“With variations,” she murmured. “Last time it was an old man and a young girl.”
“Then we won’t look,” Shayne agreed.
After a long delay, the waiter came with their drinks. The orchestra hit a wailing crescendo, and Shayne turned his head to see the tall blonde running off the stage, naked except for a pair of shoes.
The waiter set tall drinks on the table. Lucile said, “I want to see Henri Desmond.”
“I’ll give him your message as soon as he can be located, Madame,” the man said.
The lights stayed on and the platform was lowered by a hidden mechanism. Another low stage rose slowly into view with a ten-piece Negro orchestra beating out a dance tune. Half a dozen scattered couples from the nearly empty dining-room got up to dance.
Four of the six couples were men past fifty, accompanied by very young girls, none of them past the age of consent. Lucile said, “Those kids are the hostesses. I wonder how they manage to do their school work after a night here.”
“What’s the rest of the layout?” Shayne tasted his drink and set it down. “It’s worse than I expected.”
“You should have ordered something else,” she murmured. “You didn’t have to—”
“Anything in this joint would have tasted the same. What else do you know about it?”