One-Eyed Jacks

by Brad Smith

  So Tony moved into what he considered the big time. He began to stay away from the whores, who were always a problem, and started to cast his films, as he called them, from the legions of would-be actresses, singers and models he found in every city. They were all either on their way up, looking for a break or heading back down and looking for a buck. Whatever their direction, Tony had a line for them; he had cards printed up, with his name and a Beverly Hills address, and he dressed well and groomed himself carefully. Sometimes he snuck out of hotels in the dead of night, but it didn’t cost a nickel to keep the mustache trimmed.

  Mike Boston had what little imagination there was in the partnership and he always took charge of the actual shooting. One night in Cleveland — Tony’s return home — Mike was filming an eighteen-year-old who wanted to be Ava Gardner, in bed with Bobby Dean, the washed-out actor and singer who’d lost his voice to whiskey and was doing stags to make enough money to stay permanently drunk, when the girl’s father crashed into the hotel room. Mike Boston took a .38 slug in the forehead, and Bobby Dean would have received the same had he not jumped out of the second-storey window into the alley below where, like a typical drunkard, he landed unhurt.

  Tony Broad left his buddy to a county funeral and headed out of town, this time for good. After that he put on the director’s hat himself, but before he did he always made sure he had a punk like Billy Callahan on hand to watch his back. And if he had any eighteen-year-old girls around, he preferred that they be orphans.

  Lately Tony Broad had been dreaming about going to Hollywood. He didn’t have any illusions about his talent as a filmmaker but from what he saw when he himself went to the movies he doubted that would be a problem. What he wanted, as usual, was something to back him up, something that would get him respect and allow him to walk in the front door. Maybe, just maybe, that something was Lee Charles.

  When the woman in question finished her second set Tony tried to get her to join him at the bar again. He wasn’t about to bring up the other matter. He would let it simmer awhile, get to know her better. He would find out what it was that Lee Charles wanted.

  But she walked past him, shaking her head.

  “Have another drink,” Tony Broad said.

  “How ya doing, kid?” Lee said to Billy Callahan, but Callahan in his surprise couldn’t manage an answer.

  “I believe I’ll have a beer backstage with the band,” Lee told Tony Broad.

  “Why don’t we have a drink and forget about the other business?” Tony suggested. “We’re friends, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  He had his hand lightly on her elbow, beseeching her to stay.

  “It’s forgotten,” Lee said. “But I’m going back to have a beer with the guys.”

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Tony knew the voice. He figured he had that voice locked away in a room with a projector and some sweaty palms. Tony fixed his smile, tied it on with baling wire and then turned to look at Nicky Wilson, who was presently looking at Tony’s hand on Lee Charles’ elbow.

  “I said is there a problem?” Nicky asked again.

  Tony had the presence of mind to release Lee’s arm. He gave Callahan a quick look.

  “We were just gonna have a drink here, Nick. You want to join us?”

  Tony was aware that Lee Charles was amused and it pissed him off.

  “I’ll buy the lady a drink,” Nicky said.

  “I’m going for a beer,” Lee told them both. “Catch you Romeos later.”

  “We on for tonight?” Nick asked.

  She looked at him a moment. “Depends. Where we going?”

  Nicky had put himself between Lee and Tony Broad now. He stood there with his legs spread and his thumbs in his belt loops. Tony Broad wished the son of a bitch was dead, wished that Callahan would pull the .44 right now and destroy that smirking blond face forever.

  “I know a place, Solly’s, where we can go eat,” the kid was telling Lee. “It’s an all-night joint. Then maybe we’ll go for a drive.” He smiled. “Unless you got something else in mind.”

  Lee saw the dark expression of Tony Broad and thought, oh shit, not another one.

  “Maybe we’ll go for a bite to eat,” she said to Nicky. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Lee went backstage, and Nicky tried to get Lucky Ned’s attention.

  “I thought you were watching movies,” Tony said.

  “I already watched ’em,” the Wilson kid said. He smiled in the direction Lee had taken. “Maybe I’ll watch ’em again later, you know what I mean?”

  Backstage Lee took a beer from Bugs and sat down beside Doc. She was wearing heels and she slipped them off and propped her feet in Doc’s lap.

  “Let’s do one sitting down, boys,” she suggested. “You got no idea what it’s like in these pumps.”

  “Shoulda been a piano player, girl,” Teddy told her. “Get to sit all night long.” He winked at Doc. “Of course, you don’t get the spotlight, all that glory.”

  “Oh yeah, I just live for the glory,” Lee said.

  “All those sharp-dressed cats waiting for you at the bar.”

  “Right, I’m the luckiest girl in the world.” She lifted Doc’s tie with her foot. “What’re we smoking tonight, Bugs?”

  “Fresh out,” Bugs told her. “The city is dry, for some reason. Reefer madness, know what I mean? Since when did you want to blow anyway?”

  “I figured maybe just tonight,” Lee said. “Got a date with Nick Wilson later and I thought a little boo might loosen me up. I been kinda out of this scene, feel like a schoolgirl.”

  “No dates out in Hollywood, Lee?” Teddy asked.

  “I kept waiting for Cary Grant to call.”

  “This Wilson cat is the fighter, isn’t he?” Bugs asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He beat up a pal of mine in the Rooster one night,” Bugs said. “Never had a reason for doin’ it either.”

  “Never liked a boxer who fought outside the ring,” Doc said. “Don’t show no class. You be careful of this dude, Lee.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, Doc,” Lee told him. “I been out in all kinds of weather. If I can’t handle a kid like this, I’d better hang ’em up.

  “You be careful,” Doc said again.

  “Yes, father.”

  “We need a name tonight, Lee,” Bugs said then. “You’re slipping, girl.”

  “God, I don’t know,” Lee said. “I’m running out of lies to tell. So much for my dream of becoming a politician.”

  “Oh, you history, child,” Doc said. “And we gonna be history too, we don’t get back out there. Five’ll get you ten Mel’s sitting in his office with a stopwatch on us.”

  Lee wasn’t looking forward to the last set being over, so naturally it flew by. She deliberately kept it uptempo, starting with ‘All of Me’ and swinging into ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do,’ trying to be goofy and loose in between, pushing the sexy stuff aside.

  At the bar Nicky Wilson stood with a horny Elvis sneer and watched her happily. Beside him Tony Broad had pulled it in a little, in deference to Nicky, but he was still there with his own threadbare ambitions, his own little schemes. And then there was Callahan, the wild-eyed skittish one — God only knew what was going on in his muddled head. If there was a wild card in the deck, he was it.

  “What a crowd, what a crowd,” Lee said to Doc between songs.

  “They here for you, child.”

  “You make ’em sound like the men in the white suits with the butterfly nets, Doc.”

  Doc grinned around his mouthpiece and nodded his head. Lee made a pistol with her hand and shot him dead, then turned to the mike.

  “We got one more,” she said. “Gonna do a political song. It’s about this grasshopper, see, and — well, never mind, you’ll get the picture. Oh, by the way, I’m Satchel Page and this is the Blue Parrot Country and Western Revue Band.”

  “Yippy-i-ay,” Bugs said and Lee began to sing �
��

  There’s a grasshopper sitting on a

  railroad track,

  Singiripolly-wolly doodle all the

  day,

  Pickin’ his teeth with a carpet tack,

  Singin’ polly-wolly doodle all the

  day —

  “What the hell is that?” asked Tony Broad at the bar.

  “Who cares?” Nicky said.

  Lee and the band really stretched it out then, kicked the famed grasshopper all over the stage, bringing it down and starting it up again, Doc coming in at the end with a solo on the tenor sax, the sweat pouring from his forehead, eyes tight, cheeks blown out full. Lee brought it down at last in a Louis Armstrong growl and just let it lie.

  She was ready to step down when she saw him. He was standing in the half-light at the far corner of the bar, behind Nicky Wilson and Tony Broad and the Callahan kid. He must have come in during the last song, slipping unnoticed back into her life, back into a world that had been only half there since he’d left.

  She nearly lost her balance when she saw him, but even in this she was cat quick, and she forced herself to look away. She called to the band, who were heading off, and then walked back to the mike.

  “Maybe we’ll do one more,” she said. Doc and Teddy looked at one another, then shrugged and went back to their instruments. Bugs was still standing by his bass — for the first time in a month he was out of tea and he didn’t quite know what was going on.

  “This is a Billie Holiday song,” Lee said into the mike. She hesitated. “And I... haven’t sung it for a long time, so you’ll have to hang in with me. It’s called ‘My Man.’”

  She looked at the band a moment and then turned back to the mike again. “I don’t know if I remember all the words,” she said. “But I remember what it’s about.”

  Back in the lights now, she couldn’t see him as she began to sing. They’d never rehearsed this one, but the guys fell right in, following her when she led and pulling her through when she slipped up. Lee knew they’d be okay — Doc had even played some sessions with Billie back in the forties.

  — just want to dream of a cottage by

  a stream,

  with my man,

  where a few flowers grew

  and perhaps a kid or two,

  with my man

  She kept her eyes on that corner of the room, where he was just a shadow now, as she sang. What if he wasn’t there, what if she’d invented him because she wanted him to be there?

  But no — he was there — she could feel him in the room. And not only was he there, he was the only one who was.

  — oh, my man, I love him so,

  he’ll never know,

  All my life is just despair,

  But I don’t care

  When he takes me in his arms,

  The world is bright, all right —

  At the bar, Nicky Wilson was cocksure she was singing to him and he was puffed up like a heavyweight peacock just thinking about it, standing there elbows on the bar, thumbs tucked in his pockets. Beside him, Tony Broad had saturated his brain with enough bourbon by now that he dared to consider the possibility that she was singing to him. Nicky elbowed him in the ribs and showed him wolf’s teeth beneath the inconsistent eyes.

  “You know what this song is about, don’t you?” he laughed. “She ain’t singing about grasshoppers now.”

  Lee made it through the song, remembering all the words or at least all the words worth remembering this night. The song faded out on instrumental; she set the mike aside while the band was still playing and walked off the stage and across the room. Nicky Wilson straightened from where he’d been slouched at the bar.

  “Sorry, kid,” Lee said and she passed him by without a glance.

  He was standing there without a drink along that last bit of bar. End of the line, she thought, where else would she find him? He was wearing a dark suit, his tie loosely knotted, sandy hair mussed as always (was that grey in the hair?), big hands hanging at his sides awkwardly — like the only place he ever knew what to do with them was inside a ring — and it seemed he was barely breathing, his eyes on her as soft as she remembered his touch.

  She stopped in front of him, almost as tall as him in her pumps, knowing full well that everybody in the joint was watching her and not giving one thin damn.

  She could only stand there a moment though, and then she had to touch him; she put her arms around his neck and her cheek next to his, just to feel him after all this time, to smell of him after these years. And then he put those hams of his around her, and they stayed like that, not saying anything, for maybe a minute. And Lee thought she would cry, but she knew she wouldn’t because he would say it was sentimental nonsense, even though he was the sentimental one, not her.

  Finally she put her lips against his neck and then on his mouth and she stepped back to look at him again.

  “Oh, you goddamn mick,” she said. “Where you been?”

  FIFTEEN

  He was awake before she was — like always — and he rolled on his side and lay for a moment in the scant light that showed beneath the blind and he watched her face as she slept. If it was possible, she was even more beautiful asleep than awake; in sleep she dropped her guard, there was nothing in her face of the fast tongue or razor wit she used to keep the world away. Her dark red hair was tangled on the pillow beneath her head, falling across one shoulder to reach her nipple. Tommy leaned over to put his mouth there for a second, but pulled away before she woke.

  He got out of bed and put on his pants and went barefoot down the hallway to the communal bathroom, watching out for the landlady along the way. He’d been advised his presence in the rooming house was not welcome. Well, if the old girl hadn’t heard them last night, she was either deaf or legally dead.

  He took a leak and washed his hands and face and then went back to her room. She was awake and watching as he stepped out of his pants and got back into bed.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she said. “I got drunk and brought home another stranger.”

  “Hey, think how bad I feel.”

  She pulled his face to hers and bit his lip lightly. “Where you been?”

  “Oh, having a look around.”

  “You do like to ramble. You see anybody in the hall?”

  “Not a soul, ma’am.”

  “I’d hate like hell to get thrown out of such a luxury joint, lose my standing in the community and all.”

  Tommy smiled and rolled onto his back, pulling the sheet with him. Lee moved beside him, hooking her leg over his.

  “I was thinking that maybe you’d quit your rambling ways by now.”

  “I been kinda thinking that way myself lately.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, little bit.”

  She pulled back from him then, looked in his eyes.

  “Hey, you know that kid Nicky Wilson?” she said. “I was supposed to have a date with him last night.”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “I wanted you to know,” Lee said.

  “Okay.”

  “He’s supposed to be some hot-shot heavyweight. You heard of him?”

  “Not ‘til I got back in the city,” Tommy said. “But then I never read a newspaper or even listened to the radio for six months. Bought a DeSoto in Albany a few months back, never turned the radio on once. T-Bone’d sing to me while I drove.”

  “T-Bone’s with you?”

  “Yeah, we got a room at the Jasper.”

  “You didn’t tell me that last night.”

  “Last night I had my mind on other things.”

  “More than your mind.” She reached for him.

  “Mac Brady’s been trying to get me in the ring with this Wilson. They’re after my ranking and they know I’m trying to raise some cash.”

  He had told her about the farm the night before. “So what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I can’t fight, Lee. It’s over.”

&nbs
p; She put the backs of her fingers on his cheek. “You need a shave, mick. I’ll get some water and a razor and fix you up.”

  “Now?”

  “Maybe later,” she smiled. She ran her palm down over his chest; she found that even after all this time she couldn’t keep her hands off him. “Listen, I’d give you the money if I had it, but I don’t. I broke my contract out west and I left there with a couple hundred bucks.”

  “I’m not after your money, ma’am.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Maybe your ass, but not your assets.”

  “Well, maybe we can work something out,” she said. She looked at him in the half-light. “What’re you going to do?”

  “It’s probably gonna come down to some one-shot gamble. If I win, I win, and if I don’t, then the farm is gone. Don’t be feeling sorry for me, I should have taken better care of my money back in the good days.”

  “I was hoping these were the good days.”

  “They’re getting better,” Tommy said. “You know, T-Bone’s been sparring with this Wilson; he’d never say, but I know he’s tucking his money away for the farm. Bones has got this picture in his head of us living the good life up there, raising chickens and beef cattle, maybe a couple horses, living better than a couple old palookas like us have any right to.”

  “You telling me you don’t have that same picture?”

  “I guess maybe I do,” he admitted shortly. “But I know it’s only a picture and that’s maybe all it’s ever gonna be.”

  She put her hands on his chest suddenly then, and moved to straddle him, allowing the sheet to fall from her shoulders. Naked, she looked down into the grey eyes she thought she might never see again.

  “I think you should be a farmer,” she said. “I can see that.” He slid his hands over her flat stomach, felt her ribs beneath his touch, moved his hands so that the weight of her breasts rested in his palms. Keeping her eyes on his, she moved her hand down. She was still wet from the night before and she shifted herself upward and then lowered herself onto him. She smiled and closed her eyes as he entered her — sweet memories of the best days of her life — and then she looked down at him again. “Where the hell you been, mick?”