“And so you turn this task over to me, why?” I asked.
“Because you are connected on the street,” said Sal.
“But I am only here for a couple of years, while you—”
“I am married a long time and am no longer conversant in the world of single dames,” said Sal.
By which he meant, no one liked him, and except for Tony Cannelloni, Ronny Biscotti, and a few other Knights of Columbus not nicknamed after desserts, no one in the city would so much as slap Sal to get a bug off their hand, let alone do him a favor, as he had used up much goodwill in the pursuit of profit.
“I don’t know, Sal,” I said. “I do not think that I am your guy—”
“No, you’re my guy, Two-Toes,” said Sal. “Because I am not a war hero like you.”
And here something between anger and ice ran up my spine, for only Sal and very few others knew that I was no war hero, and he used the “Two-Toes” moniker to make this crystal to me.
“But, Sal,” I said, “why do we not just—”
“Do not for a second think that you can just get some girls from Madame Mabel’s on Post and dress them up like Bettys from next door, because the general is no sap.” (Sal always said “Madame Mabel” with her title, like she was a doctor or senator or had received an advanced degree in Salami Concealment from a respected College of Floozie Management.) “Make this happen, Sammy, or a little bird may tell the cops a story about a guy he knows who is going by an assumed name, a guy who clocked a cop and walked while being transported to a work detail for multiple drunk-and-disorderlies. Am I clear, Two-Toes?”
In my defense, that was the last D&D I received. I’d lost my ID and I never gave them my real name, so while I may indeed have accidentally knocked out a cop and walked away from a work crew, they never knew who they were looking for. Of course there are fingerprints and a John Doe mug shot on file down at the county somewhere, but the guy in that picture is various shades of bruised and bleeding, due to three displeased, recently discharged Marines who I suggested had especially close relationships with their mothers. That picture probably doesn’t even look like me. Anyway, Sal set me up with a new name, an ID, and a job, where he pays me less than the going rate because I owe him. When I took the deal I never knew how much and how long I’d owe him.
“Clear,” I said to Sal. “I will figure it out, boss.” I just needed him to go—get out of there—in case Stilton came in while he was going on about the war-hero thing. Even if I was building nothing into something, pulling another Molly Warner made-up romance, even if I never saw her again, I didn’t want to see her right then, with the war-hero thing in the air.
Then the front door opened behind me and a shadow of weaselly caution fell over Sal’s face. Over my shoulder I saw Pookie O’Hara filling the doorway, 260 pounds of crooked cop in a rumpled suit that looked like it had had enough food wiped on it that if you boiled it for soup a poor family could eat for a week on it.
“Hey, Officer,” I threw to Pookie, but he just growled and made a show out of moving a barstool back far enough to get his big belly up to the bar. Normally he would remind me that he’s a detective inspector, and not a mere “officer,” but he was about to strong-arm a free drink, and since Eddie Moo Shoes once accidentally mentioned that I keep a glass behind the bar in which I have rubbed a dead rat, just for special occasions, which is entirely untrue but highly effective at assuring civility in certain citizens, Pookie let it go. I could tell this steamed his clams no little, which is exactly what I was going for. I didn’t want Pookie camping at my bar, and that veined pink potato of a nose showed he did more than a little bar camping.
Now Sal was in no mood to stay. Something was going on with Pookie. “Give my best to the missus,” I said, giving Sal the out that he was looking for, and it worked.
“I sure will, kid,” he said. “And she’s expecting me. I gotta go.” Then, under his breath, “Not a word to anyone about that other thing, right?”
“Right,” I said with a wink. “Dog pizza.” Clearly whatever angle he was playing with the general and the Bohemians, he did not want Pookie O’Hara to be a party to it.
He avoided looking at the big cop and headed out through the back. Pookie tried to call him back. Before I had a chance to ask the cop his poison, the front door opened again and sunlight blasted a smoky arc through the saloon, causing patrons to grab their hats for protection. When the door squeaked shut again and the light abated, the Cheese was sliding onto the stool at the end of the bar like a weary angel.
4
Dinner in North Beach
I could let Sammy tell you this part of the tale, but let’s face it, when it comes to the Cheese, Sammy’s got all the perspective of a bucketful of dark. I been telling the parts Sammy doesn’t. Don’t worry about who I am, I know things. My people know things.
She was wearing a little red hat with one of those net veils that reached to the tip of her nose, to be mysterious or to keep the flies out of her eyes, but certainly not for modesty or there would have been netting at her bustline, where her bosoms were rising out of her sundress like the waxing twin moons of Barsoom. So the Cheese slid up to the bar just around the bend from Pookie O’Hara, who ogled her wares with no discretion whatsoever, as if working as a vice cop somehow gave him license to view all dames as merchandise—or perhaps he was just a lowbrow mug who wouldn’t know how to treat a member of the gentler sex if she smacked him upside the head with a sack full of vaginas. Sammy was thinking the latter, and he made a great effort not to ogle her himself. Out of respect.
“Hey, handsome,” she said to Sammy. “Can I get a bourbon and ginger ale?”
“One of those for me, too, rocks, hold the ginger,” said Pookie. He leaned in to Stilton. “Little early for a dame to be in a place like this on her own, ain’t it, Toots?”
“I’m not on my own. I’m here visiting my boyfriend, Johnny.”
“Sammy,” Sammy said. He set the drinks down in front of them. Gave hers a swizzle, wished he really had a dead rat glass for him.
“Sammy,” repeated the Cheese. A wink to Sammy over a dainty sip of her drink.
Sammy didn’t want to, but he guessed he had to introduce them. “Officer O’Hara, this is Mrs.—”
“Toons,” said the Cheese. “Punani Toons.” She offered her fingertips, for a shake or a kiss, Sammy couldn’t be sure. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
“Punani?” asked the big cop.
“Father was Hawaiian. Pet name he had for my mother. No idea what it means. A type of orchid, I think.”
Pookie choked on his drink. Sammy turned to the back bar and pretended to do inventory to hide his grin.
“Hey Tiffin,” said Pookie, “what was Sal’s hurry getting out of here?”
“Tiffin?” said the Cheese. “I thought you were Italian.”
“Long story, pumpkin,” said Sammy. “Not in front of the nice policeman.”
“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” said the Cheese, putting on a pout.
“Hey,” said Pookie, “I don’t like a guy makes for the exits as soon as I come in. It ain’t polite.”
“Sal got a call from the missus right before you come in,” Sammy said to the cop. “Dames, what are you gonna do?”
“You sure he isn’t trying to put some action together tax-free?” asked Pookie, pushing his hat back on his head. “He knows he’s got to always pay his taxes, don’t he?”
Sammy couldn’t even fathom how Pookie already knew that Sal was thinking about getting into the business of recruiting dames for entertainment purposes. It was well known that Pookie O’Hara exacted a tail tax for any and all transactions in the north end of the city. “I pour drinks, Officer. I know how Sal wants me to pour drinks. He wants me to pour yours for free. That’s what I know.”
“Kid, I ain’t paid for a drink in this town in twenty years. That’s just due, not a favor.”
“That’s what I know,” Sammy said. A shrug.
&
nbsp; “Well, I got some contacts down to the Bohemians, and they think that Sal might be arranging something for them.”
Of course Pookie had contacts at the Bohemian Club. Sammy had heard the story at Cookie’s Coffee. Before the war O’Hara had walked a beat in the Tenderloin. It was a big deal because he walked the beat alone, with a nightstick in hand—he’d been an institution, of sorts. The Bohemian Club’s city digs were at Taylor and Post Streets, right in the heart of the Tenderloin. No way he hadn’t had dealings with them.
The cop downed his cocktail like it was a shot. Ice jumped in the glass when it hit the bar. He reached into his pocket and flipped a silver dollar on the counter. “That’s for you, kid. And don’t put it in the till. I drink for free but that don’t mean you don’t get paid.”
A dollar was a damn good tip on one drink and Sammy was skeptical. Pookie O’Hara’s reputation preceded him and it was all stick, no carrot.
“Tell the gentleman thanks,” said Stilton.
Pookie tipped his hat to Stilton, nodded to Sammy. “You let me know how Sal keeps up with his taxes, then,” he said.
So there it was. Pookie thought he had just bought Sammy for a buck. They watched Pookie drag himself off the seat with a groan. He was ambling toward the door when it opened and in a split second the sunlight was eclipsed by a black fellow about twenty-three feet tall and half again as wide, wearing a tux and tails.
Now, Pookie was quite unused to encountering someone larger than himself, and it was well known that before the war, he made it his personal mission to keep the north end of the city free from people of the colored persuasion by administering many threats and beatings, so he pulled up, and, somewhat nonplussed, said, “Hey, buck, I think you’re in the wrong place. They don’t serve coloreds here.”
Sammy froze behind the bar. The Cheese’s eyes were darting back and forth from the door to Sammy like she was watching a ping-pong match.
“Well, that’s okay,” said the big man in the tux, gentle as a lullaby, “’cause I ain’t colored.”
Sammy slowly backed over to where his cane was leaning, then stopped himself. “He’s doing some work for me, Inspector,” he said.
“Yeah?” asked Pookie.
“Yeah,” said Sammy.
Stilton nodded slowly at the flatfoot, as serious as Saint Joan lightin’ a cigar, to confirm the tale.
This gave Pookie an out, which he needed, unless he wanted to pull his gat and start blasting, because he no longer carried the nightstick that shored up his reputation when he walked the Tenderloin prewar, and the small pocket sap he carried now wouldn’t get him far with the giant in the tux.
“Well, you watch yourself, boy,” he said to the big man, then did an awkward sideways shuffle to get through the door.
When the door eased closed and the saloon returned to smoky twilight, the big man was sitting at the bar in Pookie’s vacated seat, just around the corner from Stilton. Everyone in the joint was looking at him.
“At ease,” Sammy called to the day drunks, and they went about their business. Then to the big man, “Hey, Lone.”
“Hey, Sammy,” said the big man, his voice a bass-fiddle drawl sounding out of a mine shaft.
“What can I get you?”
“Just a Co-cola,” said the big man. “I’m ’bout to start my shift.”
Sammy caught Stilton nodding at the big man, then at her glass, then throwing up an eyebrow as if to say, Introduce me, you blockhead.
Too late.
To the big man the Cheese said, “You work around here?”
Lone looked a bit startled at the question, but smiled. “I work the door down to the Moonlight on Broadway. They a jazz club.”
“I know it,” said Stilton, dazzling a smile that would have put a figure skater or a racehorse receiving roses to shame.
“Lone,” said Sammy, “this is Stilton. Stilton, this is Lone Jones.”
“Charmed, Lone,” said Stilton, offering her hand. Lone looked panicked for a second, then took the tips of her fingers and gave them a gentle shake.
“Lonius,” said Lone. “Short for Thelonius.”
“I thought Theo was short for Thelonius.”
“No, ma’am. Not for me it ain’t. Mama calt me Lonius ’cause wouldn’t nobody play with me when I was little.”
“Lone’s mother lives with him here in the city,” Sammy said.
“We rents us a little place over to the Fillmore. Mama put up them calico curtains she like, grow some flowers in boxes in the window. Cute as a bug’s ear. We lived over to Hunters Point till Sammy got me the job over to the Moonlight. But it’s just temporary until I get in the Secret Service—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” said Sammy, like he was reining in a runaway horse. “Secret, Lone. Secret!”
“Oh yeah,” said Lone. “I forgot. Sorry, ma’am. I ain’t supposed to talk ’bout it.”
“Well, just the same, a pleasure meeting you,” said the Cheese. Then to Sammy, who was fidgeting in place because he wanted to check on his customers, but didn’t want to leave Stilton there with Lone, she said, “You’ll be here until two?”
Sammy nodded, his stomach flopping, his heart on a roller coaster.
“I’ll see you later, then,” she said, a slow and sultry wink on the you. With a smile at Lone she waved toodles to the two and was out the door with a swish of her skirt.
* * *
You could get a full meal and a glass of red wine for a buck and a quarter at any of the family-style Italian restaurants in North Beach, but the Cheese liked Vanessi’s on Broadway because there was a counter by the open kitchen where the cooks looked out for her when she was on her own. She was one of the restaurant tribe, even if she’d only been dealing breakfasts off her arm at the five-and-dime for eighteen months. Of course she had to put up with the cooks getting fresh, but they kept it pretty tame, what with actual families eating at tables nearby.
A couple of guys, business types, sat down at the counter, but before they could slide down to pitch woo at her, Vinnie, a ham-fisted ox of a cook, plopped down a water glass full of Chianti in front of Stilton as he cast a threatening glance at the business guys and said, “Here you go, sis.”
He might as well have set down a glass of diphtheria for the way the two mugs were suddenly trying to pay attention to anything, anywhere else, but Stilton’s end of the counter.
“Thanks, Vin,” said the Cheese.
“New hat?” asked Myrtle as she scissor-stepped her way into the seat next to Stilton. She was a rangy redhead with lots of legs and quite a little gawkiness. She still wore her pink waitress uniform from the five-and-dime, the apron rolled up and stashed in her purse. She had put on her face and primped her hair up a little, pinning it back with a tortoiseshell comb she’d picked up in Chinatown, so she wasn’t the same plain Jane that Sammy had seen through the window that afternoon.
“Well, don’t you make a girl feel like a dishrag fresh from mopping sweat off a hobo?” said Myrtle, giving the Cheese a once-over.
“Don’t be silly, you look nice,” said Stilton. “Ran late?”
“Yeah, didn’t have time to go home and change. Had a couple of campers at the counter. Drinkin’ coffee and smoking. Regulars, so I couldn’t throw ’em out. I swear, sometimes I miss the war, the shortages, the blackouts . . .” She sighed wistfully.
“Wading in that milky river of sailors flowing up and down Broadway in their bell-bottoms,” Stilton said, teasing.
“Those were the days.” Another sigh. Myrtle, suddenly conscious that the two business guys at the other end of the counter were listening, said, “Not that I’m a floozie or nothing, because I’m not.”
“’Course not,” said Stilton.
“She is, though,” Myrtle said to the business guys, who laughed.
“Am not!” said the Cheese.
Vinnie set a glass of Chianti down in front of Myrtle. “These bums bothering you, doll?”
“Nah,” said Myrtle. “They were just do
ing what Tilly hoped they would when she packed herself into that dress.”
“Yeah, I didn’t notice,” said Vinnie. He headed back around the stainless counter to the line and pointed to the business guys, then to his eye, then back to them again, to let them know he was watching them. They made a fuss about putting on their hats and taking their business elsewhere.
“Well, there you go,” said Myrtle. “Chased off another pair of perfectly good guys.”
“Those guys?” said Stilton. “Those guys are both married and looking for a reason not to go home to their wives. You could see it in their eyes. Both of ’em old enough to be your dad, anyway.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Myrtle, gesturing from Stilton’s cleavage to her smart red hat. “Why, if I had your figure I’d marry the richest guy in San Fran. And I’d drive around in a convertible Cadillac. With the top down, even when it was cold, just so I could show off my furs. And I’d smoke my cigarette in a long black holder so my lipstick didn’t get messed up. I’d flip ashes on everybody as I went by. And I’d curse in French when I got stuck behind a cable car.”
“In French?” said Stilton.
“Yeah. Cursing in French is classier. It ain’t even like cursing. More like poetry.”
“You was my old lady, you’d be fartin’ through silk,” said Vinnie, coming around the line again. “What can I bring you dolls?”
“Lasagna,” said Stilton.
“Same,” said Myrtle.
“Them’s gonna take a few more minutes. We got to heat them in the oven.”