Golden Throat

by James P. Alsphert

  “Will they kill me? If they do, I guess I deserve it…”

  “Maybe. You see, ma’am, our laws are full of things they call extenuating circumstances. So it’s up to the judge and jury.”

  She looked up at me, soft blue eyes reddened with tears and the unbearable emotion that now sat behind them seemed to speak to me, tell me I did it, I did it, I did it…and yeah, I’m glad I did it even though I’m in pain and I’m divided and don’t even know what the hell I’m doing or where I am! But I did it! So now punish me and let me die! She looked down at the dirty, coffee-stained rug. “I killed his baby…because it wasn’t mine…it was his—and he did it, he got me pregnant so I couldn’t see Randy anymore.” Then she got this sick, twisted smile on her face. “But you know, I fooled him. I killed his baby, to clear the way for me to be with Randy. Then I’ll have Randy’s baby—and—and we’ll—we’ll be happy! I know he’ll want me even more now. He didn’t like me as much when I was carrying my ex-husband’s kid. Now he’ll want me, free and clear. You know, that’s just so swell, and how I like it with Randy—free and clear. And guess what?”

  “You tell me, Miss…what?”

  “I’d kill anyone for him. He’s going to take me to Chicago where his folks want to meet me—and we’re gonna dance, whoop it up, go out and have fun, dine in the best places—and find a nice place to live.”

  “Yeah, that’s swell,” I said, just keeping the conversation as loose as I could until Officer Rosario arrived.

  Then she looked at me more intensely. “You don’t believe me, do you? You’re a cop. To you I’m a murderess, huh? But I’ll be famous for a week or so, won’t I? Nobody ever paid much attention to me until I met Randy. He sells shoes. Travels a lot. He’s gone right now on the train to Salt Lake City. Then he’s coming back for me. I told him it’d all be over when he got back and we could go away. That made Randy happy. He wants me. I can tell. He wants me to have his baby. You see, I kept my word, didn’t I?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Donna…Donna Corson…of course that’s my maiden name. I would never use his name again.”

  I studied her face. “I…I don’t know what to say to you, Miss Corson. But you’ll have to go somewhere for detention.”

  “What’s that? Will Randy find me there?”

  “Oh, yeah, he’ll find you there alright. I don’t think you’re gonna be movin’ to Chicago anytime soon, however.”

  “As long as Randy can stay with me—can he stay with me there?”

  Just then Officer Alicia Rosario appeared at the door. She was a pretty big woman with a tough look. I liked her, though, because she never let emotion get in the way of her job. I introduced her to Donna Corson and let her take over. I quietly walked out of the little house and stood on the porch, listening to sparrows sing in a palm tree across the way. I lit up a Lucky Strike. I glanced into my patrol car and saw my new rookie sitting there upright, looking straight ahead out the windshield. Some guys are cut out for this life, but a lot aren’t. Attrition rates among young cops during these years were pretty high. On the surface it was a glory job, but once you got a taste of the underbelly of society, you’d be hard put to justify the existence of human beings at all in this cock-eyed world. For the most part they were self-serving, gave nothing back to the soil they took their sustenance from, and pretended to be some brand of ‘civilization,’ daring to emulate the ideals philosophers and religionists had scribbled down for centuries. So far, no society had found a way to be part of the natural world without taking from her or to live in harmony with one’s neighbor without the ugly head of war peaking up over the brouhaha of human kind pretending to be ‘better than’ the simple roots they came from.

  I got into the Model-T. “I’m sorry, Cable,” Davie Spivak said. “Are you going to write me up—I mean, failing my first murder attendance and all—”

  “Naw, you didn’t fail anything, Davie, me boy. You just saw an opening to the first act of a long play, the one called ‘humanity and all its foibles.’ You got a lot more tests ahead. You know, pal, we’re only five years apart—but it’s not the years behind your eyes that count now, but the years out there, out there in the streets, taking a lost boy home, rescuing a dog that’s run away from a blind man, picking up a corpse that died during the night of malnutrition, arresting a hoodlum for breaking into a jewelry store by telling you his uncle owns it, picking up a fifteen year-old prostitute who’s so full of disease you can hardly get near her she smells so bad…yeah, and so on…you gotta see humor in tragedy, Davie. If you don’t, you’ll miss the main show, the comedy of errors humans commit upon themselves.”

  “Easy for you to say. I’m at the other end of those experiences. And I came from a very serious family. I’ve got to learn to take the punches like you do, Cable, but does it ever get better? I mean, do you get numb after a while and maybe you learn not to take it personally?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, Davie. You learn not to take it personally.” I started up the car and we drove off to the next adventure of the day.

  When I dragged myself into my apartment that evening and began throwing my clothes off, I could smell coffee brewing. I peeked around the corner and there sat Mario at my tiny little table reading the paper. “I almost drew my .38 on you, guy. What’s up?”

  “My first day off with pay…I just wanted to pop by and thank you for getting me off. I’ve already begun drafting some new indictments against O’Malley, O’Flaherty, Dragna and a few of the big boys downtown—I can smell them all the way from the mayor’s office.”

  “Easy, Mario,” I said, afraid for my friend. “You gotta clear some space here until things cool down. You agreed. Right now you’re front and center with these guys. We have to remember, if they work in cahoots together, buddy, both sides are the enemy. Let’s keep it quiet for a while, okay, pal?”

  I could tell that Mario didn’t like what he was hearing. But I was hoping against hope that he wouldn’t jump the gun. “But I’ve got a month to trap them into a place they can’t get out of. Don’t you see? Once I can get a dynamite, registered letter off to the State District Attorney—and this time a powerful article of exposure in the newspapers—the people will rally. There are lots of good and honest people out there. You said so yourself.”

  “I did say that, Mario. But people don’t act until they’re really sick and fed up with things. Right now everything’s looking rosy, the economy is leaping ahead, we’ve recovered from the Great War, we’re our own country again—nope, people aren’t quite ready to jump on our bandwagon, Mario. I still think we’ve gotta wait a while.”

  Mario Angelo shook his head slowly back and forth in consternation. “I don’t agree completely, Cable. It’s the rich who are getting richer. Look at Elena and me—my piddly little police salary hardly cuts the rent and food. I mean, her folks have to help us out now and then. They haven’t given us a raise in two years. But I notice O’Malley’s makin’ a heftier salary than last year—not to mention the kickbacks he gets from looking the other way when Dragna and his men open another speak easy.”

  “You got a point, Mario, but it’s a sore point. That kind of injustice has been going on since a caveman with a bigger club realized he could clobber his neighbor, take his cave—and his woman—just because he could. Greed, buddy boy. That ain’t about to change.”

  I said goodnight to my childhood friend with a phony smile and trepidation. I had this sinking feeling that Mario Angelo would try too much too soon in this great big grownups’ world. Causes were great if you had the right one at the right time. I think Mario was only batting two-fifty on that one.

  As soon as Mario had gone, I turned off the coffee and fell into bed. Some days are like epidemics and this had been a hard one on my body and I fell into a restless sleep, filled with dreams about someone I knew of but never met. A guy named Nikola Tesla was trying to talk me into giving him an audience with Lei-tao, the Red Dragon Lady, and I w
as disagreeing with his premise that she had overcome gravity by something he had invented. Written on his chest in big blinking red letters were the words, ‘DYNAMIC THEORY OF GRAVITY,’ and strange electrical bolts of blue lightning came out of his fingertips. Lei-tao was coming toward me, trusting me to introduce her to Tesla. But as she approached she began to fall apart into pieces and I scrambled around, trying to pull all of her bits together again into a collective whole. But Tesla was laughing as he said he disagreed with Einstein, that people like him would one day “kill anyone for effect” because he sounds brilliant, but he’s a child throwing a child’s wonderment at us. He kept yelling that space does not bend in the universe because it has no physical properties and that Lei-tao only appeared to be separating from herself. “Albert Einstein was a metaphysician, not a scientist”, he yelled at me as he began to be pulled into the darkness away from me. “He was a ‘dazzler of objectivity’ in the universe—come with me Red Dragon Lady and I will give you everything electromagnetic in your new home dimension—come! Come! Come!”

  I woke up to three soft knocks at my door. I instinctively reached under my pillow for my .38. I got up and sidled to the door. “Yeah—it’s late and if you’re carrying iron, drop it so I can hear it.”

  “What is this ‘iron’ you say, mi querido?”

  I opened the door wide. “Oh, Adora! Adora!” I whispered as I pulled her in out of the hallway.

  “Oh, señor, you are wet and shaking! Mi pobre muchacho!” We held each other only long enough to feel our pulsing bodies fill with desire. I threw off my tee shirt and shorts and began undressing her. I lowered her onto the bed and ravaged her body with my kisses, my hair still wet from my dream-sweats. Her lovely long legs wrapped around me as my manhood plunged into her. She sighed and moaned with such delight that I knew I could never be in this world without her love, without her touch. I reveled in pleasing her and in turn, as she slammed her abundant beautiful breasts into my chest, I could feel her womanhood take me deeper and deeper into her as she surrendered her whole body to me. When I finally exploded into her, I cried like a child who had found his way home after a long, impossible journey. And Adora knew exactly how to field that energy, absorb it into her own being as if she was born with a space for it all of her life.

  We lay there in the dark completely spent, completely in love. “How did you know where I live?” I asked. “And it’s dangerous out there in this neighborhood at night for a woman by herself.”

  “Señor…por favor…you are talking to first-class travel agent, no? When you buy ticket for San Francisco, I have…I have…I have…” Then her smile faded and she looked deep into my eyes in the semi-darkness. “I have you…I have you…oh, mi amor, tell me—I have you…”

  I clung to her until I squeezed some of our love juices onto my sheet. “Ooops! That must tell you something—how much of me you have. I gave you all that I have tonight, beautiful señorita.”

  “Ah, noche feliz, mi bandido! You steal my heart and I cannot have it back!” Then she rolled over, took one of my pillows and covered her chest with it. “Lo siento mucho I come here tonight. But I wake in a dream. I am wet for you, pulsing. If I do not have you I know I will burst into muchos pedazos!”

  “And I’m glad you did, Adora. It’s just that we can’t keep seeing each other—”

  She put her finger to my lips. “-shhh…..amigo, entiendo. Pero, I have to fool myself, Cable…pensar I can come here when I need you—like este noche. I must believe that, es verdad?”

  I rolled onto the side of the bed and sat up, took out a Lucky Strike and lit up. I chuckled to myself. “It’s funny, kid, just last night I was talking with Dr. Penn about you. Do you remember him and Polly from San Francisco?”

  “Oh, sí, very nice hombre, he speak español, también.”

  “Yeah, that’s the man. Anyway, he’s as much in love with you as I am. He feels we should be together, you know, the forever and ever kind?”

  “I like this man. Extraño…it is how I feel also.”

  “I’m sorry for both of us, Adora, that I just can’t be two people. Honey and I are really beginning to grow deeper bonds and it’s not like she’s some sleep-around or something—but she loves me like you love me—for keeps!”

  “Comprendo, señor. Forgive me. Maybe I am only a weak woman?”

  “No, beautiful Adora. You will never be weak or less than you are tonight to me.”

  “Can I stay…stay with you…por favor…sólo un poco más longer?”

  I looked at her with such great love that I felt my own heart pour into hers. “You can stay until the cock crows, doll—”

  “—the who crows? Am I understanding—I mean—you want me otra vez—one more time?”

  I laughed out loud. “Well, yes—and no, silly, that means you can stay with me until the rooster crows—”

  “Ah….sí, un gallo en la mañana!”

  Then I put my cigarette out and came back to be with her on the bed. “And yes, I do want you again—and again. I want to be born in you. That’s how I feel when you absorb me into your beautiful body, more and more. That’s why it drives me nuts to think about you during the day. Or even sometimes when I’m with Honey, I feel my mind drifting to you…”

  She pulled me down onto her and once again spread those lovely legs of hers as I fit perfectly between them. Even though I knew this would not be a night of much sleep, it would be a night of ecstasy and healing.

  ‘Give Me a Little Kiss, Will Ya, Huh?’

  March 29th was Honey’s birthday and we celebrated it at the club after her show that night. During her performance I noticed some of Dragna’s big mugs drift in, including Joe Lorena. As Joe entered, Honey had launched into a new song I hadn’t heard her sing before, called Stardust. It seemed to affect Lorena in some deep-down place. Words had just been added to Hoagy Carmichael’s melody…and poignant words they were indeed. I was watching him there in the semi-dark of the club, as he sat on a bar stool holding a glass and I could see tears begin to well up. Maybe aliens had emotions after all. Maybe by the time Honey got to the words, ‘the melody haunts my reverie…and I am once again with you…’ he was thinking of Honey’s mother, the one he had loved and never got over.

  The Bella Notte had gone all out for their Golden Throat that night and Affonso Amadore brought on a birthday cake five layers high and everyone was invited to have cake and champagne. About midnight Jack Dragna came in with a brunette and two of his goons. He went over to Honey, hugged her congratulations, nodded at me and went into a shady booth to confer with some other hoodlums.

  Honey and I were sitting alone at our reserved table up near the stage. “Damn, Cable, do I deserve all this hoopla? I just discovered maybe I don’t like all this attention.”

  “Well, in here you deserve it. You’ve made these guys a bundle. Just think, from that first day you auditioned with It Had to Be You until tonight—look what you’ve accomplished?”

  “It’s all your fault, Mister. If I hadn’t slept with you that first night, just think, I’d still be out there on the dance floor with countless men fawning over me with their little tokens….waiting in line for me…”

  I laughed. “Yeah! Instead, you’re a golden-throated goddess of music with a promising career in radio, recordings and soon maybe some films. The films with sound and talking are here, I think!”

  “May I join you for a congratulatory drink?” a voice spoke. I looked up. It was Joe Lorena. I still had a lot of mixed feelings about this guy.

  But blood is thicker than water, and Honey got up as Joe hugged her and soon they both sat down opposite me at the table. “Thank you, Joe, this is a happy time for me. My career’s going full steam, Cable and I are getting married—and my Dad’s here. What more could a girl ask?”

  “I’m so proud of you, Honey,” Joe Lorena said. “I was really moved by your interpretation of Stardust. I’m kind of a popular music buff. I don’t think anyone has rec
orded it with the words yet, so as far as I’m concerned, your version is the one that will set the tone for everyone else.

  “That’s swell of you to say that, Joe, thanks. Cable didn’t slip you some dough under the table to have you say that now, did he?” she giggled.

  He looked at his daughter lovingly. “There’s hardly a day when I don’t think of you and how beautiful you turned out. And it’s your birthday and it was your mother who gave you birth—and I know how happy she would be to know her daughter grew up into this talented, lovely—”

  “—I—I don’t think I can talk about that, Joe,” Honey said. “Please…”

  “I’m sorry. I suppose I’m just sentimental tonight.” Then he brightened up as he lifted his glass to toast Honey. “To you, Honey Combes, the brightest light on Wilshire Boulevard—and soon radio, records and movie houses throughout the land!”

  The three of us clinked glasses. “I’ll drink to that---and go you one more,” I said. “To the lady who’ll be the prettiest singing bride in the business.”

  Honey looked at me and threw me a kiss. “If this is Friday, I think I might love you, Cable Denning.”

  Just then a drunken Jack Dragna came over by himself and put his arm around Honey. “Honey Combes, this establishment—is—is proud of you. So, what can we do to repay—hic!—repay you? Jewelry, more money, new agent—clothes? What?” Then he bent close to her ear. “Is there someone in your way you don’t like? I’d kill anyone for you, Honey Combes,” he slurred. “Anyone who got in your way. You know that don’t—don’t you? Your Uncle Jack’s here for you…okay?”

  Honey was a bit embarrassed. “Thank you, Mr. Dragna. I appreciate that a lot. But there’s no one I can think of who I don’t want around at the moment, thanks all the same.”

  He stood to his full height, still looking down at Honey. “Okay. Just remember, anytime you want someone outta the way—you know who to call, huh?” He looked at Joe and me. “Well, gentlemen, if you’ll pardon me, I shall return to my seat.” He left. Some gorgeous dish with bobbed dark hair and a red dress stood awaiting Dragna back at his table.