The Forty-Two

by Ed Kurtz

  He had no contact with Eve at all during this time. He’d left Andy’s number with Walker but not with her. Charley would definitely have felt like a class A prick if he was just pulling the old screw-and-disappear routine on her, but it was infinitely more complicated than that. The only time he could spend in Manhattan was work time. The rest belonged to Andy. Then, on the fourth day of Charley’s Tottenville exile, Andy finally started to press him about meeting with Rosey Rosenthal.

  Herbert “Rosey” Rosenthal was one of the grand dukes of the Deuce who owned and operated nine of the myriad grindhouses and porno theatres that covered Times Square and its environs like catsup on hash browns. The pinky-ringed hyena also held considerable sway over much of the business end of the sleaze film racket in the city and could make or break a little independent production like Bloody Birthright without batting an eye. For Andy it was usually the breaking and not so much the making. He and Rosenthal loathed one another with a passion that bordered on obsessive psychosis.

  Accordingly, Andy was less than inclined to trust his latest baby in the hands of his mortal enemy without a generally likeable neutral party to stand between them. Whether or not Rosenthal was likely to find Charley as winsome as Andy had yet to be determined, but anybody would elicit a better response from the fat bastard than Andy Donovan.

  Charley took Andy’s Buick back over to Manhattan and walked two blocks from where he parked to Rosenthal’s office on 42nd and Eighth, cattycorner from Port Authority and above a porno shop called Dream Show. It was a three-room affair with an unattended desk in front that was flanked by gaudy plastic plants. One-sheets papered the walls from the ubiquitous exploitation cheat Snuff to Rosenthal’s own stabs at exploitation production in the late sixties with titles like Ana’s Basement and Swedish Bad Girls. To Charley’s surprise there was even a poster for Fleshmonger among the crowded throng of one-sheets, one of Andy’s earliest movies. It was almost invisible due to the far more outrageous titles that Rosenthal had hung on either side of it, though—They Call Her One-Eye and Shriek of the Mutilated. On the former, Christina Lindberg posed menacingly with a black patch on her left eye and a shotgun in her hands. The latter portrayed a snarling Yeti barreling through a snowdrift, its massive clawed hands raised and ready for violence. Charley was full of envy, wishing he had such easy access to all of these outstanding works of art that were so often better than the films they advertised.

  The front room was bordered by stacks of film canisters all the way around, movies that were either ending their runs in Rosenthal’s theaters or getting prepared to start. Charley couldn’t resist a peek. He was bent over at an awkward angle checking out the label on the first reel of Blood Mania when a voice like metal grinding against metal crackled behind him.

  “You Andy’s kid?”

  Charley winced. He was twenty-seven when he came to the city almost two years earlier and yet everyone still called him “kid.” It was something of a pet peeve for him.

  “I’m here on his behalf, yes,” Charley answered through clenched teeth.

  Rosenthal was slobbering all over a thick cigar as he checked the time on his pocket watch. That took some doing because his pockets were sufficiently hidden under the colossal rolls of stomach and back fat that hung well below Rosenthal’s waistline.

  “On time,” he observed. “I like you better’n that queer already. Come into my office.”

  He wobbled his three hundred pound frame into one of the two adjoining rooms, letting out grunts of breath with each step. Charley followed him in and marveled at the hurricane disaster area that Rosenthal called his office. Here were more exploitation one-sheets—1000 Convicts and a Woman, Blind Rage, Country Cuzzins, and the immensely lurid artwork for Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.—but the primary feature of the cramped room was the mountains of papers and folders containing more papers that covered almost every square inch of surface space, some of them several feet high. There was no sense of organization at all, just stacks and stacks of papers everywhere Charley looked. Rosenthal even had to push piles of the anonymous sheets out of the way just to see him across his desk. He did not appear to care how they fell or in what order.

  Rosenthal withdrew the black cigar from his mouth and a viscous string of spit came along with it. Charley looked away, focusing on the busty illustration of Diane Thorne as Ilsa instead. From the window behind Rosenthal he could see the Selwyn marquee and the worker changing out its letters, perilously balanced on an unstable ladder. So much for The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.

  “I hate to tell you this kid, but I don’t guess you’re coming clear the hell out here is going to do much good for Donovan’s picture. What’s it called again?”

  “Bloody Birthright.”

  “Right. Sounds exactly like this other piece of shit he made in the sixties. Any tits in it?”

  Charley was not entirely sure about that. He rolled his eyes back into his skull and tried to imagine if Andy was likely to have kowtowed to Rosenthal’s tastes and demands this late in the game.

  “No,” he said. “But plenty of gore. There’s a chick that gets a pitchfork right in the neck. Pretty nasty. The crowd’ll love it, believe me.”

  “If it’s anything like all the other gore that turd’s promised me then I’m not impressed. It’s a new era for the trash on the Deuce, kid. Twenty years ago a big busty girl in a low-cut sweater packed them in. Ten years ago you had to have bare tits or you were sunk. It’s a new decade now, they gotta have it all these days, everything in one picture. Tits, ass, maybe a shot of pink. And then guts spilling out somebody’s torso on top of that. We got hardcore porn, but now we got hardcore gore too. Cannibals and zombies and hillbillies with chainsaws. That’s what the crowd’ll love. Not Donovan’s period piece bullshit with catsup for blood and so much talky dialogue that even the speed freaks fall asleep in it.”

  Charley sighed. Andy was not going to be pleased.

  “It’s not that his movies are terrible,” Rosenthal continued. “They are, don’t get me wrong. They’re the worst. But the scumbags don’t come down to Forty-Two for art, do they?”

  “No, I don’t guess they do,” Charley said, wondering if he was one of the scumbags to whom Rosenthal was referring. He didn’t think so, but did a scumbag know he was a scumbag?

  “Fuck no, they don’t. Otherwise there’d be Truffaut at the Anco and Bergman over at the Lyric. But there ain’t. There’s sex and violence. And since that’s what they want, it’s what I want.”

  “Okay, Mr. Rosenthal. But where does that leave Bloody Birthright?”

  “At the Anco for half a week unless it draws receipts. Which it won’t.”

  “Not negotiable?”

  “No way.”

  “All right. I’ll pass that on to Andy. Should I have my severed head forwarded to you, then?”

  Rosenthal laughed. It was a thoroughly unpleasant laugh that brought up all sorts of crackling globs of phlegm out of his struggling lungs.

  “Sure, kid,” he rasped. “I’ll put it on display next horror picture I exhibit.”

  Charley thanked him for his time and drove back to Staten Island with no good news for Andy. At the far end of the Lincoln Tunnel he cursed himself for having forgotten to check out what was going up at the Selwyn. Charley reminded himself to pick up the Post the next chance he got.

  There was a whole new lineup on the Deuce.

  Walker phoned Andy’s house that evening to inform Charley that Chester Price was dead. He had succumbed to his injuries from the fire and checked out earlier in the afternoon. The near fatal levels of junk in his system had not helped his failed recovery much. For some reason Price wanted to die, and he’d gotten his wish.

  During Charley’s brief chat with the detective, Andy was carrying on in the next room, drunk as a lord and mad as hell about getting stuck at the Anco again. Carla dug out early and Jim was unlikely to ever be heard from again, so it was just Charley and Andy for the foreseeable future, at least until Charl
ey figured out what he was going to do with his bloodstained crime scene apartment in Alphabet City. If he was going to be honest with himself, he and Franz had never been all that close. He was a roommate, someone who conveniently helped out with the rent and bills, but they never reached that true friend level. It was not for the loss of a loved one that Charley grieved, then, but that this poor lazy loser he had lived with for the better part of two years had to get a knife in the back grated on his conscience. It was not his fault, not directly, but it would never have happened if he hadn’t gone snooping around Skid Row like some pulp novel detective. The guilt he felt made his skin seem too tight and his stomach lurch. And yet he was fairly certain that he was not going to attend the funeral. He doubted he would even get invited.

  Andy stumbled out of the kitchen with a bottle of Black Velvet precariously dangling between forefinger and thumb. Charley saw the bottle and started daydreaming about the Black Velvet Ladies from all those print ads in Penthouse, which in turn brought sex to mind, which led to his wondering what Eve was up to at that precise moment. He frowned. Andy, however, had the goofiest grin in history plastered across his face.

  “C’mon, Charley,” he slurred. “Let’s go down to 42nd.”

  “You’re too tight, man. Maybe tomorrow, okay?”

  “Too tight for the Deuce? Are you joking?”

  It did sound a little ridiculous to Charley when he put it that way. Being at all sober on the Deuce at night was the true abnormality.

  “You looking to catch a flick or cruise for fresh meat?”

  Andy shoved his lower lip out into an exaggerated pout. “It don’t got to be that fresh…”

  “Then you don’t need me along to cramp your style. Just go order up some of that cardboard they try to pass off as steak at Tad’s and some dude’s bound to come along with a hustle for you. You know as well as I do all you have to do is stand still on Forty-Two and they’ll hit you up four at a time.”

  “Four at a time!” Andy crowed. “My Christ it’s like every dream I’ve had since I was seven!”

  “You’re repulsive, Andy.”

  Andy just smiled, his walrus moustache curling up with the muscles in his chipmunk cheeks until the tips almost tickled his eyelids.

  “So you’re coming?”

  Charley sighed heavily.

  “No. I can’t. I just want to cool out here, to be honest with you. It’s been too damn…much for me.”

  “That’s what vices are for, babe. They take your mind off shit like that. Some of them just take your mind and vamoose. Your vice is sleaze on the screen, isn’t it? Go get some, then. And I’ll go get mine.”

  “Sure,” Charley responded with zero enthusiasm. “I’ll catch whatever’s going on at the Rialto this week while you…do whatever it is you do.”

  Andy said, “Delicious.”

  Andy insisted on driving even though there was no assurance that either of them would be able to return by the same method. Once they got into town he dragged Charley away from his familiar stomping grounds between Eighth and Broadway all the way up to Forty-Seventh where both sides of the block were lined with various scummy porno theaters named after the ancient love gods of Greece. Here was the Venus, the Eros, the Adonis. The marquees were lit up just like the main drag of Forty-Second, but somehow the whole block was darker, sleazier and altogether more foreboding. Just about everybody in Times Square was on the hustle, but here it was amplified a hundred times over like bacteria seen through a microscope. The only movies to be seen on this block were straight up hardcore, some of it straight but mostly catering to the gay crowd.

  X-Rated, Color, All-Male Cast.

  Hold Your Piece, Duffy’s Tavern, Games Without Rules.

  These were titles the Voice listed under “Other Movies” in the back of the Arts section, possibly due to the fact that almost no one went to them with any intention to actually watch the films. These were strictly hook-up joints, which was precisely why Andy had gravitated to this particular slice of the Deuce.

  Across the street from the Venus was a dingy little Korean grocery with no visible name by which to call it in either English or Korean. Charley could vaguely tell that there were lights on inside, but the windows were so dusty that they hid the interior from public view, and there were no lights of any kind to illuminate the exterior of the place. Andy ushered Charley inside.

  Past the dusty, cluttered aisles of unidentifiable goods and foodstuffs, a collection of vinyl-top tables were shoved together in the cramped space in back. Charley and Andy sat across from one another and munched on fifty-cent chicken wings that they washed down with orange soda. It wasn’t too bad, at least not by Charley’s standards. By and large one learned quickly that dining on the Deuce was not the best bet for one’s insides—a gyro joint next to the Show Palace had made him severely diarrheic for days after one of his first pilgrimages here—but there were exceptions to every rule. The Grand Luncheonette was one, and apparently this nameless Korean grocery was another. Not everything in this part of town was entirely abhorrent.

  After they ate and unsuccessfully tried to wipe all the grease from their fingers, they returned to the street, which was teeming with transvestites and hustlers and prostitutes of both sexes and all ages. It was an all-male meat market, a weird psychosexual cattle call of cruisers and marks, dudes aching to be had and the dudes that came to have them.

  Andy was studying the triangular arcade that jutted out of the Venus’ façade: 3 Unique Porn Hits, it promised. The Eros next door proclaimed more specific attractions inside, all male adult hits with names like Sextool and Swap Meat. These piqued Andy’s interest even more. Charley frowned, certain that Andy had made up his mind. From there it was either sit in a seedy gay porn theater or find another way back to Tottenville.

  Andy licked his lips and whispered “Swap Meat” quasi-seductively as he started across Eighth to the box office. Charley shook his head and resolved to return to Forty-Second proper when he heard Andy squeal like a little girl who’d just stepped in dog shit. He spun around to find Andy pointing at a rough-looking dude in a leather vest with a moustache to rival his own.

  “Charley!” Andy cried. “That’s Blake Love!”

  “Who the hell is Blake Love?” Charley asked without really caring.

  “Hell of a porno star is who. That son of a bitch has got a ten-inch cock flaccid!”

  On that note Andy hurtled across the street until nearly colliding with Blake Love. Charley observed from the relative safety of the other side of Eighth as the two men fell into easy conversation, locked arms and sauntered into the Eros Theater together. It was just that easy. Not so much as a “catch you later” to Charley, who hoped Andy wouldn’t get scammed or end up with a knife in his ribs. It would be a hell of a thing to get stabbed for being too horny to think straight, but he guessed it happened four times an hour on the Deuce.

  Back down on Forty-Two there was a new Seka flick playing the Harem, Carnal Highways, but thanks to Andy’s Eighth Avenue shenanigans Charley had temporarily lost his taste for any hardcore delights. Most everywhere else had karate and kung fu on the week’s menu, and the Harris was playing the sort of mainstream Hollywood fare that bored Charley to tears. Instead, he levitated toward the Lyric, attracted to the brightly lit titles on its marquee like a moth to the flame. The first feature was some disaster nonsense that was probably about half over by then, but it was the second half of the bill that captured Charley’s attention. The Human Tornado. The one-sheet on the other side of the glass in front of the Lyric promised a nerve-shattering, brain-battering, mind-splattering experience, and that sounded just fine to him.

  He pulled open the door to the lobby just as a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, scaring him half to death.

  “Hey,” Stanley groaned.

  “Jesus,” Charley responded between pants. “I thought you were Frankenstein’s monster there for a minute.”

  “You’re fucking hilarious. Got a second?”

/>   Charley shrugged. If he missed the picture it would probably be there all week. He nodded and said, “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I’m…I’m sorry I beat you down the other night,” the big man stammered. Apologies were clearly not his forte. Charley arched an eyebrow. “Eve told me you was all right and everything and, well, anyway. I’m sorry, okay? That’s all.”

  After that Stanley started lumbering away, but Charley caught up with him. He’d just have to return another night for the latest misadventures of Dolemite.

  “Stanley, wait a minute.”

  Eve’s hulking bodyguard halted, causing a little guy in a blood red suit to crash right into him. The guy faltered and almost fell down, but Stanley did not budge. He paid no attention to the little fellow at all.

  “How is she?” Charley asked. “Eve, I mean. I haven’t spoken to her in a few days.”

  “Her sister got knocked off. Whaddya think?”

  “So she’s worse?”

  “Same. She’ll be all right. But maybe you oughta call her up.”

  “I figured she could use some air.”

  “She got plenty of air. Call her up. Just don’t mess with her head none, you dig what I’m telling you?”

  “Yeah,” Charley said. “I dig it.”

  Stanley said, “Good.” Then he resumed his rhinoceros walk down Forty-Second, cutting a clear path through the crowd like Moses at the Red Sea. Charley breathed deeply, inhaling a lungful of bus exhaust and cold, musty city air as he watched Stanley dissolve into the dense crowd on the sidewalk. There was still time to catch the Dolemite picture at the Lyric, but he’d lost his steam. The wings weren’t doing so well in his stomach, and he was suddenly quite tired. All he really wanted to do was go home.

  Unfortunately for Charley he did not exactly have a home at present. There was Andy’s Colonial, of course, but that might as well have been a thousand miles away. Andy had his car keys in his pocket, which was likely somewhere around his ankles by then, which left a long trek by subway and bus if Charley wanted to get back to Tottenville before morning. Then there was Ursula’s room at the Carver. The red neon sign designating the flophouse’s back entrance loomed like a red wraith just ahead; Charley could be at her door in two minutes flat. The still lingering mental picture of the startling juxtaposition between her primary and secondary sexual characteristics still troubled him, though—enough so that this, too, got scratched from the list.