“I’m not a customer,” Maddie said.

“Good, you catch on fast. Why don’t you go hang with the ladies at Hutzler’s tearoom? That seems more your style. Or if you really want a drink, the Emerson Hotel.”

“I’m a reporter.”

Was that amusement in his sleepy eyes? At any rate, he served her, then went to the end of the bar to continue his prep for the evening. She sipped the drink, surprised to find it comparable to the vermouths she’d had in other bars, then realized how silly she was to be surprised. There was not a lot of variety among vermouths. Wines, yes, whiskeys, yes, but vermouth in Maddie’s experience ran to sweet or dry. This was a sweet one.

A girl walked in, wearing slacks and a loose blouse, glanced curiously at Maddie, then at the bartender.

“What’s your story?” Maddie asked the bartender.

“Don’t have one.”

“Everybody has a story.”

“I don’t think that’s true. You’d be surprised how many non-stories I hear in a night. What’s yours?”

“I told you. I’m a reporter.”

“Which rag?”

“The Star.”

“Never read it.”

“Which paper do you prefer?”

“The Beacon.”

“Why?”

“It’s the thickest and I’ve got a parakeet.”

Maddie sipped her drink. Not that long ago she would have been rattled by his hostility, the gamesmanship. She would have started gabbing or maybe even flirting. Now, his attitude just convinced her that she was finally in the right place. The last place that Cleo Sherwood had been seen, heading out with a man no one knew or recognized. According to this man.

“I’m working on a story about Cleo Sherwood.”

“No story there.”

“How can you say that? A young woman has died, under mysterious circumstances. Of course that’s a story.”

“Maybe I should say, no story here. Whatever happened to Cleo—it doesn’t have anything to do with the Flamingo.”

The young woman who had eyed Maddie earlier returned from the back room, now arrayed in the club’s signature costume, fishnet stockings and a leotard with pink feathers at the neckline and around the tailbone. Oh how sad, how dreary, Maddie thought. Could anyone find this costume glamorous? She thought of Cleo, the surprisingly fine clothes she owned. Clothes provided by someone, she was sure of that. Find the man who gave her clothes and find—well, something.

“Did you know Cleo?” Asking the girl, not the bartender. Predictably, the girl looked to him for guidance. He met her eyes, nothing more.

“How could I?” she said, putting glasses on a tray. “I took her spot. I wasn’t here when she was.”

The bartender could convey a lot in a look, give him that.

“Good point.” Maddie turned back to the bartender. “But you knew her. You worked with her. You described the man she left with that night—early morning—of New Year’s Day. Described the man and what she was wearing.”

“Yep.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s in the police report, which I’m assuming you’ve read. You think I’m gonna say something different? I’m not gonna say something different.”

She flipped open the narrow steno pad and looked at her notes. Cleo did not introduce her date, who came into the bar about four a.m. She had changed into a green blouse, leopard pants, a red car coat. She wore heels and carried a large green purse. Driving gloves of red leather. The man was a tall, dark-skinned Negro in a black leather coat and turtleneck, maybe in his thirties, with close-cropped hair. Very slender, quite dark. That fact had been repeated twice in the police report. Was that because the bartender thought it significant or the police did? It was my impression that she was upset he had come inside. She said: “I told you to wait outside.” Maybe she didn’t want to be seen with him, but I don’t know why. He wasn’t anybody to me. I never saw him before and I haven’t seen him since.

“Tell me about her. I mean Cleo herself. What was she like?”

Something went soft in his face. To say he was not a handsome man would be generous. His skin was bad; his hair, while thick, was clearly receding; his nose was bulbous. But he had the bartender’s way of inviting confidences, and not just in patrons. It seemed likely that Cleo would have chattered to him. He probably knew more about her than her mother did.

“She was nice,” he said. “Smart. Big personality, bubbly. She deserved better than she got in this world. Most people do.”

“The man she saw that night—”

“I didn’t know him. There’s nothing more to say.”

“But there has to be. I want to know who she was. I want to know what she dreamed about, what she wanted.”

“Whatever it was, it died with her.”

A thin, feral-looking man, a Negro, entered. Just as the barmaid had been able to interpret the bartender’s look, the bartender seemed to know immediately what was on this man’s mind.

“She says she’s a reporter, Mr. Gordon. I didn’t want to give her the bum’s rush.”

So this was Shell Gordon.

“Why would a reporter be in my club? Nothing to report on here.”

He had directed his question to the bartender, but the bartender didn’t answer and Maddie felt bold. “I’m from the Star. I’m working on a human-interest piece on Cleo Sherwood.”

“Leave that girl be,” he said. “Hasn’t she done enough harm?”

Maddie did not miss his turn of phrase. What harm had Cleo done? She was dead, after all. Had she caused her parents’ grief? Clearly. Had she abandoned her babies? Yes. But no one had come to more harm than she had.

“How much do you pay your girls?”

“You’re too old to work here,” Mr. Gordon said. “Among other things.”

“I ask because Cleo Sherwood had such fine clothes. I’m surprised that she could afford them, working here behind the bar. Cocktail dresses, furs.”

Only one fur that she knew about, but furs sounded better, more substantial.

Mr. Gordon walked to the bar, took Maddie’s glass of vermouth. “On the house,” he said. “If you leave now. If you stay, you won’t be able to afford it. You cannot afford to stay here.”

She knew he was a powerful man. But as a white woman, she believed she trumped him, even on his own turf. He wouldn’t hurt her. “And if I don’t leave?”

Mr. Gordon turned to the bartender. “Spike? Please see her out. Now.”

For the first time, the bartender, Spike apparently, seemed discomfited. He had probably escorted many men, even a few women, from the premises. But he did not know how to approach Maddie, how to touch her. Perhaps the expectation was that she would be cowed and leave on her own. If so, then she was proud to call their bluff. Shell Gordon had put her drink back on the bar. She picked it up and sipped it.

Spike sighed, flipped up the pass, and crossed to her side of the bar. He was tall and powerfully built. He could drag her from the stool easily. But he seemed reluctant to put his hands on her. He reminded Maddie of a cartoon dog, maybe one she had seen when Seth watched Donadio. Fang, the dog was called, or something like that. Fang had a raspy voice, like this man.

“Miss—”

“Mrs.” It seemed more formidable, being married. Besides, technically, she was.

“You have been asked to leave.”

“I don’t think you have the right to refuse someone service.”

“I most certainly do,” Shell Gordon said.

“Then call the cops,” Maddie said.

“You think I won’t?”

“Oh, I think you will. I’d love to know what the complaint is.”

“We don’t serve unescorted women at the Flamingo. It’s not that kind of place.”

Maddie laughed, and this seemed to infuriate Shell Gordon more than anything she had said.

“The Flamingo is a club with standards,” he said, the color rising in his skin, which wasn’t much darker than Maddie’s. “It’s a place for gentlemen—and gentlewomen. Some of the best acts in America have played the Flamingo. It is my club and I make the rules. You want to come see one of our fine musical acts, you come back with a gentleman. Assuming you know any.”

Maddie assessed the situation. She could stage her own sit-in, but to what end? “I’m happy to leave, if Mr.—what was your last name, sir?—will walk me to my car. It’s not the safest neighborhood these days.”

“Take her out, Spike.”

Outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, the sky still light, the weather warm and sultry, Maddie doubled down on her lie: “It’s some blocks away. Sorry.”

He grunted. She let a block pass in silence, then said: “Did you like her?”

“What?”

“Cleo. Did you like her?”

“Sure. Everybody did.”

“Except the man who killed her, obviously.”

Silence.

“Would you tell me one thing about her, anything? A detail I can’t know from reading things.” She waited a beat. “And going to the morgue.”

Another long silence, until she despaired that he would ever speak. But then: “She was like a poem.”

“What?” She hadn’t expected any response, much less an answer that was at once tender and provocative.

“There was a poem they made us memorize when I was in school. I never understood it. But it was about a woman, whose looks went everywhere.”

“‘My Last Duchess.’”