A long-legged brunette wearing yellow pajamas opened the door and rubbed a knotted fist in one eye. She hadn't bothered to button the pajama top. "You're looking for Moose, you say?"
"That's right."
She tugged the door wider. "Come in."
My reflection moved in full-length mirrors as I stepped into the room. Another mirror was set in the ceiling above the round double bed. In the bed lay a naked blonde, who turned on her side to look at me, the silk sheet gliding down her white body.
"My friend Delia."
I nodded and the blonde nodded back.
"Moose hired us to put on a couple of shows for him and his friends. He wasn't exactly my cup of tea," Janice said.
"How long since you heard from him?"
"January," said the blonde. "It was back in January."
"He brought a man with him that he wanted to impress." Janice smiled. "I think we impressed him, don't you, Delia?"
"You bet."
"Who was the man?" I asked.
"Mr. Smith," Janice said. "The well-known Mr. Smith. We've put on shows for a lot of his relatives."
Delia giggled. "He didn't want his real name used."
"What did he look like?"
"Tall and thin. He wore glasses. If he hadn't been with Moose, I'd have thought he was an accountant."
"Since he was with Moose, what did you think?"
The blonde propped her chin on her hand. "Come on, now. If you're looking for Moose, you know the kind of business associates he has."
"Mr. Smith was an Organization Man. An important one," Janice said. She sat down on the bed near the blonde. They would have made a great pair of bookends.
Unlike some of the people I'd questioned about Moose, they were willing to help me, but I found out they had no further information of value. I thanked them and they invited me to come back sometime.
"Ask for me or for Delia," said Janice. "We like to work as a team."
Thirty minutes after I left Portland, the Lincoln roared up behind me on the open road. The driver swung into the passing lane and sped up alongside my Ford.
I saw a face and then a shotgun barrel. I spun the steering wheel and slammed the Ford into the heavier car and ducked at the same time.
The shotgun blast ripped through the window, but it missed me.
The Lincoln was too bulky to be thrown into a skid by my light car. Its driver held it in the road and yanked his own wheel. Fender ground against fender and then the Ford left the pavement, skidded on the shoulder, and plunged into a picnic area just off the highway.
I used the brake as much as I dared and jerked the gear into second as the car's rear end whipped around and struck a litter barrel. I gritted my teeth, fighting to control the skid. The car spun again and hit a wooden picnic table, then flipped over on its side.
I must have been living right. I pushed open the door and climbed out unhurt.
The Lincoln had kept going. I saw it dart out of sight over a hill. There had been two people in the front seat, the driver and the gunman. The face I'd glimpsed just before the shotgun bucked was one I'd never seen clearly before today, but I knew that it belonged to Moose. He had been grinning as he pulled the trigger.
The Ford was a casualty. I had to leave it in a garage. I rented another car and set out for Reno, stopping along the way only to eat and place a call to Hawk.
"I'm getting close to Moose. He can feel me breathing on his neck and he doesn't like it. He tried to kill me today."
"Nick, be careful."
"I won't be checking in with you so often from now on. I've got a feeling I'm going to be very busy."
"Do you want the information we gathered on Jake Hoyle?"
"No," I said. "He s dead."
I had no trouble finding Eve in Reno. The dingy trailer camp was on the outskirts of town. There were three girls and a madam, each with her own trailer. Eve was entertaining a client and I had to wait with the madam, trading small talk of mutual disinterest. The office was hot and stuffy and the madam was an old woman trying to pretend otherwise. Her blonde wig didn't fit and her red nails were ragged.
When I worked the conversation around to Moose, her remarks became more animated. She remembered the big goon; she couldn't recommend him as a customer Or as a decent human being. He had beaten up one of her girls because he liked a little violence mixed with his sex. The madam was broadminded, but she couldn't condone that kind of behavior.
I worked my tie loose. The madam kept talking, saying the same things over and over again. Finally Eve's customer emerged from her trailer and walked to his car. I left the madam still jawing about freaky sex.
Eve was a red-haired girl going to fat and bogged down in disappointment. She said there was too much competition in Reno and anywhere else I'd care to mention. Too many divorcees giving it away. Too many amateurs all over the nation, too much of this new sexual freedom. "Hippies will do it for any reason or no reason at all. I hate hippies," she said.
The talk and the atmosphere depressed me. I had already paid the madam, but I pulled out another twenty and placed it on the bed. Eve swept it up like a vacuum cleaner. She said certainly she remembered Moose. They had met when she was in Denver, in better days.
"I often think about going back," she said. "Everything was better then, including me." She smiled apologetically. She realized she wasn't taking care of herself. She liked to eat too well and the only exercise she got was on her back.
The conversation was like a river running in the wrong direction. I reminded her that I was interested in Moose. "I'm sorry," she apologized again. She got up and opened two cans of beer and passed me one. "Moose hasn't been around lately."
There had been a time when she was hung up on him and when he thought her something special. But the relationship didn't last and he had kept in touch mostly for old tunes' sake. The last time he'd dropped in had been earlier in the year.
"I left Denver right after he hooked up with that other girl and stopped coming around. She was a waitress. From a small town near Denver. She was Moose's type, stacked. I remember seeing her once. She fell for Moose's line about making big money." Eve laughed cynically. "I guess he didn't tell her how he was going to make it. I heard later that he got hard up for a stake and put her in a house."
Her monolog had stopped boring me. I said, "Was she a blonde, that girl? Do you remember her name?"
"The name, no. She was what I call aristocratic looking. High cheekbones, big dark eyes. You'd have thought she was a model."
She was talking about Sheila Brant.
"What's the matter?" Eve asked, catching some expression on my face that I hadn't known was there.
I stood up and leaned in the door of the trailer, my back to her. "I don't guess you know what happened to her."
"I never heard. Maybe Moose left her and moved on, the same as he did with me."
"Moose made a big connection later on," I said. "He got to be close to a man with power. In the Organization."
"That's news to me," said Eve. "There isn't much of a grapevine out here."
A cowboy was walking among the trailers, his hat drawn down to shadow his eyes. He carried a green shopping bag. I watched him as he came toward me.
"You didn't say why you're looking for Moose," Eve said. She was standing near me, opening another can of beer.
The cowboy stopped. His hat was new and crimped awkwardly. He reached into the shopping bag and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun.
I lunged sideways as he brought the weapon up and pointed it at me. I hit Eve with my shoulder and drove her out of the line of fire as the shotgun went off. Lead streamed through the trailer doorway and struck the wall like hail.
Moving to the window, I pulled back the curtain. The cowboy was reloading. I knocked the glass out with the barrel of the Luger and shot at him. He lost his hat as he ran for cover.