Handsome Harry (24 page)

We stood up and put on our hats.

Glad to hear it, Sheetz said, but just the same, you boys be careful out there. And do let’s stay in contact.

Do let’s, John said.

Captain Kidd watched us go out the door, his face as impossible to read as Russian.

W
e got back to Chicago late that night and cut up the take. The next day we went on a spending spree and John finally bought himself a car, a Terraplane coupe, and that night we all went out together and had a high time.

We dined in one of the finest steakhouses in the city and then hit a half-dozen clubs all over the Loop.
Jesus,
we were jazzed. We laughed like lunatics at every wisecrack everybody made. The girls knew all the latest dances, and before the end of the evening so did we. I was cutting a rug like a real smoothie. I couldn’t get enough
boogie-woogie. Patty, who was practically a dance pro, said all us guys were good, but she thought John was so good he could’ve done it for a living. John grinned and blew her a kiss across the table. Billie patted his cheek and said It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, and this fella’s got plenty of swing.

It was a night that had everything—even the pleasure of saving a lady in distress. That happened when I found out the cigarette girl had run out of my brand and I went out to the car to get a fresh pack from the glove box. I was making my way back along the rows of cars in the parking lot and I heard a guy saying something about stupid no-good bitch and then the sound of a slap and a woman started crying. I spotted them two rows over. The guy was holding her against the side of a car and smacking her good. She was whimpering with each hit and trying to protect her face with her hands. Another guy was standing there watching.

I cut over to their row, moving fast and quiet, and they never saw me till I grabbed the hitter from behind by the wrist and tripped him down to his knees and pivoted hard and wrenched his arm out of its socket with a pop he’ll never forget. It’s a pain that’ll take your breath away, believe me—I felt it once in a fight with the hacks in M City. All he could manage was a raspy moan before I rammed a knee into his chin, cracking his teeth together and laying him out. The other guy hooked me hard in the ribs and I covered up and took the next one on top of the head and the way he yelped I knew he’d busted his hand. I grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him back against a car and pulled the .45 and whacked him on the head with it. He dropped to all fours and I hit him with the gun again and that was all she wrote. The winner and still champeen…me.

The woman wasn’t really hurt—slightly bloody nose, puffed lip, that was about it. She was a leggy thing, but even without the bruises her face would’ve been a little blurred at the edges, like she’d had one too many rough nights. I holstered the gun and gave her my hanky
to put to her nose and she thanked me, then spit on the one with the popped arm.
Bastard,
she said, I hope you’re dead.

I assured her he wasn’t and said we’d better amscray before somebody came along. She asked my name and I said Len Richardson. She said hers was Wilma or Willa or something and started telling me what the fracas had been about, but I didn’t really care and didn’t pay much attention. We went around to the front of the club and I put her in a cab and paid the driver and when the car drove off I threw away the little card she’d given me with her phone number on it.

When I got back to our table in a rear corner of the room and told the gang what happened, Mary’s first impulse was to make sure I hadn’t been hurt, and she gently felt the knot on my head and saw that it wasn’t bleeding. Then she gave me a scolding for getting mixed up in something that didn’t concern me and might’ve got me arrested.

The guys were sorry they’d missed the scrap. I mean to tell you, I felt
great.

We drank more than we usually allowed ourselves and we all got a little buzzed—except for Copeland, who got plain drunk. He’d been trying hard to keep his word about taking it easy with the booze, but being so near to Patty when she was no longer his girl was eating him up. She had to turn him down three times before he got the message that she wasn’t going to dance with him. But he kept giving her moony looks across the long table where we all sat, and even though she tried to ignore him I could see it was getting to her. So could Red, and he finally told Copeland to knock it off or they could go out in the alley to discuss it. I was hoping Knuckles would take the dare. I figured once he got his ass whipped he’d get over the whole business with Patty and pull himself together for good. But all he did was glare at Red and get up and leave.

Much later that evening—in the wee hours, to be exact—we had another minor set-to among ourselves, this time in a basement joint called the Tiger’s Rag. This one started when the bandleader an
nounced that the next number would be the last one of the night and Shouse asked Billie to dance. He was the only stag at the table, although he’d started out with a date, a blond looker named Greta Something-or-other who struck me as being too nice for the likes of him and proved me right about midway through the evening. They were slow-dancing together when Shouse must’ve said or done something real wrong because Greta suddenly pulled away and slapped him so hard his hair jumped. Mary and I were right beside them and we laughed along with some other dancers who saw what happened. Shouse stood there and rubbed his jaw as Greta went to the table to get her purse and vamoose. Then he looked at me and Mary and said There’s plenty more fish in the sea, and moved away into the crowd. Mary rolled her eyes and said he’d never catch anything but trash with the kind of bait he used.

Anyhow, when the last dance was called, John and Billie, who’d been enjoying themselves for most of the evening, were in the middle of a hot-eyed, hissing spat that they were trying to keep from turning into a scene. Mary later told me it had to do with a soldier who’d cut in on John and then held Billie too close for John’s liking. To make it worse, Billie didn’t seem to mind. So John cut back in on them. The soldier looked irked and said something, but whatever John said in response was something the soldier wanted no part of and he hustled off. Billie was so angry she pushed John away and came marching back to the table with him at her heels. They’d been going at it in angry whispers for about ten minutes when Shouse asked her for the last dance. Billie jumped up and said You bet, Ed. She grabbed him by the hand and practically yanked him out onto the floor.

John lit a cigarette and nudged me and jutted his chin at a great-looking girl dancing near our table. He was trying to affect indifference to Billie and Shouse and not even glance their way, but his face was stiff as wood. Good thing he wasn’t keeping an eye on them, because when I caught a glimpse of them through the swirl of dancing
couples they looked like they were trying to have sex through their clothes. The stupid bastard had a hand on her rump and she was nuzzling his neck. Then I lost sight of them again. I was afraid if John saw them he’d lose his cool and flatten Shouse in the middle of the dance floor and then here came the cops.

I told him I hadn’t had a dance with Billie all night and better do it before the number ended. As I got up I gave Mary a look and cut my eyes at John. She was quick to pick up, and she distracted his attention from the floor by asking if he’d been in touch with his family lately.

I made my way through the mob of dancers and tapped Shouse on the shoulder. He turned with a glare, then saw it was me and his expression eased up quick.

Ah hell, Pete, he said, you sure know how to break up a man’s good time.

Billie looked at me over his shoulder and said Hiya, Pete, you wanna dance with me? She was drunker than I’d thought.

Shouse stepped back and said She’s all yours, partner. I clamped one hand around his right forearm and grabbed him by the nuts with the other and gripped hard enough to stand him up on his tiptoes. His eyes bugged and he made a croaking sound and I told him to shut up and stay still or I’d crush them like eggs. I told him to quit bird-dogging our women if he didn’t want his face to end up in pieces.

Okay, okay, he said, his voice cracking. His eyes were watery with pain. I unhanded him and he let out a quivering breath and hunched over slightly and gingerly felt his goods. The dancers around us were staring curiously and Shouse tried to smile like the whole thing was some kind of joke. I told him to get going, in case John had seen what he’d been up to, and he made his way off the floor and toward the exit.

Billie was looking at me like she didn’t know whether to be mad or amused or what. I opened my arms to her and said I believe this is
my dance, mademoiselle, and she laughed and said Well it sure is, Mon-sewer.

As we swayed to the music, I told her it was no skin off my nose what she did with who, but one stupid squabble in public by any one of us could bring the roof down on all our heads.

She asked why I was blaming her, she wasn’t the one with the jealousy problem. Talk to
him,
she said.

I said I would, but it would help if she wouldn’t give him reason to be jealous in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, she said, I hear you, big daddy.

Then she gave me a lazy-looking smile and said Tell me something, Petey, where you carry your gun?

I had to laugh, the question was so completely off the point.

Sometimes under my arm, I told her, sometimes at the small of my back, sometimes both places at once. Why was she asking?

She giggled and said because I’d swear you’re carrying one right…
there,
and she pressed her belly hard against an erection which I swear to the living Jesus I hadn’t been aware of. There are women who can do that—give you a hard-on before you even know it—and she was one of them.

My face went warm and I drew back from her a little.

Awwww, she said, I was enjoying that.

I took a gander toward our table but couldn’t spot any of our bunch through the crowd. Then the number was done with—and none too soon—and it was time to go home.

On our way to the car, Billie had to step into an alley to throw up. She came back wiping her mouth with a handkerchief and said Well hell, no wonder I was sick, my stomach was full of puke. John was the only one who didn’t think it was funny.

I had the Vickie’s heater turned up high on the drive back, but there was a chill in the car that had nothing to do with the weather. I had a hunch John was angry with Billie about more than her drinking. He’d probably seen how she was dancing with Shouse.

Neither of them said a word to each other until they got back to their room in the apartment, and then oh man, did they cut loose. Mary and I could hear them all the way down the hall and out in the living room, where we were having coffee to take the edge off the booze. We didn’t catch too many of the particulars, but they were chiefly along the lines of drunken squaw, stupid Hoosier, low-down tramp, jealous asshole, and so on.

Mary was big-eyed with shock at the names they were yelling at each other. I patted her leg and said people in love say the darnedest things. She hit me with the heel of her fist and said it wasn’t funny and she’d be mortified if I ever spoke to her that way.

I said every couple had its own style, and John’s and Billie’s was simply a little
livelier
than most.

Mary said yeah, well, she’d thank me never to be so
lively
with her.

Oh no, ma’am, I said, I know what’s good for me.

She scooted up next to me and gave me a hard kiss, then said You really are something, you know that?

Gosh lady, I said, what brought that on?

She laughed and kissed me again.

I mean it when I say I don’t know why she was so tickled. Then again, I have to confess that even though I’ve known my share of women they’ve always been a mystery to me. They’ve always seemed a lot like the stars. You know how on a cold winter’s night the stars can seem so beautiful and somehow comforting and at the same time make you feel really lonely? That’s how it’s been for me with women. So many times, even as I held them naked in my arms, they’ve felt as far away as the stars.

John and Billie were still at it when we went to bed. Then suddenly their squabbling stopped. Mary was holding me tight and we listened hard, and then heard a rising volume of familiar gruntings and gaspings and the creakings of their bed.

Well now, I said, sounds to me like somebody’s kissed and made up.

Mary’s laugh was low and lascivious. She said it sounded to her
like a lot more than kissing, and she rolled up on top of me. And in a minute we were doing a lot more than kissing too.

T
he next day, we agreed that from then on nobody would have more than three drinks, including beer, when we did a night on the town. John laid down a tougher rule for Billie—no alcohol at all, nothing but soda water or ginger ale for her. Everybody knew Indians couldn’t hold their liquor, he said. He didn’t say that Billie had proved it at the Tiger’s Rag, but we all knew that’s what he thought.

Billie liked her booze and wasn’t happy about John putting the clamps on her, but she didn’t want to get into another big tiff with him. And although Mary thought John was being unfair, Billie didn’t want her arguing with him about it either. But, Mary being Mary, whenever we were clubbing together and John went off to the men’s room or onto the dance floor with Patty or Opal, she’d let Billie sneak a sip or two of her drink. Sometimes Billie had more of Mary’s drinks than Mary did and would be obviously tipsy at the end of the night. John would say it went to show that an Indian could get drunk just breathing the whiskey fumes in a nightclub. It took a while for him to catch on to the game they were playing on him.

It was a funny kind of friendship between Mary and Billie. Billie was slightly older and a lot more experienced, but Mary was wiser in many respects and often acted toward her like a protective big sister. And like a spoiled little sister, Billie wasn’t above taking advantage of it. During the first few days we all lived together, Mary made a big breakfast and John always joined us, but Billie wouldn’t get out of bed till almost noon, after her breakfast had gone to waste, and she’d be hungry and asking when lunch would be ready. A few days of this was all Mary could take. The next morning when John came in the kitchen he found that she had made breakfast for only me and herself.