20

Three weeks after Charley met Mardell at the Latino, the regular show change rolled around and she was booked with the other five showgirls and the headliners into one of the three Prizzi hotels in Vegas. She was almost hysterical when she told him the news because she found that the best way to handle the Mardell situations was to fall deeply into Stanislavsky’s teachings and let the Method carry her reaction to new and threatening situations.

“What are we going to do, Charley?” she asked him, swinging on the lapels of his jacket, rounding out her performance as Mardell La Tour even though, during the two days he had spent away from her in Baltimore, she had had a wonderful time in New York, lunching with Freddie, ardent Freddie, going over her notes on Charley excitedly with Hattie Blacker, and dissuading Edwina from moving in with a large colored man on Washington Heights.

“I can get out there every weekend,” Charley said tentatively.

“No!”

“I work in New York, Mardell. You know that. The weekend is the only time.”

“Then I’ll die.”

“Come on!” Jesus, Charley thought, at first it may be very satisfying to have two beautiful women so crazy about you, but after a while it gets to be a real pain in the ass.

“From Vegas they send us to Miami, then to Kentucky, then to Atlantic City. It will be twelve weeks before I get back here. I can’t live through that.” She had no intention of leaving New York to go to that awful Las Vegas. The season was about to start in New York. Everyone who was anyone would be there: Freddie especially.

She immersed herself in the Method, thought hard about her beloved dachshund, Pepper, who died at age fourteen, and tears filled her eyes. “This is why I never went with anybody, Charley. No one until you. Never. We should never have gone to lunch that first time. I thought you would be safe company because I thought you were a gangster—how could I ever have thought you were a gangster?—but you became so dear to me, so sweet, that before I knew it I let my guard down and I was in love with you for the rest of my life. I’ll never survive it, Charley, if I have to go to Las Vegas and you have to stay in New York.”

“Ah—what the hell, Mardell—why should you work? I got enough. You can stay right here in New York and everything will be the same except you won’t needa go to work every night.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be a kept woman.”

“So? It’s better than working.”

“I simply couldn’t. I’m going to start tomorrow morning and find myself a job in New York.”

“What can you do, except in show business?”

“I could be a model.”

“You might be a little big to be a model. Lissen, lemme work on it. Lemme get back to you. I’ll figure something out.”

The next morning Charley asked Pop who they knew in show business. Pop said, “Name it, you got it. Whatta you need it for?”

Charley told him a slightly revised story of how the Latino was going to transfer Mardell to Vegas but how he had decided he would rather not have her leave New York so he wanted to find an agent who could get her some local work.

“I’ll tell Juley to hold her over in the new show until you can get something set, but while all this is going on, are you thinking about Vincent and how he looks at his daughter’s honor?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“He is a maniaco, Vincent. You don’t know.”

Mardell refused to be held over. “Absolutely not, Charley. Every girl on the circuit would say that I am a dyed-in-the-wool gangster’s moll, that my torpedo—or whatever it is they call people like that—just told the management that I had to stay in New York and they had to do it.”

“You’re making it very hard, Mardell.”

“Anyway, how is it you are able to do that?”

“My Uncle Harold works in the agency that books the shows into the Latino. It’s really a little favor for him. Don’t take it so big.”

The Caltanissettas, a New York family that operated out of East Harlem and had brought extortion, arson, and faked malpractice litigation to a fine art, were franchisees of the Prizzis in the counterfeit credit card action. They owned a large theatrical booking agency and they sent Charley to Marty Pomerantz, a small independent agent.

Pomerantz was a mild, little guy who parted his hair in the back and who brought his vegetarian dog to his office on the third floor of the old General Motors Building at Fifty-seventh and Broadway. He had a sixty-six-year-old secretary who wore elastic stockings. Pomerantz had been around the business for a long time. Charley laid out the proposition to him.

“She is a beautiful girl with showgirl experience at the Latino and with Miss Bluebell in Europe, all over Europe.”

“Miss Bluebell is very classy.”

“The idea I got, I don’t want her to work outta town. She strips down great and she could score big as a novelty act.”

“It costs to build an act.”

“Whatever. Also, she’ll pay you the regular ten percent plus—just between you and me—I’ll pay you ten percent more.”

“I just keep booking her in the metropolitan area?”

“Just so she can get home every night.”

“Burlesque is okay?”

“Why not?”

“All right. Lemme look at her. Then we’ll find somebody who can design an act.”

It all worked out, and even including musical arrangements, costumes, the two piano players, transportation, and the extra ten to Pomerantz, it only cost Charley six hundred dollars a week and some change.

But he knew he hadn’t solved the real problem. Now that she had decided they were engaged, Maerose showed up at his apartment about three nights a week and he had to work Mardell in around her on the other nights. He must have been doing something right. Both women seemed to be very happy, but the day was going to come when he was going to have to have the cake or not eat it.

There were three weeks until Election Day.