A few weeks on the job, I caught the women’s wear manager giving me some long looks while I was straightening my seams in the employee lounge. But it turned out she just wanted to tell me if I went down to the beauty parlor on the first floor for a Madame Rose Hair Color Bath in Champagne Blonde or Moon Gold, then she could use me as a showroom model for the mainliners and flush out-of
towners. And of course there was some off-the-books coin to be had if you played it right. I told her I’d think about it.
Not two days later, the office manager told me to skip the drugstore lunch counter and go to Gould’s Restaurant at twelve sharp instead.
“What’s the idea?”
“The boss—the owner—wants to meet you.”
“Mr. Lavery?”
“There is no Mr. Lavery. Not since he took a dive out the
housewares window in ‘twenty-nine. I mean the moneybags who owns the operation now.”
“Why does he want to be bothered with me?”
“I can think of a few ideas,” he said wearily. He looked like he felt a little sorry for me and I pictured myself spending my future days running around some big shot’s desk like out of a Sunday paper cartoon.
Gould’s at noontime was packed with every red-faced banker and merchant on Main Street. It was one of those brass-rail, mahogany-bar, steak-and-spinach places that midsized towns everywhere have, where all the bosses tucked into their white-napkin and martini lunches while all their employees were stuck belly to some drugstore lunch counter for ham sandwiches five days a week.
“Follow me, miss,” the maitre d’ said.
I had a pretty good idea what to expect, but I figured at least I’d get a New York strip out of it.
Feeling like a bump-and-grinder walking into a smoker, I tucked my purse under my arm, adjusted my skirt, and made my way through the smoky throng.
At first, I thought I was seeing things when I passed by the far end of the bar and spotted a familiar man leaning on the mahogany,
talking to the bow-tied bartender.
And then I saw I wasn’t.
Amos Mackey.
What was he doing here?
What was he doing in this Sunday school, church social, Fourth of
July picnic kind of town?
For a split second, I thought maybe he was coming after me.
That he was coming after me for who knew what but at the very
least for squealing to the cops.
But it didn’t look that way.
And he had no reason to come after me himself when he had plenty of musclemen to do it for him.
As I passed, I could see, out of the corner of my eye, that he’d spotted me. And as I kept walking, I could feel his eyes on me and it wasn’t like he was figuring an angle. No. No. Something in the way he fastened his eyes on me, it was like he had something for me.
But here’s the thing: I couldn’t believe the fast jolt it gave me. He wasn’t the type to set me going, but there was something. Something in the way he stood there, like a king, manicured hand curling around the edge of the bar like it was the arm of his throne,
watching everything, appraising.
And knowing something about me, knowing it.
Who could guess, really, how much he might know about me.
So sure, I gave him my best walk, half class, half pay-broad. If you can twist those two tightly, fellas don’t know what hit ‘em. They can’t peg you. It gets them—the smart ones—going. Spinning hard trying to fix you. You’re like the best parts of their grammar school sweetheart and their first whore all in one sizzling package.
The maitre d’ ushered me to a corner table, empty except for a half-f highball glass with a twist. That was when I got the picture. Even if it hit me too late to run the odds or figure out how to play it. Within a few seconds, Mackey had seated himself across from me in front of the highball and the waiter in the starched uniform was setting another one in front of me.
Mackey looked at me, eyes slightly hooded, gold watch fob knocking light into my eyes. He was smiling slightly, mouth closed, and he was rapping his round, baby pink fingers on the white tablecloth.
“Do the new hires down in stock rate this kind of treatment too, boss?” I said, pulling off my gloves finger by finger.
“I’ve been looking for you for a while,” he said quietly.
Then, folding his hands together on the table, he told me how his boys had been heeling for me for a few weeks, finally tracked me down through the Impala. And he’d been staking out this turf anyway, looking for virgin snow.
“I made Lavery’s an offer and bought the whole operation for a song,” he said, bright white collar nudging against the smooth skin of his jaw. “So here I am your employer.”
Listening to him, staring at the untouched drink in front of me, I figured maybe he didn’t just want me to shimmy for my supper after all. Maybe he wanted me to cook his books for him. So I asked if that was what he had in mind.
He almost laughed, said that wasn’t so. He wouldn’t waste my time on that. Looking me in the eye but still leaning back in his chair, arms relaxed, head slightly tilted, he said he had big, big plans for me.
It was like this: he was moving in on my old bosses. They were going the way of the pantaloon and waxed mustache, he said. And then he fixed me with his eyes and they became darker, more purposeful. In spite of myself, I felt he was passing along a great secret to me and I’d better listen up.
“I’m the future, kid,’’ he said, with a kind of serene force. “I’m the next four decades.”
He said it and it was as though a long, long war had finally ended, after many battles waged and blood drawn, and now the rightful victor had been crowned with laurels on his head, spoils at his feet, and all enemies vanquished. He said it and you knew with your gut it was true, or true enough.
“Congratulations,” I said, still not touching my drink. “What’s it got to do with me?”
His smile grew just slightly. I could smell the Sen-Sen on his breath, the expensive hair tonic. His silk shirt rustled ever so faintly against his suit jacket as he leaned forward, just a few inches.
“I want you to work for me. And not in payroll.”
I felt that jolt again, harder this time. But I kept it cool. “Work for you like breaking in your featherbed?”
He shook his head, again with that smile that didn’t show his teeth. It was the smile of a man who hadn’t been surprised in a very long time but who felt like he was finally going to be surprised again and was enjoying it.
I wondered if he knew I’d stooled for the cops. I wondered if he still believed, had ever believed whatever Gloria whispered in his ear about me, about what I had done or could do. Then I figured he might know but not care. Then I figured he might know and think that it showed something in me, hard and smart and ruthless and striving, that he could use.
“It’s like this,” he said, spreading his palms on the table. And he laid it out. I’d be his girl. I’d do the pickups, drop-offs, the pad. I’d handle the casinos, the tracks, big and small, the grind joints, the high-hat restaurants, the after-hours loading docks, and everything in between.
Everything would pass through my hands before it would touch his.
“Consider it … a promotion,” he said, and I thought maybe he winked as he said it, but it might have been the light off his diamond stickpin.
I told him I needed time to think on it, to walk it around the park a little. He said fine and ordered us two porterhouse specials.
When mine was set before me, so rare it was matching me pulse for pulse, I stared at it like it was a hypnotist’s spiral.
It was there and I knew it. I knew what I was good for. I knew the payoff and the price.
My hands on everything, like resting on a pile of jewels, pressing my palms into the sharp angles, pressing them hard enough to break skin. There would be endless diamonds, slithery jade cuffs, pearls like drops of custard, the glittery crust of filigreed brooches, slick topaz bracelets too heavy for me to lift my wrist. There’d be the thunder, the nervy thrills of the track, torn tickets fluttering through the air, collecting like leaves under my feet, my teetering moll heels. Better still, the hazy, sex-tipped groan of the casinos, everyone working, sweating, toiling for the payoff, the big hit. I could listen to the soft rake across the felt, the rubbing of chips between eager fingers, the gallop of the roulette ball, the whispers, sighs, trembles shuddering through the whole sin-heady joint. I could listen to all of it forever.
Say good-bye to all that? Who did I think I was fooling? I was made for it, built for it, dipped in flashy gold and ready for plucking.
I wanted more.
“I’m your girl,” I said.