Jimmy and Fay (33 page)

Authors: Michael Mayo

Instead, I said, “Where were you all day? I was worried. So was Marie Therese.”

“I took a walk. I told you I was going to.”

She didn't say anything about a walk, but I wasn't about to start another fight about it.

“I think better when I walk,” she said, “and I had a lot to think about. I went up to the park and down to the Battery. I took the ferry to Staten Island because we haven't done that and I walked back to the bar.”

“That's a long walk.”

“It is. My legs are tired.”

“What did you and Marie Therese talk about?”

“You. Where were you?”

“I think you know. Arch and I went to Bobby's version of
King Kong
.” I stopped, trying to figure how much to tell and decided to keep it as simple as I could. “I was looking for you. The other night, Bobby came close to offering you a job serving drinks there. I thought he might have done it again in the note he left for you last night. I had reason to think there could be trouble. I was right.”

“You're saying you went there to protect me, not to watch a stag film? Ha! Marie Therese said you'd come up with a good story, but this one takes the cake.”

“It's the truth,” I said. “There's a lot more to it, but now's not the time. What were you thinking about and talking about with Marie Therese? That's more important.”

She could tell that I was serious and that I didn't make up the part about being worried about her.

She said, “I'm trying to decide what to do. My mother wants me to come home. When I first decided to leave, I had to fight her to apply for the position with the agency. She never liked the idea of me going back east and working for rich people. I haven't really told her what Jimmy Quinn's is, either. She thinks it's a restaurant. If she knew it was a speakeasy, she'd go nuts.”

My first thought was to ask her if she wanted to go back to California, but I remembered what Arch said about her old man, and I saw the hard set of her face and I knew she wasn't doing that. It was something else. “What did Marie Therese tell you?”

She laughed again but not like it was really funny. “You know what she said. She wants us to get married. For a while I thought I wanted that, too, but now I don't.”

“What?” I didn't expect to hear that.

“Don't look like that. I know what you think. But I'm eighteen years old. I don't want to be a barmaid for the rest of my life. It's fine for now, but there's a lot of things and places that I don't know anything about. I've been here a year, and I'm just beginning to understand how much I don't know about this city, and there's a lot more to the world than New York.”

I didn't understand that last part at all.

“Yeah, that's a lot to think about all right,” I said. “I've been thinking about a lot of things too. Past few days, I've heard a lot of stories and seen guys and women using each other and selling themselves and lying, and doing the most terrible things you can imagine, and all I can think now is that I don't want to be like that with you.”

I stopped because I wasn't saying what I wanted to say, but she was paying attention to me and maybe she knew what I meant, so I tried again. “I'm sorry that I forgot about when I met you, but I want you to know that every day since then, I've looked forward to seeing you and doing things with you, and I want to see you tomorrow and the day after that.”

I guess that was enough because she pushed up out of her chair and climbed onto my lap and gave me the longest, sweetest, most serious kiss I'd had in weeks. Finally, she came up for breath. Then looking worried and sounding a little embarrassed, she said, “There's a lot you don't know about me.”

Acknowledgments and Afterword

Like the other novels in this series,
Jimmy and Fay
is a work of fiction based on fact. It really began when I interviewed Fay Wray. She was one of the most charming women I ever met, and, like Jimmy, I fell a little bit in love with her. In her autobiography,
On the Other Hand
, she neglects to mention being in New York for the premiere of
King Kong
. She does write about being in the city a year later to make the film
Woman in the Dark
. She received an extortion threat then and said, without more explanation, that it was handled by studio executives Howard Hughes and Joseph Schenck. The sad details of her marriage to John Saunders, their 1931 trip to New York, and her appearance in the production of
Nikki
are in agreement with Jimmy's version of them. So are his memories of Polly Adler, her various addresses, and her introduction to the business of prostitution. The Projectionists were real and some of their films still exist, at least in stills and clips.

Thanks to my agent, Agnes Birnbaum.

And more thanks to Berenice Abbott, Reginald Marsh, John Sloan, Rian James, Frederick Lewis Allen, and Arthur Leipzig, who paid attention to the city and the people and recorded those times.

Rachel Warren Ratliff gave the book an early test drive and said that it handled pretty well. Editor Charles Perry made valuable suggestions. Copyeditors Lauren Chomiuk, Laurie McGee, and Anna Stevenson tried their best to improve Jimmy's grammatical lapses and his many insensitivities. More often than not they were unsuccessful, but they made this a better book.

Finally, once again, thanks to publisher Otto Penzler for his belief in crime fiction.

About the Author

Michael Mayo (b. 1948) has written about film for the
Washington Post
and the
Roanoke Times
. He hosted the nationally syndicated radio programs
Movie Show on Radio
and
Max and Mike on the Movies
. Mayo is the author of
American Murder: Criminals, Crime, and the Media
and the Jimmy Quinn Mysteries, which include
Jimmy the Stick
(2012) and
Everybody Goes to Jimmy's
(2015). He lives in North Carolina.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Mauricio DÃaz

978-1-5040-3605-4

Published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.mysteriouspress.com

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