In a few moments the secretary came in and put a thick album bound in green leather in front of her diminutive boss. He flipped the pages rapidly. The photographs were eight-by-ten glossies, in clear acetate sleeves, with the pertinent information about each one on the facing page.
He stopped at one, studied it, held Vangie’s picture beside it, looked from one to the other and said, “Just right.” He spun the book around and we stared at it and saw a smiling, clear-faced, brown-eyed Nordic blonde.
“Is this a rib?” I asked him.
He stood up, leaned across the desk, pointed the features out one by one, with an air of great patience. “Shape of the face. High cheekbones. Same type mouth. Same type eyes once Kretoffski gets through with her. How many wigs we own? Maybe two thousand? So relax. Read the stats.”
Miss Merrimay Lane. Twenty-three, Five seven. One twenty-three. Specialty dancer: Interpretive, comedy, acrobatic, tap, chorus, exotic.
“A dancer is best,” Jake said. “Body control. This chick was working on the Beach, then they closed out for the season May fifteen. Let’s hope she stayed put.” He gave his secretary the phone number.
After a few minutes, at the sound of a little musical bong, Jake lifted the phone and in a slower and deeper voice said, “Merrimay, sweetheart! Would you be free for a little daytime one-shot?” He listened, winked at me, and said, “Darling girl, don’t you know by now that Uncle Jake will squeeze the client for the final peso? No, dear. Not dancing. No audition required. So wrap something around it, precious girl, and put it in a cab and hustle it on down here to my office. Twenty minutes? You are such a delight, I mean it, dear.” He hung up and spoke into the box, telling his secretary to get Kretoffski to report to him in thirty minutes.
He looked at me and said, “Boychick, an arm you can have. A leg you can have. But one of my people getting hurt? That’s out.”
“Did you have to say that, Jake?”
“For the record only.”
“She starts work in Lauderdale at eight o’clock Tuesday morning. But I want to take her up there for a briefing tomorrow. There’s an off chance she might have to go with me up to Broward Beach sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday. But that will be it. How does five hundred sound, plus expenses?”
“In January, February, it isn’t such great arithmetic. In June it is a lover’s kiss.”
Merrimay Lane was announced and made an extravagant entrance. She came sweeping in wearing an orange strapless sunback dress, white gloves, purse and shoes, gigantic false lashes, a cloud of spicy perfume, a funny little hat in orange-colored straw balanced atop blonde tresses. She covered space with the effortless ease of the dancer, made glad cries at Jake, kissed his cheek, whirled and looked with pert expectancy at us.
“The giant there, darling girl, that is Mr. Travis McGee, a very personal dear friend who I would trust with all six of my lovely daughters; if you start thinking anything is strange about what he wants done, you shouldn’t worry. And his associate, Mr. Meyer. What I can say is this beautiful young girl is one of the hardest reliable workers you want to meet, strictly pro, and no temper tantrums, and she learns routines like lightning. And what it is he wants you to do, sweetheart, I think afterward you keep your mouth shut. I have people waiting to see me on the next floor down, so the talking you can do here. Feel free. Take your time. When Kretoffski comes, Liz will send him right in.
“Maybe if she could hold him until we cover the part he doesn’t have to know?”
“On the way out, I will tell her that.”
When the door shut, Merrimay said, “Well, it certainly sounds terribly mysterious.”
I handed her one of the pictures of Vangie. “You have to be mistaken for this girl, at a distance, a good distance, in daylight.”
She studied it, turned her head this way and that. “Hmm. If my mother had married a Chinese, or a half Chinese. My size?”