He got up, reached the door and held onto the knob to steady himself. The belly flop had finished wrecking his plate. The teeth flanged out of his bleeding mouth. They looked like tusks, and Hoke looked like a wounded wild boar sticking its wet red snoot out of the bushes.
“I’ll be back, Moran. This time I got your license, next fast one you pull I’m gonna put you behind bars.”
His threat didn’t worry me one damned bit, then. I’d be out of the state just as fast as I could kick the Chevvie across the Valley and over the bridge at Yuma.
The instant Hoke pulled his freight, I beat it next door, yanked the tape out of the recorder, fed it into an envelope I had already stamped and addressed to J. Moran, General Delivery, Yuma, Arizona. I put in a fresh tape, left the recording rig there . . . kind of a going-away present for Jean Orlando.
I went down the hall, dropped the envelope in the mail chute; then I scuttled back into my office, remembering something. I’d pitched Hoke’s sap behind the desk when I’d needed both hands unloading his gun. With a grin I scooped it up . . . kind of a souvenir of Elmer Hoke to hang on my next wall!
I pocketed the sap, and just as I arrived at the door on my way out the dame in the yellow dress arrived on her way in.
“You in charge here?” she asked.
I looked at her. She was worth looking at. Not her face so much . . . anyway, not right now, her mop of brunette hair being disheveled, and nothing but streaks of lipstick left. What caught my eyes was below the scanty fur cape she wore slung over her shoulders which fell inches short of meeting the low scooped bodice of the yellow dress that was cut down to where it revealed her half naked. The yellow cloth fitted the undercurves of her breasts glove-tight, hugged what I guessed to be a 21-inch waist, then traced the shape of her hips. The whole effect was the same as a silk nightie in a high wind.
“Yeah, I’m in charge.” My mouth suddenly tasted shriveled and itchy.
“I need some help, trying to locate a missing man.”
“Sorry, I’m closing up here.”
I could go to the pen for taking on a new case since Hoke had my license revoked! I knew it, and still my voice couldn’t have sounded too firm about closing up. Anyway, the girl had her gold mesh purse ready and jawed open. She pulled out two twenties and a ten that she shoved at me.
“I want you to try and find him tonight if possible, and if it takes longer I can raise some more money.”
For ten times her fifty bucks I wouldn’t have risked it . . . but the brunette’s curves floating up out of her dress-top gave me the damndest, wild, crazy feeling. Half an hour ago, I’d been so low I could have cared less. The pasting I’d handed Elmer Hoke, though, left me all worked up and really sensitized to a woman.
“Well-l . . .” I pulled the door shut behind me. I couldn’t let her inside the place with all that blood over everything. And now we were standing so close that I breathed in her smell of mingled perfume and perspiration. There was something so physical about that, it tied me in knots. “Put away your money . . . but, look. I’ll take you out, buy you a drink, listen while you tell me all about it.”
We went downstairs, around to the parking lot. I turned the Chev up Fifth, switching on the rheostat control to get the maximum amount of power from the green dash panel lights. I liked the effect of the deep shadow it painted between her breasts, bringing out their rounded depth and fullness. I kept looking at her, nodding, tossing in a question now and then while she talked.
She told me her name, Shona Pell, and said she worked as an instructress at the Sheldon Studio . . . and that much of her story I could believe. It explained the clothes she wore, the smell of perspiration which excited me. I already knew that on Friday nights the studio threw its weekly social dance for its pupils.
She said, “Working practically next door, right across the street from your detective agency, naturally I thought of you when Mr. Westburne disappeared.”
“Westburne.” I had her give me the missing guy’s full handle, Alan J. Westburne. Had her spell it out. “What is he, a relative or your boy-friend?”
“Oh, no, there’s nothing personal between us in any way. He’s one of my students at Sheldon’s. Wednesday and Saturday are his regular nights for the private lessons, and last Wednesday for the first time he didn’t show up. Then tonight he missed a Friday night dance. I’ve an awful hunch something’s wrong, and I’m trying to find out what could have happened to him.”
If I’d had a beard, by this time I’d have been laughing behind it. “What are you handing me?”
“Handing?”
“A dance-mill teacher willing to spend fifty bucks because some jerk skips a couple of his ten easy lessons . . . think I’ll swallow that story?”
Shona Pell fired back, “You never took any dance instruction yourself, did you?”
“No, I just get out on the floor and let nature take its course.”
“You would, you’re the confident type. But if you’d ever signed up, you’d find twenty-five dollars for the ten easy lessons is just the beginning. You’d learn a waltz turn and a few uncomplicated steps. We girls at Sheldon’s can’t afford to teach any more than that. We’re paid one dollar a lesson, and out of that we have to pay for our nylons and shoe leather and dry-cleaning and even our records.”
“Records?”
“Phonograph records, the music to dance to. You know, the lessons are in little private rooms, just the girl and the student and the phonograph in there.”
I grinned. “Sounds like a tit-for-two proposition, one I could really go for.”
“No, I’m not in the business of peddling sex. . . . First thing I’m selling is the advanced rumba course. It costs a hundred dollars, and I’m paid a fifty percent commission.”
“A lot of chumps fall for it?”
“A lot of them go on from there and buy the annual membership. That’s fifty-two private lessons and fifty-two social dances, priced at three hundred and the commission is a third.”
“Maybe I’m in the wrong racket. I should hire a hall, employ some fast-talking girls on a commission basis.”
Shona gave her brunette hair-do a toss: “It’s not what you think, Mr. Moran. This isn’t a racket. It’s legitimate.”
“No law against it, huh?”
“Men spend three hundred and more a year on golf club memberships, don’t they? And buy lessons from the pro, besides the balls and caddy fees and tips. They do it because golf is fun and an asset to a man professionally and socially. Well, so is dancing fun and a professional and social asset.”
“Uh . . . put it that way . . .”
“I’m no cheap little sex tramp. When I go into that private room with a student, I’m a professional woman selling a commodity that has value. A lot of my students are mature men having business contacts with women, and you’d be surprised how dancing helps. I don’t mean just getting by in the crowd, as the average man does when he barely manages to stay off his partner’s feet. I’m speaking of the man who can lead a woman out into the ballroom, instantly adapt himself to her degree of skill, then take command of the situation with so sure a touch that she unhesitatingly surrenders herself to his direction.”
Of course I knew it was what she told all the boys, her sales talk, but even at that Shona’s silky voice did things to my skin.
“What was Westburne taking?” I asked. “The ten easy lessons, the advanced rumba deal, or the king-sized annual course?”
“There’s still another one. Just as golf clubs sell life