There were two fat businessmen in the parlor of the Ace of Spades, and three girls hanging over them. Ralph, the piano man, was giving the parlor “Frankie and Johnnie.”
Now Johnnie he was a bull-dagger
He said to Frankie his femme,
“See all them lovelorn old lezzies,
“We won’t never end up like them.”
He was her man, but she done him wrong.
Frankie went down to the barroom,
Just for a packet of snow.
She asked the bartender for Johnnie
And he said, “Well I just don’t know.”
He was her man, but she done him wrong.
Peekaboo came downstairs. The businessmen half-rose in an imitation of courtesy. She smiled, and walked toward them.
Mike was standing inside the parlor door. Peekaboo gave him half a nod as she went about her business.
“You folks made up your mind, or you want me to turn the house upside down, send out, if you must have more refined or exotic tastes, Topeka, than we got here.” The businessmen laughed. Peekaboo continued her banter.
Ralph sang:
“I don’t want to tell you no stories
“I don’t want to do you no harm
“But I saw your Johnnie ’bout an hour ago,
“With a little Chink twist on his arm.”
He was her man, but she done him wrong.
Marcus came by with a tray of drinks for the businessmen. He looked at Mike, who shook his head no. Marcus laid the tray down on the low table and bowed himself out.
Peekaboo used the interruption to move the party along. She made the choice for the men, with the usual “I know who you’re looking at,” and seeing she had established the pairing, then made her adieux and walked toward Mike.
He started to speak. “Doing business here, sugar,” she said under her breath. He nodded.
Ralph sang:
Frankie went down to the corner,
She didn’t go there for fun.
With a nose full of snuff,
And inside her muff,
She carried a Colt forty-one.
Mike followed Peekaboo into the kitchen.
“Ruth Watkins,” he said.
“Yes, I know who that was,” Peekaboo said.
They flanked the kitchen doorway, Peekaboo surveyed the parlor. “Out-of-towners don’t go upstairs now,” she said to herself, “I got to either throw ’em an exhibition, some brand-new idea, r’charge ’em rent on the couch.” She sniffed and rubbed the back of her hand against her nose.
Frankie she kicked down the doorway.
Johnnie said, “Frankie, please.”
Frankie said, “Johnnie, you might as well pray,
“You’re already down on your knees.”
He was her man, but she done him wrong.
The businessmen guffawed, as at an off-color joke in a men’s club. Thelma capitalized on the moment to pull them to their feet. Peekaboo nodded approval.
The girls helped the two businessmen toward the stairs. Florence, the odd girl out, stayed behind, and Ralph gave her an understanding nod.
Peekaboo and Mike faded back into the kitchen as the procession climbed the stairs.
Frankie she pulled out the pistol,
Shot ’em both deader than sin.
Sat down and lit up a reefer,
Smoked ’til the cops came in.
He was her man . . .
Peekaboo closed the swinging kitchen door.
“Ruth Watkins,” Mike said.
“And I’ll tell you: why she came to grief,” Peekaboo said, “was, just as, you touch fire, you’re going to get burnt, she was associated, wound up all tight, with the white girl. Who, no doubt, sold her out.”
“How would the white girl profit . . . ?”
“Uh-huh . . . ,” Peekaboo said. “N’it may be, both, they was both Leslies, many of them are,” Peekaboo said.
“Many of whom?” Mike said.
Peekaboo walked across the kitchen, cracked the door into the parlor, and looked for a while at Marcus cleaning the rug with a carpet sweeper.
“Many of whom?” Mike said.
“Many of whom what, lover?” Peekaboo said.
“Many of them, you said, were dykes.”
“That’s right,” Peekaboo said.
“Many of whom?”
“You know, the one thing I learned, early on”—Peekaboo sighed—“was: what gets you killed, more than the next thing, is the inability to let things be.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t let it be,” Mike said.
“And why is that?” Peekaboo said.
“Because I got the girl killed,” Mike said.
“Now, tell me again, just how you did that?”
Mike rubbed his face. He shook his head, as if to clear it.
“Come on,” he said.
“No, how ’bout you come on,” Peekaboo said. “How ’bout you come on, with this fucken, it ain’t grief, anymore, it’s a habit, and if life don’t go on, then it baffles me what does.”
“You ever lie to a man?”
“That’s all I do,” Peekaboo said.
“White or black?”
“Don’t make no difference,” Peekaboo said. “That’s all I do.”
“You ever lie to me?” Mike said.
“What the hell I care, if they were dykes or not, that ain’t my lookout, and, thus, I got no need and so no desire to know. About anybody.”
“D’you know the girl, Ruth Watkins? Lizabeth,” Mike said. “Did you know her? Well?”
“I got to tell you. To stay out of it. Please.”
“Why? To protect me?” Mike said. “To protect me?”
“To protect her,” Peekaboo said.
Later they sat alone, in the parlor, in the dawn. The house was closed, and Marcus had closed the pocket doors, shutting them in before the dying fire.
“Two things I learned, this life, only way to help someone, is not free. Usually it gon’ cost someone; most times, that person is you: You got to give them something, whether it’s money, or ‘reserve,’ you know, or even, you have to be cruel, for them. It hurts you. To not fix ’em up, or buy ’em a drink, or lend ’em money, go and do it for themselves. You got to be content, they think you cruel. Or fire s’mbody, everyone thinks: ‘That hard bitch, they just trying to make a living.’ May be, at the cost of, costing someone else their job, closing the place down, something.
“Sometimes, you know secrets. Human nature is, turn it into gold, or attention, or a pass from the cops, rat out some competitor to the Flying Squad. Sometimes, the price is: someone’s going to get hurt. Only question is, who? You din’t ask for that choice, but you got it.
“What I do. For a living. I keep secrets. Men pay me for that. I pay the police. They pay City Hall.” She shrugged. “And here we are at the kitchen table.”
“She was passing,” Mike said, “Lita Grey.”
Peekaboo glanced over his shoulder at the sound of the door, and Mike turned to see Dolly insinuating herself into the room. Peekaboo looked at her hard.
Mike saw it and Peekaboo saw that he had.
“Why don’t you give it up?” Peekaboo said. “. . . Mike . . . ?”
“Because I got the girl killed,” Mike said.
“What if I could tell you something, you’d give her up?”
“As a favor?” Mike said.
“Black woman can’t do a white man a favor. She’s gon’ pay for it. But I might offer you a trade.”
“Where is she?” Mike said. “Lita Grey.”
“I don’t know,” Peekaboo said, “and that’s the truth; but I can give you something, in trade for, you stop looking. You game?”
Mike said nothing.
“You game?” Peekaboo said. “I tell you what. I’m gonna give it to you, you decide.”
“What is it?” Mike said. But Peekaboo didn’t speak. “Alright,” Mike said, “what is it?”
“You din’t get that Irish girl killed,” she said.
Mike walked to the window.
“You din’t have nothing to do with it,” Peekaboo said.
“I don’t understand,” Mike said. “Who got her killed?”
“Her father,” Peekaboo said.
“No,” Mike said. “No, you’ll have to explain it to me.”
“It’s in plain sight,” Peekaboo said, “like most things that you want to hide. It killed Lita, and it killed Ruth, and I’ll tell it to you, if you say it’s over, if you let it be over. That’s the deal. Is that the deal?”
“I didn’t get the girl killed?”
“No.”
“Then what?” Mike said. “And how do you know?”
“The Irish?” Peekaboo said. “Love to tell each other stories, ’mongst themselves? How smart they are, all night long. Just one dumb Negro fetching towels. And you hear things when you hear them. If you do.”
“What did you hear, and how did you hear it?”
“I heard it,” Peekaboo said, “through George White, the Kedzie Baths; and tell you ’cause you stood up for his brother.”
Then she told him the story.
And the story was that O’Banion and the Irish had been running guns to the IRA. Weiss and Teitelbaum were in charge of the routes and the transport.
They had operated on the principle that the best way to hide something is to make a show of it, and had moved the guns from the armory to storage and onto the ships in The Beautiful’s red flower van.
Teitelbaum and Weiss had gotten cute, and were skimming guns from every shipment to sell at their leisure. They were discovered and killed. Mr. Walsh, the owner of the flower vans, said that the job had now become too dangerous to him, and to his beloved daughter. So the IRA shot her to remove the objection.
“And what about Lita Grey?” Mike said.
“Lita Grey got caught up in it, Ruth, too,” Peekaboo said, “and that’s why they’re dead. There you are, and that’s the deal.”