you can tell me how to get to Keller’s Hofbrau?”
She turned and cocked her head at me. “What would you be doing there?”
“It’s a club, isn’t it?”
She gigled. “It’s more a ladies’ tea room than anything. I think it used to be a club, long time ago when Keller owned it.”
I buttoned the shirt. “And Keller and the old management are all cleared out, huh?”
She came back into the room and leaned against the dresser. “If it’s a club you’re looking for, Keller is still your man. But his place is kinda hard to get into—it’s illegal you know, and they’re a little skittish right now.” She watched me tie my tie and waited for me to make an offer. I didn’t make one.
She said: “I might be able to get you in, though. I got a friend works there. He’d fix it.”
I grinned at her and took out a ten spot and held it in front of me. “How does it work?”
“You just go in the reg’lar way and tell the jerk at the desk you’re a friend of George’s. I’ll call ’m up.” She took the ten and told me how to get there and how to go in. She went back to the door and opened it and turned around and said:
“Thanks for telling me you had work to do.” She went out and shut the door.
* * * *
THE building was a huge opaque square against the transluscent blue of the night sky. The rain had let up, and there was nothing here but wet darkness and the thick chemical smell of the river. A car came up the long narrow street and lit the face of the building faintly, and I could read the legend across it: “Rudy Milbrunner, Warehouse and Storage.” The car turned into a hole.
I walked down the ramp and came out in a dim-lit concrete basement with a few cars parked in neat rows, and white-marked spaces for a few hundred more. To the right there was an open freight elevator, and by the elevator a desk. The desk had a lot of stuff on it that looked like freight receipts and invoices, and there was a man sitting behind it with a greasy hat on his head looking like a warehouse foreman. He watched me sharply as I walked toward him.
I said: “I’m a friend of George’s.”
“Where’s your transportation?”
“I came in a taxi.”
“Friend of George’s, huh?” He ran suddenly drowsy eyes over my face and picked up the phone. He looked at me some more. He could hardly keep awake. The eyes stayed on my face like two dull and rusty gimlets. He put the phone back on its cradle without calling anybody.
“Okay. Go ahead,” he said without moving his lips.
There was an old man in the elevator, sitting on a beer barrel reading a Western magazine. We went up two floors and stopped. Double doors of frosted glass slid back and I stepped out. The old man mumbled, “Scares ya half ta death, don’t he?” I turned and grinned at him. He winked faintly, closed the doors, and went back down for another load.
* * * *
THE lobby looked like Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip of ten years ago. It was bright, walled in glass brick, and the floors were covered from wall to wall with a heavy sea-foam carpeting. The lighting was indirect except for a colored spot that picked up a uniformed hat check girl and made her look like something you’d like to send the boys for Christmas. She took my hat and coat and was so nice about it I wanted to tell her she could keep them.
The first room off the lobby was for dining and dancing. It wasn’t crowded yet, and empty linen-covered tables were spaced nicely in three tiers around the floor. The walls were glass with murals painted on them limning dancing naked girls, with here and there a check-suited guy with lacy long white pants holding a banjo. Light came from behind the glass.
At 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