by John Gardner
“It seemed pretty terrible that a nephew should arrange to have his uncle gunned down, simply because he had too much power and didn’t know how to use it. The whole business was like some of the violent plots in grand opera. Perhaps the opera helped in the way those imbeciles operated. I remember, at the time, my head was ringing and I thought it rang like the bells in the coronation scene from Boris Godunov. Aaron had taken me to see it, first time ever, at the Met, with Toscanini conducting. I was very impressed by the spectacle of the coronation scene. Mind you, it was like vaudeville if you put it next to my 1949 production.”
“Of course it was, Maestro,” Herbie said, raising his eyes to heaven and trying to keep himself from making a truly stupendously deflating remark.
“Herbie, these guys did not hesitate to pull the trigger if they thought it was right for business. I could see that running liquor and women, for those who wanted them, was very big business indeed. Helluva bigger business than shoe shops. And I also realized that the higher the financial reward, then the more risks these people were willing to take.”
Back in 1922, Carlo must have seen the look on Louis’ face as he thought about these things. “Don’t worry, Pianist. Like I tell ya, everything’s taken care of: from the Police Department to City Hall, and yer in Torrio’s showplace. Wait till ya see the kind of people we get in here tonight. Now, get outta those clothes and into one of them sharp suits we bought. In a few hours yu’ll be earning your living here.”
So Louis shampooed his hair with the fancy stuff Carlo had bought him, shaved, for the second time that day, and slapped cologne over his body—“The first time I ever used cologne, Herb. I thought it was kind of sissy, but Carlo did it, and I smelled it on Capone; so I thought when in Rome …”
He chose a light blue suit, with a cream silk shirt and a cream tie with some blue pattern in it which picked up the color of the suit. On his feet he had handmade leather shoes, better quality than those his father made. “I thought to myself, Herb, if I stick with it, I’ll fart through silk for the rest of my life. It was there, in Chicago, I really got my taste for clothes. Later, I saw the stuff I wore there was a little flashy. I learned dress sense, but that was later, in Hollywood, where the biographies begin. As far as anyone else is concerned, I arrived, fully grown, out of a star trap on Sunset Boulevard. You ever heard Chicago mentioned in my public past?”
Herbie shook his head.
“You ever hear of me conducting the Chicago Symphony?”
Again the shake of the head.
“Damned right you haven’t. I never dared even to visit Chicago for a very long time. Anyway …”
When Louis emerged from the bathroom, Carlo let out a long whistle, “Hey, Pianist, ya look sharp. Ya look like ya just broke outta the egg.”
Louis’ job was easy enough, and it took him only one night to get the measure of what went on at The Barn. He figured it was the same setup as all the other Torrio and Capone joints. Come to that, the same setup as all the joints owned and run by any of the other gang families in Chicago.
There were two large, burly men in tuxedos—Jo-Jo and Mouse—who spent all their time in the small entrance which was walled off from the main room, called the Lounge. There they checked out the customers, made sure they had the right connections and, apart from those allowed, that they were not carrying weapons. This they did efficiently, by creating a kind of aura of thuggery around them. People rarely argued with Jo-Jo and Mouse.
The Lounge was dotted with tables, and the staff of six waiters went through the crowds with trays of drinks and quick food, like sandwiches and the kind of things, Louis learned, served at smart cocktail parties in the old days. The small band, made up of white boys, played a much tighter kind of jazz than that which Louis had heard in New York, with the bass instruments sometimes playing two beats to the bar, while the solo breaks seemed more expansive, but almost orchestrated. These musicians rarely extemporized, so it was by no means jazz in the true sense of the word.
No customers were allowed to drink at the bar, and Louis spent a lot of his time in a more austere backroom, into which particular clients came through the door to the right of the bar.
The room at the back was oblong: narrow, with a staircase at the far end, and padded benches down each of the longer walls. On the walls there were old prints of voluptuous half-naked ladies draped over stone benches or beside broken pillars, and some indoor plants to give the place a homely feel to it. The clients came through from the lounge, and sat on the padded benches, and Louis played piano near the staircase, between sitting in when the band took a break.
In that backroom he soon got used to seeing the girls—twenty of them on a good evening—come down the stairs in a strict order, based on some kind of secret superiority: They were usually scantily dressed in diaphanous negligees, teddies or more exotic underwear which, Carlo said, was imported direct from Paris, France. Each of the girls would parade slowly around the room, and the client seated nearest the staircase got the first choice. If he went upstairs with a girl, everyone moved up a place, though he was free to wait around for any girl for whom he had a special liking.
Louis played slow blues and, sometimes, ragtime. He got to know the girls at The Barn pretty well: the dark-haired Linda, who was only just twenty; the tall and lovely Betty Anne, who claimed her parents were wealthy Bostonians; Carol, who had been in burlesque—small and neat, but with eye-catching outsize breasts which made her look all out of proportion, though this did not seem to worry the clients. He had a particular fancy for Liz, who, he was certain, had some Negro blood in her because of the thick lips and flared nostrils. There were others—Kate, Jane, Beverly, Chris, Harriet, and, of course, Dianne who was in charge.
Dianne, a little older than the others, was sharp-featured and hard in manner. She rarely took a client upstairs herself, but her job paid very well and she kept the girls in order, stopped fights, imposed fines and looked after the cash side of the business.
There were plenty of chances for Louis to have any of the girls whenever he wanted, but Carlo had said they had rules about that. Later he explained, “If ya want one of them, Pianist, ya ask me first. We can’t always keep a check on these broads. I guess there’s a lot of the clap around, and worse than that. Ya ask me, though, because I keep an eye out, and so does Dianne. We know when the girls get to see the doc. So, always ask.”
When the band in the Lounge took their break, Louis would leave the cathouse area and use the band piano. He only had to play background music: a bit of blues, but mainly the popular ballads and songs of the day, jazzed up a little. He often wondered if it was necessary because the men and women who came to sample the alcohol in the lounge talked a lot and were a noisy bunch.
On Louis’ third night at The Barn, Torrio came over with Capone and Harry Guzik’s brother, Jake. They brought a couple of hoods with them—Frank Nitti and Steve O’Donnell. Like Carlo, Louis did not take to O’Donnell. The man appeared to be faraway in his mind all night, as though thinking of something else. He did not seem to listen to what Torrio and Capone had to say, as if he harbored some kind of grudge. Resentful was the word that popped into Louis’ head.
Capone came over to the piano, while Louis played in the Lounge, and asked how he was getting on. The man was like a big, dangerous animal, but there was no denying the charm he could bring out whenever it was needed. Torrio came over as well, but Louis found him cold and unfeeling, like he imagined a banker would be if he walked in off the street and asked for a loan.
Jake Guzik hovered in the background.
Later, Louis would discover that the Guziks originally hailed from Moscow and there was another brother besides Harry and Jake.
Jake Guzik had worked in diners, serving tables, when he first arrived in New York, and most of the mob spoke of him as “Greasy Thumb” because he had acquired the habit of getting his thumbs into the plates of soup he carried as a waiter. The nickname was to become more sinister in later
years, when he displayed an amazing mind for figures, and became Capone’s treasurer and financial adviser. He was an amiable fat man, unlike Frank Nitti, who Louis put down as a natural killer; sadistic, unemotional and a man who enjoyed his work.
Louis was surprised to find that he was given one free night a week and, at the end of his first seven days, Carlo came to him with an envelope. Inside were two one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Yer pay,” Carlo explained.
A couple of C notes for playing piano. “I get two Cs every week?”
“Maybe a couple a high Cs, sometimes, if yer good.” Carlo grinned, his pocked and scarred face taking on a wolfish look. Louis laughed. Carlo would have difficulty telling a high C from a B natural, even with his love of opera.
Though Carlo gave Louis his money each week, it came directly from Torrio, via Jake Guzik. It took a couple of weeks for Louis to catch on to the fact that Jake came around in the wee smalls, when the club closed, every night of the week. He came to check on the takings. Torrio was clever, and very careful. There was no way in which either Carlo, or the men who kept bar, could tamper with the profits, because each bottle, and every barrel, had to be accounted for, and each bottle and barrel had a set profit.
The situation with the girls was equally, if not more, complicated. Dianne ruled the roost upstairs, together with a couple of older women who were big-boned and very hard; bull dykes, as you could imagine wardresses in the Women’s House of Correction. When a john went upstairs with a girl, one of these women handed the guy a towel. The girl also got a towel from the woman, but the john paid two dollars for his. The standard rate was two bucks for five minutes, and the two wardresses made it clear when the five minutes were up by banging on the door and demanding further cash, which meant that most of the guys parted with ten bucks for five towels to start with. The girls negotiated the real price, and each girl was paid half of what she made in one night, minus a ten percent “towel charge,” but plus a commission on any booze she got her customer to have brought up to the room.
Some of the younger, and stronger, girls would make upwards of one hundred dollars clear profit a night. They had a big party one night when Liz, the one Louis fancied, made a record of two hundred and fifty clear. On that night Carlo gave Louis the thumbs up to make out with Liz. “She was a good teacher, Herb,” the old man said. “I learned some great bedroom gymnastics at her knee, and other places.”
For three or four weeks, Louis was asked to do nothing else but play piano. He met some of the other musicians, who had been standoffish for the first couple of nights, and he got on especially well with a young Chicago boy called Milton Mezzrow. Mezzrow’s friends called him “Mezz,” and he played as sweet a clarinet as you would ever want to hear.
He warned Louis, “You do as you’re told, Pianist, unless it’s a real matter of principle with you—like music or relatives. Even then, only stand your ground with Capone. Some of these guys would blow your head off for sneezing while they’re speaking. Capone, though, he’s usually fair and, nine times out of ten, the guy’ll respect someone who stands up to him. But you’ve got to watch for his moods and never, never cross him when Torrio’s around.”
“And that, Herbie, turned out to be very good advice.” Passau paused, not looking at Kruger. “Herbie, I think I’d like a little music now.”
Big Herbie stretched and rose, pacing to a point where he could stand back, yet see clearly out of the window. It was late afternoon, with the promise of a lovely September evening. The trees had yet to turn and burn the fire of autumn. They were still the faded green of summer dust and some still carried other colors.
So, he thought, Maestro Passau is uncomfortable in Chicago. Herbie had some of it figured out. Not completely, but there had been hints. He thought he knew where the World War II stuff fitted but could not yet even make a guess at what had followed, leading to the more important, recent events.
His experience told him that Passau was gibing, holding back, not wanting to get to the heart of things. There was, undoubtedly, something particular during the Chicago period that had possibly affected him for the rest of his life.
“Herb, some music. Yes?”
All Herbie’s instincts told him that he should refuse, play the inflexible son of a bitch and make Passau go on talking. But instinct also said that Passau was so mercurial that he could easily clam up, refuse to go on, even decline to cooperate completely. Then where shall we be? Herbie shook his head, marveling at the beauty of the view.
“You can choose, Herb. You choose something.” There was almost a hint of desperation, as though he wanted to run away and hide in some music. God knew, Herbie thought, he, of all people, should appreciate that need.
He nodded at Passau. “I choose the Mahler Sixth”—he went over to the CDs—“and not your recording, Maestro. Bernstein, the most recent one. She has it here, Bernstein with the Vienna.” He opened the jewel case and took out the first CD. “Amazing that it should be a Jewish American who brought the Vienna Philharmonic back to their composer, eh?”
“He did an incredible job.” Passau did not sound impressed.
“To have not played Mahler for so long, then for them to resist Bernstein until he made them play again.”
“Lenny was always persuasive, Herb—if that story’s true, which I doubt. Lenny had a good propaganda machine.”
The thud-thud of that gawky march and the first great theme of the Sixth came sweeping down from the speakers. It was the lead-in to Mahler’s passionate musical description of his wife. Herbie knew that, but, whenever he heard the strings go marching off, his imagination took hold and he thought of huge, skeletal, Giacometti-like figures striding down from a mountain, crashing through trees in the foothills, laying waste to everything.
He also thought of a time long gone when he had listened, in his head, to Mahler’s Sixth, to hide from demons who chased him. To shelter in order that he could better deal with the people who had him, back in the frozen days when the Wall was still a killing field. Herbie, so often in those days, had used the symphonies of Gustav Mahler as tradecraft: his own cerebral hiding places during the dangerous and dark nights of his own soul. For a long time, Mahler had been cover for him. Sanctuary. Who was he to pass judgment on another great musician who obviously wanted to find his own deliverance in a similar way?
Mahler’s work thundered on, into the quiet, almost pastoral moments, with cowbell cloppings, leading to the doom-laden haunting themes.
The wonderful soaring tune, which all but overpowers in the lilting moments of the third movement, was always difficult for Herbie Kruger to handle. All men have a trigger to the emotions, with some it is a fragment of song, or a long-forgotten line of poetry, others feel it in a view seen again, unexpectedly. With Herbie, who could be a sentimental dolt, he admitted, many of Mahler’s more spectacular themes dropped the hammer on him.
They were both listening intently and, when the final dark melody began to build, signifying the sudden ending, Herbie felt, more than saw, that Louis Passau was weeping, just as he so often wept.
Herbie looked up, his own eyes moist from personal memories—the fluted ruby glasses, the Durer woodcut, and the treachery of Ursula—and caught Passau’s damp eyes in his.
It was a bonding. An exchange of vows. The interrogator and the subject becoming allies. He hoped that Louis Passau would now be able to go on and reveal the dark secrets lurking in the cavern of his soul.
They ate early—the stuffed onions—listened to more music, the Bruckner Ninth and Bartok’s Third Piano Concerto.
“I remember when people said this sounded like a freight yard,” Passau laughed. “You couldn’t get anything more melodic, with those great complex themes. I often worry about music critics. They never seem to keep up with the times. They’re always praising the past, just as they praise mediocrity.”
Herbie put on the Shostakovich Thirteenth, with its brooding and powerful settings of Yevtushenko’s poems: beg
inning with “Babi Yar” reflecting the horror of the Jewish massacre in Kiev.
There is no memorial above Babi Yar.
The steep ravine is like a coarse tombstone.
I’m frightened,
I feel as old today as the Jewish race itself.
I feel now that I am a Jew.
“The critic of the New York Times—what was his name? Schonbęrg? He called this ‘an example of poster-propaganda music’ How soulless these professional listeners can become.” Louis Passau looked miserable, and they sat in silence for a while.
Just before nine, the telephone rang. Five times, to say all was safe and Naldo felt happy about coming to the house without leeches on his back. Only it would not be Naldo, Herbie thought. It would be the Pucky person.
PUCKY CURTISS HAD suffered a strange and nerve-grating day. At eleven that morning she asked for her suitcase to be taken down to the car. She paid her bill and then took lunch, served once more by the boys and wenches in their eighteenth-century costumes. She really did find this part of America difficult to understand. There were moments, as yesterday looking at the university’s rotunda, when she felt she was in a time warp, yet at other times she was bemused. She had done the audio version of a double take when she had heard the TV weatherman refer to Virginia as “The Old Dominion”; and again when she saw a bumper sticker which boldly announced “Hang On To Your Confederate Money. The South Will Rise Again!” It was difficult for her to reconcile the recent history—old for Americans—and the current values. Everything about this place was a paradox to her, from the intense lushness of the Blue Ridge to the ugliness of buildings which did not even try to merge with the older architectural styles. Also, as one who lived mainly in London, there was the culture shock of amazement at the friendly and eager politeness of everyone she met.
