Red lit another cigarette with the butt of his old one. His hands were shaking. “We get hotshots, they come and go,” he said. “We got one guy who comes and goes, but comes regular when he’s in town. A good-lookin’ guy named Eddie. That’s the only handle I got on him, honest. He picks up here all the time.” Red backed away from me again.
“Is he here tonight?” I asked.
“Naw, he comes in when it’s quieter. A real smoothie. Flashy dresser. He’s not here tonight, honest.”
“Okay. Listen to me. You’ve got a new regular here. Me. What nights are you off?”
“Never. The boss won’t let me. I work six to midnight, seven days a week.”
“Good. Has Eddie been coming in lately? Scoring?”
“Yeah. A real smoothie.”
“Good. I’ll be coming back, every night. As soon as Eddie comes in, you let me know. If you try to tip him off, you know what’ll happen.” I smiled and held the three reefers under his nose.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Good. Now get out of here–I think your customers are getting thirsty.”
I closed the bar again that night. No Eddie.
First thing Sunday morning I went to a drugstore in Santa Monica that did one-day photo processing. I left four newspaper photographs of Maggie Cadwallader, telling the man, who shook his head dubiously, that I wanted his best reproduction blown up to snapshot size, six copies by six o’clock that evening. When I waved a twentydollar bill under his nose, then stuck it in his shirt pocket, he wasn’t so dubious. The photos I picked up that afternoon were more than adequate to show to potential witnesses.
Red was nervously polishing a glass when I took a seat at the bar early Sunday night. It was sweltering hot outside, but the Silver Star was air-conditioned to a polar temperature.
“Hello, Red,” I said.
“Hello, mister . . .”
“Call me Fred,” I said magnanimously, sliding the blowup of Maggie Cadwallader across the bar to him. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
Red nodded. “A few times, yeah, but not lately.”
“Ever see her with Eddie?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Slow house tonight, eh?” I said, looking around the almost empty bar.
“Yeah. Daylight saving time kills it this early. People don’t think it’s right to drink before dark. Except booze-hounds.” He pointed toward a bloated couple mauling each other on one of the lounge sofas.
“I know what you mean. I had a friend once who liked to drink. He said he only liked to drink when he was alone or with people, in the daytime or the nighttime. He was a philosopher.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got shot.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s a shame.”
“Yeah. I’m going to have a seat on one of those sofas facing the door. If our buddy shows up, you come and let me know, capische?”
“Yeah.”
By eight o’clock the bar was filled to half its capacity, and by ten the sustained darkness had me feeling like a bat in the Carlsbad Caverns.
At around eleven o’clock, Red walked over and nudged me. “That’s him,” he said, “at the bar. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt.”
I motioned Red away and sauntered past the man on my way to the men’s room, taking the stool next to him when I returned and catching a heady whiff of his lilac cologne. I called to Red loudly and ordered a double Scotch, in order to get a reaction from Eddie. He turned toward me, and I committed to memory a handsome face, delicate and arrogant at the same time, well-tanned, with curly, rather long brown hair, and soft, deep-set brown eyes. Eddie turned back quickly, engrossing himself in his martini and the woman sitting next to him, a skinny brunette in a nurse’s uniform who was courteously feigning interest in his conversation.
“. . . So it’s been good lately. The trotters, especially. Don’t believe what you read. There are systems that work.”
“Oh, really?” the brunette said, bored.
“Really.” Eddie leaned into the woman. “What did you say your name was?”
“Corrinne.”
“Hi, Cornnne, I’m Eddie.”
“Hi, Eddie.”
“Hi. You like the ponies, Corrinne?”