I said, “Carr claims not to be involved with hoods like Costello and Wortman, beyond the occasional favor. Is that on the level?”

“More on a slant,” she said. “It’s true he stopped doing their books for them and, like I told you, the place got too successful for mob guys to use to cool down or hide out—you know, beyond an hour or an overnight with their piece on the side. But Jack still has business ties.”

“Like your, uh, escort service?”

She nodded. “Wortman gets an overall slice—I started out with him, years ago. I was his…special girl for a while, and he still has a fondness for me. Costello gets a kickback when a cabbie lines up a john. Those Coral Court rooms wired for sound have made any number of politicians, of whatever persuasion, cooperative. Sometimes at the No-Tell Motel not telling costs you.”

“But Carr is not Mafia.”

“No. He’s nothing in the greater scheme of things.”

“Who is something?”

A cocktail waitress stopped to ask if we wanted another. Sandy ordered a second highball but I was fine with my first rum and Coke.

Sandy said, softly but unblinking, “Well, for one thing, Joe Costello got the Greenlease money.”

Almost exactly the words Mollie Baker had used; and confirmation of what Elmer Dolan had told me. Also, calculated shock value on her part.

I asked, “How is it you know that?”

She had a little speech ready; she put it across with a tiny wicked smile and an admirably droll delivery: “I don’t mean to be crass, Heller. But you already had one on the house, last night. I’m sure you’ll be picking up the check tonight, and I appreciate that. Still, it’s what any gentleman out on the evening with a more or less respectable lady is expected to do.”

“No argument.”

She leaned closer, spoke softly. “I put you off, last night, before getting into anything you really wanted to know, because I had to talk to somebody today. Somebody who owes me money. I’ll be frank with you.”

“Please.”

“If this party had come through, you and I wouldn’t be having this pleasant evening out together. But he didn’t come through.”

“If I might ask—with what?”

“I’ll get to that. We need to back up a little. Actually…more than a little. Say…five years?”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

She was saying, rather archly, “After I came to your room that long-ago night…and you found me less than irresistible…”

“Hey, you were sexy as hell. I just had a drunken kidnapper on the brain.”

“No apologies necessary. What’s done is done. But back then? Turned out my evening was just beginning.…”

Very quietly, interrupted only by the arrival of her second highball, she told me how she had caught a cab and gone back to her aunt’s apartment, to borrow the woman’s car. She had a pal in Buster Wortman’s second-in-command, Elroy “Dutch” Downey, and caught up with him in East St. Louis at the Paddock Lounge, a sleazy bar of Wortman’s. But Buster was out of town, Dutch said; and after a moment or two of soul-searching (had she found one, I wondered?), she filled her pal Dutch in about the drunken big spender at the Coral Court with luggage full of loot. Dutch’s eyes got big and then he went off to use the phone.