by Matt Braun
Quinn, with Nolan at this side, greeted them at the entrance of the nightclub. He shook the men’s hands, kissed the ladies’ fingertips, and turned his high-wattage smile on Libbie. “Allow me to wish you a very happy birthday,” he said with glib dignity. “We’re honored to have you at the Hollywood Club on such a special occasion.”
“Thank you so much.” Libbie fluttered her fan with a delicate motion. “I’m so looking forward to seeing Al Jolson perform. Everyone says he’s fabulous.”
“The world’s greatest,” Quinn said, ever the showman. “I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.”
Libbie glanced past him at Nolan. He was impeccably groomed in a white dinner jacket, his piercing green eyes magnetic behind tanned features. His sleek assurance and lithe good looks reminded her of the movie idol Rudolph Valentino. She was suddenly glad she hadn’t brought a date tonight.
The orchestra was playing Japanese Sandman. The club was packed, and on the dance floor, couples dipped and swayed to the beat of the music. Quinn led the Magruders to a large oval table centered on the stage, seating them on one side with empty chairs awaiting the rest of their party. A flurry of waiters descended on the table.
Quinn rejoined Nolan at the door as the Seagraves arrived. They were the guests of the Magruders, and like them, infrequent visitors to the Hollywood Club. With George Seagrave was his wife, Clara, locally renowned for her obsession with planting oleanders all over the Island. They were accompanied by their son, John and his wife, Mary, a woman more interested in raising children than flowers. Quinn, still playing the courtly host, escorted them to the Magruders’ table.
After everyone was seated, he made his way backstage. He knocked on Jolson’s dressing room door, waiting to enter until he heard a voice from inside. Jolson was in the midst of his transformation to blackface, tarlike goo smeared on his hands. He looked up in the mirror.
“Ollie, my boy,” he said with a broad grin. “How’s the crowd tonight?”
“Full house,” Quinn said, crossing the room. “They’re hanging from the rafters for your closing night.”
“And Dutch was worried about an extra two grand to hold me over. I shoulda asked for five!”
“Dutch would’ve had a stroke. But I hope you’re feeling generous tonight. I’d like to ask a favor.”
“Ask away.”
“I have a business associate in the audience. The whole family’s here, celebrating his daughter’s birthday. I was hoping you’d sing her a song—at their table.”
Jolson stared at him in the mirror. “You want me to sing Happy Birthday?”
“No, no,” Quinn said quickly. “One of your regular songs. Just sing it to her.”
“Is she a looker?”
“Al, she’s a knockout.”
“I always was a sucker for a pretty face. What’s her name?”
“Libbie,” Quinn said. “There are nine of them seated at a table down front. She’s the only flapper in the bunch.”
“Good for her,” Jolson said agreeably. “I’ll give her something to remember.”
“You’re a sport, Al. I appreciate it.”
“What the hey, why not? What’s your business with her father?”
Quinn smiled. “We have mutual interests in a bank.”
Their table was tiny, crammed against a wall at the rear of the room. Stoner was dressed in a double-breasted tux and Janice wore a lavender gown with a deep V in the back to her waist. They were so far away they could barely see the stage.
“I hope Jolson sings loud,” she said playfully. “We’ll need opera glasses from back here.”
“Count your lucky stars,” Stoner said. “I got the only table in the place. The one and only.”
“Well, like they say, money talks.”
“Highway robbery would be more like it.”
On a hunch, Stoner had dropped by the club early that afternoon. He’d gone to the front office and talked with the business manager, asking if there had been any cancellations for tonight’s show. The business manager was a slick operator, an extortionist at heart, who held back tickets for every show, for the right price. A hundred dollars a seat got Stoner a table.
Stoner thought it was worth a shot. For four nights in a row he had gambled at the Garden Club and a couple similar poker rooms. He was nursing his funds, for he needed a sizeable bankroll to pull off the last step in the plan. But he’d lost a few hundred here and a few hundred there, and his name was now known at the gaming dives. Tonight, he intended to talk his way into the only casino that mattered.
Over dinner Stoner observed how the club operated. From his briefing in Austin, he knew something of the routine as well as the personnel. He identified Oliver Quinn from the description he’d been given at Ranger Headquarters. He assumed Dutch Voight, who ran the gaming end of the business, was busy with the casino. He would verify that only if his plan worked.
Quinn held his attention throughout dinner. He watched as Quinn seated two groups of people at the same table on the edge of the dance floor. There were nine people in the party, and Quinn’s manner toward the two older men was ingratiating, curiously deferential. Stoner wondered who they were, and why they rated special treatment. He made a mental note of their faces.
The other man who caught his attention was Diamond Jack Nolan. Intelligence files at Ranger Headquarters indicated that Nolan was the enforcer for the Galveston mob. His reputation, though he’d never been arrested, was that of a cold-blooded killer. Stoner saw the easy smile that never touched Nolan’s eyes, and he could believe the reports were accurate. He marked Nolan as the most dangerous of the lot.
Stoner finished his steak while Janice was still savoring her shrimp Touraine. The service was faultless, and he had to admit that the Hollywood Club warranted its reputation for gourmet dining. After a glance around the room, he decided it was time to make his move. Quinn had gone backstage, and Nolan had escorted a few people to the glass doors that led to the casino. He looked across at Janice.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I want to test the waters before the show starts.”
She paused, a delicate shrimp speared on the tines of her fork. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Careful’s my middle name.”
Stoner walked to the nightclub entrance. The maitre d’ was slim as a greyhound, with a pencil-thin mustache, and an expression of haughty reserve. He inspected Stoner with a patronizing smile.
“Yes, sir, how may I help you?”
“I’m here with my wife,” Stoner said amiably. “She’s all excited to try the casino after the show. Thought you could arrange it for us.”
“I’m afraid our clubroom is open only to members, Mr—?”
“Eberling. Bob Eberling. I’d be glad to pay any membership fee.”
“No, I’m sorry, quite impossible, Mr. Eberling. One must be sponsored by another member.”
“Well, I’m a regular at the Garden Club. Call over there and ask about Bob Eberling. They’ll vouch for me.”
“Our clientele doesn’t frequent the Garden Club. And vice versa, if you see what I mean.”
“Look here—” Stoner pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. “Suppose you get me in the casino and I’ll make it worth your while. How’s a hundred sound?”
The maitre d’ looked down his nose. “We at the Hollywood Club do not accept bribes, Mr. Eberling. Will there be anything else?”
“The little woman’s gonna be awful disappointed.”
The maitre d’ just stared at him. Stoner started away, and then, as if struck by an afterthought, turned back. “Say, tell me something, will you? Who’re the people down by the dance floor? The ones with the good-looking girl?”
“The young lady is Miss Elizabeth Magruder. Tonight is her birthday.”
“Looks like the whole family’s here. Her father must have some pull to get a front-row table. Who is he?”
“William Magruder,” the maitre d’ said in an imperious tone. “O
ne of Galveston’s most prominent businessmen.”
“Pays to have influence, huh? I’ll bet you roll out the red carpet when he heads to the casino.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Eberling. I have other duties.”
“Yeah, sure, I understand.”
Stoner filed the information away, curious that a businessman was so chummy with a gangster. He walked back to the table, seating himself, and told Janice he’d struck out on the casino. She played her role and looked properly crestfallen. He shook his head. “Guess we’ll have to go back to Plan A.”
“The manager at the hotel?”
“Yeah, that and more time in the poker clubs.”
“Well, anyway—” She consoled him with a squeeze of his hand. “The evening’s not a complete loss, sweetie. We get to see Jolson.”
The houselights dimmed. A spotlight hit the stage as the orchestra swung into a bouncy tune. Jolson exploded out of the wings.
The choo-choo train that takes me
Away from you
No words can tell how sad it makes me.
Jolson was on bended knee. The spotlight framed him and Libbie as he knelt before her at the table. The lyrics were particularly meaningful because everyone knew he was leaving for Los Angeles in the morning. He finished the last refrain of Toot Toot Tootsie with outstretched arms.
The audience roared their approval. Jolson took Libbie’s hand and kissed it, then skipped back up the ramp to the stage. He concluded the show with a foot-stomping rendition of California, Here I Come, which seemed inspired, since he was off to make the world’s first talky movie. The crowd gave him a standing ovation that brought him back for four curtain calls.
When the houselights came on, Libbie was the center of attention. Quinn stopped by the table and she kissed him on the cheek for arranging a birthday song by Jolson. The conversation turned to The Jazz Singer, the talking motion picture Jolson would start shooting next week. Magruder and Seagrave agreed that talking pictures would prove to be a short-lived fad. Quinn reminded them that people had said motion pictures would never replace vaudeville. And now vaudeville was all but dead!
Libbie excused herself to go to the powder room. She wasn’t interested in listening to her father debate the future of motion pictures. All the more pressing, she felt a buzz from too many gin rickeys and an urgent need to pee. Afterward, she paused before a vanity mirror to freshen her makeup, amused by the stares that her flapper look drew from some of the older women. When she came out of the ladies’ room, she saw Quinn’s green-eyed assistant standing by the doors to the casino. She thought he was devilishly handsome, temptation in a tux. And after all, it was her birthday!
She took a cigarette from her evening bag. Then, stopping directly in front of him, she looked up into his eyes. “May I have a light?”
Nolan clicked his lighter. “Having a good time, Miss Magruder?”
“Just marvelous,” Libbie said, exhaling a thin streamer of smoke. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“I’m Jack Nolan.”
“What do you do for Mr. Quinn?”
If only you knew, Nolan thought to himself. He smiled disarmingly. “I’m the club’s Mr. Fixit. Whatever needs doing, I fix it.”
“How very interesting,” she said, vamping him with a look. “What are you fixing tonight?”
“Pardon me?”
“You could fix it quite nicely by dancing with me.”
Libbie exuded sensuality. She considered herself a liberated woman, one who rejected the starchy, outdated customs of an older generation. Like many young women of the Twenties, she drank, experimented with sex, and explored everything forbidden by a moral code that seemed unbearably ancient. She had discovered the joys of burning the candle at both ends.
Nolan was tempted. He had a weakness for cute young things with no inhibitions. But rules were rules. “I’m sorry, Miss Magruder,” he said with genuine regret. “Mr. Quinn doesn’t allow me to dance with guests.”
“Why don’t you call me Libbie and I’ll call you Jack?”
“All right, but that doesn’t change anything.”
Her voice was warm and husky, softly intimate. “We could change things.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh, I think you do. Why not give me a call at home sometime?”
“Never work,” Nolan said ruefully. “Your father wouldn’t like it and Mr. Quinn definitely wouldn’t like it. I’d be in hot water.”
“Ummm,” she murmured throatily. “I think you like hot water … don’t you, Jack?”
Nolan watched her walk back into the club. Her short skirt revealed shapely legs and her hips wigwagged in a swishing motion that held his attention. He felt a warmth in his groin and a knot in his belly, and warned himself to forget it. Quinn would have his balls if he messed with Magruder’s daughter.
The irony wasn’t lost on Nolan. A little bombshell of a girl coming on to him while her father pulled the strings to have a man killed. He was amused all over again that she’d asked him what sort of work he did for Quinn. In a roundabout way, he was working for her father, and there was the real irony. She would never know.
The orchestra wailed away in an earsplitting number. He saw the girl drag her father out of his chair and pull him onto the dance floor. The crowd went wild with the music, hopping about like well-dressed acrobats in a frenzied Charleston. Magruder was hopelessly lost, merely plodding along to his daughter’s flailing arms and thrashing legs. Her fluted laughter melded with the tempo of the beat.
Nolan turned into the casino. Voight gave him a quizzical look, and he nodded in the affirmative, proceeding on to the employees’ lounge. He hung his tux in a wall locker and changed into a dark charcoal suit. By the time he stepped into the hallway to the kitchen, he’d forgotten the girl.
He had work to do.
The organ swelled to a crescendo. Everyone in the theater sat mesmerized by the action on the screen. The organist kept his eyes glued to a speeding motorcycle.
Manslaughter was the title of the movie. A motorcycle cop was chasing the unjustly accused heroine in her car. Catherine clutched Durant’s arm as the heroine lost control and her car skidded around broadside in the road. The motorcycle struck the fender and the cop vaulted into the air, thrown over the hood. The heroine, distraught and shaken, staggered from her car.
Theaters across the country were equipped with organs. A skilled organist could provide a wide array of sound effects—thunder, gunfire, the rumble of an earthquake—and accompany the shifting moods of a film. Tonight, the organist dropped the tenor to a haunting refrain as the heroine stumbled around the car and looked down at the cop’s body. A gasp went through the audience.
After the movie, Durant and Catherine walked south on Tenth Street. Last night, when he’d run into her on the corner and invited her to dinner, it had been a spur-of-the moment thing. But he had enjoyed her company, and sensed it was mutual, and tonight he’d asked her out for an early dinner and a movie. As he walked her home, she eagerly questioned him about the stunts. She was particularly intrigued by the motorcycle crash.
“I can’t imagine it,” she said. “A motorcycle going that fast and him flying through the air! How on earth did he live through it?”
“Well, good judgment helps,” Durant said. “You have to think a stunt through, and then plan it step by step. It’s all in the timing.”
“Timing?”
“Let’s take the split second of the crash. He had to time it perfectly to let go of the motorcycle. To let the momentum throw him over the car. Everything’s timing.”
Her hand was nestled in the crook of his arm. She hesitated, but curiosity got the better of her. “Have you ever misjudged the timing?”
“Oh, boy, did I,” Durant said with a laugh. “I had to jump from the top of a double-decker bus to an elevated girder. I missed and hit the street like a lead brick. Broke my leg.”
She winced. “How awful.”
�
��Yeah, that’s when I started thinking seriously about directing. Directors don’t wind up in the hospital.”
“But it’s really more than that, isn’t it? I think you want to create films of your own.”
“Doing stunts is like a classroom. I’ve learned a lot from watching the way directors work. King Vidor and Tom Ince are two of the best.”
Durant went on to explain that Ince had formulated a blueprint for making pictures which included a detailed shooting script and a scene-by-scene shooting schedule. King Vidor had pioneered dramatic camera techniques, where the camera moves as if it were the actor, revealing the shot from the actor’s point of view. Imagination, looking at things from the camera’s perspective, was the key to visual narrative.
Catherine could have listened to him all night. Everything about moving pictures captivated her, and she was engrossed by his behind-the-scenes description of Hollywood. Before she knew it, they crossed the corner of Tenth and Avenue K and turned into the walkway of her house. She didn’t want the evening to end, but her mother would have gone to bed, and it was too late to invite him inside. She turned to him at the door.
“I had a wonderful time,” she said, smiling happily. “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself so much.”
“Same here,” Durant said. “Hate to call it a night.”
“Me, too.”
“Maybe we could do it again.”
“I’d love to.”
Durant kissed her softly on the lips. Her hand went to his cheek, caressing him, and then she stepped back. She laughed nervously.
“Well … good night for now.”
“Good night.”
Durant went down the walkway as she opened the door. He looked back, waving to her, and crossed the street. His spirits were so high he felt a little drunk, and he wondered at himself. Then, thinking about it, he realized it wasn’t just having a good time, or even loneliness. He was really attracted to her.