Chances

by Jackie Collins

  Gino pulled the old Ford up outside. A prostitute lounged carelessly against the wall outside the hotel. “Wanna have a wunnerful time, big boy?”

  He ignored her and strode into what passed for the lobby. Behind the desk a sharp-nosed man argued with a drunken couple. “Ten bucks or y’can scram.”

  “Aw, c’mon,” the woman whined, “make it five, Pete, we’re only gonna be an hour most.”

  The sharp-nosed man was adamant. “It’s New Year’s Eve. Charges are double. You don’t like it, then piss off.”

  The woman’s date fished in his pocket and slammed two grimy five-dollar bills on the counter. The sharp-nosed man scooped up the money with one hand and reached behind him for a key with the other. Not a word was spoken. The couple took the key and headed for the uncarpeted stairs.

  “Yeah?” snapped Sharp Nose, peering at Gino.

  “You got a Mr. and Mrs. Paolo Santangelo here?”

  “Who’s askin’?”

  Gino did not bother to answer. He reached for his wallet and extracted a twenty, which he slid across the desk. “I’d like the key.”

  Sharp Nose didn’t hesitate. He had an amazing sleight-of-hand when it came to money. He stroked up the twenty and handed Gino a key all in one movement. “Second floor,” he muttered. “Take the stairs, the elevator’s broke. You never got no key from me.”

  Gino nodded. The dump was worse inside than out. He walked up the stairs. The smell of the place was enough to make anyone sick. He didn’t bother to knock on the door, just fitted the key and walked right in.

  He was not prepared for the scene which greeted his eyes.

  Vera was hunched on the bed, nude. The harsh ceiling light showed up every purple bruise on her well-used body. Across her arms and breasts were fresh red weals. Blood flowed from her crushed nose. In her hands she clutched a .38 which was pointing at Paolo. She was breathing in great hysterical gulps and in frenzied tones was screaming, “I’m… going… to… kill… you…. This time… I’m… going… to… kill… you….”

  Paolo stood blankly at the foot of the bed, clad in shorts and a filthy undershirt. From his right hand dangled a heavy leather belt complete with lethal-looking buckle. His greasy gray hair was mussed and untidy. In his bloodshot eyes was an expression of true terror mixed with total disbelief.

  Neither of them noticed Gino at the door.

  “Bastard!” Vera screamed, and squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet hit Paolo squarely between the eyes. He staggered back, the expression of disbelief fixed in his eyes forever.

  “Bastard!” Vera screamed again, but before she could fire a second time Gino jumped her and desperately struggled for possession of the gun. “Vera! Vera! What are y’doing?” he yelled, pinning her on the bed and wrestling the gun from her tightly clenched fists.

  “Oh, Gino!” She began to sob. “Oh, God…. Oh, God….”

  He felt he was in the middle of some terrible nightmare from which he would shortly awaken. And Bee would be by his side with her big warm breasts and comforting thighs.

  So why didn’t it happen? Why was he still in this sleazy room with a naked, hysterical Vera lying beneath him? And his father now slumped on the floor, blood pumping from a broken mess which had once been his face.

  If only he had gotten to the room a minute earlier.

  If only he had been in time to stop her.

  Why? Paolo was dead. Wasn’t that what he had wanted all along?

  He got off the bed, still holding the gun. Vera was rolling back and forth now, racked with sobs.

  Soberly Gino stared at the heap that had once been his father. He tried to remember a good time. But he could not remember one. He bent to the pathetic body, listened for a heartbeat, heard none. He had not expected to.

  “Why did you do it?” Vera screamed, suddenly sitting up. “Why did you do it, Gino?”

  “Calm down,” he said softly, his mind running over the possibilities of how to get her out of this mess. “I didn’t do nuthin’.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, “you did it. You took away his balls. This is all your fault.” She started to scream again. “You did it, Gino! You did it!”

  She collapsed back into wild sobs.

  Gino gazed at the ceiling and wondered what move to make next.

  Margaret O’Shaunessy and Michael Flannery got engaged on New Year’s Eve. He presented her with a cheap imitation emerald ring and a hotel room key.

  “I got us a room, just like I said I would,” he crowed excitedly. Flushed with celebratory beer, they raced to the hotel.

  Margaret was not impressed with her surroundings, but when Michael started lovingly to remove her clothes she began to relax. “We got the whole night together,” he informed her. “You don’t like it the first time, we can do it again and again and again.”

  She did like it the first time. But they did it again and again and again anyway. Until at last they lay exhausted and just talked, going over their plans for the future.

  Around three thirty in the morning they fell asleep.

  At about three forty-five a lot of noise started coming from the room next door. Margaret woke immediately. She could hear angry voices, male and female. She could not make out exactly what they were saying, but an occasional word came across clearly. “Bitch… dirty slut… can’t stand you….” Then a short silence.

  Margaret hoped that the couple next door would be quiet now. But this was not to be. The man yelled loudly, “I’ll beat the shit out of you, cunt.” And this declaration was followed by a terrible series of lashing sounds.

  Margaret sat bolt upright in bed. Michael snored peacefully on.

  She wondered whether to wake him. The noises coming from next door were truly horrible. She could hear the woman crying and groaning as she was hit.

  Tentatively she poked Michael in the ribs. He did not move. He was some heavy sleeper. She snuggled back under the covers, holding the pillow around her ears to try and cut off the sounds.

  It was no good. The woman’s cries were getting louder, the noise certainly more violent.

  Determinedly Margaret set about waking her fiancé up. By the time she got any sense out of him at all, she was really angry. “I could have been raped and murdered in this room, Michael Flannery, and you would have slept through the whole thing,” she admonished.

  He grinned sheepishly. “What’s the matter, my little beauty?”

  “Shhh… and listen.”

  Michael sat up. “Listen to what?”

  The noise had stopped.

  “Oh, Michael, the people next door were fighting and screaming. You’ve never heard such carryings-on. I think someone was getting beaten. I think—”

  “I’m… going… to… kill… you….”

  The wildly screamed words hurtled through the thin walls.

  Michael jumped off the bed.

  “Bastard!” the same hysterical woman’s voice yelled, then a shot. Then another “Bastard!”

  Michael Flannery struggled into his trousers. “You stay here, Margaret, I’m going to call the police.”

  “Michael! You can’t leave me!”

  But, shirt flapping, he was already out of the door.

  “Oh, dear Father, help me, please!” Margaret uttered, running for her clothes and hurriedly putting them on her shaking body. She had never been as frightened as this in her whole life. It was a punishment, of course. A chastisement for having sex before marriage.

  “Why did you do it?” the woman next door wailed. “Why did you do it, Gino?”

  Margaret O’Shaunessy was to repeat those words more times than she would care to remember in the following months. They were the only words she clearly remembered.

  Carrie

  1941

  “What’s yer name, girly?” The fat man in the mustard suit scratched his balls and regarded her through screwed-up eyes.

  “Carrie,” she replied, trying to sound pleasant. Inside she was seething. Girly, indeed! Sh
e was twenty-eight years old and a mother—yet she still got called “Girly.”

  He continued to scratch his balls furiously as though she weren’t even in the room. “Ya got yerself a job,” he decided. “Money ain’t much—but a girl looks like you won’t have any trouble pickin’ up tips.” He winked. “An’ more. Depending.”

  She had a strong desire to say, Fuck you, fatty, you can shove your lousy job. But instead she said, real polite, “Thank you, Mr. Wardle. Shall I start tonight?”

  He left his balls alone for a moment and patted her warmly on the shoulder. “Yeah, sweetie. Tonight’ll be fine. Wear somethin’ shows off them pretty titties.”

  She left the dingy office, walked through the even more dingy dance hall, and took a bus home.

  Home.

  One room for baby Steven and her in a run-down tenement building in the midst of Harlem.

  Home.

  No bathroom. Rats at night. Walls that perspired in the summer and leaked in the winter.

  Yet it was a home for her and Steven. And for two years she had been able to pull in just enough money to keep them both.

  It had not been easy. After the difficult birth she had been exhausted. But the hospital had allowed her no long leisurely rest. After two weeks it was out on the street with only the welfare money in her pocket and a baby in her arms. She had found a woman to care for Steven during the day and had gone back to her old job as cashier in the restaurant. The job did not last long. Now that her belly was no longer swollen, the boss began to get ideas. He was old, with thin yellow hands, which made her shudder, and a wife who watched him like a hawk. He pounced one afternoon in a storeroom in back, his yellow hands pawing every inch of her. She left that very same day.

  Two years of the same kind of job. And always a boss, always the same story. What was it about her that caused men to want her so much? Did they think that being black meant being easy?

  She could not figure it out. She always wore her hair back, no makeup, and plain clothes. It did not put them off.

  As she moved from job to job, struggling to make ends meet, it occurred to her that she was a fool. If men wanted her so much, why not make them pay for it? One night of whoring would net her more money than a week’s work.

  But could she sell her body again? That feeling of being no more a person, just a thing, a piece of meat.

  Of course drugs could get her through it….

  She closed her mind to that thought. She had baby Steven to consider, and she wanted more for him than a mother who was a junkie whore.

  The new job at the Fun Palace Dime a Dance near Times Square was another direction. First, Carrie wanted a nightime job so that she could spend the days with Steven. Second, the only daytime jobs available were for scrubbing or being some lazy white woman’s maid.

  She knew that she was laying herself open for advances, but so what? She had to fight men off anyway—on a crowded dance floor it should be easy.

  A bouncy Mexican girl named Suzita taught her how to do it. “Zay get too close, knee ’em in zee groin. One, two, like so. Zay back off dead quick!”

  Carrie found she was right. A quick knee was far more effective than a hundred no’s.

  Suzita did a little business on the side. Any customer she liked she provided “extra” services for. “Zees is good,” she told Carrie. “Zees way I get to pick and choose. Why you no do it too? You need extra money. It easy money. Only take guys you like.”

  Carrie shook her head.

  Suzita laughed. “You change your mind. I know.”

  Three weeks after that conversation, Steven was taken ill with an unidentified virus infection. Almost overnight he turned from a strong healthy two-year-old into a very sickly child indeed. Carrie took him to doctors and specialists, but none of them could seem to find out what was wrong with him.

  After several weeks it was suggested that he be put into the hospital under observation. By this time Carrie was frantic. Before she had managed to scrape by. Now it was suddenly bills bills bills. And working as a dime-a-dance girl wasn’t going to pay them.

  Suzita was helpful and sympathetic. She took Carrie around to the hotel she used, introduced her to the desk clerk, and said in her quaint accent, “You like eet, Carrie. Ees not bad work. Plenny dough.”

  Carrie nodded blankly.

  That evening she dressed with care. Even Mr. Wardle was impressed. “I wouldn’t mind spendin’ a dime on yer myself, girly,” he said as he wobbled past.

  She shuddered. She might be going back to work, but it was on her terms. She was going to be like Suzita and pick and choose.

  That night there wasn’t much to pick and choose from. She finally settled on a nondescript little man with ridiculous small glasses balanced on the end of his nose. “How about you an’ me goin’ round the corner to a hotel I know?” she questioned, as they lurched around the dance floor to the strains of a tired tango.

  He pretended not to hear her, but a nervous tic indicated that he had. Two dances later he summoned up the courage to ask a barely audible, “How much?”

  Carrie willed herself to think of all the mounting doctors’ bills. “Twenty-five,” she said.

  “Yes,” he gulped.

  He was waiting when she left the dance hall. She wanted to run away and leave him standing there in his stupid little glasses. She thought longingly of having something to dull her mind. Silently they walked to the hotel.

  The desk clerk winked and requested ten dollars. The man paid up without an argument. The desk clerk handed the key to Carrie and winked again. She had to remember to slip him a five when she left.

  In the room a neon sign flashed on and off outside the window. The blanket on the narrow bed was gray. The carpet had a hole in it.

  They stood inside the room, embarrassment heavy in the air. She pulled herself together and requested the money.

  He handed her fifteen dollars.

  “Twenty-five,” she said quickly.

  “But the room was ten,” he objected weakly.

  “Twenty-five or no…” Her words trailed off.

  He produced a further ten dollars. She pulled her dress over her head, unfastened her brassiere, removed her panties.

  He turned his back and took off his trousers.

  She lay down on the bed. Just like old times.

  He mounted her carefully. His penis was so small she couldn’t even feel him inside her. In five minutes it was over, and he dressed and scurried off like a frightened rabbit.

  Carrie lay on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. She was back in business. It was a day to remember. December 7, the same day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan.

  America declared war. And she was a whore again.

  Whoring was a business she knew inside out. And much as she hated it, she performed as a professional. Soon, any johns she got were coming back for more.

  Suzita was impressed. “You is one quick operator. I like zees.”

  Mr. Wardle, owner of the Fun Palace, did not. He called her into his cramped office one night and said, “You’re using my place to pull tricks. You wanna do that, fine. I want a cut.”

  “Take your job and shove it,” she replied.

  “You’re fired, girly.”

  “You can’t fire a person who just quit.”

  Baby Steven was beginning to recover. Home was no longer good enough for him. He needed a dry clean place with a small terrace where he could get some fresh air. She suggested to Suzita that they find an apartment together and operate a small house. Suzita agreed. Within weeks Carrie found them a roomy apartment in the mid Thirties. The place was big enough for Steven to have his own private section, and she hired a sixteen-year-old black girl to care for him.

  The city was alive with soldiers, sailors, and marines, all looking for a good time. Most of them were going to Europe and wanted a last fling. War was good for business, and soon the money was rolling in. A tall redhead named Silver joine
d them.

  It wasn’t long before they found themselves with one of the most popular whorehouses in town.

  Gino

  1947

  “You got everything, Santangelo?” the prison guard asked.

  Yeh. He had everything.

  “I guess it’s goodbye, then.”

  Yeh. It was goodbye. Seven years was enough time for anyone to spend in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Seven long years of boredom and monotony and bad food and no women and sadistic guards and prison riots and no fucking freedom to do anything.

  Gino fingered his scar and walked to the prison gates.

  The warden was a mean son-of-a-bitch. He had known the press would be scamming around the prison like locusts at a feast, but he had refused permission for Gino to be released secretly in the dead of night. Bastard.

  But Gino was strong. He could handle it. Prison had not broken him. The fittest survived, and he was on top of the whole fucking heap.

  His step was full of bounce as he headed for the gates. But his gut ached, and what he really wanted to do was smash a few heads. That Irish cunt, for one: Margaret O’Shaunessy, with her dumb pop eyes and soft childish voice. Star witness for the prosecution at the famous Santangelo murder trial, SON MURDERS FATHER, the headlines had screamed. Tried and found guilty by the press before Paolo’s body was even cold. And Margaret O’Shaunessy’s damaging little voice: “I heard a woman screaming, “Why did you do it, Gino?’”

  And poor dimwitted Vera. By the time the cops finished with her she was actually convinced that he, Gino, had pulled the trigger. Unbelievable!

  It was true that, thanks to Michael Flannery, the cops had broken in and found him standing over the body with the murder weapon in his hand. And also true that he had not at first given a truthful account of what had taken place. For some stupid reason he had tried to protect Vera. But eventually he had told the truth. And nobody had fucking believed him! Nobody! He was branded a murderer—a killer—long before the trial. What kind of man executed his own father?