by Grey, Harry
“If the tete-a-tete was with you, I would ignore him completely,” Patsy laughed. “I would go about my business.”
Peggy pressed Patsy closer, she smiled amorously in his face. “That's for me, a real conscientious worker.”
Maxie was serious. He asked, “What does this shmuck look like, Peg?”
Peggy stood up, absentmindedly pulled her girdle down, and gave a tantalizing wriggle to her hips.
“I don't know. He's a pretty tall guy, I guess. About Patsy's build.”
She gave Patsy a come-on smile. Patsy ate it up. I was thinking Patsy was going to be elected Peggy's swain for tonight.
Maxie took out his fountain pen. “Give me the address of your place.”
She gave it to him, an address on the Upper East Side near Park Avenue. Maxie kept tapping his pen on the table. He was puzzled.
“Tell me, Peg,” he asked, “how does this crumb-bum get into your joint? You keep the door locked unless you recognize your clients, don't you?”
“That's the mystery, Max. Sure, I got the goddamn door locked, and just when my clients are in the midst of their festivities, this bastard comes in from nowhere.”
Maxie scratched his head. “Well, what the hell. Don't worry, Peg, we'll have to spend a little time in your joint.”
Patsy's face lit up in anticipation.
“We'll unriddle this riddle for you, Peg,” I said.
Cockeye walked in, handed Maxie an envelope. Maxie took a sheet of paper out of it and read aloud. It was a letter of thanks from the Settlement House.
Maxie said, “I feel like a Boy Scout after a good deed; for this,” Maxie waved the letter, “I will guarantee complete satisfaction.”
“That's my slogan,” Peggy said. “Well, I have things to attend to.”
She had one more drink. She kept looking suggestively at Patsy. “Well, I guess I'll run along. Do you mind driving me uptown, Pat?”
I knew Peggy had chosen him for the evening. But the invitation caught Patsy by surprise.
Over Patsy's face came such an expression of delight as he had when we were kids after breaking into our first candy store when we had all the trays of candy and charlotte russes before us.
“I'll ride you uptown, downtown and sideways all day long, Peg.” He drew her closer. “Complete satisfaction is my slogan, too.”
She acted shy, like a schoolgirl. “Fresh boy,” she murmured.
“We'll be over early Friday morning,” Maxie called to them as they walked out together holding hands.
Patsy came back the next afternoon. Maxie looked at him and smiled.
“You look limp like a herring.”
Without comment he threw himself into a chair. Patsy waved his hand for a drink. He finished it in one gulp and whispered hoarsely, The Madame is better than any chippy in her own joint.”
I wondered how he came to that conclusion. I was sure he couldn't have had a chance to compare, for Peggy was all any normal man could handle in one evening.
He retired to a corner, stretched out on two chairs and in a few minutes was fast asleep. We laughed at the state he was in.
We started a game of stud poker, and played all day long. Maxie sent Cockeye out for a pot of kreplach from Rappaport's. It was cozy and quiet that Thursday afternoon.
That evening, we had a chore to do for the Combination: we escorted a moving van full of whiskey from the unloading point in Long Island to a drop-off in New Jersey.
Early Friday morning we went up to Peggy's place. She had a better layout than the average whore house. It was a brownstone private house with about twelve rooms, on two floors. Ten of the rooms were well-furnished bedrooms. When we arrived Peggy was the only occupant of the house; it was too early for the girls and the trade.
Peggy informed us she had ten girls working for her. From what she intimated, they were kept pretty busy. She ran a ten dollar joint. And for the call trade, she charged thirty bucks. She split fees with the girls at the usual fifty-fifty arrangement. She was more generous than the ordinary Madame, for she permitted the girls to keep their tips.
Maxie figured out, “With the booze profits and rolling a lush here and there, Peggy's take must come close to five grand per week. Not bad for the little business woman, especially for a former Delancey Street piece of charity ass.”
“A lot more money than the President of the United States makes,” I observed.
“That's free enterprise,” Maxie replied. “Everybody has equal opportunities. Maybe Hoover and the country would be better off if he ran a whore house instead of the country.”
“You got something there, Max,” I agreed. “Then instead of his slogan 'a chicken in every pot' he can supply a chicken in every bed.”
“Which would the people prefer, I wonder?” Maxie chuckled.
After Maxie got a picture of the layout of the place, he said to Peggy, “We'll stay in this room. This seems to be the central room of the house. Nobody is to know we're here. Nobody, you understand? Not even the girls.”
“As you say, Max; can I offer you boys a bottle of Mt. Vernon?”
Maxie nodded. “That's okay, Peg.”
Peggy came back shortly with a bottle and glasses. As she put it on the dresser, she said, “When and if you grab this guy, fellas, can you do it as quietly as possible? No fireworks, please?”
Max shrugged. “We'll try not to make much noise, but this bum carries a rod, doesn't he?”
Peggy nodded. “But try not to make too much of a disturbance, the neighbors think I run a private dancing school.”
“The only difference is they do it with their clothes on and standing up in some private dancing school, and you supply beds. Hey, Peg?” I said.
She gave me a knowing wink and left.
Maxie sent Cockeye out to Katz's. “Get twenty-five assorted sandwiches, mostly hot pastramis. And this is important, Cockeye,” Max said. “On the way back, stop at a hardware store and buy a large brace and bit.”
“Brace and bit?” Cockeye asked.
I looked at Maxie, wondering what the hell was he going to do with a brace and bit. Then it dawned on me. I broke into a broad grin. “We're going to have a peep show.” I marveled at Maxie. He thought of everything.
When Cockeye got back, Maxie stood up on a chair and drilled holes clear through the walls into the next bedrooms. Our room was more or less centrally located, facing the entrance door right off the foyer. The foyer was luxuriously furnished with fancy chairs and little tables, on which were scattered pornographic pictures and booklets containing French treatises on sex enjoyment.
Since we were on the upper floor, Maxie sent Cockeye down to see what kind of a room was under us.
Cockeye reported, “A cozy little bedroom.”
Maxie bored a hole through the floor, then another in the door, which gave us four observation peepholes. Peggy came in. She saw Maxie at work. At first she was peeved at the damage to the walls. Then she laughed it off.
“You've given me an idea. I can rent these holes out for ten bucks a night,” she said.
“For a two-fold purpose, hey, Peg?” Max laughed.
The phone rang. Calls came in quite often. Peggy was busy on the telephone taking orders from the call trade for evening appointments. She motioned for me to sit down beside her. She wanted me to listen in on her conversation. She was proud of the well-known names calling in for girls.
Some of them surprised and even impressed a guy like me. Quite a few were in the limelight. There was a judge, a literary critic on the Evening World, a big industrialist and a banker who wanted ten girls for a private party he was throwing for some of his business associates, a lesbian woman athlete, acclaimed in the sports world, and a few lonely citizens in the everyday walks of life. I got bored listening in after awhile and joined the stud poker game the boys were playing in the room with the peepholes.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon the outside doorbell rang. I went over to the door peephole. I saw Peggy admit
a couple of girls. They were nice looking, quietly dressed, not at all like streetwalkers. They were what the trade called, “high-class stuff.” They took then-coats off. Peggy gave them large bath towels. She patted them on their plump buttocks and shoved them into the bathroom together. You could hear the shower going; one of them was in pretty good voice. After awhile they came out wrapped in bath towels. I described what I saw. Everybody jumped up from the game. We took turns at the door peephole.
Maxie laughed; he put his fingers to his lips and whispered, “Take it easy. Don't get yourselves excited.”
Cockeye and Patsy grabbed chairs and went to the peepholes on each side of the room. The girls went into the bedrooms on the opposite sides of the foyer, out of peepholes' range. Maxie and I chuckled quietly at Patsy's and Cockeye's disappointed exclamations. We went back to our cards but our minds weren't on the game. A few moments later, the bell rang again. Girls started coming in, singly and in pairs, laughing and talking. In their street clothes, one would judge them to be salesgirls from some very fashionable shop. They were fresh and pretty, and shapely enough to be in the front line chorus of a Broadway musical.
They all went through the same routine. Peggy gave each a large towel, and they retreated to the bathroom to their showers. When they came out, Peggy assigned them to separate rooms.
Max and I discussed them.
“Stupid broads,” he said.
“Yeh,” I answered. “If they could only see themselves a couple of years from now.”
One appeared very young. She could not have been over eighteen.
“Fresh from a Pennsylvania farm,” Max commented.
“Yeh, a couple of years of this life, and this kid'll look and feel like fifty. Very few have Peggy's stamina. Funny how they all take to junk or whiskey after awhile.”
“How else can they take on men one after another? The life is too rigorous. They become physical and mental wrecks.”
“Hey, Noodles,” Maxie said, “if I see any more like that, I'll become a physical and mental wreck just from watching her.”
“From frustration, hey, Max?”
We both laughed quietly.
Cockeye and Patsy were glued to their peepholes. Maxie lay down on the floor to look through the hole to the downstairs bedroom. I had the most uninteresting vantage point of all—the foyer.
From the way the boys were glued to their peepholes and the exclamations and comparisons whispered back and forth, it must have been very exciting. Cockeye got too noisy for comfort. Maxie tied a handkerchief around his mouth to quiet him. He threatened to remove him from the peephole. Cockeye promised he would keep still. We had to take our shoes off to lessen the noise of our movements.
There was nothing visible from my peephole, so I went over to Cockeye's. I pushed him aside and looked. I was amazed. I looked at Cockeye. He whispered something that was unintelligible through his gag. I looked again. Yeh. There she sat on a chair, fully dressed, manicuring her nails. I went over to Patsy, nudged him aside.
“What the hell,” I whispered. “There's nothing to see. She's all dressed and reading a magazine.”
Patsy whispered, “You should have seen her before she got dressed. Some pair of boobies on that baby.”
I knelt down by Maxie. That one was also dressed. Maxie whispered, “You should have seen her a minute ago. She isn't as pretty as a picture, but what a frame!” And he threw a kiss to the room below.
“Yeh,” I said, “Peggy understands male psychology. She knows the chumps get a thrill out of watching a woman slowly strip.”
Maxie said, “That's what made Gypsy Rose popular.”
About four o'clock, the first client came in. He looked like a salesman taking in a matinee between customers. He handed Peggy his sample briefcase. Peggy patted his cheek. She showed him an album of full length nude pictures of the girls she had in stock. He went through the book slowly, like a connoisseur. Peggy pointed out the fine points of their various anatomies like a clever saleswoman proud of her fine stock. Carefully he picked one out.
Peggy escorted him to the girl of his choice. She had the bedroom across the foyer, out of our view.
Peggy tapped at our door, stuck her head in and whispered, “Much too early for the bum to arrive. He usually comes at the peak of the rush, when the house is full. Would you boys care to be entertained by a couple of nice girls meanwhile?”
Regretfully Max refused. “We are here strictly on business. Some other time, Peg.”
To hell with business,” Cockeye mumbled in disgust.
At about six p.m. the customers began arriving in earnest. They were of all types and ages: embarrassed college boys, shipping clerks, and middle-aged businessmen looking foolish and acting guilty. Others, assured and confident executives, were brusque and to the point. All the bedrooms were filled. Peggy was doing a capacity business. Men were sitting around the foyer, nonchalantly reading, smoking, and talking baseball as if they were in a barber shop, waiting for their turn.
I kept looking through the peephole appraising the men, watching their actions, trying to figure out the reasons that prompted them to come to Peggy's.
This was something I could never understand, the cold, businesslike state of mind of a man who goes to a public place for an assignation. Then I laughed to myself. How about me and that chorine the other night? I wondered what the marital status of these men was. The majority looked married. What were their reasons? Wives away? Sick wives? Wives drained of all sex desire? Or just looking for a change, for an exotic sex adventure? Something they're ashamed of? Something their wives won't permit? To me they looked like ordinary men with ordinary desires. What the hell, I thought, this was the hidden part of the life of the New York male. Men are only animals. Yes, come to think of it, a male animal naturally requires more sex excitement than a female of the same species. A bull requires a large herd of cows to keep him satisfied. A rooster needs a whole coop full of hens to be gratified. A male animal needs a harem to keep sexually contented. Yeh, I chuckled quietly, don't I go chasing along Broadway almost every night for a different piece? Ain't I got my private harem? To pick from the million women from all over the world along Broadway every night?
Was it Mr. Ellis's book? Freud or Kraft-Ebing? What the hell is the difference anyway, some authority on the subject said he found out that men who have no moral or aesthetic objections to intercourse with prostitutes figure less often in the divorce courts. Yeh, that's pretty logical. I guess that way they avoid emotional entanglement with one particular woman.
Emotionally they're monogamous. Physically they're promiscuous. Just like me, I'm tied emotionally to a broad I never even had a date with, one I only see from a distance. What the hell has Dolores got that attracts me so? Or am I queer? Every other broad I lay and leave. The hell with all of them. I'll turn continent. I laughed at myself.
I turned to see what my companions were doing.
Patsy and Cockeye were standing on their chairs. Their entertainment had begun. They were hysterical with suppressed laughter. Even Maxie, usually self-composed, was rolling on the floor holding a pillow over his face.
I bent down and watched with Maxie. The client finally started getting dressed. He had given up in disgust. When his back was turned, the girl in the room quietly opened the window and beckoned to someone outside. I could feel Maxie, stretched out alongside me, getting tense. He nudged me.
We saw a foot come through the window, then the rest of the body. He was a big guy with a gun in his hand.
He walked up behind the man who was getting dressed and struck him on the head with the butt end of the gun. The man with the gun went through the pockets of the unconscious man. The girl hurriedly started getting dressed.
CHAPTER 16
Maxie snapped his fingers softly.
“This is it.”
He ran out of the room. I followed as Cockeye and Patsy jumped off their chairs. We burst into the foyer in our stockinged feet, pulling our Roscoes
out of our holsters.
The waiting customers looked at us in startled amazement. We reached the room downstairs. The guy was still inside. The door was closed.
Maxie motioned us to get on both sides of the door. He ripped a drapery off the window and held it in his hands. In a few seconds, the door slowly came ajar, inch by inch. The big guy stepped into view. Maxie swooped down on him, covering his head and arms with the drapery. Cockeye went for his knees, Patsy and I on top of him. Maxie whacked him over the head through the drapery. The guy dropped his gun to the floor. We tied him with the drapery and the drapery cord. He lay on the floor motionless. We rolled him in a rug.
Peggy went around calming the girls and her clients, apologizing for the disturbance and shooing them back to their diversions. Maxie went in to talk to the girl who was in cahoots with the guy. She was crying and pleading with Max.
“I'm sorry. Please don't tell Peggy. He had me bulldozed,” she sobbed. “I barely knew the guy. He made me give him all my money besides.”
“Okay, kid. Forget it,” Max said. “He's a lousy pimp, too, eh?”
She nodded.
Cockeye said, “I lost all my respect for that bastard. I thought he was an honest heist man.”
Patsy and I picked the guy up and carried him out into the deserted street. Peggy whispered after us, “Thank you, boys. Don't be strangers.”
We threw him in the back of the Caddy.
Cockeye asked, “Where are we going, Max?”
“Let's take him to the funeral parlors. I want to scare the shit out of him before we give him a good talking to.”
We went in through the back way, into the store room where the coffins were kept. Maxie told Izzy the nightman, “Take a powder.” He knew enough not to ask questions after Maxie's curt order.
We untied the guy. We took the rug and blanket off him. He was still out cold. In his unconscious state, he had an awful expression of fear on his face. Maxie kept looking at him.