Legs (13 page)

"I was working in Loretta's place on East
Thirty-third Street, her own house which she'd lived in alone since
her husband was clubbed to death by two fellas he tried to cheat with
loaded dice. Loretta had been in the life when she was young and went
back to it after that happened. It was a nice place, an old town
house with all her old kerosene lamps turned into electric, and nice
paintings of New York in the old days, and a whole lineup of teapots
she'd collected when she went straight. We were as good as there was
in the city and we got a lot of the swells, but we also got a lot of
business from hoodlums with big money. Billy was one of those.

" 'What's your name?' he says to me when he come
in.

" 'The Queen of Stars, that's my name.'

" 'Beautiful Queen of Stars,' he says to me.
'I'm going to screw love into you.'

"Nobody knew my real name and they never would.
And it's not Flossie neither. My old man would've died of shame if he
knew what I was doin', and I didn't want to hurt him more than I
already done. So I picked Queen of Stars when Loretta asked me what
my name was. I was thinking of Queen of Diamonds, but I never figured
I'd ever get any diamonds, and I was dead right about that. All I
ever got was rhinestones. So I said Stars because I had as much right
to them as anybody livin'. Then Loretta said okay and we went from
there to business, that lousy business. You couldn't get out once you
were in because they hooked you. They even charged you for the
towels. And the meals? You'd think it was some swanky place the way
they priced everything. Then they took half what you made, and by the
time you were done payin', what you had left wasn't worth sockin'
away. And try and quit. Marlene got it with a blackjack in the alley,
and she didn't quit anymore. They even beat up Loretta once after she
complained about how much she had to pay the guys up above. The only
thing to do was forget it. Just work and don't try to beat 'em out of
anything because you couldn't. They were bastards, all of 'em, and a
girl had no chance. I saved what I could and figured when I got
enough money, I'd make a move. But I never did because I never knew
where to move to.

"So Billy Blue, he called me by my full name
anyway. Some of them called me Queenie and most everybody that knew
me good called me Stars, but he was one of the few called me the
whole thing. I liked him. Most of them I didn't like, but most I
didn't even look at. Billy was pretty to look at. He got me to sit on
the edge of my oak dresser, and then he walked into me. He had his
pistol in his hand and stuck it in my mouth and told me to suck it.
Jeez, that got me. I was scared as hell. It tasted like sour, oily
stuff and I kept thinking, if he gets too excited when he comes,
he'll blow a hole in my head. But what could I do?

" 'You like my pistol?' he asks me.

"Now what do you say to a goofy question like
that? I couldn't say anything anyway with the thing in my mouth, but
I tried to smile and I give him a nod and he seemed to like that. You
can't understand how a nice-lookin' fella like that could be so bugs.
The first bug I ever had stuck a feather duster up his hiney, his own
duster he brought with him, and jumped around the room makin' noises
like a turkey. All I did was sit on the bed so he could look at me
while he did his gobbles.

"So I'm on the table and Billy's doing his stuff
and I got the pistol in my mouth when the door opens and in comes
Jack Diamond and two other guys, one of them was The Goose with his
one eye and the other was fat Jimmy Biondo, and they got guns out,
but not Jack, who was just lookin' around with them eyes of his that
looked right through doors and walls, and The Goose shoots twice. One
bullet hit the mirror of my oak dresser. The other one got Billy in
the right shoulder, and he let go the pistol, which fell out of my
mouth onto the floor and cut my lip. Billy didn't fall. He just spun
around and stared at the men, with nothing on him at all but the
safety.

"Jack looked at me and said, 'It's all right,
Stars, don't worry about anything.'

"I was scared as hell, but I felt sorry for
Billy because he looked so pretty, even if he was bugs. I started to
get off the table, but The Goose says to me 'Just stay there,' and so
I  did, because he was the meanest-looking guy I ever saw. Jack
was just lookin' at Billy and gettin' red in the face. You could see
how mad he was, but he didn't talk. He just stared, and all of a
sudden he takes a gun out of his coat pocket and shoots Billy in the
stomach three times, and Billy falls sideways on my bed, bleedin' all
over the new yellow blanket I had to pay eleven bucks for after a
customer peed all over my other one and the pee smell wouldn't wash
out.

'"
Loretta came runnin' then, and was she mad.

""Why the hell'd you do that here?' she
asked Jack. 'What'm I supposed to do with him? Goddamn it all, Jack,
I can't handle this. '

"Billy was moanin' a little bit, so I sat down
alongside him, just to be near him. He looked at me like he wanted me
to do somethin' for him, get a doctor or somebody, but I couldn't do
anything except look at him and nod my head, I was so scared. I
thought if they decided to leave maybe I could help him then.

" 'We'll take him with us,' Jack said. 'Wrap him
up.'

"The Goose and Biondo walked over to the bed and
stood over Billy. Billy's eyes were still open and he looked at me.

" 'It's sloppy,' The Goose said, and he took an
ice pick out of his coat and punched it half a dozen times through
Billy's temples, first one side then the other. It happened so fast I
couldn't not look. Then he and Jimmy Biondo wrapped Billy in my
yellow blanket and carried him down the back way to the alley. Billy
was still straight up and still had the safety on. I'd told him I was
clean, that I got regular checkups, but he wore it anyway. I didn't
see The Goose or Biondo again for years, but I saw Jack quite a lot.
He was our protector. That's what they called him anyway. Some
protector. It was him and his guys beat up Loretta and Marlene—the
bastards, the things they could do and then be so nice. But they also
took care nobody shook us down and nobody arrested us. I don't know
how he did it, but Jack kept the cops away, and my whole life I never
been in jail except for being drunk. Jack didn't own us, though. I
always heard Arnold Rothstein did, but I never knew for sure. Loretta
never told us anything. Jack did own some places later and got me a
job in a House of All Nations he was partners in, up in Montreal. I
was supposed to be either a Swede or a Dutchie because of my blond
hair. Jack brought me back down to Albany a couple of years later and
I've been here ever since.

"I really hardly knew him, saw him in Loretta's
a few times, that's all, until he gave Billy Blue his. Then one night
about a month later he come in and buys me a real drink. None of that
circus water Loretta dished us out when the chumps were buying. Jack
bought the real stuff for us.

" 'I'm sorry about that whole scene, Stars,' he
said, 'but we had to settle a score. Your guinea friend tried to kill
me six months ago.'

"Jack took my fingers and ran them over the back
of his head where he said there were still some shotgun pellets. It
was very bumpy behind his left ear.

" 'Were you scared, Stars?'

" 'Was I! I been sick over it. I can't sleep.'

" 'Poor kid. I was really sorry to do that to
you.'

"He was still holding
my hand and then he rubbed my hair. The first thing you know we were
back up in my room and we really got to know one another, I'll tell
the world."

* * *

The Wilson, Rothstein, O'Hagan, and Blue confessions
came out of Jack so totally without reservation that I told him, "I
believe you about Northrup now."

"Sometimes I tell the truth."

"I don't know as I'm so sure why you've told me
all these stories, though."

"I want you to know who you're working for."

"You seem to trust me."

"If you ever said anything, you'd be dead. But
you know some people well enough they'd never talk. I know you."

"I take that as a compliment, but I'm not
looking for information. Now or ever."

"I know that. You wouldn't get a comma out of me
if I didn't want to give it. I told you, I want you to know who I am.
And who I used to be. I changed. Did you get that? I come a long way.
A long fucking way. A man don't have to stay a bum forever."

"I see what you mean."

"Yeah, maybe you do. You listen pretty good.
People got to have somebody listen to them."

"I get paid for that."

"I'm not talking about pay."

"I am. I'm for sale. It's why I went to law
school. I listen for money. I also listen for other reasons that have
nothing to do with money. You're talking about the other reasons. I
know that."

"I knew you knew, you son of a bitch. I knew it
that night you cut Jolson up that you talked my language. That's why
I sent you the Scotch."

"You're a prescient man."

"You bet your ass. What does that mean?"

"You don't have to know."

"Blow it out your whistle, you overeducated
prick."

But he laughed when he
said it.

* * *

My memories of Jack in Europe during our first stops
are like picture postcards. In the first he walks off the
Belgenland
at Antwerp in company of two courteous, nervous Belgian gendarmes in
their kicky bucket hats and shoulder straps. He had hoped to sneak
off the ship alone and meet us later, but helpful passengers pointed
him out to the cops and they nailed him near the gangway.

Down he went but not without verbal battle, assertion
of his rights as an American citizen, profession of innocence. In the
postcard Jack wears his cocoa-brown suit and white hat and is held by
his left arm, slightly aloft. The holder of the arm walks slightly to
the rear of him down the gangplank. The second officer walks to their
rear entirely, an observer. The pair of ceremonial hats and Jack's
oversized white fedora dominate the picture. They led the angry Jack
to an auto, guided him into the back seat, and sat on either side of
him. A small crowd followed the action. The car turned a corner off
the pier into the thick of an army that had been lying in wait for
the new invasion of Flanders. Poppies perhaps at the ready, fields of
crosses under contract in anticipation of battle with the booze boche
from the west. Four armored cars waited, along with six others like
the one carrying Jack, each with four men within and at least fifty
foot-patrolmen armed with clubs or rifles.

You can see Jack's strong
suit was menace.

* * *

We left Belgium the next
day, the twerps, as Jack called them, finally deciding Jack must be
expelled by train. Jack chose Germany as his destination and we
bought tickets. The American embassy involved itself by not involving
itself, and so Jack was shunted eastward to Aachen, where the Belgian
cops left off and the German Polizei took over. A pair of beefy
Germans in mufti held his arms as he looked over his shoulder and
said to me through a frantic, twisted mouth: "Goddamn it,
Marcus, get me a goddamn lawyer."

* * *

Instead of turning the
money over to Classy Willie, Jack gave a hundred and eighty thousand
of it to me, some in a money belt, which gave me immediate abdominal
tensions, and the rest inside my Ernest Dimnet best seller, The Art
of Thinking, out of which we cut most of the pages. I carried thirty
thousand in thousand-dollar bills in the book and kept the book in
the pocket of my hound's-tooth sport jacket until I reached Albany.
The money that didn't fit into the book and the money belt we rolled
up and slid into the slots in Jack's bag reserved for the jewels. And
the bag became mine.

* * *

Police were still dragging lakes all over the
Catskills. They preferred to do that rather than follow the tip that
led to a six-mile stretch of highway near Saugerties that was paved
the day after Charlie disappeared.

Jack's home was searched; Alice was nowhere to be
found. A shotgun and rifle in a closet were confiscated. Fogarty was
seminude with a buxom Catskill waitress of comparable nudity when the
raid came.

Life went on.

* * *

I noticed that Jack had a luminous quality at certain
moments, when he stood in shadow. I suspect a derangement of my
vision even now, for I remember that the luminosity intensified when
Jack said that I should carry a pistol to protect myself (he meant to
protect his money) and then offered me one, which I refused.

"I'll carry the stuff, but I won't defend it,"
I said. "If you want that kind of protection give it to The
Count to take home."

Since that perception of Jack's luminosity, I've read
of scientists working to demystify psychic phenomena who claim to
have photographed energy emitted by flowers and  leaves. They
photograph them while they are living, then cut them and photograph
them in progressive stages of dying. The scientists say that the
intense light in the living flower or leaf is energy, and that the
luminous quality fades slowly until desiccation, at which point it
vanishes.