Crimson Lady by Larry Kent

Author:Larry Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: serial killer, detectives, hard boiled crime, private eyes, don haring, larry kent, crime fiction ebook, piccadilly publishng
Publisher: Piccadilly

She was billed as Fifi Laverne. She wore blue feathers and a few wisps of silk. She was one of the eight strippers who cavorted on the platform above the bar at the Gigolo Club. She walked up and down the platform more or less in time to a recording of “Autumn Leaves.” Every now and then she dropped a feather or a bit of silk. Finally she stood there with a small V of blue silk and two circles of material at strategic places, bumping and grinding to the strains of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B.”

A few of the customers clapped their hands as the music stopped. Fifi, chewing gum like a blank-faced cow, picked up the bits and pieces of her costume as she walked off the platform. She went to the back of the club and pushed through a curtained doorway that had a blue light over it.

I walked towards the same doorway. When I was six or seven feet from it a guy in a rumpled dinner jacket stepped in front of me and showed crooked teeth in a smile.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He put up his hands, palms forward. “Sorry, chum.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The price of a drink doesn’t entitle you to sample the goodies.”

I said, “All I want to do is have a talk with Fifi Laverne.”

“No chance, pal.”

“Just a few words.”

“Sorry. Now why don’t you go back to the bar and—”

He stopped talking when he saw the twenty dollar bill in my hand. He smiled again. “Just a little talk, eh? Well, I can’t see how a few words with the lady will hurt anybody.” He snapped the twenty from my hand and stepped away. “Second door to your left.”

I pushed my way through the heavy curtains, walked down a narrow hallway and rapped on the door.

“Yeah? Who is it?” asked a harsh female voice.

“The name is Larry,” I said.

A pause; then: “Come on in.”

I opened the door and entered a dressing room that must have been designed as a broom closet. Fifi Laverne sat before the bulb-lined mirror. Half the bulbs weren’t working. She was encased in a loose dressing gown that didn’t do much towards containing her jumbo-sized breasts. She looked me over in the mirror and said:

“How’d you get past Leo?”

“Charm,” I said to the mirror.

“Leo wouldn’t know what it was. You paid him, didn’t you?”

“I tipped him.”

She turned around on her stool to face me. The years hadn’t been kind to her. There were purple patches beneath her eyes and her skin was mottled even through her pancake makeup.

“It had to be at least ten bucks,” she said.

“Why?”

“Leo doesn’t start ticking under ten.”

“Then he was tick-tocking. I gave him twenty.”

She smiled. “I don’t start ticking under fifty.”

“Ticking?”

“Call it what you like.”

“I think you’ve got me wrong, Fifi.”

“I never get a man wrong. Fifty and you can take me home. A hundred and you get the full treatment, including breakfast.”

“All I want is a talk.”

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Are you

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