“Wait,” I said to Clair, drove the Buick down the alley, walked back.
Together we mounted stairs.
The thickset man stared after us.
Clair whispered that he was looking at her ankles, and wasn’t he a lamb!
I said if I thought he could see more than her ankles I’d turn him into mutton.
A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pyjamas came over to take my hat. She gave me a faint leer when Clair wasn’t looking. I leered back.
The lobby had the lush look of a drop curtain for a high-class musical comedy. It was all tinsel and glitter. Even the mirrors that hung on the walls were tinted pink to make you feel better than you looked. To the right of the lobby was the entrance to the dining-room. The captain of waiters stood in the doorway, menu in hand, and officiated like a well-fed Greek god.
On the other side of the lobby was the bar, luxurious under indirect lighting. The rattle of ice cubes in a shaker made sweet music.
“This is really something,” I said, speaking out of the corner of my mouth. “I don’t think there’ll be much of our nine hundred bucks profit left by the time this joint’s through with us.”
“You can always order a glass of milk and tell them you belong to an obscure religious order,” Clair murmured, and drifted away to the ladies’ room.