One Shining Moment

by Gilbert, Morris

  Jerry shifted uncomfortably. Her hands were soft but firm, and he said, “I like it that you don’t cut your hair. Most girls look like plucked chickens!” Then when she kept her eyes on him, he said, “I’ll get the lowdown on the prostitution racket. It’s a big part of the mob’s income. Dad thinks some of the women are part of the white slave traffic—that they’re kept against their will.”

  “How . . . how will you do it?” Bonnie pulled her hands back, and her dark blue eyes were fixed on his.

  “Why, I haven’t got it all figured out,” Jerry said uncomfortably. “Have to see how it goes.” He saw that she was disturbed and said quickly, “Don’t worry, Bonnie.”

  But Bonnie didn’t smile. “If they find out you’re a spy, they’ll do something awful to you. Don’t do it, Jerry!”

  But Jerry had made up his mind. “It’s a piece of cake!” he said and changed the subject.

  Jerry paused to study himself in the full length mirror before leaving his room. He admired his hair, which was plastered down with brilliantine and parted in the middle. It lay as slick as that of Rudolph Valentino! He wore a suit with wide checks, padded in the shoulders, a flower-figured necktie, and pointed patent-leather shoes.

  “What a piece of work you are, Stuart!” he whispered, and then he picked up a pearl gray fedora and pulled it down over his eyes, carefully creasing the brim to stand up on one side in the fashion begun by Al Capone himself.

  Finally, satisfied with his appearance, he left his room and took a taxi to Cicero. He got out near the Hawthorne racetrack and made his way to an unpainted frame building two stories high. His heart beat faster as he entered.

  If I see some of Nick’s gang here, they’ll spot me even in this getup, he thought. But he knew that Nick’s boys usually left Cicero for their revels.

  He entered a large room with only one table and a miniature bar, sat down, and ordered some near beer. Not a place built for drinking, he thought.

  He studied the place, noting that a series of three doors only a foot or two apart led out of the room. The first and third were hinged on the right, the middle one on the left. He sat nursing the beer, trying to fix it all in his memory. “I need details, Jerry,” his father had instructed him. “Get all the little things down—it’s what people need to make them interested.”

  A bouncer sat at a small table just inside the main entrance. Jerry soon figured out that the bartender was the “spotter.” He controlled all three doors with electric buttons. He could let a client in through the first door, then lock all three electrically.

  Jerry drank slowly, but finally the bartender gave him a hard look, and he moved to take a place with the other men seated on benches against the walls. The procedure was simple. A girl wearing only lingerie came down from upstairs, entered the waiting room through the third door, and made a slow circuit of the room, greeting the men with her painted smile. She would then go back upstairs through the first door, accompanied by one of the men.

  Little conversation took place, and the traffic moved rapidly. It took about half an hour until Jerry was sitting on the end of the bench.

  Finally a very young girl with dyed yellow hair came to him, smiling and asking, “You ready, Handsome?”

  Jerry had never been as frightened, not in all his days of dangerous flying. There was something about the place that was ominous, and he had a sudden urge to flee. However, he followed the girl silently up the stairs. She led him to a room, opened the door, and stepped inside.

  He had been curious about such things as this, but the room was totally unlovely, containing only a bed, a table, one chair, and a small closet. The air reeked with cheap perfume, sweat, and other rank odors he could not identify.

  The girl was watching him with bored eyes. She seemed to be very young, but there was a hardness about her that no makeup could hide. She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “You want a cigarette, Handsome?” When he shook his head, she moved to the table, picked up a cigarette, and as the smoke rose lazily, she turned and studied him.

  Jerry grew nervous under her stare and said in a stumbling fashion, “I . . . how long have you been here?”

  “Too long. What difference?”

  “You . . . ah . . . do you like it here?”

  A coarse laugh rose to her lips. She puffed on the cigarette, then said, “I love it! It was the dream of my life to wind up in a room like this!” She snuffed the cigarette out and turned to face him, saying, “You ain’t got all day.”

  Jerry swallowed, then said, “To tell the truth, I . . . I’m not much in the mood for . . . anything.” Her eyes hardened, and he said, “Look, would you just talk to me for a little while? I’ll pay for your time.”

  The girl gave Jerry a curious stare, then shrugged. “Sure, what do you want me to talk about?” She moved to the bed and sat down. “Want a drink?”

  “I don’t think so . . . but you go ahead.”

  Reaching for the bottle on the table, the young woman unscrewed the cap, tilted the bottle, and took two quick swallows. She shuddered as the raw alcohol hit her throat, then asked wearily, “Talk about what?”

  “Anything. What’s your name? Where’s your home—just talk.”

  The girl was reluctant, but the whiskey loosened her tongue. Jerry sat in the chair listening to her speak, feeling enormously sorry for her. She was cheap, coarse, profane—but still, as she lay back and closed her eyes wearily, there was at least a trace of something better than that in her.

  She had something better than this once, Jerry thought. She had parents who were proud of her—a mother who dreamed of a good life. She had friends and she wanted to be loved. Where did it all go?

  Finally the girl opened her eyes, and a hardness replaced the expression that had been there. “Get outta here,” she said angrily. “Go find somebody else to talk to.”

  Jerry rose hastily. Reaching into his pocket, he dropped some bills on the bed, then turned to leave. He stopped, then whirled to see her picking up the money. “Good luck,” he said, feeling like a fool for saying anything so inane.

  “Yeah, thanks,” the woman nodded. There was an emptiness in her face and something in her eyes that reminded Jerry of death, and he fled the room as if it contained the plague.

  Later, when he’d written down the details for his father, he thought of the girl with sadness. Amos read it, then said, “It’s the sort of thing that Capone and his kind do to people. He leaves misery on every soul he touches.”

  “I felt sorry for her,” Jerry muttered. “And I get mad when I think of something like that maybe happening to Bonnie.”

  “It does happen to girls like her. They don’t mean to wind up in places like that—but somehow they do.” Amos saw that the visit had disturbed Jerry. “You shouldn’t have gone there, Son. Come on, I’ve got to go talk to Lylah.”

  Jerry brightened up, and on the way to the studio, his father asked suddenly, “You’re very fond of Bonnie, aren’t you?”

  Flustered by the abruptness of the question, Jerry stammered, “Well—I guess so. She’s a fine young woman.”

  Amos asked dryly, “How old is she?”

  “Nineteen, I think.”

  “I met your mother when she was about that age.”

  The comment drew Jerry’s gaze, and he seemed to be thinking deeply all the way across town.

  When they reached the set of Monarch Pictures, the rather grandiose name Lylah and Jesse had chosen for the company, Amos led the way inside. They went to the room used for meetings of the cast and found Lylah, Jesse, and Carl together.

  Amos took one look at their faces and demanded, “What’s wrong?”

  Lylah’s face was pale, and she had trouble controlling her voice. “It’s Emory, Amos.”

  “What happened? Is he sick?” Amos knew how serious such a thing was. “Did he have an accident?”

  “An accident rigged by Al Capone!” It was Jesse who spoke, and Amos and Jerry saw that his face was
angry. “Three of his goons caught Emory alone and broke his leg.”

  “It could have been worse—for Emory,” Lylah said quietly.

  “It couldn’t have been worse for us!” Carl sat with his head in his hands. When he stood up, Amos saw misery on the small man’s face. “We’re out of business, Amos!”

  “We’ll get another actor,” Amos said.

  But Lylah seemed to be drained of all hope. “Get who?” she asked wearily. “It took all we had to get Emory. We can’t just walk out on the street and get someone. And we don’t have the money to go hire John Barrymore.”

  The room was silent, and it was Jesse who said slowly, “It looks bad—but God’s not dead. With God all things are possible.”

  Lylah stared at him, then rose, and her lips trembled as she said, “I don’t have any right to ask God for favors, Jesse.” She walked slowly out of the room, and the men knew that Lylah Stuart had come to the end of herself.

  A FAMILY ARGUMENT

  How do you like your new apartment, Ma?”

  Anna Castellano looked across the table, giving her oldest son a direct stare. “It’s fine,” she said, setting a heaping plateful of pasta on the table. “It costa too much, I bet!”

  Nick shook his head, and when his mother came around the table to fill his wineglass, he grabbed her around the waist and squeezed her so hard she grunted. “Ain’t nothin’ costs too much for you, Ma!” he said fondly. “Ain’t that right, you guys?”

  Mario and Eddy made up the rest of the guests, and both of them grinned and nodded. “Nick’s right, Ma,” Eddy answered. He looked around the spacious dining room decorated with the best furniture money could buy and laughed shortly. “Not like the old days in New York, is it? Remember how the plumbing never worked right?”

  “And we had to fight the rats all the time,” Nick nodded. “And the wind whistled through the cracks—boy, that old rooming house was pretty grim!”

  Anna Castellano pulled herself upright and glared at Nick. She was showing her age—her body was thickening and she had heart trouble—but her spirit still fired up from time to time. “That place was good enough for your papa and me—good enough for you, too!” She slammed down the loaf of bread she was cutting with a long knife, adding, “We never took no charity—and I never had to worry about what my boys were doing!”

  Nick shifted uncomfortably and gave Eddy a wry glance. “Now, Ma, don’t start again. Let’s just have a nice dinner, okay?”

  “Sure, Ma,” Eddy put in quickly. “You got two girls married to nice fellas and four grandbabies. And your three sons are all successful businessmen—even if one of ’em is a lawyer!” He reached over and tapped Mario on the shoulder fondly. “Hey, Counselor, why don’t you speak up? Tell Ma how happy she ought to be—three good-looking rich fellas like us!”

  Mario had said little, and now he managed a smile. “I can’t remember much about the old house,” he murmured.

  “Better you don’t,” Nick shrugged. “It ain’t no virtue, bein’ poor.” He poked at his pasta with a fork, and a thoughtful look came to his dark eyes. “When I was ten years old I vowed I was going to get our family out of that dump. It took a little while, but look at us now!” He gave his mother a look that was a plea. “Ma, ain’t you even a little happy we got out of there?”

  Anna sat down heavily, but she managed a smile for Nick. “I know you mean well, Nicky,” she said slowly, “But I’m alla time afraid for you.”

  Mario glanced at her and said without thinking, “And you’re ashamed of us, too, aren’t you, Mama?”

  “Ashamed?” Nick grunted, displeasure on his face. He let anger creep into his tone, and he glared at Mario. “Why should she be ashamed? We work hard for our money! And you didn’t turn it down when we sent you to law school, did you?”

  Mario put his fork down, his face tense. “No, I didn’t, Nick. I took it, just like Mama and the rest of the family take your money. And every time you break the law to make the money, I’ve got a hand in it.”

  Eddy grew nervous, for he knew that Nick had a volatile temper. “Look, Mario,” he put in quickly, “this prohibition, it’s no good. Everybody is saying it won’t work. Everybody breaks that law. The rest of them are just hypocrites!”

  Mario had gone over this in his mind for years. He was ashamed that he’d built his own success on money that came from booze and prostitution. The guilt from this knowledge burned in him—had for a long time. He had racked his brain trying to find a way to cut his ties—but the fact remained that he owed his success to Nick’s money.

  “What about Amos?” Anna demanded. “And what about Owen? Are they hypocrites, Nick?”

  “They’re different!”

  “They’re honest, that’sa why they’re different,” Anna said.

  Nick lost his temper, almost shouting, “I tell you, Ma, I’m just a businessman!”

  Anna turned her old eyes on him and asked quietly, “What kind of businessman breaks the leg of an innocent man?”

  All three of the men stared at her, and it was Mario who asked, “What’s that, Mama?” He knew that much worse than leg-breaking went on in the family business, and he wondered why the item had moved his mother. “Who got his leg broken?”

  “The actor, that’s who!” Anna shook her head, sorrow etching her lined face. “Amos, he call me today. He tell me about his sister, the one who’s making a movie. And he say there ain’t gonna be no movie now.”

  “Ma, I don’t know nothing about this!” Nick protested.

  Anna examined his face, then shook her head. “Amos say it’s bad for them—all the Stuarts. They got all their money in this movie.”

  Mario asked harshly, “Nick, what’s this all about?”

  “Don’t you start on me, Mario!”

  “I’ll start on you if you had anything to do with stopping the film! Did Capone tell you to stop it that way? Everybody knows he’s tried to block the picture!”

  Nick was beleaguered by the questions. He threw his napkin down, and his face reddened. “I’m telling you both, me and Eddy had nothin’ to do with this. I didn’t even know about it till just now!”

  “That’s straight, Mario,” Eddy put in quickly. “Capone asked us to give Lylah a warnin’ to let up on making him look like a monkey. But that’s all we done!”

  Mario’s face had grown pale. He got up at once, saying, “All right, I believe you. Capone was behind it.” He moved around the table, kissed his mother, then stepped to the door.

  “Where you goin’?” Nick demanded. “Don’t get mixed up in this! I know you’re sweet on that sister of Amos’s—but stay clear of it, Mario.”

  “I think I’ll have a talk with Mr. Alfonse Capone,” Mario said, his lips drawn tight.

  “Hey, you can’t do that!” Eddy almost shouted.

  “Why not? He’s a respectable businessman, isn’t he?” Mario moved through the door, and they heard the door slam.

  “Go after him, Eddy!” Nick said. “Don’t let him do nothin’ crazy.” “Right!”

  Eddy dashed out, calling, “Hey, Mario, wait for me!”

  Anna sat quietly watching the face of her son. “You see how it is?” she asked. “You’re afraid of that man.”

  “Sure, I am! He’s crazy, Ma!”

  “What’sa difference between him and you?” Anna asked. “You think I don’t hear about what you and Eddy do?” She suddenly put her face in her hands and began to weep. “Oh, Nicky! Nicky!”

  Nick got up and awkwardly tried to comfort his mother. He loved her with all his heart, but he knew she was right. He was not a stupid man, and he had known for a long time that he was selling out all that was good in him for money and power. But like a man who’s entangled in a snare, he could not free himself from the life he’d built. He patted his mother’s heaving shoulders and thought, I gotta do something! Capone will step on Mario like a bug if he sees trouble in him!

  Mario finally managed to get rid of Eddy by promising him to stay aw
ay from Capone. The two stood beside Mario’s car arguing for ten minutes, and at last Mario said grimly, “All right, Eddy, I won’t go to him—at least for now.”

  Eddy showed a great deal of relief, and as soon as he left, Mario got into his car and drove to the Salvation Army headquarters. It was only a little after eight, and he expected to find Christie there. But Major Hastings met him as he entered, saying, “Hello, Mr. Castellano. You’ve come to see Christie, I suppose.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “She’s not here. She and Lenora went over to that place where the movie’s being shot. They should be back any time.”

  “Well, I’ll try to catch them. Maybe I can give them a ride back.”

  Mario drove at once to the Monarch lot. He found Christie alone outside the main building, sitting on a bench and staring up at the sky. It was warm, and overhead the sky was lit by millions of tiny points of light. Mario saw that Christie was deep in thought, and he spoke to her as he was approaching, “Lots of them, aren’t there?”

  Christie was startled, and when he saw her face, he knew that she was troubled. He came to where she sat, then asked, “Mind if I sit down?”

  “No, sit down, Mario.”

  He eased himself down carefully, then said, “I just heard the bad news—some of it. What’s the whole story?”

  Christie began to speak, her voice filled with sadness. When she ended, she shook her head. “It’s bad, Mario. Amos and Lylah and Owen—they put all they had into this.”

  A hammer-headed, yellow tomcat strolled out of a crate. He came to stare at the pair, insolence in his face, then moved away. Mario watched him go, then said, “I guess the Castellanos aren’t very popular around here right now.”

  “Oh, Mario, nobody blames you!”

  “What about Nick?”

  “Amos said it had to be Capone.”

  Mario relaxed. “I’m glad to hear that. Nick said he had nothing to do with it—and he never lies to me.”

  Overhead, bats began tumbling in the still air, fluttering in that almost frightening way they have. A bulb over the door of a building gave off an amber light that diffused slowly, melding into the darkness. Mario asked finally, “What happens now, Christie?”