Chapter 15
“Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do”
E
ddie wanted to send a love letter to Walter Winchell, because the newspaper columnist had managed to drum up enough outrage about Eddie’s getting canned that he was able to get an audition for Florenz Ziegfeld with a couple of well-placed phone calls. He wondered if it would have been so easy without that. Maybe things were looking up, he considered as he left his room at the Knickerbocker one night. Maybe Jimmy Blanchard had done him a favor.
It was a hot July night, the air humid and heavy. Eddie walked up Broadway without a jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. He considered how unfashionable and uncouth this probably was for the crowd assembled around Times Square, headed for the theater, but he didn’t care.
He walked to the Marigold and was greeted amiably by Etta when he came through the door. “Hullo, Mr. Cotton,” Etta said with a wide grin. “Your table is waiting for you.”
Lane was seated at his usual table, a highball glass in his hand as always. He picked a cigarette up from the ashtray in front of him and took a long drag before he noticed Eddie there. Eddie knew the moment Lane realized he was there because his whole demeanor changed, from hardened gangster to something kinder and gentler. Eddie stood at the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “Guess who landed an audition with Flo Ziegfeld!”
Lane made a complete transition away from gangster to something else entirely when he whooped and jumped out of his chair. He threw his arms around Eddie. “Eddie! That’s amazing! Congratulations!”
“It’s just an audition,” Eddie said. “I’m not actually in the show yet.”
“No, but come on. You’ll be great, I just know it. Then I’ll have to come to the
Follies
to see you.” Lane pulled Eddie tight against him. Eddie realized from the vibrations rumbling through Lane’s chest that he was laughing. “Oh, Eddie. I’m so happy for you.”
Eddie looked up and saw that Lane was looking at him with an inscrutable expression. Eddie wondered briefly if Lane would kiss him. Eddie had told Lane the previous week that he was okay with kissing behind closed doors but definitely not in public. He’d tried to explain about how he didn’t like kissing that much, but Lane hadn’t bought it. And the truth, anyway, was that he liked kissing Lane. Just not where other people could see.
“Be happier for me when I’m actually in the show,” Eddie said.
Lane backed away, but he still smiled. “All right. Well, let me get you a drink so you can celebrate. Sit, sit. I’ll go find Julian.”
So Eddie sat, feeling content and a little smug. He was already mentally rehearsing the routine he’d do for Mr. Ziegfeld, a modification of the routine he’d been working on before he got fired from the Doozies, only with slightly more complicated steps, something designed to impress the man that Eddie had always dreamed of working for.
Julian appeared. He was dressed nicely. Or, he was dressed as all of the rest of the staff was, in a crisp white shirt and black trousers, but he looked a lot more elegant than usual. Eddie didn’t mind Julian’s flamboyance, but it hadn’t escaped his notice that most of Julian’s wardrobe was threadbare and patched together. He almost looked like a new man in the new clothes.
“Edward, darling,” Julian said, bustling over. “Mr. Carillo did not even need to tell me you were here. He’s been in a foul mood all afternoon, and then suddenly he wasn’t. I figured you must have come by.”
“Why was in he in a foul mood?”
Julian shrugged. “Who knows about these things? Can I get you a drink?”
“Yes, that would be wonderful.”
Julian reached over and pinched Eddie’s cheek before he walked away. Eddie rubbed the spot, but even Julian’s antics couldn’t have bothered him that night.
Lane came back a moment later. He sat at the table and shot Eddie a grin. “Hello.”
“Julian said you weren’t in the greatest of moods. Is anything wrong?”
Lane shrugged. “Just business. You don’t care.”
Eddie reached under the table and rubbed Lane’s knee. “You listen to me prattle about shows and dancing all the time. Talk to me about your business.” He smiled, but then realized that Lane’s business was probably not fit for public discussion. It was so hard to remember that a man as friendly as Lane could be a member of the Mob, that a man in command of everything he came in contact with was beholden to a boss who controlled so many aspects of life in New York. “I mean, tell me if you can. You don’t have to.”
Lane smiled and reached over to gently slide a finger along Eddie’s chin. “Let’s just say it takes a lot to keep a place like this open. And now Epstein wants me to promote prostitution.”
“What?”
Lane lowered his voice. “There are a lot of things I’m willing to do. I want to keep this place open. I like it here. This might be the first really good thing I’ve done in years. But I have to keep paying the local law enforcement to leave me alone. Serving liquor is hard enough. Serving up men? And, more to the point, if this is the kind of place in which it becomes possible to buy a man to take home for the night, word gets out, and then a completely different sort of customer comes to this place. And that, frankly, is an element I do not want to invite here.” Lane leaned back in his chair and looked around. “This place is safe, you know? It’s a place men like us can go to be themselves.”
“Yeah. It’s great.”
“I didn’t want to run it.” Lane glanced around and lowered his voice. “When Epstein offered it to me, I thought it was a bad idea. But he told me that I was in a unique position to understand the potential customer, which I guess I am. I understand that customer because I
am
that customer. And this place took off, which is why Epstein let me run it my way without intervention for so long. But this one cop, he sort of runs the neighborhood, he keeps demanding I pay him more to make him continue to ignore the fact that I’m importing liquor from Canada and a few other places. Thus the profits here are a little lower. Thus Epstein thinks we should do something to drum up more revenue, which includes having prostitutes here who pay us a cut. And that, frankly, is something I’m not willing to do. Why tarnish a good thing? There’s no pressure here. Men can come and dance with other men, fraternize, talk, go home with, whatever, and it’s good. I don’t want to introduce something that could change that in a negative way.”
Which Eddie understood. He looked at Lane and was in awe, to a point, because he hadn’t realized how much thought Lane put into this place, or even how much it required. It reminded him, too, that Lane was already pretty heavily involved in illegal activity. Not that Eddie was a stranger to illegal activity as such, just that it hadn’t registered how deep in it Lane was. Or, he’d known intellectually, but hearing Lane talk brought it home in a strange way.
“What are you going to do?” Eddie asked.
Lane pulled out his cigarette case and went about lighting a new cigarette. “I haven’t decided yet. Put off Epstein as long as I can. Although he’s right. If I don’t bring in more income, I may not be able to pay off this cop, and then the odds of getting raided go up significantly.”
“Surely there are other ways to bring in more money than offering prostitutes.”
Lane raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure there are, too. I’m working on that. The trick is to convince Epstein.”
Julian arrived with their drinks on a small tray. “The band tonight is hitting on all sixes,” he said, placing glasses before both Eddie and Lane. “No one’s dancing yet, but that’ll change soon.”
Lane reached over and tugged on Eddie’s sleeve. “You want to show off some of those skills that got you an audition?”
“Well, maybe in a little bit.”
Lane turned to Julian. “This is the good stuff, right? I told you we’re celebrating.”
“Yes, darling. It’s the whiskey that came in the shipment this morning.”
Eddie liked the sound of that. It had been a few weeks since he’d had good whiskey. Most of what had been served in the Marigold and the other Times Square clubs for the last few weeks had been gin or some other kind of unidentifiable rotgut or moonshine that didn’t taste especially good but got the job done. Eddie looked at the glass and the amber color of the liquid inside and started imagining what it would taste like, how warm it would be on his tongue.
Lane raised his glass to Eddie. “Congratulations on your audition, Eddie.”
“Thank you.” He clinked glasses with Lane then took a sip.
And immediately spat it out. “Ugh, this is awful.”
Lane frowned at his glass. “Not so much whiskey as bathtub gin with something in it to make it look like whiskey. Maybe caramel?” He held the glass up and looked through it at a light.
“Well, that can’t be,” said Julian. “I’m sure the bottle came from one of the crates that arrived this morning. I unpacked the crate myself.”
Lane shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Julian. It’s a bad shipment.” He pounded his fist on the table. “I’m going to shoot Mook in the foot.” He stood and stomped off toward the kitchen. Julian made a small squeal and scrambled after him.
Eddie sat at the table with his disappointment. He pulled an ice cube out of the glass and sucked on it. Whatever was in that glass tasted terrible. Eddie could still feel that first sip burning in his mouth. He pushed the glass aside and turned his attention to the dance floor, where a few men had started to dance. Eddie liked watching them together. One man caught his eye—he was young, maybe twenty-five, and he was wearing what looked like a modification of a sailor suit: wide-legged navy blue pants and a navy blue shirt with a tie at his neck. He had a sailor hat tilted sideways on his head. The whole affair was a costume, Eddie realized, and this man was as much a naval sailor as Etta was a woman. But the man was clearly having fun. He hung on the arm of another man who was dressed in more working-class attire, a work shirt buttoned up primly to the collar and a pair of worn-looking black pants. The two men danced with their arms tangled, and they laughed and moved in time with the music. Soon more men joined them, some of them dancing alone in hopes of attracting another man, some of them dancing together. Eddie thought about what Lane had said about this being a safe space for men like them. It was certainly a safe space for these men to act as they pleased.
Eddie watched the dancing and swayed a little in time with the music. He started to imagine dance steps that might go with the song, which was a slower ballad. He thought about the dance routine he’d use for Mr. Ziegfeld and imagined how the audition would go. It was the first bit of good news he’d gotten in weeks, it felt like, and he knew he could impress Ziegfeld if given the opportunity, although he didn’t have much of a gimmick anymore if he didn’t have Marian. The thought passed through his head that he could ask Marian to audition for Ziegfeld with him, but he doubted he’d be able to pull her away from her star turn at the Doozies. Or, more accurately, he doubted he’d be able to pull her away from Jimmy Blanchard.
Lane came back a few minutes later. He had a bottle in his hand and two fresh glasses. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I’ve had all of that shipment removed from the stock for the bar. But, bang it, now I’m out all that money, and I really can’t afford to be.” He plunked the glasses on the table. He pulled the cork out of the bottle and poured a little bit in each glass. “This is wine. It’s not great. I scored it off a rabbi who is making it for religious purposes. It’s too sweet, but it’s not toxic. And right now, I really need to get drunk.”
“Lane.”
Lane placed the bottle on the table, then took a sip of his wine. He tilted his head back and forth as he considered it. “This should get the job done. Although I bet this rabbi is making this terrible wine in his bathtub. Just like everybody else is. Maybe I should start making moonshine in my bathtub because at least I wouldn’t have to import my liquor through two-faced criminals like Mook.”
Eddie wasn’t sure how to get Lane to calm down, but part of him really wanted Lane to be as happy and carefree as those men dancing together. He reached over and ran a hand down Lane’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right. I’ll figure something out. I always do.”
Eddie believed that, or else Lane would not have ascended to the role he had in Epstein’s organization.
Eddie sipped his wine, and it
was
far too sweet, but he could tell by the way it burned on the way down his throat that it was more wine than grape juice. He watched Lane and worried, hoping to ease Lane’s unease somehow.
“I would like to dance,” Eddie said.
Lane smirked. “Well, I would love to dance with you. Or, I’d love to watch you dance, because I have those five left feet.”
Eddie stood. “Come on, I’ll teach you.”
Eddie led Lane to the dance floor. He did a few simple steps and got Lane to copy him. It was a little awkward, but Eddie managed to accomplish his goal, which was to get Lane to forget his problems for a little while. So they danced, and Lane stepped on Eddie’s feet, and tripped, and fumbled his way through the steps, but he also laughed and held onto Eddie, and for a few moments that night, everything was perfect.