"Could you drop Mr. Fu at Chatham Square before you go across the bridge?"
"Sure, Ma'am."
"And could you drop us on Third Avenue at.... What's the name of the place, Jordan?"
"I don't want you in on this."
"Where did you pick her up?"
"I think it was Ye Baroque Saloon."
"At ... you should excuse the expression ... Ye Baroque Saloon, please, Mr. Hamburger. It isn't a dead-end yet."
The inside laugh on Ye Baroque Saloon is that it's named after the proprietor, Chris Barokotrones, who came to The Rock and shortened his name to Baroque before he understood enough French or English to know what he was doing. By the time he found out, he had enough money to buy a building on Third Avenue and build a saloon. He had it decorated in American Baroque ... the exaggerated theatrical style that was the vogue in saloons before the turn of the century.
Everybody in the business goes to the Baroque for a nightcap. The joint was jumping when Gabby and Lennox entered. It was a piratic crowd, very young and very handsome. Crop-haired boys with hornshell glasses who would become the Audibons and Bordens of the next decade.... Striking young girls who would become their wives and mistresses.... A leavening of the older men and women whom success and good living had kept young.
Gabby and Lennox went down the bar, past the booths and into the back room. Lennox saw Aimee Driscoll sitting alone at a table behind the telephone booth. Her high fat bosom pushed out over the table. Her wide fat bottom spread over the chair. Through the smoke and haze she looked, at first glance, like a lusty Swede farm girl from Minnesota; but the second glance shamed Lennox.