This continues the story from the Rocky Stone notebooks, dated April 18th, 1949:
There are only a handful of places where dancers can make an honest living in Los Diablos, but unfortunately I wasn't looking for any of those. Marjorie Gomer had worked at The Pink Slipper, a place with a reputation longer than a pirate's bed-sheet. (Note: this is another instance of a bad metaphor in the Stone notebooks. No one is sure exactly what the writer meant by this. ed.)
The Pink Slipper was the place to go for a good time, provided you wanted to find it by gambling with money you couldn't afford to lose with a woman who wouldn't give you the time of day without a saw buck. It was the ideal place to look if it hadn't been closed down three years ago due to zoning violations. The owner's name was Max Blank, a skinny runt with a scar sliced across the bridge of his nose from a run-in with a cop's fist. The Pink Slipper wasn't the only place he operated, and five would get me ten Marjorie Gomer would come running back to her old boss as soon as money got tight.
Max worked his operation out of The Blue Chipmunk, a big, hollow den on the west side of town that made The Pink Slipper look like Sunnybrook Farm. They had hot-and-cold running shows from eight until three in the morning in there, each one guaranteed to bring out the wolf in every man, so the least I could do was scan the chorus line if I couldn't get in to see dear old Max. I hadn't seen him since the day I gave him his scar.
It was ten till three when I stopped by. The door was open to let out the night's cigarette smoke and I walked right in to a rehearsal. A series of girls wandered around the stage, holding their backs, collecting their breath before they went on to the next section of music, which was coming from a beat-up old upright piano played by a beat-up old piano player. A young man dressed in white with a red sash around his waist and a red ascot around his neck minced about the girls, whining something about two-and-three-and-four-and-STOP and they ignored him, rolled their eyes. One of them stuck her tongue out at him when he had his back turned. None of the women on stage was Marjorie Gomer.
A voice said “Hey!” and it was directed at me. I turned and saw a big, sweating chunk of a man in a polo shirt steaming across the floor to the place I was occupying. He had that square-headed look of a man who stands outside a joint like this to make sure a cop doesn't filter in. “The show starts at eight, fella,” he growled. “Get yourself moving.”
“I don't go in much for shows,” I replied. “I'm here for Max Blank. He'll be expecting me.”
The big fella pushed his face around so he could look surprised, sending a shower of perspiration all over the place. He said: “Max didn't tell me nothing.”
So Max was there. The big guy wasn't smart enough to tell me he wasn't around. A moment later I proved myself right, because I heard Max's voice say, “What do you want with me, copper?” The behemoth stepped aside and I could see Max Blank had been hiding behind him.
“I just came by for a good time,” I said. “Nice place you got here.”
“Cut it, Stone. I know you,” Blank said, and scratched the spot above his nose. “You got some nerve to come down here.”
I cut to the chase. “Marjorie Gomer. Heard of her?”
Blank looked me straight in the chest. A vein stood out on his thin-skinned forehead and on his neck as he slapped the big guy on the back. “Take care of him, Jerry.”
Make sure you read the next exciting installment of the Adventures of Rocky Stone! Next week: The Lost Love, part 4!
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