She asked me to switch off the light and I did, and then in the dimness of unreal blue-tinged city light coming in from Michigan Avenue, she tugged off the pink sweater by its long sleeves, revealing a white lacy bra, which I undid for her. Miss Chicago was not as voluptuous as the would-be Miss California I’d been with not so long ago, but she was stunning nonetheless, with uptilting breasts that made perfect handfuls and a dramatic rib cage and a tiny waist.
That she was a dancer became obvious when she stood before me, arms outstretched, naked to the waist, with the formfitting slacks still on. There was something fabulously sexy, wonderfully dirty, about her standing there in just the slacks, with her hands on her hips and the cupcake breasts thrust forward for my viewing pleasure; the experience tickled her lips into a smile, even as my mouth gaped open like an idiot staring at Mount Rushmore.
That baby doll face took on a brazen confidence as she watched me drink in her bare loveliness; then she turned her back to me and unzipped her slacks at the side and shimmied out of them, swaying to Patti Page singing “The Tennessee Waltz,” leaving only a second skin of sheer white panties over a rounded tight behind, the sweep of her back dimpling above the cheeks.
She looked over her shoulder at me, and giggled at the sight of my reaction, and came over and sat on my lap, a child asking Santa for toys, her arms around my neck, and we kissed and kissed, and nuzzled each other’s throats and ears, and she moaned as I kissed her breasts, the tips hardening under my lips….
Finally she stood before me again, with her back to me, and slid the panties down, dropping them in a puddle, then turned and held her arms out again—tah dah!—showing all of herself to me, the slightly muscular dancer’s legs, the tufted pubic triangle as brown as her eyes, her faint smile inviting me to her.
I stood and she began undressing me; drunk from her beauty—and three beers—I allowed her to do all the work, and finally we were both naked, standing there, the small shapely thing plastered to me, her sweet face turned upward, wanting kisses, aching for affection, hooded eyes yearning for love.
Then she was on the couch, lips open, arms open, legs open. I said I would get something, meaning a rubber, and she said, no, it’s a safe time, don’t use anything, I want to feel you inside me, and the warmth of her swallowed me, and her eyes rolled back in her lovely face as her hips churned with a desperation that made me drunker still and the intensity was dizzying, like a fever dream, and when she came, she cried, and maybe I did, too.
She kept crying, my little black-eyed blonde, and I held her and comforted her, for all the shit she’d been through, soothing her, kissing her, loving her, consoling her, assuring her I’d be there, and finally I took her hand and led her to my bedroom, where she slept with me that night.
On my back in bed, naked as the day I was born but with considerably more scars, staring at the ceiling like a man in a trance, I felt physically and emotionally drained. Making love with Vera Jayne had been a joyful carnival ride; making love with Jackie had been a different kind of ride entirely.
Jackie—who had crawled in bed in just the sheer panties—was asleep and the lights of the night were filtering in off the lake, bathing her in blue-tinged ivory. She looked lovely, childlike, her face puffy from crying, but also from youth; her mouth had a swollen bruised look that had nothing to do with Rocco’s abuse. When she turned toward me, the covers pulled down off her mostly naked form, I reached over to pull them back up, and tuck her in, like daddy’s little girl.
That was when I noticed the needle tracks.
This morning, in the cold light of day, we had talked about it, at my kitchen table, over the breakfast I’d prepared.
“I’ve been on it for six months,” she said.
“Why? Doesn’t make any sense, Jackie—a smart, talented kid like you, with ambition enough to buck her parents and pay for her own dance lessons….”
She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring down into the eyes of her sunny-side up eggs. “I got depressed. Rocky, when he was acting nice, said he could help me. Get me medicine. So I wouldn’t be blue.”
Wrapped up in the silver robe I’d first seen her in at Fischetti’s, she didn’t look at all bad—she certainly didn’t look like a junkie, and her young, pretty features, sans makeup, served her well.
“He got you medicine, all right,” I said.
She was shaking her head, stealing a look at me, now and then. “I was so damn depressed, I would have tried anything…including razor blades. Now…what am I going to do, Nate? I don’t even have a supplier—Rocky gave me the stuff, himself.”
“That fucking asshole.”
She heard the rage in my voice, and it startled her, scared her. Her eyes were wild, a hand held like a claw at the side of her face as she said, “You’re going to kick me out, too, aren’t you?” She looked down into her coffee cup; she hadn’t eaten a bite of her toast and eggs. “You’re going to throw me out on the street. Just like Rocco!”
“Shut up.”
The wild eyes dared me. “You want to slap me? Go ahead! Slap me!”
I almost did. But instead I just said, “When’s it going to get bad for you?”
She sighed, swallowed—air, not food. “Sometime this morning it’ll start.”
“Jesus.”
“I…I might be able to call a girl I used to know at the Chez Paree. I think she’s still at the Croyden. She smoked reefers all the time…she’s got a connection, maybe I could—”
“But you don’t have any money, Jackie. It costs thirty bucks a day, at least, to support a habit like yours.”
The eyes stayed wild but the voice turned timid. “Maybe…maybe you could loan me some. If I can have my medicine, I can get myself put together and go out and get a job—maybe now that Rocco doesn’t want me anymore, I can get a job singing or dancing somewhere.”
I shrugged, stirring sugar into my coffee. “You could always strip. You did a hell of one for me last night.”
I’d meant that as a dig, but instead it had only got her going.
“I think I could do that…. I think I could stand to do that. It’s dancing, right? It’s a kind of dancing.”
I looked at this girl, this sweet smalltown girl, and knew how close she was to the abyss.
“You’ll get a job, all right,” I said. “You’ll be over at the Mayfair Hotel with the other hookers.”
Horror filled the brown eyes, including the black-and-blue one. “No…. No I would never do that. How can you say that? Last night you were so kind…. How can you….” And she put her right hand over her face and began to cry.
She was trembling a little too, but I was afraid it had more to do with the stuff she was starting to crave than any sorrow or shame she might be feeling.
I sat forward. “Now listen to me—a friend of mine got hooked on morphine. He was on it for years, and he kicked it. You’ve only been riding the horse for a few months. Do you want to get off it?”
Shuddering, she said, “Oh yes…oh yes.”
“I can help arrange that. I’ll have to make a few calls, but I can arrange it.”
Her eyes searched my face. “How can I pay for that…for treatment?”
“I’ll float you a loan.” I had a sip of coffee. “And until we can get you into the right clinic, I’m going to make a few other calls.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody’ll be around this afternoon with what you need.”
“Do I…understand you right?”
“You do. For the next few days, I’ll support your habit. The guy who comes around, he’ll be colored. You can trust him, far as it goes. You’ve got the works?”
“The what?”
Christ, she was a junkie and she didn’t even know the lingo. Can you beat that? A sheltered drug addict. Fucking Rocco Fischetti.
Patiently, I asked, “You have your own needle and so on?”
“In my suitcase, yes.”
“Do you have somethi
ng nice to wear?”
“What? Why?”
“Because once you’ve had your medicine, and’ve had a chance to relax, I want you to make yourself presentable. We’re going out tonight.”
She was shaking her head, as if trying to clear her ears. “You’re taking me out?”
“That’s what I said.”
So when I came back to the St. Clair—after my meeting with the Kefauver crowd, and my encounter with Sam Giancana and Bill Drury, at the Stevens—she was herself again…a lovely, doll-faced innocent in a dazzling black cocktail dress, black crepe off-the-shoulder V-neck top and ruffled tiers of black net over a taffeta skirt. The sleeves of the black top, however, came down midforearm, covering sins. Pearls at her throat, cherry lipstick, white gloves….
“Do you approve?” she asked, bright as a penny, again outstretching her arms in tah dah fashion.
Her medicine had done wonders.
“You’re a knockout.”
She took my arm; she smelled wonderful—Chanel No. 5. “Where are we going tonight, my love?”
I grinned at her. “My pal Frankie is opening, tonight.”
“Frankie? Sinatra? Isn’t he…isn’t that…the Chez Paree?”
“That’s right.”
She looked horror-struck. “But Rocco and his brothers are bound to be there….”
“I know.”
“Oh, Nate…Rocco could start something.”
“One can always hope,” I said.
Like most of us in Chicago, the Chez Paree—that garish, glitter-and-glamour nightclub at Fairbanks Court and Ontario—had humble roots: the Near Northside’s fabled bistro had once been just another warehouse, before Ben Hecht’s artist pal Pierre Nuytens turned it into a fortress of festivity in the late twenties. A few years later, tired of paying off cops and fending off gangsters, Nuytens sold his Chez Pierre to Mike Fritzel, an old hand in the nightclub game, who, with Joe Jacobsen, immediately redubbed the gaudy barn the Chez Paree, inviting “the Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Sophie Tucker, to crack a bottle of bubbly over the building’s name plate. Twenty years later, Sophie was still returning annually to celebrate that christening with maudlin tunes and filthy jokes.
The bright, immense showroom seated five hundred, and presented entertainment of the first magnitude, including such $10,000-a-week stars as Jimmy Durante, Henny Youngman, and Martin & Lewis, with orchestras like Ted Lewis, Paul Whiteman, and Vincent Lopez, all augmented by the prettiest chorus line in America. Add fine dining (not your typical nightclub’s third-rate food at cutthroat prices), and the joint almost didn’t need its backroom gambling casino, the Gold Key Club, to make it the top after-dark spot in town.
Almost.
Not that the celebrated showroom didn’t have drawbacks: its very size and noonday-sun brightness seemed at odds with the postwar trend for intimate clubs. Then there were the massive square pillars, causing patrons viewing problems; an art moderne pastel wall mural of the planets that dated the joint; and all those linen-covered tables mashed together treating high-class customers like passengers in steerage. Plenty of good seats to be had, though, arranged as they were around the dance floor onto which the Chez Paree showgirls frequently spilled down from the stage/bandstand to do their elaborate production numbers.
Tonight, on the occasion of Frank Sinatra’s opening, the showroom seemed especially packed, and I suspected extra tables had been crammed in. Normally such a great crowd would have spelled good news for Sinatra, who wasn’t drawing mobs like he used to, except for the Fischetti variety.
Unfortunately, the size of tonight’s Chez Paree audience probably had more to do with morbid curiosity than any new wave of Swoonatra frenzy. Frank had been scheduled to appear at the Chez a few months ago, but had to cancel, after he’d lost his voice and coughed up blood on stage during a Copa engagement in New York. The doctors called it a vocal cord hemorrhage and sentenced him to silence for several weeks.
In fact, the Chez was so jammed tonight, I didn’t think the fiver I slipped headwaiter Mickey Levin would do the trick, particularly since we’d skipped dinner. But the five-spot—which Mickey pocketed, of course—turned out to be unnecessary, as Joey Fischetti had kept his word and saved me a booth along the wall.
The booths weren’t the best seats in the house by a long shot, in terms of seeing the show, but they were comfortable and somewhat private. As we settled in, the floor show had already started. The Chez Paree Adorables—ten dolls in Hollywood’s idea of Dodge City dancehall-girl costumes, with red garters and mesh stockings—were parading around singing that annoying Teresa Brewer tune, “Music! Music! Music!,” accompanied peppily by the Lou Breese orchestra.
I sipped a rum and Coke, and Jackie—looking like a movie star in the black cocktail dress—had not touched her Tom Collins. She was rubbing her hands together.
“Take it easy,” I said.
“Don’t you see him?” she said, alarm dancing in her lovely brown eyes. The black eye had mostly gone now— she really was a fast healer—and makeup hid what remained.
“I see him,” I said.
On our side of the room, but still separated from us by a sea of people, Rocco and Charley, with two beautiful young girls in low-cut gowns, sat ringside, craning around at the moment to watch the Adorables out on the dance floor. Charley was married, by the way, but his wife lived in Florida when he was in Chicago, and in Chicago when he was in Florida.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked, not angry, more confused.
“I thought you could use a night out.”
“You could have taken me anywhere but here.”
“Jackie—I’m making a statement: I’m letting the Fischettis know that you’re under my protection.”
“…protection?”
“This is a very tense time for them. You’re aware of this investigation, this Kefauver thing?”
“Vaguely.”
“Well, you lived in their penthouse for over a year. You saw people come and go. And you were rather rudely thrown out.”
“I’m not sure I understand…”
Or maybe she just didn’t want to.
I said, “You’re a potential witness, if those Crime Committee boys get wind of you.”
“Are you saying…I’m in danger?”
I nodded toward Rocco and Charley, who didn’t seem to have noticed us yet. “Not when these sons of bitches see that you’re with me. That you’re my girl.”
“Am I? Your girl?”
“If you want to be—position’s open.”
She clutched my hand. “Oh, I do, I do…and Nate—I’ll go wherever you want, to get well, to a clinic or hospital or whatever—”
I gave her a sharp but not unkind look. “We’re not talking about that, here. We left that behind, for tonight.”
“…okay.”
“I really do want you to have a good time.”
“I’ll try.”
“I’ll introduce you to Frank.”
“Oh, I met him when I was still in the chorus, here. He may not like seeing me very much.”
“Why?”
“I think I’m the only girl, except for a couple of married ones, who wouldn’t sleep with him.”
When the Chez Adorables had finished their number, the expected timpani roll and offstage intro of the headliner did not occur; instead, Lou Breese and his boys played “Begin the Beguine.” Murmurs of discontent and curiosity rumbled across the room—why wasn’t Sinatra coming on?
Suddenly Jackie jerked back in the booth—like maybe she’d seen a ghost, or a Fischetti—and her sharp intake of air made me jump.
I almost went for the shoulder holstered nine millimeter Browning, which my dark suit (tailored for me on Maxwell Street) was cut not to reveal. Normally I wouldn’t pack heat on a night out on the town…normally.
It wasn’t a ghost, just a Fischetti—the harmless one, the good-looking not-as-smart one, Joey, looking like a maitre d’ in his black tie and tux.
&nb
sp; “Thanks for the booth, Joey,” I said.
“You gotta help me, Nate,” Joey said from the aisle, leaning against the linen tablecloth. He hadn’t noticed yet that the pretty blonde sitting next to me was his brother Rocco’s ex-punching bag.
“Slide in—join us.”
He did. His eyes were darting, his expression twitchy with panic. “Frank won’t go on.”
“Why not?”
“That fucker Lee Mortimer’s in the audience. I could kill Halper for not catching that reservation, and squelching it.”
I shrugged. “Just ask Mortimer to leave—refund whatever money he’s spent—”
“Nate, you know that bastard. He’ll make a scene. It won’t just be in his column, it’ll be in every paper in the country.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
He clutched at my arm. “Go back and talk Frank into going on.”
“Jesus, Joey, he’s your friend, too. You guys are bosom buddies.”
“Yeah, but he don’t respect me like he does you, Nate. Please. You gotta go talk to him—look at the size of the audience. He stiffs this crowd, his career really is over.”
Joey seemed so pitifully desperate, I gave in, asking, “Where’s Mortimer sitting?”
“Three booths down.”
“I’ll talk to him, first. Mortimer, I mean. I know him, a little. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”
Joey was shaking his head; strangely, there was no rattle. “Anything, Nate…. Oh—hiya, Jackie. What are you doing here?”
“I’m with him,” she said, nodding to me.
Joey looked from her to me and back again, a couple times.
“Joey,” I said. “One problem at a time?”
“Right,” he said, nodding, as if acknowledging there was only so much room inside there. “Right.”
“But you have to do me a favor.”
“Anything, if you just talk to Frank.”
I was already out in the aisle. “You sit here with Jackie. If your brother notices her, and comes over, you have to protect her for me.”
“What? But Rocky’s—”
Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 Page 10