Black Hats

by Max Allan Collins

  She groaned. “Things are bad. When you wheel out ‘my darling child,’ I know I’m in for a horse-manure bath.”

  “Sadie…”

  “So, Wyatt, if ‘Katherine Cummings’ calls again, what shall I tell her? That the five hundred she paid you to talk sense to her wayward son, and get him out of the speakeasy business, has bankrolled you into a partnership with him? That you hope to expand past illegal hootch into illegal gambling?”

  “For Christ’s sake, woman, tell her nothing. Lie if need be.”

  “Well, the sinful omissions are pilin’ up like poker chips, aren’t they? Wyatt, you finish up out there and come home. You’ve had three calls from Bill Hart. Your last chance to hit it big isn’t playing cowboys and Indians in the Wild, Wild East—come west, old fart, and sell your life story to the movies, why don’t you?”

  “Sadie…I have to finish up here. I’ll call you next week.”

  “Well, why don’t I just sit here by the phone, then, and wait for that delightful gesture.”

  “…How’s Earpie doing?”

  “Your dog misses you more than I do. Wyatt.…”

  “Yes?”

  “Try not to get killed.”

  She said goodbye and he did, too, and hung up. The door onto the hallway was open and he wished he’d closed it before making the call; even from just his half of the conversation, embarrassment would not be at a shortage.

  Absent the restaurant’s chef and his assistants, Dixie—with the help of Bill the porter—had been doing all the cooking. Wyatt doubted your average chorus girl could handle pots and pans and stoves the way Dix did, but not all chorus girls were from Iowa. He made sure to compliment her, and even accompanied the kid to a grocery store several blocks away, pleasant bodyguard work at that.

  Once, carrying a brown bag of groceries for her, he said, “What made you want to go into show business?”

  “I was in plays in junior high and high school,” she said, also carrying a brown bag. In street clothes and without the jazz baby make-up, she just looked a human, an attractive one, but a human.

  “And you won beauty contests, I reckon,” he said.

  “Yes. One came with a screen test. I left town with a big fuss about me, all sorts of ballyhoo. So I just can’t go back.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “No. Not really. But I’m not very good, am I?”

  “Hell, child, you’re cute as a box of kittens.”

  “Yeah, and just as talented.”

  “What about that screen test?”

  “I took it. A little studio on Long Island. Producer tried to make me in his office. I turned him down. Studio did me the same service.”

  Wyatt liked the girl—she wasn’t an ambitious witch, which was what you found if you scratched the powdered surface of most show-business femmes. Just a nice smalltown kid knocking around the edges of the big city, coasting on her looks.

  He was having a cup of coffee in the big white modern kitchen while she was starting to get lunch ready for the brownstone’s residents, beef stew, when a milkman made his delivery through the back door.

  The milkman, a redheaded character in his twenties with freckles exploding all over his puss, wore a black cap, white blouse and black trousers. The cap and the back of his shirt both had stitched droste dairy. He came in and helped Dixie load up the icebox with ten cold-sweating quart bottles with wire-fastened heavy-paper caps out of his big wire-and-wood case. Helping Dixie load was probably not part of his job, but the answer to his helpfulness likely lay in the goofy smile he wore, and the way his eyes didn’t leave some part or other of her body.

  “Where’s your horse?” Wyatt asked the redheaded boy, knowing the four-foot easement behind the building would not exactly accommodate a milk wagon and its steed.

  The kid grinned; his teeth were not the color of milk. “Aw, Bessie’s over on West Fifty-third. There’s a warehouse driveway over there I can leave her in, while I cut down the passageway. This brownstone’s my only delivery on Fifty-second, in fact it’s the only building we deliver to in the fifties.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, it’s Klingman Dairy territory.”

  “Then why don’t we get our milk from Klingman?”

  Suddenly the redheaded kid looked nervous. “You’d have to ask Mr. Holliday that.” Then, to Dixie, he said, “Have Mr. Holliday let us know when he wants his regular deliveries started back up.”

  Then the redheaded kid departed, lugging his case—now filled with clinking empty bottles—and Wyatt sat thinking as he slowly finished his coffee, while Dixie cut carrots.

  Wyatt asked, “Dix, why does a delivery boy delivering milk remind a customer to ask if he wants delivery service started again?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. She was cutting celery now. “That’s at least one more ‘delivery’ than I can make sense of.”

  “Me too,” Wyatt said.

  On Friday afternoon, just a little under a week since the “raid” (as Frankie Yale had put it), the club was its old self, none the worse for wear with the exception of a few paintings and nicknacks that had as yet to be replaced, and the lingering odor of fresh paint.

  Texas Guinan dropped by to check out the progress; she had stopped in last week and saw the club at its shot-up worst, and was very pleased to see her domain recognizably itself again.

  She was wearing a dark blue dress with tiny white polka dots, simple but clinging nicely to her generous figure, with only a couple of strings of pearls to hint at her stage persona. A big beaded handbag was slung over her shoulder, and a cloche hat could not contain her wealth of blonde curls.

  Hands on her hips, pirouetting to appraise the joint, Tex said, “Well, the little elves have sure as hell done their work! How’s our young cobbler feel about it?”

  Wyatt alone was down here keeping her company—the carpenters and painters had cleared out, and “cobbler” Johnny was upstairs talking to his chef, who had stopped by for the first time since the shooting.

  Wyatt, in a black coat and trousers and white shirt and string tie, gestured to a nearby table with checkered cloth and chairs, and they sat. The basement club was naturally cool.

  “Johnny’s pleased with the place,” Wyatt said. “Nobody gouged him, and look how we’re back to normal.”

  Her mouth was smiling but her eyes weren’t. “Are we? Back to normal?”

  Wyatt twitched a frown. “Then you know about what Johnny did to that kid Capone?”

  “Of course I know about it.”

  “Little Dixie told you, I suppose.”

  Tex’s laughter echoed in the empty club. “Hell, Wyatt, everybody in town knows! Winchell put it in his column—didn’t name names, but certain blanks ain’t that tough to fill in.”

  “I suppose not.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. “I just wanna know if it’s safe to bring my girls in here. Me, I’m a grown-up woman, and I can take care of myself. But most of those girls, well, they may now and then advance their careers on their backs, but in their way, they’re still kids, innocent kids, and I don’t wanna see ’em get hurt.”

  “Me either.”

  Tex froze for a moment. Then her eyelashes batted, as if she were whipping him with them. “ ‘Me either?’ That’s all you have to say, after I ask you a question twice as long as the goddamn Gettysburg Address?”

  “I don’t think they’re in any danger.”

  She sighed. He enjoyed what the sigh did to her breasts under the white-dotted blue cloth, but tried not to make it obvious.

  She said, “Why don’t you?”

  “Why don’t I what?”

  “Think they’re in danger! Wyatt, stop looking at my tits and concentrate. Are my girls at risk here?”

  His eyes met hers. “No.”

  “My God, I oughta get that dentist Johnny down here!”

  “Why?”

  “Getting anything out of you is like pulling goddamn fuckin’ teeth
!”

  “Sometimes your language is less than lady-like.”

  “Is it, really?”

  He gestured. “Capone came around and shot up the place well after closing, when no customers or staff were around—he shot things, not people.”

  “That was before Johnny carved his fat face up.”

  “True enough. But Capone is not the boss—Yale is. I watched Frankie Yale close, and he strikes me a businessman. Remember, he was embarrassed, too, by Johnny cutting that pudgy hood.”

  Tex nodded, her eyes knowing now. “You were on Yale’s turf.”

  “Right. We made him and his top toughie look weak. Not good for him in his business.”

  “So…as a businessman, why hasn’t he retaliated?”

  Wyatt sighed. He looked at the stage, which was dim, but the lights above had been replaced and were ready to shine.

  “If he wants to do Johnny monetary damage,” Wyatt said, “he’ll wait for our renovations. Why shoot up a place that’s already shot up? No, Holliday’s is clean as a whistle again, and ready for destruction.”

  “Wyatt, you really know how to put a girl’s mind at ease.”

  “You’re not a girl, you said it yourself, you’re a woman full-grown, and I got no intention of putting your mind at ease. You deserve the truth, Tex, and you’ll get it.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  He rose and she watched as he prowled the edge of the nearby dance floor, walking, thinking, talking.

  “If vengeance was all,” Wyatt said, “Capone would have struck by now—not at this place, but at Johnny. Or maybe at me, and then there’s Bat, who clobbered him. No, I figure Capone’s boss is thinking like a businessman. Restraining Capone, and himself.”

  She frowned, shaking her head. “Can Yale still want to do business with Johnny? After that bloody farrago at the Harvard Inn?”

  Wyatt said nothing. He trusted Tex, but he didn’t know if Johnny had made her privy to the existence of his extensive liquor supply.

  “Sit down!” she ordered. “You’re making me nervous.”

  He sat.

  “Goddamnit, I just want to know my girls are all right, coming back here. That’s all.”

  He pointed a finger ceilingward. “Dixie’s still here.”

  Tex raised a pencilled eyebrow. “That’s because she and Johnny are an item, and she’s probably best protected with all you big strong men around.” The latter had a lilt of sarcasm to it, but also the ring of truth.

  “My understanding,” Wyatt said, “is Johnny’s treating your girls just fine. He’s kept them on the payroll, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes, well that’s all fine and dandy, but that’s not Johnny being a philanthropist. Every girl on my line but Dixie is either in the Follies or Scandals or Vanities, you know—this is a second job for them; they come over here after curtain.”

  “But not Dixie…”

  Tex rolled her eyes. “Wyatt, you’ve seen her dance. You’ve heard her sing.”

  “Well, uh…I’ve never heard her sing a solo.”

  Tex batted the air. “Brother, Dixie’s always singing solo! Very few of the notes she hits have anything to do with what the other girls are singing.”

  “Then why did you hire her?”

  Tex raised a forefinger. “First, she’s one of the cutest kids in town, and no healthy male in the audience will give two diddly damns about her dancing or her singing as long as they can take in the gams and the cute bottom and that girl-next-door kisser.”

  Wyatt shrugged; she had a point.

  “Second,” Tex said, holding up another finger, a rude one, “I didn’t hire her—Johnny did. We held auditions, and I advised against hiring her, but Johnny had that look you boys get—you know, the one with the open mouth and the popped eyes, like any moment you may start drooling or bust out crying or both?”

  Wyatt, wondering if he’d been looking at Tex’s bosom that way, asked, “Then Dixie doesn’t have a future in show business?”

  “She has a big future, sleeping with guys like Johnny who hired her because they’re thinking below the belt. Look, a kid like Dix will marry the boss someday, and that’s the way of the world since the Big Guy booted Adam and Eve outa Eden. But the way things are going, she won’t marry Johnny, because Johnny is gonna wind up dead.”

  “A possibility,” Wyatt said.

  “And I don’t want my girls to wind up prematurely deceased, neither.”

  “Can’t blame you.”

  “Plus…I gotta level with you, Wyatt. I got offers. I got good offers to go other places and make a fool out of myself in public for good money.”

  “Better money than Johnny’s giving you?”

  “Yes. A lot better. You should see what Larry Fay’s waving at me.”

  “Tex, I don’t want to see what any man is waving at you. Anyway, isn’t that guy a hoodlum?”

  She blew out a burst of indignant air. “Ain’t speakeasies illegal?”

  “Is that what this is about, Tex? Better offers you’re getting?”

  Her chin crinkled with anger, and she jumped to her feet and leaned across the table and glared at him, so close he could barely keep her in focus. “Hell with you, Wyatt Earp!” She slapped the table. “I put this joint on the map! I deserve more than that! And I don’t mean money!”

  Wyatt backed up, displaying palms of surrender. “Whoa there, Tex—you deserve the best money you can get for your talents. I don’t like seeing you drop Johnny when he’s down, but—”

  She moved away from the table and crossed her arms over her bosom and now she was the one prowling the edge of the dance floor. “I’m not dropping Johnny! I just want to know you will do your utmost to protect my girls!” Then she looked right at him. “You and your big goddamned gun, Wyatt Earp! Will you protect us?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  All the air went out of her and she began to laugh, not a laugh that echoed, this time, rather a soft one that was the cousin of crying. She staggered over in a graceful dancer’s way and deposited herself on his lap.

  She put her arms around his neck and she kissed him on the mouth, leaving half of her red lipstick behind.

  “We had fun once, Wyatt,” she said.

  “We did at that.”

  “You weren’t half bad for an old boy.”

  “You weren’t half bad for a young girl.”

  “I wasn’t that young.”

  “Well, I was that old. I was then, and I am now, an old married man…only when we got together, Tex, I was on the outs with Sadie.”

  She raised her chin, gazing down at him. “I heard you just had a fight with her.”

  “Johnny told you that?”

  “I have my spies. You argued on the phone, the other day, didn’t you?”

  “…Might have we did.”

  She kissed him again. Her tongue flicked at his. She ground on his lap a little and got the desired result. He put his hands on her breasts and they were soft and pliant and yet firm.

  “Let’s take the elevator up to your room,” she said.

  “…No.”

  “Why not? You’re married, not dead.…”

  He kissed her, just a little one, then took her by her waist and set her on her feet on the floor, and stood.

  She looked him up and down and gave him a dirty smile. “That your gun, Wyatt Earp, or are you just glad to see me?”

  “Either way,” he said, and waggled a scolding forefinger, “I don’t shoot unless I mean it. I am a married man, and anyway, I got my mind on other things. We better agree to be friends, here and now. I don’t need distracted.”

  She shook her head. Hands on her hips again, she said, “You can’t blame a girl…a grown woman, either…for trying.”

  “I enjoyed the attempt. You might try again. Maybe I won’t feel so noble, once I got less on my mind, and been away from home long enough to work up a real appetite.”

  That made her laugh, an echoing one this time, and she took hi
s arm and they went upstairs where Johnny was in the dining room with the chef, a Greek named Nick, almost unrecognizable out of his kitchen whites and into a gray suit. Across the hall, in the front room, the assorted waiters and bouncers were playing poker for nickels and dimes, the air blue with cigarette smoke.

  Nick the chef nodded, and smiled at Wyatt and Tex as they approached, then got up and left.

  Wyatt held out Tex’s chair and she sat and then he did, next to Johnny, saying, “Ol’ Nick looks happy.”

  “He should be. I doubled his salary.”

  Wyatt said, “What do the boys in the service call it? Hazardous duty pay?”

  Johnny, whose coat was off and the sleeves of his white, tieless shirt rolled up, looked haggard. He’d been working hard.

  “He deserves the pay hike anyway,” Johnny said. “He’s damn good, got laid off at Rector’s. Still.…You know, some joints rent out their restaurant action as a concession. Maybe I oughta consider that. Hatcheck, too.”

  “Maybe,” Wyatt said. “But let’s start with my concession.”

  “What’s that?” Then Johnny remembered, and said, “Room across the way. Yeah, we’re all set. It’s another two C’s for Lieutenant Harrigan.”

  “Cheap at half the price,” Wyatt said.

  Tex, not following any of it, asked, “What are you putting in, Wyatt? A couple two-dollar hookers?”

  Wyatt rubbed his hands together, as if the restaurant were about to serve him up a meal. “I’m going to give these New York boys the rare honor of losing money to Wyatt Earp playing poker.”

  “Strictly legit,” Johnny said, raising a forefinger.

  “I won’t need to cheat the clientele you attract,” Wyatt said. “You’ll notice your staff’s already turned the front room into a poker den.”

  Texas said, “It’s your game, Wyatt?”

  “Yes. Five-card draw. I deal every hand, but I also play.”

  “Brother, does that give the house the odds.”

  “Nobody’s going to hold a gun to anybody’s head. Johnny’s bankrolling me, and he gets fifty percent of all action.”

  Johnny said to Tex, “If it goes well, we may put in more, upstairs.”

  Tex’s eyebrows went up. “Fine, but don’t you go giving away my girls’ dressing rooms! And if Wyatt suggests a concession where men get to pay to come watch them putting on and taking off, well, Johnny, you just take a pass on that one.”