The Palace was a supper and dance club in the uptown night club and theater district. It consisted of one enormous room with a U-shaped bar in its center. Along the side walls were railed platforms containing tables and chairs. Low steps led down to the bar area at intervals. A stage at the front, elevated to the same level as the platforms, served for the floor show and doubled as a dance floor between shows.
The tables were pretty well filled with dinner customers, but there was no one on the dance floor because the orchestra hadn’t as yet started to play. When I walked in, at eight-thirty, they were just tuning up their instruments.
I found Carl seated at the bar sipping a lemon soda.
“She just came in,” he said. “The bartender says she’d be in dressing room three behind the stage. I thought I’d better wait for you.”
“O.K.,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Backstage the dressing rooms numbered one and two had stars on their doors, one presumably for the M.C. and the other for the feature act. Number three turned out to be the chorus girls’ dressing room.
The door was wide open. Glancing in, I saw a row of eight girls, all blonde, seated before a long dressing table which ran the length of the room. They all wore frilly pink skirts, pink dancing shoes and pink, rhinestone-studded halters. That is, all but two wore them. A couple hadn’t yet gotten around to putting on their halters.
The girl who had come down to headquarters to bail out Benny Polacek, and then had walked out on him when she learned he was a pusher, was second from the door. When I said, “Hi, April,” all eight girls glanced at my reflection in the long mirror above the table. The two halterless girls went right on making up without paying me any more attention than that casual glance.
April French, in the act of applying eye shadow, paused to examine my reflection. There was a mixture of recognition and puzzlement on her face, which led me to believe she recalled seeing me, but couldn’t remember where.
She said, “Be with you in a minute, honey. I’m almost done.”
Withdrawing into the hallway, I leaned against the wall. Carl remained standing in front of the door, but a little back so as to be inconspicuous, staring into the room.
“Tuck your eyeballs back in your head,” I told him.
Ignoring me, he continued to stare.
After a few moments April French came out into the hall. Nearly unclothed she had an even nicer figure than when she wore a dress. Carl seemed to admire it too.
She glanced at Carl, then flashed small white teeth at me and asked, “What is it, honey?”
I said, “Can you spare a few minutes?”
She carefully looked me up and down. “What time is it, honey?”
Glancing at my wrist watch, I said, “Twenty-two minutes until nine.”
“Then I’ve got twelve minutes, Browneyes. It’s all yours.”
Carl gave me an amused look, and I stared back at him coldly.
I said to the girl, “Apparently you don’t remember me. We met at police headquarters about a week and a half ago.”
“Oh,” she said, her smile fading. “I remember you now. I thought you were a stage-door John.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll come back some night when I’m off duty, but tonight it has to be business.”
“What was your name again?” she asked.
“Matt Rudd. My partner here is Carl Lincoln.”
She nodded to Carl, then turned back to me. “I suppose it’s about Benny, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“I figured somebody would be around asking about him. I saw in the paper where somebody pushed a few holes in him. But I haven’t seen or heard from him since the day I walked out on him at police headquarters.”
“He never tried to get in touch with you?” I asked in surprise. I had gotten the impression that Polacek had something of a crush on her, and it seemed unlikely that he wouldn’t have at least tried to talk himself back into her favor.
She lifted her bare shoulders in a shrug. “He may have phoned my rooming house. The landlady never remembers messages. I didn’t bother to check with her, because I couldn’t care less. We were finished the minute I found out what he was. I wouldn’t even bother to spit on anybody in that business.”
Carl was still casting glances through the open door of the dressing room whenever he could tear his gaze away from April. But he seemed to have at least part of his mind on the dialogue between us, because he said in a preoccupied voice, “Who’s Charlie?”
The girl looked at him without understanding.
“He means the guy who phoned you that Benny was in jail,” I said.
“Oh, Charlie Kossack. He’s just a friend of Benny’s.”
“Cossack, like in the Russian cavalry?” I asked.
“No, with a K.”
A man in a tuxedo came from dressing room number one, stuck his head in the door of the chorus girls’ dressing room and called, “Ten minutes, girls. Everybody in the wings.”
“That means me too,” April said. “Why don’t you come back after the last show? We can go somewhere and talk over a drink.”
“All right,” I said. “Meanwhile, how do we get in touch with Charlie Kossack?”
“I don’t know his address. I’ll tell you everything I know about him when you pick me up.”
“What time’s the last show?”
“It’s over at two A.M. Give me ten minutes to take off my paint.”
“O.K.,” I agreed.
The girls were streaming out of the dressing room and heading toward the wings. April fell in at the end of the line.
“See you later, honey,” she said, throwing me a kiss. “Come back alone.” Then she called to Carl, “No offense, honey, but three’s a crowd. Glad I met you.”
“Yeah, but don’t come back,” Carl muttered dourly.
As the girls disappeared into the wings, Carl looked me up and down in imitation of the girl’s examination. “Shall we phone a report to Lieutenant Wynn, honey? My, you have big brown eyes.”
“I have big bony knuckles, too,” I told him. “And they’re about to close your beady little eyes.”
“I tremble in my boots,” Carl said. “Let’s find a phone.”
There was a booth at the front of the club next to the cloak room. I dialed headquarters and asked for Homicide. Lieutenant Wynn answered.
“This is Matt Rudd, Lieutenant,” I said. “We talked to the French girl long enough to learn she’s willing to unload anything she knows about Polacek. She broke up with him when she discovered he was pushing horse, you know, so she isn’t in a mood to hold anything back. They called her away to get ready for the first show before we could get much out of her. I have a date to pick her up after the last show and get the story.”
“When’s that?” he asked.
“Two-ten A.M.”
“Hmm. Did you get anything at all from her yet?”
“The name of the guy who phoned her that Benny was in jail, who presumably is also the guy who was driving him the night we set him up. It’s Charlie Kossack, spelled with a K. She doesn’t know his address.”
“You check the phone book?”
“No, sir.”
He grunted in a tone suggesting that he was burdened with an assortment of idiots as assistants. “You might have done that at least, Rudowski. But never mind. I’ll have Carter check both the phone book and the city directory and also run the name through records. You say you’re going back to see the girl at two A.M.?”
“Two-ten.”
“Well, I guess you can knock off until then,” he said generously. “Tell Lincoln he can go home from there, and I’ll have Carter log you both out. We pulled a short trick today, so I want you both to log in at eight-thirty in the morning.”
“I’m going back to work at two A.M.,” I objected.
“Work, hell. You could wait until the first show ends and talk to the woman between shows. You ought to be able to get everything she knows in twenty minutes. I know how you operate, Rudowski. You like to combine business with pleasure. You want to interview this woman at your apartment. You have my permission to play it any way you like, so long as you get results, but you’re not tomcatting on force time.”
I didn’t say anything, and after a minute he said, “You still there, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir,” I said wearily. “See you at eight-thirty A.M.”
When I stepped from the booth, I said to Carl, “You can go home. Carter will log us out.”
His pleased expression evaporated when I added, “We log in at eight-thirty in the morning.”
“Eight-thirty! We going to work day and night?”
“Who cares?” I asked. “The quicker we wrap this up, the quicker Wynn returns to Homicide. I’m willing to work around the clock.”
After considering this, Carl nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. See you tomorrow, Matt.”
He went out the front door. I lingered a few minutes until the first show started. April was second in line when the chorus danced out. I watched long enough to decide she was as talented as the other girls, which wasn’t very talented, then I went home, too.
I set the clock for one-fifteen, and got to bed at nine-thirty. I had a feeling that before the night was over I might need my strength.
A ringing sound woke me from sound sleep. I started to grope for the alarm clock when the ringing stopped. Lying half awake, I was puzzling this over when another ring sounded. Sitting up, I lifted the bedside phone and listened to the dial tone.
Then I came a little more awake and realized it had been the doorbell.
I sleep raw. Switching on a lamp, I found my robe and padded barefoot into the front room, switching on another lamp in there. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was five of ten. My late caller had allowed me exactly twenty-five minutes of sleep. I opened the front door.
Beverly Arden threw me a dazzling smile. I still wasn’t entirely awake, but I saw that tonight she was wearing a red nylon blouse with wrist-length sleeves, a matching red cotton skirt and red pumps. Her dark hair was tied by a red ribbon into a pony tail.
“Did I get you out of bed?” she asked.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I wasn’t doing anything but sleeping.” I let her in and shut the door behind her.
She glanced around the room with feminine interest, crossed to peep in the bedroom, then recrossed the room to the kitchenette. She found and turned on the light in there.
Walking to the kitchenette door, I asked, “Thinking of renting the place?”
“I was just curious to see how you live. It’s a very nice little apartment.”
With a grunt, I turned and padded into the bedroom and on into the bathroom. Following, she stood in the bathroom doorway and watched me throw water in my face and brush my teeth. In the mirror I saw my hair was rumpled from sleep. I drew a comb through it.
“I was bored,” she said. “Norman went to bed early and left me sitting all alone. I looked up your address in the phone book and decided to drive over. Do you mind?”
“Would it do me any good?” I asked. “Like a drink?”
“Not particularly.”
I moved toward the door and she remained where she was, in the center of the doorway. I stopped six inches away. She looked up at me with a glint of challenge in her eyes.
By now I was totally awake. “Like another searching party?” I inquired.
Immediately she raised her arms to grip the door jamb on either side and simply waited. It seemed to me a little silly to go through that routine again, but if she got a kick out of acting the part of a passive young girl being investigated by some curious young boy, I was willing to go along.
She stood perfectly still, staring at me with her lips slightly parted as I unbuttoned her blouse. Finding a button at the side of her skirt, I loosened it, and slid down the side zipper.
As before, I knelt and lifted one unresisting foot at a time, this time pulling off her shoes as she stepped out of the skirt. But when I stood and attempted to push the blouse off her shoulders, she again blocked my efforts by refusing to lower her arms.
Some women have strange quirks. If it was essential to Beverly’s sense of modesty to retain one garment, even though it covered nothing but her arms and back, I wasn’t going to make an issue of it.