by Craig Rice
Mandy looked stupidly from the stock to Moss. Then he mumbled a self-conscious thanks and went back to his chair. It wasn’t until he sat down and opened the paper that the realization of what Moss had done struck any of us. Phil leaned over Mandy’s chair to read the small print on the paper. Moss had them printed especially. His slogans—Gold in your pocket when there’s silver in your hair, and Don’t take a loss; share with Moss—were in black letters across the top.
“These are the same ones we have been buying!” Phil said happily.
Moss beamed. “And why not? To me actors are like people; they work better when they work for themselves.”
La Verne nudged Russell as Moss was talking. “Work for themselves, hell. Those damn stocks aren’t worth a quarter if the theater really should get closed up. Now if he’d give us some of that old stock he’s got it’d be different. …”
Moss was bowing and accepting the thanks of the actors. I hoped he was too busy to hear La Verne. Biff heard her, though; he cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Our Prima Donna is looking a gift horse in the mouth again,” he said.
When I laughed my throat ached. I looked in my compact mirror to see if there were any marks, and Biff asked me what was the matter.
“When that big-fisted female arrested me she damn near choked me to death,” I said. Then I stopped short, it was the “big-fisted” line that made me remember; remember digging at the hand with my nails when it was around my throat. But those hands were thin! The policewoman’s hands were thick and fat.
“Those stiff red hairs … they weren’t on the hands that choked me. Biff! It wasn’t the police-woman that tried to strangle me!”
Biff looked at me out of the corner of his eye, then he looked at the full champagne glass. “If just smellin’ that stuff makes you drunk you better stick to your Seagram’s no crown,” he said. “Want me to think someone tried to kill ya?”
“Nooo …” I admitted, “but I did feel the hands and they did press awful hard, then the lights going off and everything, Moss saying that it was an inside job and …”
“It’s too coincidental,” Biff replied easily. “You keep reading them dime thrillers and you give yourself ideas. If someone grabbed you it’s only because they were trying to find their way out, too. How could they see in the dark? And anyhow, who’d want to … oh, skip it, Punkin.”
His smile made me feel a little better but I still thought that a neck was the last thing anyone would grab for unless they had a strangling intention.
Gee Gee was marching back to her chair. She clutched her share of stock in her hand as she nudged Biff.
“Hey, you’re on,” she whispered. “Don’t keep Santa Claus waiting.”
Biff pushed his chair back and sauntered to the head of the table. He was trying so hard to look unconcerned, like a kid getting a prize from a Sunday-school grab bag.
Mandy hissed at him as he went past, “Don’t forget to say thank you to the nice man.”
Biff ignored him, but the back of his neck was red. He grabbed the paper from Moss and made fast tracks back to his chair. Before he sat down he gulped his glass of champagne.
“That was an ordeal,” he admitted. I wasn’t sure if he meant accepting the gift or drinking the wine. It was probably a little of each because he made a face as he put down his glass.
“What’s with the dialogue about champagne?” he said. “Tastes like citrate of magnesia to me.”
Mandy had finished his drink, too. He poured the last few drops in his frizzy hair and began massaging it vigorously. “Anybody ever asks me if I drank champagne I can tell ’em I not only drank it but I bathed in it. And damned if bathing in it isn’t better than drinking it.”
Moss must have expected something like that because the next chorus of waiters brought bottles of Scotch and rye. He may not have been generous enough to please La Verne with the stocks but he certainly wasn’t throwing a skimpy party; I got dizzy watching the bottles fly past me. He wasn’t kidding about the steaks either; they were the biggest, most beautiful Porterhouses I’d ever seen.
One of the waiters put a plate in front of Moss, but Moss waved it away with a graceful hand. He turned his champagne glass around and put it to his nose; he closed his eyes when he breathed in the aroma.
A Bacchus in bifocals, I thought. He frowned and I had a sudden fear that I had spoken aloud. But Moss got to his feet again and let his eyes survey the table.
“Anybody that would try to break up this happy little family is worse than a schlemihl,” he said.
As usual, Moss was right.
Chapter Three
It was so close to show time when the party broke up that Biff and I went right on to the theater. We took a double-decker bus to the end of Fifth Avenue and walked from there. Biff thought the air would do us good but I knew it was going to take more than a little air to make me feel like playing the matinee.
The night before had been too hectic for me; raids and champagne don’t mix.
“Maybe an aspirin would help,” Biff suggested.
We walked to the drugstore near the theater and Biff had coffee. I tried an aspirin, a bromo, then an Alka-Seltzer. By then I was feeling healthy enough to have coffee too.
During my second cup, I told Biff about Dolly’s police record and what she had said about the license commissioner wanting an excuse to close the theater.
“Well,” he replied vaguely, “that leaves her out. She certainly wasn’t the one that tipped the cops.”
It took me a moment to understand him, then I remembered Moss saying that the raid was an inside information thing.
“But does that mean that anyone can call the police and complain about a theater or something and bring about a raid?” I asked. It didn’t sound right to me somehow. “At that rate I could complain about a revival meeting! That is if …”
“In burlesque it’s different,” Biff explained. “First of all, it isn’t the police so much as it is these self-appointed ‘Purity Leagues.’ They’re beefing all the time to the cops. Naturally the cops can’t ignore ’em. Not all the time anyway. So the cops call Moss and say that they’re dropping in for a visit. Then we get our warning in the foots. By the time they get to the theater, there’s nothing for them to see.”
“What do they see anyway?” I exclaimed. “What’s the difference between a pair of net pants that doesn’t show from the front of the house and, well … no pants? I don’t get it. Another thing. If someone in the theater did call the police, they’d be jeopardizing their own jobs. Even the stock would be worthless, and now we’re all stockholders.”
“The old stock would still be good,” Biff reminded me. “Say, for instance, that some big corporation is going to build a subway and they want to build it where the Old Opera is. Whoever owns the land is going to make himself a pretty buck or two. They aren’t going to let a burlesque show stand in their way, you can bet on that. In our case the land is owned by stockholders. Moss has got a lot of shares but he wouldn’t have to tip the cops. All he’d have to do is close down. In his lease it says the theater has got to stay open. He can close it for a month or so … alteration clause or something, but if it closes longer than that he’s out. La Verne is a good example, too. She’s got some of the old stock.”
The counter boy put an order of scrambled eggs in front of Biff. While he ate them I thought about what he had told me.
“She wouldn’t call the police unless she was out of the theater,” I said. I was really talking to myself, Biff was too busy eating to listen. Lolita La Verne, the Golden-Voiced Goddess, in a police line-up. Not if she could help it, I thought.
“She couldn’t have kept the footlights from flashing anyway,” I said aloud.
Between mouthfuls Biff asked, “Why not? All she’d have to do is stand near the switchboard and cover the buzzer. She could lean an arm on it or something, maybe … Say …” Biff dropped his fork on the counter and pushed his plate away. He jumped up from the stoo
l and made a dive for the door. “Wait here,” he yelled to me. “I’ll be right back.”
In less than five minutes the door swung open and Biff came in, very pleased with himself. He ordered another pair of eggs before he told me what he had been doing.
“No one stood anywhere near the buzzer,” he announced. “The thing is out of whack. Someone nipped the wire leading to the thing. Cut as clean as anything.”
So Moss was right, I thought. It was an inside job. But who? Surely not La Verne. Not Dolly with her police record. Jannine? Gee Gee?
“Biff!” He was deep in thought. I had to call him twice to get his attention. “No corporation is going to let on that they’re interested if they can help it, and they certainly wouldn’t let a burlesque actor in on the deal.”
“You’re right, Punkin,” Biff said. “Not only that, but I can’t see any of those guys messing around with a buzzer backstage. That ain’t the way they work. All they gotta do is squeeze. Do it all the time; they just squeeze the little guy out.”
He finished his second breakfast silently. I drank my coffee and we went into the theater. We stopped at the switchboard and he showed me the warning buzzer.
“It looks like it was cut,” I agreed, “but it could have been done accidentally.”
Biff said, “Could be, if it makes you feel any better,” and followed me upstairs.
The dressing room was close and stuffy so Biff opened the window for me. When the other women began drifting in he went to his own room.
The “good mornings” were brief. I guess they all felt as I did and that certainly was not good. Dolly was last in and the only one who was cheerful. She had three containers of beer under one arm, a stack of newspapers under the other.
“We’re on the front page of every paper in town,” she shouted happily as she kicked the door closed. La Verne hastily gulped a Bromo-Seltzer before trying to speak.
“I’m dying and that one comes galloping in with newspapers.”
She wasn’t alone in her dying act; the wet cloth on my head that was so cool a moment before now felt warm and heavy and the soothing effects of the coffee had worn off. “I’ll never get through the matinee,” I said. Gee Gee handed me a glass of something bubbly. I drank it but it didn’t help. She mixed one for herself and made a little face when she downed it.
Sandra pulled her head out of the sink to gasp, “I’ve never been so sick in all my life.”
I believed her. Her face was a pale green. She turned a bloodshot eye on Gee Gee.
“Do you think maybe we were poisoned?”
“Poisoned hell,” Gee Gee said. “You were just trying to drink old man Moss into bankruptcy.”
Dolly pushed a container under my nose. “Here, kiddo, take a swig of this,” she said. “It ain’t like the champagne we drank last night, but it’s on the cuff anyhow.” I took just a sip. Dolly prattled on. “Louie sent it over, said he’d send more later. I was supposed to deliver it to her highness with the golden box, but …”
“That’s right, you stinker,” the Prima Donna mumbled. “Wait until I’m sick and try to get your dirty work in. Oh, the hell with it.” She held out a weak hand and Dolly laughingly shoved a container in it.
Gee Gee and Jannine, sharing my container of beer, were deciding that a hangover was a small price to pay for the party the night before. While they talked I took another drink. It was so cold and tasted so good I took another before passing it on to Jannine. When she finished, she put her initials under the stain her lip rouge made and passed it back to me.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Gee Gee yelled. “You two ain’t married to that beer, you know. How’s about me?” She waited until I put my initials under my rouge mark.
“I don’t like taking things from Louie,” she said as she tipped the container. “That guy never gives nothing for nothing.” As she spoke she watched La Verne, watched her turn the two bracelets on her thin wrist until the largest diamonds flashed in the light.
La Verne handled them lovingly. With a half smile she said, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
Gee Gee snorted. “Don’t tell me he gave you those service stripes for saying no.” Before La Verne could answer she added, “Two black eyes a week. A split lip, a busted nose. You paid for ’em, girlie.”
Alice Angel, the featured show girl, lisped, “Yethir, I’ll thettle for an old brooch that belonged to Mother.” A look from La Verne squelched her, but only for a moment. “Maybe Louie thent uth the beer tho’th we’d tell him what ith like in jail.” She really meant it.
“Sure, that’s right, lame brain,” Gee Gee replied tersely. “He’s only having his mail forwarded to him from Alcatraz, but he wants to know what a jail’s like.”
Alice pouted daintily. “Oh, look!” She was all glee again as she held the Daily News up for inspection. “They got uth on the thecond page. And look at all the pictureth. Hereth you, Thandra, going up the thtepth.”
Sandra threw the Times on the shelf. As she sauntered over to Alice she said, “This one don’t even admit that we’re a theater.” She grabbed the paper from Alice.
“My Gawd, what a lousy picture. They coulda touched my chin up a little.” She read a few lines. “Listen to this: ‘Raid Rialto Burlesque, Broadway Burley Pinched On Quick Look By Vice Spy … but they arrived in limousines like high-priced Broadway actors. Gypsy Rose Lee, dazzling star of the troupe, was indignant. She said one detective who came to her dressing room was so worried lest she escape, he wouldn’t leave the place while she changed from her beads to her minks.’”
“Beads!” I exclaimed. “I’ve never worn beads in the theater in my life.”
Sandra stopped reading to say, “I suppose you’ve worn minks since you were born.”
“Read that part about me again,” Dolly said.
“‘“I’m the home-type girl,” said Dolly Baxter, a rather coarse blonde.’”
“Not that part, dope,” Dolly complained. “I mean the part where they say I came from Hollywood.”
“Well, keep your pants on,” Sandra said impatiently, “I’m getting to it.” She continued, “‘“I came on from Hollywood to make good in the hick town in a big way. I can understand now why they put the whole North American continent between Los Angeles and New York.”’”
“I think that’s kinda cute,” Dolly purred as she took the paper from Sandra and carefully cut out the item. While she pasted it to her make-up mirror with a gob of grease paint, Sandra read another headline:
“‘Ada Onion Is No Rose To Purity Squad. “I’m glancing with tears in my eyes,” the president of the Suppression of Vice Society cried chokingly over the phone yesterday. “What’s the matter?” he was asked. “It smells to high heaven. Take it away. They call it Ada Onion from Bermuda, but I’d call it Gertie Garlic from Gehenna.”’”
“Gehenna?” Dolly said. “That’s a new one on me. Where’s that dictionary?” She tossed things around looking for it. It was buried under a Science and Health and several horoscope magazines. While Sandra read, Dolly thumbed through the pages.
“‘“… It must be hot,” said the desk sergeant, and when called for volunteers the reserves stepped forward as one man. Pictures on pages 23–24.’”
“Geezer … Ge-gen-schein … Hey, here it is. Gehenna!” Dolly kept her finger on the paragraph in the dictionary.
“‘Gehenna. Used as a dumping place for refuse.’ Hell. ‘A place where prisoners are tortured.’” She looked up from the book, a crafty gleam in her eye. “Ya know,” she said, “I think we got a case against these guys. They can’t say we got a dump place here, and they gotta prove we torture people or we can sue them for libel or something.”
“You and your suing all the time,” La Verne sneered. “I got a life-size picture of you getting away with it, with your reputation.”
Dolly slammed the book on the floor and pulled herself off the chair. She doubled her fist and waved it at La Verne. “Just one more crack, sister,” she said, “and y
ou get this right among the eyes!”
A loud banging on the door interrupted her. “Hey, are ya decent?” It sounded like Moey.
Alice pouted. “I wish he wouldn’t thay that; it thoundth tho cheap.” She wrapped herself in a gingham house coat, while the rest of us hastily covered up, and opened the door. Moey, the candy butcher, stood there with a bulky package braced on his knee.
“You sure took your time,” he grumbled. “None of you has anything I haven’t seen from out front a dozen times.” He gave the awkward bundle a hoist and stumbled into the room. “Gimme a scissors, somebody,” he said. “I gotta bargain for ya.”
It wasn’t until Moey walked into the light that I got a good look at him. His suit made my head ache all over again. Never in my life have I seen a suit like it. It had green and yellow threads running through the material, as though the purple wasn’t enough! I couldn’t look at the shirt, it made me too dizzy.
“My Gawd!” Gee Gee gasped. “Get a load of Beau Brummell!”
Moey smiled, then he eyed her suspiciously. “Is that good,” he asked, “that Beau business?”
“On you it’s good,” Gee Gee said.
Her laughter put him in a better humor. He laughed with her, then said, “Somebody gimme a scissors or a knife or something. I got a bargain for ya.”
Jannine handed him her manicure nippers to cut the thick cord. He pushed his green fedora back on his head and went to work with the scissors.
“Here, let me help you,” Jannine cried.
He was cutting everything but the cord, including himself. “Get away,” he said. “It ain’t often I get a chanct to make like Lady Bountiful, and anyway I ain’t no cripple.” The Lady Bountiful got me; headache or no headache I had to laugh.