“I could pay you a lot of money to uncover something that would help me,”
“Sorry.”
He got up. “Keep it in mind. If in your investigations, you stumble onto something that would help me, I’ll be very, very generous.”
I said, “If Cool and Lam do anything for you, you won’t need to be generous. You’ll get a whale of a bill.”
He laughed at that, got to his feet, said, “Okay, let’s leave it that way!”
We shook hands and he left the hotel.
Chapter Eleven
The Jack-O’-Lantern Nightclub was typical of dozens of other little nightclubs that clustered through the French Quarter. There was a floor show of sorts, half a dozen hostesses, and tables crowded into three rambling rooms which had been merged together by a process of knocking out doors and making full-length openings where windows had been. Out in front a dozen publicity pictures of the various performers in the floor show were exhibited in a large, glass-covered frame.
It was early, and the place hadn’t as yet begun to fill up. There were a few stragglers here and there. A sprinkling of soldiers, some sailors, four or five older couples, evidently tourists, determined to “see the sights” and starting early.
I found a table to myself, sat down, and ordered a Coke and rum. When it came, I stared down into the dark depths of the drink with a lugubrious expression of acute loneliness.