Jackie Weiss, last night, made the fatal mistake of confusing his position with his own best interest, the column read. His position was that of restaurateur to the North Side’s sporting set, his God-given right to continue as such was the rock on which he stood and died; the noted devotion to the principles of free enterprise being replaced, in his head, by two slugs of .45-caliber lead. He is survived by his wife of twenty-two years, the former Margaret O’Neil. Floral tributes may be sent to Congregation . . .
But Lita Grey, née Berenice Mancuso, was interested neither in the direction of floral tributes, nor in the death of Jackie Weiss, which had not, to her, been news since last night’s phone call, following hard upon the shooting. She was interested in determining those immediate steps most necessary for her continued preservation in a world made financially barren by the death of her protector.
Her review of her assets was brief and, to her mind, unfortunately complete. She had the use of her apartment through the end of the month, some ten days off; she had her jewelry, worth, she assumed, something in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen thousand dollars; she had a closet full of clothes whose housing and upkeep she could not, at the moment, afford; and she had the face and form of a Circassian concubine: ivory skin, violet eyes, and, at most, another half decade in hand to exploit them.
“You want to be careful of that newspaper ink on your fingers,” Ruth Watkins said. Lita nodded, and took a tissue from the box on the cigarette table at her side. She wiped her hands and let the tissue and the newspaper fall to the floor.
“You want me to bring in the coffee?” Ruth said. Lita nodded.
Ruth shook her head in comment on the wretched state of a world ruled by the vagaries of both men and a God of, no doubt, the same sex.
“He could’ve fucking died,” Lita said, “in a month that wasn’t February.”
“And in the beginning of the month,” Ruth called from the kitchen.
“Well, that’s the truest thing you know,” Lita said.
“What about the car?” Ruth said. She brought in the small tray and placed it on the low table. She sat on the edge of the chair across from the chaise longue. Lita motioned to her and Ruth nodded her thanks, and took a cigarette from the silver box on the tray, and lit it. She crossed her legs.
“The car?” Lita said. “The whole fucking thing is in his name, and I am not sure that that bovine cunt of a wife does not have the right to send someone by to take the dresses and the shoes.”
“Yeah. That’s too bad, honey,” Ruth said.
“It is too bad,” Lita said. She stirred a drop of cream into her coffee with a minute silver spoon. She raised her eyes toward Ruth, who shook her head no.
“Fucking men,” Lita said. This summation, it seemed, freed her from further self-pity, whose banishment she proclaimed by a squaring of her shoulders and the adoption of her “willing” smile.
“Okay,” she said. Ruth, in response, sat up straighter, took a quick puff of the cigarette, and watched Lita as she walked from the chaise longue toward the windows.
Lita looked out on East Lake Shore Drive, now sheathed in ice, the odd car swerving and crabbing against the wind.
“You going to sing tonight, honey?” Ruth said.
“I’m gonna. I am going to, I . . . ,” she said, both understanding that whatever her decision, her fate would, as always, be in the hands of a man, the peculiarity of this particular emergency only her ignorance of that man’s identity.
The situation, both understood, rested on control of the Chez, which, following Jackie’s death, and in the short run, might mean Jimmy Flynn, the assistant manager. But the short run probably would not extend beyond the afternoon’s marshaling of forces for the evening’s entertainment, at which the various powers would declare themselves, the favorite being Teitelbaum, for his well-proven controllability, but bets on the widow as a long shot were still being considered.
The Chez Montmartre had been closed for the week of the murder, the investigation, and the funeral. It was called a supper club, which all understood to mean speakeasy. It purveyed edible food, and liquor which, while it was not imported as advertised, was sufficiently cleansed of poisons as to not induce either dementia or blindness. The freehold of the Chez was extended to its manager (the late Jackie Weiss) by the North Side, which is to say, by Dion O’Banion, said writ entailing upon the proprietor the license to run girls and dope in addition to the noted comestibles, and to provide the after-dinner diversion of some reasonably honest games of chance.
Jimmy Flynn perched on the kitchen prep table of the Chez. He was dressed in gabardine slacks; a lightweight yellow wool shirt, open at the neck; and a gray cashmere sport coat. His six tuxedos hung in the wardrobe in his office, and his anxieties ran from wondering if he would ever wear them again professionally, to wondering if he would see evening. For he did not understand what Jackie had been guilty of, nor of how far that guilt might be assumed to have run.
He had debated wearing a gun to work, flight, and a preemptive visit to O’Banion to exhibit either fealty or a swift and irreversible decampment if such were desired.
He had decided to wait. And he held the club’s preparation for evening in abeyance as a sign of respect for the wishes of its new proprietor.
“The joint, we open up again,” said the maître d’, “is going to be hot: phone’s ringing since noon; though what they think they’re going to see . . .”
“The aura of Jackie Weiss,” Jimmy said. “You got to keep up with the magazines.”
The last of the busboys entered the kitchen through the alley door. Jimmy glanced reflexively at his watch, and then at the kid, who lowered his eyes. Eight people stood in the corners of the kitchen.
“Well, fuck it,” Jimmy said. He stepped down, stepped forward, and pushed open the doors to the restaurant. He caught the low tone, and inferred the content of the conversation of three busboys, seated, smoking, across the room, on the stairs leading down from the foyer. They rose as Jimmy entered, and began to take down the chairs which had rested, overnight, on the tabletops. Jimmy motioned for them to wait, and they stopped and stood, waiting.
Jimmy looked toward the bar, in front of which Jackie Weiss had met his demise. He envisioned a line running from the foyer, where the thugs had stood, to Jackie’s last stand, in front of the bar, and turned to continue the line to a spot just to the left of the kitchen doors, where, sure enough, three gouges in the plaster showed the bullets’ former resting place—the slugs dug out by the police and safe, in envelopes, in the precinct’s evidence locker, never to be disturbed.
“Where the fuck is Teitelbaum?” he said to the room, but there was no answer and he expected none. “Fucking kike is in hiding.”
Jimmy shook his head. “Fucking Jackie, hit him two times with a forty-five. Two slugs through him, and stuck in the wall. Fat as he was.” His thoughts continued to the unpleasant image of this fat man on top of Lita Grey. “Well, he’s dead,” he said.
Pops was the handyman and stage door keeper. He was a black man in his sixties, dressed in blue overalls. Jimmy Flynn looked up and saw him. “What?” he said.
“We going to open up tonight, Mister Flynn?” Pops said.
“Whadda you got, some personal interest in it?” Flynn said.
The phone rang. The busboys turned their heads toward the maître d’s podium. The phone rang again. Then it was answered in the kitchen. After a moment the kitchen doors swung and Alan, the maître d’, leaned out, holding the door open, indicating he had work inside.
“Mrs. Weiss’s guy, her ‘lawyer,’ called. She would like the club closed, for the evening, in memoriam of—”
“Fuck this,” Jimmy said. “And I don’t know, anything in her name, in his name . . . ? Or belong to who? Some horse the fifth race Washington Park, the last twenty years. Lita the Torch Singer, the one before her, the front line at the Everleigh Club, the fuck do I know . . . ?”
“Teitelbaum?” Alan suggested.
“Teitelbaum blows his nose in his underwear. I didn’t, anybody see him at the funeral . . . ? I got to get in touch with O’Banion.”
“. . . But if Mrs. Weiss is in control . . . ?”
“She’s not in control. She is in control, she must, at some point, sell out to Teitelbaum, for O’Banion, or present the club to him, a peace offering, he doesn’t go out and kill her children.”
“I say she holds out, meaning it as a gesture of defiance.”
“No doubt,” Jimmy said. “Or as an homage to that fine conservative upbringing she received in the slums of Krakow.
“Let her come tonight, and tell me, she wants the joint closed, her and her lawyers, that we may demur, and be seen on the rational side of the argument. She hated the motherfucker. She wants to mourn, let her go gash her flesh. Call our broad, tell her she’s going on tonight. Call the combo. Get someone to patch up that wall. Fuck it, we open up. Mr. O’Banion says otherwise, I’ll blame it on you.”