by Wayne Turmel
“Yeah. Yes it is.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe for good.” That got a contemptuous snort from him.
“He’ll work you like a mule then dump you soon as he’s done. Probably in the middle of nowhere. Then what will you do?”
“F-f-find another job. Isn’t that what you always do?” He actually flinched at that, but it was all the satisfaction he’d give me. It might have been enough.
“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow. Chicago.”
“Does Mama know?” I nodded, not breaking eye contact. “If you go, you’re gone for good.”
I nodded my head, as confidently as the swelling lump in my throat allowed. He gave a single nod and turned away. I waited a moment, realized he wasn’t going to look back, then went back to packing up film cans and straightening pictures.
Chapter 14
Chicago, Illinois
February 23, 1926
It was only a hundred miles as the crow flies from 13th and Keefe to Union Station in Chicago. I wasn’t a crow, and it may as well have been a million miles. The moment my feet hit the sidewalk on Canal Street, I felt I’d really left Milwaukee for good.
To a nineteen year old lunkhead, Chicago was something out of a movie—maybe Safety Last with Harold Lloyd. I remember watching him hanging from that clock tower high above Los Angeles and not being able to feel my feet. I felt the exact same tingle just looking up at the skyline around me. We had tall buildings in Milwaukee, but only a few, spaced out over a few blocks downtown. People really worked up there every day. Not people like me, of course, but people.
Count de Prorok was in no mood for my open-mouthed hick act. He hailed a cab while I stood looking around generally being a serious navigation hazard to the hundreds of other people on the sidewalk. When the hack driver opened the trunk, he grabbed me by the arm. “You are joining me, Brown?” I turned beet red, mumbled an apology and squeezed in between the cases and trunks as he directed the cabbie to the Allerton, at Michigan and Huron.
The Count laid his head back on the seat and stared at the ceiling, just like he’d done the whole train ride down. That left me to take the bullet and make nice with the cabbie. His babble interfered with my gawking, but he was relentless.
“This is the year, I swear to God. Seventeen years the Cubs have stunk but this is their year, don’tcha think?”
“Yeah, probably.” I knew anything I said was irrelevant, it just gave him a chance to reload.
“I mean, dey got Hack Wilson, for Chrissakes. If you can’t win a World Series with Hack by-god Wilson, what do ya gotta do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seventeen years. You’d think they’d win one soon just by accident.”
It was like that all the way to the Allerton. We arrived and, just like at the Pfister, I was dropped off in the alley with our stuff. I had a few uncomfortable moments alone with the luggage looking around frantically for brown hats that weren’t there, then a few more when I realized I was surrounded by more black faces than I’d seen in my whole life. The porters and kitchen help took their smoke breaks by the loading dock, apparently. Still, Arthur the porter, once he got over the surprise of being asked his name, was a good guy and got our gear up to 803 without incident.
We knocked, but the Count didn’t answer. I stood there for a moment like a moron, not sure what to do, even after Arthur used his passkey to crack the door and extended his palm. I had never tipped anyone at a hotel before, and had no idea how much was enough. I reached into my pocket and found two quarters and a paperclip.
Fifty cents must have been pretty generous, because he gave me a gap-toothed smile and an enthusiastic offer of girls or booze, whatever the boss or I might be looking for. I gave him a smile that I hoped was worldly and amused, rather than horrified, and declined his kind offer, but yes, I knew where to find him if I changed my mind. It seemed a lot of people at the Allerton changed their minds after a lonely night or two.
The Count stood at the window, looking south towards the river and the Loop. Pipe smoke formed a blue halo around his head that renewed itself every minute or so with another silent puff. He seemed oblivious to my banging around as I stacked the cases in the corner, and put my one flaking brown suitcase at the foot of my cot. Not a word was said, the gurgling and sputtering of the radiator and faint footsteps out in the hall, muffled by carpeting, were the only sounds.
Just to make myself useful, I snapped open the case with most of his artifacts in it. “What will you need tonight?” I asked, hoping like hell that list didn’t include me. He had dinner plans with several of the money people from the Oriental Institute, and I wanted no part of those shenanigans.
One thing I’d learned in our time together, I was Gerhardt’s son enough to feel a discomfort bordering on loathing around rich people and college eggheads. The primary function of the Institute was to play matchmaker between both those groups. Throw in some wrinkly nun school teachers and it was my idea of hell on earth.
Without giving me his full attention, he pointed vaguely at the case. “The makeup pot. The Venus is good. I just need enough for a quick show and tell… And you may as well give me my helmet, too.”
“It’s snowing out. You’re really wearing this?”
He laughed. “No, but I’ll bring it. What is it with people? No matter how much money they have, or how powerful they are, they all act like children and want to try on my pith helmet?” I knew why. I’d tried it on myself the first time he left me alone with it. I wanted to see how I looked as a famous explorer. One look in the mirror cured me. I immediately realized I no more resembled a dashing desert explorer than I did a Tuareg king.
“Because they want to imagine what it’s like to be you.”
“They can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to be me,” he snapped. Then, realizing how petulant he sounded, he added, “They don’t know how lucky they are not to get lice from that damned hat.”
I scratched my head as I asked, “You’ve had lice?” For some reason, the idea struck me as ludicrous, even though almost everyone I knew had them at one time or another, and in springtime half our school had smelled like kerosene and Life Buoy. On the other hand, if I were a pest, that head of wavy dark hair was prime real estate, and with a penthouse view.
“Live in the desert long enough, you’ll catch everything but the clap. Live in the city long enough, you’ll probably catch that, too.” He managed the first real smile I’d seen in days. “You’ll have to watch yourself in New York, Willy. You barely got out of Moline with your virtue intact.” The idea of getting out to see Chicago was far more exciting than arguing whether my virtue was technically intact or not, so I chose to focus there.
“So you won’t need me tonight?”
“No, go out and explore the Windy City. Try not to get yourself machine gunned. We have that luncheon tomorrow before we head to Rockford, so don’t be too late.”
“Yes, Mama.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Und keine madchen nach hause bringen,” he squawked in an old woman’s voice.
“You don’t bring any girls home either, young man,” I smarted off before I realized what a crappy thing it was to say. Despite his shameless flirting, there was only one girl he wanted to bring to this room, and she was a long way from Chicago.
He let it slide with a quiet, “I’ll try to control my baser urges.”
After the obligatory but completely hollow offer to stay with him til he left for his appointment, I jammed two dollars in my pocket. The rest of my savings I shoved in a sock, rolled it up tightly and squished it to the bottom of my suitcase with the rest of my worldly goods, then under the rollaway bed flush against the wall.
One advantage of being broke most of the time is you learn to kill time creatively. The two best ways to do that; street cars and movie theaters. Back home I’d often just pick a line and ride it from one to the other, watching the neighborhoods change like the seasons. Dir
ty cramped tenements to bungalows to mansions, then inevitably back downscale as the lines petered out just like winter to spring, to summer, to fall. All for a dime.
Even in Cedar Rapids, I was intimately familiar with the Sixth Street South West and Third Street North East lines as they ran through downtown. Here my destination was the Clark-Wentworth line, which ran an unfathomably long way through the city. My goal was to ride it as north as made sense, and as far south as I dared, which according to Arthur, wouldn’t be far.
I wandered up Michigan Avenue to Chicago, then across to Clark. It was late afternoon, and the Magnificent Mile was alive with the lady shoppers in furs, and professional men in suits, ties and thick wool overcoats. I must have looked like one of the servants, just gaping and staring, and not a particularly bright or useful one.
Once on the streetcar, though, I fit right in. Working our way north, I was amazed to hear the languages around me change abruptly. Downtown it was English, of course, in a variety of accents and volumes but eventually it would switch to mostly Swedish, then a mix of Bohunk languages, even Syrian and Yiddish, then back to English as the tram chugged and clanged north towards the better suburbs.
The neighborhoods bewildered me. At home, there might be a block or so where people clung to the Old Country—which ever country that happened to be—but here it went for what seemed miles in any direction. A dizzying array of restaurants, stores, and signs in strange script beckoned and repelled me at the same time. Would I even know what to order in a Chinese restaurant, or a Syrian place? The Count would know, but he wasn’t here to guide me. If I wasn’t going to starve, I’d best learn to feed myself. I took it as a challenge to try something exotic and foreign-sounding.
Left to my own devices, I finally chickened out and found a German place where at least I knew what I was ordering. I was disappointed to find out that, besides being the most expensive meal I’d ever ordered, the food was no better than I’d find on Keefe Street, or even in my own Mama’s kitchen. It left me feeling cheated, and determined to be braver in my food choices from then on. At least as much as possible. I heard Orientals ate cats, and sometimes served them to unsuspecting Americans. That much adventure I wasn’t up for.
Losing track of time, I rode north, then south again, farther than Arthur suggested was wise, I was proud to note, then high-tailed it back downtown. I found a movie house playing “The Sea Beast,” with John Barrymore and Dolores Costello. Turns out, it was really Moby Dick, but it was still pretty good. I don’t remember any women when I read it in high school, but then I usually enjoyed the movies more than the books.
I sat in the dark, feeling awfully smug when the projectionist messed up a reel change, and I joined with the audience hooting and hollering when the whale appeared on the screen. I thought about how Ahab wouldn’t stop til he found that creature, and he risked everything for the girl, Esther. I never much liked Barrymore, or any of the pretty boy actors for that matter, because they didn’t look or act like anyone I knew. But watching, I recognized the look of wild enthusiasm when he spoke about that whale. It was the same look I’d seen on de Prorok’s mug when he talked about Carnegie Hall, or “digging rights,” or “making the world forget Howard Carter ever existed.”
I wondered if Countess Alice had long hair like Dolores Costello. I’d seen her picture but I couldn’t remember. That was something else I thought about alone in the dark. The good girls—Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Dolores Costello in this picture—all had long hair in ribbons. Maria Iaccobucci had hair like that: thick Italian tresses that my chewed-up knackwurst fingers would never get to run through. The bad girls—Theda Bara, Vilma Bánky, heck even Jacqueline from Moline—had their hair bobbed. The movies told us we were supposed to like the good girls, and in the movies I did. What wasn’t to like? They were sweet, and nice and usually gave their all for their man without complaint. That was the movies. In real life they scared the bejeezus out of me.
In real life, I liked the bad girls. Or at least they seemed to like me. They were either bad or the maids, telephone operators and garment workers in my neighborhood who just wore their hair short because it was easier to manage when you had real work to do. Surely long hair would get all tangled in an operator’s headset, and when you had to be at work at the crack of dawn, did you really have all day to brush it out? Most of them, in my admittedly limited experience, weren’t bad. Just practical.
The movie let out about eleven, and I stepped out onto Halsted Street. Traffic was light, mostly taxis running north and south. Small, dry flakes of snow spiraled to the ground. It wasn’t really cold for February, just a little breeze blowing east towards the lake, which made it almost balmy. I decided to walk back to the hotel, although I could have gotten a cab.
I smiled at the very idea. I could get a cab. Hell, I could do anything I wanted. Here I was in a big city, money in my pocket, no one sitting at home waiting for me. I could get rip roaring drunk if I wanted, which I didn’t. I could see another movie, or walk back to the hotel, or grab a cab and head for the fleshpots of Calumet City. I wouldn’t, of course, and whether that was my upbringing, just good sense, or a lack of cash wasn’t really the point. I could do it if I chose. I had a choice.
Walking down the street, I whistled an old German tune Mama taught me, but that didn’t seem right, so I switched to “Sweet Georgia Brown,” which gave me a beat to walk to and quickened my pace as well as my pulse. It sounded so much more Chicago, and more modern. And a whole lot like me, which made me indescribably happy.
This was uncharted territory, being responsible to no one by myself. I was in the second biggest city in the country, where I only knew one person, and he was a stranger here himself. I could have been in Cairo, or Marrakesh and someday I might be. Even the familiar seemed exotic and alien. Maybe I should be the one wearing a pith helmet, I thought. I actually laughed out loud from sheer joy, but no one heard and neither I nor they would have cared if they did.
About a block from the Allerton, I saw a newsstand, and stood there scanning the headlines. According to the Daily Herald, there were immigration raids on Dago neighborhoods after another body was found in Cicero. Forty one bodies, they said, including this guy Orazio. Mama said the Italians would never amount to anything, but the ones I knew were alright. Some, like Maria Iaccobucci, could redeem the entire race single handed.
I was lost in bloody images of tommy guns and thoughts of long dark hair like Dolores Costello’s when I was jerked back to reality by a familiar voice.
“Hey, kiddo. How’s it going?” Havlicek grimaced against the cold, which only made his eyes squintier and piggier than normal. “Where’s your boss?”
I hugged my coat tighter around me and shrugged like an idiot. Havlicek rolled his eyes. “Will you give him a message? Jesus, Braun, I’m just the messenger here, don’t bust my chops. Tell him he has a visitor. Bill Kenny wants to see him first thing in the morning.”
“Who?” Apparently the depths of my ignorance continuously surprised the Pinkerton.
“He’ll know, but first thing means first thing, no matter how hungover the son of a bitch is.” He waited for me to respond. I think he thought I was stalling. In reality, I had no idea what to do.
“T-t-tell him yourself,” was the best I could muster.
“Why’dja think I was standing out here? If I could find him I wouldn’t be freezing my heinie off. Figured you’d know better than I would. Now you been told and I can go to bed. Remember, first thing.” He spun on his heel, hunched his shoulders and headed up Michigan Avenue. I don’t know if the wind had shifted from the west to east off the lake, but for the first time that night I felt really cold.
Finding the Count was going to take some work, but I had a pretty fair idea of where to start. Arthur wasn’t working, but a couple of the other black guys on duty remembered a tall, skinny, rich guy asking for the location of the nearest speak. I got the same discounted rate for the information as de Prorok had, but it still c
ost me some of what I had left in my pocket. I dashed out and over to Wabash.
Even with the password, it took some doing to get in, dressed like I was. Through the metal grill, I told the guy I was just looking to find my father, who had left Mama crying at home. It was a story I’d told before. That earned me a terse, “You got five minutes to find him and get the hell out.”
The pounding of a piano and the din of drunken conversation made it impossible to pick out even the Count’s foghorn of a voice, but I found him by following an equally obvious clue. Over against one wall sat a crowd of well-dressed folks. One of them was a bottle blonde wearing a short red sequined dress and an off-white pith helmet. With less than my usual grace, I bulldozed through the crowd towards them, bumping into enough people I caught the eye of the bouncer, who cut off my approach.
He was taller than me by about an inch, but had me by about thirty pounds of pure muscle. The guy looked like a slab of beef with eyes. A vise grip that hurt even through my winter coat brought me to a halt about ten feet from the table. I was close enough to recognize the back of the Count’s head, but not close enough to get his attention.
“Help you?” He grunted exactly like I imagined guys like him in the movies sounded.
“I just need to get my f-f-f-friend,” I said, waving frantically to the back of de Prorok’s head.
“Don’t think so.” I couldn’t fight this guy, I didn’t have enough money to bribe him, and I suspected my limited charm wasn’t going to get the job done, but I did have a stroke of luck. The blonde saw me and the bouncer, and quickly called the rest of the group’s attention to what promised to be an entertaining, if only a one-round, fight.
“Brown, good to see you,” honked a welcome voice.
“You know this guy?” the gorilla grunted.
“Indeed,” he slurred, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “My assoshiate. Join us Brown…”
“We have to go.” I grabbed at his arm.