The following is a continuation of the April 19, 1949 entry in the Rocky Stone notebooks:
The back rooms of The Gehenna Tavern were dark and dusty as my escort led me through to a set of stairs at the end of the hall. There was a little more energy gathering here, the faint noise of music in the air I had been missing since I stepped in, and perfume. Loads and loads of perfume of the kind you can get on the cheap and think you've gotten a bargain until you smell it.
“You don't talk much,” said the dame clinging to my arm.
“Would you like me to talk more?”
“Maybe,” she said, as we both stepped on the first stair leading up. “My name's Gloria. What's yours?”
“John,” I said, “John Mungo.”
The music got louder and it came from the out-of-tune piano I thought about earlier. At the top of the stairs a red-headed dame dressed in next to nothing blew by, sending a tidal wave of perfume tumbling down. I coughed quietly into my free hand and my new friend Gloria patted my back gently, motherly, as we arrived the top and I looked at the real Gehenna Tavern.
A dozen eyes watched me from various stations inside the common area, a red velvet room complete with a bar and a large, round wooden table, suitable for a game of poker. Two of those eyes came from the lady in charge, a plump woman of middle years who sat in a tall chair along the side and checked the guestbook to make sure the accounts were up-to-date. Four more came from the bartender, who could have been the downstairs bartender's twin, and the piano player, a fifteen-year-old kid with a cigarette stuck to his mouth. The other six came from three women, none of them pretty enough to speak of, who tried to cover up their hard living with makeup and blush. They looked at me like hungry lions, ready for the kill. No sign of Marjorie. The police picked her up in this very town and this was the only place in town she could be picked up in, yet she wasn't here.
The woman at the side of the room slid off her chair and looked me over from top to bottom. “What're you s'posed to be?” she asked in a scratched voice.
Gloria's arm tightened around mine. “He's all right, Miss Lola.”
“Uh-huh.” She shook her head. “Just a weary traveler on his way west. Did he tell you that one?”
I pulled out two of the tens Pastor Hosea had given to me and held them within a foot of Miss Lola. She snatched them from my hand in such a hurry I didn't see her move. “Relax,” I said. “I'm no cop.”
Miss Lola sniffed. “What makes you think I'm worried about the cops?” She waved us off. “Don't stand around here, go on.”
I felt the pressure of Gloria's arm squeezing in as she pushed me forward, into a room at the end of the hall. She slapped at a switch and dim light filled the room. The walls were covered in newspaper and there were no windows. A pole stuck out of the wall and a small series of dresses were hanging on it. An old davenport sat on the side of the room, and in the center was a bed, topped by a relatively-new blue quilt. She pushed the door closed, wrapped her arms around me and pressed her head into my chest.
I held her there for a while, maybe a few minutes, but so help me the only thing I could think about was that poor sap who paid me to find his wife. How could he love a woman when all she had given him was a kick to the teeth? Maybe it was good thing I hadn't found her right away. There was no way on God's Earth she was going to come back to him willingly, and even if she did, she'd just turn away again, leave him again. Yet he still loves her.
Over her shoulder I saw something on the dresser in the corner, a framed picture of a man and a woman, standing side by side, smiling at the camera. Relatives, maybe parents. And I thought, why would she keep that there, where those eyes could look out on this room and all that goes on?
“It may sound like a line,” said Gloria without a trace of that phony accent, “but you're different. I'm sick and tired of those sweaty cowboys who think the measure of a man is how much he can shove a poor animal around.” She removed her hat and pushed forward, lips first, and scored a direct hit. It felt like she meant it, too, and that made me think more than anything else. I shoved her back, and she looked confused by it. “What...?”
“Don't take it the wrong way, kid, but I'm not here for the pleasant company. I need your help. My real name is Stone. Rocky Stone. I'm an investigator from Los Diablos and I'm looking for someone, a woman.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and rested her face in her hands. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
I felt sorry for her. Gloria wasn't a bad sort, and she was pretty enough. In fact, if it weren't for the clothes and the hair and all the things that were supposed to make a man feel a certain way, you'd think she was the girl next door with a heart filled with buttercups and daisies. Maybe she was once.
I took a seat on the couch. “Marjorie Gomer is the woman's name. She married a man out west and now he's looking for her.”
Her eyes opened wide and looked right into mine. “Mitch,” she said, quietly.
Who is Mitch? Find out next week in The Lost Love, Part 8!
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