The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes

by Michael Kurland

  K. Jeffrey squinted at me. “Very funny, you are. I want to see Brass. Tell him I’m here, would you, old man?” He stripped his overcoat off and draped it and his hat over a chair.

  “Sure thing, old man,” I said.

  I left Walton contemplating the framed pencil sketch of Aaron Burr on the wall behind Gloria’s desk and went through to Brass’s office. Brass was in the midst of expounding on trite phrases to Gloria. He was against them. He paused when I came in and looked expectantly at me. “If it isn’t one thing it’s another,” I told him. “The other just came in and wants to see you. His name is Welton.” Brass took a deep breath and made a beckoning gesture, which I interpreted to mean “bring him in,” and so I did.

  Welton smiled at Brass, grinned at Gloria, and slouched into one of the chairs opposite the desk. “That inspector that was just here,” he said to Brass. “Did he tell you about the girl they found? The dead one in the park?”

  “Yes,” Brass said.

  Welton nodded. “So I think it’s time, and I think I’d like you to be the one to do it.”

  “Time for what?” Brass asked.

  “I’d like you to announce it in ‘Brass Tacks,’ because everyone on the Street reads your column, especially the Thursday one. So you should probably put it in Thursday.”

  There was a common myth on the Street, as the guys and dolls of Broadway call their home; one that Brass neither denied nor encouraged, although it was not strictly true. The belief was that all the really important stories about Broadway, all the straight dope about who was doing what to whom and with what and for how long, appeared in the Thursday “Brass Tacks.” The truth was that stories appeared when they appeared; Brass wouldn’t dare hold up a hot item for fear that fellow scribes Winchell, Runyon, or E.P. Adams would beat him to it. He might make a point of doing a Thursday follow-up on one of the big stories or adding a smattering of Broadway color pieces under the catchall heading “Heard on the Street” to the Thursday column, but that was all. Nonetheless the sale of the World went up an extra two or three thousand copies in Manhattan on Thursdays.

  Brass stared steadily at Welton and, when no further words were forthcoming, sighed and said, “What am I announcing in ‘Brass Tacks’? And why?”

  K. Jeffrey bounced to his feet, impatient with we lesser mortals who lacked his rapid and incisive grasp of the flow of events. “My reward,” he explained. “I think, with all this happening, it’s time. First, you know, the Trask girl flees, then Two-Headed Mary disappears, and now this dead girl.”

  “You think there’s a connection?” Brass asked.

  “I don’t know,” K. Jeffrey said seriously. “But Broadway is a small community and everybody in it knows everything about it, or thinks he does. Since you did the piece on Mary, the rumors have been flying. The people on the Street are connecting Mary’s disappearance and the flight of Billie Trask. I hear things.”

  “That’s interesting,” Brass said. “What sort of things?”

  “I hear around that Mary was married recently, to a big spender from the Great Plains, and she left town to get away from her husband. I hear around that Mary was involved in some sort of confidence scheme in Kansas City, and one of the victims has come looking for her with fire in his eyes and a big fist. I hear that Billie Trask didn’t flee with her boyfriend, as the police think, but fled with Two-Headed Mary to get away from the aforementioned boyfriend. These are the sort of things I’ve been hearing, but you know how gossip goes in this town. The stories seem to be mutually exclusive, and the truth very well might lie in an entirely different direction. I don’t know. I know that Two-Headed Mary was friends with Billie Trask, and the dead girl, Lydia, was Billie’s roommate, so it does rather seem that the disappearances and the murder may be interconnected in some twisted fashion.”

  “I take it that the police are no closer to catching up with Miss Trask and your money?” Brass asked.

  “So it would seem,” Welton said, grinning. “Which has seriously annoyed my brother, Edward. The pride of the family has come down here from Fall River just to stir up the police.”

  “Edward?”

  “Yes. It seems that when the wench took off with the money she also removed from the safe some papers that Edward had secreted there and was particularly anxious not to lose.”

  “Ah!” Brass said. “You didn’t mention that last time you visited us.”

  “It isn’t my, ah, secret, don’t you know. But now that Edward has seen fit to inform the police, and thence the public, I see no reason to keep the information clutched to my metaphorical bosom.”

  “Is your brother in the show business?” I asked.

  This was the funniest thing K. Jeffrey had ever heard. He pounded on his thigh with his right hand, bobbed his head up and down, and broke into a sustained chuckle, snort, and wheeze. When he was able to calm down, he pulled an oversized handkerchief from the pocket of his cashmere jacket—he was wearing a deep maroon one today—and mopped his face.

  “Is Edward in…,” he said. “Oh, really, that is too much,” he said. “Edward in the show business! When pigs have wings, and not a moment before!”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be. I haven’t had such a laugh since we brought the cow up to the top floor of the Sigma Alpha frat house.”

  “What,” I asked, “is funny about that?”

  “Well, you see, cows will go upstairs, easily enough but they won’t go downstairs.”

  “Ah!” I said.

  “They had to rent a crane and take the poor, terrified animal through a window. It was a wondrous sight.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said.

  Gloria shrugged and rolled her eyes in her “boys will be boys” gesture.

  “What was in those missing papers?” Brass asked.

  “Ah! There you have me. I was not privileged to gaze upon their inky contents.” He paused and stared at the ceiling for a moment in deep concentration. “Perhaps ‘gaze into their inky depths’ would be a better construction—what do you think?” he asked.

  Brass shrugged a slight shrug. “It’s a matter of personal style,” he said.

  K. Jeffrey nodded thoughtfully. “At any rate, Edward wants his papers back and is willing to pay a reasonable reward. Edward is a parsimonious man. So are all my family. Parsimonious and abstemious. If Edward were bargaining with the Devil for his soul, he would decide on a reasonable figure and go not a jot higher. But he wants his name kept out of it. Since my name is already muddied by being associated with the show business, he’s letting me do it. Good of him, don’t you think?”

  “Is Edward afraid of having the contents of the papers made public?” Brass asked. “Are they that sort of papers?”

  “The fact of it is,” K. Jeffrey said slowly, the spaces between his words showing that he was picking them with care, “that there is information in the documents that could be harmful to the family. But the information is in such a form that the naive reader would have no way of knowing what he—or she—has.”

  “So it’s not blackmail?”

  “Not yet at any rate.”

  Brass picked up the little ivory figurine from a corner of his desk and jiggled it from hand to hand, usually a sign of deep thought. He stared speculatively at Welton for a minute. “Just what do you want me to say?” he asked. “What sort of reward are you offering?”

  K. Jeffrey pulled a sheet of lined yellow paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “I have it written down,” he said, smoothing the paper out on the desk. “I’m going to place this as a quarter-page advertisement in the drama or entertainment section of every paper in town, and with you mentioning it in your column, everybody that means anything will see it.”

  Brass smiled. It was nice to be appreciated. “Let me look at it,” he said.

  I peered over Brass’s shoulder. The copy was hand-printed in ink. “REWARD,” said the headline at the top. And below that:

  The Lucky Lady Theatrical Company
is offering a $2,000 REWARD for information concerning or leading to the discovery of the present whereabouts of Miss Billie Trask, formerly employed by the Lucky Lady Theatrical Co., or for similar information concerning the woman popularly known as Matinee Mary.

  And below that, in smaller printing:

  A total of no more than $2,000 will be paid out to and divided among any persons bringing useful information as to the location of either of these women, or of certain objects believed to be in the possession of one or both of them, within a week of the publication of this notice. Application must be made at the box office of the Monarch Theater. The decision of the producers of Lucky Lady as to the division of the reward money among qualified applicants will be final.

  “Very professional,” Brass commented.

  “Very parsimonious,” K. Jeffrey said, refolding the document and sticking it back in his pocket. “My brother, Edward, devised the wording. On behalf of the family he will pay up to but no more than half the reward. Up to but no more than half. His exact words.”

  “A precise man,” Brass said.

  “You could look at it that way,” K. Jeffrey agreed. “Will you say something about the advertisement in your Thursday column?”

  “Better not wait till Thursday,” Brass said. “If you put the ad in this afternoon, it will appear tomorrow. I’ll do a piece on it for tomorrow’s paper.”

  K. Jeffrey pondered. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “The sooner the soonest, and all of that. Well then, I’d better make some copies of the advertisement and get them to a messenger for distribution.” He pushed himself out of the chair and headed for the office door. In the doorway he paused and turned around. “You haven’t heard anything, have you? About Two-Headed Mary or the Trask girl?”

  Brass smiled. “Am I eligible for the award?” he asked.

  “You’ll have to argue that one with my brother,” Welton said. He gave a half-bow. “Bye, all. Don’t see me out.”

  I saw him out anyway, and then went back to my minuscule cubicle to type up the results of my Quogue visit for Brass.

  10

  On Mondays, an important part of Broadway turns itself off. The legitimate theaters and most of the burlesque houses are dark—even chorus girls deserve one night to themselves—and many of the restaurants that service the theater crowd are closed in sympathy. This dormant section of the Great White Way only slightly lessens the glamour, or the glimmer, of the street. As Brass and I sauntered across Times Square this Monday evening, Bing Crosby and Joan Bennett were amusing audiences at the Paramount, thanks to the magic of talking pictures. At 45th and Broadway, the Loew’s State had George Raft and Alice Faye in Every Night at Eight on the big screen, plus an hour of vaudeville acts on stage. The night, as the Broadway bards put it, was being turned into day by the myriad of lights on billboards, signs and the marquees of the Roxy, the Palace, the Strand, and a dozen other movie palaces within a dozen blocks of Broadway and 42nd Street.

  But there was another side of Gotham nightlife that knew not what day of the week it was, nor cared. Joints of all sizes and types that were splattered along the side streets in the 40s and 50s, East and West, in the old brownstone and sandstone buildings, upstairs and down. These establishments, with names like the Hotsy Totsy Club, the Club Venus, Club 46, the Kit Kat Club, the Planet Mars, were described, or at least mentioned, in the “For Men Only” sections of the more daring guides to New York’s nightlife. Those with less distinguished names or without names, just addresses, did not make it into any guidebooks and were not on the recommended lists of the Better Business Bureau. These were the small nightclubs and bars that had been speakeasies, and still maintained the aura of doing something that was not strictly legal. In many cases, with gambling parlors in the back rooms or bordellos upstairs, the aura was accurate. These clubs catered to the type of out-of-town fireman who tells the cab driver that he’s “looking for some action.” In some of the more predatory, known to the trade as “clip joints,” a well-heeled customer would get a funny-tasting drink and wake up some hours later sprawled in an alley and relieved of his cash.

  The reviews that passed for entertainment at the Hotsy Totsy Club, the Planet Mars, the Club Venus, or the lesser known joints, were small but active. The music was loud, the comics were raunchy, and the costumes on the showgirls were brief. The girls who danced in the revues were streetwise and cynical, and waiting and hoping for better days. Many of them aspired to careers in more legitimate areas of the show business, or wealthy sugar daddies to take them away from all this, or to get far enough ahead of the rent so they could afford the bus ticket back to Iowa and have enough left to show the folks how well they’d done in the big city. For some of them, it was just a job, a way to pay the rent and feed the face; no worse than any other job, and a lot better than being unemployed. Others fed on the excitement and liked the fast life of their fast boyfriends, until the boyfriend traded them in for a newer model, or left for parts unknown, or wound up facedown in the gutter on Tenth Avenue.

  And that, my friends, is what passes for a sermon among us wised-up denizens of what has been described as “the longest street in the world.”

  Brass liked to move anonymously through the Broadway joints that provided so much material for his columns, watered down from the truth, but still strong drink for his midwestern readers who reveled in the cautionary tales he told of the sins of Gotham. He enjoyed mingling with the common folk without being recognized. But these days the anonymity was, at best, partial. Every maître d’ and bouncer and hat-check girl in Manhattan, every bartender from Harlem to the Village, and many of the beat cops and quite a few cab drivers recognized Alexander Brass on sight. He had interviewed most of the greats, the near-greats, and the would-be-greats who had passed through New York City in the past decade, and could claim many of them as his friends. But he could still walk down a street or enter a restaurant without creating the sort of fuss stirred up by the stars of stage and screen, notable politicians, and several of his columnist confreres who courted personal publicity.

  Tonight we were hitting the joints. Brass likes to consort with the characters that gave Broadway much of its color and flavor, and quite a bit of its crime. He calls it research. We headed west on 46th, passed the Gaiety, the Fulton, and the Forty-Sixth Street Theater, and stopped in at Sid’s place between Eighth and Ninth Avenues—the sign on the blacked-over window said in ancient gilt: BALMORAL LOUNGE & GRILL; but it had no grill, lounging was discouraged, and few of the regulars would have known what you were talking about if you called it anything but Sid’s place. The sign had been blacked out during the Prohibition years, with no noticeable change in the clientele.

  We stopped briefly at the bar to say hi to Sid, a small man of indeterminate age—an age he had been holding for the last two decades—with a large nose that bent ever so slightly to the left, and large ears that stuck out dramatically from his bald head, and to wave to Bessie, his very thin and exceptionally blond bartender, and were buzzed through to the inner room.

  The craps game on the felt-covered table in that small, dimly lit chamber was continuous, only the cast of characters gradually changed. Some of the players looked up briefly as we entered, one of them muttered “fresh blood,” and the game went on.

  Brass plays indifferent poker and fairly good bridge, and these are his games of choice. I quote him for both of these assessments; I don’t play bridge and I can’t afford the stakes in the twice a month poker game he occasionally sits in on with other masters of the bon mot like Cornell Woolrich, Robert BencWey, Dorothy Parker, Damon Runyon, and whatever editors or publishers can be cajoled into playing. But when we enter a gambling joint, he gambles a little to establish his credentials as one of the boys. I just watch, to establish my credentials as the kid who just watches.

  Brass put some money down for a while as the dice went around the table, won a couple and lost a couple. He shot a seven when the dice passed to him, and then an eight, made his
point, rolled a three, made it, rolled a nine, sevened out, and passed the dice. I watched. After he dropped from the game, about forty dollars to the good, we went out to the bar and sat in a corner booth and talked to Sid.

  Before he acquired the bar from its previous owner in payment of a debt of honor, Sid, who dresses as somberly as a small-town undertaker in a suit that always looks at least one full size too big for him, had been what Broadway calls a “character”: a small-time con man, gambler, and hustler. Bessie, his bartender, had been what Brass occasionally referred to in “Brass Tacks” as a “lady of the night.” (Brass had used “whore” in a piece once, and thirty-seven papers had dropped the column that day, and two had canceled for good.) She got off her back for good a few years ago when Charlie “Lucky” Luciano decided to organize the industry.

  Sid still kept in touch with his old friends in the hoodlum business; many of them were customers and others used him as a mailbox. He knew who had done what and to whom, and who was where and for how long. Brass dropped in every few weeks to talk to Sid and exchange news and views on the happenings in the world of the Broadway characters and their comings and goings.

  “Have you heard, Mr. B.,” Sid said, putting a shot of Armagnac and a glass of water in front of Brass, “Valentine is cracking down on the local gentry.”

  “I heard something about it,” Brass said. “Sort of a general roundup, wasn’t it?”

  The Valentine they were speaking of was Lewis J. Valentine, Police Commissioner of the City of New York, who had his own colorful ways of combating crime. Under a new law, which was being called the “Public Enemy Act,” anyone who had a criminal record could be locked up for so much as speaking to anyone else who shared the same distinction. Over the past couple of weeks, beginning with Labor Day, Valentine had begun enforcing the law. The police had been making surprise sweeps of Midtown, to take the undesirable elements off the street before they could frighten away the tourists.