Come Hell or Highball

by Maia Chance

  “You read the society page? Not … the column by Miss Ida Shanks?”

  “I read a lot, Mrs. Woodby.”

  The waiter arrived with our drinks. I grabbed my highball and took a gulp.

  “The possibility of police raids aside,” Ralph went on, “there’s the dirty little fact that this place, like every underground jazz and booze joint in town, is run by gangsters. Including one real prominent gangster I think you know.”

  “I don’t consort with gangsters,” I said. “I’ve never met one in my life!”

  “No? What about that one?” I followed his glance. So did Berta.

  Lem Fitzpatrick sat a few tables down.

  Lem held court amid a bunch of men who could’ve posed as gangsters for the funny pages: pomade-smooth hair, pinstripe suits, stubbly jaws. White spats flashed under the table.

  “Lem said he was in the tin can business,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s in business, all right, but it’s not tin cans,” Ralph said. “Fitzpatrick runs half the speakeasies in New York, and he’s got his finger in lots of other pies, too. He’s a gangster. One of the kingpins, actually, although he’s just coming up in the world after his older brother Luke went for a swim in the East River last year.”

  “Are you sure about all of this?”

  “Never met him personally—aside from seeing him up at the Arbuckles’ place, that is—but I know him by reputation.” Ralph took a swallow from his teacup. “Lucky for Fitzpatrick, he’s not quite famous yet. And that Hare’s Hollow police inspector, Digton, wouldn’t recognize a gangster if he tripped over one.”

  “As you are obviously aware, Mr. Oliver, the reason Berta and I came here tonight was because we’re trying to find Sadie Street, and we were told she used to sing here.”

  “Right,” Ralph said. “I heard the shopgirl at the store this afternoon.”

  “Well, the funny thing is, when we were all up at Dune House, Lem and Sadie acted like they were meeting for the very first time.”

  “Why would they do otherwise?” Berta said. “According to the motion picture magazines, Sadie has a wholesome public image. She would not wish for anyone to know that she used to sing jazz at a sordid club.”

  “There’s more,” I said. I told them how I’d seen Lem and Sadie playing footsie under the Arbuckles’ dinner table.

  “Huh,” Ralph said. “So not only did Sadie know Fitzpatrick from this club, but the two of them are an item.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But why hide it?”

  “Because,” Berta said, “girls next door do not tumble with gangsters.”

  That made sense.

  “What I’d like to know,” Ralph said, “is why Fitzpatrick pretended to be in the tin can business at Dune House. I mean, did Arbuckle know he was really a gangster?”

  Berta and I exchanged a glance.

  “Listen, Mr. Oliver,” I said. “Berta and I don’t wish to get involved in Horace’s murder.”

  “Oh no? Then what’re you two doing here, looking for Sadie?”

  “Business,” Berta said. She waved her empty teacup at the waiter.

  “Did you already polish off that drink?” I whispered to her.

  She pretended not to hear me.

  “What kind of business?” Ralph asked.

  “Never you mind,” I said.

  The waiter took Berta’s order for a fresh orange blossom.

  I stared over at Lem Fitzpatrick. He had same moody, haunted look I’d noticed at Dune House, and that same nasty curl to his lip.

  Lem caught me looking.

  Rats.

  His eyes narrowed, and he stood.

  The fellow next to him stood, too. He was puny and bowlegged, with a beat-up face and a squashed nose. His diminutive pin-striped suit was exquisitely cut.

  Girls gawked at Lem as he snaked through the tables toward us; men glanced at him with covert dread. The bowlegged guy followed.

  I swallowed half my drink.

  “Jiminy Christmas,” Ralph muttered.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t New York’s most scandalous widow,” Lem said, hitching up a chair beside me. The bowlegged man sat down next to Berta.

  “Read about you in the papers today,” Lem said to me. He looked at Ralph. “Say, why do you look so familiar?”

  “The name’s Smith,” Ralph said. “John Smith.” He rose halfway and shook Lem’s hand.

  “Sure,” Lem said, settling into the chair. “About half the fellers in this place are named John Smith. Funny, ain’t it? This here is Jimmy the Ant. Say hello, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy smiled. He was missing some teeth, and I suspected one of his eyes was glass.

  “Jimmy was the all-borough featherweight champ six years straight. What we always say is, don’t fiddle with Jimmy or he’ll fiddle with your face.”

  Jimmy said, “Heh-heh-heh.” His voice was surprisingly gruff, given his petite stature. He winked his good eye at Berta.

  Berta’s eyes bugged.

  Lem looked me up and down. “Nice dress.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well,” Lem said, “guess my secret’s out.”

  I batted my mascara-globbed lashes. “What secret?”

  “That I’m not a—what did I say up at Arbuckle’s place?—oh yeah. I’m not a tin can salesman.” Lem lurched toward me; I shrank toward Ralph. “What’re you doing here, cookie? Following me or something?”

  “Now, listen here, buddy,” Ralph said.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered to Ralph. I batted my lashes again at Lem.

  “I seen that trick before, cookie,” Lem said. “Blinking your big eyes like Krazy Kat, playing dumb. Not gonna work.” A muscle on his cheek twitched.

  You probably can’t be a gangster kingpin without succumbing to a certain amount of deranged paranoia.

  The atmosphere at the table was thick, but Lem was already on to me. Might as well pump him for as much information as I could.

  “It’s true,” I said. “The beans are spilled. I’m looking for the film reel.”

  Berta made a tiny, indignant blat.

  Not a flicker of understanding crossed Lem’s features. “Film reel? Don’t know about no film reel.”

  “She is, as they say, out on the roof,” Berta said. “She does not make a bit of sense after she has been at the highballs.” The waiter appeared with Berta’s second orange blossom. She grabbed it right out of his hand and polished it off. She stood. “Mrs. Woodby, shall we—?”

  “Dance?” Jimmy the Ant said. He jumped to his feet, and his chair crashed behind him. He grabbed Berta’s hand.

  Berta’s mouth was an O of outrage. On the other hand, she’d downed two orange blossoms, so Jimmy was able to pull her out onto the dance floor.

  The musicians launched into a sassy rendition of “The Sheik of Araby.”

  “Yeah, dancing sounds like a swell plan,” Ralph said, and he pulled me out onto the dance floor, too.

  * * *

  “Rule number one,” Ralph said, pulling me close to his chest, “don’t show your hand.” He twirled me around, then drew me close again. “Especially not to a gangster.”

  “Who are you, Professor Gumshoe?”

  “I could be a real good teacher.” His gray eyes glowed. “Of lots of things.”

  Oh boy.

  Ralph was as good a dancer as a fellow could be before a girl started asking pertinent questions. He was at home in his body. And his eyes were all over me.

  I’d had one highball. Only one. But I started to wonder in a dazed sort of way, as I shook my hips and swayed my bare shoulders to the devilish, divine jazz, if I’d made a fatal error in my mathematical calculations. This was a speakeasy. The booze was extra, extra strong.

  But the thing about extra-strong booze is that it makes you not give a hippo’s toot about your fatal errors. That was sort of the whole point of the stuff.

  So I swam with Ralph in the glittery, steamy mess of bodies. My ears were full of skidding trombone; my mou
th tasted like salt and whiskey.

  And when Ralph, with his laughing eyes and serious mouth, got really close during the slow numbers, I can’t say that I made much of an effort to act demure.

  However, I wasn’t too far gone to burst out laughing when I spied Berta gyrating on the dance floor with bandy-legged Jimmy the Ant. Berta must’ve lurched across her cocktail limit, too.

  * * *

  “Hey,” Ralph whispered when the music died down. The musicians were taking a break. “Let’s go backstage. We can ask the musicians if they know where to find Sadie. After all, she worked with them, right? I heard this is the regular band here.”

  “What if Lem sees?”

  “We’ll just say we’re looking for the powder room. Isn’t that what you ladies always say when you go snooping?”

  “Wait a minute. We’re looking for the powder room? What’s all this we business?”

  Ralph pulled me toward a curtained door next to the stage. “Only trying to help out. I’d hate to see you not get what you came for.”

  It didn’t line up quite right. Still, talking to the musicians was a great idea.

  Backstage was a set of cramped little rooms with pipes crisscrossing the ceiling. We looked through an open doorway. The musicians, all of them brown-skinned men of assorted ages, lounged on chairs or stood around smoking. They were in their shirtsleeves, sweating from their performance. Shining brass instruments lay on a table, or inside cases on the floor.

  “Hey!” one of them yelled. It was the trumpeter, paunchy and middle-aged. “What’re you two doing back here? Musicians only.”

  Uh-oh. “I’m looking for Sadie Street,” I said.

  The musicians exchanged glances.

  “You mean Sadie Minsky?” the trumpet player said.

  “Um, I guess so. She must’ve changed her name. To become an actress.”

  “Well, there’s your answer.” That was the sinewy piano player. He puffed at a smoke. “The canary took off to be in the pictures. That’s the last we saw of her. A shame, too, those beautiful pipes of hers wasted in them picture shows where there’s nothing but crummy rags for sound.”

  “Do you know where she lives?” I asked. “Or where she used to live, back when she sang here?”

  Again, the musicians exchanged a round of glances. The pianist stubbed out his cigarette. “Girl, you’d best be minding your own business about Sadie Minsky, if you know what’s good for you. And I know what’s good for me, so I ain’t going to talk about her anymore.” He turned his shoulder to me and started speaking to the trombone player in a private tone.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  They ignored me.

  Ralph and I hurried back to the dance floor.

  “Minsky!” I whispered.

  “Don’t look now,” Ralph said, “but Fitzpatrick is coming our way.” He patted my low back. “Listen, kid, I think you’d better call it a night. Go grab your Swedish sidekick, and I’ll get you a taxi.”

  * * *

  Once Berta and I were careening in a taxicab through the midnight streets, I told her about Sadie’s real last name.

  “Are you even listening?” I asked.

  Berta sat ramrod straight. Her handbag was propped on knees sandwiched together so tightly, you’d have thought she was a nun in the confessional booth.

  “Thinking about Jimmy?” I asked.

  “What?” she yelled.

  “You made quite the conquest.”

  “I did nothing of the sort.” Berta’s face softened. “Although, Jimmy is not so low a character as one would suppose a gangster to be. He grew up on a farm. In Missouri.”

  “Oh, okay, does the farm cancel out the gangster bit?”

  She tsked her tongue and turned to stare out the window.

  I leaned my head back on the seat. I was woozy, and disheartened about the film reel. And extremely annoyed that I couldn’t erase the feeling of Ralph’s big, warm palms on my body.

  It wasn’t until I was nearly asleep, snuggled up with Cedric on Alfie’s sofa, that the most important question came into focus: Why the heck was Ralph helping us look for Sadie Street?

  16

  I was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey with cinnamon rolls when Berta and I waddled through the doors of Wright’s on Fifth Avenue the next morning.

  “I can’t keep on like this,” I said. We walked toward the elevators. “I’m going to split my seams. Look at this dress! It’s supposed to drape, for Pete’s sake. Not hug.” We got on the elevator.

  “You ought not complain,” Berta said. “Fellows like a homey girl.”

  “‘Homey girl’?” I couldn’t decide if that was better or worse than Society Matron.

  The elevator boy said, “Which floor, madam?”

  And when had I gone from being a miss to a madam?

  “Foundations Department,” I muttered.

  He hid his smirk.

  “Pronto, young man,” Berta barked. “And have you tried witch hazel for your spots? It worked miracles for my cousin Edvard.”

  The elevator boy’s smirk dissolved, and he hit the button marked 5.

  “Remember what we agreed upon,” I whispered to Berta after we stepped off the elevator. “I’m going to come right out and demand the film reel from Eloise, and we’ll see where that takes us.”

  We’d talked it over at breakfast. After last night’s impromptu questioning of Lem Fitzpatrick at Blue Heaven, we’d decided we needed to stay on the same page. However, that flea of a landlord was due back in three days, so we’d agreed that blustering might speed things up. And now that we knew Lem Fitzpatrick was a gangster, Eloise’s little business conference with him at the golf links had taken on a decidedly suspicious cast.

  We approached the saleslady at the girdle and corset counter. Her stout figure was frozen into the shape of one of those Russian stacking dolls. Her hair was a waved silver helmet. “May I be of assistance?” she asked.

  “I was hoping to speak to Mrs. Wright,” I said.

  “Oh? Do you have a private fitting scheduled?” She opened up a pink suede book. “Name, please?”

  “I don’t have an appointment,” I said. Darn it. I should’ve made one yesterday.

  She slapped the book shut. “Then I am afraid—”

  “I have an appointment,” Berta said.

  The saleslady opened the book again. “Name?”

  Berta craned her neck, trying to read the appointment book upside down. “Mrs. Beeker.”

  The saleslady’s fingertip stopped beside a name. “I have a Mrs. Bleeker. Not a Beeker.”

  “Silly girl on the telephone took it down wrong,” Berta said. “They always do.”

  “Very well. Follow me.”

  We wove through long-line brassieres, garter belts, and dressing gowns, went down a hallway, and stopped at a pink door. The saleslady knocked.

  “Enter,” a voice called.

  Eloise Wright sat behind a desk in a large pink chair—a throne, really.

  The room was decorated with pink flocked wallpaper and swagged curtains, and one wall was taken up with built-in pink wardrobes. Cardboard boxes towered in the corner. The boxes were stamped with a picture of a crown and the words GIRDLE QUEEN.

  Well, that explained the throne, then.

  Eloise dismissed the saleslady. Then she turned to me. “Mrs. Woodby, what a surprise. I was under the impression that a—” She glanced through her reading glasses at a paper on her desk. “—a Mrs. Bleeker was here to see me?”

  “Never mind that,” I said.

  “And who—” She looked at Berta. “—is this?”

  “My assistant.”

  “And which of you is in need of a fitting?” Eloise looked first at Berta’s midriff, tightly cased as always in her old-fashioned steel-boned corset, and then at my cinnamon roll middle. “Of course. Mrs. Woodby. Yes, I recall we spoke briefly of your … little problem at the Arbuckles’ country place.”

  Little problem? “I actually came here
,” I said, “to—”

  The telephone on Eloise’s desk jangled. She picked up the earpiece and leaned close to the transmitter. “Yes?” She frowned, and glanced at the mountain of cardboard boxes. “As a matter of fact, yes, I have found a way to dispose of them, but—what? Oh, all right.” She hung up. “I beg your pardon. It’s my seconds.” She gestured toward the boxes. “That’s but a fraction of them, and there are always more coming from the factory. They’ll be the absolute death of me. I’m afraid I must pop over to the freight elevators—I’ll be back in a jiffy.” She hurried out.

  As soon as Eloise was gone, Berta poked through one of the cardboard boxes. “Girdles,” she said.

  “Her husband was complaining about the factory seconds at Dune House. Said they were a waste of money. There must be hundreds of them in those boxes.”

  Berta stared meaningfully at Eloise’s desk, and then at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I am not going to do it.”

  “Oh, fine.” I went around to the other side of Eloise’s desk. The top was cluttered with papers, all of them typed. Only one paper had handwriting: a small, lined scrap that said 17 Wharfside.

  I started opening the desk drawers, one by one.

  “Anything?” Berta asked, peeking out the door.

  “Lots of things.” I crouched down and slid open the last drawer. It held a rubbery white mound. “But no—Berta?” I’d heard her peep.

  Someone made a tactful cough.

  Slowly, I shut the drawer and stood.

  Berta stood there, looking mortified. Next to a red-cheeked Eloise.

  “Might I inquire what you are doing in my drawers?” Eloise asked.

  It probably wasn’t the best time for a joke about underpants. “I, um—”

  “She is here to demand the return of the stolen film reel,” Berta said.

  “The what?” Eloise’s bosom heaved.

  “The reel that you nicked from Horace,” I said.

  Eloise’s face was blank.

  I could bring her tryst with Horace into the mix. Maybe that would make her fess up. “I saw you with Horace Arbuckle the night before he died.”