New York Nocturne

by Walter Satterthwait

  “That the opposing team, I assume, would score no more than a single hit during the course of the game.”

  “Yes. And that’s exactly what happened. A one-hitter. When I—”

  Someone knocked at the door.

  “Come in,” Mr. Madden called out.

  The door opened and a waiter entered, a black man but not the same waiter who had taken our order. He carried two drinks on his tray: my Coca-Cola and Miss Lizzie’s gin fizz.

  “Thank you, Paul,” said Mr. Madden. “Could you set up a table for our guests?”

  The waiter slipped the tray onto the end table beside Miss Lizzie, circled to the other table, slid it out, and arranged it in front of us. He then returned to his tray, put paper napkins on the table before us, and placed a glass atop each napkin. Miss Lizzie’s straw, this time, was yellow.

  After the waiter left, Mr. Madden nodded to the drinks. “Please,” he said.

  I picked up my Coke. Miss Lizzie sat forward and lifted her drink. Holding the napkin to the glass’s bottom, she sat back. She lowered her head, put the straw between her lips, and took a sip.

  “It’s all right?” Mr. Madden asked her. “The drink?”

  Her head rose. “Most refreshing,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Now. Where was I?”

  “A one-hitter,” said Miss Lizzie. “Mr. Johnson had pitched it, and John had lost his bet.”

  “Yes. When I saw John, I reminded him about it.” He smiled. “If John had a flaw, it was his competitiveness. He hated to lose. Just absolutely hated it.” He turned to me. “And that was why he was so grumpy when he left.”

  “I don’t suppose,” said Miss Lizzie, stirring her drink with the straw, “that you kept any record of the bet?”

  “Come now, Miss Cabot. No one keeps a record of sports bets.”

  “For how much was it?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “Rather a large bet.” She sipped her drink again.

  “I could afford it. So could he.”

  “And he paid you how? By check?”

  “In cash.” He smiled. “You’ll find that very few people are willing to accept a check for a sports bet.”

  “You were afraid that John might cancel his?”

  “The subject never came up. As I said, bets are paid in cash. John knew that. He was carrying the cash, and he gave it to me.”

  “But you had to remind him of the bet, you said. So presumably he wasn’t carrying the cash in order to pay you.”

  “John always carried quite a lot of cash. I’d warned him against it—several times, actually. New York can be a dangerous city.”

  “But this time his carrying it worked to your advantage.”

  He frowned. “I can promise you, Miss Cabot, that if my giving up the cash could somehow bring John back, I’d give it up in a second.”

  She nodded. “Where did you first meet John, Mr. Madden?”

  “Here. In the club. As a customer.”

  “And the two of you became friends?” Another sip of gin fizz.

  “Friends? We knew each other. I like to think that we enjoyed each other’s company. We were comfortable acquaintances, let’s say.”

  “Do you know Mr. Fay? At the El Fay club?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “Do you think him a honest man?”

  Another smile. “So long as honesty is in his own best interests. But to some extent, Miss Cabot, that’s probably true of us all.”

  “Perhaps.” She lowered her head and sipped at her drink.

  “Why do you ask?” he said.

  “John was with him on Friday night, before he came here. Mr. Fay maintains that John and he discussed peanut futures.”

  “That’s possible, I suppose. But there is an oversupply of peanuts at the moment. John surely knew that.”

  “According to Mr. Fay, John advised him to invest in peanut futures.”

  He frowned. “That I find unlikely.”

  “As do I,” she said. She sipped her drink, and the straw rasped as the last of the gin fizz disappeared. “Excuse me,” she said.

  Mr. Madden smiled.

  She leaned forward and set the glass back on the table. “Do you know anything about John’s travels, Mr. Madden?”

  “His travels?”

  “He spent quite a lot of time outside the country. France, Germany. Last year he spent a month in China.”

  He smiled. “I can’t imagine why. I understand that the facilities there are a bit primitive.”

  “He never mentioned the travel to you?”

  “No.”

  “And you can think,” she said, “of no one who might have wished him harm?”

  “No one.” He sat back and put his arms along the arms of his chair. “But suppose I do this. Suppose I make a few telephone calls. There are people in town who may know something.”

  “People who knew John?”

  “People who knew of John.”

  “Was John so well known, Mr. Madden?”

  “He was wealthy. He was out and about on a fairly regular basis. There are individuals who make it their business to know about such people.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Is there some way I can get in touch with you?”

  “Probably not,” she said. “Amanda and I will be moving about the city for the next few days. Would you object to my getting in touch with you?”

  “Not at all. I’ll start telephoning right now. But I shouldn’t expect any immediate answers. This may take a while.”

  “I understand.”

  “Why don’t you call me in two or three days?”

  “I shall.”

  Mr. Madden reached into the inside pocket of his white dinner jacket and pulled out a business card. He stood and walked around the desk to hand it to Miss Lizzie. “It’s my private number,” he told her. “If I’m not there, leave a message and I’ll get back to you within ten minutes.”

  Miss Lizzie opened her purse and slipped the card inside. “I’ll call you sometime in the next two or three days, then.”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  Although we could not know it then, we did not have two or three days.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When we returned to the table, Mr. Liebowitz was smiling and Mrs. Parker was laughing. Miss West was sitting back in her chair, slightly sideways, her handsome legs crossed, her smooth left arm hooked casually over the chair’s back. She was sipping from a tulip glass of champagne. Somehow a bottle of Dom Perignon and an ice bucket had blossomed in the center of the table.

  As we sat down, Mrs. Parker leaned toward Miss Lizzie and said, “Did you know that Mr. Madden has seven bullets in him?”

  “No,” said Miss Lizzie. “He failed to mention that.” She turned to Miss West, who had obviously been the source of this information. “He wears them very well.”

  “I’ll say,” said Miss West. Her Brooklyn drawl was slow and sultry, very different from the cramped finishing-school drawl of Mrs. Parker. “They definitely don’t have any effect on his performance.”

  Miss Lizzie smiled. “He’s a lucky man.”

  “Owney,” she said, “makes his own luck.”

  “I imagine that’s true. By the way, he asked me to tell you that he’d be a few more minutes.”

  Miss West shrugged her white shoulders. “I’ll live.”

  “Mae’s a playwright,” announced Mrs. Parker.

  “Indeed?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “Tell her the name of your play,” said Mrs. Parker.

  “The Hussy,” said Miss West. With her left hand, she gently fluffed at her bright blonde hair. “It’s by way of being autobiographical.”

  “You do yourself a disservice, I’m sure.�
��

  Miss West smiled, a slow languorous smile. “I never do myself a disservice,” she said.

  “Has the play been produced?”

  “I’m workin’ on it. You gotta strike while the iron is hot.” She looked at Mr. Liebowitz and smiled that smile again. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that the private detective’s shiny scalp turned slightly pink. “A hundred years from now,” she said, “we’re all gonna be memories.”

  “In the long run,” said Miss Lizzie, smiling, “perhaps being a memory is not such a bad thing after all.”

  Miss West looked at her, and then she grinned. “You know, honey, you got something there.”

  “What is the play about?” Miss Lizzie asked her.

  “A lady of easy virtue. She climbs up the social ladder. Wrong by wrong.”

  Miss Lizzie smiled again.

  Mrs. Parker said, “Mae’s also a singer and a dancer.”

  “In this town,” Miss West said, “you gotta have a broad range. Even more so, naturally, when you’re a broad.”

  Mrs. Parker said, “Variety—it was Variety, wasn’t it, Mae?”

  “Variety, that’s right, yeah. I’ve always liked Variety.”

  “Variety said she did the best shimmy on Broadway.”

  “Not the best,” corrected Miss West. “The rawest.” She said it proudly.

  “And what is a shimmy, exactly?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “It’s the kind of dance,” said Miss West, “that separates the men from the boys. And then turns both of them, alakazam, into the other.”

  “That must be a very useful social skill.”

  Miss West laughed, and then she narrowed her eyes. “Say,” she said, “you’re all right, Liz. You mind if I call you Liz?”

  I had been taking a drink from my glass of water. I nearly drowned.

  “Not at all,” said Miss Lizzie. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Yes,” I said and coughed again into my hand. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Sorry to be so long, Mae.” It was Mr. Madden, suddenly standing beside my chair.

  “That’s okay,” said Miss West, setting her glass on the table. “We’ve been chewin’ the fat like a batch of brownies.”

  She stood, smoothed down her dress, stepped back from the table, and then looked around at us, smiling. “It’s been swell.” To Miss Lizzie she said, “I’ll see you around, maybe.”

  “I should like that.”

  “Don’t forget to call me,” Mr. Madden told Miss Lizzie.

  “I shan’t.”

  “The drinks are on me, by the way.”

  “I generally prefer to pay for my own,” she said.

  He smiled. “Unfortunately, tonight you can’t.”

  “Very well. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. Good evening.”

  “Good evening,” Miss Lizzie replied.

  The two of them turned and moved in tandem down the steps to the dance floor, Miss West’s round hips swaying, Mr. Madden’s fingers resting lightly on the exposed white skin of her back.

  “She’s amazing,” said Mrs. Parker. “I hate her.” She leaned toward Miss Lizzie. “She says she speaks two languages: English and body.”

  “Both of them fluently, it would appear.”

  Mrs. Parker laughed.

  I asked Mr. Liebowitz, “How does she know Mr. Madden?”

  “Madden owns the hotel that Miss West’s mother manages. She met him there, she says.”

  “He owns a hotel as well?” said Miss Lizzie. “Mr. Madden is doing very well for himself.”

  “If I could walk like that,” said Mrs. Parker, looking off toward Miss West, “I’d never have to write another word.”

  “Did Madden say anything helpful?” asked Mr. Liebowitz.

  Miss Lizzie recounted what Mr. Madden had told us.

  As she did, Mrs. Parker seemed distracted. She looked off, looked down, and crossed her arms. She yawned once, delicately, putting her tiny stiff hand before her mouth. She lit a cigarette and let it burn, untouched, down to a fragile gray finger of ash. Several times she blinked her eyes in a quick little burst, as though trying to keep herself awake.

  At the end, Mr. Liebowitz asked Miss Lizzie, “Do you believe him?”

  “No,” she said. “And neither does Amanda.”

  Mrs. Parker looked up from the tablecloth. “And neither do I,” she said.

  Mr. Liebowitz turned to me. “Why not?”

  “Well,” I said. “John liked sports. He knew about prizefighting, and he probably knew about baseball. Maybe he made bets, but I don’t believe that if he made a bet, he’d be so . . . cheap about paying it.”

  He said, “You were with him for only a week, Amanda. People can surprise us, even after years, by what they do. By who they are.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” said Mrs. Parker. She looked off, idly, toward the bandstand.

  “Yes, but I just can’t see him doing that. And Mr. Madden said John was grumpy on Friday night. He was a whole lot more than grumpy. He was really upset. I don’t think it was a bet.”

  He looked at Miss Lizzie.

  “I agree,” she said. “Mr. Madden was entirely too smooth.”

  “You know,” he said, “Walter Johnson did pitch a one-hitter a few weeks ago. Against the White Sox.”

  “That does not surprise me. And it would not surprise me to learn that Mr. Madden had in fact made a wager on the game. But he did not necessarily make it with John.”

  Mr. Liebowitz nodded. “We’re not making much progress.”

  “Well,” she said, “we do know that Mr. Madden has excellent taste in art. He has a Renoir hanging on the wall of his office.”

  “Really?” I said. “That was a Renoir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think it was real?”

  “More real, I expect, than Mr. Madden himself.” She turned to Mr. Liebowitz. “And we know that both he and Mr. Fay are lying. We know that they’re both deliberately distancing themselves from John. Each of them maintains that John was merely a customer.”

  “But perhaps he was.”

  “He had a private discussion with each of them on Friday night. How many other customers can say the same? Do you see Mr. Fay as the sort of man who mingles with his customers?”

  “He mingled with you and Amanda.”

  “Long enough to pacify us,” she said. “Or so he thought.”

  He sat back and looked at his watch. “Midnight,” he said. “Do we quit now or should we make one more stop?”

  “One more stop?” said Miss Lizzie. “Which?”

  I looked at Mrs. Parker. With her head lowered, she was staring idly again at the tablecloth.

  “Do you remember Mrs. Norman?” said Mr. Liebowitz. “Jeanelle Norman? Mr. Burton’s cleaning woman—Albert mentioned her.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was able to reach her this afternoon. We can go talk to her if you want. She lives only a few blocks away.”

  “At this hour?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “She’ll be there,” he said and smiled. “And we won’t be intruding. She’s having a rent party.”

  Mrs. Parker looked up, beaming. “A rent party,” she said. “Now there’s an idea.”

  “It’s rather late,” said Miss Lizzie. “Amanda?”

  “I’m fine. I’d love to go.”

  “Very well, then.” She took a deep breath and sighed then turned to Mr. Liebowitz. “Let us go meet Mrs. Norman.”

  When we were all back in the Cadillac, once again with Robert at the wheel and Mrs. Parker sitting beside him, Mr. Liebowitz explained what a rent party was.

  At that time, rents in Harlem were higher than they were in most of Manhattan, but black people were essentially not permitted to l
ive anywhere else in the city. In order to pay the rent, some of them organized parties in their apartments. Guests paid to get in, and they received free drinks and, at some of the parties, free entertainment.

  Mr. Liebowitz leaned forward. “Have I put that accurately, Robert?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Robert over his shoulder.

  “And white people are allowed in, Robert?” I asked.

  “At some of them, miss.”

  “They are at this one,” said Mr. Liebowitz. “I asked Mrs. Norman.”

  “Goody,” said Mrs. Parker.

  “Robert?” said Miss Lizzie.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Did you find your friend?” Miss Lizzie asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. My friend didn’t really know Mr. Burton. Some of the customers, the men, they like to meet with the dancers. On the side. Secretly. You understand what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Burton didn’t do that.”

  “What about Mr. Madden? How did he acquire the club?”

  “The story is that Arnold Rothstein lent him the money, ma’am, after Mr. Madden got out of prison.”

  “Really.” She turned to Mr. Liebowitz. “I thought that Mr. Rothstein was merely a gambler.”

  “There’s no merely about Arnold Rothstein,” he said. “He’s a gambler, yes. But he’s one of the biggest and most successful gamblers in New York City. And I’ve heard that he does invest in businesses now and then—restaurants, nightclubs, Broadway shows.”

  “Robert,” said Miss Lizzie, “does Mr. Rothstein have a continuing interest in the club?”

  “My friend says he does, ma’am. It’s common knowledge.”

  “He’s an impressive man,” said Mr. Liebowitz. “There are a thousand stories about him. Some of them may even be true.”

  “What sort of stories?”

  “Fixing the World Series. Shooting a couple of policemen and getting away with it. Arranging the first delivery of bootleg whiskey from Scotland. Providing bail for all the bootleggers arrested in the city—at exorbitant interest rates.”

  Miss Lizzie smiled. “The Napoleon of Crime.”

  “My own favorite is the one about the pool game.”