by Michael Mayo
Klapprott took a long wallet from his breast pocket and asked how much for the Scotch. We settled on three hundred dollars. He counted it out.
“I will not ask you again to excuse Luther. He is an idiot and I will see to it that he is properly punished for his stupidity.” Hearing his name, Luther said something sarcastic in German through the pocket square he still held to his nose. Klapprott lashed out with the cane and cracked him across the nose and hand. Luther howled and fell back, more blood seeping from his broken fingers. Klapprott kicked him in the thigh and poked him with the cane. Luther scrambled up the stairs.
Klapprott said, “There is one more thing I feel I must tell you. Even now, matters beyond my control are transpiring. They involve something that is of the greatest importance to me and my clients. You are, I think, aware of it.”
His tone turned more serious. “These matters concern an item that belongs to one of our members who has not yet taken delivery. Should this item come into your possession, I strongly advise you not to attempt to keep it from us. That would be a mistake, a grave mistake.”
At the top of the steps, Luther waited, bleeding all over the floor and giving me a hard glare until Klapprott cuffed him again. The two of them left, and I asked Connie to take care of the mess on the floor. She made a face but got the mop and bucket.
I went to the bar and told Frenchy to give me a brandy. He asked what the ruckus was downstairs. I told him I was pretty sure those were the guys who had been trying to break into our door. “At least the big one was, not the other guy. They seem to think we’ve got something that belongs to them in our cellar.”
Frenchy said, “That’s nuts.”
I agreed and carried my brandy over to my table. It took a couple of belts for me to calm down. I finally sat back, hooked my thumbs in my vest pockets, and froze. There was something in the right pocket that hadn’t been there when I got dressed. I pulled it out carefully. It was a thick square of stiff folded paper about two to three inches on each side. It sprang open when I loosened my fingers to reveal a light blue envelope from the Hotel Chatham. As soon as I saw that, I thought somebody was playing a nasty joke. Then it came to me—the pickpockets, the two guys who braced me on Lex on the way to the Cloud Club. The one guy wasn’t trying to take anything, he slipped this into my vest pocket. So what the hell did that mean?
I opened it and read.
Meet me tonight.
—Anna
I couldn’t have been more stunned if Jack Dempsey had smacked me in the face. I stared at the thing for a long time and was as confused and hopeful and horny and hot and bothered as I’d been in years.
I only knew one Anna, and she and I had spent maybe the most memorable night of my life at the Hotel Chatham.
But she was dead, or so I’d been told.
Chapter Four
Every guy who met Anna fell for her, at least a little. Some of us a lot more. I guess I met her in 1925 or ’26. I was fifteen or sixteen.
I don’t remember exactly what I’d been doing that day, probably delivering payouts to one of the judges. Well past lunchtime, I found myself on Fifty-Seventh Street and I was hungry. In that part of town in those days, there were a few fancy places to eat, places that wouldn’t let a scruffy kid like me in the front door. I usually wore dungarees or work pants, shirt and tie, coat and cap—clothes that didn’t slow me down and blended in on the street. And I had to look like I belonged in a police station or the Tammany offices, where I was assumed to be some Mick’s kid.
Besides the fancy beaneries, there were lots of little places with names like Aunt Polly’s or the Kangaroo that were meant for women. I guess guys could eat there if they wanted, but none of the guys I knew went to them, so I didn’t either. But that day, my gnaw was so huge I was considering it.
Then I saw a brightly painted sign for the Spanish Marketplace, and a cartoon man was part of the design. A menu was posted by the door. It listed sandwiches and stuff, not the beef and beans you’d find in a place that was just for guys or the waffles and desserts you see a woman’s place. And, when I looked through the glass in the door, I saw the head waitress, a big busty brunette, who smiled at me. As soon as I opened the door, the smell of coffee floated through and that did it.
It was a hole-in-the-wall place with small tables with candles, striped tablecloths and matching folded napkins, and woven rugs on the floor and hanging on the walls. The big brunette showed me to a table next to the kitchen. I stared at her butt as she walked away. Then the waitress handed me a menu, and I looked up and fell in love.
Now, here’s the truth of it. Anna wasn’t beautiful. Hell, I guess maybe she wasn’t even that pretty by some standards, but if you remember what Mary Pickford was like in the movies then, you know what I’m talking about. She was neither thick nor slim. Just right to me. About medium height, a little taller than me, I’d learn later. Her hair was a little more blonde than brown. She had wide shoulders for a girl her size and a complexion that used to be called peaches and cream with most of the peaches in her cheeks. Her eyes were dark, and when she smiled, she could light up a room. She wore a black skirt and a white blouse with lots of ruffles in front, Spanish ruffles, I guess, and a silly little round cap perched on top of her head.
I don’t remember what I ordered or what I said at all, but after the meal was over, when she brought me the bill, I said, “What’s your name, when do you get off work, and what would you like to do then?”
She laughed and said, “Aren’t you the fresh one? I should slap your face.”
“No, you shouldn’t. You should go out with me.”
She looked around to see if any of the other girls who worked there were listening. “I can’t tonight. I’m Anna, by the way”
“I’m Jimmy. How about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
“OK,” I said, “I’ll come back and ask you then.”
I was there the next day, and I was there the day after that and then, worn down by my persistence, she said yes.
At least that’s the way I choose to remember meeting her. I was probably too tongue-tied to say anything the first time I was there and came back a couple of times before I screwed up the courage to say a word.
Anyway, she lived in a yellow brick apartment building up on the Upper West Side near the park. It wasn’t much of a building, and she shared her room with three other girls, and they shared the bathroom with three more.
I was doing pretty well, so I took a cab to pick her up. She’d never seen me in a suit, either, so she was surprised when she came out onto the sidewalk and saw that I was presentable and I could afford to keep a cab waiting. She gave me a funny look as she got in and said, “You’re going to be trouble, I can tell.”
She smiled when she said it, and I fell even harder.
I wish I could remember all the details you’re supposed to remember about important moments in your life, but I’d be lying if I claimed to. I remember her skirt as something light, maybe pale green, and a blouse with a tie and a cloche hat like all the girls wore. The important thing is that if she looked good in the silly uniform she had to wear to work, she looked great when she dolled herself up in real clothes.
In the cab, she held her bag in her lap and kept both hands on it. I’d had an idea that we’d go to one of those fancy uptown places, and we actually got out in front of one. But when she saw the kind of people who were going in—guys in tuxedos and women in long dresses and lots of jewelry, she took my arm and said, “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”
“Whaddayamean?” I said, or something equally thick-headed. “I can afford a meal here. My money’s as good as anybody’s.”
She must have realized then that I didn’t really know what I was doing. She was always a couple of steps ahead of me.
She said, “Look, Jimmy, I’ve been working straight shifts all week. T
his is the first night I’ve had off since I can’t remember. Can’t we go someplace where we can get a plate of spaghetti and a beer? That sounds just swell to me.”
And that’s what we did. Went down to one of those little joints in the Village, which she thought was neat and crazy. It sure wasn’t much like the Spanish Marketplace. The one thing that I do remember is the way she made sure that I left a big tip for the waiter. She explained how she and the other girls got fined if anything went wrong at a table. A broken cup, spoon not in the sugar bowl, guy runs out on his check—she’d get gigged for any of those. Most of the girls had to pay to get their uniforms laundered, but she got out of that by working a second shift in the laundry that the owner of the restaurant ran. Anna had to iron all those Spanish ruffles and striped tablecloths and napkins.
She was working a hell of a lot harder than I was, and she made a hell of a lot less. So when I took her home that night, I decided to give her an extra tip.
We were standing on her steps. She was a step higher than me. She put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I had a terrific time tonight, the best in a long time. I hope we can do it again.” I remember her smile, and we agreed to go out again the next week. That’s when I slipped a fin into her hand. She knew I’d given her a piece of paper money, but she didn’t look at it or say anything. She just tucked it into her pocketbook. It may not sound like much, but in those days, five dollars might have been half a week’s wages for a girl in her position.
We went out just about any time she could get a night off, and it didn’t take her long to figure me out.
The truth is that I had no real understanding of women and even less about sex. Once, I’d been with a bunch of guys who decided to go to a whorehouse. I was too embarrassed to say no and was terrified by the whole thing. The experience was dark, frustrating, brief, and actually kind of painful. Another night when I delivered the booze to a fancy party up in Great Neck, I met a drunken debutante who got all excited when she realized that I was carrying a pistol. She took me out to a dark corner of the garden and dropped to her knees, unbuttoned my fly, and got off to an enthusiastic start before she threw up on my shoes.
So, while I was stepping out with Anna, I wanted some kind of sexual experience that involved a woman, but I didn’t really know what it would be. I did know that I wanted to be with this woman, to talk to her and to make her smile. I couldn’t take it much farther than that. I was just trying to show her a good time without making an idiot of myself. As far as money went, I turned over everything I got from A. R. and Lansky to Mother Moon. I’d always squirreled away a little for myself, and since I’d been seeing Anna, I squirreled away a little more, but I never flashed my cash. That was just stupid.
We went to a lot of little restaurants. Whenever she heard about some nutty place from one of the other waitresses, we’d have to go. One place was set up like a miniature golf course, and one was called the Rabbit Hole or something like that, and you had to slide down a chute to get in.
We’d been going out for maybe a month when I learned that she’d arrived in the city from a little town in Illinois five weeks before. For once, we were at a joint that was just a joint, not a circus or a rodeo. She was working on her second schooner. Yes, she loved her beer, and I’ll admit that I couldn’t handle it in those days. After a couple of sips, I felt like my stomach was all swollen up with gas and I didn’t want any more. Not Anna—that girl could put it away all night long. Of course, both of us could eat. We were a couple of real trenchermen with just about any kind of food.
As I recall it, she was working her way through some pickled pig’s feet when she asked about my family. I told her that my parents were dead. I lived in a building that was owned by a woman who was my aunt or my grandmother or something. I wasn’t sure.
Then she asked what kind of politics I had, and I answered that I really didn’t know, but I wasn’t a Red.
She agreed and sounded more serious when she said, “I don’t want anything to do with a fella who’s more interested in picket lines than he is in me.”
“So you’re looking for a rich guy?”
“Hah!” Her tone made it clear what she thought of the idea. “Any girl who works as a waitress knows how arrogant and snotty society people can be. I don’t want anything to do with them, either. What do you do for a living, Mr. Moneybags?”
“This and that. You could say I’m a deliveryman.” That was true enough. The day before, I delivered a couple of bribes for A. R. and a truckload of Canadian whiskey for Lansky.
She teased me. “I thought you were some kind of big shot.”
“Nah, I’ve just got a couple of jobs that pay pretty good.”
Now some guys, when they were out with a girl or a bunch of guys they wanted to impress, they’d talk about how tight they were with Legs Diamond or Owney Madden, but the guys who really knew Legs and Owney and A. R. and Lansky, they didn’t talk about it much. I waved to the waiter and ordered another schooner for Anna.
It was that night, when we were going home, that we ran into an irate asswipe. Actually, he ran into her, I guess, but it was my fault because I wasn’t paying attention to anything but her.
We had our arms around each other’s waists, I remember that clearly, and she was giggling into my ear about something. We were near MacDougal Street close to Washington Square. There wasn’t much foot traffic on the sidewalk in that neighborhood after dark, and I knew it’d be easier to catch a cab a couple of blocks north.
Then, with no sound or warning, this guy came slamming around the corner and barreled right into Anna. He was about seven feet tall and four feet wide with knuckles dragging the sidewalk. All right, he was really just a normal-sized guy, but something had made him so angry he was acting crazy.
He hit Anna and pushed her into me, knocking both of us off-balance. She said something like, “Hey, watch where you’re going, buster.”
He snarled back in a loud nasty voice, “Fuck yourself,” and she hauled off and let him have it with her bag.
Now, this wasn’t some swing-like-a-girl tap with her pocketbook. She really got her legs and hips into it, and the bag had a thick metal frame. She caught him on the jaw and snapped his head back. He staggered a step, then bellowed and came right at her. I tried to move between them and got it from both sides. Anna came up short with the bag and clipped me on the ear. The asswipe punched me in the gut and chest.
She was yelling, “Come on, you big bastard!” and he pushed me aside to take another swing at her. I weighed in again, trying to push her behind me. He got serious and jabbed Anna so hard in the ribs that she went down to her knees. He pivoted and put two solid punches into my midsection and went for my head. He kept his fists in close like he knew what he was doing and muttered curses as he pounded me. I got my left arm up over my face, but I still saw stars when he caught me a good one.
It seemed like it took forever for me to get hold of the little .32 Lemon Squeezer I had in my pocket. Even though it didn’t have a hammer, it tended to catch on the cloth, and I had to keep my finger out of the trigger guard while I pulled it out. All the while, he was pounding on me, and I sensed that Anna was getting to her feet. Then the pistol came free, and I jammed it into the center of his stomach and shot him.
As the report echoed away, they both stood there, mouths open in shock. I think at first he couldn’t believe what had just happened. Anna didn’t even know that I had the gun, so she was surprised and quiet, too. For a little while, until she barked a short laugh.
I grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the guy as he stumbled backward, his mouth moving like he was trying to say something. Resisting the urge to run, I walked away quickly. She kept swiveling her head around to look back at him. I pulled her along, pausing to ditch the pistol down a sewer grate and then kept us moving. I couldn’t see anybody else on the street.
Her face flushed and she started
to yell something but gasped and held her stomach.
I looked back. The big asswipe was nowhere in sight on the dark street. I held her hand and pulled her along, heading north. I was pumped up but knew that I had to force the excitement back down. It wasn’t helpful. Somebody probably heard the shot. We needed to get away, and we couldn’t look like we were running.
When we’d both calmed down and the nausea had passed, she said, “You don’t look so good, Jimmy.”
“I look better than he does.”
“You think you killed him?”
“Maybe.”
“You didn’t tell me you carried a gun.”
“It’s just something I have to do sometimes.” Truth be told, I wouldn’t have had the Lemon Squeezer on me if I hadn’t driven that truckload of booze for Lansky. As for the guy, well, that was his bad luck, I guess.
Before we found a cab, she gave me a strange look that I couldn’t read. My pulling the pistol may have surprised her, but I don’t think it impressed her, not like the drunken debutante.
Later, in front of her building, she pulled me into the shadow of the front steps, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me harder than she ever had. Her body molded itself against mine. I got hard and she knew it.
“Yeah,” she said as she plucked the bill from my hand, “you’re going to be trouble all right.”
Then came the evening when everything changed. We had been to a place called the Bat. It looked to me like something out of a Theda Bara vamp movie. It had all these thick drapes covering the walls and pillows on the floor and incense and no light. Anna said it was Bohemian. I thought it was scary, and I didn’t care for the food, either. But she liked it, or maybe she liked the third beer. Something made her looser and more reckless than she usually was.