The Old Colts (7 page)

“That’s four lobsters and four bottles of champagne already and a private booth,” says Wyatt. “What’s all this going to cost?”

“A bagatelle,” says Bat. “Anyway, it’s on me, pal. I run a bill at Rector’s.”

Rector’s is to the Gay White Way what Mrs. Astor’s palace is to Fifth Avenue society. A long, low, yellow-brick building on Times Square between 43rd and 44th, its amazements include a giant illuminated griffin suspended from its facade and the first revolving door in the city—the latter contraption having caused Wyatt, who had never seen one, some difficulty with entrance. Inside, the establishment is elaborately decorated in green and gold, walled with mirrors from floor to ceiling, and lit by crystal chandeliers. On the second floor are seventy-five tables at which the
hoi polloi
are dumped. For the elite, one hundred tables and two private booths are reserved on the ground floor. And it is to this level that the
bon ton
of New York night life come after the theater in jewels and silks and soup-and-fish to be greeted by George Rector, to sip and to sup, to see and be seen, to crowd the place by midnight every night. Through these portals have regularly paraded such personages as Diamond Jim Brady, who bankrolled the restaurant in its beginning, and Lillian Russell, and Florenz Ziegfeld of “Follies” fame, and Anna Held, who took tub baths in milk, and the Floradora Girls, and Harry K. Thaw, who shot Stanford White over Evelyn Nesbit, and Charles Frohman and Richard Harding Davis, and 0. Henry, whom few recognized, and young Billie Burke, and Victor Herbert, the composer who penned the immortal “I Want What I Want When I Want It,” and, neither last nor least, the legs of Miss Frankie Bailey, which were unveiled nightly at Weber & Fields’s Music Hall, legs adjudged by the stronger sex a national treasure and actually registered for copyright at the Library of Congress—not to overlook W.B. “Bat” Masterson, the Fearless Frontiersman, whose renown entitled him, on request, to a private booth.

Presently, in that booth, crackers crack and butter flies and bits of shell ricochet about like bullets.

“Are you married, Bat?” asks Helen Troy.

“Twice over,” states Bat, popping the cork of the fourth bottle and pouring.

“Twice!”

“I have two Indian wives. Cheyenne. Brought ‘em with me from the plains.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“Are you married, Mr. Earp?” asks Juliet Bard.

An arm parts the curtains and extends a menu and a pencil for Mr. Masterson’s autograph, which he provides.

“I am,” states Wyatt.

“Two Indian wives!” Helen exclaims, having thought about it.

“A chief can have two. And it’s very convenient—I want what I want when I want it.”

“But she’s in California,” adds Wyatt, “and a man gets mighty lonesome far from home.”

Juliet changes the subject. “I love to dance. Do you do the Bunny Hug, Mr. Earp? The Turkey Trot?”

“No.”

“How many men have you killed, Bat?” Helen inquires. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“If you don’t mind my not telling.”

“The Grizzly Bear?”

“No. But I do the Buffalo Wallow.”

A waiter’s arm is thrust through the curtains, removes the bucket and two empties, and replaces it with a bucket and two fulls. Wyatt kicks Bat under the table, and they put heads together outside.

“That’s six bottles!” worries Wyatt.

“An investment!” responds Bat with a wicked wink. “What pippins!”

He withdraws, pops a cork, pours, and says to Helen, “But I will say this—there’s twenty-three notches on my gun.”

“Oooh, I’d love to see your gun!”

A droplet of melted butter rolls entrancingly into Juliet’s cleavage.

“People want to buy it all the time.”

“Buy it!”

“It’s a collector’s item.”

“I read all about what happened in Tombstone, Arizona,” Juliet informs Wyatt. “You know, you and your brothers up against those terrible men.”

“Doc Holiday was there, too.”

“What a battle that must have been!”

“It was O.K.,” says Wyatt modestly.

They have annihilated the lobsters now, and are applying napkins prodigally while Bat pops the cork of the sixth bottle of Mumm’s and pours.

“Yes, you must see my pistol,” says he to Helen. “It’s a very historical weapon.”

Her upper lip still shimmers butter.

“Do you ever fire it any more?”

“Are you girls married?” Wyatt asks Juliet.

“Well, yes. But our husbands are in vaudeville—on the Pantages circuit. They’re in Boston this week. I think.”

Bat lights Helen’s cigarette, which raises Wyatt’s eyebrows. “Of course I fire it, my dear—whenever I can.”

Juliet’s hand is on Wyatt’s knee.

“Vaudeville, you say.” Bat takes an interest in all things theatrical. “What do they do?”

“Well, my husband is ‘Beppo, the Sicilian Strongman,’” says Helen proudly. “He tears catalogues in two and bends iron bars with his bare hands.”

Bat’s hand is on Helen’s thigh.

“Really?” Wyatt has always taken an interest in feats of strength.

An arm parts the curtains and extends a menu and a pencil for Mr. Masterson’s autograph, which he provides.

“My husband has a dog act—’Carl’s Canines,’” says Juliet. “They’re the darlingest dogs!”

“Would they fight a badger?” asks Bat.

“The Buffalo Wallow?” asks Juliet, having thought about it.

“Two Indian wives!” exclaims Helen.

“Where do you girls hang your hats?” Wyatt inquires, his hand on Juliet’s knee.

“We share an apartment in the West 50’s,” Helen confides.

A waiter’s arm presents the bill, which Bat scans and requests a pencil.

“Would you like to see it?” Juliet suggests.

Instead of providing a pencil, the arm summons Bat beyond the curtains.

“Sure would,” says Wyatt.

“Mr. Masterson, sir, sorry, but you can’t sign,” says the waiter.

“D’you know who I am?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Send George Rector over here.”

“He’s the one said so, Mr. Masterson. He says you pay up your whole bill from before, he’ll run you another one.”

Bat asks Wyatt to step outside the booth, then explains the situation. “I’m down to coffee-and-cake money. Can you take care of this?”

“How much?”

Bat hands him the bill.

“Sixty dollars and sixty cents!” Wyatt’s aghast. “All I’ve got to get home on is a hundred-fifty!”

“You want to wash dishes?”

Wyatt pays up, adding after deliberation a dollar tip as Bat orders the waiter to inform George that, hoity-toity or not, a saloon is a saloon, and he will never patronize this one again.

Exeunt all, W.B. Masterson with lip curled, W.B.S. Earp in considerable dudgeon, and the Ginger Sisters in some disarray, their roses buttered, their ostrich plumes damped with Mumm’s and drooping, their gold mesh snoods garnished with lobster shell.

Only to discover, as their hansom clops to a stop before
an apartment house on West 58th, that their driver is Gas-House Sam, a notorious gyp, and that his price for the transportation is ten dollars.

“Ten dollars!” Wyatt barks. “Highway robbery!”

The horse retorts a Bronx cheer.

The Ginger Sisters giggle and sway up the steps, leaving a trail of rose petals.

“Two miles, ten bucks,” says the hackie.

“You detoured us through Central Park!” accuses Bat.

Sam is adamant. “Ten bucks or I call a cop.”

Bat takes Wyatt aside. “Pay ‘im. I’ll pay you back tomorrow. I told you, all this is an investment—in a few minutes the fun starts, and it’ll be worth every cent, I guarantee it, pal. You ain’t saddled up a big-city baby, you ain’t saddled!”

“Where the hell you been!”

This from an enormous young man with pomaded hair and a swordpoint mustache and shoulders as wide as a barn and biceps as thick as Sears-Roebuck catalogues, wearing a striped tank top and tights, who is working out with barbells.

“Why are you home!”

This from Helen, ostensibly his wife, who has opened the door to the ratty living room of an apartment which, rather than being dark and conducive to romance, blazes with light.

“We closed in Boston,” says Beppo, the Sicilian Strong-man. “Thought we’d surprise you and—”

“We sure did!”

This from a tall slim young man in a boiled shirt and riding breeches and boots who stands ring-mastering four small dogs of indeterminate breed, but probably Pomeranians, with pink bows on their heads, who dash single file and leap one after another from a footstool to a table and up through a hoop on a standard and down to run in a circle to repeat the routine.

“Who the hell are these old poops?” Carl demands of Juliet, ostensibly his wife.

The Ginger Sisters’ guests stand transfixed, mouths opening and closing like fish for air.

“Oh, these are our friends!” trills Helen. “Mr. Masterson and Mr. Earp!”

“What the hell they doing here!” growls Beppo, bending to pick up an iron bar.

“We... we... we just stopped by for a cup of... of... of cocoa!” manages Bat.

“Coffee!” Wyatt corrects.

“Coffee my ass!” cries Carl, snapping his fingers at his act.

Juliet attempts to untangle the
contretemps
. “You don’t understand—this is the real Bat Masterson—and the real Wyatt Earp!”

“I don’t give a shit if they’re Buffalo Bill!” says Carl, picking up a telephone. “I’m calling a lawyer! We’ll sue for alienation of affections! We’ll take ‘em for every cent they got!”

Round and round, up and over and through the hoop, Carl’s Canine’s rush and commence to bark as they sense the drama rampant in the room.

“Oh, no, you can’t do that!” yelps Bat.

“The hell I can’t!”

“We gotta keep this out of the papers!”

“Headlines!”

“Mr. Earp’s traveling
incognito
!”

Carl lifts the receiver from the hook.

“I’m a married man!” Wyatt protests.

“I have an aged mother!” Bat begs.

Helen and Juliet have slipped discreetly stage right into another room. Bat and Wyatt retreat toward the door.

“Get ‘em, Bep!” cries Carl.

And with a bellow not unlike that of the male elk in rut, the Sicilian Strongman crashes across the room and, before his victims can find the doorknob, rams them both against the wall with an iron bar athwart their throats, then bends the bar into a V so that they are trapped, backs to the wall, their wind cut off. They struggle, but in vain. They turn blue in the face.

“What—can—we—do?” Bat chokes.

Carl comes to them, as do his dogs. The performing Pomeranians leap up at them and loudly bark. Carl shakes his fist in their blue faces while Beppo holds them in durance vile.

“You can pay up!” Carl snarls. “Try to make time with our wives while we’re out of town, will you? Then you pay the price, you old goats! Let’s have your wallets!”

“I’m—I’m—broke!” Bat gasps.

The Sicilian Strongman growls and bends the bar across their larynxes more brutally.

Bat rolls bulging eyes at Wyatt.

“But—he’s—loaded!”

Up on the corner of Broadway and some street in the West 50’s
a Salvation Army band tootled “Nearer My God To Thee” in discordant hope, even at that late hour, of lassoing lost souls and bringing them into the fold.

Catching his wind, Bat sat on the curb before the Ginger Sisters’ apartment house. Wyatt stood behind him, breathing like an old cayuse with the heaves. Noting a rose petal on the pavement, Bat picked it up and pressed it to his nostrils. He knew what was coming. It came. Wyatt stepped around him off the curb, loomed above him, took his slouch hat by the brim, and hurled it to the ground.

“Choused again, goddammit! I didn’t come to this hellhole of a town to get plucked like a damn chicken!”

“We were set up, right from the start,” gloomed Bat. “I should’ve known.”

“You sure should—you’re the city slicker! Why’d you tell ‘em I was loaded?”

“Had to,” said Bat, chin in hands. “Did you want to die in an iron necktie?”

Wyatt dusted his hat. “You’re stretching our friendship out of shape,” he warned.

Bat was thinking. “We had guns tonight, this wouldn’t have happened. I can’t figure out what’s taking the President so long.”

“Well, I’m cleaned. All I’ve got left is a return train ticket. What do we do now?”

Bat rose, rubbing his throat. “I’ll think of something— trust me.”

Wyatt put menacing hands on hips. “Bat, I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”

Bat grasped his arm, suddenly, his attention riveted on something down the dark street. “Oh my God—look!”

Two men in leather caps. Grogan’s muscular mugs have popped
up from behind a flight of steps and start for them on the run. “Cheese it!” cries Bat.

They take off together, heading for the haven of Broadway. Wyatt falters.

“Shake a leg!” puffs Bat. “What’s wrong?”

“Got a gimp knee!”

“You said your shoulder!”

“Knee, too!”

On the great gunfighters gallop, blowing and snorting, trying to get as near as they can, not to God but to the Salvation Army.

This time they were admitted to the office of the Commissioner of the NYPD on the dot.
Anthony Lucca sat behind his desk, fizzing like a fuse, and pointed at the permits on the corner of his desk. Bat picked them up.

“Much obliged, Commissioner,” he smiled, passing one to Wyatt.

Lucca leaned forward and emplaced elbows on the desk and aimed two heavy-caliber fingers. “I want to tell you birds a thing or two. Mather, I don’t know who you are and couldn’t care less. But I know you, Masterson, and you listen. This is no bang-bang, birdshit cowtown thirty years ago and you’re not marshaling any more. This is New York City and this is 1916. You behave yourselves. You be in bed early, both of you. You start shooting the lights out in our saloons or scaring our barflies half to death or plugging somebody to see if you can still do it and I’ll have your ass in a Sing Sing sling.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” smiled Bat.

“Or a museum.”

“Is that a fact?” smiled Bat.

“Or an old folks’ home.”