A Conversation with the Mann (28 page)

“Paulie, what the fuck ya doin'? Get the fuck up and let Jackie have a seat.”

Paulie, whoever Paulie was, got from where he sat and did it like he was trying to earn a stay of execution.

I took the open space next to Paulie's lady friend.

A murmur flared its way across the room. I couldn't tell if the buzz was about me sitting with Frank or me sitting next to
a white broad.

Frank. I hadn't caught a last name, and I couldn't figure who he was. The face was familiar. Vaguely. He kind of resembled
George Raft but wasn't an actor. A movie mogul? My heart upshifted. Was I getting tight with a movie mogul? He was jeweled
up like he had that kind of juice. The whole of the booth was pinky-ringed and gold-watched and diamond-stickpinned and pearl-strung.

While I was thinking, Frank said, said again: “You're a funny boy. How come I haven't never seen you here before?”

“Never worked here before, sir. Mostly done Village clubs, coffeehouses.”

“Workin' with those long-haired freaks.” Frank made it plain he didn't care for the Village crowd. “You don't do drugs, do
you?”

“No. No, sir.”

“Nothing but poison. You stay the hell away from poison.” Frank killed the liquor in his glass.

“Yes, sir. I've spent a lot of time on the road recently. Just now breaking into the class joints.”

Frank nodded to that, said: “I like how you don't have a foul mouth. Lot of these acts, specially the ones who work with them
long-haireds, everything is fuck this, fuck that. Not you. I could bring my wife to see you.”

“You could, Frank,” Paulie chorused from his penalty box beside us in the booth. “She'd enjoy the show.”

A red jacket appeared, replaced Frank's drink, was gone without a word.

I felt something brush along my thigh. I looked over at the woman I was sitting next to. Paulie's girl. She was staring at
Paulie and sporting a dull smile.

Frank: “You ever worked Tahoe?”

“Lake Tahoe? No, sir.”

“Got to get you up to Tahoe.” To Paulie: “Remember me to talk to Momo about getting this kid into the club.”

Paulie took out a pen and paper, wrote things down rather than chance them to memory.

I asked: “Who's Momo?”

Frank did a quick jump from sincere to sharp. “Somebody we know, that's who the fuck he is. Don't fuckin' worry about it.”

I didn't worry about it. I was more worried about what else I was going to get besides a good talking-to for asking the wrong
questions.

“Jules takin' good care of you and everything, getting you something to eat?” Frank, sincere again. I was getting hip to the
fact that he was the variety of cat who would just as soon slap you as stroke you, and neither really meant a thing to him.

“Yes, sir. Had a nice New York steak.”

Nodding a couple of times, then: “Well, I know you've got to get ready for the next show …”

I'd been in entertainment long enough to catch a cue when I heard it.

Getting up: “Thank you for your hospitality and kind words, sir.”

That hacking laugh started up again. “Hospitality and kind …” Frank turned to the others in the booth. “You hear this fuckin'
kid? Sounds like fuckin' Shakespeare.” He laughed some more.

As always, I didn't care to be laughed at.

As usual, when the person doing the laughing had juice, especially when they had enough juice to get me into Tahoe, I didn't
say or do a thing about it.

Frank put out his hand and I shook it, and shook the hand of the girl next to him and the other guy at the table and his girl
and Paulie's girl next to me …

I felt paper crumple between our palms. I looked at the woman and she looked back with a blank meaninglessness that advertised
to all who watched that the only thing going on between us was a handshake.

I did a quick hand-to-pocket magician-style before shaking with Paulie.

I crossed back to the kitchen. Along the way, from a table: “You believe that? The kid knows Frank Costello.”

Costello?

I stopped. My hands went slick with sweaty jitters, slipped over the back of a chair I used as a crutch.

Costello.

Frank Costello was a name everyone in the city knew. Most times, in the papers, it was tagged with the words alleged and reputed.
Frank Costello. Why Jules was extra eager to make sure I was taken care of, why the room laughed when he laughed; the reason
for all that was I was having a sit-down with the Prime Minister, one of the biggest Mafia bosses in New York.

I made it back up to my dressing room, fell onto the bed. Exhausted. The scene was turning into one long crazy carnival ride,
and there was still the second show.

Sid caught up with me. I gave him the short version of me and Mr. Costello, his offer to help me out with Tahoe.

“Jesus,” Sid said to that.

Yeah. I knew. Frank Costello was
the
Mafia fixer. It was widely, quietly believed he'd bought and paid for New York City starting at the beat cops and ending
with the mayor. Even FBI hotshot Hoover—public gambler, private degenerate—was in Costello's hip pocket, carried around same
as a good-luck charm. If the mob wanted to do business in the city, if the mob wanted protection from the law, the mob went
through Costello. He did things the clean way: spread money around to avoid trouble. Still, if it came his way, he had no
problem giving trouble a couple of bullets to the head to keep it down for good.

Sid gave a smile, weary and wary. “You've got a friend,” he said, saying it all.

Sid headed down, got a table for the late show. In the few minutes I had before I went on, I unpocketed the piece of paper
Paulie's lady friend had slipped me: Gina and a phone number.

I recollected on the girl. Not bad-looking. Very not bad-looking.

I projected a short bit into the future, thought about how I would feel after the second show—how I felt after a lot of the
shows I'd done: worn out and hungry with an appetite food and drink did nothing for.

Lonely.

Lonely is how I would feel.

Gina and a phone number.

I thought about it. I thought about how good it would be to get sweaty with the woman. I thought about how good it would be,
in an exotic way, to get sweaty with a white woman. With a white woman who was also making time with some guy who was the
pal of some other guy who oozed respect. There was that; there was all that on one side of the scale.

On the other side was Tommy. Nothing more than the thought of Tommy, out there somewhere, thinking of me while I was thinking
of her. Nothing more was needed.

I tossed out the paper.

I went down for the second show.

Even without Frank Costello leading the yucks, I killed.

M
Y NEW HOBBY
was trying to get together with Tommy. You'd think in the age of air travel two young people making decent cash would have
no trouble maintaining a fairly regular schedule of physical acquaintanceship.

You'd think.

In some five months time, Tommy made one trip back to N.Y.C. It was while I was doing two weeks in Cleveland. I made a swing
through Chicago, talked about going up to see her in Detroit, but she was leaving on what Lamont had tagged the Motown Review,
a traveling road show of fresh and as of yet unknown acts doing warm-up for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the newborn
record company's first bona fide stars. The review was a solid idea as far as getting people familiar with new artists and
make some cash at the same time. I may not have liked the guy, I may still have figured him for having eyes for my girl, but
I had to admit Lamont knew his business.

The review was playing mostly down through the South and the Delta, bringing entertainment to blacks who otherwise didn't
have much access to it. After my adventures in Bigotville I was nothing but worried for Tommy. But unlike my road dates, the
revue played the chitlin circuit—black-owned clubs and venues—where performers got treated better than as if they were just
field labor.

Tommy suggested to me I should try getting on the circuit. There was plenty of stage time to be had, the pay was good and
the people appreciative.

Sure.

But black comics on the chitlin circuit didn't make it to the Sullivan show.

I told Tommy I was fine with my clubs.

The revue would be a month solid on the road, and by the time Tommy was done and free I'd be back out doing dates.

I missed Tommy. More than that, us being apart was a kind of torture. At first. But gradually over the months, on the occasions
I talked to her, she sounded more and more content as the pain of separation was dulled. She was getting used to Detroit and
being on the road. My fear was she was getting used to life without me.

I distracted my worries with constant work.

I needed the work.

Not so much for the money, although the money was sweet. Most times now more than four hundred dollars a week. What I needed
the work for was the work itself. I was getting to be a solid performer, and every time I went up I was honing a style and
presence, putting together an act that couldn't help but get laughs. And when I was really on, when I was clicking, I could
barely do much less than kill.

But there was still something missing from my sets. I knew it. Sid knew it and would tell me so. What I didn't have was a
distinctiveness that separated me from every other Charlie cracking wise. Jack Carter, Shelley Berman, Norm Crosby; except
for my skin, I was no different. No better, no worse. No different. You could be as good as you wanted, you could kill as
often as you wanted, you could get paid as much as the law would allow, but until you were selling something others weren't,
you were just another guy trying to make funny. What I didn't have was a voice. The nutty part was: The one time in my life
I needed to be different, and I was painfully the same.

I
WAS MAKING A STAND
at a club in St. Louis. I got a call from Sid, who'd gotten a call from the Cal-Neva in Tahoe. They were offering me a week
starting in a month's time.

I asked who I'd be opening for.

“No one.”

“No one? What do you me—”

“You're headlining, that's what I mean. They want to put you in the Cabaret Lounge. Not as big as the Celebrity Room, seats
less than a hundred, but the—”

Hearing, but not believing: “Headlining? You sure it's me they want?”

“By name they asked for you, and on top they're bumping you up to five-fifty a week.”

Small room or not, five hundred fifty cash-dollars a week to headline a show?

Frank Costello. It must have been Frank Costello coming through for me.

“Only …” Sid cut in with the spoiler. “The week they're offering is same as Frannie's debut on Sullivan. So I asked the booker
to move you to—”

“No.”

“Jackie, they said it was no problem to mo—”

“I don't want to chance it.”

“Chance it?” Sid couldn't even begin to dig my lingo. “Chance what? You know same as me why they're making the offer. With
a guy the size of Frank Costello in your pocket, you never had a better bet. Look, I'll get a message to him personally that—”

“My first gig headlining, a favor from some cat I barely know; I'm not going to let that pass. Not for nothing.”

“Not for Frannie? Frances isn't nothing, Jackie. She's your friend.”

Static. Between me and Sid, across a transcontinental landline, there was nothing but static that filled a pause that was
less than a quarter of one minute but felt much longer.

Sid cut through it with “I'll book the date” and hung up.

Later, I would call, tell Frances that I couldn't make the Sullivan show. She did her “don't worry about it” bits, but the
whole scene was a definite letdown for her. I told Fran how sorry I was I wouldn't be there. I told her I'd be watching and
how happy I'd be for her, how proud I was of her.

What I didn't tell Fran: I didn't mention how that little piece of me that was jealous when she first landed her record deal,
her CBS deal, in the dark and cold inside me, had grown like a fungus into something larger.