Jimmy and Fay (7 page)

Then Scoodles invited some of his pals over. More girls told her they were interested. Before she really knew what she was doing, she was pocketing a hundred dollars a week, big money in those days, and she was looking for a larger place. Two bedrooms just wasn't getting the job done.

Now, the truth is that Pearl wasn't doing anything that hundreds of other guys and girls weren't doing all over the city. The difference was that through Scoodles, she met Charlie and a lot of other guys in the booze business, both the guys like us who sold it and the politicians and cops who got their cut to let us sell it. They had wallets full of cash and they were ready to spend a little extra or a lot extra, if the girl was pretty enough and energetic. And Pearl, as they say, had a good eye for young talent.

It didn't take long for word to get about that Pearl had the best girls and the highest prices. Sure, she was busted from time to time, but the charges were always dismissed and it didn't hurt her business. She got taken up by the literary and show business crowd, too. That's when she changed her name to Polly Adler, and the phrase “Going to Polly's” came to mean more than ripping off a quick slice. A lot of guys went to Polly's to play cards and backgammon, and to be seen and to talk about who they saw there. I visited once or twice myself, in my younger days, when I was flush with dough and the sap was rising. She served good booze and good food, and she charged top dollar for everything. She was fond of saying that her place was a combination of a gentlemen's club, a speak, and a harem.

Whenever there was a big nightclub opening or the like, she'd doll up three or four of her classiest heartbreakers and make a big show of parading them around. That always boosted her traffic, but she was careful. You didn't get into her place unless she knew you. Or you were recommended by the right guys.

I got out of the cab at Fifty-Fifth Street and Madison. The lobby of Polly's building was flanked by storefronts. Inside the lobby, I gave the colored elevator operator my name and said I was there to see Pearl, no, Polly Adler. He said she was entertaining visitors in a private party. I told him to call anyway and tell her I was there. He went behind his desk and, frowning at me, dialed the phone. After talking for a minute or so, he told me to wait, and took the elevator up.

Polly was with him when he came back. She was wearing a nicely tailored skirt and jacket that made her look like a well-heeled schoolteacher. Her hair was done up nice and in her high heels, she was almost as tall as I was. Damn, it was good to see her again. It must have been at least a couple of years since I'd been to one of her places or she'd been to mine.

“Hello, Jimmy,” she said and hugged me. “Sorry to keep you waiting, but I had to be sure you were you. Charlie's here and he don't like to be disturbed.”

I said that was good, I needed to talk to him, and we went up to her place.

She had the second floor. All of it.

There were twelve rooms to the place, and she wanted to show off all of them, except the ones that were being used. She'd just moved in and it was all new to her. Her taproom looked like the army had decorated it with red, white, and blue, stars and stripes, and the like. The mah-jongg room was Oriental red and gold. She told me that the bedrooms were peach and apple green because peach brought such a warm look to the complexion. I remember that the dining room was huge, and the main room was gray with green satin curtains that she was really proud of. I said hi to Charlie “the Bug” Workman and another guy I didn't know who were smoking and looking bored, while Charlie Lucky was enjoying himself in a peach bedroom. Three of her girls who were sitting around put down their magazines and perked up.

“All this furniture,” Polly said, making a sweeping gesture, “that's Louis Seize.”

“Oh yeah,” I answered, “Louie says what?” It was an old joke with us.

She slapped my arm and said, “Goddammit, you're still an ignorant thug with no culture.”

Truth is, the first time I said it at one of her fancy west side places, I had no idea what she was talking about. It was years later that Marie Therese explained that “Louie says” was French “Louis Seize,” for the sixteenth guy named Louis who was the king of France and had fancy furniture named after him. Go figure.

“Yeah,” I said, “I'm an ignorant thug with no culture. No drink, either.”

“Cynthia,” she said, “a cognac for Mr. Quinn.”

Cynthia got up and went to the taproom. She was Polly's main assistant who took over running the show when they got busy. Since she wasn't as pretty as some of the other girls who worked there, she wasn't as popular in the sack, but she came to Polly from the nightclub business, and everybody liked to talk to her.

Polly and I sat down in the mah-jongg room, and Cynthia brought me a brandy. She said, “Hello, Mr. Quinn, nice to see you again. Everyone has good things to say about your place. Are you going to continue after . . . ?”

“Looks like it, thanks.”

After she left, Polly said it had been a long time since I'd been in. “I hear you're keeping company with a pretty barmaid.”

I said it was true, and she said it was time I settled down, and I said it wasn't that serious.

She got a funny look in her eye and said that she'd heard different. We talked about this and that for a few more minutes. Then Polly stopped, and I could tell there was something else on her mind. After a second or so, she said, “Do you remember the woman I told you about, Kitty? I was living at her place when I met you?”

“Yeah,” I said, “the one with the Mother and the Mother's gigolo.”

“That's the one,” she said and lowered her voice even though we were alone. “I saw in the papers that she was arrested on a narcotics charge, and then a songwriter who knew her back when I was staying in her apartment, he told me that when they booked her, she was living in Chinatown with a Chinaman, working the street. He said she'd wasted away until she didn't weigh more than fifty pounds, if you can believe it. Fifty pounds! Two weeks later, she was dead.”

“No kidding?”

“I know what the hard stuff can do to people. Enough of my girls have gone through ‘the cure,' but for her, of all the girls I've known, to die from it, that's hard to take. Such a goddamn waste. I'm not saying that she was destined to be a Broadway star or anything like that, but she was so young when she got here and she got a big break right away. Millions of pretty girls come here and never get close to that kind of thing. Anything could have happened for her. And then to wind up like she did. I don't know, I still can't say that it was completely her fault. Maybe she never had a chance.”

I was sitting there not knowing what to say to that when Charlie walked down the hall and stopped when he saw us.

“Jimmy, what the hell are you doing here?” He strolled in and shook hands. Polly said she'd get him a drink and hurried away.

Charlie settled in the nicest chair in the room and fired up a cigarette. He wore a dark gray pinstripe, a bright silk tie, and polished black wingtips.

As I'd explained to Lansky, I told Charlie about the picture book, the movie, Detective Ellis, and the studio lawyers. He'd heard of
King Kong
so he knew what I was talking about. I didn't mention the two guys who'd braced me at the diner. I just said, “So they figure that these pictures will embarrass the studio and the studio will fork over six Gs to keep 'em under wraps. When I take a look at the book, I see that at least a couple of the pictures were taken here in the city, and I think the book looks like something your guys might be handling with the peepshows and magazines and slots. If it is your guys, I'll tell the lawyers to pay up.”

Polly brought his drink and left. Charlie ignored it. In the years since we knocked off Maranzano, he'd taken over the rackets, but all he really did was to skim the cream and then divide up the rest of the pie and try to keep guys from horning in on other guys' territories. He didn't have anything to do with that “boss of bosses” stuff. As long as the dough was rolling in, it was easy to keep the guys in line. Lately, it hadn't been so easy, but as far as I knew, he still had control over the Forty-Second Street neighborhood.

He shook his head and said, “No, I haven't heard about anything like that, and if one of my guys tried to put the arm on a movie studio without telling me, I'd have his balls. But this book, you got it with you? Let me take a look.”

He got out his glasses and studied it more carefully than Lansky but not as much as the lawyers did.

When he reached the end, the picture of the girl with her dress ripped open, he said, “I know this girl. She wasn't a blonde, but I'd never forget those tits.”

“Did she work here?”

He shrugged. “Probably. Can't say I really remember. What do you care anyway?”

“I don't. As long as you and Meyer aren't part of it, it's just a job. Pick up a little pocket money for an evening's work.”

He took off his glasses and stubbed out his smoke. “We could all use some of that.”

After Charlie and his guys left, I tried to find Polly but she was tied up on the phone. Cynthia was in the taproom. I showed her the picture of the girl on the Empire State Building. That was the one that had the best view of her face. Cynthia recognized her right away.

“Sure,” she said, “that's Nola. Wow, she never had a wig that nice while she was here.”

“That's a wig?”

She gave me that look that women give and muttered, “Men . . . Yes, it's a wig.”

“Who is she? Where can I find her?”

“Let's see, she left about a year ago, I think. Let me get her card.”

Polly kept a three-by-five card file on all her girls. Filled up a drawer. She had a lot of staff turnover.

Cynthia came back with the card. She said, “Yes, she was Nola Revere when she was here, and that was from February to May last year. I remember her but not very well. She was quiet, I think. Pretty, you can see that. Didn't use drugs, not much for booze, either.”

“Was she friendly with anybody in particular?”

“I think she and Daphne may have gone to the movies together once or twice.”

Daphne? Last seen at the door to the stairs in the Grand Central Building. What did that mean?

“What's this about anyway?” Cynthia asked.

“I'm not sure,” I said, and looked over her shoulder at the card.

I could see the name Nola Revere printed on the top. Most of the three-by-five card was filled with numbers—dates and amounts of money, I guessed, a record of Nola's earnings, loans from Polly, and the like.

I reached for the card. She pulled it back and said, “No, Jimmy. Only if Polly says it's okay.”

I said I'd wait. Cynthia said Polly was probably going to be on the phone for some time, and another party was expected soon, a big one. It was about to get very busy.

I said thanks and left.

I caught a cab on Madison and told him to take me back to the speak. On the way, I thought about what Polly had said about Kitty. Shacked up in Chinatown and dead before she was thirty. That was a hell of a thing, and then the rest of her story came back, how Kitty came to be in New York in the first place. Polly told it to me on the night I mentioned, when we'd been drinking. It must have been around '25 or '26. We were in bed, in the little office she kept as her private room back at the Majestic.

She said that after she left Kitty and Kitty's Mother and Kitty's Mother's Gigolo, she didn't hear from them for almost a year as her business grew. Then, one afternoon, Kitty's Mother showed up at her place and said everything had gone to pieces. Kitty was completely hooked on the hard stuff and had moved in with her supplier. Then Kitty's Mother's Gigolo forged a check, cleaned out her bank account, and took a powder.

Polly said that was terrible. What could she do to help? Kitty's Mother then surprised the hell out of her by asking if she could come to work for Polly. She was old compared to most of Polly's crew, but she still had her looks, and she swore she was clean. So Polly had her doctor look her over, and Kitty's Mother moved in. When the supplier kicked Kitty out, her Mother and Polly got the girl a cheap room and gave her enough cash each week to manage her habit.

Kitty's Mother explained that this really was all her fault. Kitty's real father died in the Chicago suburb where they lived when Kitty was just a little kid. Straightaway, Kitty's Mother fell for a sharpie named Hull. She admitted that she was blindly jealous and possessive of the guy, but he seemed to be just as head over heels for her, so that was fine. And he was crazy about little Kitty to boot. Doted on her every day, tucked her in every night. Things were great until Kitty started to grow up. When she was twelve, she looked sixteen. One evening when the tucking took longer than usual, Kitty's Mother became suspicious, went upstairs, and caught Hull in bed with Kitty.

Enraged, Kitty's Mother decided that it had to be the girl's fault and kicked her out then and there. Kitty took her sixteen-year-old figure and twelve-year-old voice into Chicago and started singing in restaurants and clubs. Once she was on her feet, she tried to get back in touch with her Mother, but no. By then, Hull had hit the road and Kitty's Mother had found Husband Number Three. She still blamed her daughter for everything.

So Kitty headed for New York, landed her part in the Broadway revue, and decided to try to reach her Mother one more time. As it happened, Husband Number Three hadn't lasted very long. And when the new Gigolo said he'd love to see the Gay White Way, Kitty's Mother finally said yes, and they moved east.

It must have been about then, as I remember it, that I told Polly that was the craziest and most terrible story I'd ever heard. She rolled over and lay on top of me and whispered, “That's not the worst of it.” You see, Kitty tried to clean up, and Polly paid for her to take the cure. She knew it wouldn't stick, but Kitty got well enough to ask Polly if she could come to work for her, just for a little while, until she could get back on her feet and back into show business.