The following is a continuation of the April 18th, 1949 entry in the Rocky Stone notebooks:
Max turned his back as the behemoth took his cue and stepped forward, punching his fist at me to make sure I knew he meant business. I yelled back at him: “I'm not looking for trouble, Max. I'm just looking for her. Marjorie Gomer.” He turned around and sneered at the mention of her name. “She worked for you, didn't she?”
He spit on the ground, narrowly missing one of the dancers who was resting at a table nearby. It was his own personal floor so I guess that was his own business. “Listen, Stone,” he growled, “if I find that two-bit floozy I'll tear her to pieces with my bare hands. You can have her.”
It almost made me laugh, and if Big Jerry hadn't been standing nearby, maybe I would have. Max Blank treated women as well as he treated the floor, so to hear him talk about one who might have done him wrong sounded good and funny. He stood there in the middle of the floor and plotted his next move, and a second later he screwed up his face and decided. He came charging back to me and sat at the nearest table, pausing only to push a stray dancer out of his way. “You wanna talk?” Blank said. “Then let's talk.”
I sat across from him and looked straight into those beady little eyes of his. He was serious. He had to be, because whatever it was she did to him made him hate her more than he hated me. I asked: “When did you see her last?”
“Two weeks ago. When that sky-pilot of a husband kicked her to the curb she came here. We were old friends, Marjorie and me, if you get my meaning.”
Yeah, I got his meaning, but I didn't want to think about that too hard. “She was here a good long while, then.” I reasoned. “She's been out on her ear for at least ten months.”
Blank's eyes opened slightly from the normal slits. He laughed. “You're working for the guy, aren't you?”
When he said that, Big Jerry stepped forward and slipped his hands in his pants pockets so that his jacket would come open just enough to show me the rod he was carrying in his holster. Blank waved him off.
“What difference does it make if he hired me or not? He had money. I do a job. What made her go?”
He spit on the floor again, and this time with feeling. “She says she needed an advance on her salary, so I says sure and hand over the dough. What I don't know is she's carrying on with the kid who mops the floors and they're gonna take it on the lam, see? I come home and her clothes are gone, her toothbrush is gone and I'm down a grand. How's that for a kick in the head?”It was a kick in the head, all right. Not only did she disappear, but she did it with a chunk of his money, and I knew Max well enough to know he didn't care about her as long as he got his money back. It had been two weeks. Max must have been looking for her himself but he hadn't found her, so she was pretty well out of plain sight. It was a kick in the head, a punch in the throat, and a knee to the unmentionables.
“So,” Max continued, “the Reverend Whats-his-name is looking for her. She steal from him?”
“More than you know,” I said, and stepped toward the door. If I was going to find this dame I was going to have to start looking everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
“You know, Stone,” said Blank to my back, “if you find her first, I'm going to do to you what I'm going to do to her.”
I turned. “I'm not your type,” I said, and walked out.
Be sure to read the next installment of The Adventures of Rocky Stone! Next week: The Lost Love, Part 5!
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