James Chase - Miss Callaghan Comes to Grief

Lu cursed under his breath. He stood thinking for a moment, then nodded. “Listen, tell her I’m a cop when she comes down. I’ll take her to Grantham’s apartment and he must decide what to do with her. When I’ve got her out of the way, continue your beat. You don’t know anythin’ about the killing, get it? The longer it remains under cover the better. It’ll give Raven a chance to get set.”

O’Hara nodded. “This’ll cost me my job if it comes out,” he said with a sly look.

“Don’t worry your head about that,” Lu said impatiently. “We’ll look after you. I’ll see you get somethin’

extra for this.”

“See that it’s worth havin’,” O’Hara said, and went back into the hall.

Sadie came down as he entered. He touched his cap respectfully. “An officer of the Homicide Squad is outside with a car, lady,” he said. “You go with him. I gotta do some phoning.”

He led her out to Lu, who was standing by his car. Lu raised his hat.

“This is Mrs. Perminger,” O’Hara said with a broad grin. “She’s the little lady who saw the guy I told you about.”

Lu opened the car door. “I’m sorry to get you up at such an hour, Mrs. Perminger,” he said, “but you’re goin’ to be a big help to us.”

Sadie thought he wasn’t at all her idea of a plain−clothes cop, but she got in the car, because she was scared that they’d think she had something to hide. Lu got in beside her.

O’Hara stood watching the car drive away. He spat into the street. “I wonder what they’ll do with her?” he thought. “Nice little dame,” and he turned and resumed his patrol with measured steps.

June 6th, 2.30 a.m.

CARRIE O’SHEA ran the only high−class brothel in East St. Louis. There were plenty of other such joints in the town, but none of them came anywhere near Carrie’s for class.

For one thing, it stood opposite the District Attorney’s office. That alone gave it class. Then Carrie, who ran the house, saw to it that she got a fresh batch of girls each month. That wanted some doing, but Carrie knew variety is the spice of life and her clients never knew from one visit to the next who they were going to find there.

She organized the change by shuffling the girls round from the various other houses, ruthlessly selecting only the young fresh ones and refusing anything that the bookers thought they could hoist on to her.

It was only when Mendetta began his Slaving racket that Carrie really ceased to worry. Now, through a careful system, she was getting new girls pretty steadily. Of course, a lot of them made trouble, but that didn’t worry Carrie a great deal. She knew how to handle girls who refused to fall in line.

The system worked this way. Trained thugs carefully combed the town for suitable girls. The qualifications that they considered suitable chiefly consisted of having no relations, being down on their luck, or to have committed some petty crime that the bookers could use as a form of blackmail.

There wasn’t a great deal of material to fit these qualifications, and after a while the supply dried up. The bookers got a little more daring. They’d go after girls who wanted jobs as models. They persuaded them to pose in the nude, take photos secretly, and then threaten to show the photos, which had mysteriously become exceedingly obscene by clever faking, to narrow−minded parents. This succeeded for a time.

Although Carrie had ceased to worry about the supply of girls, the bookers were continually having headaches. They got well paid for new material, but they were constantly having to think up new ideas to ensnare unsuspecting girls into the racket.

Finally they got so bold that they’d kidnap girls and hand them over to Carrie to break in. This meant a lot more work for Carrie to do, but she realized their difficulties and she entered into her new task with philosophical fortitude.

Some of the girls were so popular that she kept them in the house as permanent workers. They had been well broken in, they got good money, and they showed no inclination to leave. Such were Andree, Lulu, Julie and Fan.

They were sitting in the big reception−room waiting patiently for Carrie to tell them to go to bed. The last client had gone over half an hour ago. Carrie made a habit of having a word with her girls before turning in for the night: to hear any complaints and to hand out punishment to any of them who hadn’t given satisfaction.

The girls were all dressed in flimsy knickers, black silk stockings and high−heel shoes, with big showy garters to keep their stockings in place. They had all thrown wraps round their bare shoulders as soon as the front door closed behind the last client.

Carrie thought it was all very well to sit around half naked when the guys were in the house, but when they had gone she liked to see her girls look decent.

Lulu reached for a cigarette, yawning. “Gee!” she said. “Am I tired? I’ve gotta get my hair fixed tomorrow morning and I don’t know how I’ll make it.”

Fan, a red−headed girl with a superb figure, but a hard, almost brutish face, gave a short metallic laugh.

“You don’t want to bother about that,” she said. “Get a guy to fix it for you. Do it on the exchange system.”

Lulu frowned at her. “You’ve got a dirty mind,” she said. “If I had a mind like yours I know what I’d do with it.”

Julie, a little silver blonde, broke in: “Save it, you two. Let’s have a little peace once in a while.”

Lulu shrugged. “I’m not startin’ anythin’,” she said. “I’m just tellin’ her she’s got a dirty mindso she has.”

Julie went on, “I had the nicest and queerest guy tonight. Gee! The dough he had! When he got upstairs he was terribly shy”

Fan groaned, “We’ll now listen to a leaf out of Julie’s life story.”

Lulu said, “Go on, Ju, don’t mind about her. Maybe she’s got the crabs.”

Julie pouted. “Well, I guess I won’t tell you if you don’t want to hear,” she said. “Only he was such a nice guy−”

Fan sneered. “I know those nice guys,” she said. “I’ve had one or two. What did he tell you? The one about his wife being an invalid?”

“Can’t you leave her alone?” Lulu demanded fiercely. “What’s the matter with you tonight?”

Andree, a tall brunette with long tapering limbs, gave a little giggle. “My Gawd! I saw that guy Julie’s talkin’ about. He looked as if his Ma was waitin’ outside for him.”

Julie nodded. “That’s the one. He gave me ten bucks as soon as he got in the room”she put her hand over her mouth and spluttered with laughter“in an envelope. Can you tie that? He was so genteel he gave it to me in an envelope.”

Even Fan smiled.

“Well, go on,” Lulu said. “What was he like?”

Julie shook her head. “He didn’t do anythin’. When I started to undress he nearly had a fit. What he thought he’d come up there for I can’t guess. He said, all embarrassed, that he just wanted to talk to me. And would I put on a wrap as he thought it was tough for a girl like me to sit around as I was. Believe me, you could have knocked me over with a mangle.”

“Yeah?” Fan said bitterly. “I guess I’d sooner sleep with a guy than listen to him talk. A guy who likes talkin’ about it can go on for ever.”

“Oh, he talked about all kinds of things. He was ever so interestin’,” Julie said stoutly. “I liked the guy. He didn’t once ask me why I lived here, or if I liked it, or any of the other crap guys always ask.”

Fan got bored. “Gee! I thought you were goin’ to tell us somethin’ worth listenin’ to,” she said.

“Didn’t I tell you she’d got a dirty mind?” Lulu chimed in triumphantly.