The following continues the April 21, 1949 entry in the Rocky Stone notebooks:
Gloria and I stood outside The Pink Slipper wondering what would be worse: to see the Reverend tossed out the door on his ear or to never catch sight of him again. I knew Max Blank well enough to know that the latter was more likely than the former and that meant getting inside somehow. Only a fool would build the kind of place with a reputation like The Pink Slipper without a back door, and Max was no fool. He'd have plenty of ways out in the event that the cops got wise to him. I took Gloria's arm and we slid into an alley alongside the building.
The Pink Slipper had been something else in a previous existence, something industrial most likely, due to the presence of a small side dock along the alley, boarded up years before. A gunmetal gray door stood next to the dock, a sturdy iron gate covering it. The few windows set high along the wall were shielded by bricks and mortar. No chance here, so I peeked around to the back of the building.
That story was a little different. Max indeed had a back door to the place. Problem was, it was just as heavily guarded as the front. A beetle-browed junkman twice the size of Big Jerry stood there with his back resting against the wall, his arms folded across his massive chest, waiting for a dummy like me to come along just so he could bounce my head against the pavement for practice.
“I could distract him,” Gloria whispered.
“I'll bet you could,” I replied, “but there's got to be a better way.”
And it didn't take long to spot it. At the other end of the alley, a small man in an overcoat walked along the sidewalk from the direction of The Pink Slipper, holding his head low. He spotted us and my eyes met his head on. It was too much for him and he quickly jerked his head around and shuffled off. I knew that look. He was guilty. And what was more, he wasn't guilty about something he did, but something he was about to do.
We ran to the corner and watched the man as he continued up the street. He turned his head on a swivel, watching in every direction to make sure no one could see him. The section of town he walked to was a series of houses, all innocent-looking things you might see in any neighborhood. He checked the number on the side of a mailbox and continued forward, stopped at the next mailbox, and turned up that house's walkway. I followed him at a distance and Gloria followed me, until he turned his head again and we had to duck behind a parked car. He didn't see us. At the door, he knocked three times, then paused, then two more knocks. The door was opened by a feminine arm, and the man scurried inside.
Gloria whispered: “Suppose the neighbors know?”
I nodded. “But they know enough about Max to keep quiet about it. Come on.”
We slipped in behind the house. A set of concrete steps led up to a back door, and next to that was a window with a light shining from it. Better than nothing. We made our way up to the door and opened it, and as soon as we did, another beefy bull was there to greet us.
“Got a problem, Mac?”
I winked at him and tossed my head toward Gloria. “New girl.”
“Boss didn't say anything,” he groused.
“When does he ever?”
He couldn't argue with that logic and nodded sadly. He had been sitting at the kitchen table reading a racing form when we came in and he returned to it, leaving us to explore the house unencumbered.
At the end of a long hallway I could see the lady in charge as she paced along the floor with a cigarette smoldering at the end of her long fingers. Fortunately, the house was built with a staircase at each end so we could make it upstairs without having more questions to answer. Five rooms greeted us on the second floor, and four of them had “Do Not Disturb” signs on the doors. We disturbed the remaining door.
They kept the rooms in good order, with quiet, comfortable furniture you would see in anybody's house. Her room contained a fireplace mantle too clean to be used for real, an armchair with a floral pattern and a touch of wear at the edges, and a large, inviting bed covered by a homey, crème-colored quilt. The fireplace mantle held only one decoration, a five-inch tall statue of a cow, depicted in bronze. The bed had its own decoration: the figure of a woman in a sheer nightgown, draped over its surface with elegant precision. She faced forward, her blonde-haired head disappearing into a pillow, her right leg tucked in to her body and her left extended, accenting the hem in her white stockings. The sound of the door opening aroused no interest in her. All she could do was heave a quick breath and push her face out of the pillow.
Marjorie looked at me with dead, moist eyes. All she could see was a man, another man who wanted something from her, the same something she had been giving her entire life. She had been crying for a long time and her make-up had long since made a run for it, but her vanity made the effort and swiped at her lips and pushed her hair into place. It wasn't until Gloria stepped in after me that she figured it all out.
“You,” she said, in revelation.
Can Rocky set Marjorie Gomer free and restore her to her husband? Tune in to this very same inter-net location next week!
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