Scam

“Is that it? Can I go now?”
    I put up my hand. “Just a couple more things.”
    “A couple?”
    “Yeah. First off, what’s your name?”
    “Oh,” she said. She blushed somewhat. I assumed it was the realization I knew her only as Marla Melons. “It’s Lucy. Lucy Blaine.”
    “And your address?”
    She held up one finger. “Huh-uh. That you don’t get. I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. I don’t give out my address or my phone number. You want me, you call my agent.”
    “Actually, that was the other question,” I said. “How do I reach your agent?”
    “Her name’s Shelly Daniels. She has an office on Eighth Avenue. I’ll give you the phone number.”
    She didn’t have to look it up. She had it memorized. Her dancing agent. I wondered if I’d asked for the number of her legitimate agent, if she’d have had to look it up.
    It occurred to me, Christ, was I getting old and cynical.
    I pushed back my coffee cup, picked up the bill. “Well,” I said, “shall we go?”
    She shook her head. “Huh-uh. We don’t do anything. I sit here and you go.”
    “Is that really necessary?”
    She grinned. “You think you’re the first guy tried to follow me home? Forget about it. You go out there, you hail a cab, and you go. I’m no dummy. You leave first.”
    She was no dummy.
    I left first.

16.
    C RANSTON P RITCHERT SOUNDED PEEVED. “I told you not to call me here.”
    “I know, but I got something for you. Can you talk?”
    “What do you mean, can I talk?”
    “Is it safe to talk on the phone? If not, can you come to my office?”
    “Not this morning. I’m up to my ears in work. Can’t this wait?”
    “Sure. I’m sorry I bothered you. Just wanted to tell you I found the girl.”
    I hung up.
    I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t resist. The guy was being such a prick.
    The phone rang ten seconds later. I picked it up, said, “Hastings Detective Agency.”
    “God damn it,” Pritchert said. “You hung up on me.”
    “I thought you didn’t have time to talk.”
    “Don’t be an asshole. You say you found the girl?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Who is she? What’s her story?”
    “You want this over the phone?”
    “Not really, but I don’t have time to run over there. So give it to me fast. If I start talking business, it means someone walked in.”
    “Okay,” I said. “The girl’s name is Lucy Blaine. She works as a topless dancer under the stage name Marla Melons.”
    “What!”
    “That’s right. If you’d like to catch her act, I can take you to the bar. Anyway, you’re absolutely right about it being a setup. She was paid five hundred dollars to have drinks with you.”
    “She was what?”
    “She was paid to have drinks with you in the bar. Her instructions were to keep you there until seven o’clock that night.”
    “Keep me there?”
    “So she says. She was to hang out in the bar, meet you, get you to buy her drinks, and keep you busy until seven o’clock. After which she simply left.”
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Pritchert said. “That isn’t what happened at all. I told you. One moment I’m drinking with this girl, the next I wake up on someone’s front steps.”
    “She said you might have followed her out.”
    “Followed her out?”
    “Yeah. When she left. She said you were pretty drunk, but she thinks you might have followed her out of the bar.”
    “She doesn’t know?”
    “No. According to her, seven o’clock she went out the front door, never looked back.”
    “What about pictures?”
    “Pictures?”
    “Yeah, pictures. Did anyone take any pictures?”
    “Wait a minute. What are you getting at, pictures?”
    “Don’t be a jerk. I mean compromising pictures. While I was so drunk I don’t remember, did anyone take pictures of me with the girl?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “You didn’t ask her?”
    “Why the hell would I ask her that?”
    “Are you kidding? I told you I was being set up. A compromising picture would be the icing on the cake. Hell, you were the one who brought it up, for Christ’s sake. Saying if someone wanted to embarrass me, that’s how they’d do it. Send a picture to all the stockholders. Isn’t that what you said?”
    “Yeah, but I meant racy pictures. Pictures with your pants down. Compromising stuff. Just sitting in the bar with the girl isn’t going to do it.”
    “Oh, really? I happen to be a married man.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Yeah, that’s right. So how does it look