around the United States you can find lots of places—especially near the Canadian line—where good booze can be bought for less than you are soaked for poison in Tijuana.
The purple-haired woman at my side downed her shot of whiskey, and was opening her mouth to suggest that we have another drink—hustlers down there don’t waste any time at all—when a voice spoke from behind me.
“Cora, Frank wants you.”
Cora scowled, looking over my shoulder.
Then she made that damned face at me again, said “All right, Kewpie. Will you take care of my friend here?” and left me.
Kewpie slid into the seat beside me. She was a little chunky girl of perhaps eighteen—not a day more than that. Just a kid. Her short hair was brown and curly over a round, boyish face with laughing, impudent eyes. Rather a cute little trick.
I bought her a drink and got another bottle of beer.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked her.
“Hooch.” She grinned at me—a grin that was as boyish as the straight look of her brown eyes. “Gallons of it.”
“And besides that?”
I knew this switching of girls on me hadn’t been purposeless.
“I hear you’re looking for a friend of mine,” Kewpie said.
“That might be. What friends have you got?”
“Well, there’s Ed Bohannon for one. You know Ed?”