Jimmy and Fay (12 page)

She and Daphne shared a bedroom when she moved to Polly's full-time and they got along fine. Nola loved the moving pictures and so they went to all the new ones. That's where she picked up a lot of her English from the talkies, but she was never comfortable with it. The main problem she had was the same one that all the girls had. During the day she was lonely. They couldn't go to the pictures all the time, and there were a lot of afternoons when Nola would talk about how homesick she was. Her family was somewhere in Pennsylvania. They wanted nothing to do with her, and she didn't like them, either. No, she wanted to move someplace where it was warm, and she was better than most of the girls at saving money. All of them said they were only in the life until they saved enough to open a dress shop or move to a small town or got their break in show business—that sort of thing. But none of them did it. Instead, they blew their cash on clothes or cosmetics or jewelry. Or cocaine, if they could hide it from Polly and Cynthia.

“So is that what happened?” I asked. “Did she save up enough to leave?”

Daphne settled back and scratched the cat's neck. By then, she was comfortable talking to me. “It would be nice to think so, but I don't see it. I wasn't there when she left. I was out of town for a couple of days. She hadn't said anything about leaving, so I thought maybe she got lonelier than usual, but the other girls said she went out with them. Nothing happened with any of the johns, and she wasn't the type to keep quiet if somebody got out of hand.”

“Could she have got knocked up?”

“She didn't say anything to me and she would have, and besides, Polly takes care of that. Look, that's it, that's all I know about Nola. Girls walk away all the time. It's not that mysterious. There was this one kid, a nice-looking Polack guy that was stuck on her. He met her at this restaurant where she went sometimes to get some home cooking. She took me there once. I don't think he knew what she did, and the way she talked about him, he wouldn't have cared if he did. They could've run off.”

I wasn't ready to let it go yet and asked, “You think somebody made her an offer like you have? Set her up in her own apartment?”

Her expression got darker. “You don't know anything about what I'm doing here.”

“Sure I do,” I said. “You found a place to land, just like I did with the speak. Good work if you can get it, right?”

She shook her head. “Maybe.” Then she looked at her watch and said, “All right, it's past one. That means Harold isn't going to call, and he said that if he didn't call, then he wouldn't see me until Sunday.”

Her mouth twisted into a rueful smile. She scratched the cat's neck with both hands and said, “Another exciting weekend, Andrew.” Then to me, “You'll find a corkscrew and a couple of glasses in the kitchen. Let's see if this stuff is any good.”

The kitchen wasn't much bigger than some closets. She had good glassware and the liquor in the cabinet was scotch, the McCoy, and not much else. When I got back to the front room, she'd taken off her shoes and loosened her collar. The calico cat was purring on her lap. I opened, tasted, and congratulated myself on choosing well.

I poured two glasses. Daphne said, “What do you know about crooks on Wall Street?”

I hadn't expected that. “Nothing, really. A few years ago I was part of Rothstein's Liberty Bond racket, but that was simple theft. I thought the guys who ran Wall Street had it fixed so they didn't have to break any laws.”

“Me too. Now, I'm not so sure.” She took a short sip and then a longer one and then she started talking.

Harold—she didn't tell me his last name—came into Polly's a little more than a year ago. He was an older guy, in his fifties. Balding but tall and not bad looking and not fat, not too fat anyway. He had a lot of cash to spread around and he didn't show off with it, just bought the better booze and eats that Polly put out, and tipped well, particularly to the girls he liked. Before long, he started asking for Daphne whenever he came in, and he even phoned ahead to make sure he could see her. As johns went, he was the best, usually just looking for a nice relaxed tumble in the sheets. He liked to talk, too, but none of the “what's a nice kid like you doing . . .” stuff. It was questions about what she did that day, foods she liked, what she wanted to do with herself.

A few months ago, he called and asked for something different. He wanted Daphne to come out to a private engagement at the Gay Street address. He wanted her for the weekend, which was not an inexpensive proposition. Polly snapped it up and told Daphne to pack an overnight bag. Since transportation came out of her cut, Daphne took the subway. Harold met her at the door with champagne and flowers. When she asked what the occasion was, he said they were celebrating his freedom. His wife was gone for the weekend, and he wanted to indulge himself by being with her without all the “distractions” at Polly's. He'd laid in food and drink for forty-eight hours and suggested that she head upstairs and get rid of those clothes.

For the rest of the night and the next day and night, they screwed and drank and ate and talked and screwed. He told her it was the best time he could ever remember having, and it actually made him kind of sad because he was afraid nothing would ever be that good again. Daphne didn't tell me what she thought of that first weekend. I'm pretty sure it wasn't what he said, but she must have been flattered.

As she was packing up, Harold made his pitch. He started with what she already knew or had figured out. He worked on Wall Street, survived the crash, and recently had some good luck while most other people were still hanging on by a fraying thread. He lived out on Long Island. His son had grown and left home and now he and his wife barely spoke to each other. She had her life, he had his. They didn't ask each other questions. Now he wanted to enjoy himself. Would she consider moving into this place? He'd signed the lease. He'd transfer it to her name if she'd like.

Right up front, he said he wasn't some romantic idiot. He didn't love her and he knew she didn't love him, but he enjoyed being with her. Though he didn't know exactly how much she made working at Polly's, he was sure he could make her an offer that was in the same neighborhood, and, as he put it, “you won't have to work nearly as hard or as often.” There were no promises on either side. If she got tired of the arrangement, she was free to leave. Finally, he said, he knew he couldn't expect an answer right away, so she should think it over and let him know as soon as she made up her mind. He sincerely hoped she'd say yes.

Daphne moved out of Polly's place the next day.

At first, it was exactly what he said. They put her name on the lease. He gave her two hundred bucks and set up a bank account for her. She bought new furniture for the place. He came over for lunch whenever he could and sometimes in the afternoon. Usually there was at least one day on the weekend. But the loneliness was no different there than it had been at Polly's. She got Andrew the cat and that helped, but not much. She thought about going to secretarial school or working on a real-estate license but didn't quite get around to it.

She hadn't been there a month when Harold told her that he'd got a tip on a stock. It would be impossible for him to explain all the ins and outs to her, but there were reasons he couldn't buy this instrument—that was his word,
instrument
—but she could and it would be completely legal. He'd show her what to do. He gave her the name and address of a brokerage, and he told her who to ask for when she went there. He even told her the day and time she was to go there, saying that all these details were just to make sure that everything went smoothly. No, he swore to her, you're not doing anything illegal. Handling it this way just makes sure that everything is aboveboard. He told her to dress severely and to wear the glasses. He didn't want any of the men at the brokerage making time with his woman.

She did just as he told her to. It was a nice break from her routine. She got her first real hint that something wasn't on the up-and-up when she went to the brokerage and asked for the man Harold had named, a Mr. Deener. He was a younger guy who bolted up from his desk in a bullpen full of desks when he heard his name. He hurried over to see her, mopping his face with a handkerchief, and she could see just how nervous he was. But everything went just as Harold said it would. The name of the company, or whatever it was, meant nothing to her. As Harold said, it was an instrument. She gave it to the nervous Mr. Deener. She wrote a check. He gave her a receipt and a folder full of papers she didn't understand.

A week later, a messenger arrived at her place on Gay Street and had her sign for an envelope. Harold called minutes later and told her to wait until he got there to open it. When they did, she was shocked by the amount of the cashier's check.

By then, we'd worked through half of the wine. Daphne took most of it.

“How many more ‘instruments' have you handled?”

“Fourteen.”

“How much money?”

“Almost eleven thousand,” she said. “It's in the bank. There was some extra business, fine print, when we opened the account. Nobody said so in so many words, but I think Harold can get at it.”

“So he could be setting you up,” I said.

“Maybe, but I can't believe Harold would hurt me.”

Not as long as the gravy train is running on schedule
, I thought. “How long do you think you can keep him happy in the sack?”

One corner of her mouth cocked up. “As long as I want, buster.”

She knew that wasn't true. It was the wine talking, but we let it pass. She said, “What do you think I should do?”

“The first thing is to figure out what he's up to. Then once you've got the details, decide if he's marked you to take the fall. If he has, then figure out how to steal it from him before he steals it from you. I don't know anything about that racket, but we've got three or four regulars who brag that there's nothing about Wall Street that they don't know. You want, I'll ask around, see if I can learn anything.”

“How much?” She looked and sounded skeptical, but the idea interested her.

“I'm getting ten percent for this business with Nola.”

She drained her glass and muttered, mostly to herself, “I don't know.”

I asked if they'd talked about how the cash was going to be divided, and she said Harold had started talking about it as “their” money, but nothing more definite. I asked a couple more questions, but she didn't want to answer, so I said that if she decided to do anything, she knew where to find me. I got ready to leave.

She poured the rest of the bottle into her glass. “You know,” she said, “I've always wanted to ask you about that day.”

“What day?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant.

“That afternoon that old guy—what was his name?—Manzanaro got killed. It was in that same building. I didn't realize it was the same place until I heard about it later. Somebody said Charlie Lucky was behind it. And one night in Polly's, Vincent Coll was bragging that he had been paid by the old guy to kill Charlie. Then a little bird told me it was you who stopped Coll.”

I shook my head and said, “Don't believe everything you hear from little birds. What were you doing there?”

She laughed. “That was a hell of a story. The guy I was with, he said he was a big shot and he was going to make me famous. He was going to make me a movie star. He said I was going to be in the greatest stag picture ever made. With a giant ape, if you can believe it.”

I sat back down and said, “Tell me about him and his picture.”

He told the girls that his name was Oscar Apollinaire. Daphne remembered he first showed up a couple of years ago in the spring, when Polly was still working out of the Majestic over on the west side. That's when she was a favorite of the literary crowd, Benchley and those guys. This Apollinaire character fit right in with them. He was a real dude who sported brightly colored vests—bright red paisley, blue and silver flowers, that kind of thing—along with the fez and the Vandyke. Like a lot of that bunch, he was more interested in lounging about, drinking, and holding forth on this and that in the parlor than in running to a bedroom to dip his wick. As long as he paid for his drinks, Polly and the girls thought he was pretty terrific.

He said he was a Polack and had taken the name Apollinaire to honor his countryman who had become a famous poet in France. Daphne said he and Benchley shared a laugh over that, but nobody else got it. She sure didn't. Neither did I. Daphne also said that he didn't sound like he came from Poland or France. From his accent, the closest he'd been to Europe was an East River pier.

What she noticed about him was the way he always seemed to be standing back a step, away from everybody else. Even when guys were taking their time in the parlor, they liked to sample the merchandize, you might say. Engaging in a leisurely feel, having a girl sit on their lap, slipping a hand up under a hem to squeeze a thigh. That was part of Polly's place. But Oscar Apollinaire tended to stay off to one side or in a corner, watching all the girls, focusing on one and then another and taking notes and drawing sketches on little cards that he always had in his pocket. When Daphne asked him about it, he said he was working on other projects and was considering which girls might be right. Daphne figured she wasn't one of those special girls since he never went with her.

I interrupted then and asked if this character had anything to do with Nola, both of them being Polacks.

She said, “No. Oscar went for girls who were younger and thinner than me and Nola, and I never saw them together. In fact, now that I think of it, I guess I haven't seen Oscar since that day we saw you, or the next time, I guess, before Nola came to Polly's.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Tell me about that day.”