“That’s all right,” I said. I didn’t want to be there any longer than I had to. I kept thinking about what he had on us, on me. With a word to our bosses, those men on Gloria’s phone, the ones whose ringed hands everything that passed through mine landed in, we could suddenly become not worth the trouble. Wasn’t that right? And wouldn’t they be none too happy that we’d gone to this local overseer and not them for help?
“I’m just dropping this off,” I said, holding the envelope out towards him. He looked at it without moving.
“We met before,” he said. “I don’t think so,” I replied, even as I remembered our exchange months before at the While-a-Way Cocktail Lounge, after my Gloria routine, my tough-guy number with the owner. “I like it,” he’d said, with a ghost of a smile. “I like it.”
“Well, not formally. But I wouldn’t forget you,” he said, but without a flicker of flirtation in his voice. It was serene, relaxed. “You know, you could sit down. We could talk over some things. We might have some topics of mutual interest, if you were so inclined.”
The patter was smooth, sticky, tupelo honey. But you could feel there was something solid behind it, like oak. Like he was one of those sober-faced men behind the big desks in the movies. The ones who played the judges or bank presidents or Abraham Lincoln. I could see what people meant when they said he wasn’t long for shark business. That was a way to fill coffers in the first stretch. The things I’d heard about him, they were making sense.
But if so, he was taking quite a risk still dipping his cashmere toe into mop-ups like last night. He must’ve seen a major rake-off to take that chance. What was the payoff?
“I really have to get back,” I said.
He was looking up at me, eyes squinting slightly, looking so closely I almost backed up a step. “I don’t want to keep you,” he said. “But it’s a standing offer.”
He picked up the phone as if to make another call. I set the envelope down on his desk.
“So long, Mr. Mackey.” I said, as softly as him. Something about him called for hushed tones and meaningful stares and polite nods, followed by brief phone calls where everything is taken care of without anyone ever raising a voice.
“Give my regards to Miss Denton,” he said. “And tell her to come here to dine. I promise her the white-glove treatment.”
“Right,” I said, trying to read him. Trying and failing. You can’t read a top dog’s face. That’s why they’re top dog.
After I closed the door behind me, I stood there. Mackey’s goon was watching me, picking his nails with a crystal-handled nail file. He smiled, gums gleaming.
I walked past him without saying anything. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to get out of everywhere, all these places and their back rooms and back offices and back alleys. All these whispers and winks and knowing glances and everybody knowing, or maybe knowing, everything you’d done, everything you were. I didn’t want them to know what I was.
On the way back to her place, I stopped and picked up an afternoon paper. I’d been avoiding it. Hadn’t glanced at the morning edition, didn’t want to see if anything was in there. Sitting in my car, I read the news, local news, and crime beat sections. Not a word about Vic. Not that there should be.
It struck me suddenly. How long could a guy like that go missing before someone reported him missing? Days, months, more? Besides his girlfriend and his shark, who would notice?
That was when I started to cry. But it was only a few seconds. It was fast and then it was done. I wouldn’t even tell you, but it happened. I was weak and I cried in three fast, soundless jags and then I stopped, powdered my face, and started the car again. I tossed the newspaper out the window the minute I hit the boulevard.
Oh, Vic, remember when you came home with those miniature roulette wheels you’d pinched from the casino promotion office? You’d passed me the key to your place earlier that night and you came in late, you were tight from whiskey sours and you came in and I was in your bed, not a stitch on like you liked it and you were so lit you’d boosted a whole box of those novelty miniature roulette wheels. Remember how you laid me down and set one on my belly and spun it? How you blew on it to make it spin? Remember that? You said I was lucky for you, that it was only straight-up bets for you and me. But I knew. I knew what you really had in mind was a skin game. That’s what you had in mind all along, even as you spun the roulette wheel, chin resting on my stomach, razor bristle on my skin. The whirring of the wheel.
That night, I waited for her in that gloomy chromium-trimmed apartment of hers. I mixed myself seven and sevens, slinking around the place, running my fingertips over the plush surfaces, the high-class statuary, the objets, that’s what they called them in the deep-pocket stores that sold them to her.
By the second drink, the slinking had turned to sauntering. The way the whiskey was tingling behind my eyes, I started to get ideas. Who did she think she was anyway, putting us both in the bull’s eye? And now she thought she could keep me prisoner here, locked up in her silver-decked tower, sent out only at her pleasure?
By the third drink, though, the swagger started to wane. The panicky feeling from earlier in the day was coming back. Everywhere I turned I thought of things we’d forgotten to do, things that could trap us. When I looked at the satin moire drapes on her windows, I thought about the half-drawn blinds in Vic’s apartment. What if someone had seen us through the window? When I leaned against the far wall and could hear a neighbor’s warbling radio, I thought about the two gunshots, the struggle on the floor. Anyone could have heard and it would be over for us.
And Mackey. If Mackey was as big as his spread looked, as his spending looked, building new restaurants every week and, if the rumblings about him turned out to be true, buying acres and acres of land on the waterfront for a rumored new high-class racetrack, buying interests in welterweights, in shipping companies, in importing companies with fat government contracts—if he were doing half these thing, he could be a very dangerous man. How could we be sure what he’d do, what his motives might be?
So I poured myself one more drink, a short one. And as the booze kicked in, I drummed up some of the bluster again. Before I knew it, I was sashaying around her bedroom, deep into her treasure chest of jewels, dangling her diamond fan earrings, her South Sea pearl drops from my ears, donning the favored aquamarine and citrine fringe necklace, then the diamond sautoir, followed by the angel-skin coral choker.
As I pulled each piece out, expecting to find anything from the Hope diamond to a necklace made of human tongues, I felt tougher and tougher. A few months before I wouldn’t have dared to set foot in her bedroom without permission, but now everything had changed. She’d shown me something and everything had changed.
Not that I was a fool, not that kind of fool at least. I returned each piece to its place, nestled in individual fabric pouches.
After I’d made my way through the sparkly wampum, though, I was primed for more. My balance slightly off from the last drink, my heel catching in the thick carpet, I tripped over to her long-mirrored, walk-in closet and waded through its soft treasures. Digging my hands deeper and deeper, through the brocades, bouclé, and nubby wool, I felt my fingers touch something slippery and familiar. A sickly feeling rushed through me, wiping out all four drinks in an instant.
Quickly, I shoved everything along the closet rod to get a look, hoping it was a mistake, that I was just tight. But sure enough, there it was, at the far, far end of the closet, almost completely concealed by a peacock-green beaded evening coat.
The red dress I’d worn the night before, through it all. Through everything. The dress I’d finally peeled off at three A.M., shivering and shaken to the core. She’d asked me to hand it to her through the partially open bathroom door. She was going to take it down to the incinerator, along with her own suit, brittle brown from collar to knee. She’d draped it over her arm. Hadn’t I seen her walk out of the apartment with them?
But no, there it was hangi
ng in the far back corner of her closet, the jeweled front tugging down the padded hanger. There it was with the fresh rip in the back slit from one of the many times I’d hit the floor. I pulled it out and held it up to the smoked glass sconce, looking frantically for any stains. And there were stains. A rusty scatter along the bottom hem, just visible against the red. A plum-sized smear just under the neckline. I remembered that one. Pulling her back against me, against my chest, pulling her off with all I had in me. I did do that, Vic. I didn’t let it go on forever. She might have gone on forever. I did do that, Vic.
So here it was. She was holding this. She was holding this to have something on me. She was biding her time, waiting to see if she’d need to use it. Or planning on using it, the time just hadn’t come yet.
I probably should have stuffed the thing in a grocery bag first, but it felt like there was no time at all. Dress wrapped around my fists and forearms, nearly sliding from my grasp like some enormous tongue, I tore down the back stairway’s seven flights.
In the bleach-soaked basement, it took me a long, sweaty minute and a half to find the incinerator hatch. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, off my wet forehead, I jerked open the heavy door and tossed the dress in, letting the blast hit me square in the face, hearing the awful red thing sizzling for a second then disappearing into flames. I slammed the trap shut without a second glance.
Who did she think she was making? She’d taught me herself and she thought I’d roll over so easy?
“So how’d the drop-off go?” she asked when she finally got home, near one o’clock. “Mackey catechize you?”
“No,” I said, thinking hard. Thinking about what I was going to say to her and which chips I’d hold on to.
“Did he pull anything raw?”
I leaned back, surprised. “Raw? No. Why?”
She shrugged, unpinning her hat. “I kinda had an idea he might like a touch of your downy silks.”
“Is that why you sent me?”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned over me, turning my face from one side to the other, appraising my wounds, every ding and purple dent. “A few more days, chickie baby, and you’ll be back in the saddle.”
“Was that why you sent me?” I tried again.
She sighed shallowly, then slowly began loosening her hair from a handful of tight bobby pins. “I got the impression, nothing to put my finger on, that Mackey had been eyeing you, had an itch for you. Thought it might make him less inclined to stronghand us. Only looking out for us both, kid.”
I kept my eyes fixed on the wall behind her, on the scalloped shelf with the tall marble gazelle on it. If I looked at her, I’d lose my guts.
I forced the words out of my mouth. “Gloria, everyone there was looking at me like they knew. How can you think we’re not getting collared for this?”
She ran a pair of fingers through her hair, stretching out each auburn twist, almost with a languor. I couldn’t get a rise out of her. Who would’ve believed she’d been breathing fire twenty-four hours before?
“Listen, kid,” she said, “as much as Amos Mackey’s got on us, we’ve got a dozen more tales to tell on him. As a for-instance, you think he wants the gendarmes to get wise to the five little Indians he’s got buried in the wine cellar of Amos’s Italian Grotto? I know everything there is to know about each one of those clips. He’s got big ideas and he can’t have anyone squawking about the things he did before he got those big ideas. Or the things he did to get the pot of honey to bankroll those big ideas.”
She was so confident, so cocksure. For a second, it worked on me. I started wondering if I was acting crazy, like some hysterical girl. But then I reminded myself of the dress. If she was so confident, why keep a bargaining chip? I thought of that dress and everything started jumping in me. “How about those errand boys from last night?” I said. “Who knows who they’ll tell?”
“Don’t worry about the meat,” she said, watching me more closely now. Seeing something on me. “They do as they’re told. That’s their job. Since when do you worry, anyway? Have I ever queered you before? Have I ever laid you open?”
“Yes, Gloria,” I said, my voice crackling, popping. I couldn’t stop it. It was happening and I couldn’t stop it. “You have, Gloria. Last night. You ruined everything, don’t you see? You broke all your own rules. You said never to lose control. And you did. You fucked up and we’re both going to hang for it.”
I thought, as I heard myself, as the terrible words came out of my mouth, I might turn to stone on the spot. But they were out there. They were out there and there was no taking them back.
“How many cocktails have you had anyway, dear heart?” she said, unbuttoning her cuffs but with her eyes on me. “Been crying in your beer over your boyfriend?”
“Don’t talk about him,” I blurted out. “Don’t you talk about him. Don’t you dare.”
She tilted her head. “So that’s how it is, huh? A real love match and I tore you apart. Romeo and Juliet.”
“That’s not how it is,” I bristled. After everything, I still found myself feeling insulted by what she’d said, what she was suggesting. “I’m talking about business. About doing things smart. You broke all your own rules, Gloria. Anybody could’ve seen us, heard us. And you brought in other parties, parties we have no reason to trust. We’re behind the eight ball because of you.”
She shook her head, still seemingly unfazed by the growing hysteria in my voice. “This was your first time and I didn’t prepare you,” she said, plain and even. “I didn’t set you up first. I should have, sure. But I needed you in the dark. Otherwise you would’ve given your boy a warning and he’d’ve copped a heel. The point is, there’s nothing to worry about. This is how these things go.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot him?” I said, the words slipping out of me in a trembling voice I didn’t recognize. “Why’d you have to do it to him that way? Like some…” I stopped myself. The whiteness in her face, the bullet-hole eyes. I stopped myself. Her eyes said to stop and I did.
There was a long, terrible silence. All the sound seemed sucked out of the world and I knew if I tried to open my mouth, tried to force a word up my throat, I would come up mute.
She rose and walked over to me, put one cold, gloveless hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot, kid. You’re going to be okay. If you think about it, you’ll see how right I was. Because I’m taking care of us. I always take care of us.”
I went to sleep that night resolving to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open, biding my time. That was her best lesson to me, after all. If I was careful, maybe I’d see it coming, whatever it was.
If she saw the red dress was gone from her closet, she didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see it on her, couldn’t draw it out from the rest, from her whole cool, watchful way. I would stare at her face when she wasn’t looking, and when she was, and I couldn’t read a thing in it. In spite of everything, I envied her that. To wear that kind of face. It seemed like something impressive to me still. I couldn’t shake that.
In the dream that kept coming, Vic was throwing down playing cards at the long green table, card after card skating through the air. He was watching me, not the cards, and he was smiling in that genial way of his, the way that said, Sure, I’m lying, baby, I’m always lying but just because I’m lying doesn’t mean it isn’t true too. And the cards fly up and I can’t see his face for a second and when they flutter down again he looks different. He looks funny, like he’s made of wood. I see the long line across his face, hooking from earlobe to earlobe like a ventriloquist’s dummy, with the smile suspended from corner to corner. And then he throws the last card and he’s still looking at me and he reaches up to this jaw and twists it first one way, then the other, with a sickening creak. He’s holding it in his hands, that jaw, and I start to shut my eyes and he says something but I can’t hear it and I look again and he’s handing me the jaw across the table. He’s handing it to me, and it’s white and polished like a dog’s p
icked-clean bone. I know he wants me to lift it up to my face to see if it fits, if it locks into place, but I’m afraid to. And his face is hanging half open, like it’s come loose, but he’s flipping those cards again. And smiling. Always smiling.
Three days went by and I was still sleeping on her sofa. I’d made some noise about going back to my place, but she’d just slanted her head at me and said, “What’s there that’s not here, Kewpie doll?”
What could I say? Sure, I was scared of what she might do. But I was also being smart. I didn’t want to seem too eager. I was working on my poker face. I was getting better at it. I’d spent all three days stuck in that marbled mausoleum of hers, thinking, thinking.
On the fourth day, I got my day pass. She put the Pan-Cake on me herself. It took a half hour. She held my face in her silver-tipped hands and turned my chin this way and that way and I couldn’t see what she was doing, but first it felt rough and gritty and eventually it was like she’d dipped my face in soft wax and carved out my features anew. Like wearing a face on top of my face.
She held her hand mirror to my face and I pretended to look but I didn’t look.
She was giving me an easy ride that night. A few pickups to test the waters. I half wondered if she might follow me, but she ended up leaving first, saying she was going to check on three floating casinos on the river, a good sixty miles away. They weren’t the money spinners they once were and the fellas upstairs were raising eyebrows.
I can’t pretend it didn’t feel good to be back in the mix, walking through my favorite velvet-walled, gold-telephone casinos. The shift bosses and the floor men and the regulars all wanted to buy me drinks, sorry to hear I’d been under the weather, tucked into bed for nearly a week with a bad case of the grippe.