"There ought to be something on her. Let me check it out. Wait a couple
minutes."
He got on the phone. He had to wait quite a while. Then he thanked the
man on the other end and hung up. "He knows her. She's been booked a
couple times as Antoinette Rasi. But the name she uses is Toni Raselle.
She calls herself an entertainer. He says he thinks she did sing for
a while at one place. She's a fancy whore. The last address he's got
is the Glendon Arms. That's a high-class apartment hotel on the west
side, not too far from the Strip. Both times she was booked last it was
on a cute variation of the old badger game. So cute they couldn't make
it stick. So watch yourself. She plays with rough people. We got rough
ones here by the dozen."
I thanked him and left. It was nearly ten when I got back to the Strip.
I went into the Aztec first. I went to the same bartender. "Find that
girl yet?" he asked.
"I found she calls herself Toni Raselle."
"Hell, I know her. She comes in every once in a while. She may show
here yet tonight. You an old friend or something?"
"Not exactly."
I tried the other two places. They knew the name there also, but she
hadn't been in. I had a steak sandwich in the Doubloon. A girl alone
at the bar made a determined effort to pick me up. She dug through her
purse looking for matches, unlit cigarette in her mouth. She started a
conversation a shade too loudly with the bartender and tried to drag me
into it. She was a lean brunette with shiny eyes and trembling hands. I
ordered a refill for her and moved onto the bar stool next to her.
We exchanged inanities until she pointed up at the ceiling with her
thumb and said, "Going to try your luck tonight? I'm always lucky. You
know there's some fellas I know they wouldn't dare try the crap table
without they give me some chips to get in the game."
"I don't want to gamble."
"Yeah, sometimes I get tired of it, too. I mean when you just can't
seem to get any action out of your money."
"Do you know a girl around town named Toni Raselle?"