by John Gardner
“I love you, Sophie. God help me, I really love you.”
She threw her head back and, for one terrible second, he thought she would laugh at him. Then she smiled, her eyes fixed on his, lips parted in a look of commingled love and lust. “I love you, my darling, Louis. I truly love you.”
Footsteps on the stairs. They leaped apart, and Sophie was putting the finishing touches to her hair when Carlo knocked at the door. When he entered, he paused for a second, looking first at Louis, and then at his cousin.
“I just came in to get the nightingale and bring her down.” Louis looked steadily at his old friend and thought he saw the tiny hint of suspicion vanish from Carlo’s face.
“They’re ready.” Carlo wished them both good luck. “The joint is crowded and they’re pretty quiet. The word’s out that Johnny and Al are there to see ya, so people will take notice.”
The three of them went downstairs and headed for the lounge.
“She was a smash, Herb. I tell you I never heard ‘Melancholy Baby’ sung so provocatively. It was as if she was reaching out, giving a personal invitation to every lonely man in the whole room. God, you could feel the drinkers at those tables, all drowning their fantasies in her. Incredible. Truly, I never heard any ballad singer do as well, not even Sinatra. She was Fabelhaft.”
“But Lou, you were, what is the word? Based? No, biased. Yes, you were biased.”
Louis Passau simply nodded. “Then, yes. Then I was biased. Later things became more difficult.”
The remainder of their performance that night was just as electrifying. Nothing, Louis thought, could have been bettered and, by the time they got to “Chicago,” everyone in the place was captured by Sophie’s dynamism, her enthusiasm and emotion.
At the end, the place went mad, with people stamping, banging on tables and yelling for more. Carlo hurried up, whispering to Louis as Sophie took her moment of glory—“Get her out, Pianist. Get her outta here. Some of those guys’ve been drinking for quite a time. It’ll only take one to go for her and we’ll have a riot on our hands.” Later he said, “Christ, I didn’t know that cousin of mine could turn on the sex like that. Every man in the place had one thought. Fucking—Sophie for preference.”
He had hustled her out as soon as Carlo warned him. Once back in her room, which had been enlarged, by taking out a wall, to make a dressing room area for her, Sophie threw her arms around him, trying to drag him towards the bed.
“For Chrissake, honey,” he muttered. “We’re not gonna be alone for long. The big boys’ll be coming up to see you. They’ll want to congratulate you.”
“And you as well, Lou. Without you …” Her eyes were misty and spoke whole libraries of love.
“With or without me, you were magnificent. …” But before he could continue, there was a knocking at the door. Torrio, Capone and Carlo, with several of their men, were in the room, shaking her hand and nodding with pleasure. Even the grim little Johnny Torrio was smiling. “You gotta triumph here.” He looked at Carlo, his eyes sensing big money at The Barn.
Capone fawned over her, then he saw Louis and began pumping his arm. “She’s gonna bring in business like we’ve never seen.” His rubbery lips curved up in a wide smile. “Ya’ll accompany her, Jew-kid. Mainly here, at The Barn. But I want her doin’ spots in all our bigger places. I’ll get the papers to run some pieces on her. Ya know, gossip columns, that kinda thing; and we’ll take advertisement space. Ya been a great help, Pianist. We won’t forget ya.”
Louis excused himself. He had to get on with his job and he did not want Carlo, or anyone, accusing him of spending more time than necessary with Sophie.
He went down and played for about half an hour, and he could not recall ever seeing the place so full. They had men waiting outside, tipping the waiters to jump the line. After a while, Carlo came down to say he was going over to The Four Deuces with Torrio and Capone. “Ya’ve done wonderful things for my cousin, Pianist, and I’ll see ya get yer piece of the action. But ya’ve done enough for tonight. The Mush is here, and Mario and Luigi. They’ll take care of the place till morning. I’m putting the band pianist in here and paying him double time. Y’relax. Get some food. Big Al’s sending stuff over from The Metropole. Eat with Sophie, huh? Help her unwind.” He grinned, resting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Watch it though, Pianist. Remember what I told ya. No funny business, or I’ll see ya in the river, okay?” He gave a big laugh, as though even the thought of Louis and his cousin was funny and impossible.
“There’ll be big things come outta this, Lou,” he continued. “Big things and big money. They’re real pleased about Sophie. Real pleased.” He took two steps away, and then came back. “Ya notice anything tonight?”
“Such as?”
“Such as Steve and Tommy O’Donnell.”
“I saw them out there, hanging around the big noises like always.”
“Look out for them, Pianist. They’re with our people all the time these days but they don’t show no respect. Every time I see ’em sucking up to Al and Johnny, at The Four Deuces, I get uneasy. I get a feeling that makes me sick to my stomach. They’re puttin’ on some kinda act. I hear things. I hear like those O’Donnells hate Italians. They been seen with the other O’Donnell boys, ya know, the ones who run that section out on the West Side: ‘Klondike,’ Myles and Bernie O’Donnell.
“They’re seeing Deany O’Banion all the time as well. I mentioned this to ya before, Lou. If Johnny Torrio’s peace ever breaks down, it’ll be because of them. None of those bastards like us Italians. …”
“I’m not Italian, Carlo.”
“Nah, but yer family. I tell ya, I wouldn’t put it past the O’Donnells and Deany O’Banion to try and split us against the Gennas, the Gennas being Sicilian. So just watch out for them, and keep your ears open. I don’t like the O’Donnells bein’ so close to Johnny and Big Al.” He shrugged. “But then, I don’t like ya spending time with Tony Genna either. That could have its uses, though. Just keep listening out, Pianist, okay?”
Louis thought he was exaggerating the importance of the O’Donnell brothers, and his own friendship with Tony Genna. Everyone got jumpy from time to time. He had seen and heard, after the trio from New York had been murdered on the city limits, that a lot of people had become trigger happy. There had been some killings and woundings. Even Capone, they said, was suspected of having gunned down a man in a saloon, but nobody could make it stick. Al had been holed up at The Four Deuces for a few weeks, constantly using his favorite alias, Al Brown.
That night, though, Louis could smell only success. There was not a trace of cordite or gunpowder in the air as he walked up the stairs to Sophie’s room. Mingled with that sweet smell of success, was the musky scent of sex, which he knew had to come.
“You ever seen that movie, Herbie, The Sweet Smell of Success?”
“I think so, Lou, yes.”
“Tony Curtis plays the little guy, Sidney, and Burt Lancaster’s this bigtime gossip columnist. I love that line, when Lancaster says, ‘Match me, Sidney,’ so Curtis has to light his cigarette. That had a great score by Elmer Bernstein. I knew Elmer. He was after my time in Hollywood, of course. Great score.”
He is wasting time, Big Herbie thought. He does not want to go on. Then Passau took a deep breath and began again.
Capone had arranged for a huge meal to be brought over from The Metropole to Sophie’s room. There were salad dishes, chicken, meat pies, cold cuts of every kind, a great chocolate cake and a crate of champagne. A waiter had been driven over, by cab, with the whole thing. He had laid it out on a special portable table, glittering with silver cutlery and crisp with white linen. Louis tipped the man, who was just leaving as he arrived, telling him to come back for the dishes and flatware in the morning. Then he deliberately closed and locked the door behind him.
There was a big Chinese screen in a corner of the room. Carlo had bought it cheaply from some antique dealer who owed him a favor. Now Sophie came out fr
om behind the screen, wearing a thin wraparound over her lace underclothes. She put herself into Louis’ arms and seemed to fit there, as though made for him. They did not wait for the food, another hunger had to be satisfied first, and they made their way towards the bed, stripping off each other’s clothes, leaving a trail of garments like a ship’s wake running into harbor.
Sophia Giarre was a virgin, but she was ready for him. After the first time, she said she had been wanting it from the moment she saw him. “From you, Louis. Only from you. I’ve never wanted a man before. For me, you are the first and last.”
For Louis it was, by turns, like diving into a magic place, drowning in some strange kind of ecstasy, and being driven across whole continents. She was as natural a lover as a singer. Together they performed whole symphonies of sexual music. Louis heard great scores, full of melody in her scream of climax, and he thought this moment to be more satisfying than any experience life had offered to him until now.
When they finally got around to eating, it was almost six in the morning, so they had to gulp down food and wine quickly, lest her cousin should arrive back and catch them. Their scent so pervaded the room that they opened the window, letting the cold morning air blow in to freshen the place.
In the months to come, they spoke often of the chances of making their affair permanent. Yet there were several stumbling blocks, not least of all Carlo. Then there was the whole question of faith. No Catholic could ever think of marrying a Jew. Yet, on one occasion at least, Sophie said, “You know, baby, I’m sure they’d find a way of getting around the mixed-marriage problem if everyone knew how well Jews fuck.” They had laughed a lot at that.
So, at least for now, Louis Packer was a happy man.
Most nights he would accompany Sophie, performing not only in the most prestigious of the Torrio-Capone night spots, but also in the big legal hotels that provided entertainment, like The Metropole itself. He was also a regular guest of Tony Genna at the opera and concerts and, while he had reservations about the rest of the Genna family, Louis found Tony a pleasing companion. He was entertaining, witty, educated and with a considerable knowledge of classical music.
“You know, Herb, I look back at those days and often think that, if it hadn’t been for Tony Genna’s intelligence, I’d have probably turned into a thug or a hoodlum myself. I’d have eventually wound up like all the rest who indulged themselves, bribed cops, politicians, innocent people; killed, robbed, destroyed and tortured, in order to maintain power during those years. Years of folly. But, in some measure, my friend, I possibly did just that anyway.”
The only things that marred his wonderful relationship with Sophie were the constant need for secrecy and the fact that she showed no interest at all in classical music. Apart from an obviously deep emotional feeling for Louis, Sophie’s other joys came mainly from the money she earned which enabled her to buy clothes, geegaws, jewelry, and live a pampered life.
“But, in some ways,” Passau said, in the present, “I was also indulging myself. I was popular, could afford to dress well and go to the best places during my spare time. And I used my position within the mob’s machine to give myself a good time. I began to hoard money, opening a bank account outside Chicago, though I did spend a lot on Sophie and buying more musical scores. Then I had a phonograph and started to collect the records which were just coming onto the market in bulk.”
Louis probably knew it could not go on forever, but he had no idea of the blood and horror that was to start spilling into the streets and the ginjoints of Chicago and its environs, even before that year was out.
“If I’m truthful, Herb, I must have seen it around the corner. But, like war, you don’t really believe it until it’s on you.” He stopped, as though in midsentence, his eyes screwed up, looking at the figure who had just entered the room behind Herbie.
Kruger slewed around, one hand reaching for his waistband, behind his right hip.
She seemed taller, and the dark hair was long, falling and brushing her shoulders. Even the spectacles made a difference.
“So, how do you like it, darlings?” said Pucky Curtiss. “This is my going to market, sir she said, outfit.”
“Pucky, you give me culinary failure creeping in like that. You could have killed us all, including yourself.” Big Herbie, possibly roused by Louis Passau’s story of illicit love between Catholic and Jew in 1920s Chicago, saw her slim hips, and the set of her breasts. To himself he thought, “Herbie, you old lecher, what you could do with this Pucky girl if you were only a few years younger. No, what you could do with her anyway, you male porker, you.”
To his surprise, Pucky beckoned to him, asking if he would step outside for a minute. On the landing she placed a hand on his shoulder and moved close to him. “How’s the old bastard doing?” she asked.
“He is getting leg over with nice Catholic singer in Chicago.” He smiled, blankly.
She nodded. “Which reminds me, Herb. I wanted to apologize to you. I was bloody rude in the kitchen last night. I’m sorry. Will you please take this on account.” She hooked a hand around the large man’s neck and drew him to her, pressing her lips hard and quickly against his.
“Jesus, Pucky. You do that again, please.”
“Later, Herbie. Later. When I’ve done the shopping. Forward hussy, aren’t I?”
“Forward, yes. Hussy, yes. Do I mind? No.” So Herbie Kruger, long-time husband and faithful lover of Martha Adler, knew there was some justice after all, and he went off to make sandwiches for Passau, Pucky and himself.
While making them he sang, off-key—
“Come mitt me mein melancholy baby,
Cuddle up and close your ears.”
(21)
THEY HAD EATEN THE SANDWICHES, had coffee, and listened to a little Mozart. Now the old man was talking again. It was like turning on a tap, Herbie thought. When you got Passau on a roll, he just spewed out his secret past like a drunk ridding his body of alcoholic poisons.
It came—Passau told him—as these things usually do, unexpectedly and without any fanfares. Carlo had been spending more and more time with his bosses, helping to run what was evolving into a very large organization, particularly with regard to the complex business of shipping in booze by land and water.
“We both continued to live at The Barn, Sophie and I,” Louis said, in the present, “but soon found we were only performing there about twice a week. Torrio and Capone caught on pretty quickly, so they moved us around all their better clubs and those thinly disguised brothels. We drew many customers. We put a lot of money in the Torrio and Capone purses.”
Passau stopped, his eyes far away on that still, central point behind Herbie’s shoulder, the point Kruger thought of as Louis’ gateway to the past.
“And things went well with Sophie? I mean the affair.” Big Herb quietly touched Passau’s withers with the light question.
“Sophie?” He said it like a long-forgotten prayer. “Herbie, except for one other woman in my life, she was everything to me. Sophie Giarre was the morning and evening star, she was music. …”
Kruger thought he recognized the phrase, or something like it. Inexplicably, he thought of Burt Lancaster.
“She was … she was life itself to me. I loved her with as deep a passion as I have ever loved, except for one other—as I said. The problem with Sophie was her Italian temper, and her lack of ambition. Her voice could have been the glory of the international opera houses, but she had, what do they call it these days? She was not a high-achiever. The saloon singing came easily to her once she’d mastered it. When she developed her own style, she didn’t need to work hard. She enjoyed doing it. Like all great creative people, she loved the adulation, but it stopped there.
“That she loved me, I have no doubt. There was never anyone else at that time for her. But the major trouble was her jealousy and her shallowness. She really couldn’t even bother to think about the things I needed so much: the great music, wonderful art, the towering work
s of literature, the timeless, ageless things that are God’s reflection in the minds of men.”
“And that became a real difficulty?” Herbie, low-key. “Get on with it, Louis. Tell me what happened,” he was thinking.
“Eventually it became a very big issue. Sophie was all the wonders a man required, but she was superficial. She was also obsessive. In the end there were long periods in our short time together when she became like a nagging tooth. Then, when it was forgotten, she would transport me to a land I had never fully known. A place of laughter, of intense physical joy. Her body was like living in a poem. But, when you pulled back, the poem became a lewd limerick. You understand?”
“Oh, more than you can imagine.” Herbie thought of his wife, Martha, and her little obsessions, the endless prattle about the price of meat, the trivia of life. Pucky sauntered through his head and he saw her, in almost adolescent terms, beckoning to him in tarty underwear. The vision led Big Herbie away for a moment and he had to consciously pull himself back to the real matter in hand.
“Herb, you can love a woman with endless passion, yet you can actively dislike her at the same time.”
“I know it.” Herbie nodded his big head.
The work, for Louis and Sophie, was hard; the hours were long, the audiences demanding. But the relationship became more ardent, more enclosed. Sometimes, Louis thought of himself as a prisoner. They used every possible chance to make love, and even managed to stay together all night on some occasions, when they were playing dates away from the watchful eyes of Carlo.
It was Carlo who brought the first hint of trouble, towards the end of the summer of 1923.
Louis was taking his regular day off, having accepted an invitation to attend a concert with Tony Genna: just the two of them—the concert, followed by dinner at one of the Genna-owned restaurants. Chi the previous night, Sophie had made a scene about it. Even in a few months she had become possessive.
“I never get out with you, darling. Apart from those places we play outside town, we can never behave like a normal couple. Louis, why the hell can’t I come along?”