Mother Finds a Body (16 page)

The bartender waited for Biff to say, “What?”

“Well, sir, she goes to Cullucio and tell him I'm watering down the stock. Me! The respect I got for liquor I should go watering it!”

Biff nodded sympathetically. He could understand that kind of respect.

“Maybe she was trying to get in good with the boss,” Biff suggested.

The bartender poured another round.

“This is on me,” he said. “If she was, she sure played it wrong. The boss don't like liars and from the way he watches us guys back of this bar, he knows damn well she's lying. Nope,
he's a hot-and-cold guy, that Cullucio. Got funny ideas about honor and honesty. He can change in five minutes from the sweetest guy in town to the toughest. Just let him catch you in one lie or one fast deal and, believe me, you're out.”

Well, I thought, that accounts for Tessie having the good spot in the show. Cullucio had gone into his little hot-and-cold act with Joyce Janice and there was the reason. I tried to dig up a sympathetic feeling for Joyce, but my mind wasn't on it. I decided to tell Dimples to play straight, at least until she learned her way around.

Two tired-looking women stood in the doorway. They both wore enough makeup to face an audience. One of them swung a red patent leather purse, the other sauntered up to the bar. Before she could seat herself, the bartender hurried toward them.

“Gowan, beat it, you bums!” he said loudly.

The woman with the red purse swore. The words weren't new to me, but she did put a twist on her swearing. If the bartender could do what she suggested, he would have a good vaudeville act.

“And button yer lip,” he shouted, “or I'll kick ya out on yer ear.”

He waited menacingly until the two women left. Then he came back to where we were sitting.

“If I wasn't firm,” he said, “this place would be so full of whores the customers couldn't get in.”

Biff coughed noisily, and the bartender got the hint.

“I mean it'd be so full of streetwalkers that it'd be awful.”

Any feeling of homesickness for the theater I might have had was slowly disappearing. There was something unhealthy about The Happy Hour. It wasn't only the cook's apron and the surly waiter. It was more than the hot-and-cold Cullucio. Even the friendliness of the bartender made me uneasy. It wasn't the sordidness. After all, I've been in show business all my life; I know sordidness. Trouping with tab shows, carnivals, and vaudeville, a girl learns to appreciate the full meaning of that word. Then, too, burlesque is no revival meeting.

But this was different. This was something that made me feel like hitching the trailer to the car and getting as far away from Ysleta as the eight wheels would carry us.

13
WHEN THE SHOW STARTED, BIFF BRIBED ONE
of the waiters to get us a table. They all knew us by then, and bribery was the only thing that would get us out of the barroom.

The show was routined the same as the night before. Dimples followed Turk and Turk, the roller skaters. Bob Reed introduced her as “Stageland's Loveliest.” The orchestra played the introduction to her music, the lights dimmed, and Dimples made her entrance.

She didn't try to sing her number; she talked it. Her voice is thin and weak, but the customers usually hear enough. I couldn't hear one word of the verse that night. It didn't matter; she looked well. She wore her red chiffon trimmed with ostrich feathers. With it she wore an ostrich feather cape and a red satin picture hat.

Cullucio had given her a good spot in the show, following two men and doing the first strip number. He was watching her intently. When he saw me looking at him, he made a circle with his thumb and first finger. He held them up for me to see.

I nodded back. Then I nudged Biff.

“Dimples is in,” I said. “The boss just gave me the high sign. All we have to do now is keep our fingers crossed for Mandy and your friend.”

Dimples finished the verse of her number and went into the chorus:

She took a package of cigarettes from the bodice of her dress and tossed one to a man in the audience. The cigarette fell on the table and the man let it lay there.

Dimples paraded around the stage, handing cigarettes to the men at the tables. They were beginning to catch on now, and as she came near them the more venturesome ones would reach out for her.

Dimples stopped in front of a bald-headed man. She let out a little squeal of delight.

“Isn't he beautiful?”

She placed a cigarette in the man's mouth and lit it for him. He had a few hairs growing along the sides of his head. These few hairs she curled with her finger. She took a red ribbon from her wrist and tied it in a bow around one of the locks.

Dimples leaned over and kissed the man on his bald head. With a quick little run she was at the stage exit. She unloosed the feather cape and removed her hat.

Just before she exited, Dimples flashed one bare breast. The audience was not trained to applaud for strip numbers. There was only a scattered round until Biff began. He cupped his hands to make the clapping sound louder. He shouted, “Take it off!” and suddenly the audience picked it up.

The orchestra played “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and Dimples was back on for her first encore. By then the din and shouting
in the saloon reminded me of the balcony of boys at the Gaiety.

Dimples went into her bumps and grinds. She had slowed down a little in the past few years, but she was still the fastest bumper Ysleta had seen. Toward the end of the chorus she turned her back to the audience, removed her skirt, and did her quiver. The beads on her net pants sparkled like diamonds as she shook them. Dimples had originated the quiver and she still did it better than any other woman in burlesque. The beads began to fly madly as the orchestra played faster and faster.

“Tessie is going to find this tough to follow,” I said to Biff. I was a little pleased. Tessie wasn't my friend, Dimples was.

With a quick movement, she pulled off her beaded pants. She stood in the blue spotlight just long enough to let the customers know she didn't get the name Dimples for nothing. Then she darted offstage. She had to do encore after encore before they would let her leave. It was a solid show stop.

“I'll be back in a minute,” I said to Biff when the number was over. “I want to go backstage and tell her how swell it went over.”

I hurried through the alley until I came to the familiar garbage cans. Dimples was standing in the doorway cooling off. Little drops of perspiration clung to her upper lip. Her yellow hair was damp around her forehead.

“It was great,” I said. Then I saw the busboys.

There were three of them staring at Dimples in open-mouthed admiration. I threw the skirt of her costume around her shoulders.

“You're not in a theater now,” I said. “These guys aren't like stageheads.”

Dimples clutched the skirt tightly as we walked through the kitchen. The chef still hadn't looked up. I began to wonder if he had made someone a rash promise. The chorus girls were dressed for their next number. They stood near the huge sinks that were piled high with dirty dishes. They still looked tired.

“What's with the cold reception committee?” I asked when we were in the dressing room.

Dimples shrugged her naked white shoulders.

“Search me,” she said.

There was nothing to search unless you pulled off the adhesive plaster to see who won the turkey, but I let it pass.

Tessie said hello as coolly as the others. Then she turned to Dimples.

“Cover it up dearie,” she said. “This place is just about as private as Grand Central Station.”

The words weren't out of her mouth before the door was thrown open and Cullucio had walked in. Dimples grabbed a makeup towel and held it up in front of herself.

“Why the hell don't you knock?” Dimples exclaimed irritably. Then she recognized him. “Oh,” she said, “I didn't know it was you. Well, how'd it go?”

“Good, good,” Cullucio said. “Only why don't you let 'em see a little more? You leave too soon.”

“Don't encourage her,” Tessie said. “She'll be out there all night. That is, until the cops raid the place.”

Dimples looked at her languidly. “I don't know about that,” she said with a superior smile. “If you haven't got the place pinched yet, it's a cinch that I won't.”

The dialogue had become altogether too familiar. Before I got in the discussion myself, I decided to leave. Unfortunately, Cullucio had the same idea. I was in no mood to walk arm in arm with him through the dark alley. He looked too much like the type who knows all about alleys. He might have been the one they had in mind when they wrote the signs,
COMMIT NO NUISANCE
.

“I think I'll go through the house,” I said, “May I?”

“Sure,” Cullucio said. “I'll go with you.” At the door he turned to Dimples. “When you get dressed, come out. I want you to meet some nice people. Lots of money, and they like to give it away to pretty girls.”

“Well,” Tessie said, smiling up at Dimples, “that leaves you out, dear.”

Bob Reed was on as Cullucio and I passed through the small
door behind the bandstand. Mandy and Corny were standing ready to go on.

Mandy wore a sponge nose. It rather surprised me. He always worked clean in burlesque and here he was on his nightclub debut in baggy pants and a spongy nose. The suit was really a street suit, but when Mandy bought his clothes he always liked to get his money's worth. Instead of buying a suit that fit him, he'd get one several sizes too large. Then he had the extra material. In case of fire, flood, or riot, as he would say. His red tie was six feet long and he wore a very small brown derby. His bushy hair held the derby straight on his head.

Cullucio took one look at him and howled.

“That's the kind of comedian I like,” he said. “A classy comedian.”

Mandy winked at me. I winked back. Mandy knew what he was doing all right. If that was Cullucio's idea of class, Mandy was just the boy to deliver the groceries.

I couldn't say as much for Corny. It might have been his surly expression that made him look more like a straight man than a comic. His eye was all right, though; a little dark, but Corny had covered it pretty well with grease paint. Corny was quite adept at covering black eyes. Of course, he'd had a lot of practice.

“Say, we don't have to follow that, do we?” Corny indicated Bob Reed's figure on the dance floor. “After all, he's out there doing our best gags already. Aren't we going to get any consideration around—”

Cullucio interrupted him. “A girl number goes first. Don't worry, I'm not so new in this show business that I don't know what I'm doing.”

Cullucio held my arm and led me through the saloon. As we passed Mother's table Cullucio greeted her warmly. He might have said hello to Mamie, but her attitude discouraged it.

She was toying with a beer and, from the stiffness of her back, I had an idea that this was her last trip to The Happy Hour. She had disapproved so strongly of Tessie and her tassel
twirling, and Tessie was an ice-cream-social entertainer in comparison to Dimples.

Biff waved to me from the bar, so I dropped Cullucio at his office.

Biff was sitting alone. I was glad of that. It was the first chance I'd had to talk with him in hours.

“Mandy is wearing a nose,” I said, pulling out a stool and making myself comfortable.

“I told him to,” Biff said. “Cullucio's idea of humor is having a dame take the seltzer water in the pants. None of the women would sit still for it, so I figured we'd settle for a putty nose.”

“It's sponge,” I said.

“Couldn't get any nose putty here in Ysleta,” Biff replied. He said it as though that made Ysleta a very backward city. Almost as though he'd said there was no post office.

“You know, honey, I was just thinking,” I said.

Biff glanced at me sharply.

“Did I sound like Mother?” I said laughingly. “Seriously, Biff, I was thinking. I'm glad everyone knows everything now. It's a load off my mind. All but one thing: did Gee Gee mention anything to you about Gus? About him being a fence, I mean, and a dope peddler?”