The War Against Miss Winter (12 page)

A lifetime later we arrived at the Shaw House. We paused at the stoop of the building and I pondered which farewell would make it clear I hoped to never see him again.

“I am sorry about before,” he said.

“Don’t think of it. You’ve been through a lot and I can try the patience of a nun.” I’d left the Shaw House in such a hurry that I hadn’t grabbed my wrap. I hugged myself to keep the wind from my wet dress.

“You said it, not me.” While I shivered, my knight in naval dress pulled his coat tighter about his body. “Since the files are gone, I guess we won’t be needing your services anymore. In fact, you probably don’t need to be concerning yourself any further with this play.”

I translated what he was saying. “You’re right about that. I work for money.”

“Good,” he said. “So where’s your blind date taking you?”

I wondered if I possessed the same power as Jayne, if the mere mention of a name could send a warning that I wasn’t to be touched again. “I’m not sure. We’re doubling with my girlfriend Jayne and her fellow. He’s one of Mangano’s men. Maybe you’ve heard of him—Tony B.?” Edgar
shrugged. I made a note to encourage Jayne to date more recognizable thugs. “The
B
stands for bones, which he’s fond of breaking. Anyway, my date’s some friend of his, which means the guy probably has a short temper and a long record.” The wind picked up, but Edgar showed no sign of leaving. I rose onto the first step and teetered. “I hate to be rude, but if I stay out here another minute, you’ll have to chisel me off the walk.”

“Of course.” He removed his hat and replaced it. “Enjoy your date.”

Jayne was in the lobby, ruining her otherwise perfect appearance with a scowl. “Where have you been?”

I headed over to the mirror above the fireplace. “Java at Louie’s. I told Belle to tell you.”

She approached me from behind and lectured my reflection. “That was over an hour ago.” Her eyes landed on the dress’s bodice and widened in horror. “You do know the cup goes to your mouth, right?”

“Is it that noticeable?”

“Only when I look at it.”

The continent of Africa began at my bosom and ended at the first of the skirt’s pleats. While, mercifully, the dress was brown, the coffee had the nerve to appear a darker shade.

I turned away from the mirror and headed toward the stairs. “I’ll change my diapers.”

Jayne grabbed my arm and steered me in the direction of my waiting coat. “Oh, no you don’t. It took you all day to decide on this and we’re already late.”

I checked my watch. “We’re fine. Tony’s not even here yet.”

Jayne whipped out a tube of lipstick and blotted it on without pausing her lecture. “He’s been here and left. I told him I’d wait for you and the minute you showed we’d be over.” She pinched her cheeks until color rose into her pale skin.

“Go without me—I’m not fit for man or beast.”

Jayne picked up my coat and forced my arms into it. “You’re go
ing and that’s final.” Her dainty, well-manicured fingers pushed buttons through buttonholes with such force that I expected to hear wool rip. “The car’s waiting for us.”

I sighed and pinched my own cheeks until they matched the ruddiness of my nose. “Far be it for me to keep a car waiting.”

W
E HOPPED INTO
T
ONY
’
S BOILER
and a mute driver lost beneath a large fedora drove us too fast down side streets still slick with snow. With each turn the heap made, a stack of forged c-ration gas coupons slid the length of the dash until the driver stilled them. I waited for Jayne to ask me who I’d had coffee with and why I’d ended up wearing most of it, but she kept her eyes locked on the window, working her hands into the nervous knots she always made when she was concerned she was displeasing Tony.

Tony, Tony, Tony. I shook my head in rhythm to his name and found myself growing sick at the thought of spending an evening with the great Tony B., a man so powerful he could make my otherwise secure friend turn into a quivering spaniel. I pushed him out of my mind and tried to replay my conversation with Edgar. Something wasn’t adding up beyond his familial ties. There had been plenty of time for him to retrieve the files on his own, even if the papers had been in disarray. No, Edgar’s visit couldn’t have been just about determining the files’ current location. His mother must’ve wanted to verify what—if anything—I knew about their contents. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I’d been square with them and told them about the file of programs I’d found, I’d still be lying under that table staring at the remnants of someone’s chewing gum while the life leaked out of me.

We careened down Fifty-second Street and pulled in front of Ali Baba’s. The driver opened the door and helped both of us to our feet, before he went to some secluded garage where he wouldn’t get fined for being at a nonessential location. We walked under a bright red awning and were ushered through glass and brass doors by a man in a monkey cap. A sister with so much bosom she could have rented herself out as a
porch took our coats and directed us down the hall to the powder room. There, in a sea of elaborately dressed platinum blondes, we jostled for mirror space and took the shine off our noses.

Ali Baba’s was part clip joint, part dance hall. In the twenties it had been a heavily populated speakeasy, but when it was no longer necessary to hide its activities from prying eyes, those who’d made money off bad booze pumped the dough back into the club until it became one of the places to see and be seen. Tables ringed a gigantic, dimly lit room decked out to look like Hollywood’s concept of a sheikh’s palace. Spaced a stumble apart were bars attended by men in white sheets and women in belly-dancer gear. If that was too far for you to wobble, in the space between booze venders were crystal fountains flowing with cheap champagne, which you could collect in a shoe or a hat or, for the more conservative, one of a hundred spit-cleaned glasses stacked in a pyramid. At the edge of the tables was a brass banister designed to keep the eaters from the hoofers. In the center of the room was an immense marble dance floor and in its center was a stage outfitted by a big band playing a somber rendition of “I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen.”

It was striking to see such ornate entertainment at a time when we were being cautioned to conserve and think of our boys in blue. Unlike Hollywood’s Lucky Jordan, Alan Ladd’s gangster who became a war hero, the clientele of Ali Baba’s had bought their way out of the war with cabbage so dirty it left a mark on your hand. Their pockets bulged with rolls of ill-gotten bills and their profiles tattled on arm holsters packed with rods still warm from last night’s raid. Since the war, Tony B. and the like had made this their joint, discreetly letting the public know it was invitation only and anything that went on there was to be forgotten by dawn. Most of the women who decorated the tables with bright hair and shiny fabrics were cardboard stand-ins, the wives being too preoccupied with raising children and mourning their lost youth to participate in these entertainments. These common bims had chosen this life instead of the war plants or the Women’s Army Corps because it was easier to be
quiet and pretty than to stand on their own. Even though laughter filled the room and flowed from the amber fountains, there was an air of sadness about the skirts as though they knew they were playing Cinderella only for the weekend. Come Sunday they would go back to their dingy brownstone apartments filled with black-market gifts, waiting for the horn to blow with an invitation for another Friday night.

“There he is,” squealed Jayne as we entered the restaurant. She took me by the hand and pulled me across the room to where Tony B. was holding court at a table near the dance floor.

“Dollface.” Tony rose from his throne and the crowd that had been around him dispersed in silent acknowledgment that whatever business they’d been conducting was adjourned for the evening. “Don’t you look beeyouteeful.” Tony liked to drag out long words as though to remind the listener that one of the many powers he wielded was the ability to stop time. He was also loose with his verb choice, which had convinced me long ago that despite his business smarts, he thought grammar was his mother’s mother.

Tony landed a kiss on Jayne’s cheek and patted her well-girdled keister.

She stepped back and put her arm around my waist. “You remember Rosie.”

“Do I remember her? Of course I remember Rose!”

“It’s Rosie, not Rose,” I said. I was pretty sure Tony knew I didn’t like him, but I still liked to remind him of it whenever the opportunity arose. He moved toward me like he was going to engulf me in a hug but stopped when I offered him my hand. Instead of shaking it, he planted a kiss on it, then gestured Jayne and me into two chairs separated by an empty one.

“What are you ladies drinking?” Tony plopped into his chair and signaled for one of Ali Baba’s women to come our way.

“Champagne,” said Jayne. “We’ve got celebrating to do.” The band announced it was going on a ten-minute break and a Glenn Miller platter was piped through the speakers. Tony gave the girl our order, instructing her to pull a bottle from his private stock. She disappeared into the
crowd and Tony returned his attention to us.

“I understand congrajoolations are in order,” he said. “Jayne says you got yourself a swell part in some play.”

I ignored evidence to the contrary and decided that for tonight’s purposes I did indeed have the lead in a good play. “I’m not the only one,” I said. “Jayne got a chorus part in a great musical.”

Tony took Jayne’s hand and played with her fingers as though they were an expensive piece of jewelry he’d asked to see up close but which he knew he couldn’t afford. “Can you believe this one? Another lousy chorus part.”

“Tony.” Jayne’s eyes shifted to the table as a blush colored her cheeks a deep maroon. One of the many things I admired about my pal was she never used Tony to get ahead. She insisted any work she got was on her own terms, despite the strings he could’ve pulled.

“I’m proud of you, babe. I’m just saying a girl as beeyouteeful as mine needs to be up front where everyone can see her.” This was one of Tony’s refrains, always dragged out when Jayne was cast in something new, and always interpreted by Jayne to mean she’d failed. The thing was, he
was
proud of her. He was just befuddled that he was the only one who recognized Jayne’s value and that made him mad because she was the only investment of his that hadn’t paid off.

“I like being in the chorus,” Jayne told her lap.

“It’s a revival of a great musical,” I said, even if repeating the lie didn’t make it true.

Jayne lifted her head and pushed her hair out of her face in a way that said she was a star no matter what she was cast in. A smile washed across her features as she prepared herself for the next scene in that evening’s play. “Well?” she asked Tony. The secret language of people who spend far too much time together passed between them, encoding that single word with an entire conversation.

“Bathroom,” said Tony (the word missing its
h
). “Nervous bladder.”

“Oh,” said Jayne. “That’s sweet.”

“Does my intended have a moniker or just a medical condition?” I asked.

“His name’s Al and he’s a great guy,” said Tony. “First thing he said to me when he got out is he wanted to make things right for his ma.”

I wasn’t sure which part of that sentence to tackle first. “So he’s been in the stir?” I nudged Jayne’s thigh and shot her a sidelong glance that said,
See what you’ve gotten me into?

Tony pulled at his shirt cuffs until a pair of bright gold cuff links appeared. “You didn’t tell her about him, doll?”

“You knew he’d been in jail?” I asked her.

Jayne sank farther into her chair. “Maybe Tony mentioned it.”

I reached for my evening bag and struggled to rise from my seat. Tony showed me his palms. “Whoa, Rose. Calm down. I wouldn’t set you up with some lowlife. Al’s one of the biggest gentlemen I know.” I had a feeling that claim was to be taken literally and the fellow in question would not only have a rap sheet but a girth and height that made him tower above the rest of the room. “Ain’t a guy in here who ain’t been in the joint. Don’t make them bad people.”

I pointed at him with my bag. “You and I have different standards, Tony.”

He surrendered with his hands. “It’s not like he murdered somebody.”

“Is that the measure you use?”

He ignored me and downed the finger of scotch he’d been nursing since before our arrival. “He got the bum’s rush. Al passed some orphan paper is all.”

“Some what?” I asked.

“Forged checks.”

I dropped my purse into my chair. “Gee, I can’t even believe that’s a crime.”

Tony leaned into the table and I was reminded that this was a man with blood on his hands, a man who, with a snap of his fingers, could have parts of my body distributed in trash cans throughout the city. With a gesture so sparse I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching for it, he urged me back into my chair. I obeyed. “He was dizzy for this one dame. Real cheap sort, but he didn’t see it. She writes him a Dear John,
says she found someone who can keep her in the style she likes. He can’t eat, he can’t sleep. He’s sick about it. At some point he decides the way to win her back is to buy her anything she wants. He gets her a car, furs, jewels, a nice apartment—you name it, that cupcake got it. Everything’s going great until the bank tracks down the checks he’s paying for all this with. Every one of them’s forged. Al does a three spot and this girl of his forgets his name in under a week.”

Jayne put her hand on mine. “It was for love, Rosie. Isn’t that sweet?”

I couldn’t have been more touched if my arms were fingers.

“A man,” said Tony. “A man’ll do anything for love.” His broad, angular face softened and for a moment I lost myself in the fairy tale that said irresponsible, criminal behavior was something a woman should long for.

Fortunately, it passed.

Tony tapped the table with his index finger. “You will, of course, keep this between us?”

“Of course,” I said.

The waitress deposited four flutes and a bottle of bubbly nestled in a silver-plated cooler. She popped the cork and dribbled some liquid into each of the glasses.

“I got to tell you,” said Tony, “Al was reluctant to come here tonight. He even tried to tell me he was coming down with something. I think he’s intimidated by you being this big-time actress. I told him ain’t nobody can show a fellow a good time like Rose Winter.”

I ignored him and tipped a long swallow of champagne. As a warm ebb started in my neck and slowly moved upward, Tony leaped to his feet and ceremoniously deposited his flute on the table. “And here he is: the man of the hour.” I kept my eyes locked on my drink, determined to postpone the inevitable. Jayne turned to see Al, then spun back toward me, her face as pale as our tablecloth. “We’ve been waiting for you,” said Tony. To strengthen my resolve, I downed the rest of my champagne, then rose as gracefully as a wooden boy.

Behind me the man who’d visited me at the office—“Frank” the enforcer—cracked his knuckles and shifted his weight from one foot to the
other. I searched the air behind him, hoping to find my date.

Tony wrapped an arm about my waist. “Al—Rose. Rose—Al.”

“Frank?” I asked.

He continued his nervous dance. “It’s Al,” he said.

Tony elbowed me in the ribs. “Youse know each other?”

Al shot me a look that begged me to go along with whatever he said.

“I must’ve been mistaken,” I said.

“I got one of those faces,” said the man formerly known as Frank. “Happens all the time.” Behind us, the band returned from its break and struck up “Moonlight Serenade.” A sea of people rushed onto the dance floor, where two by two they became one.

Tony offered Jayne his hand and pulled her to her feet. “What do you say, doll? Let’s cut a rug and give these two a chance to get to know each other.” Jayne mouthed
scream if you need help
and followed Tony out to the dance floor. While I plotted my revenge against her, the crowd swallowed them whole until they became just another gangster and his blonde.

Al attempted to collapse into himself until he was no longer visible.

“Sit,” I told him.

He did as I ordered. “I didn’t want to come here tonight.”

“So I heard.”

His eyes sank to my chest and lingered there.

“My eyes are up here, Al.”

“What happened to your dress? You spill something on it?”

I crossed my arms. “It’s not a stain—it’s a design. You’d know that if you were a dame.”

“Fair enough.” He gestured toward the fourth, untouched flute. “That for me?”

“No,” I said. “For me.” I threw back the champagne and slid the empty glass across the table. I figured it was fair turnabout for the doughnut. “There’re two ways to work this,
Al
. Either you spill what last week was about or Jayne and I let Tony B. know you threatened us. I know you don’t like that idea, so I’m going to encourage you to be forthright.”

He waved over a server and asked for a whiskey, neat. As the waitress
disappeared, Al set his forearms on the table and, like a flat tire encountering a pump, regained his bulk. “I didn’t threaten you.”

“Say what you will, I have a feeling Tony will disagree.”