“I thought you were.”
“I don’t know whether I should go around shooting my mouth off. I don’t know what there is in it for me.”
“Probably nothing,” Mason said.
She studied him thoughtfully. “You come to the place every once in a while. I’ve waited on you.”
Mason nodded.
“And,” she said, “you’re a good tipper... Most of the time you sit in the stalls though, don’t you?”
“I like privacy,” Mason said. “When I eat I like to relax, and when I’m out in the main dining room I’m recognized occasionally...”
“Occasionally? You should hear what people say about you when you eat out there. I know how you feel. I don’t blame you... I don’t think I’ve waited on you over twice in all the time I’ve been there. I suppose one of these times I can get the privilege of waiting on the booths, if I stay there long enough. I’ll probably drop dead in my tracks before that waiter who’s in there now ever lets go.”
“As I remember it, you’re a very skillful waitress,” Mason said. “If I gave you a large tip, I can assure you it was because the service was more than satisfactory.”
“Well, thank you ever so much for those kind words. We don’t hear them too often. Like I was saying, when you’re out in front people crane their necks all over and there’s a lot of whispering. Then when I go to other tables to get the orders, people will beckon me to lean over closer, and say, ‘Isn’t that the famous Perry Mason over there at that other table?’ and I’ll nod, and then you know what they want to know, Mr. Mason?”
“What do they want to know?” Mason asked, winking at Paul Drake.
“They want to know who’s that woman with him.”
“And what do you tell them?” Mason asked.
“And then,” she said, “is when I draw myself up and tell them it’s none of their business.”
“You were going to tell us about Dixie,” Paul Drake interpolated.
“Oh, was I? I — that may be what you thought, but...”
Mason turned to Paul Drake and said, “You know, Paul, there’s something funny about that Dixie Dayton.”
“In what way?” Drake asked, catching Mason’s eye.
“Well, she somehow didn’t seem to fit in,” Mason said. “I don’t know just how to express it but I had the idea that perhaps Morris Alburg was giving her the breaks.”
“Well, that’s the way I understood it,” Drake said. “Of course, Mae, here, evidently doesn’t want to discuss it any more.”
“I think I’ve shot off my big mouth all that’s good for me,” Mae Nolan said.
Mason ignored her, and continued to Paul Drake: “Of course, I’ve known Alburg for quite a while, and if he was giving Dixie Dayton any favors you can be pretty certain that it was because she was in a position to earn them — I mean in a business way. I think by the time you check into her past history, you’ll find that she had waited tables in some of the real swanky spots over the country, and that Alburg knew that and...”
Mason was interrupted by a loud, brazen laugh from Mae Nolan.
The lawyer turned to her and raised inquiring eyebrows.
“What a hot detective you turned out to be,” she said, and then, raising her hand, made the gesture of one shooing a fly away from her face. “That girl a waitress? Phooey! Whatever she had on the ball that appealed to your friend, Morris Alburg, wasn’t anything she displayed during working hours. Not that girl.”
“Bad?” Mason asked.
“Bad? She stunk.”
“But I can’t understand it,” Mason said, his voice showing that he was puzzled. “Alburg is such a keen businessman.”
“ ‘Keen businessman’?” she repeated. “Where do you get that noise? He may be a keen businessman when it comes to running the kitchen and putting the prices on the menu so that he’s damned certain he won’t lose any money, but don’t kid yourself that he’s a businessman when it comes to handling waitresses. My Gawd, I’ve seen girls twist him right around their fingers, just absolutely right around their fingers.”
“Indeed?” Mason said.
“You can bet your bottom dollar. I’ve waited tables ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, Mr. Mason, and I’ve yet to find the man running a joint who couldn’t be handed a line of taffy by a good-looking, up-and-coming hustler.”
Mason made his voice sound all but incredulous. “Do you mean to tell me that Morris Alburg could be taken in by...”
“Could he? Say, I guess you don’t know Morris very well. And that Dixie girl was the girl that did a job on him, too.”
“A fast worker, eh?”
“Well, I don’t know how fast she was, but she certainly was thorough.”
“Apparently she’d known him before,” Drake said.
Mason slowly shook his head.
“What are you shaking your head about?” Mae Nolan demanded. “Why, Morris Alburg knew her... Say, you’re not talking to me! When she came walking into the joint Morris Alburg was having one of his spells of efficiency. He wanted ‘more this’ and ‘more that’ and ‘more the other,’ and then he looked up and saw that girl coming toward him, and his jaw fell open and his eyes bugged out like he was seeing a ghost.”
“What did he say?” Mason asked.
“He took a step or two back, and then his face broke into a smile, sort of a dubious smile, and he put out his hand and came forward, and that was when this Dixie pulled her first fast one.”
“What do you mean?”
“She spoke right up before he had a chance to say anything and she said, ‘Are you the proprietor here? Well, I understand you’re looking for a waitress, and I’m looking for a job.’ ”
“Then what happened?”
“Then Mr. Alburg sort of caught himself and straightened up and said, with dignity, ‘Well, if you’ll step into one of the booths there in back, I’ll talk with you in a few moments. Right now I’m busy giving instructions to my waitresses about how to handle the business. I’m expecting a heavy night tonight. Just step right in there and sit down.’ ”
“And she did?” Mason asked.
“Gave us girls one of those patronizing smiles and swept on past us to the booth at the farthest end of the line,” Mae Nolan said.
“Then what happened?”
“Then Mr. Alburg went into the booth and was in there for — oh, I guess ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Then what?”
“Then he came out and introduced Dixie to the rest of us girls and told us he was going to put her on as a waitress.”
“That was about a week ago?”
“Just a week ago, yes.”
“And then what?”
“Well,” Mae said, her manner thoughtfully judicial, “she had waited tables somewhere, but not very long, and it wasn’t a really high-class place. She wasn’t good at it. She made too many trips back to the kitchen, she didn’t space them so she could kill two birds with one stone, and she got terribly tired. And every time she did, Mr. Alburg would fix things so that people who came in went to the other tables.”
“Did she lose tips that way?”
“She lost tips and she got out of work, but, if you ask me, Mr. Alburg was making it up to her in some way because she’d flash him one of those grateful, gooey smiles whenever he’d steer customers over to the other tables and let her take it easy during the rush hour.”
“You other girls didn’t mind that?” Mason asked.
“Oh, we didn’t care. We’d have taken on the extra work for the extra tips, but what made us sore was the fact that when business was light and some person would come in who was a regular customer and was known as a good tipper, Mr. Alburg would steer him over to Dixie’s table. Now that isn’t right. If a man’s going to run a place that like, he should run it on a fair basis. If he wants to have friends, he can have them on the outside. We don’t care what he does, just so he’s fair to us girls in working hours.”