“Something else’ll happen soon,” I said. “There were three of them and the other got away to carry the story home. It’ll happen again. If it does I’ll call you.”
“If you’re still alive. If that happens you can usually reach me at the Circus Bar.”
My lips jerked back and left my teeth bare. “I stay alive through a lot of things, Logan. I’m not easy to take at all.”
He grinned back at me and got out of the car. I stayed there until he had walked away then kicked the engine over. A half hour later I was down in the red light district looking for a parking place.
Some people might have called it a slum section, or if they saw it when it wasn’t too light, an old residential spot gone to seed. There was a swamp on one side and a road that led to the smelter plant on the other, with four or five blocks nestling in the V of the two. Along the road were a dozen gin mills, a gas station and a few stores. Most of the section was given over to providing homes for the poorer element of Lyncastle, but the one block along the outer edge of the section made no bones about being what it was. Elm Street. There wasn’t a tree in sight.
The houses were the same style and age, but they looked alive. Some were sprawled out with extra wings added on in ranch-type style and others had fairly new second stories added.
Hell, all you had to do was look in the garbage cans. They were loaded with booze bottles. I spotted some of the babes sunning themselves in the backyards and on the front porch of one place a drinking bout was just getting started.
No. 107 was the last place on the road. Originally it had been a two-story job with a garage. Now the garage was part of a wing that crossed the back of the house like a T, extending on the other side into three small cabin affairs. It was a white house with red shutters, a red door and red Venetian blinds on all the windows.
Very appropriate.
I went up and rang the bell. Inside a radio was playing softly. The Moonlight Sonata. It didn’t go with the business at all. I rang the bell again and lit a cigarette.
Then the door opened and the bag Jack told me to see was standing there smiling gently at the creature that was man, glancing quickly and humorously at the watch on her wrist because it was only four o’clock and not the time for that sort of thing at all.
But she wasn’t a bag at all either. Somebody had taken a statue of Venus, patted it until it was soft, colored it with jet-black hair and rich magenta lips and poured it into a dress that had an elastic quality of being stretched too tight, needing only one touch to burst.
I said, “Jack sent me,” then felt like a damn fool. I must have looked it, because her smile got wider. “If I knew you’d be here I would have come anyway and kicked the door down to get in,” I added.
She had a nice laugh. She looked even prettier with her head thrown back. “Please come in. I really wouldn’t want you to kick my door down.”
So I went in. I sat down and gaped at a room that had all the trimmings of a mansion and let her serve me a drink from a small bar built into the wall. On either side it was flanked with books and they weren’t just dummy copies. There was a record library built in around a console player that held a selection of classics and only a handful of popular pieces.
“Like it?” She swayed over with a bottle and ice and put them on an end table.
“It fooled me. I’ve never been in one of these places before.”
“Really?” She took a sip of her drink. “I’m alone until six o’clock. The girls won’t be in until then.”
It was a nice way of putting it. Just so I didn’t get ideas, you know. Venus was the owner and operator, not a hired hand. I finished my drink and the cigarette at the same time and waved off seconds. “I’m not too early because I’m not after merchandise, kid. I’m after information. Jack thought you might be able to supply it.”
“Nice boy, Jack. Who are you?”
“A friend of his and names don’t matter. Ever hear of Vera West?”
“Certainly. Why?”
She said it so coolly that I got caught short for a second. “Where is she?”
“That I couldn’t tell you. For a while she was Lenny Servo’s girl, but then that isn’t unusual. A lot of women were Lenny’s... for a while.”
“You too?”
“A long time ago. For a week.” She took a deep pull on the butt and exhaled it slowly, watching the smoke curl around the glass in her hand. “You really meant to ask me... if Vera was... one of us now, didn’t you?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, fella, as far as I know, she never had anything for sale. She certainly never got this far. She wasn’t the type.”
“You don’t look like the type either.”
I got that laugh again. She reached over and ran her fingers through my hair. “That’s a long story and a rather interesting one. Now tell me about your Vera West.”
“Hell, I don’t have anything to tell about her. I want to find her.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Quite a while. It’s a cold trail.”
“Have you tried the police?”
I let out a short snort and she knew what I meant.
“You can try the bus station and the trains. If anybody knew her there they might have seen her leave. It’s possible that she might have gone to some large city and taken up her former occupation. She was something in the bank, wasn’t she?”
“Secretary,” I said.
“Then she’d be a secretary or steno somewhere else.”
“You know a lot about things, don’t you?”
“A little,” she said, “I used to be married to a cop.”
I squashed out my butt and stood up. “I’ll try everything I can. This was an angle and it didn’t pan out so at least I know where not to look now.”
“Have you tried Servo? He might know where she is.”
My fist kept pounding against my palm slowly. “I haven’t seen him... yet. Maybe I will pretty soon now.”
Her eyes went a little bit cold. “Say hello for me when you do,” she said.
“In the teeth?”
Her head moved up and down once, and slowly. “Snap them off. Right across the front.”
We stood there looking at each other for quite a while. Everything she was thinking came out in her eyes and I knew the kind of a deal she had gotten from Lenny Servo too. I was working up a nice feeling for that guy. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“I’d like that. Maybe if you called me back later I’ll have news for you. The... girls usually know pretty much of what goes on in town. The number’s unlisted — 1346.”
She walked me to the door and twisted the knob on the lock. She was close and smelled faintly of jasmine, the way Venus should smell. Every bit of her was outlined in detail against the clinging fabric of the dress. She caught me studying her and smiled again.
“How do you get into that thing?” I asked her.
“It’s a trick.” She handed me a silken tassel that was suspended from a gimmick on her shoulder. I held it in my fingers a second, she kept on smiling, so I gave it a pull. Something happened to the dress. It wasn’t there any more. It all came apart and fell on the floor with me still holding the tassel and Venus looked like she was supposed to look. She was tall and lovelier than when she had clothes on.
“Now you know,” she laughed. “What do you think?”
“Baby,” I said, “on some people skin is skin...”
“And on me?”
“A beautiful invitation in black and white.”
I opened the door, stepped out and closed it behind me. Venus had made it too plain that I didn’t have to wait until six o’clock if I didn’t want to, but I just couldn’t afford the time. Later maybe.