"Tell me something," I said. "How much do these kids make?"
"If you're one of the top twenty you can climb into the fifty-thousand-a-year bracket. Otherwise you stay in the crowd, squeeze out a hundred or two a week for the few years nature lets your face stay unwrinkled and hope for a break or somebody who wants to marry you."
"How about you, kid?"
Cleo gave me another of those deep chuckles and said, "I made my own breaks and when it comes to men, well, after two sour early marriages, I'll take them when I want them."
"You'll fall."
"It'll take a guy like you to do it?" She reached over and pinched the back of my hand. "I'm the aggressive type, watch out."
I tasted the drink and put it down. "Think Greta could have lit out with some guy?"
She made a wry face and shook her head. "Greta had more on her mind than men, I told you. She was the money type and had enough to attract it." She paused and picked up her drink. "How far are you going to go to locate her?"
"Beats me, kid. She had a pretty big head start."
"Look, there's one thing about the city...pretty soon you bump into someone you know. Maybe some of the gang around here might have seen her. If it means that much to you we can tour a few of the places she played in."
"I've had enough gin mills for one night."
Cleo finished her drink and slid off the stool with a rustle of nylon, a funny little smile playing around her mouth. "Uhuh, big man. Little Greta had peculiar tastes. The oddball intellectuals were more to her liking."
"Lead on," I said.
If there was a host, nobody pointed him out. Introductions were a casual affair of no last names and preoccupied acceptance. The smell of weed mixed in the tobacco smoke that hung in the air like a gray smog and a few were already flying away into a dream world on something stronger.
Cleo and I drifted around the fringes a few minutes before she leaned over and whispered, "The weekly gathering of the clan, big man. Greta made the meetings pretty often. Some of them would have known her. Go ahead and cruise. Maybe you'll come up with something. Give me a nod when you've had enough."
Most of the two dozen crammed into the apartment sprawled on the floor listening to the pair strumming guitars on the window seat. A cropped haired girl in tight jeans sang a bitter song against the world with her eyes squeezed tight, her hands clenched in balled fists of protest.
I gave up after the second time around and joined the two guys at the makeshift bar back in the kitchen and made myself a decent drink for a change. An empty fishbowl beside the bottles was partly filled with assorted change and few lone singles, waiting for contributions to help pay the freight. I dug out a five, dropped it in and the guy with the beard grinned and said, "Well, well, a banker in our midst." He lifted his glass in a toast.
"We salute thee. That denomination doesn't appear very often around here."
I winked at him and tried the highball. "Nice party," I said.
"Hell, it stinks. It was better when we had that horsy belly dancer up for laughs." He tugged at his beard and grimaced. "You dig this gravy?"
"Nope."
"You didn't look like the type."
"I can give you the first ten lines of 'Gunga Din,'" I said.
He let out a short laugh and took a long pull from his beer bottle. "I must be getting old. Guys like you are easier to read. Me, I'm scratching thirty-four and still going to college, only now the freshman cap doesn't fit too well and I'm beginning to think that maybe my old man was right after all. I should have gone into the business with him. When you get that attitude, the kick is gone." He paused reflectively. "Maybe I'll start off with a shave."
"Try a haircut too."
"The freshman cap wouldn't fit," he laughed. "How'd you make it here?"
"Cleo brought me."
"Ah, yes. The lady of the loins. Some great stories are told about that one, but methinks it's all talk. Not a Simon around who wouldn't want to sample her pies. You tried it for size yet?"
"Nope."
"Ha. That's a different answer. Anyone else would have happily lied about it. Intend to?"
"I haven't thought about it."
"Brother rat, with an attitude like that, you can't miss. Cleo just can't stand indifference. How'd you ever meet her?"
"Looking for Greta Service. She lived in the same building."
The guy gave me a surprised glance. "Greta? Good grief. She's long gone." His eyes ran up and down me. "She give you the brush too?"
"Never even met her."
"That's good. Guys flipped for that one and she wouldn't go the route. A few hearts are still bleeding around here. Sol saw her once uptown but she shook him loose in a hurry. Didn't want anything to do with her old buddies."
"Who's he?"
He indicated a lanky kid in a red plaid shirt curled up against the wall, chin propped in his hands while he contemplated the trio whanging out the folk songs. "Wait a minute, I'll go get him."
Sol Renner turned out to be a sometimes-writer of ads and captions for the women's trades and had met Greta Service through a mutual account. My story was that I had a message from a friend who had a job lined up for her, but Sol grimaced and told me to forget it.
"She didn't need a job when I saw her last. She was coming out of a fancy restaurant with some joe, all decked out in furs and diamonds and all I got was a quick 'hello, glad to see you' and out. I asked her if she heard about Helen Poston, but she just gave me a funny look and nodded, then got into a cab."
"Helen Poston?"
"Yeah. Crazy kook drowned herself. She and Greta did a couple of jobs for Signoret Fashions where I worked and kind of hit it off like dames do. Guess they were friendlier than I thought. So I boo-booed. She sure picked herself a beauty, though."
"Who?"
"Greta," he said. "The duck she was with was a Charlie Chan type, short, dark and dumpy with b.b. eyes and a mustache. He hustled her in the cab in a hell of a hurry."
"Got any idea where I could find her?"
He grinned and said, "Try New York."
"Great. Maybe some of the others might know?"
"Ixnay. I'm the only one around here who saw her. The kid's found her mark. My guess is she doesn't want to be disturbed. Anyway, she's not with the working masses any more, that's for sure."
The singers got started on a new theme about war and I finished my drink. Cleo was cornered in the alcove by two straggly-haired kids sucking on beer bottles, trying their damndest to make man talk. I eased them apart; smiling so as not to hurt their feelings and took Cleo's arm.
"Time to go, sugar."
One of the kick grabbed my hand and said, "Hey!" indignantly, so I wrapped my fingers around his forearm and squeezed a little bit. "Yes?"
My smile showed all the teeth and he read me right. "Nothing," he said, so I let him go. Cleo forced back a laugh and hooked her arm under mine and we headed for the door.
"Big man," she said. "Big, big man. Come home for coffee. I have something to show you."
I kicked the door shut and she flowed into my arms, her mouth a wild little volcano trying to pull me into its core. Deliberately, she took my hand, pressed it against the warmth of her belly, then forced it up to cup her breast. Beneath my fingers she hardened, her body twitching spasmodically, pressing against me in a plain language of desire.
Very gently I pushed her away and held her hands in mine. Her eyes were full of soft fire, lovely and wise, her lips moist and trembling. She looked at me for a long second, then said, "No coffee?"
"Rain check?"