But Not For Me

by Jack Kline

  “No idea.” I had a good idea and it all centered on the Holloway kid.

  “What say you and I go downtown and we’ll talk about this whole distasteful business, Mr. Morris?” Myers and I had clashed before. He didn’t seem to mind me putting bad guys out of commission. But he didn’t like my methods and made it clear long ago that one slip and he’d put me out of commission and have me collecting free meals in Jeff City.

  “Unless you’re arresting me, Detective Myers, that stiff has already made me late for some very pressing matters.” Myers was angry, so I tossed him a bone. “I’d be happy to swing by tomorrow when I have more time.” Mackey stood nervously next to the chief, his eyes turned upward, his feet shuffled back and forth.

  “No, you are not under arrest. This appears to be a self-defense shooting, Mr. Morris.” He ran his hand through his silver hair.

  “Well, then, if you’ll just hand over my pea-shooter, I really must get going.”

  “I’m sorry, the weapon will be held for evidence, at least until your visit to my office tomorrow.” Myers smirked at me, the bastard.

  Didn’t matter, though I preferred the stopping power of the .38, but I had a snub-nose .32 Terrier under my car seat. I tipped my hat to the man and said, “Tomorrow then, Detective Myers.” And to my new patrolman friend, “See you in the funny papers, Officer Mackey.”

  Mackey’s eyes glowed, but he kept the rest of his face professional. “Sure thing, Mr. Morris. You be careful, and make sure I don’t see you in the obituaries.”

  I laughed and made to push my way through the crowd, but it parted like a good barber’s finishing touch. I winked at Rosemary, who was still with the cop, and walked to the old Plymouth. There were files in my office on Leary and Lazzeri, so I headed up to Ninth and Locust to poke around in them. Why would Mike Leary want to keep me away from the Holloway case? Lazzeri had made Leary extraneous to the KC mob scene during last four years. And if Leary nabbed the kid, was it some kind of power play against Holloway, against Lazzeri, or both?

  Henry, the elevator man, leaned against the wall in front of the Rawlston Building’s elevator. He smiled and straightened up as my heels echoed through the high-ceilinged, charcoal and white marble entryway. The guy was as tall as anyone I knew, tall and thin.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Morris. How’s your day?”

  “Howdy, Henry. The day’s been peachy: got a new case, buried my dog, and plugged a bad guy. You know, the usual.”

  “Oh, Mr. Morris, you always teasing old Henry.” He pulled the elevator’s gate closed and slapped the switch upward.

  “Warm for October, huh, Mr. Morris?”

  “Sure is, a regular Indian summer.” As we arrived at the third floor, Henry pulled down the switch at just the right split-second, and the elevator floated to a stop dead-on perfect with the level of the floor. He slid the gate open, and I stepped out.

  “You’re still the best, Henry,” I said and slipped him four bits.

  “Thank you, Mr. Morris. You watch out for them bad guys now.”

  My office was at the end of the hall, a corner office with two windows no less. Jill’s desk in the outer office stood empty. I examined her notepad for any calls we may have gotten and found a note. Jill was running errands, both personal and for office supplies.

  I pulled Jill’s files on Lazzeri and Leary and opened the door to my office. The files flopped on my desk and I slid the bottom drawer open. First things first. A bottle of Jim Beam and a grimy glass joined the files. Before opening the files I opened the bottle and poured a glass, poured it full, my hand shaking some. I’d killed a few men before and made a big show of bravado and nonchalance. But it was just that, show. Killing a man bothered me, no matter what the reason I had for pulling the trigger. Pulling the trigger was easy; living inside the man that pulled it, not so much. I wondered if it would always be that way, or would be that way at least until somebody else’s trigger pulling was better than mine.

  Me and Mr. Beam opened the Leary file. There were handwritten notes, some by Jill and some by my occasional associate, Rusty Callahan, and also my own. Jill had included pertinent newspaper clippings with her notes scribbled in the margins. And it was all chronological. I knew there was a reason I kept her on the payroll—besides her good looks, sultry smile, and of course, the hourglass-perfect body.

  Fifteen years ago, Leary ruled the rackets like Holloway did the political machine. But Italians began moving into KC north of the Missouri River in ever-larger numbers. For a while, Leary’s Irish mob still ran the booze, the sex trade, the numbers and the off-track betting operations there. But Johnny Lazzeri began horning in on Leary’s territory.

  At first, Holloway backed Leary with his money and his cop and court connections. As Lazzeri built a bloody foothold north of the river, Holloway backed off. He sat on the sidelines waiting to see how things would play out. By 1928, Lazzeri ran things up north and then to a large degree south of the river. He did it without Holloway’s interference.

  Leary kept some speakeasies, a liquor import and distribution warehouse, and a half-dozen betting houses in the Irish section south of the river. Lazzeri became the new kingpin, which included a laissez-faire policy from the Holloway machine. And now that the Feds woke up and ended prohibition, Mike Leary’s liquor business had legit competition that he would either need to remove or else learn to live with a lesser south town slice after being accustomed to pigging out on the whole liquor supply pie.

  Through the open door of my office, I saw a shadow appear on the frosted glass of the outer door. It wasn’t Jill’s. The shadow wore a homburg and jiggled the door knob—which I had locked. Whoever it was didn’t knock and didn’t leave, just stood there. I quietly slid open the middle drawer and set my office .22 on the blotter next to the almost empty glass. I waited. After a minute or so, the shadow turned and walked away. I grabbed the gun, went to my outer door and carefully opened it. I peeked down the hall. Nobody. He must have taken the stairs.

  I locked the door again, returned to my desk, poured another half glass of Beam and opened the Lazzeri file. Born in Sicily, Johnny Lazzeri grew up here in Kansas City, on the north side. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade but was so bright he was clerking for a judge by the time he was seventeen. In a remarkable irony, he also began working in Leary’s crime syndicate.

  Soon Lazzeri got nabbed for robbery and was sentenced to 15 years. Mike Leary used both his and Holloway’s connections to get him out on parole after only eight months. That was a mistake. Lazzeri immediately began biting Leary’s hand in the Italian northland. Things got real violent, and Leary’s best people either went over to Lazzeri, got out of town, or got dead.

  There were some notes on Tony Palmisano from Rusty Callahan. One from eight months earlier stated that Palmisano had moved up to become Lazzeri’s lieutenant in charge of muscle. Rusty warned that he not only ran the muscle but also enjoyed participating in the rough stuff. And Tom Holloway Jr. was hanging out with this guy?

  I drained the last of the Beam, picked up the phone and gave Rusty a call. He answered on the first ring and he had already heard about the shooting at Nick’s.

  “So Rusty, tell me about this Colin Hardy guy I dropped. What was his role with the Leary mob?”

  “He was a gun, and a good one.” The phone was quiet.

  I tapped the receiver hook several times. “You there, Rusty?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here. You knew Hardy wasn’t with Leary anymore didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t know the guy at all. The cops said that he was with Leary.”

  Rusty laughed that tenor-pitched laugh of his. “Who told you that? Hardy left Leary more than a year ago.”

  “Our old buddy, Detective Chief Myers.”

  Rusty tsked. “Figures. That copper keeps his brains below his belt. He got where he is swinging his nightstick with the police chief’s wife, not investigating crime. Any idea why Hardy was gunning for you?”

  “Yeah
, Rusty, it has to do with a case I’m working on. Listen, I might need your help on this one. Got time to meet me for lunch tomorrow?”

  Rusty said that his workload had been lagging and agreed to meet at Nick’s at twelve-thirty the next day. It was about time for me to grab a bite and get ready for my meet-up with Colleen Holloway at the Krazy Kat.

  The snub-nose Terrier still rested up under my car seat, so I slid the .22 into the pocket of my overcoat to make sure I made it to the car. The shadow might still be lurking and a fella can’t be too careful. I left a note for Jill that included a teaser that we now worked on a case for Tom Holloway. More tomorrow, I wrote. I would have liked to see her expression when she read it. I locked the office door, crossed the hall and pushed the down button at the elevator.

  Henry and his elevator arrived. He slid open the gate. “All done, Mr. Morris?”

  “Yeah, Henry, all done for the day. Say, you see anybody on this floor or in the lobby in the last few minutes?”

  “Only Mr. Passman from the insurance office headed home. Most everyone else already left. Why do you ask, Mr. Morris?”

  It’s hard to say how old Henry was, maybe 60 or maybe more. His red Rawlston Building uniform with its black velvet trim looked natty on Henry’s thin frame—made him look dignified. “I’ll tell you, Henry; somebody was poking around my floor about thirty minutes ago.”

  “One of those bad guys that hangs around you like them rats hangs around at the dump?” Henry smiled, and whenever he smiled I flashed on my piano lessons as a kid. I pictured myself staring at those eighty-eight keys, and either my instructor or my ma whacking knuckles on my head to improve my concentration. It never did. But I learned to play pretty well, and also learned the discipline of practice. For years, I saw those keys when I closed my eyes at night. Maybe the piano’s drudgery and the stinging knots on my head pushed me into my current line of work.

  Anyway, Henry’s smile projected a mirror of those keys I used to see when my eyes closed, his dark skin the ebony of that damned black piano and his smile of polished ivory. Henry’s teeth were as big and as white as teeth get in a man. He pulled us to a stop at the lobby.

  “Maybe he was one of those dump rats, Henry; I didn’t get a good look at him.” I reached up and put my hand on his shoulder. “Say, will you keep an eye out for strange folks snooping around the third floor over the next few days?”

  “Sure will, Mr. Morris. You got trouble?”

  “Maybe.” I reached into my pocket. “That makes you one of my investigators for this case then, Henry. Here’s an advance on your salary.” I handed him a folded fiver.

  He looked surprised and slipped it into his pocket, then opened the gate. I stepped out, hesitated, and turned back.

  “One more thing, Henry. You see somebody, you don’t do nothing. You look. You see. You remember. But you do nothing. You got that, Henry?”

  “Yes, suh, I’m your eyes here, not your muscle.” I had to laugh at that and he joined in.

  “And when Jill returns, tell her that you’re working for me and why, okay?”

  “Yes, suh, I will.”

  I parked in front of my flat, shut the door and stepped up on the walk. Mrs. Potter came waddling out in a flower print dress and a grease-stained apron carrying a similarly stained grocery sack in her arms. This lady cooks and bakes like a kitchen goddess. Before she reached me, her eyes began to leak.

  “You poor man. I know what that big dog meant to you. And I know that nothing can replace him.” She pushed the sack into my hands and I peeked in—a loaf of still-warm bread and some kind of roast, hot and wrapped in butcher’s paper. A meal for six, and it all smelled swell.

  “You need to eat, or you’ll waste away from grief. And I’ve put the call out, dear boy; we’re going to find you a puppy.”

  I thanked her for the eats and told her to hold off on any puppies. To me, Sammy was still my dog and I wouldn’t replace him, not for a while.

  Upstairs, I sat at the kitchen table and chowed down on Mrs. Potter’s grub. Tasty. But my dog wasn’t curled up under the table waiting for any food that might fall to the floor. And it seemed like, for Sammy, I always did manage to be a bit clumsy.

  After finishing the eats and tossing my dishes in the sink, I got cleaned up and went to the bedroom. The dwindling sunlight through the window spotlighted a splotch of blood on the sill that had been overlooked. Dried and sunbaked, it looked like a smear of chocolate some kid with messy hands might have left. I turned to the closet and thought about what I should wear.

  Then it struck me. How long had it been since I wondered what to wear to impress a dame? When was the last time the prospect of meeting up with a girl made me both anxious and uncomfortable?

  The jazz district glowed with snazzy neon, each club trying to lure patrons to their spot. And they had packed them in more than usual for a Wednesday night. Bernie Moten and Count Basie were playing at the Chesterfield Club, and that place looked full to the gills. I found no place for the Plymouth on Vine and ended up parking a block over on 20th. I slid the .32 Terrier into the back of my belt and walked the two blocks to the Krazy Kat. The doorman nodded my way, and I slipped him the four-bit cover at about eight-twenty. I checked my hat and overcoat with the girl, and some blonde in a Mary Pickford hair-do asked me if I wanted a table. I told her no.

  I grabbed a bourbon on the rocks at the bar and took a stroll. Some familiar faces spread around the place, but no Colleen. Back at the bar, I took a seat that gave me a view of the door. It was quarter-to-nine, and the broad was late. A colored quartet played up on the small stage: two horns, a piano, and drums. The sax player knew how to blow his horn. At nine, I waved to the bartender and he set me up with another. I swirled the caramel liquid around, letting the ice chill it just right, then downed it in one gulp and slapped it down on the bar. Louie, that was my bartender’s name, stepped over and poured another.

  “Keep ’em coming, Louie. It looks like I’ve been stood up.”

  Louie rolled his eyes and shouted “Dames” over the cornet player’s solo. We both laughed, and the guy next to me nodded and raised his glass in solidarity.

  The piano player struck up the Gershwin brothers’ new hit, But Not for Me. He crooned in a rich mellow voice:

  They’re writing songs of love, but not for me,

  A lucky star’s above, but not for me …

  From behind someone tapped me on the shoulder. I swiveled around, and she was there. She looked spectacular, her red gown diaphanous. I didn’t know exactly what the word meant, but the sound of it fit that gown. Her blonde bob flipped up on the left side. It made her look playful. And the rest looked good enough to eat.

  Before I could stand, she stepped between my straddled legs, pressed her hand on my chest and asked, “You dance, Mr. Morris?”

  “I can find my way around the floor. And call me Phil.” Without stepping back she took my hands, pulled me to my feet. You couldn’t slide a dime between us. She swiveled, and with her arm held behind her, her fingertips curled in mine, she led me to the dance floor. Dutifully, I followed, admiring her legs and where they were attached.

  On the floor, I took her hand in my left and pressed my right on the small of her back. The back of her gown plunged and my hand rested on cool soft skin. My fingers nestled in the valleys of her backbone. Her skin warmed to my touch.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” I asked.

  “Later,” she said and she rested her head on my shoulder. “Dance with me.”

  The spicy fragrance of her, or her perfume, or both, disoriented. But as we moved to Gershwin, it felt like we had danced together for a lifetime. She intuited each move, and I couldn’t be sure that I was leading anymore. Was this what it was like to dance with Ginger Rogers?

  As the song wound down and the piano player intoned although I can’t dismiss the memory of her kiss, Colleen pressed up against me and I felt something stir below. She ran her hand down my spine until it rested on my .32. She
brought her head up and scrutinized me, then whispered in my ear, “My, my, rods front and back. I hope you don’t plan to shoot me.”

  She brought her hand back up between my shoulder blades and returned her head to my shoulder. The music ended to polite applause. We joined in. Up on the stage, the group began something snappy and Colleen, on tiptoes, leaned into me and told me that she had Max, the proprietor, reserve a corner table. Once again, she led the way, and I followed, admiring the scenery.

  We reached the table—a booth—and she sat facing the band. I slid in across from her. The lady with the Pickford hair must have been hovering because she showed a moment later.

  She knew Colleen. They chatted about lady things, and I took an eyeball tour of the place looking for someone who might be a little too interested in what went on in our little corner. I divided my attention between Colleen and the crowd as much as is possible with a dame like her sitting across from me. Colleen ordered a gin and tonic and I another Beam on the rocks. I asked the Mary Pickford lady to check with Louie to see if I still had a drink at the bar, then leaned forward, shrugged my shoulders, turned my palms up and waited for Colleen.

  “Phil, I don’t know what you’ve been told about Tommy, what you know—” She stopped in mid-sentence. It was a question.

  “I know some,” I said. “But I figured you asked me here to tell me more, not poke me for what I already know.”

  Her look showed exasperation, and she took my left hand in both of hers. “No, it’s not that. It’s just that I know my father, and I know you’ve been instructed to keep him informed on your investigation …” She trailed off again.

  “Look, doll, I am the god of discretion.” My smile may have been disingenuous. Colleen looked at me in silence, head tilted slightly. Her eyes changed from blue to green and back again with the dance floor’s mirror ball flash.

  “Your father wants me to fill him in on the progress of the investigation. That’s all.” I patted her hand and pulled away, leaning back in the booth. “He doesn’t need to know everything. But if anyone around here does, it’s me. You agree?”