“Bobby, you have any idea how lucky you are? Beautiful wife who loves you? Kid on the way?”
“I know,” he said. He shook his head, curls flouncing, and his sigh started down around his shoes. “Now if only I wasn’t facing no twenty years in stir.”
And he went inside.
19
Of the jewels in the glittering bracelet of the Sunset Strip after dark-the Trocadero, the Crescendo, La Rue, and Ciro’s, to name a few-the Mocambo was the brightest, and the gaudiest. The epitome of a Hollywood nightspot, with record-breaking attendance unfettered even by the post-VJ Day slump, the Mocambo sported a deceptively simple exterior. The two-story building’s lower story was red with its name emblazoned in bold stylish white, the upper floor white with red-shuttered windows and a modest neon sign, with only the oversize canopy’s red-and-white-striped awning to suggest anything remarkable might await within.
The club had a wildly eccentric South American motif, the inside of Carmen Miranda’s mind as depicted by Salvador Dali. Oversize baroque tin wall sculptures of flowers and harlequins and dancing girls mingled with flamboyant terra cotta and soothing shades of blue, the latter perhaps intended to tone things down a bit in a room where striped patterns were everywhere, from draped walls to candy-cane columns wearing chrome crowns with oversize ball fringe dangling, invoking a demented gaucho’s sombrero. An exotic aviary-a cockatoo, several macaws, a quartet of love birds, a couple dozen parakeets-added constant punctuation to the Latin music of house-band leader Phil Ohman (lured from the Trocadero).
The tariff at the Mocambo was steep-ten bucks a head-but a tourist’s bargain, considering the parade of stars the joint attracted. With Eliot trailing after us like a high-priced bodyguard, Peggy and I were escorted through the packed club by maitre d’ Andre (stolen from New York’s “21”). Along the way we passed Judy Garland and her escort, Myrna Loy and hers, Lana Turner with Tony Martin, Marlene Dietrich with Jean Gabin, and Rosalind Russell and an old gent my wife informed me via whisper was Irving Berlin. If a bomb dropped on this place, the only thing left of American show business would be the Ritz Brothers.
My wife and I were holding hands. I was in a dark suit with a black-and-gray tie and looked pretty snappy; Peggy was a vision in black crepe, her shoulders and midriff bare beneath misty black lace, her dark hair down and flouncing, mouth lushly red-lipsticked. She may have only been a bit player, but every male eye found her, as we wound through the tables. Partly it was her beauty-but some of it had to be her resemblance to the dead girl whose picture had been so prominently in the papers.
We had already had a fight, a little one back at the hotel, and had kissed and made up, after a bigger problem had taken centerstage.
The little fight had been over this late-night (our reservation was 11:30 P. M.) engagement to go dancing and drinking with several old friends. One of those old friends was Barney Ross, as Peg-without me knowing-had set this up with Barney’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Cathy, who was seeing him for the first time since his release from the drug rehabilitation hospital.
When Peggy informed me of this, I had already agreed to go out, and we were getting ready in the big bathroom in the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, me in my shorts, at the mirror, shaving, with Peggy in the tub, also shaving-face and legs, respectively.
“Barney’s going to be there? Does he know I’m going to be there?”
“No. Cathy thinks it will be good for him.”
“You can’t spring me on Barney like this! We haven’t spoken in years.”
She shrugged and then returned her attention to her soapy, nicely formed calf, stroking it with her Lady Gillette. “I know he was a little put out with you…”
“Put out! He was a dope addict, and I dried up his hometown street supplies!”
“But he’s well, now,” she said.
And all I could think of was Lloyd Watterson saying the same thing.
“Do you have any idea how few addicts make it?” I asked her in the mirror, royally pissed at her, loving the way the water made her breasts look so smooth and round and shiny. “Almost none!”
“You were friends since childhood. He’s trying to make a new start. You have to help him.”
“Surprising him like this is no way to do it!”
She began to drain the water, stood, and began adjusting the shower nozzle, so she could wash her hair. Over the tub gurgle, she said, “Then I’ll just go without you and when Barney asks, I’ll say you didn’t want to see him.”
And she turned on the shower, cutting off anything I might say in response.
My mirror began steaming up, and I was steamed too, rubbing a place on the glass for me to finish shaving, muttering to myself, watching her shower, cutting myself when I was paying too much attention to the way the water was streaming down her slender shapely frame, cascading over the tiny cliff of her perfect little breasts, a rivulet trailing through her dampened pubic tuft…
I was in my underwear sitting on the bed when she came in with her hair wrapped up in a towel and her body tied into a terrycloth robe with the hotel’s gold BHH monogram.
“I’m not going,” I told her.
“You have to go,” she said. “Besides, you told Eliot we were going out for a late supper.”
She came over and sat next to me and sighed heavily, even dramatically, and announced, “Anyway… there’s something more important than that we should, well…”
I frowned at her. “What?”
“Can we talk?”
Those three words again: now I was starting to know just how deadly they were in married life, trumped only by the fatal four: “We have to talk.”
But I could tell something was really wrong. The violet eyes were troubled, the smooth brow managing a wrinkle.
Melting, I said, “Sure, baby.”
“What I have to tell you is going to make you sad.”
I slipped an arm around her. “What is it?”
“Oh, Nathan… I know you’re going to be so disappointed…” She was tearing up; lips trembling.
“What, doll?”
“… I got my friend today.”
“Your friend?”
“My friend… you know-my period.”
“You can’t get your period-you’re pregnant.”
“No, I’m not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you-it was a false alarm.”
She explained that she’d always been as regular as clockwork with her periods (which of course I already knew-just as I knew the bad ones put her in bed for a day or two) and when she’d been late, a week and a half ago, she had assumed the worst. (Exactly how she put it: “The worst.”)
“But you went to the doctor…”
She swallowed; looked sheepish. “No. I made an appointment, but I never kept it… didn’t bother… I’ve never missed a period, never had one arrive so late-oh darling, I know how dearly you wanted a child, but we can have another.”
I felt empty. The emotional roller coaster Peg and I had been riding lately, where this now nonexistent kid was concerned, had finally jumped its tracks; and this very long day suddenly caught up with me, and I flopped back onto the bed. For some reason, I began tearing up, too. Emotions getting away from me…
Peggy crawled onto the bed and leaned over me; her face, with no makeup, at all, was lovely. “Nate, darling, when the time is right, we’ll have as big a family as you want-I’ll be your personal baby-making machine.”
She was so earnest, hovering over me, making that silly statement, that I had to laugh. Smiling, she cuddled close to me.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll make you better.” She slipped her hand into the fly of my boxer shorts, found me, and brought me out for a look. “He’s tiny.”
“Just what every man hopes to hear from a beautiful woman.”
“Let’s see what I can do.”
Then she knelt over me, making me grow, her head bobbing up and down, sliding u
p and down slowly, quickly, slowly, and it was dizzingly sensual, making me giddy with pleasure, and when I had to come, I warned her, but she didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop…
It was the best I’d ever had.
Next to Elizabeth Short.
A man who has been paid that kind of attention will follow a woman anywhere, and so I was now in the Mocambo, hand in hand with her, Al Capone’s nemesis trailing faithfully behind us, walking over to where my other best friend sat with his former showgirl wife.
My partner Fred Rubinski was there, as well, seated next to Barney in a spacious corner booth. Everybody had drinks already, and Fred was inflicting a Havana on them.
Just above and behind where Barney sat with Cathy at the linen-covered table, concealed lighting glowing upward, a huge tin sculpture seemed to float. The life-size figure of a South American native in a headdress of curled tin stood on a round pedestal, exotic fronds and flora at his feet, skeletal body festooned with webbing and ball fringe, arms outstretched, an elaborate electric candelabrum in one hand, a small iron cage in the other.
The tin figure would have been at home in Welles’ Crazy House, or possibly in a dope addict’s dream.
Though this surrealistic statue seemed to be springing from his head, Barney Ross did not look like a dope addict. In fact, he just looked like Barney Ross-a slightly pudgy bulldog-pussed brown-eyed ex-boxer in his late thirties, his hair prematurely stone gray, looking pretty spiffy for just getting out of rehab, in a brown-and-white-checked sportjacket and red bowtie.
I stood swallowing spit, feeling just a little awkward, no worse than the time I farted on the witness stand.
Cathy looked great-a Maureen O’Hara type with the flowing dark tresses to prove it. In her powder-blue dress with dark blue embroidered flower at one shoulder, she looked as chicly beautiful as the movie goddesses around us.
But Cathy’s smile-which normally could make a man’s knees go rubbery-seemed forced, and anxiety was doing a spastic dance in her usually flashing blue eyes.
She was holding on to Barney’s elbow-he was looking up at me, pop-eyed-as she whispered to him: “It was my idea-I hope you don’t mind, dear.”
“Hey I’m sorry,” I said to him, backing away a little, Peggy hugging my arm protectively. “I don’t like surprises, either-Peg and me can just go.”
Barney just looked up at me, frozen.
“Barney,” Eliot said, ignoring the melodrama. He reached his hand across the table and Barney shook it, numbly. They were old friends, too-used to practice their jujitsu together. “Glad things worked out-you look good.”
Barney was just sitting there as glazed as a glazed ham and with about as much expression.
Then he said to Cathy, “Let me out.”
“Barney…”
“Let me out, would you?” His voice was flat.
She complied, getting out of the booth so that he could, too. Was he going to paste me one? Great-nothing like standing here waiting for a sucker punch from the former welterweight/light-weight world boxing champion.
“Barney,” I said, holding out a palm, “take it easy-I couldn’t stand what you were doin’ to yourself; I had no choice, I had to do it.”
Barney just stood there, looking at me, trembling, hands balled into fists, mouth quivering, eyes twitching-goddamn it, he was looking like a dope addict all of sudden…
Then he hugged me.
And I hugged him back.
We held on to each other for a long time, and maybe we cried a little-that’s what Louella Parsons claimed in her column the next day, anyway. Nobody minded: this was Hollywood, where people displayed their emotions openly, and a lot of men liked to hug each other.
This was followed by a round of congratulations for Peggy and me, on our recent marriage, including admonitions from Barney and Cathy (and, for that matter, Eliot) for not being included in the wedding, and we were told the impromptu Vegas nature of it was no excuse.
Cathy gave up her seat and I got in next to my childhood pal. She and Peggy sat next to each other, holding hands and giggling (which was okay-a lot of the women in Hollywood liked to hug each other, too), coconspirators who had happily pulled something off. Cathy had also had some bit parts in movies and the two women had a lot in common.
Eliot and Fred, who knew each other well from Chicago, sat and chatted and caught up with each other, as Barney and I did the same.
“Why the hell did you go to a government hospital?” I asked him. “You could afford a private sanitarium, and those guys never talk about their patients.”
Cathy answered the question, or started to: “Barney didn’t want to keep this a secret-he wanted to go public with it.”
Barney shrugged, his smile rumpling his rumpled face further. “Best place to get the cure is a government hospital. They’re the toughest-you need that military kind of iron discipline to beat this thing.”
“What does Cathy mean,” I asked, “you wanted this made public?”
He shrugged again, sipped his beer. “There’s a lot of people, some of ’em just kids, who’re hooked on dope, too afraid and ashamed to look for help. Maybe somebody like me comin’ forward will help them get over that.”
Blue eyes sparkling, Cathy said, “I bet you didn’t know Eliot helped Barney make the original arrangements.”
Eliot didn’t notice himself being mentioned, he and Fred were so deep in conversation.
“No!” I said. “What’s that about?”
Barney said, “The Public Health Service Hospital at Lexington is designed for addicts who got caught committing a crime-you know, it’s one of those joints the courts order you to go to. Being admitted as a volunteer patient is a little trickier.”
“And Eliot helped?”
“Yeah, with friends of his over at the Treasury Department. Set it up so I could surrender to their district narcotics supervisor.”
I had a taste of my rum and Coke. I was trying to think of what to say, finally just blurted, “Listen, I’m not going to ask you how tough it was. I know it was tough…”
And it was like I’d turned a spigot.
“I’ll tell you this much,” Barney said, words streaming out. “The withdrawal gave me the miseries, ’cause the reduced dose of morphine wasn’t enough to kill the cramps and the sweats. I learned damn quick where that expression ‘kick the habit’ comes from, ’cause when they gradually cut down my dope, I got spasms in my arms and legs-I kicked like a chorus girl, without even trying. Then the nightmares, the delusions… I was back there, Nate. Back on the Island. I kept fighting the Japs in that muddy shell hole, over and over again… But now? Now I don’t have to go back there no more.”
He was gripping my arm, just above the wrist. I patted his hand.
“No, buddy,” I said, not quite sure whether he meant Guadalcanal or the rehab hospital. “No, you don’t. How long have you been clean?”
“Three months.”
“How come you aren’t skinny?”
He grinned. “Most addicts come in skin-and-bones, so they feed you this high-calorie diet-meat and eggs and potatoes. Man, have I porked up. Gotta get back to the gym.”
“Are you out for good? Are you sprung?”
Barney shook his head. “Officially, it’s just a furlough. In two months, I go back-they check me for dilated pupils and needle tracks and runny nose and the whole megillah… three days of testing.”
“But then…?”
“Then it’ll be over. I got my life back, Nate. Now all I got to do is get my wife back.”
Cathy-who had been right with us through all of this, smiling, encouraging-suddenly stiffened, and turned away.
“I’m not supposed to talk about that,” Barney said, with a pitiful grin. His voice was quavery. I knew he loved her like crazy. And I wondered why she seemed so supportive, yet insistent on going through with the divorce.
I learned the reason when Barney took Peggy out onto the dance floor.
Very quietly, Cathy told me
, “Nate, you can’t repeat this. You have to swear you won’t share with this Barney.”
“Hey, I’m the guy who took his dope away from him, remember?”
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she said, shaking her head, “telling Barney I wouldn’t take him back. But his doctors at Lexington talked to me-they told me to let the divorce go through.”
“What? Why?”
She glanced out where Barney and Peggy were dancing to “Come Rain or Come Shine.” “I’ve told Barney he has to prove himself, to win me back. If I take him now, the way I’m dying to, the doctors say he could lose his incentive.”
I was frowning. “Don’t you think he already has ‘incentive’ enough, Cathy?”
Firmly, she said, “I’ve told him if he’s still off that stuff a year from now, we can talk about remarriage. As for right now, the divorce will be final soon, and we won’t be living together.”
“Yeah, but if you were, you could watch him and-”
She shook her head again, dark tresses bouncing off her shoulders. “He has to do this himself, Nate-just like he checked into that hospital himself. If the disappointment of not immediately getting me back sends him reeling, reeling so bad that he starts back on the dope… then he isn’t cured.”
“Jeez-I don’t know, Cathy…”
“You promised me, Nate. You will respect my wishes on this.”
I smiled at her, nodded. “All right. But if it’s okay with you, I’m going to take the little bastard back in my life as of now.”
She beamed and squeezed my hand.
Eliot was out dancing with Peggy, and Barney with Cathy, when Fred and his big Havana slid over next to me. “You get a load of the rocks in the lobby?”
“Actually, no-missed ’em somehow.”
That Edward G. Robinson puss of his worked up a smirk; Fred was feeling pretty cute. “They’re in a glass case recessed in the wall. You can take a gander on the way out-thirty thousand in diamonds.”
Fred had told me earlier about the new Ringgold Jewelry display, which was making its debut tonight, replacing the ice that had been heisted by the McCadden Group.
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