Figure it Out For Yourself

'So what does he do? Feed her five bucks a week? I'll pay for information.'

Maxi finished his beer, dusted the ash off his trousers and stood up.

'Well, I guess I gotta get back to work.'

'Sit down and give. I haven't had anything like ten dollars' worth of information.'

'At my rates you have. Make it another ten, and I'll tell you something that'll sit you on the edge of your can.'

'Five.'

'Ten.'

'Seven and a half.'

We closed at eight.

I gave him the money and he sat down again.

'She's a reefer-smoker, see? Barratt keeps her in weeds. You ain't got a chance.'

I thought this over, and decided perhaps I hadn't, but there was no harm trying.

'Give me her address.'

The extra money persuaded him to break the rules.

'274 Felman Street: it's one of those rooming-houses.'

I stood up.

'Keep this under your bowler, Maxie. If anyone asks you, you've never seen me.'

Maxie grunted, thumped himself on the chest and eyed me sourly. 'You don't have to worry. I'm fussy who I claim as a friend.'

I left him sitting there, breathing gently and staring absently at the empty beer cans.

VI

The entrance to 274 Felman Street was sandwiched between a tobacconist's shop and a thirdrate cafe. There was a dirty brass plate on the door that read: Rooms for Business Women. No Service. No Animals. No Men. A card with several dirty thumb-prints on it was pinned above the brass plate and read: No Vacancies.

The next-door café had four tables on the sidewalk. They were presided over by an elderly waiter whose long, lean face carried an expression of infinite sadness, and whose tail coat, in the hard sunlight, looked green with age. He watched me park the Buick before the entrance to the rooming-house and hopefully flicked at one of the tables with a soiled cloth, but the gesture didn't sell me anything.

I climbed the three stone steps to the glass-panelled doors of 274, pushed one open and entered a dark, smelly lobby full of silence and neglect. Along the left-hand wall was a row of mail boxes. I went over and read the names mounted in grimy brass frames above each box. There was a surprising number of Eves, Lulus, Dawns and Belles among the three dozen names, and I wondered if the brass plate on the door was entirely truthful. The fourth frame from the right read: Miss Gracie Lehmann. Rm. 23. Flr. 2.

Stairs, carpeted with coconut matting, faced me. I puffed gently up thirty of them before I reached the first-floor landing and a long corridor that went away into a quiet dimness surveyed on either side by numerous doors before which stood bottles of milk and newspapers. As the time was ten minutes past noon, it seemed to me the business women were neglecting their business, if they had a business, which on the evidence didn't seem very probable.

As I began to mount the second flight, a lean, hard-faced man appeared at the head of the stairs. He wore a fawn flannel suit, a white felt hat and sun-glasses. He gave a nervous start when he saw me, hesitated as if in two minds whether to retreat or not, then came down the stairs with a studied air of nonchalance.

I waited for him.

He scratched his unshaven jaw with a thumb-nail as he passed me. I had an idea the eyes behind the sun-glasses were uneasy.

'No animals and positively no men,' I said softly as he walked across the landing to the lower flight of stairs.

He looked hastily over his shoulder, paused, said aggressively, 'Ug-huh?'

I shook my head.

'If you heard anything, it was probably the voice of your conscience.'

I went on up the stairs, leaving him to stare after me, pivoting slowly on his heels until we lost sight of each other.

The second floor was a replica of the lower floor, even to the bottles of milk and the newspapers. I walked along the corri- dor, treading softly, studying the numbers on the doors. Room 23 was half-way down and on the right-hand side. I paused before it, wondering what I was going to say to her. If what Maxie had told me was true, and it probably was, then the girl could clear Perelli if she wanted to. It now depended whether or not I could persuade her to throw Barratt to the wolves.

As I raised my knuckles to knock on the door I heard a quiet cough behind me. I looked furtively over my shoulder. There was something in the atmosphere of the place that would have made an archbishop feel furtive.

Behind and opposite me a door had opened. A tall, languorous redhead lolled against the doorway and surveyed me with a smile that was both inviting and suggestive. She wore a green silk wrap that outlined a nice, undulating hip, her legs were bare and her feet were in swan'sdown mules. She touched her red-gold hair with slender fingers that had never done a day's work in their lives, and her neat, fair eyebrows lifted in a signal that is as old as it is obvious.

'Hello, Big Man,' she said. 'Looking for someone?'

'Huh-uh,' I said. 'And I've found her. Don't let me keep you from your breakfast.'