Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

A lot of things hadn’t been here three years ago — including the Bamboo Room and the lush young blonde on the bar stool next to mine.

Bars like the Bamboo Room are a dime a dozen, but the blonde was something else again. I’d taken a good fast look at her when she first came in, and a couple of even faster ones in the bar mirror, and then I’d tried to get interested in the old fort again. No use looking at candy if you haven’t got the price.

She said, “You’re not very sociable, Mr. Drake.”

She couldn’t have surprised me more if she’d hit me on the head with a rum bottle. I turned around to face her, and cocked an eyebrow to indicate she had the advantage.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—”

She laughed, and suddenly all the sunshine was not out in the Square. “That’s all right. I was just teasing. I saw you checking in at the West Indian, and I asked Charley Boxer who you were.” She had a soft, throaty voice that smiled right along with her gray-blue eyes. “You don’t look much like a private detective, do you?”

“Don’t I?” I said, and realized I was gaping at her like an idiot.

Most times I can do more about a pitch from a pretty girl than gawk at her. But not now. This girl was the end. I didn’t know what the minimum requirement for street clothing was in St. Thomas, but she was wearing it. She had a body that would have looked good in anything, and in skimpy blue halter and shorts it looked almost too good to be true. And her hair wasn’t just yellow, I noticed; it was a pure yellow, like rich warm butter.

“Charley said you were down here for a vacation,” she said.

I nodded, and got my eyes back in my head. “Couple weeks. Are you a friend of Charley Boxer’s, Miss...?”

“Lanier. Evelyn Lanier. Yes, you might say I’m a friend of Charley’s.” I got the impression that the thought amused her.

For some reason, I felt ill at ease. It wasn’t just her beauty, or the fact that I couldn’t understand why I should suddenly be so tongue-tied when a pretty girl made a pitch at me. It was something about the atmosphere in the bar. And then it came to me that the blonde and I were the only ones talking. Except for a young kid in a crew haircut sitting with a brunette girl at one of the tables, and a lanky, redheaded guy at the far end of the bar, we’d had the place to ourselves.

It was funny because, before Evelyn had come in, the young kid in the crew cut and his girl had been having a pretty good argument about something, and the redheaded guy had been talking the ear off the bartender.

I glanced toward the kid and his girl, and then I did a double take. Both of them were glaring at us. The kid’s eyes shuttled between the two of us, but his girl friend was concentrating entirely on the blonde. Neither of them could have been more than nineteen or twenty.

I held the kid’s eyes a moment, but they didn’t even blink. I shrugged and turned back to Evelyn. “Those two over at the table — are they friends of yours?”

She nodded. “Certainly. Just like Charley Boxer.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “And if you’ll look up at the far end of the bar, you’ll see another. I’m a very popular girl.”

I lifted my drink and glanced over the rim of it at the redheaded guy. I’ve seen some hard looks in my time, and I know kill-fever in a man’s eyes when I see it. I was looking straight at it.

The air in the Bamboo Room was so charged with hate that I began to think about the .38 clipped beneath my left shoulder.

“Did you say friends of yours?” I asked.

“I have lots of friends. And here comes one.” Her smile was just as bright as ever. “Charley Boxer.”

I looked past the redheaded man toward the street door, and suddenly I remembered that Charley had said he might meet me here for a drink. I’d been surprised at the change three years had made in Charley, and the change struck me again as he came toward the bar.

Three years ago Charley had been tall and blond and muscular, as happy-go-lucky as they come. Now he was still blond, but his shoulders seemed to have narrowed and settled into a defeated slump. He’d grown thin and hollow-cheeked. There was something different about his eyes, too — something I couldn’t define.

“Hello, Charley,” Evelyn said gaily.

Charley nodded at her, without smiling, and said nothing.

I grinned. “How about a drink, boy?”

He shook his head. “Not here,” he said, his eyes still on Evelyn. “How about next door?”

I shrugged. “Whatever you say.” I didn’t know what the hell was going on in the Bamboo Room, but it was putting me in a pretty sour mood for a guy just starting a vacation. I put a bill on the bar and followed Charley out to the street.

“Come on over to the hotel,” Charley said. “I’ll give you a drink of rum that’ll make that other stuff taste like turpentine.”

We turned in the direction of the West Indian, and I said, “Give.”

“What do you mean?”

“That girl back there. Evelyn. The way people react to her, you’d think she was a cobra. You can get a hard look just by sitting next to her.”

Charley mopped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “You just happened to meet her when her fan club was around.”

“Meaning?”

“She’s a girl who just naturally causes trouble. A guy takes one look at her, and straightway he forgets about everything else.”

There was something about the way he said it. I looked at him, “you too, Charley?”

We’d walked another half dozen steps before he answered. Then, “Yeah... me, too.”

“And the redheaded guy at the end of the bar?”

Charley nodded. “He’s an artist. He came here for a couple weeks, to paint — and that was four months ago. Evelyn played with him a while.”

We turned the corner, and I said, “Don’t tell me that kid with the joe college haircut...”

“Yeah. He got it the worst of all. He and that little girl you saw him with were engaged — before Evelyn Lanier showed up. Nice kid, too, and you’d never find a nicer girl than the one you saw him with. Damn shame.”

“Split them up, eh?”

“Yeah. Everybody thought Danny Jenkins and Lois were a sure bet to get married. But then along came Evelyn — and that was that. Danny never even knew what hit him.”

“But Lois took him back, anyhow?”

“She’d like to. When Evelyn gave Danny the bounce, Lois was right there to catch him. She’s crazy about Danny. They’re both rich kids, and neither one of them ever wanted anything they didn’t get.”

We turned in at the West Indian and walked across the lobby to the elevator. We didn’t say anything in the car on the way up to the fourth floor. I couldn’t know what Charley was thinking about, but I was ready to bet it was about Evelyn Lanier, the same as I was. I hadn’t talked to her long, but it had been long enough to believe that she’d be a hard girl to forget.

When we were settled in Charley’s room with a pair of tall, cold drinks, Charley said, “It’s funny, Mr. Drake. When I got the job as assistant manager here at the hotel, I sort of settled down. Maybe I was just getting old, but I began thinking about a wife and kids. I’d done enough helling around, and when Evelyn moved in here I guess I was just prime for what happened. Anyhow, I got it bad. She made the world go round for me, and for a couple months everything was great.” He took a sip of his drink, and I noticed his eyes had narrowed a little.

“And then?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Then Red Cannon — that’s the guy at the bar I was telling you about — came here from Miami. All at once he’s number one boy. Then she meets Danny Jenkins, and Red gets the big good-bye.” He smiled thinly. “And now even Danny’s joined the club.”