I had a beer in the casino bar, served by a perky little redheaded waitress in a red satin outfit that was little more than a low-cut one-piece bathing suit with mesh stockings and black heels; if her push-up bra had pushed any harder, her nipples would’ve popped out.
Half a dozen little booby-displaying beauties were weaving around the casino, providing free drinks. I made conversation with mine and learned she was a community college student across the river-most of the girls were.
“So,” I asked her, “you don’t live in Haydee’s Port?”
“No!” she said, eyes so wide you’d think I goosed her. “ Nobody lives in Haydee’s Port!”
“What about your boss?”
She got coy. “What boss is that?”
“Mr. Cornell. Does he live across the river, too?”
My knowing the boss’s name was enough for her to replace coy with chatty. “He lives close. A regular mansion. Ever see Gone with the Wind?”
“Sure.”
“Like that. White pillars and everything.”
“He lives in Tara and you’re a wage slave, huh?”
“Yeah, minimum wage, but the tips are good.”
I considered kidding her about darkies all working on the Mississippi, but figured the reference would be lost on her.
“Kind of business this place does,” I said, “I’m not surprised Mr. Cornell has a mansion. He here tonight?”
“He’s always here. I’ve been at the Paddlewheel a year, and he’s never missed a night.”
“Could you point him out to me?”
She shook her head. “He’s rarely in the Key Club, unless he’s in the back poker room.”
“Is he in the back poker room now?”
“No.” She got narrow-eyed. “Why?”
“Just like to meet him. Tell him how impressed I am. I mean, I’d heard about this place, but it exceeds all my expectations.”
She liked that. Apparently she was a proud little community-college student/waitress. “Yes! I don’t know of anything like it anywhere else around these parts.”
These parts? My God, this was the Midwest…
I asked, “What about downtown?”
The eyes got the goosed look again. “In Haydee’s Port? You don’t want to go down there, sir.”
“I don’t?”
“No! It’s just for lowlifes.”
So I left her a nice tip. She didn’t consider me a lowlife, and that made me feel good about myself.
I gambled a little. Lost twenty-five bucks at black-jack, got ahead fifty at roulette. Played video poker, a buck a shot, and in ninety minutes carved the fifty in half. Another waitress, who I’d asked for a Diet Coke, delivered it.
I asked her, “The music upstairs?”
She had a galaxy of permed blonde hair and dark blue eyes and light blue eyeshadow and big breasts that made heavy lifting for the push-up bra. “You mean upstairs at the Paddlewheel Lounge?”
“I’m talking about the top floor.”
“So am I.”
“How long does the music last?”
“Till two on weeknights. All night Friday and Saturday. We’re closed Sunday.”
Even Hades rested on the seventh day, it seemed, this branch office, anyway.
It was already close to one a.m., so I took the elevator up to the Paddlewheel Lounge. The big room had lots of neon pseudo-graffiti on the brick walls, glowing in black light-cheesy stuff that tried too hard, jagged lettering of assorted words and phrases: Da Bomb! Awesome! Wicked! Rad! Gnarly!
Not that the crowd seemed to mind, a mix of twentyand thirty-somethings, some of whom I’d seen dining downstairs. The dance floor was a raised acrylic platform with red-yellow-blue flashing lights inside, the band fronting big amplifiers on a wooden platform stage (the drummer up on his own smaller one) painted flat black but with more corny neon day-glo fake graffiti. The little dance platform could only accommodate maybe a third of the hundred or so in the lounge, so a lot of smoking and talking (that is, shouting over the band) was going on at the little round tables with red vinyl cloths.
A bar was at one end, as far away from the band as possible. The bartender was female, a pretty blonde with over-teased hair and a black leather vest over her white blouse; she wasn’t particularly busty, which was almost a relief after all those exploding bosoms in the casino.
Perched on a stool, I ordered another Diet Coke and asked her (actually, yelled at her), “ What’s it like on the weekends? ”
“ Zoo-a-rama, ” she shouted back with a friendly smile and an eyeball roll. “ Hangin’ off the flippin’ rafters, my friend. ”
“ Good band! ”
They were-they were doing “Under My Thumb” by the Stones. They all wore white shirts and skinny black ties and black leather trousers and short spiky hair, including the lead singer, a cute skinny girl.
“ Not bad, ” she admitted. “ Smart. Called the Nodes. They play about half classic rock and half New Wave. That’s why the demo is so broad. ”
“ The demo? ”
“ Demographic. You’ll find ’em as young as twenty-one and as old as forty, out there. ”
Forty didn’t sound as old to me as it used to. Also, I thought some of the girls-like one in a side ponytail, fingerless gloves and a petticoat, who was just swishing by-weren’t twenty-one. Not that I could imagine the Paddlewheel was a rigorous I.D. checker.
That was all the shouted speech I could take, so I got out the charming smile again and made sure the teased-hairdo behind the bar got a nice tip, figuring she was another minimum-wage slave.
I’d been on all three floors of the Paddlewheel now, over these past three hours or so, and still hadn’t seen Richard Cornell, at least not to my knowledge. I really didn’t have any idea what he looked like, just that he was a Brit and a “smoothie.” All I probably needed to do was ask somebody who appeared to be vaguely in management if I could see Mr. Cornell. But I wasn’t ready to stoop that low just yet…
On the second floor, things were winding down. The dining room had closed at midnight, though the bar was still heavily populated, serving booze and sandwiches till 4 a.m., if the menu was to be believed. I was seated at a little table whose round top was smaller than a steering wheel, having another Diet Coke, listening to the vocalist who had finally turned up on stage to keep the pianist company.
A couple of things had become clear about Richard Cornell’s management style, among them that he paid minimum wage, but chiefly that if you weren’t a good-looking young woman, you need not apply for any job that included interacting with the public. The needle on the pulchritude meter at this place was buried, or wanted to be. Till it closed in ’81, the Playboy Club at Lake Geneva had been my favorite home away from home, and the Paddlewheel rivaled their Bunnies with these cornfed cuties.
But the woman on the small stage, perched on a stool, was not cute, nor was she young. I made her for mid-forties, easy. She was a little heavy and she had some years on her, but she blew the cuties away, because she was beautiful. Truly beautiful.
She had reddish blond widow’s-peaked hair that was up off her high forehead but swept down to her bare shoulders. Her wideset eyes were green and so was her eyeshadow, her face a gentle oval nicely disrupted by prominent cheekbones; her lips were full and ripe and glistening red. She wore a bare-shouldered black dress with a full skirt, the top part putting half of an admirable full bosom on display, no push-up bra, though some would argue she could use one-I would argue she’d never lack for a man to push them up for her.
When I sat down, she was singing “What Is This Thing Called Love?” She had a soft, smoky voice that reminded me of Julie London-she reminded me physically of Julie London, too, though the nose was different, small, almost pug. Everything she did was sad but with a lilting, mid-tempo swing feel that was part her and part the deft piano player.
Some people were talking, laughing, at their tables, because for anybody not gambling, it was getting pretty drunk out. But
perhaps half of the little crowd of maybe twenty-five at the tiny tables in front of the small stage were paying rapt attention.
I had a feeling she had a following. She might have made it big in another era-she was old enough that she might have tried, before she’d become a throwback, if a goddamn pure one. Anybody else would have been using a drum machine and a synthesizer. Yet somehow she was getting away with just her voice and a piano, right here in the middle of the USA, closer to the Gran’ Ole Opry in Nashville than the Rainbow Room in Manhattan.
She sang “Little White Lies” with a lot of humor and warmth, and then she slowed down “I Got Lost in His Arms” with such a rich, well-earned vibrato that I damn near remembered how to cry.
Rising, she got a nice hand as she smiled and nodded, gestured to her pianist, who was bald and bespectacled and maybe thirty and painfully skinny; then they both got some more applause and came down off the stage.
On impulse, I rose and went over to her. “Excuse me,” I said. “But that was terrific.”
She seemed embarrassed. “Oh. Well. Thank you. Haven’t seen you here before.”
“Passing through.”
She grinned and it was wide and real with plenty of white. “Nobody passes through Haydee’s Port.”
“Passing through River Bluff. Can I buy you a drink?”
The smile tightened, the teeth disappearing. “No. I have one more set in fifteen minutes. I never take a drink till after my last set. But you’re very kind.”
“Coffee, then.”
“Makes me jumpy.”
“Perrier? Not coming on to you. Just liked what I heard.”
The teeth returned. “Nice young man like you, maybe I wouldn’t mind.”
“A Perrier?”
“You coming on to me.” The smile tightened again but in a nice way, this time. “Come on.”
She took me by the arm and led me to a booth with a reserved card on it. I sat opposite her as she retrieved a purse from somewhere. This booth was apparently her between-sets office. She got out Paddlewheel matches and a pack of Virginia Slims.
She offered me a smoke and I declined. When a waitress came over, my new friend indeed ordered a Perrier and I had the same. She got a cig going, waved the match out and gave me a skeptical look.
“You aren’t gay, are you?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re about…Beatles age, I’d say. Rolling Stones. Your idea of a female singer would be, what? Petula Clark? Dusty Springfield?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. But most guys your age who think Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart are the shit are gay.” She nodded toward where her piano player sat with another young guy at a table. “Lonnie’s gay, as you might have guessed. Where would I find a straight kid who could play like that?”
I skipped any comment on Lonnie, and went to her first point. “Maybe I just have a healthy respect for professionalism.”
She seemed to like that.
I sipped my sparkling water and hauled out the charming smile again, which was getting a workout tonight. “My next line is, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ ”
She blew a smoky kiss at me. “I’m part owner of it. I can do what I like.”
“Part owner? I, uh…I came in on your act. I didn’t catch your name. Mine’s Jack, by the way. Jack Gibson.”
“Two of my favorite things-money and a mixed drink.” Her laugh was husky as she extended a hand for me to take and shake. “I’m Angela Dell.”
“I thought this place was owned by a guy named Cornell.”
“Dickie is my husband. Dell is my stage name-a shortened version of my maiden name. I used it before I met Dickie, and I’ve kept it.”
“You’ve been doing this a while.”
“Singing? Oh yes.”
“Do any recording?”
She nodded, twitched a smile that was more for her than me. “Had a contract with Verve back in the ’60s.”
“No kidding?”
That was a big deal-Verve was a jazz label and very picky about the artists they signed.
I went on: “I’m surprised I haven’t heard any of your records.”
“They just put one album out, and it sank like a stone.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
She shrugged. “You can buy it at the bar-I got the rights back to put it out on CD and cassette. There are two newer ones, too, recorded with just Lonnie on the piano.”
“You’ll sign them?”
“Sure.” She tapped her cigarette into a glass tray with a Paddlewheel logo in its bottom. “What do you do, Jack?”
“Nothing very interesting, I’m afraid. I sell veterinary medicine.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Do you know anything about farms?”
“No. I have a cat, though.”
“Well, I strictly sell to vets who service farms. Pretty boring.”
“But you’re on the road a lot?”
“Yes. You must’ve been, too, at one time.”
She nodded. “Until I married Dickie.”
I was trying to figure out a way to finesse this, to use my new acquaintance with the missus to get to the man of the house, or anyway of the Paddlewheel.
Then she said, “But don’t let that discourage you.”
There was something sly in the green eyes now, and the full mouth was twisted up at one corner.
“Pardon?” I managed.
“Dickie and I are separated. We…we’d probably have been divorced a long time ago, but I’m a Catholic, and I don’t want to go to hell…even if I do work in Haydee’s.”
“Oh-kay,” I said.
“We’re friendly, Dickie and I. Best of buddies. He’s got a great business head, and I add a little class to the joint. I don’t have any desire to do anything in life but sing for my supper. No ambition-not for a new man, or an old career. Anyway, a shopworn broad like me can’t make it in show biz these days, that’s for sure.”
“I’d think some lounge in Vegas would-”
“I worked a lounge in Vegas for six years. It wasn’t a bad life, but it was a dead end, and here I’m a coowner and making nice money and singing six nights a week. Satisfies my work ethic and my artistic cravings, and fills my bank account. I live in a nice apartment over in River Bluff, just me and my pussy…cat.”
That pause was promising.
“How long,” she asked, tapping her ash off in the tray, “are you going to be in town?”
“Not sure. Few days. Maybe we could get together. Have lunch or something.”
She shrugged. “I only have another half hour set. Why don’t you stick around? We could go over to the Wheelhouse and have breakfast. They’re open twenty-four hours.”
Then she smiled, sighed smoke dreamily, stubbed out her cigarette, and headed up onto the stage, swaying her hips a little, whether for the audience or me, I couldn’t say. But she had fine legs for a woman her age, strappy heels doing nice things to their musculature, her full caboose making the skirt twitch.
Warm applause greeted her, and she did “But Not For Me,” and I sat wondering how I’d managed to muff it so bad. Here we’d been having this nice friendly conversation, and I reflexively gave her the vet medicine cover story, before realizing I had no reasonable segue from that to asking her if she’d introduce me to her husband.
She would want to know why, and I couldn’t think of anything that made sense. I doubted Richard Cornell was in the market for animal tranquilizers.
By the time she’d started her next song, “You Do Something to Me,” I’d about given up. I figured I should just disappear before her set was over, though snubbing the boss’ wife (separated from him or not) was not exactly a great plan, either.
But I’d pretty much decided on skipping, and was maybe three seconds away from slipping out of the booth, when a six-footer slid in opposite.
He was dark-haired with some white coming in on the sideb
urns, a dark tan, lazy eyes and a smirky mouth, but handsome enough at about forty, attired in pale yellow slacks and a darker yellow-and-black checked sportcoat over a black shirt open a few buttons to display several gold chains and some curly black hair.
“My name’s Richard Cornell,” he said, and extended a hand. “I run the Paddlewheel. Did you and my wife have a nice talkie-poo?”
Chapter Four
I shook his hand. He smiled across the booth at me in a fashion that I’m sure fooled a lot of people, but I could see the coldness in the aqua-blue eyes, which were half-lidded and made his gaze seem casual when it was heart-attack serious.
“She’s a wonderful singer, your wife,” I said.
“Indeed she is.” The British accent was light but there, a touch of class that went well with his lilting baritone.
“Friendly, too. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Mr. Cornell.”
He leaned back, smiled on half his face. He’d blinked maybe three times since sitting down. “Angela’s a big girl. We’re separated. She goes her way and I go mine…though I maintain an interest in her welfare. Didn’t get your name.”
“Jack Gibson,” I said.
Cornell folded his arms and the smile widened, though it had no warmth. “And what brings you to my part of the world, Mr. Gibson?”
Not this part of the world- his part of the world.
In about half a second I processed the following: he wouldn’t have sat down casually to chat up a stray Paddlewheel patron, and as a nearly ex-husband he had no reason to check up on or protect his wife, meaning he was (for whatever reason) suspicious about me, I’d been noticed somehow, and if I trotted out the veterinary meds schtick right now, I’d soon be dancing in the parking lot with two or three of his satin-vest bully boys before he even got around to blinking again.
“Are you always this attentive to your guests, Mr. Cornell?”
A black waitress in an Afro wig delivered him three fingers of what looked to be Scotch over two ice cubes. He smiled, said, “Thank you, darlin’…drinky-poo, Mr. Gibson?”
“No thanks.”
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