Legs (33 page)

"I told Jack I wanted us to be happy together
for always, even if it was only in a picture."

Despite such healthy
overtness, the good Alice had pushed the lemon back and forth in
front of the incense for three months, a ritual learned from her maid
Cordelia, a child of Puerto Rico, where the occult is still as common
as the sand and the sea. The lemon embodied Alice's bitter wish that
Jack see Kiki as the witch Alice knew her to be, witch of caprice and
beauty beyond Alice's understanding; for beauty to Alice was
makeshift-nice clothing, properly colored hair, not being fat. And
Kiki's beauty, ineffable as the Holy Ghost, was a hateful riddle.

* * *

When Jack's lucky blue suit came back from the hotel
cleaners, a silver rosary came with it in the key pocket. I always
suspected Alice's fine Irish Catholic hand at work in that pocket.
The night of our Rain-Bo dinner Jack pulled out a handful of change
when he sent Hubert for the Daily News, and when I saw the rosary I
said, "New prayer implement there?" which embarrassed him.
He nodded and dropped it back into his pocket.

He had examined it carefully when it turned up in
that pocket, looked at its cross, which had what seemed to be
hieroglyphics on it, and at the tiny sliver of wood inside the cross
(which opened like a locket), wood that might well, the monsignor
suggested, have been a piece of the true cross. The hieroglyphics and
the sliver had no more meaning for Jack than the Hail Marys, the Our
Fathers, and the Glory Bes he recited as his fingers breezed along
the beads. His scrutiny of the cross was a search for a coded message
from his mother, whose rosary, he was beginning to believe, had been
providentially returned to him. For he remembered clearly the silver
rosary on her dresser and, again, twined in her hands when she lay in
her coffin. He studied it until its hieroglyphics yielded their true
meaning: scratches. The sliver of wood, he decided, was too new to
have been at Calvary. Piece of a toothpick from Lindy's more like it.
Yet he fondled those silver beads, recited those holy rote phrases as
if he, too, were rolling a lemon or hexing money, and he offered up
the cheapjack stuff of his ragged optimism to the only mystical being
he truly understood.

Himself.

No one else had the power
to change the life at hand.

* * *

How does a mythical figure ask a lady to dance? As if
Jack didn't have enough problems, now he was faced with this.
Moreover, when he has a choice of two ladies, which one does he
single out to be the first around whom he will publicly wrap what is
left of his arms as he spins through waves of power, private unity,
and the love of all eyes? These questions shaped themselves as
wordless desires in Jack's head as he read his own spoken words about
his own mythic nature.

When Hubert came back with four copies of the Daily
News, everyone at the table opened to the first of a three-part
interview with Jack by John O'Donnell. It was said to be Jack's first
since all his trouble, and he corroborated that right there in the
News very bold type:

"I haven't been talking out of
vanity-the fact that I've never given out my side before would show
pretty clearly that I'm not publicity mad."

Reasonable remark, Jack. Not publicity mad anymore.
Too busy using interviews like these to generate sympathy for your
cause, for the saving of your one and only ass, to worry about
publicity for vanity's sake. Jack could be more pragmatic, now that
he's a myth. But was he really a myth? Well, who's to say? But he
does note a mythic development in his life in that bold, bold Daily
News type:

"Here's what I think. This stuff
written about me has created a mythical figure in the public mind.
Now I'm Jack Diamond and I've got to defend myself against the
mythical crimes of the mythical Legs. "

Legs. Who the hell was this Legs anyway? Who here in
the Rain-Bo room really knows Legs?

"Hello, Legs."

"How ya doin', Legs?"

"Good luck on the trial, Legs."

"Glad to see you up and around, Legs."

"Have a drink, Legs?"

"We'd like you to join our party if you get a
minute, Mr. Legs."

Only a handful in the joint really knew him, and
those few called him Jack. The rest clustered 'round the mythic
light, retelling stories of origins:

"They call him Legs because he always runs out
on his friends."

"They call him Legs because his legs start up at
his chest bone."

"They call him Legs because he could outrun any
cop at all when he was a kid package thief."

"They call him Legs because he danced so much
and so well."

Shall we dance! Who first?

"This is a good interview, Jack," said
Marcus. "Good for the trial. Bound to generate some goodwill
somewhere."

"I don't like the picture they put with it,"
Alice said.

"You look too thin. "

"I am too thin," Jack said.

"I like it," Kiki said.

"'
I knew you would," Alice said.

"I like it when your hat is turned up like
that," Kiki said.

"So do I," Alice said.

" Find your own things to like," Kiki said.

Who first?

Dance with Alice and have the band play "Happy
Days and Lonely Nights," your favorite, Jack. Dance with Marion
and have them play "My Extraordinary Gal," your favorite,
Jack.

"Is it true what he says there about Legs and
Augie?" Kiki asked.

"All true," Jack said.

"As a matter of fact I was never
called Legs until after that Little Augie affair. Look it up and see
for yourself. It don't make much difference, but that's a fact. My
friends or my family have never called me Legs. When the name Legs
appeared under a picture, people who didn't know me picked it up and
I've been called Legs in the newspapers ever since."

O'Donnell explained that Eddie Diamond was once
called Eddie Leggie ("Leggie," a criminal nickname out of
the nineteenth-century slums) and that somehow it got put on Jack.
Cop told a newsman about it. Newsman got it wrong. Caption in the
paper referred to Jack as Legs. And there was magic forever after.

"I didn't know that," Kiki said. "Is
it really true, Jackie?"

"All the garbage they ever wrote about me is
true to people who don't know me."

The music started again after a break, and Jack
looked anxiously from woman to woman, faced once again with priority.
Did his two women think of him as Legs? Absurd. They knew who he was.
If anybody ever knew he was Jack Diamond and not Legs Diamond, it was
those two ladies. They loved him for his own reasons, not other
people's. For his body. For the way he talked to them. For the way he
loved them. For the way his face was shaped. For the ten thousand
spoken and unspoken reasons he was what he was. It's wasn't necessary
for Jack to dwell on such matters, for he had verified this truth
often. What was necessary now was to keep the women together, keep
them from repelling each other like a matched pair of magnets. This
matched pair would work as a team, draw the carriage of Jack's
future. Fugitive Kiki, wanted as a Streeter witness, needed the
protection of Jack's friends until the charge against her went away.
She would stick, all right. And Alice? Why, she would stick through
anything. Who could doubt that at this late date?

A voluptuous woman in a silver sheath with shoulder
straps of silver cord paused at the table with her escort. "This
one here is Legs," she said to the escort. "I'd know him
anywhere, even if he is only a ridiculous bag of bones."

"Who the hell are you?" Jack asked her.

"I saw your picture in the paper, Legs,"
she said.

"That explains it."

She looked at Alice and Kiki, then rolled down the
right strap of her gown and revealed a firm, substantial,
well-rounded, unsupported breast.

"How do you like it?" she said to Jack.

"It seems adequate, but I'm not interested."

"You've had a look anyway, and that counts for
something, doesn't it, sweetheart?" she said to her escort.

"It better, by God," said the escort.

"I can also get milk out of it if you ever feel
the need," she said, squeezing her nipple forward between two
fingers and squirting a fine stream into Jack's empty coffee cup.

"l'll save that till later," Jack said.

"Oh, he's so intelligent," the woman said,
tucking herself back into her dress and moving off.

"I think we should order," Kiki said. "I'm
ravished."

"You mean famished," Jack said.

"Yes, whatever I mean."

"And no more interruptions," said Alice.

Jack signaled the waiter and told him, "A large
tomato surprise."

"One for everybody?"

"One for me," Jack said. "I have no
power over what other people want. "

The waiter leaned over and spoke into Jack's face so
all could hear. "'They tell me you've got the power of ten
thousand Indians."

Jack picked up his butter knife and stared at the
waiter, prepared to drive the blade through the back of that servile
hand. He would take him outside, kick him down the stairs, break his
goddamn snotty face.

"The way I get it," the waiter said,
backing away, speaking directly to Jack, "you know it all. You
know who the unknown soldier is and who shot him."

"Where do they get these people?" Jack
asked. But before anyone could respond, the waiter's voice carried
across the room from the kitchen, "A tomato surprise for the
lady killer," and the room's eyes swarmed over Jack in a new
way.

Jack straightened his tie, aware his collar was too
big for his neck, aware his suit had the ill fit of adolescence
because of his lost weight. He felt young, brushed his hair back from
his ears with the heels of both hands, thought of the work that lay
ahead of him, the physical work adolescents must do. They must grow.
They must do the chores of life, must gain in strength and wisdom to
cope with the hostile time of manhood. The work of Jack's life lay
stretched out ahead of him. On the dance floor, for instance.

He started to get up, but Alice grabbed his arm and
whispered in his ear: "Do you remember, Jack, the time you stole
the fox collar coat I wanted so much, but then I took it back and you
insisted and went back and stole it all over again? Oh, how I loved
you for that."

"I remember," he said softly to her. "I
could never forget that coat. "

Kiki watched their intimacy, then leaned toward Jack
and whispered, "I've got my legs open, Jackie."

"Have you, kid?"

"Yes. And now I'm opening my nether lips."

"You are?"

"Yes. And now I'm closing them. And now I'm
opening them again."

"You know, kid, you're all right. Yes, sir,
you're all right."

He stood up then and said, "I'm going to dance."

Alice looked at Kiki, Kiki at Alice, the ultimate
decision blooming at long last. They both looked to Jack for his
choice, but he made none. He got up from his chair at last and, with
his left arm swinging limply, his right shoulder curled in a way to
give his movement the quality of a young man in full swagger, he
headed for the dance floor where a half dozen couples were twirling
about to a waltz. When Jack put a foot on the dance floor, some, then
all couples stopped and the band trailed off. But Jack turned to the
bandstand, motioned for the music to continue. Then he looked at Kiki
and Alice, who stood just off the edge of the floor.

"My arm, Marion," he said. "Take my
arm."

And while Alice's eyes instantly filled with tears at
the choice, Kiki gripped Jack's all but useless left hand with her
own and raised it. As she moved toward him for the dancer's embrace,
he said, "My right arm, Alice," and Alice's face broke into
a roseate smile of tears as she raised Jack's right hand outward.

The women needed no further instruction. They joined
their own hands and stepped onto the dance floor with their man.
Then, as the orchestra broke into the waltz of now and forever, the
waltz that all America, all Europe, was dancing to—'"Two
Hearts in Three-Quarter Time," its arithmetic obviously
calculated in heaven—Alice, Marion, and Jack stepped forward into
the music, into the dance of their lives.

"One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three,
one-two-three," Jack counted. And they twirled on their own axis
and spun around the room to the waltz like a perfect circle as the
slowly growing applause of the entire room carried them up, up, and
up into the ethereal sphere where people truly know how to be happy.
 

JACK-IN-THE-BOX

I'll spare you the details of the summer's two
trials, which produced few surprises beyond my own splendid rhetoric
and, in the Troy trial, a perjury indictment for one of our witnesses
whose vigorous support of Jack's alibi was, alas, provably untrue. I
presume the July verdict must be counted a surprise, being for
acquittal of Jack on a charge of assaulting Streeter. The courtroom
burst into applause and shouts when the verdict was read. Alice ran
down the aisle in her lovely pink frock with the poppy print and her
floppy picture hat, leaned over the rail and gave Jack a wet one with
gush. "Oh, my darling boy!" And three hundred people
standing outside the Rensselaer County courthouse in Troy, because
there were no seats left in the courtroom, sent up a cheer heard
'round the world.