Kiss Me Once

by Thomas Gifford

  Terry had made it to NYPD plainclothes faster than almost anyone ever had, or so the story went, and he’d had to face the resentment of some older, more traditional colleagues. Not only had he risen fast, he always had lots of money to go with the good-looking dames and the big cigars. It was obvious that he lived way beyond whatever his cop’s salary was, and for a long time Cassidy fell for the line that he specialized in not only beautiful but also generous lady friends. In any case, Cassidy figured it was none of his business.

  Terry had always been good at having plenty of money, even back in Fordham, where there’d been a story that he supplied very discreet, highly companionable young ladies for social evenings with some of the priests. He used to say that he wished he’d thought of that himself since there was bound to be money in it. Cassidy didn’t really know where the money for the women and the Park Avenue apartment came from but he had some ideas. There were such things as gratuities from an appreciative public who enjoyed helping out a deserving cop, particularly a celebrity cop, which he’d become when he blew the Sylvester Aubrey Bean murder case wide open and then artfully put the lid back on. It was a masterful inside performance and every homo in New York owed him one.

  Terry led the way into the Tap, said something to Charley Drew, who was working the piano for all it was worth, and settled in at the bar. He ordered a couple of Rob Roys and when they came he clicked his glass against Cassidy’s, the ice tinkling.

  “Absent friends, Lew,” he said. “Any news?” The toast and the question composed their private ritual. Terry missed her almost as much as Lew did. He missed her for Lew because underneath the polish and the jazz he was a sentimental mick, full of Irish heart and blarney.

  “Dr. Goebbels says the German Volk must accept the idea of a long, hard war,” Cassidy sighed. “I know it’s true ’cause I read it in the Times. He says defeat will be worse than an inferno for the German people. So they have just begun to fight. I’m not encouraged.”

  Terry nodded. “Tell it to the Bolshies. It’ll get worse before it gets better. Think of it, kid, she may be making a movie over there right now …” Terry was star-struck. Always had been. He always said the introduction of sound film was the most important event of his lifetime thus far. He loved to come up with funny little bits of information that Cassidy never was sure he could believe. He said that Theda Bara’s real name was Goodman, that “Theda Bara” was an anagram for “Arab Death” dreamed up by some studio genius. Even Paul Cassidy hadn’t known that and he claimed to have come within a gnat’s eyelash of screwing her in 1925 when she was thirty-five and her career was almost over.

  Through the second Rob Roy, Terry kept the conversation going, told Lew way too much about the Bob Hope movie he’d seen the other night, Caught in the Draft. He could have gone on about movies all night but he switched gears and said he’d bought a mink coat at Russek’s that afternoon for two grand. When Cassidy asked the name of the lucky lady, Terry just laughed, slid off the stool, waved good-bye to Charley Drew, who was playing “My Indiana Home” for a couple from Terre Haute celebrating their anniversary, and asked Cassidy if he was hungry.

  They headed downtown in a cab. There was a heavy mist and the windshield wipers clapped raggedly. Times Square looked like a cheap, gaudy dream of Christmas. The marquees twinkled in the night. Lillian Hellman had a hit show, Watch on the Rhine. Cassidy looked away. Germany again. He couldn’t get away from it.

  He was a hero to the guys hanging around Keen’s Chop House and it took a few minutes to get through the crowd wishing him luck against the Giants. Then a table was ready for the guy leading the league in touchdowns and they got down to a couple of serious steaks. Halfway through his, Terry put down his knife and fork, patted his mouth with the heavy linen, and lit a Dunhill Major, one of the new long cigarettes. “Listen, pal,” he said, “I may be needing your help one day soon.”

  “Spare me the bad news,” Cassidy replied, dunking a piece of steak the size of a hockey puck in the Lea & Perrins. “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know exactly. That’s the problem. Some people pass me the word, that’s all. I’m on the wrong list, or so they say. Right at the top. Kinda news like that, hell, ruined my lunch. I was at the Harvard Club, too. Damn fine lunch. Max invites me to lunch and then I get this call. From a friend with his hankie over the mouthpiece. You know? Couldn’t finish my rice pudding.”

  “What can I do? Want me to go out there and wear ’em down for you?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, just stay my friend, Jocko.” Terry called him that sometimes, an old Fordham nickname, mainly when he was thinking about the old days, wishing they were back in them. “Anyway, maybe it’s a joke. Or a false alarm.” He finished his cigarette and dug back into the two-inch-thick porterhouse.

  “Max Bauman? He went to Harvard?”

  “Where else?”

  “I don’t know. Not that many Harvard men wind up making license plates and twine up in Dannemora, that’s all. Bootlegging, running girls, running guns, Havana casinos, funny money …”

  Terry shook his head, amused at the recitation. “Misunderstandings. And all a long time ago. You know how it was during Prohibition. Hell, I used to deliver hooch for my uncle in Jersey City when I was just fourteen. Max, he’s in trucking, scrap metal, he’s got the club, he made the big mistake of buying the Bulldogs, he’s putting some money into the movie business.” He shrugged. He was wearing a gray suit with a white chalk stripe broad as the yard lines out on the field. There was a maroon silk in his breast pocket, suspenders to match, a pearl pin in his maroon swirled tie. Finchley’s on Fifth at 46th, three hundred bucks for the works.

  “Whatever you say,” Cassidy nodded. “You’re the cop.”

  “Max is aces with me, pal. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  They went on from Keen’s to a couple more joints where sports types hung out. Two broadcasters who’d be doing the next day’s game were good for another set of Rob Roys and then Terry said they ought to work their way back uptown. They came to rest in the Savoy Room listening to Hildegarde sing “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” The last time Cassidy had seen Paris was the spring of ’36 with Karin, and their hearts had definitely been young and gay. Hearing the song and seeing the chanteuse in the spotlight made him blue. So they went on to Heliotrope, which was just down West 52nd from the Onyx, where Count Basie was in residence. Cassidy didn’t have to think very hard to know who’d be in residence at Heliotrope.

  Max Bauman.

  He was the first guy Cassidy saw when his eyes adjusted to the purple darkness and the indirect lighting that came from he knew not where. He was sitting at a corner table with Bennie the Brute, who had probably been a classmate at Harvard and a secret Jane Austen scholar.

  Bauman waved to Terry and they drifted over, sat down. Max always wore a tuxedo at his club. So did Bennie the Brute, who was doing the impression of the world’s largest penguin. Pretty soon they were all lapping Courvoisier from snifters the size of cowboy boots. Max passed out Havanas from his private stock at Dunhill. First they’d sniff the brandy. Then they’d sniff the cigars. Cassidy’s nose hadn’t seen so much action in years.

  Max was somewhere in his fifties, a sports fan who’d never had the luxury of competing himself. He asked Cassidy lots of questions about the Giants and Cassidy pretended to give him complicated inside dope. It was just a kid’s game but they were sitting around bullshitting over brandy and cigars so what the hell. Most of Cassidy’s mind was still on Karin and the news from Europe. The Brits seemed to keep chasing Kraut battleships around the Atlantic. You had to give the limeys credit. They had pluck.

  When Max got to talking about his son Irving, his eyes filled up. Nobody noticed but Cassidy. Irving had left Harvard during his sophomore year and joined the navy. “He’s quite a kid, Lew,” he said, his face full of a father’s love. Cassidy saw the boy at his bar mitzvah, getting a gold watch and a fountain pen and pencil set and lots of checks. “S
aid he figured there was a war coming and he wanted to be in on it. You know what those bastards, those Nazi bastards, are doing to our people over there? Sure, you know, you’re a bright boy, a college man. Hell, I’m too old to do much fighting but Irvie, he says he wants to get ready to fight when the chance comes … my mother and father, Poland, they lost everything and now they’re just gone, poof, and my Irvie says fuck that, he joins the. navy! Whattaya think of that, Lew? Hey?”

  “Irvie’s got guts, Max.”

  Bauman wiped the corner of one eye with a hairy knuckle, nodded. Nice manicure. “The Yorktown.” He swallowed hard. “Irving Bauman, Lieutenant j.g., USN. Some kid, my Irvie.” He waited, watched a girl singer go stand beside a white baby grand. Her silvery-blond pageboy swung forward and cloaked one eye. She gave their table a barely perceptible smile. “Communications officer.”

  “What?”

  Bauman leaned over, his eyes darting from the girl to Cassidy. He smelled like the kind of cologne Cassidy could never find. “Irvie. My son. He’s communications officer on the Yorktown.”

  “That’s great, Max. You should be very proud.”

  But Max didn’t hear him. He was transfixed watching the girl.

  Bennie the Brute touched Cassidy’s arm when the girl began singing in a low, almost hoarse voice. “Listen to her, Lew. Quite a nice voice. A real stylist.” He wore silver-rimmed spectacles with thick circular lenses. He had a nose like a zucchini. He always wore a polka-dot bow tie, even with his tux. He was big and friendly and gentle, like a large dog who when aroused might eat you in an excess of high spirits. “Delightful,” he said.

  “Delightful,” Cassidy agreed. You’d have to have a hell of a good reason to disagree with Bennie. Besides; the girl could sing.

  “Miss Squires,” Bennie whispered. He wore nice cologne, too, but the effect was lessened by the fettuccini with garlic and oil he’d had for dinner. “Miss Cindy Squires,” he said like a man repeating the answer to the only question that mattered. She sang “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and everybody clapped. Max Bauman looked very pleased. Bennie was whispering again. “Mr. Leary told us about her. Mr. Bauman hired her the first time he heard her sing. He called her a thrush. Mr. Bauman has a finely educated ear.”

  “Well, he is a Harvard man.”

  Bennie nodded. Speaking of ears, Cassidy had once seen Bennie the Brute bite a man’s ear clean off during a late-evening dispute in Hell’s Kitchen. No clam sauce, no oil and garlic, just an ear, al dente.

  Moments before Cindy Squires sang “The White Cliffs of Dover” Bauman leaned across the table and tapped Terry’s arm. The two profiles came together in the dim light and Max whispered, “You pick up the coat for me, Terry?” Terry nodded and Bauman patted his sleeve.

  She was singing about the bluebirds over the white cliffs on some better, happier day when the world would be free. The crowd was eating it up. Everybody had seen the newsreels and read the papers and knew what Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post and H. V. Kaltenborn and Ed Murrow and Bill Shirer were saying. They knew all about Churchill and the brave fly-boys of the RAF and the Spitfires and the Hurricanes. Cindy Squires knew how to sell the song, conjuring up all those images by some kind of magic. Cassidy thought she was just about the classiest-looking girl he’d ever seen, well bred, with a fancy accent. Vera Lynn would have been proud of her. Everybody was proud of her. Everybody was proud but Terry Leary, who must have figured that finding her for Max had brought his account up to date. Terry looked bored. Still, he kept checking her out over the rim of his snifter. Terry didn’t miss much.

  After she’d finished the set Cassidy got up to head for the Gents. Max said, “We never own liquor, Lew. We only rent it.” Terry yawned. “Through those doors, take a left.” Max pointed the way. The corridor was painted a hot shade of heliotrope with dim lights in wall sconces shaped to look like jungle foliage. He was occupied in the Gents for two, maybe three minutes, thinking that it was time to get home before his head got any foggier. It was past midnight. Twelve hours away from his customary throwing up in the locker room.

  He came back into the hallway, adjusting his eyes to the gloom after the bright lights on the shiny white tiles. He heard something from the end of the hall, shook the booze out of his perceptions. A woman’s voice, angry, rushed, out of breath from behind a closed door. “Bloody bastard, you … bloody … bastard!” It was a loud whisper and there was no r in bastard; it came out sounding like bah-stud. Then he heard something slam against the wall, cutting her voice off in mid-curse.

  The door wasn’t locked and he saw a gold five-pointed star at eye level. He pushed it open.

  Cindy Squires stood with her back to her dressing table mirror, perfect blond hair disheveled, clutching a silk dressing gown to her thin body. She was reaching for a vase of roses behind her. A large man stood between them, his back to Cassidy, one hand grabbing at the front of the flimsy robe. As Cassidy came through the door the man ripped her arm away and tore the robe open. Her tiny breasts, the fragile rib cage, registered in Cassidy’s mind: He’d never seen such vulnerability. She clawed with one hand at the man’s face, her perfect heart-shaped face a mask of determination, unafraid. The man let out a yell of pain and Cassidy saw scratches on his cheek leaking blood. He turned back to her, looking from the blood smeared on his hand to her spitfire face, made a low growl, and lunged at her in a fury, knocking her backward, bending her against the mirror.

  Cassidy took him by the collar of his tuxedo jacket, yanked him backward, twirled him around, and threw him at the wall hard enough to stick. Like spaghetti. The eyes were glassy with too much liquor and just enough confusion. Cassidy gave him a sour frown and hit him in the chest, right on the onyx stud below his sternum. The man coughed and went walleyed.

  “Get out of the way, Miss Squires. He’s gonna lose his dinner—”

  “Jolly bad luck for him,” she said. She was holding the vase of roses over him.

  “Better not hit him with that. You could hurt him—”

  “Good!” She flung the vase at him. He was sliding down the wall, eyes pointed in different directions, and the vase clunked off the wall. Drenched in water and smothered in roses, he reached the floor, closed his eyes, and tipped over.

  “Services will be held at Mount Olivet Cemetery.” Cassidy grinned.

  Cindy Squires had closed her robe and cinched the belt tight. Her nipples seemed enormous, protruding beneath the silk from her boyish chest. “Flowers in his hair,” she muttered. “Swine!” She bit her lip and looked up at Cassidy. “I suppose I owe you thanks—so, thank you.” She looked back at Sleeping Beauty. “But I could have handled him, actually. I had him right where I wanted him. Still and all, thanks.” Her solemn face hinted at a smile. Her voice was very soft and husky.

  “This sort of thing happen often?”

  “Never. Most people know about Max and the thrush, which is how I’m usually described among such … people.” She made the final word an insult. “Maybe he’s an out-of-towner.” She took Cassidy’s arm and hugged it spontaneously. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “One of those people, I guess.”

  “Well, you’re my Saint George. And you’ve more or less slain the dragon. A friend in need—” She leaned up and planted a quick kiss on his mouth. She took a hankie from the pocket of the robe and quickly wiped it away, destroying the evidence. “He seems to be coming around …”

  The man lifted a leg experimentally, looked at it as if it were an unfamiliar piece of farm machinery. Then he figured the hell with it, let it flop loudly back onto the floor. “All wet,” he observed with great dignity. His eyes closed and he sighed like a man who’d already had to put up with too much.

  “What the devil’s going on here?” Max Bauman stood in the doorway. He sounded curious, not angry. “You all right, my darling?” He went past Cassidy and put a protective arm around her shoulders, pulled her tight. Her face powder smudged the lapel of his dinner jacket.

  �
��This drunken oaf was making a nuisance of himself,” she said softly, matter-of-factly, her eyes turning toward Max, “and this nice chap came in and dealt with him.” Cassidy smiled at that. Dealt with him. “I threw the vase at him. I’m sorry about the roses, Max—”

  “I send her roses every night,” he said to Cassidy, winked. “Plenty more where they came from.” He held Cindy Squires at arm’s length, looked her over. “You’re all right?” She nodded, raked her hair into place with long nails. “Good girl. Lucky you were nearby, Lew. I won’t forget it.”

  “It’s nothing, Max. I enjoyed it.”

  “He enjoyed it,” Max said, chuckling. “That’s good, Lew.”

  Bennie the Brute cleared his throat in the doorway. “Can I be of any assistance, Mr. Bauman?” He needed a bigger doorway. He looked crowded into this one.

  Max nodded at the man on the floor. “Take out the trash, Bennie.”

  Bennie whisked the limp body off the floor after brushing the roses away. He carried him like a man putting a child to bed. When he went out, they heard the sound of a door opening into the alley, then a crash as Bennie filled one of the trash cans.

  Cassidy watched the girl. She smiled shyly and said she ought to get dressed. Some girl, he thought. Had him right where she wanted him …

  “In a minute, baby,” Max said. “Have you met young Lochinvar here?”

  She shook her head, put out her hand. “I’m Cindy Squires …”

  “Lew Cassidy, Miss Squires. It was a pleasure … dealing with our friend.” He watched her eyes, looking at him frankly, one from behind the pale curtain of hair.

  “Lew works for me,” Max said. He slapped Cassidy on his broad shoulders, an owner’s gesture. “He’s got some business to take care of for me tomorrow. You’d better get some shut-eye.” Cindy Squires nodded politely and pulled away from Max. She brushed at the powder she’d left on his jacket. “Thanks again, kid,” Max said. Cassidy nodded and left them together. Cindy Squires had turned her back and was untying the belt on the robe.