Under the Skin Page 5

  “With golddiggers,” he said, “the idea you got money works better than Spanish fly.”

  “Too bad Mexican flies don’t work as good,” LQ had said. “You always got plenty enough of them on you.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Brando said.

  “If I only could,” LQ said with a sigh. “I’d finally be doing it with the best there is and somebody I truly love.”

  He stopped the car in front of the Club and Brando and I got out. I carried Ragsdale’s valise and one of the briefcases, in which I was carrying my revolver and the .380 I took from Ragsdale. LQ waved so long and drove off.

  Brando punched me on the arm and asked if I was sure I didn’t want to go to the party with him. “Frenchy can prob’ly get a friend.”

  “Thanks, anyway,” I said. “I’ll find my own fun.”

  “Suit yourself, bud,” he said, and walked off to the parking lot in back where he’d left his car.

  T he Turf Club was a three-story building where the Maceos kept their headquarters. Everybody just called it the Club. On the ground floor was a restaurant called the Turf Grill, and as restaurants go it was fairly flashy and the food was always good. On this night the place was packed and there was a line of diners out on the sidewalk, waiting to be seated. A hostess named Sally gave me a wink when I went in, and some of the harried waitresses smiled at me in recognition as I made my way across the room to a doorway leading to the real attraction on the lower floor—a large betting room where you could lay money on any horse race at any track in the country. The day’s major races were broadcast over the parlor’s wall speakers and the hollering in there could get pretty intense when a race was in progress.

  Anybody could get into the betting room, but the upper floors were exclusive. The elevator and the narrow stairway were in a hallway at the rear of the room. The stairway doors on every floor locked automatically from the inside, and there was always a palooka posted at the elevator to make sure nobody but special customers or friends of the Maceos got on it. Rose and Sam had their offices on the second floor, which also contained a billiards room and the Studio Lounge—a small restaurant with a dance floor and a long bar and a backroom gambling hall for big-money card and dice action. The third floor was a health club equipped with a boxing ring and all kinds of exercise equipment.

  The only raids the local cops ever pulled were of course just for show. They always let the Maceos know they were coming and they never hit anything but the ground-floor betting parlor. Whatever equipment they confiscated they returned on the Q.T. a few days later. Every now and then, however, the Texas Rangers would come calling. That’s when the elevator man would push a hidden button to buzz a warning to the upper floors. The band in the Studio Lounge would strike up a blaring rendition of “The Eyes of Texas,” which everybody knew was the signal of a Ranger raid. The staff in the gambling room would fly into action, covering the gaming tables with expensive tablecloths and setting them with dinnerware and platters of food. The back bars would swivel around to hide the booze racks and display nothing but seltzer bottles and tea sets and urns of fresh coffee. The elevator was also equipped with a secret switch that turned it into the slowest mechanical conveyance in Texas. By the time the Rangers arrived at the second floor the only booze they’d find was what the customers had brought in—which was legal to do—and there wouldn’t be so much as a poker chip in sight.

  At this hour the day’s races were long over, and the betting parlor was pretty quiet. A few guys sat around with bottles of beer, gabbing and telling each other how close they’d come to winning big today in the first or the fifth or the last race at such and such a track.

  Guarding the elevator tonight was an ex-pug named Otis Wilcox who’d once lasted six rounds with Tunney before the Gentleman Marine coldcocked him. Otis said he couldn’t remember his own name for an hour after he came to. He worked as both a Turf Club guard and a trainer in the gym. He gave boxing lessons to health club members and still liked to spar, but he wasn’t one to pull all his punches, so regular partners were hard for him to come by. I was his favorite sparring buddy because I could take it. Besides, I was a fast learner and had gotten good enough to make it interesting for him. The lumps I took were worth it to me for the chance to box against somebody who knew what he was doing. We rarely got a chance to work out with each other, though, because of our different schedules, and we hadn’t been in the ring together in a month. We’d gone three rounds the last time, and we got pretty serious in the third. With about a half minute left in the round he’d got careless and I nearly knocked him down with a right. For the rest of the round he went at me with everything he had. By the time the bell rang, my headgear was in a lopsided twist and my ribs felt like he’d used a ball bat on them. But Otis took a lot of kidding from some of the boys about the right hook I’d hung on him, and I knew he couldn’t wait for our next session so he could get back at me.

  As I walked up to the elevator he feinted a left at my ribs and popped a lazy right into the valise I threw up to block the punch.

  “Christ, kid, you getting too quick. You’ll knock me on my ass next time.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Name the day,” he said.

  “Been out of town a lot. I’ll let you know.”

  “Do that, kid.”

  The old guy working the elevator nodded hello and took me up.

  The Studio Lounge was loud and smoky and dimly lit, jammed with revelers, the band hammering out “Let’s Fall in Love,” the dance floor swirling with couples. The Maceo offices were in a hallway on the other side of the room and I made my way through the crowd between the dance floor and the bar. A lot of the customers knew who I was, and they pulled each other out of my way. No telling what kind of stories they’d heard about me except that all of them were scary and probably half of them bullshit, but that was all right with me. The more such stories got around, the easier it sometimes made my job.

  As I entered the hallway, a door at the far end opened and Big Sam came out, adjusting a gardenia in his lapel. A blond cigarette girl I’d never seen before was with him, holding to her tray and straightening her pillbox hat over her slightly disheveled hair. She had the right body for the little shorts and low-cut vest of her uniform.

  She’d missed a button on the side of her shorts and Sam pointed it out to her. Then he saw me and said, “Hey now…Jimmy the Kid!”

  He’d started calling me that from the time we’d first been introduced and he heard how Rose and I had met in San Antonio. “You should’ve seen this guy in action, Sammy,” Rose told him. “Like fucken Billy the Kid or somebody.”

  “Only this one’s Jimmy the Kid,” Sam said with a big grin—and that was his name for me from then on, though he usually just called me Kid. Then Rose took up the name, and Brando and LQ sometimes used it, sometimes Goldman the bookkeeper. But nobody else. Even people who knew me well enough to say hello—and there weren’t many—rarely called me by any name at all, but when they did, it was just Jimmy.

  Sam gave the girl a smack on the ass and she hurried past me with a fetching blush. She gave off a sweet warm smell with a tinge of sex in it. I watched her disappear into the crowd, then arched my brow at Sam.

  He laughed and said, “Just getting a happy start on the new year, Kid.”

  Sam and Rose were both married, but you never saw their wives and children, and the brothers rarely spoke of them. Their business lives and their home lives were completely separate worlds—except that their families and luxurious homes were protected around the clock by a crew of Ghosts and special police patrols.

  Sam put a hand on my shoulder and stood with his back to the lounge so no one who looked down the hall could see his face.

  “So?” he said, his aspect serious. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  His face brightened again and he patted me on the arm. “You always do good work, Kid.”

  He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder into the loun
ge behind him and said, “Listen, do yourself a favor and take a spin with that doxy was just here. New girl. Suzie Somebody, from…I don’t know, Hick City, Nebraska. She’s a regular carnival ride, I swear.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

  Sam liked to hire small-town girls who’d been brought up so straitlaced they couldn’t wait to run off on their own. Girls who’d been hit over the head with religion all their life, who’d been told over and over that if they let a boy so much as touch their tit they were no better than whores. But the girls would see broads like Harlow and Crawford having all that slutty fun in the movies, and some of them wanted to have that kind of fun too, wanted it bad. When they finally couldn’t take any more preaching, they’d run off to some big city and dive into sin headfirst.

  “It’s like they wish Mommy and Daddy could get a load of them with a mouth full of cock,” Sam once told me. “Like they’d love nothing better than to give everybody back home a heart attack.” I’d heard a few Galveston madams say pretty much the same thing about a lot of the girls who worked for them.

  Sam was husky and handsome and always impeccably groomed, every curly hair in place even now, just minutes after a roll in the hay. His teeth were as bright as a movie star’s. Hell, he could’ve been a movie star if he’d wanted. I’d never seen him in need of a shave or a haircut, and he always smelled of just the right touch of cologne. Nobody could make a suit look better. His usual good spirits were so contagious you couldn’t help getting caught up in them.

  I accepted the Chesterfield he offered, then the flame of his gold lighter, and then he lit his own.

  He told me Rose was up in the gym, and as he walked me back to the elevator he said, “Hey, you hear about the suicidal twin who killed his brother by mistake?”

  I smiled politely.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. How about the nun and the oyster shucker? Sister Mary Antonia goes into this oyster bar, see…”

  R ose was punching the heavy bag when I pushed through the frosted-glass door to the gym. You could tell on sight he was Sam’s brother. The same curly hair and beaked nose, the same dimpled and slightly double chin. At forty-nine, Rose was seven years older than Sam and he looked it, at least in the face. He almost always had blue half-moons under his eyes and his hair was already half gray. He was a little shorter than Sam and not as husky, but in truth he was in pretty good shape and he tried to stay that way with workouts in the gym. Sam was naturally strong and built like a halfback, but his only exercise was in humping the chippies.

  A hulking, bushy-bearded health club worker named Watkins was bracing the bag with his shoulder as Rose threw hooks and crosses, bobbing and shuffling, showing good footwork, glaring at the bag like it was a flesh-and-blood opponent. He popped a few sharp jabs, cut loose with a roundhouse right, ducked and hopped back like he was dodging a counterpunch. Sweat ran off his face, and his sweater was dark around the neck and armpits. He saw me watching from the door and beckoned me over. Then pivoted and drove a right-hand lead into the bag like he’d caught his opponent off guard. He followed up with a pounding combination of steady lefts and rights before finally stepping back and dropping his arms, blowing hard breaths.

  “Okay…thanks, Billy,” he said to Watkins. “That’ll do.”

  “Good work, chief,” Watkins said. He exchanged nods with me and headed for the elevator.

  Rose stripped off the bag gloves and tossed them on the table, then wiped his face and neck with a towel. He draped the towel around his neck and stepped over to the open locker where his white suit was hanging and reached into a coat pocket and fished out a pack of Lucky Strike. He put one in his mouth and I took out my lighter and lit it for him.

  “Jab’s looking snappy,” I said.

  “You think? How about that right lead?”

  “You try it against somebody knows what he’s doing and he’ll take your head off with a counterpunch.”

  “That’s what Otis says. He also tells me you landed a stinger on him the last time you guys sparred. Says he’s gonna tap you a good one next time, remind you who’s who.”

  “I always expect him to try tapping me a good one.”

  “I think he’s right—you’re getting too goddamn cocky.” He softly spat a shred of tobacco off the tip of his tongue and took a casual look around. We were the only ones in the gym. “So?” he said.

  “Everything’s jake,” I said. I put the valise on the table and worked the snaps and opened it and he looked inside.

  “It’s all he had with him,” I said. “Said he could get more from the bank tomorrow, but you said let it go, so I—”

  “Fuck the money,” Rose said. “He down?”

  “He’s down.”

  “I don’t mean are his hands and knees busted. Not for a bastard I warned.”

  “He’s down,” I said. “Two other guys were there. I gave them the word for Dallas.”

  He nodded and smiled. His best smile couldn’t hold a candle to Sam’s, but then Rose rarely smiled with the intention of making someone feel warmly regarded. His usual smile was the one he showed now. The smile he wore when he won.

  “There was a piece in the money bag too,” I said. “I took it.”

  “Let’s see.”

  I unzipped the briefcase and took out the .380 and laid it on the table. He picked it up and thumbed off the safety and pulled the slide back just far enough to see the round snugged in the chamber, then eased the slide forward again and reset the safety. He turned it over this way and that, regarding it from every angle. A .380 was the second kind of pistol I’d ever fired and I liked the model a lot. It didn’t have the punch of the army .45 automatic but was generally more accurate. Still, everybody knew an automatic could jam on you and a revolver never would. This piece was in mint condition, though, and I couldn’t resist it.

  “Nice,” Rose said. He set it on the table and pushed it back to me. “Had supper?”

  “I was about to.”

  “Good.” He dropped the butt on the floor and stepped on it, then picked up a fresh towel and slung it over his shoulder. “I’ll take a shower and we’ll go for clams.”

  “Don’t you have a party or something?”

  “Because New Year’s? Hell, Kid, it don’t mean nothing but another year closer to the grave. What’s to celebrate?”

  F orty minutes later we were in his private corner booth in Mama Carmela’s, a small Italian place on Seawall Boulevard. A picture window looked out on the gulf. The faint lights of shrimp trawlers moved slowly across the black horizon. I’d brought the briefcase with me, both pistols in it, so I wouldn’t have a gun digging into my belly while I ate.

  The grayhaired waiter brought a basket of breadsticks and poured glasses of Chianti. Rose waved off his suggestion of minestrone and salad and ordered clams in pesto over capellini for both of us.

  “Molto bene, Don Rosario,” the waiter said with a bow, and retreated to the kitchen. A Victrola behind the front counter was softly playing Italian songs.

  As always, Rose wanted every detail, so I told him exactly how it had gone in Houston. And as always, he listened intently and without interruption.

  F

  When I was finished, he raised his glass and said, “Salute.”

  The clams and pasta arrived and Rose ordered another bottle of Chianti. We tucked our napkins over our shirtfronts and dug in, twirling pasta on our forks, spearing fat clams dripping with pesto, sopping up sauce with chunks of warm buttered bread. Rose wasn’t one for conversation while he dined. He broke the silence only to ask how my clams were. “Damn good,” I said. He nodded and refilled our glasses and gave his attention back to his food.

  When we were done and the waiter cleared away the dishware and poured coffee and bowed at Rose’s dismissal of dessert and left us again, Rose said he wanted me to stick around town for the next week or so.

  It took me by surprise. He knew I liked making out-of-town collection runs, that I hated hanging around the Club with
nothing to do.

  “I’m supposed to make the pickups in Victoria tomorrow,” I said. “Then there’s the pickups across the bay in a couple of days.”

  “I already put another man on the Victoria run. And your partners can handle the eastern collections. I want you close by for a little while.”

  “How come?”

  “I got a hunch about those Dallas guys. They might just be dumb enough to try something. If they do, they’ll probably try it pretty soon, and I want you here to deal with it.”

  He read the question on my face. “I got a phone call,” he said. “One of the other two guys must’ve called Dallas as soon as you left the hotel room. Then Dallas called me, some guy named Healy—fucken mick. Says he represents the organization that owns the machines Ragsdale was pushing on this side of the line. Organization—like he’s talking about Standard Oil. Says he wanted me to know his organization had nothing to do with Ragsdale putting the slots in Galveston County, that it was strictly Ragsdale’s doing. Says the organization only contracted the machines to him. Says Ragsdale deserved what we gave him.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I said. “Sounds like he was saying they got your message and they want no trouble.”

  “That’s what I thought. He’s telling me it was all Ragsdale, his outfit’s hands are clean, right? So I tell the harp no hard feelings, Ragsdale crossed the line but the account’s all settled.”

  “So? What’s the problem?”

  “I’m getting to that. You know, that’s your problem, Kid, I told you before—you get in too big a hurry. The man in a big hurry is the man who misses something important. Always be sure you know what’s what before you make a move. You listening to me?”

  “Yes, Daddy. So…what’s the problem?”

  He gave me a look of mock reprimand and pointed a warning finger at me. A lot of people referred to him as “Papa Rose,” though never to his face—they didn’t dare get that familiar with him. The truth was, he didn’t mind the “Papa Rose” at all. He took it as a show of respect toward him as the head of a sort of business family. Calling him “Daddy” was my sarcastic way of ribbing him about it, especially when he’d lecture me like I was some schoolkid. I didn’t do it often, and rarely in front of anybody else, but one day I’d called him Daddy when Artie the bookkeeper was in the room, and Artie’s eyes got big as cue balls. He must’ve expected Rose to blow his top at my insolence. But all Rose did was roll his eyes and shake his head and say to Artie, “Young people today got no respect. My old man woulda taken a belt to my ass if I’d been so disrespectful, believe you me, no matter how old I was.”