One-Eyed Jacks Read online

  T-Bone put his hand on the arrowhead in his pocket and wondered what luck was there. The waiter came over with four more beer. Tommy tried to wave him off.

  “No charge,” the waiter said. “Gentleman at the bar sends his regards.”

  There was no gentleman at the bar, but Mac Brady was standing there. In his three-piece suit and grey fedora, he could have been mistaken for a gentleman, at least by someone who didn’t know him. There was some kid standing with Mac, a huge farm boy with blond hair and side whiskers. The kid was drinking soda and he was showing Tommy Cochrane an insolent grin.

  Mac Brady raised two fingers in salute. When Tommy nodded back Mac picked up his glass and started over.

  EIGHT

  If it was true that Mel Dunston was the bad news (and it was, as far as Lee was concerned), the good news was the band. Lee hadn’t been expecting much and she got a happy surprise. Teddy Foster on the piano, Ralph ‘Bugs’ Bundy on bass, and Lee’s old pal, Doc Thorne, blowing sax and clarinet. These guys weren’t just good, they were a country mile better than that, and Lee was pleased as punch to have them backing her.

  The first night, the Friday, went off pretty well, all things considered. The Blue Parrot was nearly full, an uptown crowd out for dinner and some entertainment. Lee waited until ten o’clock — by that time most of the crowd had finished eating — before she went on.

  She opened with ‘Bill Bailey’ to get things moving, then kept the tempo with ‘Sunny Side of The Street.’ Foster held the break on the second song to give Lee a chance to breathe; her wind wasn’t good yet and she was happy for the help.

  She was wearing the green velvet dress, with high-heeled pumps and dark seamed stockings. Her auburn hair looked good against the green, she knew, and she wore it down, parted at the side and brushed away from her face. Lee had always been pretty objective about her looks and she knew she looked okay tonight. Entering the club she’d received a few compliments and she’d accepted them like a bum taking coppers when he wanted quarters. Yeah, yeah — what else you got for me?

  They’d run through maybe fifteen songs that afternoon, just her and Teddy Foster, and there were another half-dozen or so Lee knew she could wing if they had to stretch it out. Enough to get her started; she planned to keep it pretty simple for the first week.

  Patty Simmons had been at the rehearsal, dispensing wise-cracks and moral support. Mel Dunston had been there too. He listened to Lee for maybe ten minutes and then spent the rest of the hour cosy-ing up to Patty, who, in her tight skirt and beehive, must have seemed like an easy woman to Mel. As she sang Lee watched the little drama happily; she’d lay even money on how it would turn out.

  “That’s my knee,” she heard Patty say finally. “And if your hand touches it again, I’m going to break your fucking fingers.” Mel went backstage after that and waited for Lee to finish. Then he told her that her singing was okay but that he expected some “patter” between songs.

  “Like the preformers do in Las Vegas,” Mel told her.

  “What do the preformers in Vegas do?” Lee asked.

  “You have to develop what we in the business call rapport with the audience. Do you know what rapport is?”

  “It’s French for something, isn’t it, Mel?”

  Mel hesitated. “I believe so,” he agreed. “Now listen, you’re a beautiful-looking dame, if you don’t mind me saying so. I have a lot of handsome young men come into my club, important men in this city. I want you to be nice to them when you’re onstage, be their friend. Understand?”

  “Gee,” Lee said. “You’re paying me money to be nice to men I don’t know? Haven’t they got a name for girls like that, Mel?”

  Mel was perplexed and Lee had left him that way.

  Now she finished out the first set with an offbeat version of ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?’ With the lights in her eyes, Lee had no idea what the crowd was thinking, but she knew that Doc Thorne, blowing the alto sax, loved every minute of it, his eyebrows arched happily as Lee exercised some artistic licence with the lyrics of the song.

  Between sets they went backstage for a drink. The dressing room was nothing more than a hallway, blocked off at one end, with a card table and chairs scattered about. Lee took a beer and sat down. Doc Thorne, sweating bullets from the last solo, plopped down beside her, his brown face shining.

  “Goddamn, that was fun,” he laughed. “If this was twenty years ago, Lee, I’d marry you.”

  “You might have had a problem with my father,” Lee said. “Hell, I was only ten years old.”

  Leaning against the wall, Bugs Bundy smiled and lit a reefer through the smile. The brown paper caught fire then settled into ash and ember as he pulled on the cigarette.

  “Catch your breath, old man,” he said to Doc Thorne. “We got a ways to go yet.”

  “I’m fifty-two years old and I can still kick your white ass,” Doc said. He took a mighty pull on the reefer then offered it over to Lee. She declined.

  “Better keep my wits about me,” she said. “First night and all.”

  Doc gave the stick back to Bugs, and then Mel Dunston walked into the room. He went right after Bugs, his eyes popping behind thick glasses.

  “I told you about that stuff,” he said. “I won’t have it in my place.”

  “This?” Bugs asked. “This ain’t tea, Mel. This is just Black Cat tobacco.” He pulled a pouch of Black Cat from his pocket. “See here — Black Cat.”

  “I thought it was whatdyacallit — maryjane,” Mel said uncertainly.

  “You won’t find any musicians smoking that stuff,” Bugs said. “Fogs up your thinking, that stuff.”

  Mel could never be sure if Bugs was pulling his leg or not. Most of the time he just wouldn’t talk to the bass player — it seemed to Mel that it was better to be thought arrogant than an idiot. He turned to Lee; she was the reason he’d come back anyway.

  “Very nice,” he said, moving to sit beside her. He made a move to pat her knee, but she gave him a look of wide-eyed impropriety and he pulled away. “However,” he said, “we have to work on connecting with the crowd.”

  Lee feigned confusion. “You’re coming onstage, Mel?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You said that we have to work on connecting with the crowd.”

  “A figure of speech,” Mel hastened to explain. He shook his head merrily at the notion. “1 didn’t mean that I — no, of course not.

  “1 see,” Lee said. She looked over at Doc’s mirthful face.

  “1 want you to be more chatty,” Mel explained. “1 want —”

  “Rapport.”

  Mel smiled happily. “That’s what I want. Make them feel at home with you.”

  “These people have nightclub singers at home, Mel?” Lee asked. “What the hell are they doing here?”

  “Show ’em some leg,” Bugs said.

  “Oh, no,” Mel said. “Nothing improper. Not that you...”

  Lee got to her feet and patted Mel’s balding head. “I’ll try to keep my clothes on, Mel,” she said. “But I can’t promise anything.”

  She and the band walked out for the second set. Mel stayed behind. He was reasonably sure that Lee had been kidding. And he was trying not to think of Lee Charles with her clothes off.

  Onstage the band went for their instruments, and Lee walked to the open mike.

  “Hey, we’re back,” she said. She held her hand above her eyes and looked below the lights to the people at the tables. “Anybody out there?”

  “Who gives a shit?” she heard Bugs say behind her. Lee turned and crossed her eyes at him, then went back to the mike.

  “Yeah, we’re back,” she said again. “And we’re here to entertain you folks tonight. First of all, I’d like to welcome you all to the... uh, Red Robin.”

  “Blue Parrot,” Teddy Foster told her.

  “Oh yeah, the Blue Parrot,” Lee said. “I knew it was some kind of coloured bird. Anyway, I’m Lee Charles and I’m j
ust back in town, I’ve been out in California the last couple years. Hollywood, to be exact. Hollywood, now that’s where you go to make movies, but I guess you knew that. It’s also a good place to go if you’re in need of a little perspective, if you know what I mean.”

  Doc sounded off on the clarinet. Lee smiled.

  “Anyway, I made a couple,” she said. “Movies that is. And they were going to make me this big movie star with fur coats and diamonds falling out of my pockets and all that. But one day I just decided to hell with that, I’d rather be back here entertaining you good people here at the Orange Duck.”

  “Blue Parrot,” Teddy said.

  “Yeah, I’d rather be here singing to you,” Lee said.

  “Then sing!” The voice came from the bar.

  “Well, I’m gonna sing,” Lee said into the mike. “But first I’ve been instructed to establish some rapport with the audience. Now I’m not at all sure how long that s gonna take. It’s been a good long while since I’ve established any real rapport, you know, and I’m kinda rusty.” She turned to Doc Thorne. “Doc, how long you figure it’s gonna take?”

  And Doc was laughing, his lips on his horn. “I believe you damn near there, girl.”

  “All right,” Lee said. She looked out below the lights again. “You feeling any rapport yet?”

  There was a wolf whistle, again from the bar. Lee put her hands on her hips and spread her legs slightly. “There’ll be none of that,” she admonished. “We’ve been told to behave up here. Ain’t that right, Doc?”

  “That’s a fact.”

  “You been behaving, Doc?” Yes, ma’am.

  “You ain’t been misbehavin’?”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “You ain’t what?” Lee asked and she gave him a wink.

  “Ain’t misbehavin’,” Doc said. Then he smiled widely.

  “Well, all right,” Lee said. “All right.” And she began to sing —

  I don’t stay out late, don’t care to go. I’m home about eight, just me and my

  radio,

  Ain’t misbehavin’, savin’ my love for

  you —

  They ran through forty minutes, keeping it loose and having fun, Doc laughing and egging Lee on, Bugs high as a Georgian pine on the bass, and Teddy on the keys just giving Lee her head, following wherever she wanted to go. They finished up with ‘Tennessee Waltz,’ playing it soft and melancholy, running it out like sand through an hourglass. Afterward, Lee stepped down and headed for the bar, and a man at a table stopped her and said she was better than Patti Page.

  “Oh, gosh,” Lee said and she went to the bar for a glass of ice water.

  Half a minute later she felt a hand on her elbow and she turned to see Mac Brady’s fleshy face. He showed her his gold tooth in a smile, one hand on her elbow and the other in the pocket of his vest, like some cagey politician on the stump.

  “Sweet Lee drinking ice water,” he said. “You taking the cure?”

  “Maybe I got religion, Mac,” she told him. “How you doin’?”

  “I’m doing all right, for a law-abiding man,” he said, flashing the tooth again. “What do you say I buy you a real drink — for old times’ sake?”

  “Gin and tonic,” Lee said. “And I don’t care for whose sake.”

  Lee had known Mac Brady a lot of years. He was a boxing manager, and a promoter of a lot of different things — fights, circuses, bad plays — anything that would bring in a few bucks and didn’t require anything resembling good taste. Yeah, Lee had known Mac a good many years and she had never been overly fond of the man, and as such she wondered why she would agree to have a drink with him tonight. Of course, Lee wasn’t real fond of automobile accidents either, but whenever she passed one, she just had to have a look.

  Standing beside Mac was a sharp-eyed kid, a Viking with sideburns and wavy blond hair. He was watching Lee like a stray dog eyeing a sirloin.

  “This is Nicky Wilson,” Mac said. “The Nick’s a fighter, the best I’ve ever had.”

  Lee wondered if he was giving her a shot with the last remark, but it didn’t seem likely. Mac wasn’t that quick on his feet, she decided.

  “How you doin’, pretty lady?” the kid asked.

  “How you doing yourself,” Lee said.

  He gave her a quick, crooked smile, his head nodding like he was agreeing with her on something. He was a good-looking kid, she thought, built like a goddamn oak. He gave off confidence like reflected light.

  “Lee used to like fighters,” Mac said then. “Especially heavyweights.”

  “Lee used to like a lot of things that weren’t all that good for her,” she said and she tasted the gin.

  “Well, you’ve never met a fighter like the Nick,” Mac told her. “He is on his way. He’s fifteen and oh right now — nobody can stay more than three rounds with the kid. We’re looking to get him ranked and then watch out — title time. Katie, bar the door.”

  The kid came a little closer. “Two years,” he said and he held up a pair of thick fingers. “Two years and the belt is mine.”

  “What’ll you do ’til then — wear suspenders?” Lee asked.

  “Whoa, you’re still a pistol, Lee,” Mac said. “I remember your lip, always getting somebody in trouble.”

  “Usually me,” Lee said.

  The kid’s smile was fading a little; he was used to being the centre of attention.

  “Why don’t you come down to the Gardens at the end of the month, Lee?” Mac asked. “We’re fighting Wosinski. Come on down, I’ll get you ringside.”

  “You ever see a Polack fly?” the kid asked her. “You come on down, I’m gonna put that bum in the grey seats. You wanna see something, you come on down.”

  “Maybe,” Lee told him. She finished her drink. The band was back onstage, killing time with a Joplin rag.

  “I like the way you sing, pretty lady,” the kid was saying now. “Will you sing for me some time?”

  “I’m here six nights a week,” she said.

  “Have you seen Tommy?” Mac asked then.

  “Not for a few years, Mac.”

  Mac had something to say to that but at the last minute he swallowed it. Lee noticed, but the kid was getting closer and she could feel his breath on her neck. He had strange, mottled eyes; he reminded Lee of an inbred dog her stepfather had once owned.

  “I don’t think you understand what I meant,” he said.

  Lee put her hand on his chest and backed him off. “Down, Fido. You ain’t the champ yet,” she told him. “And I gotta go to work.”

  It was the last set of the night and Lee kept it short and easy, made a point of enjoying herself for a change. Whatever else happened, she was right at home with this band. A stroke of pure luck — thrown in with a bunch of creeps, she wouldn’t have lasted a week.

  When she glanced beneath the lights she could see the kid Nicky Wilson watching her, his eyes arrogant, elbows on the bar behind him, hips thrust forward, a toothpick in his mouth. He was a good-looking boy, Lee had to admit.

  She finished with ‘September Song’ and then went backstage with the boys to the makeshift dressing room. The audience gave them a pretty good hand going off. Mel Dunston, who knew nothing about music but a good deal about money, took the applause as a good sign and came back to congratulate them.

  “It’s all you, Melvin,” Bugs told, waving aside the praise. “The Blue Parrot is nothing more than an extension of your personality. You’re the leader, Mel — the general — and we’re just the foot soldiers. The Parrot is you.”

  Mel stole an uneasy look at the others. “I think that’s true,” he decided. He turned to Lee. “It if the Blue Parrot,” he said. “You had trouble with that tonight.”

  “The Blue Parrot,” Lee repeated. “I’m gonna have to write that down, Mel.”

  She’d been debating going back to the bar for a drink. Mac Brady was there, in his cheap pinstripe and fourteen carat tooth. And the kid with the strange eyes and the lean body w
as there too. What Mac’s game was that night was anybody’s guess, but the kid, she knew, was waiting for her, with his insolent smile and his hard-on confidence. He was a possessor, this kid, and Lee was betting that so far he’d gotten everything he’d gone after.

  Doc Thorne was buttoning his jacket. “You needin’ a ride, Lee?” he asked. “Got my car.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” she said. “These heels are hell for walking the sidewalks. I don’t know how the hookers do it.”

  “Well, they only on their feet part of the time, those girls,” Doc said.

  He let her off in front of the rooming house. She leaned over to kiss his brown and whiskered cheek, then went upstairs and went to bed.

  NINE

  Maybe the first time was accidental; anyway it was nothing you could call somebody on. The second shot was no accident — a hard left hook that caught T-Bone square in the balls and dropped him to the deck, the pain exploding through his groin like shrapnel bits. He stayed on one knee for maybe a five count, his glove on the canvas, head moving back and forth. When he got up, he looked over at the smirking Wilson kid and wiped his gloves on his trunks.

  “Keep your punches up,” T-Bone said to the kid. “That twice now.”

  “Let’s go, coon,” the kid said. “I wanna work out.”

  Mac Brady had hired T-Bone a couple days ago in the Rooster. The offer was ten bucks a day to spar with the heavyweight Nicky Wilson, who was training to fight Ted Wosinski at the Gardens later in the month. Seemed the kid was kind of hard on sparring partners, and Mac was having trouble finding anybody to work with him. T-Bone decided that ten bucks wasn’t bad for maybe an hour or two at the gym; he’d been paid more, but he’d been paid a hell of a lot less, too. He figured he could put together a hundred, maybe help Tommy with the farm.

  Today was the first day and Wilson was coming after him again, pawing with clumsy lefts and then throwing haymaker overhand rights that T-Bone just managed to slip. He was just trying to stay away now; the pain in his balls was still there and he wanted to make it to the bell to rest. He picked off one of the kid’s candy-assed jabs, then threw a combination to the body and moved in to clinch.