be a lot of crap, so beat it."
"I want Lorenzo Jones."
The glass stopped twirling in her fingers. She studied it a, moment, drained it and set it on the bar. "Why?" she asked without looking at me.
"I want to give him a friendly punch in the mouth."
"Somebody already did."
"Yeah, I know." I laid my hand palm down on the bar so she could see the cuts across my knuckles. "I want to do it again," I said.
Very slowly, her face turned so she was smiling up at me and her eyes had the look of a puppy that had found a friend and was trying his best not to run away. "So I have a champion."
"Not quite."
"But you laid him out, didn't you? Word gets around fast. You were the one who raised all that hell in Virginia's room, weren't you?"
"I was on a job."
Her grin turned into a chuckle and she motioned with a finger, for the bartender to fill her glass again. "I wish I could have seen it. That dirty bastard took me apart enough times. He hated my, guts, you know that? And do you knows why?"
"No."
"I used to work a hatcheck concession in a joint he hung out in. I wasn't like this then. He tried his best to make me and I brushed him off. He was a pig. You know how he gets his kicks?." He...well, hell, that's another story."
Her drink came and I paid for it. For a few seconds she, stirred the olive around with the toothpick absently, then tasted it, her eyes on herself in the back bar mirror. "I almost had it made. I was doing some high-class hustling, then I got a guy who liked me. Nice rich kid. Good education." She made a sour grimace and said, "Then Jones queered the deal. He got some pictures of me on a date and showed them to the kid. That was the end of that. I went to pieces, but he picked them up fast. He had me worked over a couple of times, picked up by the cops so I had a record, then he moved in and took over when I didn't have any place to go." Roberta took a long pull of the martini and added sadly, "I guess this is what I was cut out for anyway."
"Where's Jones now?"
"I hope the bastard's dead."
"He isn't."
She ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, then lightly down the side of her cheek. "The cops are looking for him too."
"I know."
"Why?"
"There are a couple of dead girls he might know something about."
"Not Lorenzo Jones. They can't make any money for him dead. He'd keep them alive."
I said, "He's just a lead. I want him, Roberta."
"What will you do to him if you find him?"
"Probably kick the crap out of him."
"Promise?"
I grinned at her. She wasn't kidding at all. "Promise," I said.
"Can I watch?"
"My pleasure."
She picked the drink up, looked at it a moment, then put it down unfinished. The twenty was still there, but she didn't touch it. "My treat," she told me.
The rain had slicked the pavement and was coming down in a fine drizzle, throwing a misty halo around the street lights. I wanted to call a cab, but Roberta said no and we walked two blocks without talking. Finally I said, "Where to?"
"My place." She didn't look at me.
"Lorenzo there?"
"No, but I am." She didn't say anything after that, crossing the avenues in silence, then down another two blocks until we came to the doorway between a pair of stores and she took my arm and nodded. "Here."
She put a key in the lock and pushed the door open, stepped in and let me follow her. I went up the stairs behind her, waited at the first landing while she opened up again and switched the light on. I had been in a lot of cribs before and they were usually dingy affairs, but she had taken a lot of trouble with this one. It was a three-room apartment, clean, furnished simply, but in good taste.
Roberta saw me take it in with a single sweep of my eyes and caught my initial reaction. "My early upbringing." She walked to the closet, reached deep into the shelf and came out with a cheap pad stuffed with papers and held together with a rubber band. She handed it to me and said, "He dropped it one night." It's a tally sheet on us, but you'll find receipts in there from a few places. We knew he had a place he stayed when he wasn't in with one of us, but nobody knew where. That is, until I found this one night. You'll find him there, but let me go find me first."
I looked at her, wondering what the hell she was talking about, and when she left, sat down and opened the pad. The kids had made plenty for Lorenzo Jones, all right, but I wasn't interested in his take. What I saw were paid bills from three different small hotels, each covering a period for about three months, and the last was dated only a month ago and if the pattern fit, he'd be there now. Only he wasn't listed as Lorenzo Jones. His name on the bill head was an imaginative J. Lorenzo, room 614 of the Midway Hotel.
Roberta Slade came back then. She wasn't the same one who had left and I saw what she meant about finding herself. She, smelled of the shower and some subtle perfume; the makeup was gone and the outfit she wore was almost sedate. She pulled on a maroon raincoat, stuffed her hair under a silly little hat and smiled gently. "There are times," she said, "when I hate myself and want to go back to what I think I could have been."
"I like you better this way."
She knew I meant it. There was an ironic tone in her voice. "It isn't very profitable."
"You could give it a try, kid."
"That depends on you. And Lorenzo Jones. He's got a long memory."
"Maybe we can shorten it up a little."
The Midway Hotel rented rooms by the hour or the day, and if you paid in advance, no luggage was required. The going rate for accommodations was steeper than the place deserved because the management got its cut for providing its service of keeping its mouth shut and overlooking the preponderance of Smiths in the register.