Ten Cents a Dance

by Christine Fletcher

  But it would be my word against his. The word of a taxi dancer. A girl who went with men for money. No one would believe that all I'd done was let the customers kiss me. Paulie would say he'd given me sixty dollars, and they'd say I deserved whatever I got.

  No. I needed something better than police.

  Honore Street. Our old flat, five doors up. Folks walked past me like I was a rock in a stream. Any second, somebody would recognize me, and the next thing you knew, I'd be answering a dozen people's questions about Ma, and Betty, and Ma's new husband and our new house . . .

  I turned back the way I'd come. Across the street was the Wachowskis' tavern, the same Hamm's beer signs in the windows that had been there as long as I could remember. I missed Angie, her kitten's face and her bluntness, with a sudden ache in my throat, sharp as thirst. Where was she tonight? At the movies with Lois Terasek. Or dancing to the jukebox at Pulaski's drugstore. Who did the girls dance with, now that the boys were gone?

  She might be home. She was sometimes, Sunday nights when her mother helped out in the tavern and Angie had to watch the kids. I could climb upstairs, knock on the door. And say what? I saw Stan Dudek an hour ago, he helped me out of a jam. He looked great, Angie. Like he was going places.

  Or I could say, last night, Paulie Suelze beat me in the street. Right after he shot somebody. Stole the man's car and a lot of money. You've heard of policy, haven't you, Angie? Millions of dollars, made out of nickels.

  The Hamm's signs faded. In my mind I saw Paulie's face, the corner of his lip raised like a dog snarling. You breathe one word about me to anyone, he'd said, and I'll hurt you.

  You breathe one word about me to anyone.

  I started walking back to the streetcar. After half a block, I started to run.

  . . .

  Four hours later, I stepped inside the Club Tremonti. Before this, the closest I'd been to the Club Tremonti was when the newspapers ran pictures of movie stars and millionaires beaming for the flashbulbs, drinks scattered in front of them like dice. The Club Tremonti was the best nightclub on the South Side. Maybe the best in Chicago. On my own, a low-rent girl like me would never have gotten past the doorman in his yellow-braided coat. As it was, the man who brought me had to do some fast talking.

  Inside, the first thing I saw was ten Negro girls dancing on the raised stage. They wore tiny two-piece outfits and enormous ruffled sleeves, and their heels ratta-tatted, whooshed into a sideways shuffle-slide. So smooth, they looked like ten pieces of one girl. A trumpet growled, and my heart shivered. By the dim red lights around the walls, I could barely make out the dozens and dozens of tiny round tables, the sequins and beads of the women's dresses, the silhouettes of officers' hats. Men's voices rumbled below the music, women's laughter slid high. The air solid with smoke, reddish from the lights, soaked in a hundred perfumes.

  The man who'd brought me tapped my shoulder and pointed at the white-jacketed maitre d'. Follow him. Then he left, winding his way through the tables to the ones nearest the stage. I spotted the one he was aiming for. A dark island in a sea of white faces. I couldn't tell anything more than that. I didn't have to. Only a policy king could get one of the best tables in a club that seated only whites. Only a policy king could break those kinds of rules.

  It had taken me four hours to find Horace Washington. Four hours, and half of Bronzeville turned upside down. But I'd done it.

  The easy part was over.

  "Miss," the maître d' said. "This way." He had to lean close to be heard over the booming of the bongo drums. I nodded and followed him to a curved carpeted staircase, leading down. At the bottom was another room, almost as big as the lounge upstairs, but more brightly lit. Through a forest of suit jackets and officers' uniforms and shimmering dresses, I glimpsed green-felted tables. The maître d' was hurrying now, weaving past the swells, and I hustled after him. I bumped into a woman holding a highball glass, and she gave me a look like I was an iceman's mangy horse. An excited call rose above the din of voices—Hundred on the black six!—and then the maitre d' opened a door ahead of me and waved me inside.

  "Wait here," he said, and closed the door.

  An office. Big. Plain brown wallpaper with an odd pebbly sheen. I looked close and rubbed it with my finger. I made double sure nobody was in the room, and then I sniffed it. Leather. I'd never heard of such a thing. Leather chairs, too; a leather sofa in one corner. Pipe tobacco smell in the air, instead of cigarettes.

  Bongo drums pounded through the ceiling. I couldn't hear them, so much as feel them. Not loud enough to drown out my nerves. How long would they make me wait in here alone? If I could be upstairs, with the music and the crowd, that would be better. Then maybe my heart wouldn't be skipping like a little girl's hopscotch foot.

  I sat down in one of the chairs. Then sprang up again and roamed around the room. Dark green carpet, a shiny dark wood desk. Next to this, Del's office was plain as a flour sack.

  Del. The Starlight, and Ozzie. I wondered where he was. I thought of Ophelia and her new fellow, and I wondered if Ozzie had been fighting his own battles, the same time I'd been fighting mine.

  It was Ozzie I'd gone looking for first. From the Yards, I'd gone straight to the Starlight. O'Malley, the bouncer, met me at the head of the stairs.

  "Del said to tell you you don't work here no more." Not a bit of interest on his broad cop's face, as if he didn't know who I was, as if he hadn't seen me practically every night for the past eight months.

  "I need to talk to Ozzie," I told him. O'Malley looked blank. "Look, just ask Del, will you? Ozzie, in the band! He'll know."

  A minute later, O'Malley was back. He shook his head. "Quit," he said.

  Quit? The Starlight was his rent money, he'd said. Where could he have gone?

  "Please, can you find Peggy? Tell her I'm here. Tell her I need to talk to her." Alonso knew all about the policy king. Maybe he'd said something to Peggy, maybe she'd know where to find him.

  O'Malley didn't budge this time. "She's working."

  "Just for two seconds! Please, O'Malley!"

  "Scram." Pointing one of his big mitts down the stairs. Through the closed doors behind him, I heard the strains of "Sweet Sue, Just You." How many times had I hoofed it to that groaner! I wished I was in there now, laughing with Peggy, not worried about a thing except whether or not I could hook a fish to take me to Lily's.

  "You must make your mother proud, O'Malley," I said, and then I beat it out of there.

  It was early, barely nine o'clock. Lily's wasn't open yet. I pounded on the door until a boy in a white apron answered.

  "I need to find Ozzie," I told him.

  "Ain't here," the boy said. He started to close the door. I stuck my foot in the opening and pulled a bill out of my change purse. I didn't look to see what it was. A ten at least, I guessed, from how quick the boy snatched it. He tucked the bill into his shirt. "He plays a dance hall up on Madison somewhere."

  The Starlight. I could've punched him. "Then where's Lily?"

  He eyed my change purse. I swore under my breath and pulled out another bill. He considered it. Probably considered Lily, too, and if he'd still have a hide when she got done with him. The bill won. He plucked it out of my hand and pointed down the street.

  "The apartment house with the geraniums," he said. "Second story, in the front."

  "Who the hell are you?" Lily said, when she opened her apartment door. She was wearing a housedress, her hair tucked under a flowered scarf. The light in the hallway was dim, but still brighter than I was used to seeing her by. Her jaw looked heavier than in the club, her lips dull without their carmine shine. But I'd have known her by her eyes in any light. Not a bit cowish, like so many big-eyed girls, but sharp as two tacks, and with those luscious curling lashes. They flicked down to my shoes, narrowed when they arrived back at my face.

  "Okay, yeah," she said. "You're one of the taxi dancers. You used to bring those Pinoys." She didn't seem happy about it. In fact, she edged close t
o the jamb, pulling the door along with her, so that she filled the open space. As if she thought I might push past her into her apartment. "What do you want?"

  "I need to find the policy king."

  Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't that. Her eyebrows arched higher than the busboy's had. "What do you mean, the policy king? Which one? And why in hell are you bothering me about it?"

  "There's more than one?"

  From inside the apartment came a man's voice. I couldn't hear—some kind of question, I thought. Lily waved her hand—hush—without taking her eyes off my face. "Yeah, there's more than one," she said. She sounded more amused now than hostile. "Don't matter, though, 'cause ain't none of them going to talk to a little white girl like you. Now go on. Get out of here."

  This time I didn't stick my foot in the door. Boys are nicer about that kind of thing. A girl like Lily, she'd bang the hell out of it without a second thought. I would, if I was her.

  "The policy man who got shot last night," I said. "I know who did it."

  Except that the door stopped closing, I might have said the sky was blue. Not a sign showed on Lily's face. If she shut me out, what would I do? In all of Bronzeville, she was the only person I knew by name. Except for Ozzie, and I didn't know where Ozzie was.

  Lily stepped back. 'You'd better come in," she said.

  . . .

  From the other side of the office door, I heard men's laughter, getting closer. I looked right and left—should I sit? Stand by the bookcase? By the desk? Before I could decide, the door opened, and Horace Washington—the king of Chicago policy kings—walked in. He was still chuckling. Behind him drifted a haze of cigar smoke and two other men. The men arranged themselves by the wall, hands in their pockets. Horace Washington strolled past me to the desk. He didn't look at me. I'd barely gotten a peep at him that night at Lily's, but this was him all right. The slow, rolling stride, like he had all the time in the world.

  I licked my lips. They were dry. Bare. I wished I had a gown on, instead of a sweat-damp, polka-dotted house-dress. Or even just some lipstick. Something to make me feel savvy. I needed to be savvy.

  I lifted my chin, brushed tangled curls behind my shoulders.

  Mr. Washington pushed aside a stack of papers on the desk and sat on the edge. He was mostly bald, and his top eyelids drooped, which made him seem sleepy. His suit— double-breasted, navy pinstripe—looked like it cost more than everything in my closet and my locker at the Starlight combined.

  "Gracious of Mr. Tremonti to let us use his office," Mr. Washington said. "I understand you went to a bit of trouble to find me."

  "Yes, sir."

  He took a short puff on his cigar. "They tell me you're a taxi dancer."

  "I was. At the Starlight. I saw you once, at Lily's."

  "Mmph." Cigar in his mouth. Rolling it a little between his fingers. "They tell me," he said, "you know who hit my man."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Mmm-hmm." He shifted his weight. "You going to tell me this person's name?"

  I'd thought about this hard, the past four hours. "Not if you're going to kill him," I said.

  The drooping eyelids flickered. He lowered the cigar. "Don't believe it was your man got put in the hospital. Or your money stolen. Was it?"

  "He's not dead?"

  Mr. Washington chuckled. "Whoever this sumbitch is—excuse my language—he can't aim worth beans. Jerry'll be okay. One arm a little shorter than the other, maybe."

  I let my breath out. Whatever else Paulie was, he wasn't a murderer. Not yet. "If he wasn't killed, then . . ." Trying to keep my voice from trembling. If Mr. Washington didn't agree . . . "He wasn't killed. So you can't kill this . . . this person. Please. I can't have that on my hands."

  The two men stirred near the wall. One coughed. Mr. Washington reached behind him and tapped his cigar into an ashtray. "I'm sure you don't know," he said, "being as you seem like a nice young lady. But this isn't the first time the mob has tried muscling in. You see, they're tempted by the money. For some reason," he went on, in a dry voice, "they think some of it ought to be theirs."

  They got Rolls-Royces. . . . While I have to borrow a lousy dinged-up Chevy.

  "He's not in the mob," I said.

  Mr. Washington nodded. "Thinks he's going to be the next Capone, then. Get enough dough, take over the city. Us, the mob, everyone. We've seen those, too. I call 'em mad dogs. You know about mad dogs? Generally they need to be shot. Before they spread the infection."

  At the word shot, I flinched. "If he leaves Chicago . . . if he promises never again . . ."

  "Oh, he'll do it again. See, that's the problem with mad dogs. Smack 'em with a newspaper, they just get madder." Mr. Washington took another puff on his cigar. Studied me with his sleepy eyes. I met him look for look, but inside, my head was in an uproar. If he didn't agree, would I still give him Paulie's name? Would I let Paulie die, to keep Betty safe?

  "If he leaves Chicago," Mr. Washington said, as if to himself. Then, "Morris."

  "Yes, sir," one of the men by the wall answered.

  "You remember Eddie Johnson?"

  "Yes, sir. Could work."

  "Mmm." Mr. Washington looked back at me. "This mad dog of yours. He 4-F?"

  4-F. Unfit for service. "He's been in army prison," I said.

  "We can take care of that." Mr. Washington stood up. "This is what I'm going to offer. Your mad dog joins the merchant marine. Or we take care of him ourselves. One or the other."

  The merchant marine! On the newsreels and the radio, almost every week, there were reports of merchant marine ships hunted by the German U-boats. Torpedoed and sunk, one after another, dozens of ships in just the last six months. Hundreds of men killed. Died in explosions, drowned in the Atlantic. Another ship just today, in the Pacific, blown up by the Japanese.

  "It's a fair deal," Mr. Washington said. "We both of us want him gone. Isn't that right?"

  I stared at him, but I hardly saw him. Paulie's dark gold hair, matted with blood. Paulie tossed in the ocean, screaming, his hand outstretched for help that wouldn't come, like the mariner in that horrible poster you saw hanging everywhere. Loose Lips Sink Ships!

  "Merchant marine, he stands a chance." Mr. Washington turned, ground out the stub of his cigar. "He won't, with me."

  Paulie's rain-cloud eyes, the same color as seawater, slipping beneath the surface of the waves. I closed my eyes. Saw Betty instead, in a St. Casimir's uniform, walking to school with the Gorman sisters.

  "All right," I said. And then I told.

  It took only a few minutes. When I was done, Mr. Washington offered his hand. For a big man, he had a gentle grip. Or maybe he just saw that if he squeezed too hard, I might break apart.

  "Tell you what, Miss Jacinski," he said. "I'd hate to have you mad at me." He pulled a gold cigar case from his pocket, flipped it open. "You know, this Paulie makes it, he'll come back home. Might not be too happy with you. I'd think about that, between now and then."

  I nodded. If he makes it . . .

  Please God, keep him safe. And keep him far, far from here. Forever.

  TWENTY - FOUR

  I walked through the door that night to find Ma in her armchair, a rosary twisted through the hands in her lap. Under the little table lamp, her face was gray and grim as old snow. She didn't say anything. She didn't look up. Her knotted fingers working the rosary beads into her palm, one by one. The last time I'd seen Ma with a rosary, Pop had been in the hospital.

  I dropped my pocketbook on the sofa and went to her. "Ma, you shouldn't have sat up. Are you all right? Do you need some aspirin?"

  She didn't answer right away. Then she said, "I've been praying to the Blessed Mother. Asking her for understanding. Because I don't understand, Ruby."

  I sank to the floor in front of her. "It's okay, Ma. What happened tonight . . . it won't happen again. I made sure. That's why I was gone so long, I—"

  "Tonight?" She looked at me then. The lines around her eyes, her mouth,
harsh in the small light. "And the past eight months? What about that?"

  Betty had told.

  "Why, Ruby?" Her voice bewildered. Not a trace of iron in it. Somehow, that was worse.

  I would be anywhere, rather than here. Back in front of Horace Washington. Back with Paulie, or Tom. I could fight them. Because I was right, and they were wrong. But now I was the one who was wrong.

  I'd had reasons, though. All along, I'd had reasons. I tried to remember what they were, back in the beginning. I couldn't. Not with Ma looking at me, disappointment drowning her eyes and every line in her face. All the times I'd imagined her finding out, terrified she'd find out, I'd imagined her furious. You're not my daughter anymore. I'd never imagined her disappointed. Seeing it felt worse than Paulie beating me. It felt like standing by while Paulie beat her. I couldn't meet her eyes.

  "It wasn't enough money," I said. "The packinghouse. It wasn't enough, and . . . " The smell of relief beans, I remembered that. But there were other things, important things, what were they? My eyes grew hot, my throat closed with tears. If only she'd stop looking at me . . . "I dropped out of school, didn't I? I got a job, I paid for everything. The coal. And your gloves, and Betty's shoes and the groceries and the rent. I got your ring back . . ."

  "Did you buy the coat?"

  I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. Ma reached into her pocket, held out her handkerchief. I took it. "What coat?"

  "My winter coat. Did you buy that?"

  The hunter green wool. Manny had given it to me, and I'd given it to her. Ma had cried when she opened the box.

  "It was a gift," I whispered. Her face changed. She hadn't wanted to believe. But now she did, and she believed the worst. Like Paulie. "Ma, it's not what you think. The Starlight"—I saw her flinch, but I kept going—"it's not a bad place, it—"

  She shook her head, looked away. "Don't tell me. Please, Ruby. I don't want to know."

  "I'm a good girl, Ma. I never—" I bit my lip. "I did everything you asked. I worked so hard, I was saving money. I was going to get us out of the Yards."