Bandbox (11 page)

“Terrible, isn’t it?” he said, raising his glass. “The lengths the law makes us go to to disguise a civilized habit.”

“Sounds like you’re hoping for another flash,” said Rosemary, snapping her garter.

“No, no,” said Harris, innocently wounded. “I’m just remembering a time when you could see men come in here holding tumblers of whiskey, not pieces of ticker tape, when they sat down to their lunch.” It would soon be a decade since the adjoining Oak Bar had been turned into an E.F. Hutton office.

“Don’t knock the market,” said Rosemary. “The week I dumped that no-good-nellie husband of mine I found out that his money-man had quadrupled everything he’d been holding in the space of a month. Half and half? Hell, we split it double and double!”

Harris ignored these financial loaves and fishes. He could only marvel: Howard Kenyon—that cinematic sheik, that heroic screen doughboy, that movie-palace pirate … was a
feygele
? Why, he wondered, was she telling him this? Did she just assume that he’d be too scared to print any of the beans she was spilling? He tried looking further into those green eyes, and he hit an emerald wall.

“So let me tell you how you’re gonna shoot me for your cover,” said Rosemary.

Harris came out of his frightened revery. “Actually, Miss LaRoche, that’ll be up to Mr. Lord, whom you’ll—”

“You’re gonna have me on a couch with just a fancy silk sheet covering my hoohah and melons. My wrists and ankles are gonna be tied together with pearls. I got a picture called
Chained
coming out around the time you’ll be getting your show on the road, and I’m gonna need people to think this crummy masterpiece is a little hotter than it is.”

“Was the director a nellie?” It was all Harris could think to say.

“Worse,” said Rosemary. “A gentleman. Of course, you are, too. But in the best sense of the term. Which is why I know you’ll be square with me. I get a nickel on each thirty-five-cent copy you sell above a hundred thousand.”

Harris chose to concentrate not on the meaning, but the mere sound, of what she was saying. Where had he heard such a voice before? On the rodeo cowboy
Bandbox
had once let loose in the city for a babe-in-the-metropolitan-woods piece? No, it was too deep, and not quite twangy enough. On the old lady he and Betty had met last winter down at the Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg? The one who’d actually been
born
in Florida? No, not enough syrup. And the way Miss LaRoche said “term”—didn’t it sound faintly like “toim”? Whatever head she might have for figures, this dame didn’t add up.

“I’ll have to talk with Mr. Burn, my publisher,” Harris finally said.

“You do that, ’Phat. Otherwise we got no deal. Hel
-lo
,” she then uttered, without a pause to mark the shift from business to pleasure. “What have we
here
?” She parted the smilax once again. Harris stretched his neck to get a look at the gentleman checking his overcoat with the girl at the entrance. A good-looking fellow, even if he was in need of a hair-combing and—

Rosemary LaRoche had him so agitated that it took several seconds to realize he was looking at Stuart Newman.

“That’s your writer, Miss LaRoche. I asked him to join us for coffee.”

Staring at Newman with her fierce green eyes and smile, the actress said to the editor: “You’re goddamned right it is.”

Newman approached the table, trying not to recall a long-ago bender that had ended here at the Plaza in a broom closet on the eleventh floor.

“Stuart!” cried Harris. “Come meet Rosemary LaRoche.”

Newman took his last steps with a certain hesitation, trying to guess why the boss was looking at him as if he’d already accomplished something wonderful.

The actress put out her hand. Newman, uncertain for a moment what to do, finally took hold of it and brought it to his lips. Harris thought this tough-talking cookie might swallow his man in two bites, like a second order of strip steak. But in a soft little voice, creme-filled with vowels from yet another indeterminate part of the country, Rosemary LaRoche purred: “Mr. Newman is
très, très charmant
.”

Around other tables here at Lindy’s, the showgirls outnumbered the fighters and newsmen and producers who were buying them supper. So Daisy felt grateful for the odds where she was: two to one, the one being herself, seated between Eddie Diamond and Judge Francis X. Gilfoyle. The numbers would only improve once Arnold Rothstein
arrived at his usual spot, though perhaps it was the absence of his rather glum presence that had made this evening, so far, a little gayer than the one she’d spent at 912 Fifth Avenue a few weeks ago, shortly after Carolyn Rothstein’s departure for Europe.

She knew that long-standing marital troubles had dictated that
bon voyage
, but she now decided to go ahead and ask if there had been any word on how Mrs. Rothstein was getting on over there. The response, from Judge Gilfoyle, was appropriately circumspect, since it concerned, as Daisy was coming to understand, his boss’s wife.

“She’s cabled that she’s doing quite well,” said the judge. “I’d say better than one might expect. You have to understand that Mrs. Rothstein is a nervous creature—” He paused to come up with a suitable softening. “Delicate. Refined.”

“Oh, I’m sure she is,” said Daisy, with a great deal of breathy sympathy.

“As he likes to say himself,” the judge went on, “Mr. Rothstein usually keeps the lady ‘in a glass case,’ so perhaps this European excursion will prove liberat—”

Eddie Diamond’s lungs erupted with wet, wheezy laughter. A tubercular past, thought Daisy; one found it in many men in his line of work.

“A glass case?” cried Eddie. “She’s lucky he don’t stop up the air holes!”

Noting the distress this remark provoked in the judge, Daisy pretended it had never been uttered. She liked Francis X. Gilfoyle. There was something reassuring about his florid face and advanced age. (The most dreadful revelation inside Max Stanwick’s article was the fact that Rothstein was only two years older than herself.) She liked the whole ensemble that was the judge: the old-fashioned homburg; the three-quarter part in the thinning hair; the dandruff that needed a woman’s cheerful brushing from the lapels. Put him in a
lineup of her recent escorts—all those sharp-edged characters who came right to the point—and she’d have no trouble picking him out.

“And where
is
Mr. Rothstein tonight?” she finally asked.

“Out in Maspeth,” said Judge Gilfoyle, who Daisy had learned was the third senior justice in Manhattan Criminal Court. “Looking over the progress on a grand housing development he’s got a hand in. It’s called Juniper Park. Two hundred modest homes—”

“That he’s gonna have trouble sellin’ to
coons
!” declared Eddie Diamond, who coughed his way so hard through the next couple of sentences that his two big ears shook. “You should see this ‘development,’ Duchess. They put the hot-water heaters in the front hallway! If ‘The Brain’ is out there, he’s probably tryin’ to keep the whole slum from bein’ condemned before it opens.”

Appalled at this sarcastic use of Mr. Rothstein’s best-known nickname, Daisy looked toward her escort, who appeared positively frightened. Had she misjudged Eddie Diamond the night he drove her home from 912 Fifth? Had there perhaps been a deterioration in his business relationship with “The Brain”?

“Tell me how you know Max,” said Daisy to the judge. “Now
there’s
a brain! I daresay his books are touched with genius.”

“Some friends of Mr. Rothstein had the misfortune to appear before me in court not long ago. Mr. Stanwick asked to interview me about the matter, but of course professional ethics forbade my commenting on it.”

“ ‘Misfortune’?” cried Eddie. “I’d say they was pretty goddamned lucky to appear before
you
! ’Scuse my language, Duchess.”

“Nonetheless,” said Gilfoyle, struggling to continue. “I was very pleased to meet Mr. Stanwick. I count myself a great fan of his novels, particularly
Ticker Rape.
”

It was now the judge’s turn to apologize, for injuring Daisy’s ears with that scandalous title. To make amends, he took out a dollar and snapped his fingers for the girl with the tray of paper gardenias.

Daisy cooed while he pinned one on her. “I should think Mr. Rothstein will be
very
pleased with the piece Max has written. Of course,
my
professional ethics forbid me from showing you an advance copy of it.”

Eddie Diamond gave a thuggish snort over the word “piece.”

“It must be fascinating,” said the judge, “to produce a magazine about all that’s new and unusual in this hundred-mile-an-hour world of ours.”

Daisy’s comment on the excitement and responsibility involved in such an enterprise was cut short by the arrival at the table of a skinny, shaking man in a checked jacket who asked Eddie Diamond when Rothstein was supposed to get here tonight. He was immediately pushed away, more forcefully than Daisy could imagine being necessary. Eddie responded to the inquisitive look on her face. “Some fourth-rate crooner who needs dough to pay his bookie. A parasite.”

Embarrassed, Judge Gilfoyle explained to Daisy: “Mr. Rothstein often acts as a kind of banker for people unable to secure credit by more conventional means.” The explanation competed for her attention with a wave from a tall, lately retired ballplayer at a table near the front of the restaurant.

“Do you know him?” asked the judge.

“No,” said Daisy. “I suppose I remind him of someone.”

“You couldn’t possibly,” said the judge, taking advantage of Eddie Diamond’s current distraction by Leo Lindy himself, who had brought a pile of messages to the table. “You seem to me unique in all the world,” Gilfoyle told Daisy.

“Oh, Your Honor!” she said, while Eddie straightened the little pile of paper and set beside it an ashtray and a book of matches.

“That’s the ‘out’ basket,” he explained to Daisy. “The boss don’t like to keep a lot of files once he’s through with readin’ stuff.”

Over the next quarter-hour, during which a policeman clapped his hand on the judge’s back and a pockmarked lawyer came by the
table to present his card, Daisy felt more and more certain that this poor, considerate magistrate was in over his head. The sweat pouring off his neck had begun to destroy his collar.

“Tell me about your late wife,” she said, sure Judge Gilfoyle would welcome a sentimental shift in his mental focus.

“Oh,” said the judge, immediately brighter. “My Charlotte was the most wonderful woman. A factory girl when I met her forty years ago, but anyone who knew her would swear she was a lady. Yes, Countess, a wonderful woman. We were never blessed with children, so she showered all her attention on me.”

“No more than you deserved, I’m sure,” said Daisy, whose own attention detected that the diners within a twenty-foot radius had fallen silent—over the arrival of three men who proceeded to sit down at her table. Judge Gilfoyle made the introductions. Arnold Rothstein—“The Brain,” “The Big Bankroll”—was accompanied by Mr. Fats Walsh, his bodyguard, and a thin, blond-haired associate named William Wellman. Rothstein appeared even paler than Daisy remembered his being last month; the brown eyes were heavily ringed with fatigue. But he was dressed exactly as Max Stanwick had described him for
Bandbox
, with an all-white, spun-silk muffler done in an Ascot knot. While The Brain scowled at the stack of messages, the judge whispered to Daisy that Wellman was the man who had recommended the ill-starred Juniper Park venture.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Rothstein said to Daisy, remembering his manners and last month’s foot massage.

Daisy’s eyes went to bat, more for the judge’s sake than her own. “Mr. Rothstein, I understand that you’re camera-shy, but you really
should
have let my magazine shoot you wearing that muffler.”

“Lady,” said Eddie Diamond. “Never say ‘shoot’ around Mr. Rothstein.” He hacked his way through another guffaw; an awkward silence followed.

Wellman eventually broke it. “I’ve been showing Mr. Rothstein
the auto-racing track we’re starting to build near the development in Queens.”

Daisy, a natural encourager, nodded brightly.

“Yes,” said Rothstein, cutting Wellman off. “The track goes round and round, just like the rest of the project.” He then drilled the judge with a look that was all business. “I may soon be needing your—what shall we call it?” he said, glancing at Daisy with some wariness before he found the word. “Expertise.”

Gilfoyle smiled nervously.

Daisy took the jurist’s hand and made a last attempt to lighten the mood. “It’s delightful seeing a bit more of your world, Mr. Rothstein. But isn’t it time I showed you a little of mine? My magazine is hosting a party tomorrow evening, and I’d like to invite all of you gentlemen to come by.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Diamond and Mr. Wellman and myself will have some business obligations to attend to,” said Rothstein, “but I’m sure the judge’ll be delighted to go.” The Brain came the closest he had to smiling when he noticed the look of pleasure now invading Gilfoyle’s sagging features. “In fact,” added Rothstein, putting a match to the message he’d just read, “I’m going to let him see you home now, Countess.”

Instead of asking for the Warwick Hotel, Betty told the cabdriver to take her the handful of blocks between the Forty-eighth Street Theatre and Malocchio. She’d left
Cock Robin
at intermission, upon realizing she’d missed half the dialogue and still figured out the rest of
the plot. She was more than eager to go home, but had decided, having seen the same sheet of GME ad figures, to check up on Joe.

Arriving at Gianni Roma’s detestable little bistro, she found Joe still in full swing, recounting the morning’s victory over Jimmy to the small group of staff he’d shanghaied here hours ago. Gianni was on his way to get Betty a small plate of
spaghetti alla vongole
, her usual, before Joe even noticed she was there. “Hey, sweetie!” he finally said, his features in a visible war between pleasure and disappointment. Only Spilkes, on his right, betrayed unalloyed relief: Betty’s supervision would mean a shorter night and the chance to catch a late train back to Connecticut.