"They must be tone deaf. What do they do there?"

"Talking and drinking. Once in a while I hear them arguing about stuff when I'm trying to sing. I usually just do a louder number."

"Arguing?"

"Donno about what, I don't pay 'em much mind. Weird-looking bunch. Couple of 'em have that hungry, mad-at- the-world look. Maybe they're communists."

That caught my attention. It might explain a few things about why someone was willing to pay McCallen a couple of grand. Maybe he'd gotten Miss Sommerfeld to join the communist party and instead of love letters the envelope was full of papers proving it. That would break the engagement to her prince fast enough. If there was one thing royalty hated more than rioting peasants, it was rioting communist peasants.

"Does anyone else here know for sure? The staff? The owner?"

"I doubt it. Moe lets 'em have the room so long as they keep buying beer. He doesn't ask questions unless somebody starts busting furniture."

Since this seemed to be the limit of his information I asked him about his music. "Singing tonight?"

"It's early yet. I like to have some kind of a crowd before I interrupt their talking. You still serious about that nightclub?"

"Yeah." But I could tell he wasn't quite buying it yet. I wanted very much to convince him what I had planned was more than just some kid's ambitious pipe dream. "Look, how would you like to meet Bobbi Smythe? She's going to be on the Archy Grant Variety Hour tomorrow night and afterward there's going to be a celebration at the Nightcrawler Club. I'll introduce you."

"I don't know if that's my kind of party-"

"You need to meet her anyway. Once my club's up and running you'll be working together."

He hemmed and hawed until I was tempted to give him a little hypnotic nudge. Then: "Is she as pretty as she sings?

I've heard her on the radio a few times."

"Brother, she's a knock out."

"Well... I think I could be persuaded to-"

"Great, I'll have a paid-up cab outside your store tomorrow at seven-thirty."

He gave me a startled look and chuckled. "You don't want me to change my mind, do you?"

I grinned back. "Nope."

He shook his head and started on the second beer. "This club of yours, where you setting up?"

I gave a shrug. "The best location I can afford."

"Well, you look like you can buy the best. Is it your money or the mob's?"

Maybe I'd been hanging around Gordy and his friends too much. Something of them must have been rubbing off onto me. On the other hand, in these hard times the only people with bucks were the racketeers. "I earned it, and I pay taxes on it." True statements, but both avoided a direct answer about its source.

He nodded, a wise gleam in his eyes. He was on to me all right, but willing to let me keep my secrets. "You got a name for this place yet?"

I'd been sitting on that one for a long time. The name had come to me one night with no effort or thought, yet it struck me as being absolutely perfect. "Oh, yeah. I do."

"Ready to share it?"

I had to grin again, I was so pleased with myself. "Club Crymsyn."

8

"A blues club named Crymsyn?" Waters gave me a c.o.c.keyed smile of wry doubt.

And spelled funny to boot. I figured it'd be memorable, not underwhelming, but he wasn't going to see me falter.

The name was good luck, and I knew it. "The club won't be strictly blues. I'm planning to have in all kinds of music, lots of other talents."

"What? Like magicians and dog acts?"

"Only if they play good music and can sing to it."

That got a chuckle. "Then I'll allow as you just might get away with it."

I decided he wasn't trying to throw a blanket on things, only being innately cautious. He didn't know me from Adam, after all. I could be some crazed eccentric out to impress a stranger before disappearing into the crowd never to return.

There was one sure way to dispel that impression; all I had to do was find the right location to put the joint.

He sipped his beer and we talked about some of the other singers and bands in Chicago that would fit the bill for Club Crymsyn. He'd been to the Shoe Box a few times with friends, and was impressed when I said I knew the owner.

"He has some prime talent playing his place, but I heard Shoe Coldfield himself was a killer," he said.

"That I wouldn't know about. He's always been straight up with me. Pulled me out of a couple jams a while back."

"What kind of jams?"

Sometimes I talked too much. Not wanting to scare him off, I trimmed the complicated and violent past down to essentials. "I had trouble with some guys not unlike this stuff going on with McCallen. Shoe came by and helped peel me off the sidewalk."

He sat back, looking shrewd as Solomon. "There's a lot you're not telling, son."

"When I know you better. And when I have more time. For right now, what I do know for sure about Shoe is that he's a businessman looking after his part of the world."

"But he's still mob."

"Does that make him much different from a banker foreclosing on a widow? He's legal, but it's wrong. Shoe looks after his own."

"Meaning he might shoot the banker but not turn out the widow?"

"Why don't you come meet him sometime and judge for yourself?"

Waters gave a good-natured shrug. "I won't say yes or no."

"Maybe I can bring him here some night. I'd like him to hear you sing."

"What you planning on? Some kind of audition?"

"That's up to Shoe. I can't make promises for him, but I think it'd be a h.e.l.l of a thing to have you playing at the Shoe Box."

"A white guy at a colored place?"

"If Shoe says you're in, you're in. Turn the lights out and your music still hits the heart same as the rest."

He flapped a hand. "Sure thing. Bring him anytime you want, there's no cover, but I don't know if Moe might have a problem with a colored guy coming in here."

I smiled. "I'll have a little talk with him. He won't mind."

"Jeez, boy, but you are sure of yourself."

"That's the best way to go in this town." Of course, it does help to have a hypnotic edge over people. "You know what kind of odds are against you for success with a new club?" he asked.

"I've been getting a pretty good idea from others in the business."

"Getting's not the same as having, and you gotta pardon me if I think you look too young to have much experience for this sort of game."

I nodded, giving him that point. My apparent youth would probably always work against me. I was getting used to dealing with it. "I know, but it's my investment to risk, my dream to bring about. Besides, I know enough to hire people who will be experienced."

"That's half of it, and I wish you luck."

"Hey, if I get artists like you coming in regular, the luck's already there."

He did enjoy hearing sincere praise. I got the impression he didn't receive a lot of recognition for his work. Maybe he'd become a fixture in this place, and no one paid him much mind because he was so familiar a sight. That would change if I had anything to do with it.

Time was short; I told Waters I had to leave and would see him tomorrow, then paused long enough at the bar to ask after McCallen. Neither the waiter nor bartender had anything useful to share about him. He came in often, usually had two or three beers along with his friends, all gathering to talk in the back room. The waiter thought they did a lot of speech making. Often when he went to check on them there would be one man reading aloud from some papers.

They seemed to take turns, then argue with each other about whatever they'd heard. The waiter never paid attention to them beyond the fact that they were lousy tippers. It was a sliver more of information than Escott had, and it reinforced Waters's communist theory. Whether it proved to be useful remained to be seen.

And that was as much as I wanted to put into the McCallen problem for the present. For the rest of the evening I had better things to do.

Bobbi looked like one hundred percent nitro when she greeted me at the door wearing a blazing red dress with a band of gold sequins that spiraled up around her figure from hem to neck. It had some kind of matching-scarf things trailing from the shoulders that she wound in a repeat spiral over her arms and acted like sleeves. If she slipped them off her arms, they trailed gracefully down her back. She said it was another Adrian, and I asked if dresses came in models like cars.

"That's the designer's name," she told me, getting her big coat with the high fur collar.

"So's Ford's Model A."

She shook her head and gave a little eye roll, like I'd never really get it. "Adelle helped me pick it out when we went shopping. I've decided to wear it for the broadcast."

"It's too bad only the studio audience will see. If everyone else could you'd be a star in the first minute. Now, how do I get it off you?"

"Later, Mr. Caveman. Take me to some food, I've been singing all morning and helping Adelle with the dancing all afternoon. I'm completely starved."

I took her to one of our favorite dinner-and-dance places. She wasn't in the mood for dancing, not after all the rehearsal, but the food-she a.s.sured me-was marvelous. Last night I'd called Escott's answering service and told them to make an eight-thirty reservation for me. There shouldn't have been a problem as they were usually very efficient, but something had gone wrong. I went through variations of my name and even Escott's with the hostess, who gave me an apologetic smile and said she did not have any of those in her book for this evening. A table might be made available in another hour if the gentleman and lady would care to enjoy c.o.c.ktails in the bar.

She had a glacial face, but I melted it with a long, steady look. "I think if you'll check just one more time you'll find my name listed." I released her from my concentration and waited.

She checked, and her smile got very sunny, indeed. She led us in triumph to a table overlooking the dance floor and saw that we were comfortably seated.

Bobbi managed not to break up until the woman was gone. "It's spooky when you do that-but so convenient," she whispered.

"Saves on bribes, too." A waiter with an accent soon swooped in and out with Bobbi's order. I asked for only a cup of coffee, which seemed to worry the man, but I didn't owe him any explanations. To make things look all right, Bobbi occasionally sipped from the cup so he could refill it. She was very well accustomed to the fact I would never be able to join her in eating a normal meal. On the other hand, what we often shared between us afterward more than made up for it.

"Won't that keep you awake?" I asked, indicating the coffee.

"I thought you preferred me alert."

"And kicking, but you need your rest for tomorrow."

"Then you'll just have to get me to bed early and exhaust me."

"Whew. I'll do my best."

"As always."

The restaurant had a live orchestra, not as brash as the Melodians, but good enough to get the point across for listening as well as dancing; just in case she was up to it, I asked Bobbi if she wanted to take a turn around the floor, but she shook her head.

"We can find another floor to turn around on at my place," she said, then attacked her steak like she had a grudge against it.

When we went out to eat I usually did most of the talking to start with until she'd worked her way past the food.

She would nod and make encouraging sounds to hold up her part of the conversation, then have a turn later. I told her about the Sommerfeld case and the possible communist angle.

"You make it sound sinister," she said. "Lots of my friends are communists and they're perfectly nice people."

"Even Madison Pruitt?"

"Okay, there are exceptions to everything, but it's more of an intellectual choice for them. He and the others aren't exactly building bombs in an attic."

"I doubt he even knows how to change a lightbulb."

"Oh, be fair. He's not dumb, just irresponsible."

"Which is curable, only he doesn't want to be cured."

"Maybe you could ask Madison if he knows anything useful for your case. He'll be Marza's date at the party."

"How peachy," I said.

Madison Pruitt was heir to a whopping fortune and a devoted communist-very distressing to his rich and straitlaced family. He was as pa.s.sionate about his politics as he was short on social graces. He knew about manners, but eschewed them as concessions to the decadent oppressors of the workers of the world. In a young man a little rebellion is to be expected; in a guy well past thirty it's downright embarra.s.sing. But Bobbi had a point, so unless something changed in the case tonight, I'd have a talk with him tomorrow. I don't know what her accompanist, Marza, saw in him, unless it was that fact that she was too intimidating for most men, and Madison was either completely oblivious or immune to her sandpaper personality. Though he had money enough to attract the most determined gold digger, he was fairly oblivious to them as well. His pa.s.sion was for politics and food, often not in that order, depending when he'd last eaten.