Free Find a Victim by Ross MacDonald Page A

was in. He was loaded to the gills, practically blind. Rocco had to put the dry sign on him.”
    “When was this?”
    Her eyes rolled up in thought. “Three-four nights ago. Sunday night.”
    “Was Jo here?”
    “Naturally. He took her home. Or she took
him
home. He wasn’t navigating so good.”
    “What does Jo look like?”
    “Why? Don’t you know her?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Seems to me you’re awful interested in a girl you never saw.”
    “I have a reason.”
    “What reason?”
    “It doesn’t matter. Describe her.”
    “Well, she’s a little slinky brunette, if you like the type. I was a brunette myself at one time, until I got bored with it.”
    “We were talking about Jo,” I reminded her. “I need a complete description.”
    “What the hell for? I thought you wanted to
talk
to me.Incidently, I haven’t got much more time, and you owe me fifteen.”
    “Does Rocco time you?”
    “With a stop-watch, practically.”
    I took a twenty out of my wallet. It frisked away in her hand like a little green lizard with a homing instinct for the top of her stocking. The feel of the money seemed to encourage her:
    “Wait a minute. If you want to know what Jo Summer looks like, I can do better than a description.”
    She started for the door.
    “Don’t forget to come back, Jerry Mae.”
    I won’t.
    She returned with a blue cardboard placard lettered in gold. “This is a picture of Jo—a glamour pose. Rock just took it out of the window yesterday.”
    “The Golden Slipper features gorgeous Jo Summer,” the lettering said. “Songs and sallies, three times nitely, never a cover or minimum.”
    Attached to the placard was the slightly beaten photograph of a young woman. She wore a sequined black evening dress with a neckline that plunged to the waist. Her half-restrained breasts were her most prominent features, but it was her face that struck me: a sloe-eyed face, lowbrowed under straight black bangs, with a sullen passionate mouth. I had seen her mouth a few hours earlier, hungrily pressed to the back of Kerrigan’s hand.
    I looked up at Jerry Mae. “Is she Kerrigan’s girl?”
    She sat on the bed beside me. “Everybody knows that. Why do you think he gave her a job in the place?”
    “What kind of a person is she? Straight or crooked?”
    “How can I tell? She isn’t exactly a mamma’s girl, but I can’t read her mind. Half the time I can’t even read my own.”
    “Who are her friends?”
    “I don’t think she has any friends, outside of Mr. Kerrigan. How many friends does a girl need? Oh yeah, she has a grandfather, she said he was her grandfather. He came in one night last month, a few days after she started. He wanted her to pull out of here and go back home with him.”
    “You wouldn’t know where he lives?”
    “Some place out of town, I think she said in the mountains. I told her she’d be better off at home. I told her if she hung around too long in the cabarets, the wolves would tear her to pieces. I gave her the best advice I could. She’s a little bit of a viper, see, and I tried to talk her out of that. She don’t know what it leads to.”
    “What are you on, Jerry Mae? Horse?”
    “We won’t go into the subject of me. I’m hopeless.” The corners of her heavy red mouth stretched in a bitter horizontal smile. “The kid wouldn’t take my advice, so she’ll have to learn it the hard way.”
    “Learn what?”
    “You don’t get any kicks in this life for free. You pay double for them afterwards, and after you run out of moxy you go on paying anyway. So now she’s in a real jam, eh?”
    “Could be.”
    “Are you a cop by any chance?”
    “A private one.”
    “Snooping around for Mrs. Kerrigan?”
    “It’s a little more serious than that.”
    She bit her lower lip and got lipstick on her teeth. “I hope I didn’t say anything to hurt the kid. She treated me kind of uppity—she thinks she’s an
artiste
, and we’re on different kicks—but I don’t hold that