The bartender had a red conk. Red’s Place. Jake said howdy to Red, ordered a beer and ended up drinking three, then danced three dances with a slender, cocoa-colored gal who wanted two dollars to go to the room in back. He thanked her for the dances, ordered another beer, took the glare from her man, a thickset pimp, his legs spraddled on a barstool up front. The pimp could give him the evil eye all night long. He wasn’t going to pay two dollars for a chippie. Quim always felt like quim, once you were beating around inside it. One visit with Miss Cocoa was four tricks with a fifty-cent harlot.

By the time he was halfway through the fourth beer, he hadn’t spotted a likely whore other than Miss Cocoa and he was ready to start trouble. The pimp would do just fine. He wore brown pants and a brown shirt, which made it easy. Say, where’d you get them shit-colored clothes? Was they always that way, or did you just shit yourself when you seen me comin? The pimp would come at him quick and low, the knife held blade up. Kick the blade loose, bust him in the face.

Jake drained the beer, set the bottle down, rubbed his knuckles. He was about to head after the pimp when a woman dark and ample as a coal car planted herself between his thighs. The heat of her went straight to his loins.

“Hello, sweetheart…”

“Well, hello yourself.”

In the back room she washed him with a cloth so hot it made his eyes water, then squatted over a basin on the floor and washed herself. He closed his eyes, thought of the slender, willowy body of the girl working in the diner. The whore mewed like a newborn kitten while she rode him.

It was hot in the little room. They were both soaked in sweat when it was over. She sat up, her chest heaving, wiped her breasts with a towel. “Damn. I aint had it like that since Chester left for Kansas City.”

Jake leaned back, pleased with himself. “Is that your pimp out there, the man in the shit-brown pants?”

“Naw, that good-for-nothin leech is Yancy. Only girl he got is Kitty, that high-color gal you was dancin with. My man is Chester, only he been gone a month. They all afraid of Chester. Don’t know when he’ll come back, so they leave me be.”

She moved across his chest to reach for a cigarette. The weight of her breasts got him going again. He reached for his pants and hauled out another fifty cents. “I got to have it again,” he said, “but this time, let’s make it wrong side up.”

“Oh, no, sugar. You want to go up that road, it will cost you six bits.”