The Double Vice: The 1st Hidden Gotham Novel

by Chris Holcombe

  “Come now, El. You’ve taken in many a white bull whose family, or husband, threatened to beat her normal. Why not take in him?”

  “I take in those gals because they give me something in return. And I don’t want his white pipe.” She nodded towards Karl. “No offense.”

  Karl blushed but remained silent.

  Dash softened his voice. “El. We’ve all been in his situation. It doesn’t matter what neighborhood. It doesn’t matter how much money we got in the bank. When it comes to who we love and how we love, we all get reduced to the same curse and the same violence, sent to the crazy houses, to the jails . . . the work yards . . .”

  She stared at him some, then rolled her eyes again. “Goddammit.” She set her almost empty whiskey glass on Leslie’s desk with a hard tap. She breathed in deep, then looked at Karl. “Are you afraid of hard work?”

  “No, madam.”

  “It’s ma’am. I am no madam. I’d be making more money if I was.”

  Dash asked, “Where are you going to hide him? Your place?”

  She scoffed. “Hell, no! My building is full of busy bodies. They’d rat him out the first chance they get. No, we need a place where downtowners can visit and not raise too many eyebrows.” Her snaggletooth grin beamed at Dash. “And I know exactly where we can put him.” She leaned her head back towards the office door and yelled, “Les!”

  “You’re joking,” Dash said. “Will he be willing?”

  Her grin got bigger. “No, sir. He’ll hate it, which is gravy for me. But I’ll convince him. ’Cause remember this, boys: I always, always get what I want.”

  And get what she wanted, she did. Karl would work in the Oyster House’s cellar, counting inventory, and then clean the bar once the patrons left for the night. He’d be allowed to sleep on a cot in the main room.

  “Two days,” Leslie said to Karl. “You got two. You hearing me? One. Two.”

  El sighed. “Les, we can count.”

  He turned his sapphire eyes to her. “I’m just making sure we all understand that I’m not, I repeat, not putting up this ofay indefinitely.”

  El ignored him and said to Karl, “That’s the time you have. You better make it work.”

  Leslie held out a warning finger to Karl. “And under no circumstances, I mean none, are you to use my telephone. You hear me?”

  “Y-y-yes, sir.”

  Satisfied with the kid’s intimidated response, Leslie nodded. “Good.”

  As Dash got ready to leave, he said to Karl, “I’ll ask around some of the hotels in midtown and see if they got a space open. Then we’ll figure out how to get your stuff there without your mother or brother noticing. Don’t worry. You’ll be free in no time.”

  He reached into his inside pocket and handed the kid his card, the one that said Pinstripes and had the West Fourth address on it. “In case you need to find me. I’m there almost all day and night.”

  Karl nodded, taking the card and placing it in his own jacket pocket. When both El and Leslie weren’t looking, the kid leaned in and gave Dash a fast peck on the cheek. “Thank you, Mr. Parker.”

  “Please. Call me Dash.”

  Karl’s smile was radiant. “Alright. Dash.”

  “Atta boy. I’ll be back in two days.” He nodded towards El. “Mind your new aunt and uncle.”

  El’s eyebrows shot straight up. “Uh-uh, I am nobody’s aunt.”

  Dash just smiled and walked towards the exit of the Oyster House.

  As he said goodbye to Horace out front, he glanced back into the club. He could see Karl standing in the doorway of Leslie’s office, his trim body backlit by the desk lamp. The kid raised a hand in farewell. Dash did the same. He turned on his heel and hailed a cab, not knowing he would never see Karl Müller again.

  7

  Dash was rudely awakened when Finn Francis burst open the door to his bedroom.

  “I am just distraught!”

  Finn slammed the door shut behind him and swept across the room, where he collapsed into a wooden chair leaning against the wall.

  Dash sat straight up in bed, his head pounding from the suddenness of it all. His jaw cracked with a mighty yawn as his eyes tried to adjust to the bright light of the late morning. He felt like a jalopy with rusted sides and slightly flat wheels, the engine wheezing and whining before finally starting up.

  Twenty-six and already a Father Time, he thought ruefully.

  The inside of the apartment wasn’t helping matters. The ceiling had more water stains than plaster, the floorboards more splinters than polish, and the thin walls more arguments than peace and quiet. That last bit referred to their unique living situation: the apartment was above the Cherry Lane Playhouse on Commerce Street, a few blocks south of Pinstripes. According to Finn, who found the living space through a performer he was seeing at the time, in no existing world would playwrights, directors, and actors get along. Indeed, at this very moment, someone was yelling about his character’s motivation and how he’d never say that line, to which another voice responded with: “Fuck your motivation, your job is to say the lines, not write them!”

  Finn, momentarily distracted, raised his eyebrows. “Must be a new production.”

  “Previews start tomorrow.” Dash stifled another yawn. “What time is it?”

  Finn ignored the question and rolled his hand dramatically. “This is when you ask what I am distraught over . . .”

  Dash ran a hand through his hair, trying to rouse himself. “Apologies. What’s the matter?”

  Downstairs, a door slammed, followed by a shouted “Get back here this instant!” and another door slam. That’s when Dash noticed in Finn’s hand a rolled-up newspaper, which Finn brought up and slapped on his thigh.

  “My favorite screen star, the Latin lover Rudolph Valentino, was struck ill!”

  “Who?”

  “Rudolph Valentino. Don’t tell me you don’t know who that is.” Dash’s ignorance earned him an eye roll. “He’s just the god of cinema. He’s here in New York at the Hotel Ambassador. I was going to camp out there last night after my shift, see if I could run into him at the bar they have in the basement. An oh hello there, how are you? sort of thing. Now the man had to go get himself an ulcer and a ruptured appendix.”

  “I don’t think those are the kinds of things you go and get.”

  Finn ignored him. “He was with his valet when it happened. They were in his apartment when Rudolph suddenly gasped, put his hand to his side, and then collapsed. They rushed him to the hospital where the doctors performed a double surgery. A double surgery! Oh my poor, sweet Valentino.”

  “Did the doctors say how he’d fare?”

  Finn’s eyes were heavy with sadness. “We won’t know for three or four days. I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand it while his life hangs in the balance.”

  “Must be some actor.”

  “He’s more than that! Those eyebrows. Those cheekbones. Those lips. He practically screams masculine bravery, no matter what that anonymous writer wrote in the Chicago Tribune . . .”

  This time, Dash hit his cue. “What did the Chicago fellow write?”

  “Malicious lies, that’s what! It was an inflammatory editorial called ‘Pink Powder Puffs.’ Said beautiful men like Valentino are lightweights and aren’t real men. Ha! I never. Valentino was so insulted he challenged the writer to a duel.”

  “How courageous, challenging an anonymous man in a faraway city.”

  “Of course, the yellow-bellied boar didn’t show. Do you know what Valentino’s first words were when he came out of the anesthetic from his surgeries?”

  “Haven’t a clue.”

  “‘Doctor, am I a Pink Puff?’ And you know what the doctor said? He said Valentino had been very brave. Very. Brave.”

  Finn beamed a satisfied smile, though the smug victory over the Powder Puff article didn’t last long. Within seconds, Finn’s face crumpled again, and he clasped a hand over his heart.

  “Whatever shall I do if he d
oesn’t recover? Why I’ll die, I’ll just die.”

  “Don’t be goofy, Finn. Doctors can do wonders these days.”

  Dash stretched his arms upwards, trying to wake his body up. That’s when he noticed Finn’s face had been scrubbed clean of last night’s rouge, though faint black liner still traced his luminous blue eyes. He had also changed clothes, the white vest with no shirt inviting the kind of trouble from which one doesn’t recover. He was now wearing blue-gray wool pants, wide with a two-button waistband and wide belt loops. On top of Finn’s trousers were a simple white shirt and suspenders. Instead of wearing a proper hat—a fedora, even a bowler—he opted for the flat cap of a newsboy. His vain attempt to stay young.

  Finn said, his words tumbling over each other, “A bunch of us will be attending a vigil later today. I might even sneak into a church and light a candle. Valentino’s Catholic, I believe, so I have to pray to the right God. Though I’ll be praying to the goddesses as well. Every little bit helps!”

  What happened next was a miracle, for Finn seemed to acknowledge someone else’s plight over his own.

  “Ohhh, I see we’re looking like a painted lady today.”

  Dash reached up and gently touched his face. He winced. Still tender. “How bad?”

  “Like a giant thumb pressed itself into your eye.”

  Finn stood up and peered over the side of the bed. The neighboring cot—the landlord’s suggestion for turning a two-room apartment into something more—was empty of Joe’s usual presence. Not that Joe spent every night on it. He and Dash flipped a coin to see who got the bed. Sometimes, when neither side was willing to lose, they’d share it. Those were some of Dash’s favorite nights.

  Alas, Joe was not here to flip the coin last night. Finn noticed the man’s absence.

  “Did Mommy and Daddy have a fight?”

  Not quite, thought Dash.

  Joe had to bring medicine to his sister’s apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, to help his nephew who, the poor lad, was suffering from the croup. While Dash admired Joe’s dedication to his family, he often wondered if Joe’s sense of family duty was born out of guilt of his own nature.

  Dash shook his head. “We are not a couple, Finn. We are . . . sometime companions.”

  The little man rolled his eyes and returned to the chair. “Yes, of course. Lord knows I never hear anything from my bed in the salon.”

  “You mean the hall.” New York landlords were certainly crafty in cramming as many tenants into a two-room apartment as they could.

  Finn talked over Dash. “Casual acquaintances. Weekend friends. Separate candles, who only on cold lonely nights light each other’s wicks. You can’t fool me, Dashiell Parker.”

  “I’m not trying to fool anyone!”

  “Only yourself. You share a room with the man! You can at least share his heart.”

  Difficult to do when half of mine is missing.

  That other half belonged to Victor Agramonte, the man for whom Dash had abandoned his family. The man who sailed out of New York for good one cold bitter day last autumn, to be with the family who couldn’t cross the ocean. A part of Dash never truly healed, and after that, he vowed he’d never allow himself to be that vulnerable again. One heartbreak in a lifetime was more than enough.

  Dash didn’t feel like going into it—especially not before coffee—so he asked, “How was the rest of last night after I left?”

  Finn pointed to his own face. “This is me noticing you changing the subject. Let’s see. I cracked my knuckles scrubbing Walter’s blood off the floor in both Pinstripes and your silly tailor shop. I may need tonight off to recover.”

  “Finn.”

  “Oh! And there was some man, a huge baby grand, asking for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Not you specifically. Just the owner.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “Yes, dear. Lowell Henley. I never heard the name before.”

  “Neither have I. Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Only that it was about our inventory.”

  “Inventory?”

  Finn tapped his chin. “I suppose he meant our booze. I think he’s trying to sell us something. He said he’ll try to catch you again.”

  “I see,” Dash said.

  Open only a few months and already someone was peeking into their business. He didn’t know who this Lowell Henley was, but Dash suspected he knew his kind. And what he wanted.

  I thought we’d have more time before we had to do something like that.

  Finn stood up from the chair. “I need to go wash my face. I’m a tad puffy from being so upset over my Valentino. I may be in mourning, but that’s no reason to look like a Bloated Betty. Tah-tah!”

  He didn’t wait for Dash’s response before sailing out of the room, which coincided with the third door slam that morning from downstairs. A voice trembling with fury shouted, “And I’ll tell you another thing: without me, you have no play!”

  Dash rolled his eyes as he got out of bed. Actors.

  In desperate need of coffee and food, Dash returned to West Fourth dressed in his Banff blue pinstripe suit with an eye-catching red tie and topped with a new gray homburg he’d been dying to show off. He walked to the Greenwich Village Inn, his usual lunch and dinner spot situated on the triangle-shaped plot of land on Barrow and West Fourth. The Village was full of such odd geometric shapes, its isosceles triangles, trapezoids, rhombuses, and parallelograms at odds with the perfect squares and rectangles of the rest of Manhattan.

  There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, thought Dash.

  The Inn sat across the street from Sheridan Square, just a few shops down from Hartford & Sons. The shutters of the pine-outlined windows of the downstairs tavern were folded open in a vain attempt to catch a cooling breeze.

  Inside the Inn he saw the usual mix of bohemians— artists, suffragists, writers, and political anarchists—at the scarred round wooden tables, whose surfaces had equal parts stains and etched epitaphs. This morning, the bohemians were arguing over the state of the country and from the sounds of it, America was on the verge of collapse. No one in the place was a fan of the do-nothing Coolidge who, like his name, kept a cool, nondescript presence while robber barons and tycoons ran amuck. “Coolidge Prosperity” only benefited the rich and the bankers, one woman argued, while the working class still had the same wages as last year and the year before that.

  “Mark my words,” she said, her voice rising in volume, “this administration only cares for the wealthy few. Why else put one of the world’s richest men as the Secretary of the Treasury? This Andrew Mellon cuts taxes for millionaires as often as flappers cut their hair! Newspapers every day talk of soaring profits. But do we see any of that? Have your wages gone up? Have yours? The only thing that’s gone up is the rents! Hear me, folks. The wealthy only take care of each other and when this so-called prosperity ends, they’ll retreat to their mansions while the rest of us scrounge for food in the streets!”

  Her audience heartily agreed with her.

  The only patrons who sat silent during these political arguments were the three ex–Wall Street traders sitting in the back against the exposed brick wall. “The Ex-Pats,” they were called. Years of ulcers, trembling fingers, and night terrors meant the only items they traded these days were coins for booze. They kept their eyes on their drinks and nowhere else.

  Behind the rough wood bar, which needed two more sessions of sanding, was the owner of the tavern, a tall, thin older gentleman Dash knew only as Emmett. He wore an apron over blue slacks and a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  The warped wooden floorboards groaned and protested as Dash made his way to the bar.

  Emmett glanced up, regarding him with cobalt-blue eyes and an arched snowy white eyebrow. “Well, if it isn’t our well-dressed friend. What has you slumming it today?”

  Dash sat at the bar and smiled. “Had a slum-filled birthday last night. I figured I couldn’t go
any lower.”

  Emmett barked out a laugh. “I can see that. What happened to your face?”

  There was no way to hide the damage Walter Müller had inflicted. This morning in the Cherry Lane Playhouse WC, the mirror had reflected a face with a swath of sickly purple around his left eye complemented by red spidery veins. Not a very Mode look.

  “A gentleman’s disagreement,” Dash replied.

  “I see how ‘gentlemanly’ it was. Whattaya have?”

  “Eggs on rye and coffee.”

  Emmett’s palm tapped the bar. “Done.” As he set about pouring Dash’s coffee, a creak of the floorboards turned his head towards the door. “Shit,” he muttered.

  Dash swiveled around and repeated the same curse.

  Cullen McElroy of the NYPD was standing in the doorway. With the whirlwind events of last night, Dash had completely forgotten today was “Donation Day.”

  McElroy’s beady eyes searched and found where Dash was sitting. He lumbered over. The bohemians went uncharacteristically silent, with a few of the patrons giving him wide berth, as if he were diseased. Round as a globe, his belt was a black equator dividing the copper’s hemispheres. His face was a constant sunburnt red, made even more apparent by the yellow hair peeking out from underneath his police cap, as lifeless and as bland as straw.

  Dash felt all eyes upon the two of them.

  “Well, well, well,” McElroy said, as he stood next to Dash. “Mr. Parker.” McElroy reached into his pocket with a meaty hand and pulled out his timepiece. He flicked the clasp open. “What time is our usual meeting?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “And what time is it now?”

  “I presume a few minutes after ten.”

  McElroy regarded the face of his timepiece. “Ten-oh-seven.” He shut the clasp with a loud snap. “And where are we supposed to meet?”

  Dash swallowed the pride which wanted to tell this odious officer where he could go. “At my shop.”

  “So why, Mr. Parker, do I find you past our meeting time in a place we are not supposed to meet?”

  Emmett spoke up. “Quit being a condescending ass and just take his money.”