Hit and Run

By the merest chance I had picked up a piece of information that had to be important. So Ross and Dolores Lane worked at the same nightclub. Dolores had told me she was going to marry O'Brien. As Slim had said why should a nightclub singer hook up with a cop? It didn't make sense. It certainly deserved to be investigated.

On the spur of the moment, I decided to take a look at the Little Tavern nightclub.

I thumbed the starter, moved the Buick into the evening traffic, and headed out to Mount Cresta.

CHAPTER NINE

I

The Little Tavern nightclub was a typical roadside joint with a circular drive-in, a lot of coloured neon lights, a gaudy doorman and a big parking lot crammed with the less expensive cars.

I found space in one of the rows, cut my engine and turned off my lights.

Then I walked back between the alley of cars to the entrance of the nightclub.

The doorman turned the revolving door for me, touching his cap as he did so.

I entered a large ornate vestibule. A hat-check girl, clad in a frilly thing that showed her knees, hipswayed towards me, showing her even white teeth in a smile of welcome. The smile slipped a little when she saw I had no hat and had nothing to leave with her for her to earn a possible dollar tip.

I moved around her, giving her one of nay boyish smiles, but for the impression it made on her, I might be offering a beggar the time of day. She turned and hip-swayed back to her station. For build, she and Marilyn Monroe had a lot in common.

I went up the red-carpeted stairs to a passage lit by ceiling lights and headed towards a pale-blue neon light that flashed Bar at me.

I paused in the doorway and surveyed the scene.

The room was big, with a horseshoe-shaped bar at the far end, and a lot of tables and chairs to cope with the hundred odd people who were getting liquored up for the night.

It wasn't what I would call a smart crowd. None of the men were in tuxedos. The women were a mixed lot: some of them looked like businessmen's secretaries out for the night in return for past services rendered; some of them looked like slightly soiled young ladies from the back row of unsuccessful musicals; some of them were obviously professionals, and they sat alone at various tables, discreetly distant from each other, and there were a few elderly women waiting impatiently for their gigolos: the usual crowd you can see any night of the week in the less smart nightclubs of Palm City.

I looked over the bar. There were two barmen coping with the rush: neither of them was Ross: two small men, Mexicans to judge by their sleek, black hair, their dark oily skins and their servile, flashing smiles.

I didn't expect to find Ross serving behind the bar. I guessed it was his night off.

As I looked around I was aware that at least ten of the women on their own were staring pointedly at me. I took care not to meet their inviting eyes.

I wandered over to the bar and waited my turn beside a fat man in a slightly creased, tropical white suit who was being served with a rum and lime juice and who looked three parts drunk.

When my turn came, I ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and while the barman was fixing the drink, I asked him what time the cabaret started.

'Half past eleven, sir,' he said, sliding the drink over to me. 'In the restaurant, second on the left down the passage.'

He went away to serve a tall, bony blonde in a sea-green evening dress whose elderly escort seemed to begrudge her the champagne cocktail she was whining for.

I glanced at my wrist watch. The time was twenty minutes past eleven.

The fat drunk next to me turned and grinned sheepishly as if to apologize for intruding. He said on a rum-ladened breath: 'You don't want to waste good money on the cabaret, friend. It's the worst swindle in town, and that's saying a lot.'

'No girls?'

He made a face.

'Well, yes, there are girls, if you can call them girls.'

I twiddled my glass.

'I heard this Lane dish is worth catching.'

He sucked up some of his rum and lime juice, and then closed a heavy eyelid.

'If you could catch her, I'd say she would be pretty satisfactory, but she's hard to catch. I've tried, and all I've got out of it is a couple of evenings listening to her sing, and that's something she can't do.'

'So what's good about this joint?'

He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening, then leaning close and lowering his voice, he said: 'Between friends, they have a roulette table upstairs. The table stakes are up to the ceiling. All the rest of the muck here is just a front. But keep it under your hat, friend. I'm doing you a favour, telling you.'

'Maybe I might see what I can lose.'

He lifted his fat shoulders.

'They're pretty strict who they let up there. It's strictly illegal. You might have a word with Claude: he manages the joint. You can mention my name if you like: Phil Welliver.'

'Thanks. Where do I find him?'

He nodded across to the bar to a door.