The photographers knew me, at least some of them, and just as many flashbulbs died in my wake as had for Andy Warhol, a skinny broad on his arm, the last ones out before I made my entrance. Warhol was that fifteen minutes of fame clown—weren't his up yet?
Over at my right, standing on a little platform ringed by security guys, was Little Tony Tret—Anthony Tretriano himself. He was skinny and short and dark with a well-trimmed mustache, little dark eyes, and Roman emperor curls; he was in a black tuxedo but his bow tie was a big floppy red thing, vaguely obscene.
When I got to the row of painted-out black doors, the guy with the clipboard asked me for my name and I told him and he clearly didn't know it and also couldn't find it. He glanced at the nearest blazer bully, but a voice called out from above.
Not God. Better.
The boss.
"Steven, don't you know a native New Yorker when you see one?" Anthony said, in a nasal Brooklyn tenor. "That's Mike Hammer. Let him in.... Love the fedora, Mike."
I didn't correct him. That would have been ungracious of me, and we all know how gracious by nature I am. So I gave him a little grin, nodded, tugged the brim of the porkpie in a tip-of-the-hat manner, and got a big smile out of Anthony, who immediately returned to picking lucky numbers from his human lottery.
If human was the word—I paused at the door and glanced at this group, who were dressed up in various ways, from high fashion to low self-esteem. A number were in oddball outfits, gladiators, barbarians, even one doll in a Marie Antoinette getup. A few were playing it cool, and these were the ones most often selected, as those yelling "Anthony!" and "Choose me" and so on were not making it with the exalted arbiter of the worthy
I went on in. Admission was slow, as Nero took his time with his thumbs-up (and mostly -down) routine, so I was alone in a vast entryway, with the half-dozen black doors behind me. Darkness encompassed me. So did thunderous disco music, only slightly muted here. The only light in this space came from a glittering chandelier and an indirect purple glow splashed on the arched ceiling. Up ahead was a lot of light, flashing and colorful but indistinct, like a city making itself known on the horizon.
Somewhere in the darkness, off to my right, a female voice called over the music: "Want to check that Bogart wrap, big man?"
I found my way over there. Behind the counter, two girls in their early twenties wore Roman togas with necklines that allowed the brunette's big ones to spill out and the blonde's perky ones to point accusingly at me, twice. They wore way too much makeup for my taste, but I forgave them even while wishing I'd invested in the blue eye-shadow industry
The brunette took my trench coat and I was about to pass the porkpie to the blonde when Little Tony was suddenly at my side, a hand on my sleeve.
"Hang on to the fedora, Mike," he said lifting an advisory finger. His speech was slurry and his eyes were half-lidded. Drunk? Quaaludes? "People here dress to identify themselves."
"As who they are?"
"Or who they want to be."
His hand was still on my arm. I wanted to flick it off, like a bug, but he was my host.
As we moved toward the flashing lights and pumping music, I said, "To what do I owe this honor? I mean, escorted by Little Anthony himself. So where are the Imperials?"
He only smiled at that. "We'll find time to rap later. You'll soon understand, Mike, that there's no need for the old hostilities."
"Water under the bridge?"
"My feeling exactly." He was guiding me toward the flicker and flash and the storm of sound. "You need to get a feel for my party. It's a party I throw every night, and you may find it addictive."
Some straight lines are just too easy.
So I ignored it and said, "I'm hoping we can sit down and talk, Tony."
"Please call me 'Anthony,' Mike. You're comfortable being called 'Mike'?"
"Have been for some time. Can we talk now?"
He shook his head. "I'll be on the door for another half hour at least. You run a tab and I'll take care of it. In an hour I'll meet you at my office. Just tell any one of my security guys that you have an appointment."
Then he waved and disappeared back into the darkness, illuminated briefly when he opened a door onto the street to resume his duties—he had people to crush and others to elevate. The way those Italian heels elevated him.
When I made it to the flashing lights, and was no longer solitary but one of a crush of people, I still felt encased in darkness. Light was a pulse, timed with the booming bass beat of the deafening disco music—yellow, blue, momentary baths of color in a cavern carved by occasional green laser lights. Cigarette smoke swirled, but the ventilation wasn't bad, and busboys in athletic shorts and running shoes and nothing else were keeping the bottles and glasses picked up and off the packed dance floor.
The bare-chested busboys were part of a bisexual motif—for every nude male statue there was a female one; for every bartender in a hot-pants toga, there was a waitress in a miniskirt toga with a neckline to the navel. I'd heard the term sensory overload kicked around, but never understood it before. I just stood there like Dorothy getting a load of Oz for the first time.
Around me were bizarre towering hairstyles, tuxes, bikini tops, spandex, gold lamé, masks, body paint, glitter, hard hats, athletic T-shirts, pointed collars, berets, sunglasses. Above it all loomed a giant silver man in the moon with a gold coke spoon with glittering lights in its bowl near the moon man's Bob Hope proboscis. Below was a sea of partying souls on a central raised plexiglass dance floor, hands waving as if to heaven as they writhed like the damned, washed in that throbbing red and blue illumination against a painted backdrop of Pompeiian pillars.
The crazy joint did not seem to have tables, other than in a V.I.P. section behind a gossamer-type screen, home to comfortable booths and nonstop champagne. Among the pampered elite were Truman Capote, the mayor of New York, and various models whose faces I'd glimpsed on fashion magazines when I was picking up True and Guns & Ammo at my favorite newsstand. Mirrored bars were at left and right, and the bartenders were muscular young males in vests and no shirts, doing dance moves as they served a frantic nonstop customer onslaught. The only quiet in the storm was the stage—it seemed to have been abandoned for the records the d.j., high in his omniscient booth, was spinning.
I did find tables and booths upstairs, in the balcony, but they were filled with necking threesomes, fornicating twosomes, and the general funky smell of sex. The great ventilation didn't seem to be able to take the edge off that. I was able to find a place at the front rail of the balcony to have a look down at the self-absorbed dancers—many had no partner—whose fluttering hands suggested a revival meeting run amok as they immersed themselves in the repetitive, senses-numbing music.
From my vantage point, I caught some interesting items. For one thing, the bartenders seemed to be dispensing pills and coke vials as much as drink tumblers and champagne glasses. This perch made that obvious, but they didn't seem to be hiding it particularly. I could also see the cash registers at the nearest of the two bars. Starting at about ten-thirty, at staggered intervals, the cash drawers were emptied into garbage bags, and the register tapes were changed.
Clearly a skimming operation Vegas might have envied.
Anthony Tretriano and his curly Nero hair and his black tux and floppy red bow tie had taken his d.j. booth box seat at this coliseum of decadence and was now interrupting the thudding, mechanical songs with celebrity announcements. Most of those he introduced were the kind who were recognized by a single name and he had a kidding put-down for each of them.
Funny thing is, there was never applause. Just smiles of recognition. Maybe Club 52 was too cool for clapping. But probably not the clap.
I had been here before, in this space, even in this very balcony, long before it was the trendiest club in town. This had been a theater, or anyway a radio and television studio, its traditional seating long since ripped out. CBS Studio 52—that's why a club on Fifty-fourth w
as called 52—had been home to Jack Benny, Captain Kangaroo, and countless game shows, What's My Line? To Tell the Truth, The $64,000 Question.
The $64,000 question I was mulling was whether that stage was still used for anything. Like a black hole, the proscenium where so many mainstream entertainers had performed was a void in the midst of flashing lights.
Then the recorded music was cut off and dead silence filled the room.
Little Tony's voice burst forth: "She's Manhattan's favorite Latin, my children—everybody's favorite pink taco..."
Lots of laughter at that.
"...Chrome!"
This time the room did erupt in applause.
On the wall behind the stage, a rainbow of neon tubes finally illuminated the stage as the star performer strode from the wings with a wireless mike in hand and all the confidence that could fit into one tall, curvy, leggy frame. A backup band was revealed as well, but just a drummer on a riser and one guitar player and a guy at a synthesizer. The sound coming from speakers all around conveyed more instruments than were up there, and whether they were miming their performance or not, I couldn't say.
But Chrome was singing all right.
She had a strong alto that cut with authority through all that disco noise and made her delivery of this updated "Boy from Ipanema" appealing. Against the now-alternating neon slashes of yellow, pink, blue, green, her bronze flesh made the white of her teeth startling, her almond-shaped eyes big and brown and lavishly lashed, her nose pert, her mouth moist and ripe and scarlet red. Exuding a charisma that seemed to shimmer around her, she stalked the stage in pink platform heels carrying long, almost masculinely muscular legs that climbed all the way to the fringe of her shocking pink dress.
If you could call it a dress—it was skintight with a cutout that exposed her supple midsection, navel and all, and a V-neck that did its best to contain those firm D-cup globes. I hated the thud thud thud of that disco beat, but her strong voice and her confident manner, and the rhythmic bounce of her bosom, won me over.
Of course, in that place a star performer was just so much window dressing. Nobody in the balcony stopped necking or fucking to watch Chrome, and the dance floor remained filled with Holy Roller hand wavers lost in their own narcissism. Come to the cabaret, my friends, and why not? Liza had.
Chrome and I did have a moment, or maybe I just imagined it. As I stood in the balcony, twelve kinds of sex behind me in a living Hieronymous Bosch tapestry, I thought I saw her look right at me, and hold my gaze, and smile, before she moved on down the stage on those magnificent, endless legs.
She did only half a dozen songs, and was gone. No encore but Tony praised her over the sound system and the applause rang, just like in a real nightclub.
When I left the city a year ago, this had been an empty theater, out-of-date studio space the TV network had been trying to dump unsuccessfully for many months. Now it was the most famous nightclub in town, maybe in the world. And it had all been the doing of that punk Little Tony.
The office was one flight up from the balcony. Tony had said to meet him in an hour, but it was more like two—I didn't bother asking one of his flunkies for my audience until I saw the party's host move out of the d.j.'s perch. The blazer boy who led me up was as polite as he was muscular. On the stairs, he glanced back at me.
"Ain't I seen you at Bing's?"
"Could be."
"I do some boxing. Why's an old guy like you working out for? No offense."
"It's a Zen thing."
That stopped the conversation.
The honcho's office was nothing fancy—drywall painted light blue, some framed Broadway show posters, a bulletin board with news articles about the club, a metal desk cluttered with Rolodex, business-card caddy, ashtrays, pill bottles, a few drink glasses, and a pile of register tapes. On the floor next to the desk was a garbage bag, twist-tied shut, but I knew it was full of cash.
Skinny little Tony had tossed his tux jacket on a couch under the Broadway posters and undone the red tie, the fabric flaccid around his collar. Under the fluorescent lighting, his curly Roman emperor locks appeared shiny and wet. He had the casually drowsy demeanor of a guy who'd been doing an untold combo of drugs, and seemed like anybody but the mastermind behind Manhattan's biggest success story.
He was probably thirty-one and looked like a kid on prom night who'd overdone it.
"Excuse the mess, Mike," he said, not rising, but gesturing genially toward a hard wooden chair opposite his comfy-looking black leather swivel job, the only class appointment in what could have been the office of the manager of a Dunkin' Donuts in Queens. If that manager was into Broadway shows, anyway.
He was beaming at me, the small dark eyes red-tinged and half-hooded. Were those caps under that perfectly trimmed mustache?
"Well, Mike? What do you think? What do you think of my party?"
"People are having fun." The never-ending pounding bass was a reminder of that—no music could be heard in the office, but that relentless thudding went on.
He threw his hands up and the grin got even bigger. "Exactly! That's the point. That's what I was after. Famous people need a place to let their hair down, and not be bothered. Not-so-famous people, if they're good-looking and know how to party, this is their place, too." The dark little eyes flared. "Say, what did you think of Chrome, Mike? Isn't she something?"
"Oh yeah. Crazy. I can see why you're having her open your new clubs."
"She'll hit the top of the charts, wait and see. She'll win a fuckin' Grammy. Love of my life, that woman."
Was that for real, or just show biz talk? In the old days, Little Tony made a point of going out with big, bosomy babes on his arm. But the word was he swung the other way. And with all those bare-chested bartenders downstairs, I had to wonder.
"Tell me, Anthony—that curbside circus out there. Why do you run the door yourself? Can't you trust anybody else to do the picking and choosing?"
He shook his head firmly. "Mike, this place is ... it's my living room. You don't just let anybody into your living room. When you invite guests in your home, you make sure it's a good mix, right?"
"I don't do that much entertaining."
He chuckled. Shook his head. "You're perfect for 52. You're a legend. Larger than life. You are welcome here anytime."
"Do I rate an all-access pass?"
His smile turned pixie-ish. He raised a cautionary palm. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's your first night."
"Bill Doolan rated one."
Without hesitation, Tony nodded and kept nodding. "Great guy. Perfect fit. Best addition to the family since the Disco Grandma."
"How the hell is an old-time copper like Doolan your 'perfect fit'?"
Tony lighted up a cigarette, swallowed smoke through a smile. "Mike, he was famous in this city—not as famous as you, but the papers were full of him. He cleaned up his neighborhood, the capper of a career full of putting thieves and robbers and hoods away."
"Some of whom you're related to."
He waved that off. "That's history. That's the past. That's not who I am anymore. But Doolan, he was a real character. He could put away the booze like Sinatra. He liked the ladies, too, the young ones. I think he had a thing for Chrome, y'know. Whether it went anywhere or not, I couldn't tell you. Probably just a flirtation."
"How often was he here?"
Tony shrugged. "Maybe once a week—for a couple of months. Not a regular, but a familiar and always welcome face."
"He took photos here."
"Did he?"
"Is that allowed?"
He gave up a sluggish shrug. "We let media types in, if they behave. If we got somebody here, Princess Grace or Baryshnikov, and they don't wanna get photographed, they don't get photographed. That must be understood."
"Is that who Doolan was to you? A media type?"
"No! He was just another wonderful eccentric. I never saw him shoot photos. If he did, it was probably just snapshots for his scrapbook. To pa
ste pics of Chrome in next to his grandkids or whatever. Or to do whatever dirty old men do with photos of sexy young women in the privacy of their own homes."
"A dirty old man? Doolan?"
"Why, won't you be one someday, Mike? And me, if I live long enough?"
I shrugged. "If you live long enough."
Not much threat had been put into that, but it sobered Tony. Anthony.
The little emperor leaned forward. "Listen, Mike, this place is legit. I got no mob ties whatsoever. My brother Leo and me, we haven't spoken for two years. You saw the mayor downstairs. We got councilmen and congressmen as regulars."
"Like your friend from the Enfilade, Alex Jaynor?"
"No, Alex has never been to 52. And we shoot on different days at the Enfilade. We've spoken a few times at events. Why?"
"He was tight with Doolan. All three of you belong to that gun club. Just wondering what the connection was."
Tony shrugged again. "Just what meets the eye. I think Jaynor and Doolan were in the same regular shooting group, but I wasn't. We got along. Were polite. My hunch is Jaynor may harbor suspicions about me. About my background. He's a do-gooder, and I frankly don't trust do-gooders."
"Yeah. They can spoil a party. No mob ties at all, Tony?"
"Please, Mike—it's Anthony. No. None."
I gestured to the garbage bag. "But that's a mob-style skim you're running."
The smile under the mustache froze. Then it melted and he said, "We don't need the mob for that. It's a cash-and-carry business, Mike."
"How much are you carrying that the I.R.S. doesn't know about?"
"Why, are you a fan of the I.R.S.?"
"Not particularly. They did a nice job on Capone. What have you made in a year, Anthony?"
Another shrug. "Seven million."
"Before or after the skim?"
He shrugged. "After. Skim's around two mil. See, Mike? We got no secrets, you and me."
"And you're not worried? If I could spot that action from the balcony, so could an I.R.S. agent."
That smile again. "He'd have to get past the velvet rope. Look, Mike, we're hot right now. Everybody loves a winner and we're winning."
Kiss Her Goodbye Page 14
