American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee (36 page)

Waxey Gordon was forty-three years old, short and plump, with just enough coarse gray hair to disqualify him from true “baldhead” status. He wore a heavy gray suit that encased his girth like cement and a coil of diamonds around his thick wrist. He seldom smiled and when he did it was effortful, as if the corners of his lips were lifting heavy weights, and he was free and careless with his gun.

One night, after the Republic’s final show, Waxey arrived at a speakeasy on Eighth Avenue. He was flanked by four bodyguards wearing green fedoras slouched down, shadowing their faces. Gypsy thought he looked more like a booking agent than a gangster, but everyone knew who and what he was and how he’d begun: little Irving Wexler from the slums of the Lower East Side, so skilled at filching wallets from pockets it was as if they were covered with wax; hence the nickname.

During the early days of Prohibition, Waxey connected with the now-deceased racketeer Arnold Rothstein and worked alongside such underworld luminaries as Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Owney Madden. Rothstein had been the master of New York City’s illegal liquor trade—the largest operation in the country, with
an estimated 32,000 speakeasies—and he taught his protégés everything: the connections to the purchasing rings in Canada, England, and the West Indies; the number of speedboats they had at their disposal for smuggling purposes; the locations of every one of their storage warehouses.
At the height of Rothstein’s operation, 80 percent of the liquor distilled in Canada found its way to the United States, and
the Bahamas’ export of whiskey increased 425-fold. Patrons of both the city’s exclusive clubs and Bowery dives unwittingly drank alcohol laced with antifreeze, ether, or Jamaica ginger extract—the last of which, when adulterated with a plasticizer, caused a paralytic condition known as “jake leg.” Everyone thought of the “jake leg blues” as an affliction of poor southerners, but
New York City had its share of victims, roaming Harlem and the Bowery in their trademark dismal march, knees lifted high and feet slapping the pavement,
toe
heel,
toe
heel, the heel forever incapable of landing first.

Determined to take over a number of breweries in New Jersey, Waxey began warring with the Irish gang that controlled them, murdering its members one by one. The breweries were technically legal since they manufactured “near beer”; their authentic stuff was produced and transported to bottling and barreling facilities via an intricate, elaborate system of underground pipes. During one raid, federal authorities discovered
a 6,000-foot beer pipeline running through the Yonkers sewer system. In Manhattan, Waxey’s web of contacts set up neighborhood cordial shops with “importer” or “broker” plates nailed to the door, a clear signal that they were “
in the know.” To pick up business, these clever proprietors also slipped flyers under windshields and apartment doors, offered free samples and home delivery, took telephone orders, and urged customers to “ask for anything you may not find” on the menu. For the weekend warriors, steamship lines operating out of New York introduced cruises with no destination at all but the “
freedom of the seas.”

There were signs the party might be nearing its end. That summer,
a five-year-old boy was killed by a stray bullet on East 107th Street, and Governor Roosevelt vowed a crackdown on organized crime. In the meantime, Waxey lived exactly the way Gypsy wished she could, watching the money go out while confident it would come back in. He kept his wife and three children in a ten-room, four-bath apartment at 590 West End Avenue (paying $6,000 per year in rent at a time the average annual salary was $1,850), decorated with the help of professionals, including a woodsmith who custom-built a $2,200 bookcase. Five servants catered to their every whim. His children attended private schools, took daily horseback-riding lessons in Central Park, and spent summers at their house in Bradley Beach, New Jersey. He owned three cars, bought $10 pairs of underwear by the dozen, and stocked his closets with $225 suits tailor-made for him by the same haberdasher who outfitted Al Capone. In 1930, Waxey made nearly $1.5 million and paid the U.S. government
just $10.76 in taxes.

And now, in this Eighth Avenue speakeasy, Gypsy watched Waxey Gordon watching her, his eyes fixed with purpose as he summoned a waiter and whispered into his ear. He watched as the waiter approached her table, hoisting four bottles of champagne high in the air, and setting them down, saying crisply, “
Compliments of Mr. W.” Waxey watched
Gypsy sip the champagne and noted the realization passing across her face: accepting his gift was as much an invitation as a courtesy, an implicit agreement that he would open doors she’d be obliged to step through, locking them tight behind her, no matter what she might find on the other side.

“
Thank you for the champagne,” she told Waxey when he strode over to her table, the bodyguards lined up like ducklings behind him.

He nodded and said, “You can’t tell when you’ll run into me again,” although she did, indirectly, on the phone the following morning.

The ringing awakened her and Mother, who strained to listen to the voice on the other line. “
No names,” the voice barked at Gypsy. “I’m calling for the friend you met last night.” Mr. Gordon, the voice said, wanted her to visit a certain dentist at 49th and Broadway. She had an appointment the following morning to get her teeth straightened.

The dial tone droned in her ear.

“I never heard of such a thing,” Rose said indignantly, and they skipped the appointment.

That night, as Gypsy primped in her dressing room at the Republic, Georgia Sothern’s reflection appeared in her mirror.

“
Gyps,” she whispered, holding her friend’s gaze in the glass, “Waxey’s very hurt that you didn’t see his dentist. He’s got you another appointment for the same time tomorrow. You’d better go. Waxey’s all right … it don’t pay to turn up your nose at him.”

Gypsy remembered Georgia’s warning when the strange man called again, after the show. This time Rose took the call. “
I don’t understand this,” she said, “but I don’t like it. My daughter isn’t going to any dentist we never heard of and can’t afford to pay.”

The voice urged them not to worry about paying, since the doctor owed the “boss” plenty. And if the boss wanted Gypsy Rose Lee to get her teeth straightened, she would do it—if she knew what was good for her.

T
he new caps were beautiful, Gypsy thought, and looked like real teeth—no matter that she could no longer eat corn on the cob, or that
they felt like pins lodged deep in her gums. Waxey Gordon was another member of her new world, and she was still learning its language, cracking its code. The people inside it knew nothing of Rose Louise or the bleak, endless days she’d spent running from her, and she rewarded their ignorance by letting them assist in the invention of Gypsy Rose Lee. When Waxey told her to keep her new teeth “
brushed good,” she did, meticulously and obsessively. When he invited her to perform at a benefit for the inmates of Comstock Prison, at which Florenz Ziegfeld was expected to be a guest, she signed on right away (although her appearance was canceled when wardens worried that she might corrupt prisoners’ morals). When Waxey told her he wanted to give her a dining room set for her new home, she could not have been more thankful for the gesture. When Waxey wanted her to appear on his arm or in his bed she complied, learning to take more than she gave without anyone sensing the difference.

She ventured deeper into Waxey’s circle, meeting his people’s people, noting everyone who floated along the edges. When a man named Vick Mizzy asked her to accompany him home, she assessed carefully, coolly, exactly what he might do for her. He was in the music industry, a person of prominence and power, and she yearned to collect people like him, people who could help develop her creation. Once the door closed behind them, she took off all of her clothes, dropped onto his bed, and said, “
You can fuck or suck whatever you want, I’m going to sleep.”

For now, at least, she was theirs to admire and to stroke, to turn off and on, to beckon and send away.

“
She was very involved in the underworld,” June said. “She was one of their pets, just like Sinatra … it guaranteed things, the kind of things she wanted.”

June happened to be in New York the night Waxey Gordon’s stolen furniture was scheduled for delivery. She’d divorced Bobby and rejoined the marathon circuit, spending
3,600 hours on her feet in a recent contest, and was more desperate than ever to find work in a legitimate theater. She subsisted on a hot dog with sauerkraut for breakfast and a jelly doughnut for dinner and spent her days taking acting classes, rushing from call to call, hoping to step onto the right stage at the right time.
Mother wouldn’t help her, she was certain, but her sister might—Louise was highly sophisticated now, after all, and she could fill June’s pocket with all the right names.

She arrived at the Rego Park house and found her mother wrapped in a bathrobe, popcorn in hand, watching a movie. The projector rattled and hummed and a naked woman appeared on the screen. She lowered herself into a tub, and then a man appeared behind her. He urinated over her shoulder as she soaped herself clean.

Laughing softly, her mouth full of popcorn, Rose told June that her sister was upstairs. “
Plenty of popcorn, dear,” she added. “Come back and make comfy at the movies.”

At the top of the stairs, a short hallway led to a bathroom. June found her sister facedown on the floor. She turned her body over—Louise had gotten so lithe, so slim—and smoothed her hair away from her face. Smeared makeup made her skin look sallow and bruised, and a line of lipstick ran jagged across—what were these?—new teeth, thick and strangely white, still slightly bucked. A flask of brandy stood like a miniature tombstone behind her head. An old memory took shape, frame by frame: her on the bathroom floor, recovering from that last fight with Mother; Louise closing the door and sitting close enough to touch her; a furtive confidence shared, both of them low and lost.

June tried to hoist her sister up.

“
Let go of me, June—let go!” she yelled, pushing June away. She pulled herself up and began retching into the toilet. When she finished she leaned back against the tub, making herself as tall as she could, managing even under the circumstances to look imperious and regal.

“What the hell are you doing here? This is a private lesson.”

June boggled at her. “Lesson?”

“A lesson in social amenities. I happen to be moving in a very special set of people, and I’ve got a lot to learn.”

Closing her eyes, she took a long swallow of brandy.

“Louise—” June said.

“I’m not Louise,” Gypsy insisted. “I’ll never be Louise again. Didn’t Mother tell you? My stage name is who I am from now on. Gypsy Rose Lee. That’s who I am for good. You call me that—Gypsy, I mean. We’ll all get used to it.”

“But wasn’t that name just temporary? Besides, you’re not a gypsy.”

“And you weren’t dainty, either,” Gypsy retorted and then gave her sister the help she sought, telling her to “smarten up” and stop playing those “dance marathon games.” How unbright did June have to be, thinking she’d get into a chorus line, with those skimpy eyebrows and bumpy knees? And what had happened to becoming a real actress?

As for men, June should know that all of them are married and merely want a “pretty little ornament.” Such dalliances were ephemeral, little snatches of phantom lives, and only June could give herself anything lasting or real. Did June even know what or who she was? She had no idea, had she? Well, whatever it was, and no matter how hopeless it sounded to her ears, she needed to pin it down and made a solid vow to it—and not let hell or high water get in her way.

“Believe me, June,” Gypsy said. “Nobody—I mean nobody—is going to be a roadblock for Gypsy Rose Lee.”

Mother’s voice came bounding up the stairs. “Gypsy! Gypsy, they’re here. The truck is here with the furniture! Right on the dot … it’s 4
A.M.
, dear.”

Gypsy sent June downstairs; she needed to fix her face and brush her new teeth. June and Rose waited at the door, watching a team of burly men lug in a long, carved oak table and thirty ornate matching chairs, the grandest dining set they had ever seen. Another man followed, well groomed and smartly dressed, and his very presence crowded the room. His eyes turned toward the stairs, waiting, and Gypsy descended, pointing her toes and accentuating each step, an entrance meant for Waxey Gordon alone.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” she told Waxey, and then directed his men to the dining room.

Rose turned to Waxey, looking at him through lowered eyes. She smiled and spoke softly. “Well, son,” she said, “I am the mother of Gypsy Rose Lee.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Waxey said.

She pointed a finger at June. “
And this is my baby. She used to be somebody, too.”

When Waxey left, Gypsy said good-bye, calling him “Mr. Gordon” and shaking his hand. He called her “kid.” Rose sighed and said, “Class.
Class. No pretense, just honesty himself. In this world of stinkers, just give me a straightforward, true-blue gangster every time.”