She wore a Pierrot costume, at least from the waist up. Under the high conical white hat her fluffed-out hair might have been red. Her eyes had laughter in them. I won’t say her face was unspoiled. I’m not that good at faces. But it wasn’t like the others. It hadn’t been kicked around. Somebody had been nice to that face. Perhaps just a tough mug like Steve Skalla. But he had been nice. In the laughing eyes there was still hope.
I threw the others aside and carried this one over to the sprawled, glassy-eyed woman in the chair. I poked it under her nose.
«This one,» I said. «Who is she? What happened to her?»
She stared at it fuzzily, then chuckled.
«Tha’s Steve Skalla’s girl, Lou. Heck, I forgot her name.»
«Beulah,» I said. «Beulah’s her name.»
She watched me under her tawny, mangled eyebrows. She wasn’t so drunk.
«Yeah?» she said. «Yeah?»
«Who’s Steve Skalla?» I rapped.
«Bouncer down at the joint, Lou.» She giggled again. «He’s in the pen.»
«Oh no, he isn’t,» I said. «He’s in town. He’s out. I know him. He just got in.»
Her face went to pieces like a clay pigeon. Instantly I knew who had turned Skalla up to the local law. I laughed. I couldn’t miss. Because she knew. If she hadn’t known, she wouldn’t have bothered to be cagey about Beulah. She couldn’t have forgotten Beulah. Nobody could.
Her eyes went far back into her head. We stared into each other’s faces. Then her hand snatched at the photo.
I stepped back and tucked it away in an inside pocket.
«Have another drink,» I said. I handed her the bottle.
She took it, lingered over it, gurgled it slowly down her throat, staring at the faded carpet.
«Yeah,» she said whisperingly. «I turned him in but he never knew. Money in the bank he was. Money in the bank.»
«Give me the girl,» I said. «And Skalla knows nothing from me.»
«She’s here,» the woman said. «She’s in radio. I heard her once on KLBL. She’s changed her name, though. I dunno.»
I had another hunch. «You do know,» I said. «You’re bleeding her still. Shamey left you nothing. What do you live on? You’re bleeding her because she pulled herself up in the world, from people like you and Skalla. That’s it, isn’t it?»
«Money in the bank,» she croaked. «Hundred a month. Reg’lar as rent. Yeah.»
The bottle was on the floor again. Suddenly, without being touched, it fell over on its side. Whisky gurgled out. She didn’t move to get it.
«Where is she?» I pounded on. «What’s her name?»
«I dunno, Lou. Part of the deal. Get the money in a cashier’s check. I dunno. Honest.»
«The hell you don’t!» I snarled. «Skalla —»
She came to her feet in a surge and screamed at me, «Get out, you! Get out before I call a cop! Get out, you
«Okay, okay.» I put a hand out soothingly. «Take it easy. I won’t tell Skalla. Just take it easy.»
She sat down again slowly and retrieved the almost empty bottle. After all I didn’t have to have a scene now. I could find out other ways.
She didn’t even look towards me as I went out. I went out into the crisp fall sunlight and got into my car. I was a nice boy, trying to get along. Yes, I was a swell guy. I liked knowing myself. I was the kind of guy who chiseled a sodden old wreck out of her life secrets to win a ten-dollar bet.
I drove down to the neighborhood drugstore and shut myself in its phone booth to call Hiney.
«Listen,» I told him, «the widow of the man that ran Shamey’s when Skalla worked there is still alive. Skalla might call to see her, if he thinks he dares.»
I gave him the address. He said sourly, «We almost got him. A prowl car was talkin’ to a Seventh Street conductor at the end of the line. He mentioned a guy that size and with them clothes. He got off at Third and Alexandria, the conductor says. What he’ll do is break into some big house where the folks is away. So we got him bottled.»
I told him that was fine.
KLBL was on the western fringe of that part of the city that melts into Beverly Hills. It was housed in a flat stucco building, quite unpretentious, and there was a service station in the form of a Dutch windmill on the corner of the lot. The call letters of the station revolved in neon letters on the sails of the windmill.
I went into a ground-floor reception room, one side of which was glass and showed an empty broadcasting studio with a stage and ranged chairs for an audience. A few people sat around the reception room trying to look magnetic, and the blond receptionist was spearing chocolates out of a large box with nails that were almost royal purple in color.
I waited half an hour and then got to see a Mr. Dave Marineau, studio manager. The station manager and the dayprogram manager were both too busy to see me. Marineau had a small sound-proofed office behind the organ. It was papered with signed photographs.
Marineau was a handsome tall man, somewhat in the Levantine style, with red lips a little too full, a tiny silky mustache, large limpid brown eyes, shiny black hair that might or might not have been marceled, and long, pale, nicotined fingers.
He read my card while I tried to find my Pierrot girl on his wall and didn’t.
«A private detective, eh? What can we do for you?»
I took my Pierrot out and placed it down on his beautiful brown blotter. It was fun watching him stare at it. All sorts of minute things happened to his face, none of which he wanted known. The sum total of them was that he knew the face and that it meant something to him. He looked up at me with a bargaining expression.
«Not very recent,» he said. «But nice. I don’t know whether we could use it or not. Legs, aren’t they?»
«It’s at least eight years old,» I said. «What would you use it for?»
«Publicity, of course. We get one in the radio column about every second month, We’re a small station still.»
«Why?»
«You mean you don’t know who it is?»
«I know who she was,» I said.
«Vivian Baring, of course, Star of our Jumbo Candy Bar program. Don’t you know it? A triweekly serial, half an hour.»
«Never heard of it,» I said. «A radio serial is my idea of the square root of nothing.»
He leaned back and lit a cigarette, although one was burning on the edge of his glass-lined tray.
«All right,» he said sarcastically. «Stop being fulsome and get to business, What is it you want?»
«I’d like her address.»
«I can’t give you that, of course. And you won’t find it in any phone book or directory. I’m sorry.» He started to gather papers together and then saw the second cigarette and that made him feel like a sap. So he leaned back again.
«I’m in a spot,» I said. «I have to find the girl. Quickly. And I don’t want to look like a blackmailer.»
He licked his very full and very red lips. Somehow I got the idea he was pleased at something.
He said softly, «You mean you know something that might hurt Miss Baring — and incidentally the program?»
«You can always replace a star in radio, can’t you?»
He licked his lips some more. Then his mouth tried to get tough. «I seem to smell something nasty,» he said.
«It’s your mustache burning,» I said.
It wasn’t the best gag in the world, but it broke the ice. He laughed. Then he did wingovers with his hands. He leaned forward and got as confidential as a tipster.
«We’re going at this wrong,» he said. «Obviously. You’re probably on the level — you look it — so let me make my play.» He grabbed a leatherbound pad and scribbled on it, tore the leaf off and passed it across.
I read: «1737 North Flores Avenue.»