“In that order?”
“In any order you like. Without them the world would be a sad and dismal place.”
“Speaking of sad places, what’s new in Wichita?”
“Wichita?” She put down her glass and gave me a gorgeous shit-eating grin. “Where’s that?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I can’t remember. I packed my bags five years ago and haven’t set foot in that town since.”
“Who bought the house?”
“I didn’t sell it. Billy Bigelow lives there with his chatterbox wife and two little girls. I thought the rent would give me some nice pin money, but the poor sap lost his job at the bank a month after they moved in, and I’ve been letting him have it for a dollar a year.”
“You must be doing okay if you can afford that.”
“I pulled out of the market the summer before the crash. Something to do with ransom notes, cash deliveries, drop-off points—it’s all a bit blurry now. It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Your little misadventure saved my life, Walt. Whatever I was worth then, I’m worth ten times that now.”
“Why stay in Wichita with that kind of dough, right? How long since you moved to Chicago?”
“I’m just here on business. I go back to New York tomorrow morning.”
“Fifth Avenue, I’ll bet.”
“You bet right, Mr. Rawley.”
“I knew it the second I saw you. You look like big money now. It gives off a special smell, and I like sitting here breathing in the vapors.”
“Most of it comes from oil. That stuff stinks in the ground, but once you convert it into cash, it does release a lovely perfume, doesn’t it?”
She was the same old Mrs. Witherspoon. She still liked to drink, and she still liked to talk about money, and once you uncorked a bottle and steered her onto her favorite subject, she could hold her own with any cigar-chomping capitalist this side of Daddy Warbucks. She spent the rest of the main course telling me about her deals and investments, and when the plates were carted off again and the waiter slid back in with the dessert menus, something went click, and I could see the lightbulb go on in her head. It was a quarter to two by my watch. Come fire or flood, I aimed to be out of there in half an hour.
“If you want in, Walt,” she said, “I’ll be happy to make a place for you.”
“Place? What kind of place?”
“Texas. I’ve got some new wildcat rigs down there, and I need someone to watch over the drilling for me.”
“I don’t know the first thing about oil.”
“You’re smart. You’ll catch on fast. Look at the progress you’ve made already. Nice clothes, fancy restaurants, money in your pocket. You’ve come a long way, sport. And don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’ve cleaned up your grammar. Not one ‘ain’t’ the whole time we’ve been together.”
“Yeah, I worked hard on that. I didn’t want to sound like an ignoramus anymore, so I read some books and retooled my word-box. I figured it was time to step out of the gutter.”
“That’s my point. You can do anything you want to do. As long as you put your mind to it, there’s no telling where you might go. You watch, Walt. Come in with me, and two or three years from now we’ll be partners.”
It was a hell of an endorsement, but once I’d soaked up her praise I snubbed out my Camel and shook my head. “I like what I’m doing now. Why go to Texas when I’ve got everything I want in Chicago?”
“Because you’re in the wrong business, that’s why. There’s no future in this cops-and-robbers stuff. You keep it up, and you’ll either be dead or serving time before your twenty-fifth birthday.”
“What cops-and-robbers stuff? I’m clean as a surgeon’s fingernails.”
“Sure. And the pope’s a Hindu snake charmer in disguise.”
Dessert was wheeled in after that, and we nibbled at our eclairs in silence. It was a bad way to end the meal, but we were both too stubborn to back down. Eventually, we made small talk about the weather, threw out some inconsequential remarks about the upcoming election, but the juice was gone and there was no getting it back. Mrs. Witherspoon wasn’t just peeved at me for turning down her offer. Chance had thrown us together again, and only a bungler would pass up the call of fate as blithely as I had. She wasn’t wrong to feel disgusted with me, but I had my own path to follow, and I was too full of myself to understand that my path was the same as hers. If I hadn’t been so hot to run off and plant my pecker in Dixie Sinclair, I might have listened to her more carefully, but I was in a rush, and I couldn’t be bothered with any soul-searching that day. So it goes. Once your groin gets the upper hand, you lose the ability to reason.
We skipped coffee, and when the waiter delivered the check to the table at ten past two, I snatched it out of his fingers before Mrs. Witherspoon could grab hold of it.
“My treat,” I said.
“Okay, Mr. Big Time. Show off if it makes you happy. But if you ever wise up, don’t forget where I am. Maybe you’ll come to your senses before it’s too late.” And with that she reached into her purse, pulled out her business card, and laid it gently in my palm. “Don’t worry about the cost,” she added. “If you’re belly-up by the time you remember me, just tell the operator to reverse the charges.”
But I never called. I stuck the card in my pocket, fully intending to save it, but when I looked for it before going to bed that night, it was nowhere to be found. Given the tussling and tugging those trousers were subjected to immediately following lunch, it wasn’t hard to guess what had happened. The card had fallen out, and if it hadn’t already been tossed into the trash by a chambermaid, it was lying on the floor in suite 409 of the Royal Park Hotel.
I was an unstoppable force in those days, a comer to beat all comers, and I was riding the express train with a one-way ticket to Fat City. Less than a year after my lunch with Mrs. Witherspoon, I landed my next big break when I went out to Arlington one sultry August afternoon and put a thousand dollars on a long shot to win the third race. If I add that the horse was dubbed Wonder Boy, and if I further add that I was still in the thrall of my old superstitions, it won’t take a mind reader to understand why I bit on such a hopeless gamble. I did crazy things as a matter of routine back then, and when the colt came in by half a length at forty to one, I knew there was a God in heaven and that he was smiling down on my craziness.
The winnings provided me with the clout to do the thing I most wanted to do, and I promptly set about to turn my dream into reality. I requested a private counsel with Bingo in his penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan, and once I laid out the plan to him and he got over his initial shock, he grudgingly gave me the green light. It wasn’t that he thought the proposition was unworthy, but I think he was disappointed in me for setting my sights so low. He was grooming me for a place in the inner circle, and here I was telling him that I wanted to go my own way and open a nightclub that would occupy my energies to the exclusion of all else. I could see how he might interpret it as an act of betrayal, and I had to tread carefully around that trap with some fancy footwork. Luckily, my mouth was in good form that evening, and by showing how many advantages would accrue to him in terms of both profit and pleasure, I eventually brought him around.
“My forty grand can cover the whole deal,” I said. “Another guy in my shoes would tip his hat and say so long, but that’s not how I conduct business. You’re my pal, Bingo, and I want you to have a piece of the action. No money down, no work to fuss with, no liabilities, but for every dollar I earn, I’ll give you twenty-five cents. Fair is fair, right? You gave me my chance, and now I’m in a position to return the favor. Loyalty has to count for something in this world, and I’m not about to forget where my luck came from. This won’t be any two-bit cheese joint for the hoi polloi. I’m talking Gold Coast with all the trimmings. A full-scale restaurant with a Frog chef, top-notch floor shows, beautiful girls slithering out of the woodwork in skin-tight gowns. It’
ll give you a hard-on just to walk in there, Bingo. You’ll have the best seat in the house, and on nights when you don’t show up, your table will sit there empty—no matter how many people are waiting outside the door.”
He haggled me up to fifty percent, but I was expecting some give-and-take and didn’t make an issue of it. The important thing was to win his blessing, and I did that by jollying him along, steadily wearing down his defenses with my friendly, accommodating attitude, and in the end, just to show how classy he was, he offered to kick in an extra ten thousand to see that I did up the place right. I didn’t care. All I wanted was my nightclub, and with Bingo’s fifty percent subtracted from the take, I was still going to come out ahead. There were numerous benefits in having him as a partner, and I would have been kidding myself to think I could get along without him. His half would guarantee me protection from O’Malley (who ipso facto became the third partner) and help keep the cops from breaking down the door. When you threw in his connections with the Chicago liquor board, the commercial laundry companies, and the local talent agents, losing that fifty percent didn’t seem like such a shabby compromise after all.
I called the place Mr. Vertigo’s. It was smack in the heart of the city at West Division and North LaSalle, and its flashing neon sign went from pink to blue to pink as a dancing girl took turns with a cocktail shaker against the night sky. The rhumba rhythm of those lights made your heart beat faster and your blood grow warm, and once you caught the little stutter-step syncopation in your pulse, you didn’t want to be anywhere except where the music was. Inside, the decor was a blend of high and low, a swank sort of big town comfort mixed with naughty innuendos and an easy, roadhouse charm. I worked hard on creating that atmosphere, and every nuance and effect was planned to the smallest detail: from the lip rouge on the hat-check girl to the color of the dinner plates, from the design of the menus to the socks on the bartender’s feet. There was room for fifty tables, a good-size dance floor, an elevated stage, and a long mahogany bar along a side wall. It cost me every cent of the fifty thousand to do it up the way I wanted, but when the place finally opened on December 31, 1937, it was a thing of sumptuous perfection. I launched it with one of the great New Year’s Eve parties in Chicago history, and by the following morning Mr. Vertigo’s was on the map. For the next three and a half years I was there every night, strolling among the customers in my white dinner jacket and patent leather shoes, spreading good cheer with my cocky smiles and quick-tongued patter. It was a terrific spot for me, and I loved every minute I spent in that raucous emporium. If I hadn’t messed up and blown my life apart, I’d probably still be there today. As it was, I only got to have those three and a half years. I was one-hundred-percent responsible for my own downfall, but knowing that doesn’t make it any less painful to remember. I was all the way at the top when I stumbled, and it ended in a real Humpty Dumpty for me, a spectacular swan-dive into oblivion.
But no regrets. I had a good dance for my money, and I’m not going to say I didn’t. The club turned into the number-one hot spot in Chicago, and in my own small way I was just as much a celebrity as any of the bigwigs who came in there. I hobnobbed with judges and city councilmen and ball players, and what with all the showgirls and chorines to audition for the flesh parades I presented at eleven and one every night, there was no lack of opportunity to indulge in bedroom sports. Dixie and I were still an item when Mr. Vertigo’s opened, but my carryings-on wore her patience thin, and within six months she’d moved to another address. Then came Sally, then came Jewel, then came a dozen others: leggy brunettes, chain-smoking redheads, big-butted blondes. At one point I was shacked up with two girls at the same time, a pair of out-of-work actresses named Cora and Billie. I liked them both the same, they liked each other as much as they liked me, and by pulling together we managed to produce some interesting variations on the old tune. Every now and then, my habits led to medical inconveniences (a dose of the clap, a case of crabs), but nothing that put me out of commission for very long. It might have been a putrid way to live, but I was happy with the hand I’d been dealt, and my only ambition was to keep things exactly as they were. Then, in September 1939, just three days after the German Army invaded Poland, Dizzy Dean walked into Mr. Vertigo’s and it all started to come undone.
I have to go back to explain it, all the way back to my tykehood in Saint Louis. That’s where I fell in love with baseball, and before I was out of diapers I was a dyed-in-the-wool Cardinals’ fan, a Redbird rooter for life. I’ve already mentioned how thrilled I was when they took the ‘twenty-six series, but that was only one instance of my devotion, and after Aesop taught me how to read and write, I was able to follow my boys in the paper every morning. From April to October I never missed a box score, and I could recite the batting average of every player on the squad, from hot dogs like Frankie Frisch and Pepper Martin to the lowest journeyman scrub gathering splinters on the bench. This went on during the good years with Master Yehudi, and it continued during the bad years that followed. I lived like a shadow, prowling the country in search of Uncle Slim, but no matter how dark things got for me, I still kept up with my team. They won the pennant in ‘thirty and ‘thirty-one, and those victories did a lot to buck up my spirits, to keep me going through all the trouble and adversity of that time. As long as the Cards were winning, something was right with the world, and it wasn’t possible to fall into total despair.
That’s where Dizzy Dean enters the story. The team dropped to seventh place in ‘thirty-two, but it almost didn’t matter. Dean was the hottest, flashiest, loudest-mouthed rookie ever to hit the majors, and he turned a crummy ball club into a loosey-goosey hillbilly circus. Brag and cavort as he did, that cornpone rube backed up his boasts with some of the sweetest pitching this side of heaven. His rubber arm threw smoke; his control was uncanny; his windup was a wondrous machine of arms and legs and power, a beautiful thing to behold. By the time I got to Chicago and settled in as Bingo’s protégé, Dizzy was an established star, a big-time force on the American scene. People loved him for his brashness and talent, his crazy manglings of the English language, his brawling, boyish antics and fuck-you pizzazz, and I loved him, too, I loved him as much as anyone in the world. With life growing more comfortable for me all the time, I was in a position to catch the Cards in action whenever they came to town. In ’thirty-three, the year Dean broke the record by striking out seventeen batters in a game, they looked like a first-division outfit again. They’d added some new players to the roster, and with thugs like Joe Medwick, Leo Durocher, and Rip Collins around to quicken the pace, the Gas House Gang was beginning to jell. ’Thirty-four turned out to be their glory year, and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a baseball season as much as that one. Dizzy’s kid brother Paul won nineteen games, Dizzy won thirty, and the team fought from ten games back to overtake the Giants and win the pennant. That was the first year the World Series was broadcast on the radio, and I got to listen to all seven games sitting at home in Chicago. Dizzy beat the Tigers in the first game, and when Frisch sent him in as a pinch runner in the fourth, the lummox promptly got beaned with a wild throw and was knocked unconscious. The next day’s headlines announced: X RAYS OF DEAN’S HEAD REVEAL NOTHING. He came back to pitch the following afternoon but lost, and then, just two days later, he shut out Detroit 11–0 in the final game, laughing at the Tiger hitters each time they swung and missed at his fastballs. The press cooked up all kinds of names for that team: the Galloping Gangsters, River Rowdies from the Mississippi, the Clattering Cardinals. Those Gas Housers loved to rub it in, and when the score of the final game got out of hand in the late innings, the Tiger fans responded by pelting Medwick with a ten-minute barrage of fruits and vegetables in left field. The only way they could finish the series was for Judge Landis, the commissioner of baseball, to step in and pull Medwick off the field for the last three outs.
Six months later, I was sitting in a box with Bingo and the boys when Dean opened the new season against the Cubs i
n Chicago. In the first inning, with two down and a man on base, the Cubs’ cleanup hitter Freddie Lindstrom sent a wicked line drive up the middle that caught Dizzy in the leg and knocked him down. My heart skipped a beat or two when I saw the stretcher gang run out and carry him off the field, but no permanent damage was done, and five days later he was back on the mound in Pittsburgh, where he hurled a five-hit shutout for his first win of the season. He went on to have another bang-up year, but the Cubs were the team of destiny in 1935, and by knocking off a string of twenty-one straight wins at the end of the season, they pushed past the Cards and stole the flag. I can’t say I minded too much. The town went gaga for the Cubbies, and what was good for Chicago was good for business, and what was good for business was good for me. I cut my teeth on the gambling rackets in that series, and once the dust had settled, I’d maneuvered myself into such a strong position that Bingo rewarded me with a den of my own.
On the other hand, that was the year when Dizzy’s ups and downs began to affect me in a far too personal way. I wouldn’t call it an obsession at that point, but after watching him go down in the first inning of the opener at Wrigley—so soon after the skull-clunking in the ’thirty-four series—I began to sense that a cloud was gathering around him. It didn’t help matters when his brother’s arm went dead in ’thirty-six, but even worse was what happened in a game against the Giants that summer when Burgess Whitehead scorched a liner that hit him just above the right ear. The ball was hit so hard that it caromed into left field on a fly. Dean went down again, and though he regained consciousness in the locker room seven or eight minutes later, the initial diagnosis was a fractured skull. It turned out to be a bad concussion, which left him woozy for a couple of weeks, but an inch or so the other way and the big guy would have been pushing up daisies instead of going on to win twenty-four games for the season.