It was just after midnight when we stepped out of the elevator and into my office. Everything was just as I had left it; the papers all laid out on the desk, a nearly empty whiskey bottle, the smell of stale cigarette smoke. It was home, but it wasn’t sweet. There was an air of danger that loomed over me that made being home feel alien.
I instructed Claudia to put her luggage wherever she could find a spot and pulled out the Murphy bed from the wall. I gave her the grand tour, which consisted of the living room/bedroom/kitchenette/dining room that comprised 90% of the office, with my desk shoved into one unoccupied corner and a bathroom with a shower a toilet and sink; the Andaluz Hotel it was not.
Claudia set her luggage down in the far corner next to a dilapidated bookshelf filled with books that were there more for the aesthetic than anything else (there was no way I was going to be able to read through The Doors of Perception). She looked at the office once over and showed no outward signs of disgust.
“It’s late, Mr. Lane,” Claudia whimpered, “could I use the shower? I think I would like to try and sleep.”
I nodded.
“Through that door kid,” I said as I pointed behind her. “Call me Clayton. I’m not much for the mister business.”
Claudia gave a sheepish grin (damn that grin) and bent down to rummage through her luggage.
“Thank you… Clayton.”
There was something about this kid Claudia that was starting to wear me down. When I first met her, all I could think was that she was scared of her own shadow, but the more I was around her, the more her mousey look became that of a reserved beauty. I wasn’t one, to borrow a phrase, to shit where I ate, but Claudia was starting to grow on me. That grin was what got to me the most.
I caught myself staring at her shapely figure as she pushed clothes and accessories to the side, digging deeper into the suitcase in pursuit of something specific. She bent over further, and her skirt began to rise up, higher and higher, revealing more and more of her pearly white legs. I snapped my attention away toward my desk and shuffled the papers around the top absent-mindedly. I saw the near-dead bottle of hooch, and felt a flash of shame. I grabbed it just as Claudia stood up.
“Is that whiskey, Clayton?”
I took my eyes from the bottle to the blonde. She was holding a sleeping gown clutched to her chest. It was satin and lacy, a sort of aquamarine color. I could tell that it would fall just right in all the right places. God help me.
“It is. It’s almost dead. Would you like the last of it?”
Claudia nodded silently and held out her hand, still clutching that satiny gown to her breast, her perky, round breast. I handed over the bottle of Old Fitz. Claudia took it and, with the poise and grace of a seasoned juicer, swallowed the rest of the spirit in one swig. She wiped her mouth and nodded.
“Do you have any more?” She looked at the now empty bottle like a girl who just lost her favorite doll.
I shook my head.
“I usually only buy for one. The stores are all closed.”
She nodded, still looking at the bottle. Heaving a delicate sigh, Claudia placed the bottle on the bookshelf and made her way to the bathroom to shower. I watched her walk away, eyeing every inch of her body. Somehow that shy, timid facade she wore hid the body of a sex goddess. I was transfixed, and I was damn sure going to struggle knowing that she was just ten feet away, naked in my office with hot, steamy water cascading down her porcelain skin.
I tried to busy myself with the case, trying to shut out the sound of the running water and the thought of Claudia in all her fully glory. It was an exercise in madness at first, but I was able to focus my concentration on the case at hand.
It appeared that the Montreal mob had finally tracked down Claudia, which means they probably had a lead on Isadore as well. That didn’t bode well for either dame, and it didn’t bode well for me since my big schnoz was firmly wedged into this business. My timetable for cracking this case just got a whole hell of a lot smaller.
The one thing that I just couldn’t get my mind around was the junkies. What was Isadore doing asking where the dopers got hopped up? It was the biggest piece of the puzzle that had eluded me. There was a bigger game at play here, and I wasn’t seeing it. I just didn’t think that Isadore was cokey, I thought that there was some ulterior motive to it all.
“Going over the case?”
Claudia’s voice startled me, and I flinched, reaching instinctively under my jacket for my gun. I don’t think she caught the move, or if she did, it didn’t phase her. I looked her over, the nightgown falling in all the right places over her body, just as I had feared. She was toweling off her hair and looking at me with hopeful, seductive eyes.
“Trying to. I got some roadblocks I can’t seem to get around.”
“Maybe I could help?”
She folded the wet towel and placed it on the sink in the bathroom and made her way over to me. With every step she took, my heart thundered in my chest. I was afraid she could hear it because I couldn’t hear a damn thing over it. Placed her hands on the corner of my desk and leaned over to take a look at the notes I had. Her nightgown hung dangerously low from her body. I could feel the magnetic pull from her alabaster body, just begging my hands to run themselves over it, to caress every nook and cranny, to explore her like a tropical rainforest.
“What is the big mystery you have, Mr. Lane?”
“Please, call me Clayton,” I said, my eyes transfixed on the cleavage that she was bearing as she leaned over the desk. I snapped myself out of it and pointed to the paper where I had written down Gino’s.
“I went down to this bar, Gino’s, downtown to ask around about Isadore.”
Claudia nodded.
“I know the place. My husband and I used to go with Izzy and Harvey for drinks and dancing when we first moved here.”
“Well, the folks there said that she hadn’t been seen there with Harvey in some time, but she had been there alone, and would frequently be seen talking with, and leaving with, strange women.”
Claudia stared off into the distance, her face giving away no indication of her thought. She bit her lower lip in concentration (sweet Mary that mouth), but said nothing for a time. I decided to go on.
“I also visited Rue de Seine, a French joint that Harvey said they used to attend. The waiter, some young kid, said the same thing I got from Gino’s; she hadn’t been in there with her husband in some time. However, this kid told me that she started asking about the black ties and bigwigs that came in, wanted in on the social scene, but she also asked him about the dope game, wanted to know where the junkies and hopheads could be found.”
Claudia nodded, sighed, then shook her head.
“Isadore was, is, a wild child, Clayton. She is up to something, but what it is, I’m unsure. She never did drugs back home, as far as I was aware, although some girls took to opium or reefer as a way to “relax”. What she wants with other women, well, she was… open.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“Open?”
Claudia nodded and looked me in the eye. ‘You know what I mean,’ he stare told me. I nodded and circled goes both ways on my notes.
“She ever solicit work from any women that you were aware of?”
Claudia nodded again. It was definitely an uncomfortable subject, but I needed to get some answers. I learned today that Claudia was a tough dame, and I wasn’t as unwilling to ask the hard questions now.
“What can you tell me about her clientele?”
Claudia blinked a few times at me before looking away and up at the ceiling as she tried to recall what she could.
“Mostly factory men. Montreal had suffered from the economic depression, but most of the factories during the war were tasked with making munitions and supplies. There were some military men, mostly airmen and sailors. She began to take on women later as more men enlisted or were drafted. Women started to man the factories, and with a short supply of men…”
She trailed off.
“Did you ever-”
“Yes.”
Her answer was flat and emotionless. Her eyes had fallen to the floor, where they swept around for anything to focus on. I knew I was prying now.
“Were you and Isadore ever… together?”
She mouthed the answer. Yes. It was silent, but it resounded like a gunshot.
“Were you two in love?”
I saw a tear fall from her eyes to the floor. She didn’t lift her head, she had submitted to my questions, and I felt a slight tinge of guilt, perhaps the questions had gone too far? But she continued to answer.
“I thought we were. I mean, I wouldn’t say that I am a… but the way she made me feel. We had been brought in together, we both started working at the same time, we worked in the same hotel. She had made me feel safe when I was terrified, she made me feel like I had someone there watching over me.”
She closed her eyes and sniffled. The tears were really coming now, there was no doubting it.
“I guess it was just a wild fling for her. Yancy, my husband, had been my best customer. I convinced him to marry me, got a ticket out of Montreal, and that’s been it between her and I.”
She began to sob quietly. I stood up and Claudia leaned into me, crying and apologizing. I hugged her close and told her that everything was alright. I held her for several minutes. After she had stopped crying, she pushed herself away from me slightly and reached out, placing her hand on the left side of my jacket, fondling the outline of my Browning.
“Is that a gun?”
“Browning Hi-Power P35. Manufactured in your neck of the woods.”
She ran her hand over the outline of the gun, her fingers dancing delicately and sensitively over the hunk of cold steel hidden by cheap camel hair sport jacket. She looked into my eyes as she continued to fondle the pistol. She had a look of excitement in her eyes, no, something more, it was a look of sexual hunger. She ran her fingers from the gun up my chest and to my chin. She rubbed the stubble from the two day beard I had grown since taking the case, then she ran a seductive finger over my lips.
“Do you know how to use it?”
Her voice was a whisper, but it could have toppled the walls of Jericho. I played it cool as I took my hand, brushed back her hair and placed it on the back of her head, my thumb caressing her earlobe. She shuddered at my touch.
“I put a hot slug in that goon’s leg earlier. I would say I am handy with it.”
She slipped her hand under my jacket and reached for the Browning. I took my left hand and stopped her. She gasped slightly before I took my hand away and she felt the metal of the weapon with her bare skin. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back in quiet ecstasy.
“Please, Clayton, please tell me you’ll keep me safe. Tell me you will use this gun and keep the bad men away.”
I took my hand from her head and pulled my gun from the shoulder holster. I placed my finger along the barrel and turned it over ever so slowly in my hand as she watched with erotic pleasure.
“I promise, Claudia. No one will get to you when you’re with me.”
I placed the gun down on the desk. Claudia drew herself into me once more. She ran her hands under my jacket and up my back, using her fingernails to dig and scratch oh so slightly into my back.
“Clayton,” she whispered, over and over again. “Keep me safe, Clayton.”
I took her chin in my hand. Her eyes were shimmering. She bit her lip in anticipation. I leaned down and kissed her. She moaned as our lips met and she pushed herself harder into the kiss. Before long, we were entangled, clawing and groping at clothes and flesh. We fell into one another, then onto the bed before we gave ourselves to each other for the first time.