They had come to see Clara Smith, the Queen of the Moaners, second only to Bessie Smith. Clara and Bessie had been close friends until, one night, Bessie got drunk and assaulted Clara. That event, eight years before, and a brief romance with Josephine Baker gave Clara a reputation for living on the wild side. Round faced with a large tipped nose that flared at the nostrils, she had sparkling eyes and glowing hair that she wore parted down the middle and looped over her forehead and ears. She made her wide mouth function as an incomparable musical instrument, mournfully singing “Shipwrecked Blues,” “Look What You Done Done,” “Cheatin’ Daddy,” and “Tell Me When.” She followed her blues routine with several gospel numbers and then teased the band with her sassy and sardonic wit.
“Leon,” she said to the trumpeter, “you is so black that I reckon lightning bugs follow you around in the daytime.”
Leon ran up and down the scale on his horn.
“Sketch,” she said to the saxophone player, “I hear you’re colored blind.”
Sketch played an off-key note and replied, “Heavens, Clara, I hope you is wrong, because I just got married last week.”
“Clara,” asked the drummer, “do you keep all your old love letters?”
“You bet I do, Henry, ’cause some day I expect them to keep me.”
She continued this repartee, to the boisterous delight of the audience. If laughter is an outward sign of an inward state, then these partygoers were enjoying the night.
As she left the stage, Jay heard a man at the next table say, “Clara’s on her way down. At thirty-nine, she don’t have the power to moan the blues the way she used to.”
“But her stories are still sharp as a tack,” said his companion.
Arietta had struck a contemplative pose.
“What’s on your mind?” Jay inquired.
“I was just thinking of my father and the grand piano we used to own. We even had an eighteenth-century violin from Cremona, until we had to sell it.”
“Times are bad for everyone.”
“Except the rich. Clara’s gospel numbers reminded me of Papa’s singing. He wanted a career in opera.”
A waiter hovered over them expecting an order for another round of drinks. Jay would have ignored him had not one of the bouncers begun staring. Requesting two more beers, Jay heard the waiter grumble, “The last of the big spenders.”
“The opera,” Jay said, trying to pick up the thread of Arietta’s conversation. “Where?”
“In Rome . . . after he left the priesthood.”
Jay blinked and tried to tell himself that he had misheard. Arietta, seeing his expression, continued. “He was a Jebby. My mother and her two sisters bumped into him on the steps of St. Peter’s . . . they came from Germany . . . on a pilgrimage with a group from Stuttgart.”
“Your father was a Jesuit priest?”
“Once. But he loved women more than God, or so he says.”
To step back a moment: The evening had begun with Jay being grilled by Mr. Magliocco. After having called Arietta no fewer than six times—where women were concerned, he believed in the adage that success is nine-tenths persistence—he dropped by to see her at Castle House, where she worked as a part-time dance instructor when the school needed an extra coach. As he sat on the sideline watching the klutzes shuffling across the polished wooden floor, she told one, a rotund fellow no taller than she, “Don’t shake the hips or twist the body . . . don’t flounce the elbows or pump the arms.” At the end of the lesson, she took a break.
“What are you doing here?”
“You wouldn’t say yes on the phone, so I thought if I made a personal appearance, I might persuade you.”
She looked around furtively. “It’s that nasty business at Dreamland. My father wants me to cut all ties to it and anyone associated with the place. But I did ask him to make an exception for you.”
“Maybe I should speak to your parents and show them I’m okay.”
“Mother’s dead.”
“Sorry.” Pause. “Well, what do you think?”
Removing her black patent leather shoes and rubbing her feet, she gave him a gnomish smile and said, “All right, but if he doesn’t approve, you’ll just have to understand.”
He shook her hand. “I accept your terms. How about Saturday night . . . about eight?”
“Where?”
“The Kinney Club.”
“Not the Kinney . . .”
“Why not?”
He took a taxi to her house on Littleton Avenue, a two-story brown-brick dwelling dwarfed by big trees that left the interior dark. Arietta opened the door and stopped him in the foyer, which had framed photographs of famous opera stars, mostly Italians, like Enrico Caruso and Amelita Galli-Curci.
“Don’t mention the club to my father. Say we’re off to a movie.”
“Which one?”
She thought a moment. “Bombshell, with Jean Harlow.”
“You won’t believe this, but I met Harlow once and we became friends.”
She smiled skeptically and said, “Be sure to admire his plants.”
In the living room stood a stunted piano covered with faded photographs in silver frames. The mission-style furniture, with its dark wood and Dick Van Erp hammered copper lamps, casting warm yellow shadows through the vellum-like shades, bespoke a time when arts and crafts design was all the rage. Now it all looked dated and dreary. Only a profusion of houseplants mitigated the sense of decay: spider and rubber plants, a Boston fern, a large philodendron, and a plant that Jay had never seen before. Mr. Magliocco sat in a parlor chair with rimless spectacles perched on the end of his nose. Jay’s arrival had interrupted his reading. Arietta introduced them. Mr. Magliocco placed his book face down on his chest, invited Jay to take a seat, and asked Arietta to pour them each a glass of Strega. Extending his hand, her father said, “Piero Magliocco.”
“That plant?” asked Jay curiously, failing to introduce himself.
“An ornamental monkey-puzzle tree. It’s native to Chile and Argentina. The name comes from an Englishman who thought that the tree would be a puzzle to climbing monkeys. Ironically, monkeys are not native to the areas where this unique specimen comes from.”
“It looks prehistoric. By the way, my name,” he said belatedly, “is Jay Klug.”
“Klug . . . what kind of name is that?” Before Jay could answer, Mr. Magliocco left his chair and insisted on showing him the framed photographs on the piano. Mostly prewar, the pictures of his wife and her blond wealthy family had been taken on terraces, in formal gardens, on picnics, on pleasure boats. Mr. Magliocco pointed to his wife posed in her First Communion dress and coming-out dress, the latter inscribed on the bottom: “Silvesterabend 1911.”
Turning to Jay, the older man observed, “You could pass for a German . . . the blond hair,” pointed to two chairs, and said, “Let’s sit.”
“I’m Jewish, sir. My father comes from the Ukraine.” To curry favor, Jay added, “He speaks Italian.”
“And do you?”
“I wish I could. It’s a beautiful language. My father sings Puccini and Verdi arias.”
“Does he?” Mr. Magliocco exclaimed. “I studied opera in Rome and even appeared in Tosca at the Teatro della Pergola in Firenze.”
“Do you still sing?”
“For my own pleasure. Arietta accompanies me on the piano. These days most opera companies have folded. No one has the money to stage a production. How do you support yourself?”
“Journalism. The Evening News. I do movie and theater reviews.”
“Under your own name?”
“I just started.”
“You’re lucky to have a job. Until recently, I worked all the time . . . as a truck driver . . . hauling liquor.” Piero chuckled, remembering. “Kristina never approved.”
Jay took Kristi
na to be Arietta’s mother. “My dad says Prohibition was a full-employment act.”
Arietta brought the drinks. They clinked glasses and toasted each other’s health. Mr. Magliocco sipped his drink and expounded:
“He’s right. It took thousands of law-enforcement officers to police it and even more people to break the law: shippers, sailors, smugglers, truckers, bodyguards, warehouse watchmen, nightclub owners, bankrollers, bribers. The guys who brewed their own had to buy barrels, malt, brewing machinery, cooperage coating, air compressors, cleaning compounds, kettles and pipes, hops and yeast. If they repaired their beer barrels, they needed heads, shooks, and rivets. Those who did their own delivering had to buy a fleet of trucks, gasoline, oil, tires. Yeah, Prohibition created a lot of jobs and brought good times. Even Kristina had to admit it.”
Jay gathered that his wife’s upper-class background made it difficult for her to countenance his illicit work. Suddenly, Mr. Magliocco changed the subject.
“Arietta is all I have,” Piero said, leaning over and taking her hand. “She’s my support. Without her . . .”
How could she have supported him on a part-time job as a dancer? Surely, instructors didn’t earn that much.
“Your plants are magnificent. I particularly like the monkey-puzzle tree. You must have a green thumb.”
“Gardening and opera: my two passions.”
Jay walked to a flowering geranium resting on a window sill and made a point of cradling the orange bloom in his hand.
“That one comes from a trash can. I found it on a walk in the neighborhood. A little pruning and plant food and ecco!”
“Lovely.”
“You’d better hurry or you’ll be late for the movie.”
Whew, what a relief! The father had approved of Jay’s dating his daughter. “I hope in the future to see a lot more of Arietta,” he replied gaily. Oops, would Mr. Magliocco hear the double entendre? Jay decided that he would take Arietta and her father to dinner just as soon as he could afford it.
Between acts, two familiar-looking toughs, wearing black homburgs and white silk scarves, entered with a couple of whores. It took Jay a minute to realize that these were the men he had watched from his Prince Street window. They worked for Dutch Schultz. The headwaiter seated them next to the stage. Jay would have ignored them except that one of the women in their company removed her hat and he recognized Margie Smith. Before Jay could say hello—he had been woefully delinquent in not sending her flowers and inquiring about her health—Johnny Fussell, back from Europe for a short tour, tapped out onto the floor for his specialty number, dancing while seated on a chair. His bow tie and white shirt quickly lost their starch as his face and neck ran with sweat from the furious beat: tap-a-tap-tap. Swinging his arms and skipping, Johnny swept from one end of the stage to the other with a fluency and rapidity that left the audience breathless.
At the conclusion of his number, people spilled change and bills on the tables, which Fussell swept into his black derby as he made his way through the room. Arietta enthused knowledgeably, “He’s the best, the very best. Leave him five dollars.” Five dollars! Who did she think he was, a Vanderbilt? His reluctance led Arietta to sing:
When me and mine am blue and broke,
Wishing to ’scape the common folk,
We throw money at our cares,
Though we ain’t no millionaires.
Maybe Barbara Hutton and her friends used conspicuous wealth to thumb their noses at the Depression, and maybe the determined gaiety at the Kinney Club was designed to ignore the world outside, but he knew that some families could live two weeks or more on a fiver. So he put down two greenbacks. Looking contemptuously at his offering, Arietta shoved it back at him, opened her purse, and balanced a fiver atop her beer glass. He figured her father wasn’t wrong in saying that she supported him. Perhaps her mother had left her a trust.
Shamed, he excused himself to greet Margie. Her deep-cut dress accentuated her breasts. One of the hoods showed his appreciation by lasciviously staring at her exposed anatomy. She leaped up and embraced him, to the annoyance of her escort.
“Boys, I want ya to meet an old friend of mine, Jay Klug. We used to go marathon dancing together. The night I got sick, Jay was my partner.” Jay shook hands with the men, whom Margie introduced as Mandy Weiss and Charlie Guzick. “This is Charlotte. She’s one of the girls.” The young woman, balancing a cigarette holder in one hand and wearing a sheer pink dress that brought to mind Jean Harlow, smiled and cracked a piece of gum. He nodded—and wondered how one could chew gum while smoking. “Sit down,” said Margie. “Take a load off your feet.” She turned and looked over her shoulder. “Who’s the lady?”
“Sheesh,” said Charlotte, “she looks like a movie star. Maybe I ought to ask for her autograph.”
“After they drove you to the hospital, I teamed up with her. She teaches at Castle House.”
“Pretty soon you’ll get so good you’ll be high hatting me.”
“Not you, Margie. You’re an old pal.”
Weiss kept staring at Arietta. “How does a punk like you rate a doll like her?”
Margie shook her head censoriously. “Behave yourself, Mandy. We’re here to have a good time.”
But Mandy persisted, “Well, kid, how come? You got a bulgin’ bankroll or somethin’ else in your pants?”
“We both like to dance.”
Mandy laughed uproariously. “With a babe like that, why spend your time waltzin’?”
Jay didn’t like the company Margie kept. Standing up to leave, he foolishly taunted, “The pleasure’s been all mine. The conversation’s been illuminating. Maybe we can meet again, on Prince Street.”
Mandy and Charlie exchanged knowing looks. Forcing Jay back into his seat, Charlie put his hand inside his jacket. “Mandy, I think pretty boy here’s tryin’ to tell us somethin’.”
“Yeah, he’s soundin’ real smart.”
Margie foolishly blurted, “Sure he’s smart. He went to college.”
“See, I told you, Mandy, pretty boy’s got a head on his shoulders—unless he loses it.”
Nightclub shootings were not unheard of, and the gunsels usually escaped in the confusion. This party was certainly unlike Longie’s. Gang leaders were one thing, gorillas another.
“My friend Charlie has an itchy finger. Maybe if you tell him what’s on your mind, he’ll stop scratchin’.”
Trusting that Margie would restrain her friends, and that Abe’s magical name would protect him, he replied, “I’m merely an errand boy for Longie Zwillman. My boss likes to keep tabs on his friends.” A contrite Charlie Guzick offered to buy Jay a drink, and Mandy amended his remarks. Immediately, Jay began to trade further on Zwillman’s name, suggesting that he had long been in the employ of “Abe.”
“Some of us,” said Charlie, “ain’t real happy about Longie puttin’ out the no-go sign for drugs in the Third Ward. He oughta know that a guy’s got a right to make a livin’.”
“I hate when friends fall out,” said Mandy. “You end up scraggin’ your own.”
Charlotte said impatiently, “Hey, we’re here to dance, not chew the rag. They’re playin’ some good swing music.” She stood and grabbed Charlie’s hand. “Come on, Romeo.” Charlie seemed uninterested. “Forget how to dance?” Charlie got to his feet and hit her forehead sharply with the palm of his hand, dazing her. She plopped back in her chair and sat there looking off into space.
Arietta had to be troubled. Jay mumbled something about his date waiting for him. Margie grabbed his arm and pulled him toward her.
“Drop by Polly’s. I’m there every day but Mondays.”
When Jay returned to his table, Arietta asked, “What was that all about?”
“The woman in the blue dress . . . she’s the one who took sick the night I met you. The others I don’t know.”
“They seemed awfully friendly for strangers.”
Her suspicions made him uneasy. She’d never see him again if she thought he ran with the mob. “Honest, I never met them before.”
“All that back slapping and laughing made me wonder.”
“We were just swapping stories.”
“On what, mad hatters?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Headwear. Chapeaus. Caps. Lids. Skimmers. Homburgs.”
“Arietta, you’d better translate.”
She studied her glass and said, “The ticket taker at Dreamland said that the two men in the getaway car wore black homburgs.”
A second later, he remembered that Mandy and Charlie entered the Kinney wearing homburgs. “Hey, thousands of men wear them.”
“You do seem to show up at the wrong places at the wrong time—or perhaps the right places.”
Now, what the hell did that mean? “You’re speaking in riddles, and frankly I’m lousy at solving them. Could you be more precise?”
“If those are the same men who drove the getaway car . . . your being palsy-walsy with them doesn’t look so good.”
“What about you?” he said snappishly, feeling abused. “You asked the victim to dance. Maybe yours was the kiss of the spider woman.”
“Yes, I went to Dreamland, but while I rested in the tent, you hung around. Why?”
“The triggerman looked fishy.”
Could she really believe that he had anything to do with the murder? If she did, why would she spend the evening with him? Something else had to be up. “Look, Arietta, I’m no gangster. Just a journalist who . . .”
She interrupted, “. . . is on Longie Zwillman’s payroll.”
How did she know that? He hadn’t told her.
“I can hear what you’re thinking, Jay. Where did I get my information?”
Dreams Bigger Than the Night Page 7