by P. N. Elrod
“You seen the papers today?” I asked.
Joe James blinked dramatically. “My God, you don’t mean it! You’re that Jack Fleming? And . . . and she was the one walled up in your club?”
“My club to be, it’s not open yet, and yes, I guess she was if you’re right about the dress. That’s why I had to be sure you were sure. It’s what was on the remains they found.” I indicated the photos.
He immediately dropped them on the makeup table as though they were hot. “How utterly awful! That poor girl!”
“I’m surprised the cops haven’t contacted you already.”
“They have to find me first. I’m overdue on a film deadline and hiding out with friends. Those studio bastards keep phoning to hurry me up, and that interrupts my concentration. I’ve not checked with my answering service in a couple of days. If dear Roberta hadn’t called every fashion store in town trying to find me, I’d still be in happy seclusion working away on my new masterpieces.”
I turned to Bobbi, lifting her hand and kissing her dialing finger. “Have I ever told you that you’re perfect?”
“Yes, but it bears frequent repeating.”
“Ah, young love,” said Joe in an approving tone. “I must say he’s better than the last one, darling. Now tell me what’s going on. Am I to have the police on my doorstep? Do you know what effect that will have on my delivery schedule?”
“You’ll hear from the cops, all right,” I said. “No way out of it.”
“Damn.”
“Could you tell us what you know about Lena?”
“Of course, but why?”
“It’s my nightclub, and I don’t want this hanging over the roof like some thunderbolt waiting to drop. If I can point the cops in the right direction for the killer, then maybe that poor woman can rest in peace.”
“How utterly noble. The killer? God, but I never thought of that. She didn’t get walled up by herself, did she? Oh, it gives me the leaping fantods just thinking about it. I don’t want my name involved. Suppose he comes after me?”
“I can fix it so your name stays out of the papers. I have an in with the guy in charge of the case.”
“You must tell me your secret sometime. Well, all right, what do you want to hear?”
“Where did she live, who did she know? If she was on the make, who paid her bills?”
“I’ll have to look her address up in my old files, but you’d have better luck talking with that Rita creature, if she’s still around after all this while. They were best friends, always in the shop together.”
“Rita who?”
“Robillard. Cut out of the same cheap cloth if you ask me. She worked—if one may call it that—for Booth Nevis. So did Lena.”
I took a short pause to swallow. “Booth Nevis? You sure?”
“Lena usually paid in cash—she always seemed to have plenty, but when she ran out, she’d put it on account. Sometimes she let it go for months, and I’d have to get very cross with her. Then she’d turn up the next day with a two-party check to settle it. Booth Nevis was always the name on the check. For both Lena and Rita, I might add.”
Bobbi shot me a look. She knew about Nevis owning the lease on my club.
Joe noticed our interplay and was instantly alarmed. “What’s going on? Is this Nevis a gangster? What have I done? He’ll put me in cement overshoes or worse for fingering him. That’s it, I’ll just have to grit my teeth and move to Hollywood with the rest of the harlots.”
Bobbi made a calming gesture. “Joe, it’ll be all right. Jack said he had the fix in. We won’t let anything happen to you.” Bobbi put her hand on his, reassuring.
He wasn’t reassured. “Roberta, this is serious stuff; this is my life, for God’s sake.”
“Jack?” She gave me a glance.
“Mr. James, I’ve also got reasons for wanting to keep my head low,” I said. “When the cops come calling, you don’t mention me, Nevis, or this conversation, and I’ll return the favor.”
“I’d appreciate that, but that gangster . . .”
“Just because his girl wore a dress from your place doesn’t mean Nevis will know you said anything about him. Give the cops Lena Ashley’s name and leave it at that. It was five years ago; they’ll believe it if you say you don’t remember anything more about her. Let them take it from there. And Nevis won’t find out about you from me. You’re safe.”
“Well, if you’re sure.” He leaned earnestly toward Bobbi. “Is he sure?”
“Jack knows what he’s doing.”
“Oh, darling, I’ve heard that one before.”
It took a lot more talk from me to get a little more talk from Joe, but he eventually calmed down and spilled what he had. Lena Ashley shared a flat with Rita Robillard back then, or so he assumed since he sent the bills to the same address for both. They had expensive tastes and frequently indulged them at his shop, coming in nearly every week for something new, though Lena stopped after picking up the red dress. Rita still turned up regularly, and when Joe asked after her roommate, she claimed not to know what happened to her. Soon after that she stopped coming in herself.
“In this light, it’s highly suspicious,” Joe intoned. “She acted more angry than worried about Lena’s vanishing. She must have known something more than she let on.”
“Was she the type to wall up anyone alive?” I asked.
“And ruin her manicure? Don’t make me laugh. Rita would have talked someone into doing it for her, but I really don’t see her doing it in the first place. They got along very well so far as I could see. Rita was the smarter of the pair—though that’s not saying much. She knew the ropes, and Lena often asked her for advice, at least for dressing well. Lena was the real hell-raiser, she liked parties, was always talking about this one or that and always in need of something new to wear. Happy day for me.”
“You sure she and Rita were on the make?”
“I suppose they must have been. How else do pretty girls with no family, no talent, no brains, and no job get the kind of money they spent?”
But I’d never heard Gordy mention anything about Booth Nevis being a pimp. Maybe he’d been a customer instead. Evidently a very satisfied one to judge by the money involved.
Or maybe not.
As Joe James said, poor Lena.
AFTER having his brain picked clean, James confessed to being parched and that the least I could do was buy him a drink. It was coming up time for Bobbi to do another song set, anyway, and she wanted to freshen her makeup. We left her to it and went out front to the table she’d reserved for him. It was close to but not on top of the stage. I bought us a couple of martinis.
“Such a treat it is to get out and dust off the cobwebs,” he told me. “I spend so much time over the drawing board I’ll end up a hunchback before long.” He then went on to say his job wasn’t that glamorous, but he wouldn’t want to do anything else. “You do meet the nicest people, though, like Roberta—and yourself, of course.”
“Thanks.”
“Whatever happened to that frightful man she was with before? His name was Slick. Very pretty, but there was nothing behind his eyes.”
“Dead. Shot.”
Joe pursed his lips. “Oh.” He gave me a long look and finished his drink. I said I’d changed my mind about having mine and asked if he would take it. He said yes and seemed grateful when the lights dimmed for Bobbi’s entrance.
With the spot making her platinum hair shimmer like a halo, she started out with a throaty ballad that drew a few late dancers onto the floor. Instead of a regular small band for music there was just the one piano. The Red Deuces could have had more, and often did, but its focus tonight was for the romantics in the crowd. The ones with lots of money. The martinis I bought were on the high end of the pricing scale for this town. I was paying to see and be seen, and for the classy atmosphere of the joint. I tried my best to enjoy it. With Bobbi making the entertainment, it was easy.
Part of me was still putting time in on
my own place, though. I was taking mental notes as I always did when in a club now. I watched how the staff here did their work and if they were efficient about it. The people almost seemed to be overdoing themselves in amiability. They had a right to it if the tips were in keeping with the price of the drinks, but I got the impression that they were indeed genuinely cheerful. While off to the side, hanging around the bar between orders, they smiled and joked with each other. At the same time they kept their eyes on the patrons, alert for the least signal for service. One waiter even started toward a table as the customer pulled out his cigarette case, arriving in time to hold a lighter under the smoke, then discreetly withdrew like a helpful ghost.
That was good to see. It was just the sort of thing I wanted for Lady Crymsyn.
After Bobbi finished her set, some of the customers left, and if the next singer onstage was troubled by the thinning ranks, he didn’t show it and plowed forward. I wondered if he’d been the one too drunk to go on the night before. Yet another item to worry about once the club opened: entertainers who didn’t entertain. Bobbi had filled my head with endless horror stories of drunks, fistfights breaking out, and impromptu backstage sex and even impromptu onstage sex when someone pulled a curtain open at the wrong time. There were other alarming examples, but those were the most common reasons why, at times, the show did not go on.
I had my work cut out for me. The sooner I got an experienced general manager to take the load off the better.
Just shy of midnight Joe James said he had to leave, so I offered him a ride home since he’d cabbed over. He accepted, and I went backstage to let Bobbi know.
“I’ll return here at the usual time, though,” I promised.
“Then I’ll be out front. What’d you think of Joe?”
“You were right on the festive part, but he’s okay.”
She snuggled close, and I caught the scent of her rose perfume again. It seemed to go right through the top of my skull, but in a nice way. “Good. I’m glad you don’t have a problem with him.”
“He’s a friend of yours, so he’s all right by me.”
She went out front so she could give him a kiss on the cheek good-bye, and they promised each other to get together to talk clothes later that week.
James liked to chat about himself and filled my ear with Hollywood gossip on the drive to his home, or rather to where he was staying. The house was dark, meaning his hosts were asleep, and it was too late for the one-for-the-road drink he’d wanted to give me. Just as well, with my condition. I was good at pretending to imbibe, but it didn’t always work. At parties I’d just carry a full glass around and keep moving, but it’s hard to get away with the trick when it’s just me and one other person.
He expressed his regrets, said it had been a pleasure to meet me, shook my hand good-bye, then strode easily up the walkway, happy in his two-toned shoes. I wished him well and pulled back into traffic again.
Between what I’d just learned from him and my talk with Gordy the night before, I had plenty to think about, and right now my thoughts were on Booth Nevis.
Either by accident or on purpose, every single one of the papers failed to include Nevis’s name in their many stories, though it was well-known that he’d had a feud with the speak’s violently deceased owner, Welsh Lennet. The rank-and-file reporters seemed to know all about it to judge from what I’d overheard while hidden behind the bar during their invasion last night. If I’d been one of them and was trying to work up an interesting angle, it would have only been natural to include at least a line or two on the club’s dark history. This strange lack spoke volumes.
I’d have to run by Nevis’s place and ask a few questions.
I had a feeling he wouldn’t like them much.
5
NOT too far from the west side of the Loop, Booth Nevis ran a place with a good bar, a small band, and a dance floor. That was all pretense; anyone interested who’d been in town for more than a day knew it to be only a thin cover for the gambling in the back and upstairs rooms. The Nightcrawler Club had the same thing going but could cater better to a more respectable, less informed crowd with its fancy shows and singers. The Flying Ace was strictly for the pros and their marks.
Nevis called it the Flying Ace because he was supposed to have been a pilot during the war, but no one believed that. He’d been too busy running numbers for some uncle in San Francisco, learning the family business. Word had it that he and the uncle got interested in the same woman, and she played one against the other for money and gifts. She got found out, though, and wisely left town before either of them could express his annoyance to her. Nevis was supposedly looking for her when he hit Chicago, learned how to pilot a plane, and began short hops across the Canadian border to bring in booze. He couldn’t fly big cargoes, being limited by what his plane could carry, so he smuggled in premium stuff for the rich and discriminating and played the role of the dashing bootlegger to the hilt. The snob crowd ate it up. Or rather drank it up.
Selling the quality booze and special wines at a five hundred percent profit per bottle, he soon had plenty of dough to flash and invested it in staking out a piece of territory to build his club. The lessons he’d learned by the foggy bay stood him just as well by the windy lake. He prospered with the gambling and now only flew for his own amusement.
The club was decorated with aviation souvenirs, and behind the bar was a big photo of Nevis decked out in leather flight gear standing next to his plane. There were some medals in a frame next to it, the implication being that he’d won them in service. Anyone who’d been in the war would know at a glance that it was bullshit, since the medals were navy honors he’d probably bought in a pawnshop. No one told him that to his face. It just wasn’t worth the trouble.
The gorilla watching the door knew me from my dealings with his boss and nodded when I asked if Nevis was in. I passed through a small, bare lobby. It had no cover charge, no hat check, nothing to prevent a person from quickly going through to the gaming rooms, where bigger change was to be made. Anyway, there was little point in leaving your hat out front if you were forced by a raid to make an exit out the back.
The main room was choked with a week’s worth of loser’s sweat and stale cigarette smoke. My night vision was no good here, but at least I didn’t have to breathe the stuff. I felt my way over to the bar. The bartender, who looked far too clean-cut for the joint, came over. Mindful of the drink that had been left so mysteriously on the bar at Lady Crymsyn, I ordered a shot of whiskey and asked where I could find his boss. He gave me one, told me the other, then I paid him fifty cents and said he could keep the change.
Nevis didn’t have a regular table for himself, always sitting in a different spot, and he usually moved several times a night. No one was gunning for him that I knew about; he was just being careful. Gordy was often the same way. I hoped I wouldn’t need to follow their example once my place was up and running. I was pretty bulletproof, but details like that I just didn’t want to have to think about.
The band was playing loud and hot as I threaded between tables, and some couples were making use of the floor. There were a number of dressed-up women sitting in groups. Some looked bored, others predatory, as they drank and smoked, thickening the atmosphere. None of them made an offer to me, so I politely assumed they were waiting on their men to finish gaming in the back. It might be a while; Nevis usually let things go on around the clock.
I discerned Nevis’s outline in the shifting murk. He was at a table away from the crowd, his back to a wall, of course. He had a phone receiver jammed against his ear and, from his gestures, was holding quite an animated conversation. In a short lull between the din of the music and other sounds I just barely picked out his voice.
“No, no, no, I’m telling you, you can’t push anyone out of a plane like that. The damn door is too small for that kind of thing. Oh, I gotta go.” He’d spotted me and hung up, flashing a big smile my way. “Fleming, long time no see. How’s that wreck of m
ine doing?”
“Not too many hitches.” Pretending I’d not heard anything amiss, I stuck out my free hand and we shook. He invited me to sit across from him. If anything interesting snuck up behind me, I’d see it in his eyes first. “You can’t call it a wreck anymore. I’ve put too much work into it.”
“So I’ve heard.” He was a long, lean man, with thin hair smoothed back over a skull without much meat under the skin. He seemed frail, with the hollow, wasted look of a lunger; only his assured manner and robust confidence belied the initial impression of illness. He had a square jaw and wide mouth full of good humor for himself and the world. Most of the time it was sincere. “Is this a social visit?”
“Not really. I’m opening soon and thought you could help me find people to work there. I need the usual and a general manager to run the place when I’m not around.”
“Why not ask Gordy? He knows everyone.”
“I did. He said to come to you.” This was true. Gordy and I had discussed the intricacies of hiring and firing many times.
Nevis smiled amiably, long, nimble fingers lightly touching a sweating glass in front of him. He turned it clockwise slowly, a quarter inch at a time. His drink was down to melting ice.
I wondered how much alcohol he’d had tonight. That would affect my ability to get reliable information from him. “I figured you could put the word out for me.”
“Sure, no trouble.”
“Especially for the general manager spot. I need a guy who knows how to do books and keep them straight.”
“Not asking for a lot in this town, are you? All the people who come here have an angle—their own. Maybe you should advertise for some college kid who’s never been hungry.”
I let that one pass as the joke it was. “I’ll be at my club between nine and midnight for anyone who wants to see me.”
“Why so late?”
“So I know they can work the hours.”
“What if they’re working someplace else at that time?”
“Then they don’t need a job.” I pretended to taste my whiskey. It was like bringing gasoline to my mouth, but I managed without any face-twisting to wet my lips. Next time I’d just ask for water. “Doing a good business tonight?”