Chances

  She complained all the way. “Jesus! Help! I’m not a fucking acrobat, you know.”

  As soon as the maintenance man had hold of the top half of her, Steven put both hands firmly on her ass and shoved.

  “Watch it!” she shrieked. Crouching gingerly on the roof of the elevator, she muttered in an uptight voice, “I am… one very… frightened person.”

  “Nuttin’ to worry about,” the maintenance man said, checking that the ropes were secure under her arms. He raised his voice and yelled, “Haul her up, George.”

  George, somewhere out of sight, obliged. And dangling like a puppet on a string she was pulled to safety and the forty-seventh floor. George and the two other men assisting him peered at her curiously.

  “Whew!” She sighed. “Do me a favor and get these ropes off me.”

  Silently they obeyed.

  “Anyone got a drink?” she demanded.

  One of the men indicated a nearby drinking fountain. Quickly she went over and drank three paper cupfuls of lukewarm water, then looked around the candle-lit hallway. “No lights yet, huh?”

  The men were busy throwing down the ropes for Steven. Lucky took a candle and made her way to the ladies’ room. She stuck the candle on a washbasin and peered at herself in the mirror.

  “Christ!” she exclaimed. “Whatta hag!!” She ran some water in the basin and rinsed her face. It felt wonderful.

  All she wanted to do now was get home, have a bath, and sleep for a week.

  Dario froze. Someone was trying to get into his apartment. He stopped punching out numbers on the phone and looked around for a weapon. He picked up a solid bronze statue and stood by the front door. “Who’s there?” he questioned in the toughest voice he could manage.

  The picking, scraping noise did not stop.

  Dario raised the statue, ready to strike.

  The door clicked open suddenly, but as his arm traveled down with the heavy bronze, something happened. He was grabbed, tripped up, and imprisoned on the floor. The statue crashed uselessly to the ground. A few swift moves had rendered him helpless.

  “What’s going on…?” he started to say, but the feel of cold steel between his eyes shut him up in a hurry.

  Someone had a gun on him.

  Once more he was a prisoner in his own home.

  Dr. Mitchell attended to Carrie’s ears, dosed her with sedatives, then Elliott drove her home.

  They climbed the stairs to their seventeenth-floor luxury home, escorted by a boy with a flashlight who was assisting people to their apartments at a dollar a throw. “Free enterprise!” joked Elliott, giving the boy a five for his trouble.

  The sedatives were beginning to take effect. Carrie felt drowsy, very drowsy…. “I must phone Steven,” she mumbled.

  “Forget about Steven for once,” Elliott replied crisply. “You’re going to bed, and that’s that.”

  She didn’t argue.

  Gino could not get back to sleep easily. He was restless after the incident with the photographer and that dumb stewardess. Coming to his door and trying to take pictures in the middle of the night. What had happened to privacy? A person’s rights?

  He attempted to get back to sleep, but his mind was racing with thoughts of Lucky and Dario and his old friend Costa. He ached to see them all again. Especially Lucky, his beautiful wild daughter. Especially Lucky…. Seven years was a long time…. Maybe too long….

  Eventually he fell asleep.

  Lucky emerged from the ladies’ room as Steven was hoisted onto the forty-seventh floor.

  He patted his rescuers gratefully on the back and thanked them profusely as they undid the ropes around his body.

  Lucky stared at him. He was definitely in the O. J. Simpson league—even in the flickering candlelight she could see that. “Hello!” she said. “Nice to see you.”

  He looked at her, and he too was surprised. Where was the buck-toothed buxom blonde he had imagined? This slim young woman with the wild black curls and direct eyes was a very foxy lady indeed.

  He grinned. “I told you we’d make it.”

  She grinned back. “All in one piece, too.”

  “You don’t look like I imag—”

  “Nor do you,” she interrupted. “Hey, how do we get out of the building?”

  “I guess we walk down the emergency fire stairs.”

  Steven turned to George, who was now hauling the maintenance man back onto firm ground. “Walking’s the only way to get out of here, right?”

  ‘“Less you wanna fly out the window.”

  “Thanks, guys. I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

  George chewed on his lower lip. “How much you appreciate it, fella?”

  “Very much indeed.”

  “Lay a little cash on him,” Lucky hissed, “and let’s go.”

  “Oh!” Steven fumbled in his back pocket and produced a ten-dollar bill. “Here, have a drink on me.”

  George took the bill and stared at it. Then he handed it disgustedly to the maintenance man and said sarcastically, “Ten bucks for our trouble. I reckon we kin get a coupla beers to split between the four of us.”

  Lucky opened up her purse and fished out two fifties. “Here you go, boys.” Then she grabbed Steven by the arm. “For crissake, let’s move.”

  He went with her as far as the emergency door, but when it clanged shut behind them he stopped and said furiously, “You just embarrassed me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Giving them all that money. They get paid for doing their job. They didn’t even deserve the ten.”

  “What’s all this deserve shit? They just saved us, pulled us out of the fucking black hole of Calcutta, for crissake. They deserve anything I care to give them.”

  “Ten was enough,” he said stubbornly.

  “Ten was an insult,” she replied.

  He glared at her. Foxy lady or not, she was still one big pain.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Are we going to walk down the stairs or are we going to stay here and fight?”

  “You can do what you like. We’re not joined at the hip.”

  She glared at him. One of the best-looking men she had ever seen but still an uptight schmuck. “Fine. I’ll say goodbye, then.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and began the long descent.

  He stood on the concrete landing, the early morning light filtering through the slatted windows.

  “Oh, and by the way,” Lucky yelled up the stairs, “your fly’s undone.”

  He looked. It was.

  Smart-ass woman.

  Dario hardly dared to move. The gun was grinding into his forehead and he thought he might puke.

  “Who are you?” a voice growled.

  Who was he? What was happening here? “Dario Santangelo…” he managed.

  “You’d better be able to prove that,” the voice said, releasing him. As he stood up, a bright flashlight was beamed onto him. “So prove it,” the voice demanded.

  Prove it, prove it. How was he expected to do that?

  “I… I live here,” he stammered. Then it occurred to him that perhaps this was a contract hit, and once he identified himself—

  He snapped. It was all too much. If he was going to get killed, then so be it. He sprang forward with an anguished roar.

  Carrie fell into a sedated sleep. She dreamed wild nightmares and woke bathed in sweat in the early morning.

  Elliott slept in his own bedroom across the hall.

  She tried the light beside her bed, only to discover that the electricity was still out. Her earlobes were throbbing and her body felt stiff.

  She pulled on a robe and padded down the hall to the kitchen. The small battery alarm clock she kept beside the stove told her it was six forty-five. She opened up the fridge and poured herself a warm glass of grapefruit juice. Modern living. She couldn’t even fix a piece of toast.

  Was it too early to call Steven? Usually she called him every morning at eight thirty, but wasn’t today an exception?

>   What was she going to say to him? Tell him about her wonderful adventure the previous evening? Steven would have a fit. In his own way he was even more conservative than Elliott.

  A twinge of pain in her left hand disturbed her. Arthritis, Dr. Mitchell had told her when she first complained months ago. “After all, Mrs. Berkely, you’re no longer a spring chicken.”

  Thank you, Dr. Mitchell. She was sixty-four years old, looked forty-eight, and certainly never felt old.

  Arthritis! Is that how one ended up, a crippled old woman, bones and joints stiff and tired?

  Vogue magazine certainly did not see her as an old woman. Vogue magazine had recently featured a full-page picture of her with a caption that read SIXTY PLUS… AND STILL GOING STRONG. The article had started off by saying, Mrs. Elliott Berkely, one of the great exotic beauties and hostesses of our time…

  She noticed that her hand was shaking as she sipped the grapefruit juice. She put the glass down and wandered through her tastefully decorated, wholly original ten-room apartment. Tastefully decorated… wholly original—quotes from the Vogue article.

  She rubbed her eyes and thought about going back to bed, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  When would the blackmailer strike again? She would live in fear until she knew.

  By nine o’clock in the morning Gino was showered, dressed, and ready to get the hell out of Philadelphia. He placed a terse call to Costa, telling him to meet him at the Pierre; then he went downstairs where an apologetic hotel manager waited.

  “Mr. Santangelo. I’m so sorry about last night. The car you ordered is ready. If there is anything I can do for you…” He walked beside Gino to the revolving doors. Outside waited a group of reporters and photographers.

  “Shit!” Gino snapped. “What is this?”

  “You’re news, Mr. Santangelo,” stated the hotel manager apologetically as he escorted his notorious guest out to the waiting limousine.

  Gino covered his face as best he could. “The blackout is news. Jackie Onassis is news. I’m just a tired old man who wants to live out the rest of his life in his own country—quietly—undisturbed.”

  His words hung in the air. They were untrue. And everyone knew it.

  Carrie

  1943

  It was Carrie’s birthday. She was thirty years old.

  Suzita, Silver, and the other two girls now resident in the apartment baked her a large chocolate cake with thirty blazing candles on top of it. She wanted to cry. It was the first birthday cake she had ever had.

  Little Steven danced around excitedly in a white silk suit while the girls fussed and petted him, exclaiming, “Ain’t he the cutest little fella in the world?” He was cute, with his milk chocolate skin, black curly hair, snub nose, and huge green eyes. Carrie gazed at him lovingly. Having Steven made it all worthwhile and she was determined to give him the best of everything.

  They were a protected house now. A large chunk of the week’s takings had to be paid to a collector. “We don’t fight zee mob,”Suzita had insisted, when a polite young man had come calling two years back with a proposition.

  Carrie had agreed, although her natural instinct had been to tell him to get lost.

  “Say!” Suzita trilled, lifting Steven onto the table next to the cake. “Sing for mommy Happy Birthday like zee good boy.”

  One of the girls took a picture. Steven grinned, revealing missing baby teeth, and began to lisp the song.

  Carrie’s eyes filled with tears. She was glad that she didn’t know who his father was. Somehow it made him all the more hers.

  Bernard Dimes sat in the dimly lit theater and watched his actors and actresses going through their paces. The rehearsals for his new show were progressing smoothly.

  The director called a ten-minute break and walked over to where Bernard was sitting. Amiably they discussed things. Costumes. An actor’s temperament. Accommodations in Philadelphia and other cities they would shortly visit. “I had a funny experience the other night,” the director said, almost as an afterthought.

  “What was that?” Bernard asked politely.

  “Hell! I don’t even know if I should tell you.”

  Bernard sipped his coffee from the thin paper cup.

  “But I guess I will—’cause you know anyway that I have my kinks.”

  Bernard smiled. The entire company knew about the director’s kinks.

  “I went over to this brothel on Thirty-sixth Street. Someone told me about this wild Mexican whore who specializes in what I like. And guess who’s running the place?”

  “Who?”

  “That black kid we had in the chorus a few years back. The one that ran out on us…. Used to share with Goldie. Remember?”

  “Carrie,” stated Bernard, his stomach lurching.

  “That’s it! Carrie! I said to her, What’s a nice kid like you doin’ in a place like this? You know what? She pretended not to know me. How d’you like that?”

  “How was the Mexican?” Bernard asked, trying to keep his tone noncommittal.

  “Wild! Why? That’s not your scene, is it?”

  “I have an investor who might be persuaded to part with a touch more cash should I be able to recommend such a service.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Leave the finances to me. Just write down the address in case I have to pass it on.”

  The director shot him a quizzical look, but he scribbled on the card Bernard handed him anyway.

  Bernard tucked it into his pocket and did not remove it until he arrived home that evening. Then he took it out and studied it, memorizing the address and thinking that of course he would never go there. He thought of Carrie as he had thought about her over the years since she had vanished.

  Goldie had been no help at all in his search for her. “I don’t know why she ran off. She had a wonderful evening out with me and my boyfriend and a very nice friend of his. She was rather a strange girl.”

  Yes, she was. Different. Unusual.

  Bernard made a decision. He got in his car and drove to the apartment house on Thirty-sixth Street, parked outside, and stared at the building. The minutes ticked by, then the hours. He watched the different people going in and out of the entrance. Mostly men. A constant stream of them.

  He watched until dawn, and his neck was stiff and his body aching. Then he drove slowly home.

  Early lessons she had learned from Florence Williams and Madam Mae stayed with her. The madam of a house should be warm, friendly, and a touch stern. She should treat the men like guests at a fun party. Learn their favorite brand of cigarette or cigar. Their favorite drink. Their favorite sexual game. She should suggest which girl they might like to try. And greet them like a long-lost friend at every visit. A madam never offered her own sexual services. She only obliged very special clients. Screwing the madam was like getting the best table in a restaurant.

  Suzita did not object at all to Carrie’s taking charge. “Suits me,” she had said, shrugging shapely shoulders. “You do all zee work. I have all zee fun!”

  Carrie tried to keep a very professional house. Her girls were spotlessly clean, never under sixteen, and dedicated to their job—one of the reasons the place developed a good reputation.

  After an initial brush with the police, she learned to pay off and was not bothered again. What with the protection and the police it sometimes seemed that life was one big payoff. But there was plenty of money coming in. She rented another small apartment in the building and moved Steven and the girl who looked after him there. The farther he was away from her activities the better.

  Every day at twelve noon she took him for a walk. He sat in his stroller, bright as a button, and they would wander over to Fifth Avenue and window shop. Steven loved his outings with her, and she never let him down. After all, Steven was her only reason for living.

  Bernard Dimes began to spend a great deal of time sitting in his car outside the building on Thirty-sixth Street. He did not know why he was doing it
, something just seemed to compel him. He took to driving past at every opportunity. In the mornings before going to rehearsal, in the evenings on his way home, and then finally, after dinner, he would park outside and just sit there.

  What was the matter with him? Was he going mad? He was in his fifties, and yet he felt fifteen. Too nervous to go in and see her. Not strong enough to stay away.

  “Bernard, dear, you’re awfully jumpy lately,” one of his polished blondes complained. “Something troubling you?”

  Yes. Something was troubling him. He was in love with a person he hardly knew. He was in love with sad exotic eyes and a graceful black body. He was obsessed.

  Carrie smiled at Enzio Bonnatti. It was his second visit. She had obviously pleased him the first time. She handed him his scotch, fixed exactly the way he liked it, two ice cubes and a splash of water.

  He lay on the bed in her room and talked about his wife, Francesca. He obviously thought a lot of her. According to him she was young, beautiful, sympathetic, and intelligent.

  If she was all those things how come he wasn’t home with her? Carrie had learned not to ask questions. Just to nod and mumble an encouraging “I understand.”

  Enzio was fully dressed, but as he began to describe, in every intimate detail, his wife’s lovemaking techniques, his erection grew.

  Francesca was the perfect wife. The perfect mother. She had a perfect body. A perfect cunt. Only Francesca refused to go down on him.

  Carrie knew exactly when to unzip his pants and take him in her mouth. That was all Bonnatti required of her. Nothing more. Nothing less. He did not pay. He did not need to. Enzio Bonnatti controlled every whorehouse in the area.

  “You’re a smart girl,” he said to her conversationally, when she returned from the washbasin in the corner of the room, “but a good whore would swallow it.”

  “Next time,” she said quickly.

  “What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”

  “I… hope so.”

  He laughed. “I want you to start pushing a little dope for me, nothing heavy. The niggers’ll go for it, an’ those dumb college kids.”