Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [16]
“A Perrier?”
“You coming on to me.” The smile tightened again but in a nice way, this time. “Come on.”
She took me by the arm and led me to a booth with a reserved card on it. I sat opposite her as she retrieved a purse from somewhere. This booth was apparently her between-sets office. She got out Paddlewheel matches and a pack of Virginia Slims.
She offered me a smoke and I declined. When a waitress came over, my new friend indeed ordered a Perrier and I had the same. She got a cig going, waved the match out and gave me a skeptical look.
“You aren’t gay, are you?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re about…Beatles age, I’d say. Rolling Stones. Your idea of a female singer would be, what? Petula Clark? Dusty Springfield?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. But most guys your age who think Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart are the shit are gay.” She nodded toward where her piano player sat with another young guy at a table. “Lonnie’s gay, as you might have guessed. Where would I find a straight kid who could play like that?”
I skipped any comment on Lonnie, and went to her first point. “Maybe I just have a healthy respect for professionalism.”
She seemed to like that.
I sipped my sparkling water and hauled out the charming smile again, which was getting a workout tonight. “My next line is, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ ”
She blew a smoky kiss at me. “I’m part owner of it. I can do what I like.”
“Part owner? I, uh…I came in on your act. I didn’t catch your name. Mine’s Jack, by the way. Jack Gibson.”
“Two of my favorite things—money and a mixed drink.” Her laugh was husky as she extended a hand for me to take and shake. “I’m Angela Dell.”
“I thought this place was owned by a guy named Cornell.”
“Dickie is my husband. Dell is my stage name—a shortened version of my maiden name. I used it before I met Dickie, and I’ve kept it.”
“You’ve been doing this a while.”
“Singing? Oh yes.”
“Do any recording?”
She nodded, twitched a smile that was more for her than me. “Had a contract with Verve back in the ’60s.”
“No kidding?”
That was a big deal—Verve was a jazz label and very picky about the artists they signed.
I went on: “I’m surprised I haven’t heard any of your records.”
“They just put one album out, and it sank like a stone.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
She shrugged. “You can buy it at the bar—I got the rights back to put it out on CD and cassette. There are two newer ones, too, recorded with just Lonnie on the piano.”
“You’ll sign them?”
“Sure.” She tapped her cigarette into a glass tray with a Paddlewheel logo in its bottom. “What do you do, Jack?”
“Nothing very interesting, I’m afraid. I sell veterinary medicine.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Do you know anything about farms?”
“No. I have a cat, though.”
“Well, I strictly sell to vets who service farms. Pretty boring.”
“But you’re on the road a lot?”
“Yes. You must’ve been, too, at one time.”
She nodded. “Until I married Dickie.”
I was trying to figure out a way to finesse this, to use my new acquaintance with the missus to get to the man of the house, or anyway of the Paddlewheel.
Then she said, “But don’t let that discourage you.”
There was something sly in the green eyes now, and the full mouth was twisted up at one corner.
“Pardon?” I managed.
“Dickie and I are separated. We…we’d probably have been divorced a long time ago, but I’m a Catholic, and I don’t want to go to hell…even if I do work in Haydee’s.”
“Oh-kay,” I said.
“We’re friendly, Dickie and I. Best of buddies. He’s got a great business head, and I add a little class to the joint. I don’t have any desire to do anything in life but sing for my supper. No ambition—not for a new man, or an old career. Anyway, a shopworn broad like me can’t make it in show biz these days, that’s for sure.”
“I’d think some lounge in Vegas would—”
“I worked a lounge in Vegas for six years. It wasn’t a bad life, but it was a dead end, and here I’m a coowner and making nice money and singing six nights a week. Satisfies my work ethic and my artistic