“You’re Lam,” he said.
“That’s right.” I extended my hand.
“Bertha Cool’s partner?”
“Right.”
He gave me a listless hand. For a moment there was a slight tightening of the fingers, then his hand became putty.
I dropped the hand, and Elgin said, “Come in.” Technically, it was a double apartment. If the bedroom could be judged by the living-room, it was just about big enough to hold a bed, a dresser and the door to the bathroom. The living-room had a sofa, two chairs and a table, a badly worn carpet, dejected lace curtains, and a few pictures. At one end was a miniature breakfast nook, an electric refrigerator and a small electric range. Above that were some cupboards.
The sink-board held a few dirty dishes and there were two glasses on the table in the living-room. The half inch of water in the bottom of each glass could have been left by ice cubes that had melted during the night. The ash-trays were filled with cigarette stubs and the open window hadn’t been able to get the atmosphere of stale tobacco and liquor fumes out of the room. There was a copy of VARIETY on the table, and another one on the sofa. The Sunday newspapers, still folded, were also on the sofa, as though Elgin had picked them up straight after he had answered Bertha Cool’s telephone call but had decided not to read them.
He was, however, shaved, and his hair was combed. Glossy black hair, combed straight back.
“Sit down,” he said, “make yourself at home. The place is a mess. I had a couple of drinks last night before we rolled in.”
I nodded, and sat down.
He was around fifty, hollow-cheeked, pinch-waisted, fairly broad-shouldered. He had high cheek-bones, and his black eyes were spread far apart. He had a trick of lowering the lids over those eyes, tilting his head back and looking out from half-closed eyes. It gave him a peculiar expression of not giving a damn about anything.
I said, “I suppose you have to keep pretty late hours.”
“It’s pretty close to daylight before I get home.” The weariness of the voice showed how he felt about it.
“I understand you put on quite a show at the Cabanita,” I said.
He made a little gesture of disgust, drew deeply on the cigarette, blew out twin streams of smoke from his nostrils, said, “It’s a job.”
“You own the place?”
“I lease it.”
“You have a steady trade?”
“Steady business, not steady trade. You want to buy the dump?”
“No, I was just interested in the way it runs.”
“We see a lot of the same faces,” Elgin admitted, “but with a place like that, you try to build it up so it has a reputation. I put on an act of fast talking, slip in some double-meanings so fast it takes them a while to get it, and go right on without waiting for the laughs, until I get my first titter. Then I stop and look surprised, and that usually brings down the house.”
“Women go for that stuff?” I asked.
“They eat it up.”
“The first laugh usually comes from a woman?”
“The fast talking, double-meanings get the women,” he said. “Usually some dowager who knows all the answers titters hysterically. Then I stop talking and look at her in surprise. By that time the joke in the situation has caught up with the rest of the audience and they start laughing.”
“On the jokes that are a little more raw, there’s usually some loud-voiced guy gives a belly laugh first. I don’t pay any attention to him, simply go on talking, and then stop when the general laughter develops… It’s a job of timing. The main thing is never to stop long enough for the audience to catch up. Some of them might get shocked if you did. Just keep on going.”
“They fall for it, eh?”
“I tell you, they eat it up. Women who would slap your face if you tried to say anything off-colour in private, sit out there right in front of the whole damn dining-room and laugh their heads off at stuff I tell them that’s just as close to the borderline as I can get by with it. What the hell do you want?”
“I wanted to find out something about a woman.”
“Oh, my God!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Getting me up at this hour over a woman. God, I can give you the names and telephone numbers of five hundred of them.”
“You know a lot of them?”
“I know every hustler in town.”
“This may not be a hustler. She has been in the Cabanita recently.”
“What about her?”
I said, “She’s a pocket edition — warm eyes, light hair, very small, but perfectly formed. High cheekbones, full lips. Sort of a baby stare, and…”
He interrupted me, to make a motion with his hand, a lazy motion which pivoted at the wrist, much as a swimming seal would casually twist a flipper.
“Know her?”
“Hell, yes. I know a hundred of them. They all come in. They all look the same. It’s a model you’re describing, not an individual.”
“This one’s an individual.”
“Well, we’ve got lots of them. I can’t help you on that. You’ll have to look the joint over for yourself.”
I said, “This little number has lots of fire, quite a bit of individuality.”
“Know her name?”
“I know the name she gave me — Lucille Hart.”
“Don’t know her.”
“I think the ‘Lucille’ may be okay,” I said. “The ‘Hart’ may or may not have been made up.”
He said, “Wait a minute. I want to think.”
He took another pull at the cigarette, then pinched it out and dropped the stub into an ash-tray that was just about full. I noticed other cigarette stubs in there with lipstick smears on them.
“Lucille,” he said almost musingly.
He waited a while, his eyes on the faded carpet, then he tilted his head back so that he could look down his nose at me through half-closed lids. “What’s it to you?” he asked.
“I want to find her.”
“So I gathered,” he said dryly. “Professional or personal?”
“You might say it’s a little of both.”
“Tell me about the personal angle.”
“She took me to a motor court, then stood me up and left me holding the sack.”
Elgin yawned.
There was silence in the room. A fly was buzzing around in sleepy circles, looking for a patch of sunlight and not finding any.
Elgin reached for another cigarette. “Want one?”
“No, thanks?”
“What’s the professional angle?”
“I don’t know. She may be mixed up in a case I’m investigating.”
“What sort of a case?”
“Suicide. A love-tryst. It’s in the papers,” I said, jerking my hand towards the folded newspapers.
“Never read that kind of crap,” Elgin said. “I look at the foreign news, then study the sporting pages, particularly the horse race stuff. Lots of times you can get a chance for a good gag on a horse race.”
“You don’t read the funnies?” I asked.
“Good God, No. When you have to be comical three shows a night, seven days a week, you don’t want to even think of some guy who tries to be funny every day in a comic strip. I have to be funny. It’s a business. He has to be funny; it’s his business. I sympathize with him too much. What else do you want to know?”
“Suppose this Lucille hangs around your place? How would I be apt to find her?”
“Just by hanging around the dump. I wouldn’t ask any questions, though, if I were you.”
I said, “Here’s a folder of matches from the Cabanita. Is this the latest type you’re using?”
“That’s right. Never have used any other. Only the one folder.”