“Never saw her before.” Sam looked at Tony. “You?”
Tony shook his head. “No, but Mel has a longer assembly line of girls than Ford does cars.”
Which was exactly why she shouldn’t be here. She couldn’t possibly know the dangers of working here. Walter’s back teeth clamped tight. If she was working here, she was living here. Upstairs. His blood ran cold at that thought.
Sam started explaining the reason he’d called. He and Tony wanted to put on a boxing exhibition show and needed advice on the legal side of things. Walter listened, and answered their questions, and kept one eye on the woman the entire time. He didn’t even know her name, so in his mind, started calling her Blondie.
She was still working the room, serving drinks, when Sam and Tony must have had all the information they needed from him, and called it a night. He bade them goodbye and stayed at the table, still keeping an eye on Blondie. Other girls had brought their table the drinks Sam and Tony had consumed. He was still nursing the only one she’d brought him. The ice had long ago melted. He didn’t care. He wasn’t drinking it. Just using the glass as something to twirl between his fingers.
There were no laws governing speakeasies; most were open twenty-four hours, and it was up to the owners what sort of hours the workers put in. Walter glanced at his wristwatch. Almost two-thirty in the morning. He hadn’t stayed up this late in years, but would sit right here until her shift ended.
A large portion of the patrons had long ago left. Some with cigarette girls on their arms as they walked out the doors; a few left in stumbling, ossified stupors, and others, like Sam and Tony, left alone, had simply been there to enjoy the nightlife but had jobs to go to in the morning.
So did he. Had to be at the courthouse by eight.
The room was almost empty by the time she made her way toward the bar with a full tray of drinks still strapped around her neck. He knew how that would play out. That the drinks would be dumped, and she’d be out the money for them. He stood and sidestepped, cutting her off before she made it to the bar.
“I’ll buy those.” He laid a bill on her tray, one that would pay for twice that many drinks.
Exhaustion showed on her face. He could understand why. She’d not only delivered drinks all night, she’d spent a fair share of time declining offers of more. More than once he’d wanted to grab her and haul her out of the door. The only thing that had stopped him was her. She’d handled herself well. That left him in a quandary. If he did haul her out of here and she came back, she’d get the wrath of Mel, the owner. If he didn’t, there would soon be a man she couldn’t fend off. Or worse.
“No.” She nodded toward his table. “You still have a drink, and I don’t need you or anyone else doing me any favors.”
“It’s not a favor.” He picked up a drink and downed it, nearly choking at the rotgut whiskey. If it hadn’t been so watered down, he wouldn’t have been able to swallow it. “I’m thirsty,” he said despite his burning throat.
“You’re...” She shook her head.
She thought he was crazy. He might be. “I’m Walter Russell,” he said. “Who are you?”
She huffed out a tired-sounding sigh. “It doesn’t matter. Take your money and leave.”
He took another drink off her tray. “Not until you tell me your name.”
She glanced around and then sidestepped to the table he’d sat at all night. There, she lifted the final four drinks off her tray and set them on the table. Tucking his bill beneath her ashtray, she nodded. “Enjoy your drinks, Mr. Russell.”
Walter grasped her arm, but the bartender, with yet another cigarette hanging out of his mouth, cleared his throat. The glare the man gave Walter said he’d be in charge of anything that happened from here on out.
That could include her leaving with him, for a price, Walter understood that. He also understood it wouldn’t be her choice. But she’d be expected to do whatever he wanted or she’d lose her job.
She, however, probably did not understand that.
Walter let that settle for a moment before he set the drink in his hand on the table and then pulled a calling card out of his suit pocket and laid it on her tray. He gave her and the bartender a nod before he turned about and left.
Every step got harder and harder to take, and by the time he was at the door, he was ripped right down the middle. She wasn’t his problem, but she had no idea what she’d gotten herself into.
He did, and would do something about it.
Shirley lay on the lumpy cot in the room she shared with six other cigarette girls and stared at the calling card. It was shiny, like the pages of a magazine, but harder, stiff and small, just a few inches long and a couple inches wide. And the writing on it was gold.
Gold.
She’d never seen a calling card before, but had heard about them. The other girls had said she better not let Mel learn about it. He was the owner of CB’s and would be mad because when a man gives you a calling card, he wants to see you outside of the basement.
That wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t want to see Walter Russell again. Not inside or outside of the basement.
Under his name it said The Russell Firm. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but there was also an address and a phone number on the card. A phone was very expensive. Not even the Swaggerts could afford one. They sure as heck didn’t have calling cards, either.
One of the other girls, Alice, rolled over, and Shirley quickly tucked the card beneath the one and only cover on the bed, a scratchy wool blanket.
Alice didn’t open her eyes, but she did pull her blanket over her head to block the light shining in through the window.
It was the middle of the night, but the city, so full of lights, was never dark. The building next door had a big cigarette billboard on top of it, and the lights on the billboard lit up the room all night as brightly as the sun did all day.
Alice had been tricked into working at Cartwright’s, too; so had Rita and all the other girls sleeping on the cots.
Shirley pulled her arm out from under the blanket and stared at the calling card again. It was him. The same man who’d almost run her over. She’d felt as if he had run her over tonight when she’d recognized him sitting at the table with a man that was as skinny as a match. The second man at the table not only had hair the color of a carrot, but he looked like one, too. A big one. Wide at the top and skinny on the bottom.
Walter wasn’t skinny or fat. Just somewhere right smack in the middle. He was nicer to look at than the other two, too. Actually, he was nicer to look at than any other man in the room. Any other man she’d met since arriving in California. Mayhap in her whole life.
His eyes. There was something about them that made it hard to look away from him. It was as if they were sad or lonely. No—lost. That’s what they looked like. Like he was lost.
She felt that way herself. Lost. With nowhere to go. All the fancy talking Roy Harrison had done turned out to be nothing but baloney. He’d hoodwinked her, that’s what he’d done. It hadn’t taken long to figure that out, but it had been too late.
Oh, he’d gotten her an audition where she’d sung her heart out, and had jumped with joy when she’d been given the job. Roy had even given her a fancy dress to wear and had shown her an apartment. Not this one. That one had been a real apartment. With nice furniture and a bathroom complete with tub, right next to the kitchen with a stove and refrigerator. This one, the one she was staying in, only had two rooms, and both of those rooms had nothing but cots in them.