Red Iron Nights

34

The Crystal Chandelier, as the name implied, pretended to have class. Hill girls would be just what the management ordered. I headed there first. I was in and out in the time it took to slurp a beer. I didn't learn anything except that somebody there knew my face and didn't like what I did for a living.

I did better at the Masked Man. I knew somebody there.

The name of the place was appropriate again. People donned masks before they showed themselves inside. Likewise, those who worked the place. The Masked Man catered to a select clientele.

The guy I knew was a bouncer, a breed nine feet tall with muscles on his muscles and more between his ears than anywhere else. I downed three beers before he understood what I wanted to know. Even then he wouldn't have talked if he hadn't owed me. And what he had to say wasn't worth hearing. Only one Hill-type gal worked the Masked Man these days, a blond so screwed up she scared the owners. He hadn't seen a brunette in weeks. The last had quit her second night. But he did remember her name, Dixie.

"Dixie. Right. That's useful. Thanks, Bugs. Here. Have a beer on me."

"Hey, thanks, Garrett. You're all right." Bugs is one of those guys who are always amazed when you do something nice, no matter how trivial. You'd think after a while the whole world would be nice just to watch him be amazed.

I drifted over to the Passionate Witch. The Witch was strange, even for the Tenderloin. I never quite understood the place. A lot of girls worked there, mostly dancing, mostly without wearing much. They were very friendly. They'd crawl all over you if they thought you might stuff a mark into their pants. They were available, but not to everyone. There was a kind of bid board. The girls worked the crowd, getting guys drunker and randier and driving the bidding up till closing. A crafty girl could pull more with one trick there than some who worked all night the traditional way.

Whatever will separate a mark and his money. It's there in the Tenderloin.

"Ever see so many bare boobs in one place, Garrett?"

I jumped. You don't expect your friends in those places.

I hadn't found one. "Downtown. Been a while. Nope. Never. And I shouldn't be seeing some of these here now."

Downtown Billy Byrd was the guy they'd had in mind when they'd decided somebody looked like a ferret. He was a walking stereotype. He looked slimy-sneaky and was. He spied on people, sold information to anyone who'd pay. I'd used him myself, which is how he knew me.

Downtown wore a lot of junk jewelry and flashy clothing. He carried a long-stemmed ivory pipe. He tapped its mouthpiece against his teeth, pointed it at a woman. "Case in point?"

"Right. Bigger don't always mean better."

"She was something before gravity set in." Downtown Billy Byrd was the kind who'd think gravity sets in. "You working, Garrett?"

I didn't have much use for Downtown's type but I stayed polite. I wasn't spending much. It'd help if I stuck with somebody whose cheapness was accepted. Else I might get asked to take my questions to the street.

"Would I be here if I wasn't?"

"Half the guys here would say that if I asked."

I understood, then, what Downtown was doing in the Passionate Witch. He was working. Looking for faces he might sell later. I told him, "I'm working."

"Something maybe I can help with?"

"Maybe. I'm looking for a girl. A special kind. Brunette, seventeen to twenty-two, five-feet-two to five-ten, long hair, reasonably attractive, high-class."

"You don't want much, do you? She got a name?"

"No. It's a type. I'm interested in any woman like that working the Tenderloin."

"Yeah? How come?"

"Because some creep is snatching them and cutting their guts out. I want to find him so I can explain why we don't consider that behavior socially acceptable."

Downtown eyed me a moment, weasel mouth open. "Come on over here, Garrett. I got a table with some pals."

I followed but feared it was a mistake. Byrd ran his mouth steadily. How long before word spread? I wouldn't catch anybody if the girls hid out and the bad guys lay low.

Downtown led me to the worst table in the dive. You had to send carrier pigeons to the bar. Waiters got lost trying to get back there.

Downtown's two pals looked sleazier than he did. Cheap flash must have been in, along with mustaches.

They had bought their night's supplies before lighting.

"Sit, Garrett." There was a spare chair. "Shaker, give the man a beer."

"Screw you, Byrdo." Shaker had a palsy. He had a face like a rat's. It was loathing at first sight. "What you giving away our beer?"

"Don't be a butthead, Shaker. Business. The man might maybe be in the mood to buy. We got something he might want."

Shaker and Downtown glared at one another while the third man contemplated the secrets inside a beer bottle. Then Shaker pushed a bottle my way. It was the old-fashioned stone kind, not used by commercial breweries anymore. Which meant the beer inside was cheap stuff from a one-man cellar operation, fit only for the poorest of the poor. My stomach started whimpering before the first blast headed south.

I couldn't be intimidated. We investigators fear no beer. Besides, I'd swilled so much already that it had become hard to care what went down next.

Downtown didn't introduce anybody. Common practice on the street. Nobody wanted anybody to know them. But Downtown didn't bother not dropping names, either. "Garrett's looking for a guy that snatches girls." He looked at me. "Cuts them open, right? The one doing the jobs we been hearing about?"

I nodded, sipped from my bottle, was pleasantly startled. That was damned good for cellar beer. I found the trademark. It didn't match that on the other bottles, so the brewer was putting his product up in whatever came his way. Too bad. I said, "Way I figure it, he grabs rich girls working the quarter for kicks. I expect he scouts them before he grabs them. I want to spot him doing it before he snatches the next one."

Downtown eyed Shaker. "What do you say now, butthead?"

I asked, "There something that I'm not getting, Downtown?"

"One minute, Garrett." He kept looking at Shaker.

"Well?" His minute had flown.

"I figure you got somebody big behind you, Garrett. Some girl's father. Maybe a bunch of them. Somebody what's got more money than sense and is out to buy revenge. Right?"

"Something like that." Downtown's bunch would melt like salted slugs if I told them who was paying.

"Somebody that might pay damned good if somebody handed them the whole thing on a platter?"

"I don't think you can, Downtown. You're shucking me. Running a game. You heard I was asking around. You decided to see if you couldn't rip me off."

Wound a man to the heart. Downtown Billy was in pain. "Garrett! My man! This is me! Your old buddy, Downtown Billy Byrd. I never done you wrong."

"Never was anything in it for you."

"You just being nasty. You know that ain't my style."

He'd never gotten caught. Everything was his style if he thought he could get away with it. "So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. What've you got?"

"I tell you, then I don't got nothing to sell."

"I'm not buying a pig in a poke, Downtown. I've got enough cats already."

His face screwed up into a frown that had to hurt. He didn't understand. In the old days, less-than-scrupulous peasants sold gullible city folks baby pigs in tied sacks. Only when the sacks were opened, out jumped some very unhappy cats.

"All right, Garrett. I got your point. Here's the way it is. Gal like the one you're looking for, name of Barbie, worked here up to last night. Ain't in tonight, you'll notice."

"So?"

"So the bidding went outrageous. Way high. And when it come time for her to deliver her half, two guys come in to pick her up and take her somewhere, not upstairs."

It might be a lead. But I was less than excited. I'd dealt with Downtown before. He'd try to make a mountain out of some molehill and sell it for a fortune.

"You aren't impressing me yet. It isn't unusual for the high bidder to take his prize home. Not even unusual for him not to show his face."

"He showed his face when he was bidding. Scruffy little dink. Like a bum somebody cleaned up, but not much. Definitely not no high roller."

"Was a bum." That was the third man. Downtown grinned. "Dickiebird says he seen the guy before, on the down-and-out. Anyway, it all looked funny. We decided to scout it out. You never know what might be handy to know. Like, here you are already, wanting to know what we saw."

"Maybe I do. What did you see?"

"You want it all for free, don't you? No way, Garrett. We got to live too. You ain't heard enough to know if you want more, then you're gonna have to do without."

I pretended to study it. Then I dug out a few small coins. "I'm interested. But you'll have to talk a lot more than you've done."

Downtown traded looks with his pals. They had to trust his judgment. That put them in a spot I hoped I'd never occupy. I've never understood how Downtown survived his five in the Cantard.

"Going to take a chance, Garrett. Going to tell you more than I would anybody else, but only on account of I know you. On account of I trust your rep for playing square."

"My hair's getting gray."

"Looks to me like it's falling out. Whoa! Touchy!"

"Talk, Downtown."

"Right. Always in a hurry. Here it is. The two guys that come in for Barbie put her into a coach with the dink that did the bidding. Only he'd changed somehow. Gotten spooky. She didn't want to go, but he grabbed her. I thought maybe I'd give her a hand, only the guy's eyes got weird."

"Green?"

"Yeah. Like green fire."

"You're holding my interest, Downtown. But if that's all you've got... "

"Shaker knew one of the guys helped push her into the coach."

"Ah!"

"I don't know him, see," Shaker said. "It's like I seen him around. He's not somebody I pal with, like Downtown. Just a guy I seen around."

"Here's the one that makes or breaks you, guys. You know where to find him?"

Shaker said, "I know where he cribs."

I dropped coins on the table. "I'll be back in a while. I'm going to bring a guy to talk to you. If you put us together with this guy you know, he'll fill your pockets." I was out of there before any of them could respond.