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with harsh creased features and a voice like a boat whistle, said she’d spoken to all the cops she cared to for one day and tried to bang my face with her door. I pried myself in with a roadwise five-dollar bill long enough to learn that her dancing tenant had been living there for only six weeks, that she always paid her rent on time, and that the landlady made it a point never to pry into her lodgers’ business. I left while she was telling me a funny story about the two queens who were living together on the top floor. I used the pay telephone outside her door to dial the number I had in my notepad for Nate Washington, who my client had said had referred her to me. A recording informed me that it was no longer in service. On the lam, I thought as I hung up and retrieved my dimes.
    A black in dirty green work clothes was sweeping curls of dust across the sky-blue floor of The Crescent as I descended the steps and asked him if the owner was in. He wagged his head toward an open door behind the bar.
    The man in the storeroom was an Arab, tall and thin, with a beak nose and Valentino eyes. He had lobeless ears very flat to his head and black hair that gleamed blue in the dim overhead light. His suit was new, the crease on the trousers as sharp as the edge of a fresh hundred-dollar bill. He was watching a pair of men, one black and one white, check off the names on the labels of bottles in wooden cases against a list on a clipboard in the black man’s hands as I approached.
    “More police?” he asked, after I had introduced myself and explained the nature of my visit. His intonation rose and fell monotonously, like a chant. But his English was good. “No wonder I pay such taxes.”
    “I’m not with the police. I’ve been hired to find Ann Maringer. What can you tell me about her?”
    “She was a good dancer.”
    I waited, but he didn’t add anything. “That’s it?”
    He shrugged exaggeratedly. “How much more must one know to hire a dancer? Nothing else is any of my business.”
    “How long has she worked here?”
    “Since February. I have told the police this.”
    “What about Bingo Jefferson, the dead waiter? When did you hire him?”
    “I didn’t.”
    “Who did?”
    “No one.”
    I said, “You mean he just started working? Just like that?”
    “Not quite. He came to me last night just before opening. He said his name was Ben Adams and that he was filling in for my regular waiter, who was sick. Franklin Detwiler.”
    “Where can I reach him?”
    “He lives with Coral Anthony, one of the dancers.”
    “You mean she lives with him?”
    “If that was what I meant I would have said that. What’s that wet there? Open that case.” He indicated a sealed crate atop a stack in the corner, dripping with moisture. The white worker took up a crowbar and inserted it between the boards on top. Nails shrieked as he applied leverage.
    “Where can I reach her?” I shouted, over the din.
    “Who?” The Arab was concentrating on the crowbar’s progress.
    “Coral Anthony. The dancer Detwiler lives with.”
    “Look her up. Can’t you see I am busy?”
    I waited while the loose board was pried off and the three inspected the crate’s contents. Then: “Did Jefferson have his baseball bat with him when he came on?”
    The Arab looked at me strangely. His sharp, desert-brown features were dominated by large black eyes like dates, lusterless, without moisture. “I know you,” he said at length. “I saw you talking to Ann last night. You are the man who attacked my waiter.”
    The two workers turned to stare at me. I was vaguely aware that the janitor’s broom had stopped sweeping outside the storeroom. Tension grew like mushrooms in the damp.
    The Arab said, “Grab him.”
    The black man dropped his clipboard clattering to the cement floor, took the crowbar from his partner’s hands and came toward me, jiggling it. He had thick, sloping shoulders and a head of close-cropped grizzled hair mounted on a short