the back there was a long glass-and-chrome bar. I stopped off there. The bourbon wasn’t good, but they were generous with it, as is the way with chip-cribs. After the third drink I noticed that people came in, but they didn’t stop in the dining room or at the bar. They went right on by, down a dim-lit corridor to the right of the bar. One man didn’t go on by. He stopped at the bar, and the barkeep fixed him a drink without waiting to be told. The man was thick and short, and his clothes were too tight for him. His coat concealed the bulge his gun made with all the subtlety of a school girl’s bra.
He was watching me. Not covertly, just looking at me out of eyes that were the color of gin. I winked at him and his eyes watered at me. I got up and went on down the dark corridor and through a heavy sheet-metal door. This room was different. It was already crowded, and there was a feeling of hot, sweaty tension in the place that the air conditioner wasn’t doing anything about. There was blackjack. Four games going, and tables for more. Five crap tables with the crowds attached to them like bees. Chuck-a-luck. Two-bit slot machines. And in the back, quiet men under a net of blue smoke at round felt-covered tables. Poker. There wasn’t a roulette wheel in the place. Some of the players were noisy, with an overtone of hysteria in their voices and movements; but most of them were quiet, intent, like primitive people engaged in a solemn ritual.
Someone tapped me gently on the shoulder. It was the little man with the bulge.
“Well, what d’ya think of the place?” His voice was high, tinny, and it was trying to be cordial.
“No roulette,” I said.
“We got wheels. They’re in storage. People up this way don’t go for roulette.”
Three fat, gray-haired women pushed by us, and we moved over, out of the way of the door.
“What did you expect to get for your ten bucks, Mr. Bailey? Anything in particular?” He smiled.
“You work together up here.”
“We try to.”
“I wanted to talk, to Keller a couple minutes about a very small matter.”
“Keller. Assuming I knew anyone named Keller, what would the small matter be about?” The smile was getting a little sharp at the corners.
“A girl. A girl who used to work for him.”
He looked at my left ear with a slow loss of expression, like a man filling an inside straight. “Uh-huh,” he said softly. “We try to oblige our guests. Wait at the bar.”
* * * *
HE WAS back at the bar in about ten minutes and we took the elevator to the third floor. It looked like a warehouse up here. In front of the elevator there was a green-painted greasy door with a long splinter out of it just above the knob. The short man knocked and the door clicked and opened. Inside was more of the through-the-looking-glass stuff. The room was large. The walls were inlaid panels of Philippine mahogany, the grain alternating every other square. The lighting was indirect and came from around the wall molding and dropped a soft glow over several over-stuffed pieces that looked as if they were upholstered in lamb’s wool.
Behind a blond-wood desk in a high-back executive chair sat a white-haired, benevolent looking old gentleman. He was getting up with a slow and heavy dignity and giving me the kind of warm smile you give to people who have something you want. I was going to hate to disappoint him.
“Sit down, Mr. Bailey.” His voice was low, and it bumbled out as if he had marbles in his throat. I sat in one of the lambs’ wool chairs in front of the desk, and the short man stayed somewhere behind me, silently. The white-haired man took hold of his great belly and sat down again carefully. “My name is Keller, sir. How can I be of service?” He coughed loudly and brought up some marbles. I never knew what he did with them.
“I’m looking for a girl,” I said. “She used to work for you.” I stopped and waited.
He nodded heavily and blinked. He was a man who might have been fifty and living too well, or seventy and well-preserved. His white hair was soft and flowing like a senator’s, and his face was round and puffy, and smooth as an inner tube. His eyes were just wet dark gleams deep in soft cushions of fat. They didn’t tell me a thing.
“She may have taken a cozier name for your show,” I went on. “She was born Margaret Bleeker.”
There may have been a change, a subtle release of tension in the room. Or maybe I just thought there was, because I was looking hard for a reaction. The man behind me moved audibly for the first time, and Keller’s shoulders and face seemed to relax imperceptibly. He chuckled softly and said:
“What’s that high-nosed little brat got herself into?”
“She’s just missing.”
Kellar squirmed slightly and glanced at a clock on the corner of his desk. He was bored. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Bailey. She left here in 1938 when I sold the Hofbrau. Went to L.A. with a two-bit comic named Buffin.”
“That’s a long time ago. Sure of the date?”
He stood up slowly, painfully, and came around the desk. “I’m afraid so,” he rumbled. “Do you know her, Mr. Bailey?”
I shook my head.
“Private operator?”
“Uh-huh.”
He chuckled again. “She was quite a young lady. Luscious as a pomegranate, and twice as acid. I don’t think anyone ever got to her. Buffin was just a sleeper ticket to L.A.”
I stood up. “Would you know anyone who might have kept in touch with her in Los Angeles?”
He patted me on the shoulder with a hand like a pink pin cushion and said, “Sorry I can’t help you. But six years is a lot of years, sir.”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t have any picures around would you?”
“I might. I have a room full of relics I trucked over from the Hofbrau. Want to go through it?”
“I’d like to.”
He walked over to a bar set in a blond-wood cabinet and began to mix a drink. His hands shook a little.
“You know the room, George. Take him down and let him go through it.”
I walked to the door and turned around. Keller was taking a long, business-like drink. I said:
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Keller. Sorry I had to disappoint you.”
He lowered the glass and looked at me blankly over it. He belched majestically. He didn’t say anything.
* * * *
THE room was large and cold and had a sour smell to it. There was a 100-watt bulb burning fiercely in the high ceiling and throwing a begrudging light on a collection of junk stacked against the far wall. I could make out a few sandwich boards, some broken floodlights, and a collection of cheap silvered shields, the kind a five-man orchestra sits behind.
I left George standing at the door and started through the junk. It was probably
