The Yankee Club

by Michael Murphy

  “Silly gigolo …” Cole grabbed the pencil and furiously wrote on the sheet music. He glanced up at Frankie. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  A well-endowed blonde wearing a black sleeveless dress and an expensive assortment of jewelry nestled in her cleavage gave Cole the once-over as she walked by.

  Frankie did a double take and grinned. “For a second there I thought that dame was Mae West.” He shrugged. “Maybe this joint’s too fancy for me. I’m not so used to hanging out in highbrow joints like this.” Frankie appeared oblivious that he was helping Cole Porter write a song. Cole spun back toward the piano keys. He set the handwritten music in front of him. He flexed his fingers, cracking the knuckles. “How does this sound?” He began to sing and play the earlier music.

  “In olden days a glimpse of stocking

  Was looked on as something shocking,

  But now God knows, anything goes.”

  Frankie grinned, “Very nice, Mr. Porter.”

  “That’s just the beginning, fellas.” Cole made a change in the notes on the page and set the pencil beside him on the bench. His face glowed as he continued.

  “Good authors, too, who once knew better words,

  Now only use four-letter words

  Writing prose, anything goes.”

  A dozen customers gathered around as Cole Porter wrote notes on the sheet music. “Almost there.”

  I glanced toward the manager. He shook his head. Laura still hadn’t called.

  Cole set the pencil down. I snatched it without him noticing and grabbed my cane as Cole’s hands danced over the piano keys. He continued to sing, playing to the crowd as he often had at parties I attended.

  “If driving fast cars you like,

  If low bars you like,

  If old hymns you like,

  If bare limbs you like,

  If Mae West you like,

  If me undressed you like,

  Why nobody will oppose.”

  Cole grinned. The crowd ate it up.

  I slipped through the crowd and crossed the room as everyone, including Frankie, laughed, hollered, and applauded. I hurried inside the bathroom.

  “Anything goes … anything goes … anything goes.”

  The room burst into applause.

  After peering beneath the stalls to make sure the men’s room was empty, I set the cane on the counter. I removed the blank sheet of paper from my pocket.

  I smoothed the curled paper on the counter. Like I did in Mickey’s office, I ran the lead from Cole’s pencil gently along the paper. Two words appeared on the paper. Golden Legion.

  I let out a deep breath as questions flooded my mind. What was the Golden Legion that Mickey had to leave an invisible clue on a blank piece of paper? Did they have something to do with Mickey’s death?

  “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble.” The hulking figure of Jimmy Vales stood in the doorway. He had a bandage across the bridge of his nose and wore a sneer he’d saved up just for me.

  I clutched the silver handle of my cane.

  He lumbered into the restroom and closed the door behind him. “I didn’t shoot you and Mickey O’Brien. I wasn’t anywhere near you when that happened.”

  “I don’t think you did either. I told the police as much.” I gripped the silver handle of the cane, ready to free the dagger. “You should talk to the cops.”

  He let out a laugh then bellowed. “I was with my brother. You think those pinheads will believe either of us?”

  His brother, Tony, had a rap sheet longer than Jimmy’s.

  Just when I thought we might reach an understanding, he glanced in the bathroom mirror. His face twisted in a scowl. “You broke my nose.”

  Actually, Gino broke Jimmy’s nose when he slammed the big man’s face against the table, but I wasn’t going to quibble. I glanced toward the door, hoping Frankie would realize I’d gone missing, but my “muscle” was onstage helping Cole Porter write show tunes.

  Jimmy thumped a fat finger against my chest. “How ’bout I break yours?” He shoved me against the counter.

  I stumbled against the sink. With my back to Jimmy, I twisted the handle of the cane. I faced him and brandished the dagger. “Don’t ever put your hands on me again.”

  Jimmy smashed the mirror with a fist then grabbed a long shard of glass, apparently unaware the glass had cut his palm. Blood flowed down his wrist.

  The manager entered the restroom. “Mr. Donovan, Laura Wilson’s on the line …” His eyes danced between my dagger and the shard in Jimmy’s hand.

  Jimmy threw the broken shard against the wall, shoved the manager aside, and ran from the restroom.

  Frankie rushed into the room and slid to a stop. He glanced at the broken glass on the floor and the openmouthed manager blotting Jimmy’s blood from his suit with a towel. “Jake, next time you need to use the can, I’m going with you.”

  Chapter 5

  Split Pea and Dry Bread

  Over the phone, Laura sounded amused over my alarm that she’d been followed. The theater provided security from time to time, and Spencer often sent a bodyguard to tag behind on her outings. The man who’d followed in the Model T must have been one of those men.

  I relaxed my strangled grip on the telephone and sat on a stool at the mahogany bar in The Diamond House. Perhaps I overreacted, but her lack of concern didn’t totally reassure me. The time we’d spent in Mickey’s office and the bus station renewed my appreciation for Laura’s special insight into cases, like she’d provided in the old days. The truth was, I enjoyed being with her for a few hours. My pain over losing Laura to Spencer Dalrymple might’ve risked her life, a selfishness I wouldn’t repeat.

  With Laura safe at the theater, I gazed across the speakeasy following a trail of blood left by Jimmy Vales. I couldn’t imagine the fat lumbering goon had enough smarts to pull off a hit so soon after I arrived in town.

  I waved Frankie over. With Mickey’s newspaper clippings safely stashed in the shaft of my cane, I wanted to talk to his friend Belle Starr who fled the scene of the shooting. Her behavior convinced me she saw something that could help lead me to the killer.

  Frankie and I left The Diamond House and picked up a green Model A, almost as slick as the one Mildred provided, from “a guy” Frankie knew. He didn’t let me out of his sight, no doubt still feeling guilty he’d let Jimmy Vales corner me in the restroom while he helped Cole Porter write a show tune.

  We spent the rest of the day searching my old neighborhood for Belle, starting with the hotel across from Mickey’s office and the apartment building where we first saw her.

  Frankie took me to all of Belle’s hangouts and then some, but we drew a blank. No one had seen her since the shooting. As the day wore on, irritation over not finding Belle increased, along with the throbbing in my leg.

  We sat in the car across from the Carlyle and passed Frankie’s flask back and forth. He thought Belle had caught a train or bus out of town. Although I could write a book about running from one’s problems, I wasn’t so sure.

  The whiskey helped the ache in my leg and the frustration over not finding out what she’d seen the night of the shooting. We finished the booze, and Frankie agreed to pick me up early the next morning for another day of searching for Belle.

  When he drove off, I limped to the hotel entrance, nodded to the doorman, and took the elevator to my suite. I tossed the room key beside the phone. I downed a couple of aspirins, loosened my tie, and dropped into a chair next to the phone on a corner table. After a twist of the cane handle, I set the dagger beside the phone. The contents from Mickey’s folder slid easily onto the table. I flattened the articles and arranged them in chronological order.

  The articles revealed little I didn’t already know about Giuseppe Zangara and the February shooting in Florida that struck five people, including the mayor of Chicago, but missed Roosevelt.

  On March 6, two days after Roosevelt’s inauguration, the wounded mayor died. Zangara pled guilty to
a murder charge, the judge imposed the death penalty, and, inexplicably, authorities carried out the execution ten days later. Any secrets about the man’s motivations or involvement with coconspirators went with him to the grave. The government considered the case closed and declared the unemployed bricklayer a crazed lone gunman. Imagine that.

  The clippings didn’t end with Zangara’s execution. One story dealt with the impact of Roosevelt removing the United States from the gold standard. A photo showed bankers opposed to Roosevelt’s plan.

  It came as no surprise that powerful bankers opposed Roosevelt’s policies. The president’s efforts to bring the country out of a depression would lessen their influence and jeopardize the empires they’d established since the turn of the century. The article quoted a dozen business leaders about their concerns, but one name leaped from the paper—Spencer Dalrymple.

  From my suit coat pocket, I removed the blank sheet of paper I’d shaded while in the speakeasy restroom. Golden Legion. What did that mean?

  I leaned back in the chair and stared at the articles. Who hired Mickey to investigate a solved assassination attempt? My gut told me Mickey felt Zangara hadn’t acted alone, but there were no other names in the file. Were the bankers behind a conspiracy to kill Roosevelt? Had they ordered Mickey killed because he’d come close to the truth?

  After I reassembled my cane, I paced the room. The thought that powerful bankers conspired to plan the death of a president-elect and silenced Mickey because he’d discovered the plot sounded preposterous, even to a writer who’d spent the past few years making up plots and scenarios. Laura wouldn’t marry a man Mickey suspected of conspiring to kill Roosevelt. I had to be missing something.

  I dropped into the chair and read the articles again. When I finished, I came to a conclusion about the night a man in a black sedan shot Mickey and me. Jimmy Vales wasn’t really behind the hit. I had to convince the cops.

  I peeled Detective Hawkins’s business card from my wallet and grabbed the phone. I wouldn’t spill what I’d learned about Mickey’s last case until I had more than newspaper clippings and invisible messages. Still, the cops needed to hear about my encounter with Jimmy Vales at The Diamond House. Hawkins wasn’t in, so I left a message for him to call me at the Carlyle.

  If Jimmy wasn’t in the black sedan the night I was shot, who was? Belle Starr could probably tell me. Frankie might be right she’d skipped town. Then again, she could still be in the neighborhood, a place whose back alleys and hiding places a streetwalker would know well.

  An idea came to mind. Only a hunch, but that was all I had. I grabbed the room key and took a cab to my old neighborhood.

  The Grand Theatre had been a fixture in Queens as long as I could remember. It started out featuring vaudeville shows. As a kid I celebrated when the theater switched to movies. Gino and I often snuck inside when we didn’t have the dime for a ticket. Before I left for Florida, talking pictures were the talk of the city.

  The Grand would always remind me of Laura—where we had our first date and our last: our first talkie, The Champ with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper.

  I bought a ticket and went inside. Belle picked her name from a movie. The idea I’d find her at the Grand was just a hunch, but Mickey and I often played hunches, and things paid off with greater odds than this.

  My eyes adjusted to the dim light while The Three Musketeers serial played. Only a third of the seats were filled. I walked down the aisle searching for Belle. No luck.

  Struggling with my cane, I climbed the stairs to the balcony with a few dozen seats where fellas took their girls for a cuddle or a smooch. I sat in the back row, my eyes surveying the thirteen people, six couples, and a single woman with a scarf over dark hair. I moved a couple of rows closer.

  I got a good look at the woman wearing the scarf. Definitely Belle Starr. She’d toned down her flashy appearance and barely resembled the dish I met the night Mickey died.

  Her eyes focused on the screen as I made my way down the row and sat behind her. What had she seen the night of the shooting that made her change her appearance so drastically and blend into the neighborhood surroundings?

  I leaned forward and tried my friendliest voice. “Hello, Belle.”

  Her head spun toward me. With terror visible even in the dim light, she covered more of her face with the scarf.

  “Remember me? Frankie’s friend, Jake Donovan.”

  “Shhhh,” a young woman behind me called out.

  Hands trembling, Belle stood, grabbed a bag at her feet, and hurried toward the aisle.

  “I need your help,” I pleaded.

  “Quiet,” came a voice from behind.

  She reached the end of the row and bounded down the steps.

  I got up to follow but sank back into the seat. With my wounded leg, I’d never catch up.

  On the screen, a fight in North Africa, a battle of virtue over evil. I wanted to uncover the evil that had taken Mickey’s life, but flushing Belle from her hiding place was hardly virtuous. She’d disappeared, fearing for her life. We both understood. If I’d found her, the men she feared could find her as well.

  Perhaps I’d lost my touch. I’d been wrong not to consider the impact of my investigation on Belle. I wouldn’t risk her life to learn the identity of the two men in the black sedan.

  I struggled to rise and braced myself as my leg buckled. My cane helped me shuffle toward the aisle. Carefully, I made my way down the stairs. I limped into the lobby then went outside to hail a cab.

  “I thought you were dead.” Belle stepped out of the shadows of the theater awning.

  The lights above the marquee gave me a better look at her appearance. In addition to the changed hair color, brunette, she wore no makeup; her formerly red lips were pale and cracked.

  I liked this version of Belle Starr. Pretty, with more innocence, less flash, mid-twenties or younger.

  “My friend, Mickey, bought it. I got shot in the leg.”

  “You thought I’d tell you who was in the black sedan that night?” She stepped back into the shadows when a cab pulled up.

  I waved the cab away. “That was my original plan.”

  “And now?”

  “You hungry?” She looked like it. “The Yankee Club has a good chef if you like Italian.”

  “Ain’t going no place people might recognize me.” She nodded in the opposite direction from The Yankee Club. “There’s a place that serves hot soup a couple of blocks away. No one pays you any mind.”

  “Let me carry your bag.” I hefted Belle’s bag on my shoulder. I kept between her and the street while we headed down the sidewalk. “What’s inside?”

  She flashed a wistful smile. “All my worldly possessions.”

  Belle tugged the scarf over her face on the street side and avoided eye contact with passersby. Two blocks later we reached a line outside of a soup kitchen, McCoy’s Hardware before the stock market went into the tank.

  Even my cheap suit looked out of place, especially behind a man in a frayed overcoat and a woman with two hungry-looking kids. Laura would’ve emptied her wallet. “Where have you been staying?”

  “The Grand.” Belle fidgeted while we waited. “Don’t suppose you have a cigarette?”

  “Sorry. I don’t smoke.”

  “Here.” The man in front of Belle handed over a Camel from a nearly empty pack.

  Her hand trembled when he held the match to the cigarette.

  Inside, the line stretched to a counter where a tired-looking lady handed us each a bowl of split-pea soup and a slice of bread. Belle and I carried our food to a table where dozens of people ate their meal with little conversation.

  I took the hint and ate without talking. I sipped the watered-down broth and tiny bits of ham. Whoever ran the joint stretched the soup for the many who needed a hot meal. I ate the slice of less-than-fresh bread. No butter. I’d tasted worse.

  Minutes later, Belle wiped the last of the soup from the bowl with a piece of bread. “Bett
er than yesterday.”

  Her platinum appearance and flashy clothes were a mere memory. She glanced around and nodded toward an empty table in the corner where we could talk.

  She sat across from me, keeping an eye on the people filing in through the door. “I might beat it out of town. Got enough dough for a bus ticket. If you found me, the guys who shot you could, too.”

  “I’m a detective, or I used to be. I have a knack for such things.”

  Not even a hint of a smile. “Yeah, well …”

  “I’ll put you up at the Carlyle until this mess blows over.”

  “You’d do that?” Belle tugged on a thread unraveling from her sleeve then spoke in a hushed tone. “You trying to buy information?”

  “I’m trying to do the right thing.” It wasn’t her fault a couple of killers might want her dead.

  “Okay then.” She managed a smile. “You seen Frankie?”

  “He spent the day with me trying to find you. I hired him to drive me around until my leg’s well enough to push in a clutch.”

  “Or until you find the bums who shot you.” Belle had plenty of street smarts.

  “The cops are after a thug named Jimmy Vale.”

  “Sure, I know Jimmy, but he had nothing to do with shooting you and your friend. Guess if you’re putting me up in a fancy-schmancy place like the Carlyle, I should trust you.” She drummed her fingers on the table and glanced toward the line of people still making their way for the free meal. “If you find these guys, they’d get locked up and I could go back to being—”

  I whispered, “Belle Starr.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “You’re a swell guy, Jake Donovan.”

  “I know plenty of people who’d disagree with you. So why don’t you go to the cops?”

  Belle laughed. “Cops ain’t too sympathetic to girls in my profession.” She let out a sigh and lowered her voice. “I only know the driver, the man I chatted with outside the hotel. Paul Cummings. Good-looking, dark-skinned Jamaican.”

  “You sure he’s Jamaican?”

  Belle grinned. “I know my accents.”

  “What about the shooter?”