Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

“Maybe,” she said, with a thin echo of that widely-imitated, engagingly amiable gurgle introduced in night club circles by Miss Tennessee Martin, “maybe I will!”

She bathed and dressed quickly, and she had a trained smile for big Sam Coats when she walked into his office half an hour later.

“Lefty ain’t here yet,” he told her, grinning back. “But sit down. Make yourself at home. He ain’t the only one that likes to look at you.”

She had girded on her armor of the cabaret for him and took it wide-eyed.

“I thought you were different, Sam,” she murmured. “All business. But you’re like all of ’em. I guess the man doesn’t live who won’t try to hand you a line.”

Coats’s widening smile showed a glint of gold in his upper jaw.

“The big question before the American girl to-day,” he said, “isn’t the men’s line, but what they’re willing to hand with it. I’ll spend money, any day, on mine. Sweet boys are all right, but it takes a fur coat to keep a lady warm when the mercury’s down.”

Dorcas O’Donnell sighed.

“Some get furs, and some don’t,” she said. “You’d be surprised how the big-hearted customers up at the club shower them on me between two and five any morning — in promises. But whenever the delivery cars stop in front of my door, it’s something C. O. D. they’ve got for little Dorcas.”

Coats chuckled.

“I was going to say something. I guess I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Lefty Byrne mightn’t like it.”

Her gaze was a baby stare, steady and gently thoughtful, and provocative.

“But,” she suggested demurely, “Lefty isn’t here.”

Sam Coats guffawed and slapped his knee.

“That’s good! Well if men are the same — ain’t women?” He swung around and sidled his chair along behind the desk. “I like ’em smart, kiddo. Up on their toes. Out to grab what they can. But — on the square — I always thought you was too good-lookin’ to be anything but dumb.”

The girl evaded his reaching hand, but her smiled stayed put.

“Don’t!” she whispered. “Not here. Lefty—”

Coats’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah?” he questioned. “Lefty?”

“He... he might be coming back.”

She drew further from him in the pause, while the Big Shot’s blunt fingers began softly to drum the desk.

“Listen,” he said, “listen here, kiddo. Tell me th’ truth. Would you care a lot if he didn’t? Would you mind it, that is, if somebody with a real roll was ready to be good to you?”

She lost the smile at that — gasped.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

The gold tooth flashed again.

“You heard me. You’ve got ears — and brains. A skirt like you could dazzle this town if she had things. If she was hooked up right. What th’ hell are you alive for? Just to sit around and help the butter-an’-egg men get ready for an ice bag in the morn-in’? Or to waste time on a cheap gun that ain’t got nerve enough to stick with his racket?”

The girl straightened.

“That’s — Lefty? Where is he, Sam? Why are you talking that way about him? About him not — coming back?”

Coats had caught himself, and his eyes were veiled to her.

“That’s somethin’,” he said, and coughed, “somethin’ that could be taken care of. I got connections in Florida — and believe me, he’ll go where the best dough is.” He got up and crossed to a filing cabinet; pulled open one of the steel drawers, and from the drawer produced a bottle and glasses. “How about a ‘first to-day’?” he asked. “This is the McCoy, kiddo. Stuff you never get uptown. My own private stock, with th’ music of th’ bagpipes in every drop.”

She had started to refuse, but something was buzzing suddenly in the back of her mind. She had to stay, and that meant she must play the game as nightly she played it at the Gold Slipper. Play it the Spartan Tennessee’s way, with a glass in one hand and the reins firmly in the other, until she knew what was coming up for Lefty.

Out by the garage door, Walsh and two or three others still were loitering. Coming in, she’d wondered why they were sticking so close to-day with the big car; wondered why they had been so set on avoiding her eye. Now, after that sodden miscue of Coats’s, terror was throbbing in her throat.

Yes; she must stand by. If she could only make a party of it, run it in her maddest madcap manner, get them whooping it as she knew they often did, get upstairs to Lefty—

Staring at her with the bottle uncorked, big Sam Coats said: “Well, what do you say?”

She gave him the Tennessee look and the Tennessee gurgle.

“If it’s as good as you say it is, pour me one as big as I ought to want it.” Then, as if it had been a swift inspiration, she wanted to know: “How about having the boys in?”

“Why?” grunted Coats.

Both coolness and promise were in her slow glance.

“I’m a hard woman in a hard world, Sammy,” she drawled. “Starting now, when anybody talks fur coat to me — I want witnesses!”

Coats’s eyes went wide.

“What a gold digger my baby’s turnin’ out to be!” He gave her an ecstatic squeeze in passing, and roared happily through the office door: “Gang! Front and center!”

IV