by David Mamet
“Teitelbaum?” Alan suggested.
“Teitelbaum blows his nose in his underwear. I didn’t, anybody see him at the funeral . . . ? I got to get in touch with O’Banion.”
“. . . But if Mrs. Weiss is in control . . . ?”
“She’s not in control. She is in control, she must, at some point, sell out to Teitelbaum, for O’Banion, or present the club to him, a peace offering, he doesn’t go out and kill her children.”
“I say she holds out, meaning it as a gesture of defiance.”
“No doubt,” Jimmy said. “Or as an homage to that fine conservative upbringing she received in the slums of Krakow.
“Let her come tonight, and tell me, she wants the joint closed, her and her lawyers, that we may demur, and be seen on the rational side of the argument. She hated the motherfucker. She wants to mourn, let her go gash her flesh. Call our broad, tell her she’s going on tonight. Call the combo. Get someone to patch up that wall. Fuck it, we open up. Mr. O’Banion says otherwise, I’ll blame it on you.”
Chapter 6
The old City Room hands’ principle was “The story’s a lemon: squeeze it dry.”
The principle obtained in every aspect of the job. The publishers and the advertisers set the tone: trading ad revenue for promotions disguised as news. The reporters equally felt themselves entitled to whatever copy they could convert into preference, sex, or cash.
Mike, in his early days, had written the odd “marvel of science” half column about some new radio or refrigerator, passing off as news that which was obviously bribery.
The reporters shook down the stadium owners, trading good coverage of the local teams for tickets, and trading the tickets for cash. Likewise it was the reporters’ vail to exploit and be exploited by the town’s showmen. A supportive notice, or the promise of same, was always good not only for extra tickets to the show, but for an introduction backstage, to the chorus girls.
But the most fungible of all was the puff piece: advertisement passing as news, on the star’s new car, beauty tip, favorite food. These valentines, as they were known, were not only good in trade, or as sexual leverage, but, correctly exploited, redeemable for cash.
The neophyte fenced with the public relations man, pretending virginity; the seasoned said, “How much?” and struck a hard bargain. The observed rule was “They asked, they’ve got to pay.” Reporters loved corruption. It was not only the game’s rule, but its complete playbook.
All had heard of the fellow at the American who had, in fact, bedded a Very Famous Film Star on her trip west.
He’d been taking a walk and bummed a smoke from the bellman curbside at the Drake Hotel. The bellman dropped the name of the famous new arrival; the reporter called up to the suite and improvised his pitch.
He said he was writing a piece on Rags to Riches; his particular hook, how the star’s discipline and virtues learned on the farm led to and sustained her success in the wider world of film. He knew it was thin, but he’d made it up on the spot, and he was hungry.
A woman’s voice told him to come up. He assumed it was the maid, but it was, in fact, the movie star, drunk as a lord, and randy beyond even his wide experience.
He’d come to, sick as a dog, in her compartment on the Super Chief, at a whistle-stop in Ashton, Wyoming. He was awakened by the rough handling of two railroad cops, under the direction of her manager. They threw him off the train, with a caution that if anything of the escapade appeared in print he would be killed. But he’d retained his memories, the bragging rights, and the supportive evidence of two pair of her monogrammed lace panties.
All supposed he carried them, constantly, in the lapel pocket of his coat. But he needed to show no one. He had shown them once, and the respect of the community was, from his return, constant and sincere.
He’d been invited to her hotel room because of a lapse in her security. Her manager, a hophead, had been in the adjoining room getting fixed, and so unable to protect his charge from her proclivities. The manager missed the train, and the ensuing two days, then rented a plane and caught up with the pair in Wyoming.
All in the Sally Port agreed that the plane was hardly sporting; Parlow bemoaned a civilization which, in addition to its undoubted blessings, carved out the leisurely heart of the past.
The American’s fellow possessed status unlimited and was, as Parlow had said, like unto those who, glorious in battle, see, when they speak, that all men must hold their tongues. Mike scolded him.
“That’s the one quote of Shakespeare everyone knows,” he said. “And it don’t even fit. You disappoint me.”
“I was using it ironically,” Parlow said.
Status, in the Sally Port, was awarded for the exploit, for the quip, for the unpunished transgression against law or policy, for extortion, and, occasionally, for writing.
The award for writing was not given for reportage, which came under the heading of intuition, hard work, intrepidity, or luck. These Men on the Scene called it in; their stories were structured and rewritten by that group generally known as “those tin-eared time-servers and tools of the rich,” the first being Rewrite men, and the latter editors.
It was the reporters’ daily job to be brash and unfeeling, to steal the photo portrait of the slaughtered infant from the mother’s bureau; to taunt the spouse murderer into an interesting outburst; to withhold pity for the youth sentenced to death. It was their job to be not only brave but foolhardy. Covering the shootout, the school fire, the flood, the train wreck.
It was the ethos that pertained in France. There, the fliers retold only those stories which reflected discredit upon them, their skills, and their courage. All escapes were ascribed to luck; the well-performed maneuver, kill, landing was confessed to’ve been accomplished with the eyes closed.
In the Sally Port, as in France, credit was awarded not for the feats, but for the worth of the attendant story. But highest status—equal to that of him of the Panty Raid, as it was called—accrued only to him who could actually write.
Mike had covered the All Saints Catholic School fire. Twenty-two schoolgirls had died, screaming, behind the barred second-floor windows. Two firefighters had burned to death, swinging their axes at the masonry. Mike had seen it all. He’d come into the City Room, his eyes red, stinking of smoke. He’d gone to his desk and downed half a bottle of scotch. Poochy had dropped his film at the photo lab and come up to the City Room, as he needed to be with someone who was there.
Mike had put a sheet in the typewriter, and was staring at it. Poochy was still in his overcoat. The hem of the coat was burned. It was still dripping water. He looked at Mike and shook his head. Mike handed him the bottle. Mike began to type.
Mike filed the story and it ran the next morning, on page 1, under his byline.
When he came to work, his way to his desk took him through the Compositors’ Room. Work stopped as he walked through the room. Each man began tapping his composing stick against the desk.
Mike walked to his desk through the awed silence of the City Room. He sat quiet at his desk for a quarter hour and went home.
The papers had hit the streets and the newsboys were crying the fire headlines. Mike let himself into the apartment house door and climbed the two flights to his room. Annie was on the landing waiting for him.
Chapter 7
Peekaboo was of that color the age knew as high yellow. She had graduated, somewhere in the past, from whore to madam, and had run her house, the Ace of Spades on South Michigan Avenue, since the Armistice. In her wandering days as a whore she’d found it revenue-effective and appropriate to indulge in jack-rolling.
She’d abandoned the practice with her settlement in Chicago during the War, and now considered herself an honest woman, who gave value for the money. She was forty-eight years old, and dressed, as usual, in a simple gray cashmere frock.
She left the house kitchen and walked into the narrow hall, which, like the rest of the house, bore the traditional deep-flocked red
wallpaper.
She glanced into the parlor.
There were two fellows, whites, as were all her customers, from, she guessed, the high South, perhaps Missouri, laughing too loud at some feminine remark or gesture, they having decided that the evening’s theme would be the black girls’ naïveté.
The three candidates she’d sent down were, she thought, doing well, as they should, having been selected for their affability.
“Good,” she thought. She continued through the hall toward the back of the house. The front doorbell rang, and she turned.
Marcus, the houseman, looked up at her, meaning, Are you here? She raised one shoulder and a hand to indicate, How would you expect me to know, until I know who it is?
He took the rebuke in good form, unfolded himself from his chair, and stepped through the doors and into the vestibule. He closed the doors behind him. The doorbell rang again.
Marcus moved to the left side of the door. He reached with his right hand and opened the Judas hole, viewing the entranceway from the side.
Thus protected from a possible admonitory shot to the head, he saw a youngish man in an overcoat, in front of the peephole, stamping his feet for warmth.
He slid the wood panel closed, came around to the door’s front, and looked through the peephole. “Hold on a minute,” he said.
He opened the vestibule door and called to Peekaboo. “It’s Mike Hodge,” he said.
“In the kitchen,” Peekaboo said.
Four of the girls were in the kitchen. One was actually sick; one was shamming, but Peekaboo had let her slide rather than endure the tears and protestations of mistreatment that would have followed a demand to work. The girl would have to go, and go quickly, but Peekaboo did not want to dismiss her when she was, though only notionally, ill—the unspoken threat of appeals to outraged sisterhood staying Peekaboo’s hand, as the girl knew it would.
“Well, good,” Peekaboo thought. “She wins one, I win one. Order is maintained, and what the fuck.”
The two other girls were in working gear. They sipped their coffee out of chipped navy mugs, perched primly in the breakfast nook, careful of the drape of their gowns.
“How many times do I have to tell you,” Peekaboo said, “to not sit in the kitchen?”
“We wanted a cup of coffee,” the younger one said.
“You wanted a cup of coffee, all you had to do was ask for it,” Peekaboo said.
“We didn’t want to make extra work for Marcus,” the younger one said.
“What is there about a whore,” Peekaboo thought, “makes it impossible to tell the truth”—Mike came into the kitchen—“about any-fucking-thing whether or not . . . ?”
“Hello, old-timer,” Mike said to Peekaboo.
The two on-duty girls nodded vaguely at him, and moved off with their coffee cups, toward the door to the back room. The two casualties lowered their eyes, the goldbrick actually clutching to her throat the collar of her nightgown.
“For the love of Christ,” Peekaboo thought.
“You know what you bitches need?” she said. Her remorse at her broken vow of imperturbability added to her rage.
“You need, as in the old days, some boss-nigger with a stick to motherfuck your no-good, ‘eat my food’ black asses, to some semblance of gratitude, ’til you thank God for the roof over your no-good, frowsty . . .” She collected herself. “Get the fuck out of here, and wash your hair,” she said. The two girls left the kitchen.
“Never criticize in front of strangers,” Mike said.
“And you better stay away from that Irish girl,” Peekaboo said. “’Cause if I know about it, the whole world is waiting for the shoe to drop.”
“World is waiting for the sunrise,” Mike said.
“Yes, I know. I heard it on the radio. What’re you doin’ these days?”
“I’m looking for a line on who did Jackie Weiss.”
“Well, that’s another good idea,” Peekaboo said. “Howzbout this: two Sheenies from Detroit, and I’ll throw in the phone book.”
“Certainly,” Mike said.
“Then, what do you want a line on, who’s going to run the Chez?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“I want to know: why didn’t he ‘go’ for it?”
“Why didn’t he go for it?” Peekaboo mused. “Mayhap he was feeling secure and unthreatened in his native lair, or somesuch, and he felt . . . protected. You know, Mike, about the protective mechanism of, what do they call you, ‘males’? I been hearing about it my whole life, ’cept when it’s some girl you got tired of, some wife don’t wind your clock anymore, or mouthed off, or she looked at you cross-eyed over the oatmeal. And you beat the shit out of her.”
Marcus had walked into the kitchen, carrying a large camel-hair coat and a man’s white soft-collar shirt. He opened the cleaning cupboard. “Ammonia,” he said.
“Whazzit, lipstick?” Peekaboo said.
“It’s lipstick.”
She sighed. “I’m gonna, I swear to God, what mindless hussy, have I got to fucken shoot her, to remember: They done, you paid? They get dressed? They done with you, you done with them. Don’t kiss ’em goodbye.”
She took the coat from Marcus and examined it. It was a heavy, expensive gray coat, new-bought for winter. A small enamel shamrock pin was stuck in the lapel. It had a thin but quite noticeable smear of red lipstick on the collar. She nodded, and Marcus showed her the shirt, its collar similarly stained.
“Ammonia on the coat,” she said. “The collar, try alcohol first; do we have time to wash it, ’fore we send him home?”
Marcus shook his head. “Late already.”
“Nice coat,” Mike said. He looked at the label. “Marshall Field’s,” he said. “Camel hair. Lord Raglan.”
“That’s the sleeves,” Marcus said. He pointed out the diagonal set of the sleeves.
“We got another spare shirt we can give him, or run out right now?” Peekaboo asked. Marcus shook his head.
He took a dish towel, saturated it with ammonia, and laid it flat on the kitchen table. He put the overcoat collar, stain down, over it; he looked up at the pots hanging over the worktable. Peekaboo nodded. He took down a casserole pot and laid it over the coat, to press the collar down on the towel.
“Coat going to stink,” he said.
“Yeah, well, yeah, the coat’s gonna stink,” Peekaboo said. “The smart move, he want to be sure, is burn it with a cigar. Sm’by, at the club, in conversation, burned his coat.”
“What about the shirt?” Mike said.
“Alright,” Peekaboo said. She lifted the casserole pot, and picked up the coat. “Here’s what he did, you see? He’s coming back from the Turkish baths: wants to be fresh for his wife, what does he do . . . ?”
“He shaves,” Mike said.
“Michael,” said Peekaboo, “for a white man, you ain’t quite so dumb as someone would expect.
“Marcus,” she said. “You take your razor . . .”
“He won’ let me,” Marcus said.
“You tell him he will let you, r’he ain’t comin’ back no more, n’you nick him, the . . .” She looked at the coat. “The right side of his face. His right side, do you understand?” Marcus began to resent the insult.
“. . . smarter minds than you, alright,” Peekaboo said. “Listen and learn: his right side. You drip some of the blood: over the lipstick stain, his shirt collar, you drip some of it, over the stain, his coat; you pour alcohol over the cut, you pat it dry with a clean towel, you use your styptic pencil, you pat it dry, you cover it with a court plaster.”
“Coat still stinks of ammonia,” Marcus said.
“They used it, at the baths, try to get the blood out,” Peekaboo said. Mike began to offer what he obviously thought was a wise suggestion.
Peekaboo held up a finger to forestall him. “Which baths he goes to?” she said.
“I think, likely, the Kedzie Baths,” Marcus said. “Is where most of ’em goes.”<
br />
“You find out,” Peekaboo said. “We know the man there? The Kedzie.”
“Yes, I do,” Marcus said.
“Who is that?”
“George White,” Marcus said.
“Yeah—that’s right,” Peekaboo said. “Call him, ’n’ tell him what happened, what’s there in it for him, tell him I owe him five dollars, the bloodshed he witnessed.”
Marcus said, “Yes, ma’am,” and took the clothing out of the room.
“Who goes there?” Mike asked.
“What?” Peekaboo said.
“Most of ’em go there, the Kedzie Baths, Marcus said . . .”
“The Irish,” Peekaboo said. She pointed to the shamrock pin on the coat’s lapel, as if demonstrating the obvious to a small child. “Yeah, the Irish—they all go there,” she said.
“Would she call them, the wife?” Mike said.
“Man’s wife? Would she call the baths?”
“Yes.”
“His wife?” Peekaboo said. “She might. What does it cost to be prepared?”
“Cost you five dollars,” Mike said.
“I’ll pass it on,” Peekaboo said. “Plus which, thing you don’t ever want to do, get in the habit being sloppy.”
“Well, but, you can’t chase it down ’til the end of time,” Mike said.
“You chase it down, to the limits,” Peekaboo said, “your opponent’s mentality. This bitch, now, she suspected her husband—and be sure she does—he says, ‘I cut it shaving, at the baths,’ she calls the baths, talks to some fella, all she knows, is some poor nigger, up from Alabama, too dumb to lie . . . she’s content. Don’t go no further. Why should she?”
“To find out the truth?” Mike said.
“She knows the truth,” Peekaboo said. “She needs to be assured her husband is observing the proprieties.”
Mike first met Peekaboo on Armistice Day 1925. Parlow had come into a small inheritance and Mike agreed to help him blow it. They were celebrating in an alcove table, in the small dining room of the Ace of Spades. A waiter stood at the table’s end. Across the dining room, the large doors gave onto the parlor. In the parlor various white men, most middle-aged, most portly, some prominent, and all well-to-do, sat talking with the girls.
