Lu opened the car door. “I’m sorry to get you up at such an hour, Mrs. Perminger,” he said, “but you’re goin’ to be a big help to us.”
Sadie thought he wasn’t at all her idea of a plain−clothes cop, but she got in the car, because she was scared that they’d think she had something to hide. Lu got in beside her.
O’Hara stood watching the car drive away. He spat into the street. “I wonder what they’ll do with her?” he thought. “Nice little dame,” and he turned and resumed his patrol with measured steps.
13
June 6th, 2.30 a.m.
CARRIE O’SHEA ran the only high−class brothel in East St. Louis. There were plenty of other such joints in the town, but none of them came anywhere near Carrie’s for class.
For one thing, it stood opposite the District Attorney’s office. That alone gave it class. Then Carrie, who ran the house, saw to it that she got a fresh batch of girls each month. That wanted some doing, but Carrie knew variety is the spice of life and her clients never knew from one visit to the next who they were going to find there.
She organized the change by shuffling the girls round from the various other houses, ruthlessly selecting only the young fresh ones and refusing anything that the bookers thought they could hoist on to her.
It was only when Mendetta began his Slaving racket that Carrie really ceased to worry. Now, through a careful system, she was getting new girls pretty steadily. Of course, a lot of them made trouble, but that didn’t worry Carrie a great deal. She knew how to handle girls who refused to fall in line.
The system worked this way. Trained thugs carefully combed the town for suitable girls. The qualifications that they considered suitable chiefly consisted of having no relations, being down on their luck, or to have committed some petty crime that the bookers could use as a form of blackmail.