He wanted something more. He did not know what.
“The trip to Frisco’ll do you good,” Aldo remarked, easing himself into a leather chair. “You work too hard. You can’t even find time to come by the house for dinner. Barbara’s startin’ to take it personal.”
“When I get back.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Spaghetti and meatballs—my Barbara makes the best.” He sighed and kissed the tips of his fingers. “Ah… my wife is such a wonderful cook.”
Gino stared pointedly at his friend’s gut bulging over the top of his pants. “I can see that.”
Aldo laughed self-consciously. “A contented belly shows a contented man.”
“Fat. Asshole.”
“Please!”
“Fat!”
A knock on the office door interrupted their joking.
“Yeh?” snapped Gino.
“Me, boss.” The voice was unmistakable: Jacob Cohen. Now known as Jake the Boy. Or mostly just The Boy, although he was now pushing twenty-four. He had received his nickname because of his early start in a life of crime. With Gino’s hundred-dollar loan to back him at the tender age of fourteen, he had gone right to work. Stealing cars. Hit-and-run robberies. Audacious cons. “Who did it?” outraged victims would question. “The Boy,” was always the answer.
Gino had taken him on when he was sixteen. By the time he was twenty he was in charge of collecting for the numbers racket, with several very nice little sidelines of his own.
“Come in,”Gino yelled. “What’s with the polite shit?”
Jake burst into the room smiling. “Don’t wanna interrupt you, boss. Understand the new rule is to knock first.”
“What new rule?”
Aldo looked flustered. “I thought,” he began. “Well, it seemed like a good idea….”
“What the fuck.” Gino burst out laughing. A week previously, Aldo had walked in while he was servicing the cigarette girl over his desk. “I guess you’re right.”
“If Cindy should arrive unexpectedly… or Mrs. Duke…”
“I agree,” said Gino, still smiling. Maybe that’s what he wanted—one or the other of them to catch him at it. Then he would be off the hook. Free.
Jake dumped a large bag filled with money on the desk. “I think Gambino—y’know, the candy store on a Hundred and Fifteenth—is stealin’.”
Gino raised his eyebrows. “You sure?”
Jake scratched his wiry head of hair. “Sure enough. If it ain’t him it’s his old lady—she’s the only other person gets near the money before it’s collected.”
“Give him a warning. Just one.”
“I understand, boss.”
Gino stood up from behind his desk. “I’m going away tomorrow, Jake, only for a week. Any problems, talk to Aldo.”
Jake glanced over at the fat man and nodded. Why was Gino demeaning him by telling him to talk to the creep. Everyone knew Dinunzio was chicken shit. Frightened of his own shadow. Why Gino kept him on was a mystery. He sat on his fat butt in the office and did fuck all. Oh, yeah. He got off his ass to lock the money in the safe the workers brought in. Workers like him, Jake, the real guts behind the Santangelo operation.
“Everything else fine?” Gino questioned.
Jake scratched his head again and wondered if he had caught something crawly from his latest girl friend. “Everything’s stupendous, boss.”
“Good. I’ll see y’in a few days.”
Clementine Duke stared coldly at her husband. “I do not believe what you are telling me.” Her voice was ice. “How could you possibly be so stupid?”
Oswald gazed unseeingly out of his office window. His voice quavered. “I’ve never tried to hide anything from you. You have always known what I was.”
She laughed sharply. “Not always, Oswald. The way I recall it, I waited two years before I found out the truth about you.” She flicked a Camel cigarette from a packet on his desk, lit it, and said, “So. Do you have a… solution for this… problem?”
“Gino Santangelo. He owes me a favor.”
She blew smoke toward the ceiling thoughtfully. “This would be more than a favor.”
“I know. But he owes me everything he has. He’ll do it.”
“You seem so sure….”
“He has to do it. If he doesn’t, I can destroy him.”
She licked her lips. In his own way Oswald was probably as ruthless as any street gangster. But then he had power—and enough of that could corrupt anyone. “When will you ask him?” she breathed.
“The day he returns from San Francisco. The timing will be perfect.”
She nodded wordlessly. Since when did it require perfect timing to ask someone to commit murder?
Bee sat a respectable distance from Gino on the back seat of his black Cadillac sedan. Red drove the car, and Sideways Sam lounged in the front passenger seat.
Gino puffed on a cigar, filling the car with fumes about which no one complained.
Bee, her hair pinned neatly atop her head, felt as nervous as a kitten. She was not an inexperienced girl—indeed, she had certainly had her fair share of over-amorous men to deal with—but still… Gino Santangelo…. He was her boss, after all, and a married man…. And he was inclined to use women and then discard them with merely a trinket as a remembrance….
Bee had no wish to be used and discarded. But how could she make herself different from all the other girls?
“Jeeze!” Gino exclaimed, interrupting her thoughts. “Whyn’t you tell me you lived in a different country?”
“Just another four blocks, that’s all.”
“It better be.” He yawned and wondered if it was going to be worth the trip. Another day. Another broad. They were all the same.
But tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he was going to San Francisco to be best man at Costa’s wedding. Tomorrow he would see Leonora.
The thought ruffled him. How would he feel? How would she feel? His initial instinct had been to turn Costa down.
“You can’t do that,” Cindy had insisted. “You promised when he was our best man that you would return the honor.”
True. So there was no getting out of it. Besides, it was about time he faced up to Leonora. For insurance he was taking Cindy.
“We’re here,” Bee announced.
Red pulled the Cadillac up outside a brownstone apartment house.
“You going in, boss?” Sideways Sam asked.
“Yeh,” Gino replied. What did the idiot think? That he had come all this way just to sit in the car?
Sideways Sam got out and checked up and down the street. Then he opened the back door of the Cadillac and Bee climbed out, followed by Gino.
She led him up the outside steps and into an apartment on the first floor. It was plain and simple but not bad. “You live here alone?” he asked.
She hesitated for a second. “Yes.”
He roamed around the room. “Make me a scotch,” he commanded. “You got ice?”
“Sorry. No scotch either.”
“What have you got?”
“Nothing. I… don’t drink.”
“Don’t drink? What d’you do in the club, for crissake?”
“The waiters bring me colored water.”
He laughed. “And the mugs pay for champagne.”
She laughed with him. “That’s right.”
He stretched. “Jesus! What a life!”
Bee stood watching him. “Shall I… take my clothes off?”
He flopped into a chair. “Is that what you do instead of serving drinks?”
“If you’d like me to.”
The kid was all right. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “Go ahead.”
Her heart was beating wildly now. She had a plan to make him remember her…. It would either work or lose her the job at the club. Better than ending up as just another one of the girls.
Slowly she began to disrobe. He never took his black eyes off her.
She re
moved everything she was wearing except for her high-heeled shoes, black silk stockings, and red garters.
He stared at her appreciatively. She certainly had a special body. Big and white and smooth. Large pale breasts, topped with generous nipples. Long firm legs. A flat stomach. He liked her style, too. Maybe this one would be worth a second visit.
The hardness he felt in his pants was becoming unbearable. He stood up and walked toward her.
She took a deep breath and spoke quickly. “Mr. Santangelo, I think I should tell you. I am recovering from a… social disease.”
He stopped dead in his tracks.
“The doctor did say it was all right for me to… make love now, but I just felt it was only right to tell you.”
“You got the clap,” he said blankly, collapsing back into the chair. “Holy shit! You got the clap an’ I nearly screwed you.” He leaped up from the chair as though it suddenly occurred to him he might catch it through the material. “Whyn’t you tell me before?”
“I am cured.”
“Jeeze! All the way to the fuckin’ Village, and you’ve got a dose!”
“Had,” she corrected.
“Jeeze!” He glared at her. “Put somethin’ on.”
She climbed back into her dress while he edged toward the door.
“I hope I haven’t upset you, Mr. Santangelo.”
“Upset me? No, kid. You only ruined the best hard-on I had all month! See ya.” And he was gone.
She slumped in relief. At least he would remember her now and, she hoped, come back again. She had lied about having a social disease. The only disease she’d had in her life was chicken pox at the age of ten. She couldn’t help smiling. The look on his face when she had told him!
Quietly she tiptoed into her bedroom. Her seven-year-old son, Marco, was asleep in the roomy double bed. She pulled the covers up over him and kissed him lightly on the forehead. If Bee was to get involved with Gino Santangelo, it would be properly or not at all. Now she stood out from the crowd.
He wouldn’t forget who she was in a hurry.
Cindy lay sleeplessly in bed and wondered who her darling husband was bestowing the big favor on tonight. Dear Clementine, maybe? After all, he was going to be away a whole week and how the heck was the old broad ever going to manage without him?
Or one of the girls in the club perhaps? One of those mindless dumb hostesses who thought that she, Cindy, didn’t know what was going on. Gino the Ram. Sure. Everywhere except at home. How did he expect her to get pregnant when he hardly ever went near her?
When Clemmie’s first opened it had been a project that they were both very much involved in. She had been down there every day with the builders and decorators, getting the place ready to open. In the beginning she had hired all the girls for the place. Hostesses. Hat-check girls. Cigarette tootsies. No tramps. Pretty girls who were prepared to work hard and earn their money. While she was around, Gino never second-glanced one of them. After all, he had skinny Clementine to keep him busy.
Cindy had steeled herself from the very beginning to accept that affair. She was smart enough to know that there was nothing she could do about it. Besides, the advantages of being friendly with Senator and Mrs. Duke outweighed the disadvantages. She had known that Gino would get fed up eventually. What she did not know was that, when he did, he would systematically and thoroughly screw his way through the entire female work force at Clemmie’s. By the time that happened she was no longer involved with the running of the club. She had given up hiring and firing girls after the first year and only visited the place when she wanted to be seen. Mrs. Gino Santangelo at her usual table. A bunch of saps surrounding her, who, although they sniffed around her like dogs sensing a bitch in heat, were too scared to do anything about it. Nobody was going to risk anything more than a casual flirtation with Mrs. Santangelo. Not if they knew what was good for them, they weren’t.
She tossed restlessly about on the big bed. Mrs. Gino Santangelo. Clothes. Jewels. A Park Avenue penthouse. But no one to hold her tight at night. No one to love, goddamn it. And there was nothing she could do about it. Not if she wanted to stay married to him, there wasn’t. For Gino gave her only one rule. She was to be faithful or else. That was it.
She reached for a glass of water on the bedside table and thought about the trip. It was something she had looked forward to for weeks. Just the two of them away from New York and the club. Away from it all, maybe she could get him to realize that for all his chasing he had something pretty special at home in his own bed.
The front door slammed, and she peeked at the clock. One A.M. Early for Gino. Now he would go to the fridge, fix himself some ice cream, then straight to his study, where he usually slept.
Tonight she would not bother him. Sometimes she went to him in a new negligee and tried to rouse his interest. Usually with no result. She lay on her stomach and stuffed her fist in her mouth. Sleep, she commanded, sleep.
When she was just drifting off he came into the bedroom and crawled into bed beside her. His hands started roaming under her nightdress, and she could feel his urgent hardness pressing into the small of her back.
“Gino,” she murmured, sudden joy flooding her body.
Before she had even finished uttering his name, he was inside her. Gino. Once the caring considerate lover. Now obviously intent on only his own pleasure.
It was short, sharp, and over quickly without a word exchanged.
Cindy lay in a turmoil of frustration. She bet he never dared to treat his girlfriends like this. And certainly not Mrs. Duke.
The bastard! If the way he acted toward her didn’t change soon, she was going to have to show him a thing or two. Oh, yes! She had a plan that would bring Gino fucking selfish Santangelo to his knees!
Carrie
1937
Early in 1937, Carrie was released from the institution where she had been for nine long years.
She no longer thought of herself as a girl of thirteen. She knew who and what she was. It had all come back to her in sharp fragmented sections. Everything. From mama Sonny to grandma Ella and Leroy all the way to Whitejack.
Her memories tapered off abruptly after a short period with Whitejack. She remembered leaving Madam Mae’s with him and Lucille, then there was a time of jazz joints and having fun, and then… nothing.
Of course it was the drugs. She knew what she had been. The doctors—especially Dr. Holland, who had been following her case for the last two years—had told her all about her addiction. It was the biggest battle she would have to face once she was out of the hospital.
He had argued for a year to have her released. “The girl is not mad, she’s just being kept here as cheap labor.” Eventually he had forced the institution board to agree with him.
Carrie was now twenty-three years of age, a thin woman with large breasts, dramatically long dark hair, and strangely sad oriental eyes.
On the day she left, she wore a shabby gray coat donated by a charity, along with a brown skirt and a yellow blouse. Her hair was tied firmly back, and her face devoid of any makeup. She had twenty-five dollars in her purse and a slip of paper with the name and address of a woman who had a job for her as a housemaid.
Dr. Holland bade her goodbye at the institution gates. “It won’t be easy for you, Carrie, nothing ever is. But I want you to try, and if things get too difficult for you, then, please—I am always available to discuss matters with. All right?”
She nodded blankly. The doctor was a nice man who thought he was doing her a favor putting her out in the world again. But hell, all she really wanted to do was curl up in a corner and never have to face anyone or anything again.
She felt strangely empty and inadequate as she left the institution and rode a bus into the center of the city. Everything seemed so different. Maybe she would have been better off staying where she was. There she had functioned, not thought.
A man on the bus leered at her, and she shrank into the folds of her coat and averted her ey
es. Men were the enemy.
A butler opened the door of the house on Park Avenue.
“I’m Carrie,” she mumbled, shocked because she had just realized that this house was only three doors away from the Dimes residence where she had once worked. “The new maid,” she explained.
The butler frowned. “Why didn’t you use the back door?”
“I’m sorry…. I didn’t realize….”
He tut-tutted and reluctantly ushered her in. “Follow me.”
She did as she was told, trailing after him as he led her downstairs into a large kitchen where a fat black woman was stirring something over the stove.
“Mrs. Smith,” the butler said, “this is Carrie, the new maid. I’ll leave her in your care. I expect that Mrs. Becker will want to look her over before she takes up residence.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Beal.” She turned to Carrie and drawled, “You bin in service before, honey?”
Carrie nodded.
“Then you-all know it ain’t no bed o’ roses.”
Back in service. The same old routine. Making beds. Dusting. Scrubbing. Cleaning toilets. Scouring baths. Down on hands and knees polishing marble floors. Washing. Ironing.
Carrie started work at 6 A.M. and was sometimes not finished until ten or eleven at night. For this she made less than a hundred dollars a month, and that was considered a top wage for a maid who lived in.
She didn’t care about the work too much. It took her mind off other things, kept her good and busy. Once a month she had a day off. She had no idea what to do with her free time, so usually she just stayed in.
She rarely encountered her employers. Mr. Becker was very wealthy, so Mrs. Smith informed her, and Mrs. Becker was always being pictured in the society magazines. “One day I’ll take you in her dressin’ room when she’s out—she must have more’n thirty pairs of shoes!” Mrs. Smith promised.
Whitejack. His name flashed quickly through Carrie’s mind. He had possessed just as many shoes.
Whitejack. So tall and sharp and shiny black. So irresistible. She thought of his twenty-three suits, and the way he preened, and his smile.
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