I said, “If I need to find you, where do I look?”

“Here. Then the Mariache Bar on South Tenth. An old buddy of mine owns it, he’s not in the mob. I’ll leave word for you with him if I have to move. His name’s Maldonado.”

I nodded and went.

Chapter Five

Mike Farrell, I thought as I drove away, was a vexing character. If I’d still been a cop, and if I’d had time and facilities, I’d have taken him downtown, booked him as a material witness and sweated him a while to find out how much of his story was true.

I took back streets to get out of Las Palmas, found a phone booth in a shopping center and called the Executive Lodge. I asked for Mrs. Chittenden and when I heard Joanne’s voice I said, “Me. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but I think our secret is out. Just after you left, I went to get some newspapers and a paperback, and a man saw me in the lobby.”

So that was how Madonna had found her—pure blind luck, and all of it bad. I said, “You recognized him?”

“I think so. What’s more important, I think he recognized me.”

“Is he hanging around?”

“He may be. If he is, he’s being discreet—I haven’t been pestered since I came back to the room.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got my gun, you may as well just stay put a little while.”

“Simon, how is—”

“It going? We’re in trouble up to the hairline. Sit tight and I’ll see you in a little while. Have room service send you a sandwich.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then get loaded,” I said. “Keep the door locked and keep the gun handy, right?”

She said dismally, “All right, Simon,” and I hung up with a vivid tactile image of the rich warm tone of her flesh, the flash of her eyes.

Either way, I had to take a risk. If I tried to spirit her away and hide her someplace else, I’d probably have to ditch a tail and that would make Madonna angry. This way, leaving her where she was, he might get the idea we weren’t ducking out on him. It might persuade him to keep his word and give me free rein at least for a little while.

I looked up Dodson, Judy, in the phone book, found a number listed under Dodson, Judith, and let it ring eleven times. No answer. After a minute’s thought I looked up the Atomic Bar and when the bartender answered I said, “Is Phoebe there?”

“Who wants to know?”

“A friend. Tell her Simon says.”

“Tell her what?”

“Simon says.”

“Christ,” he said, and then: “Hang on, I’ll see if she’s here.”

There was some background noise and then Phoebe Willits’ whisky baritone voice roared out of the receiver at me:

“Simon, you bastard.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’d have to check that with Dad and Mom and they’re not here right now. Phoebe, I’m looking for a girl.”

“Isn’t everybody? Listen, you son of a bitch, if I wasn’t old and fat and ugly, somebody’d be looking for me, too.”

“Nonsense. You know you’re beautiful.” In the eyes of, say, a bull moose; I didn’t state that part out loud but she got the inference. I said, “The girl’s name is Judy Dodson and she was seen now and then with Sal Aiello. I tried her listed phone but nobody’s home.”

“She doesn’t work for me,” Phoebe said. “You working on the Aiello murder, Simon? I thought you quit the flat-feet.”

“I did. It’s personal.”

“Personal, sure. Hang on a minute, Simon, I’ve got a couple of my girls here, I’ll ask them.” I waited three minutes. Phoebe was the prototype for all the whisky-madam movies ever made; she was a lusty type, more character actress than madam. She worked a string of girls out of the Atomic Bar, which was a joint barely one step up from the pavement; she was devoted to espionage—a fact known not only to the police, who used her as an informant, but also to all the crooks, who played the game with her by allowing her to overhear harmless bits of information. She adored the game—maybe it gave her a sense of importance.

She barked into the phone in her parade-ground voice: “Big fluffy blonde girl?”

“I guess so. I haven’t seen her.”

“I’m told a girl like that works at the Moulin Rouge, Judy something. That help?”

“I hope so.”

“Simon?”

“Unh.”

“You sound like you’re in trouble. Anything I can do?”

“No,” I said, “but I love you. Thanks much. So long, Phoebe.” I hung up and went to the Jeep and drove north through a Mexican slum. It was a littered adobe neighborhood where the kids on the streets watched you go by with big blank eyes and studied contempt; they grew up quickly down here. Anything and everything was for sale, you only had to know where to go and what name to ask for. I’d driven a prowl car beat here for six months and now, driving through, I saw familiar faces. One or two nodded with reserve; the others pretended I was a stranger.

I reached the Strip and turned east, and drove a chromium-neon mile to the Moulin Rouge. It was a long flat building set back a hundred feet behind a wraparound parking lot. The huge sign at the curb was fifty feet tall and shaped like a neon-outlined champagne glass, with the name of the place spelled across it in script. A row of palm trees broke up the austere roofline, running across the front.

There was a thin scattering of cars on the lot. I parked by the side entrance and went in that way; otherwise I would have had to walk through the dining room to get to the bar, and my lack of tie and jacket might have provoked an argument with the major-general at the front door.

Just inside the door I stopped to give my eyes time to dilate. The place was dim; after the hot brilliance outside, it seemed pitch dark. The side door gave entrance through a dirty narrow corridor with doors on either side; the smell, essence of men’s room, told you where you were even if you couldn’t read the signs.

When I could see through the gloom I went along the short hallway into the bar room. The place was bathed in an unpleasant sea-green light, muted and indirect. The gaudy juke box played bedroom music with heavy bass thumping; loners sat on bar stools drinking steadily, staring straight ahead with drowned faces, and at a round corner table three floor-show ponies sat in the leather booth nursing pink drinks with their smiles glazed on, waiting to be picked up by men from the bar. The three fastened the smiles on me when I appeared.

The barkeep was a minor hoodlum I knew from the old days. If he was all broken up by the proprietor’s death he made no show of it. When I slipped in between two empty bar stools and hooked an elbow on the bar, he came down to me and gave me a mildly inquisitive look. I said, “Too bad about the boss.”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t giving away a thing, that bird, so I decided to change my tactics. Instead of asking him any questions I went straight back to the corner booth and said to the three girls, “Any of you know how I might find Judy Dodson?”

They got busy looking at each other. Two blondes and a redhead, none natural. One of the blondes was over-stuffed and ripe, barely tucked into a spare, tight dress which lifted and bunched her abundant soft breasts. She said, “Who are you?”

“Name of Simon Crane.”

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

“No. Are you Judy Dodson?”

“What of it?”

I gave her a closer inspection. When she looked up, the light caught the surfaces of her eyes—the most startling pale blue, as if she had gem crystals in the irises. It was easy to see why Aiello had picked her: she was a big, splendid animal, brimming with glandular equipment that suggested—by nature or design—that her sucking needs had made of her a container that had to be filled.

I said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

One of the other girls said, “Are you a cop?”

“No.”

Judy Dodson said, “What do you want to talk about?”