At twenty after twelve, a white Ford station wagon rounded the corner, and turned in just past the entrance of the Hillside, into a small side lot, and found an open stall.
Moments later, I heard the car door slam, but wasn’t sure it was Bunny till she came around and paused under a streetlight. She might have been a veteran streetwalker if her white fur coat and blue velour pantsuit hadn’t put her in a whole other class. She was getting keys out of a purse, but not for the front door of the place—there was a uniformed doorman just inside who tipped his hat and opened one of the two glass doors for her. The entryway was well lighted and I could easily make out Bunny’s activities within.
The gal knew the ropes, all right. She took her time looking in her mailbox, sorting out a few envelopes, reading a letter, giving anybody who might have been following her a chance to show themselves, not so much to her as to me.
I waited maybe three minutes, then left my shadows and walked across. You’d never know her eyes had left the letter she was reading—or pretending to read—as she stood there in the foyer in no hurry at all.
But I knew she had spotted me crossing the street when she approached the doorman, granted him a lovely smile, and said something to him, gesturing behind her as she did.
Then the doorman nodded, tipped his hat to her, and disappeared into a room across the mini-lobby marked storage just as I was approaching the front doors. She quickly let me in, whispered “Two A, one floor up,” and I left her in the foyer to deal with the doorman and the fool’s errand she’d sent him on.
I took the stairs and waited at the top of the landing. I could hear some muffled conversation between her and the doorman below, then maybe thirty seconds later, she emerged from the self-service elevator down the hall.
Bunny was a good-looking broad for her age—what, fortyfive? Fifty? One of those larger-than-life dames, the sort that went out with Mae West, Jean Harlow, and Jane Russell. She’d held up well, had all her curves and no apparent flab; whether she exercised or just drew decent genes, I had no idea. But she was the kind of older woman who could give a guy lessons, purple-streaked blonde bouffant and all.
I let her open the door, stepped inside while she closed it and flipped on the light switch. She started to say something, but I tapped my mouth with one forefinger and my ear with the other.
She returned the nod, motioning me to tag along.
Taking time out only to hang up her white fur coat in the front closet, she gave the apartment a professional systematic search, starting with the windows onto the street.
The pad was small, considering how important and wealthy a woman Bunny was, just a living room, bedroom, small kitchen, and bath; but she probably had other residences. This was one appointed in white with sleek, rounded, off-white furnishings that fit the art moderne look of the old building, though the carpet was a more current pink shag.
We wound up back in the living room.
“No bugs,” she said. “You’re sure a suspicious bastard.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? How secure is your office?”
“I have it swept once a month,” she said, “and I don’t mean the rugs. The law can’t legally tap the phones, but it gets done anyway, and I’m not exactly in a business where I could lodge a complaint.”
“Understood. Guess the phone game I played was unnecessary.”
“No, with what’s been going on, there’s no sense taking chances. Now sit down and take a load off. Want a drink?”
I plopped onto a plump couch that proved as comfy as it looked. “Got a cold beer handy?”
“Coming right up.”
She hip-swayed out to the kitchen—no come-on, just the kind of natural gait that’s made the world go round since Eve was a rib.
I heard her pop a pair of cans in there, and she came back in, sat beside me and passed me a very cold Schlitz.
“That’s some smart cookie,” she said, “they got heading up the outfit that almost busted your ass.”
“Walter Crowley.”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, he wasn’t smart enough to hold onto me the first time around.” I sipped icy beer. Nectar of the gods. “Bastard may have had a lead that’ll take him to Gaita.”
Bunny studied me over the top of her beer can. “You do get around,” she told me.
“Think so?”
She nodded. “I heard the same thing. So we covered for her. Rounded up a trustworthy lookalike who filled in for her, and a good-size Cuban who could make it stick by admitting he was the guy caught rolling around in the dark with her.”
“One of my fellow employees at the Farango Car Wash?”
“No, but the big, not-so-dumb galoot works for the laundry that handles the Farango account. He told the cops—local and federal alike—that he wore those coveralls home, to put on while working on his car.”
“Put on is right.” I chuckled appreciatively. “Not a bad story.”
“Not bad at all. It all tied in. The cop even identified them, much to Crowley’s disgust and dismay.”
“Nice. Thanks.”
She laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“The cop? The one who identified our lookalike gal as Gaita? When he first saw our substitute, he asked if he could see her with her top down. Thought he might be able to identify her better.”
I almost snorted beer through my nose, laughing. “Guess you can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Her laughter subsided. “I just wish that’s all there was to it. I don’t like having a leak in this operation, and we’ve obviously sprung one. Think it came from someone on this end?”
“I hate to say it, doll, but I’m inclined to think so. I doubt it came from Luis Saladar’s side. I mean, this all went down too quickly. How far can you trust the girls at your place?”
Bunny took a slow sip of the beer and shrugged. “Who knows? How far you can you trust any girl on the game? I treat them good, better than good, and I don’t take on anybody who seems hinky to me...but every girl in that line of trade is damaged goods, Morg.”
“I know. It’s an old, sad, and very true story.”
She nodded. “Every one has something to hide, or something that might break them. They’re scared, most of them, or they wouldn’t be there in the first place. If Daddy wasn’t their first sexual experience, their uncle was, or some neighbor or school bully.”
“Yet I’ve known girls on the game who liked their work.”
“Some do. Some actually enjoy it, at least part of the time. But they all have come to a place in their lives where this is their best option for making for a living...and almost all of them are scared.”
“Who else knew that you were helping me? Who else could know about us taking Jaimie Halaquez on?”
Her frown made her years show, wrinkles coming out from hiding. “Nobody that I know of. Just Gaita and Tami, but then, some of the others had to sense something was up...and might have put the pieces together.” Her dark blues locked onto me. “What are you thinking, Morgan? I can see the wheels turning.”
I shrugged. “Just that Jaimie Halaquez was a regular patron of yours, Bunny. Sometimes girls on the game have special clients—sometimes they even marry them. Maybe one of your girls latched on to the son of a bitch.”
“Fuck,” she said, that single dirty word at odds with her quiet elegance, even if she was a whorehouse madam. “You were right the first time—Halaquez is a son of a bitch. He wasn’t exactly well liked, Morgan. The guy was a bastard, a real louse.”