Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (29 page)

After some idle chatter about Texas weather, Larry passed out in the backseat, and I knew he was “in the bag.” As we made our way through sloppy streets leaving Dallas, I wondered if I was going to be working with yet another alcoholic. Did it really matter?

I brushed the question aside because I now saw my chance to find out everything about whores and whorehouses a girl like me just might want to know.

“Where did most of the girls at the Chicken Ranch come from?” I asked Edna.

“Mainly country gals. They're the best kind. They know how to listen. I don't like those big-city types.” I wondered if that judgment included me, but it would be unproductive to explore that, and besides I was extremely curious about how much the women got paid, so I plunged right ahead and asked. “The girls got 60 percent and the house kept 40,” she told me.

“Okay, but how much did they turn tricks for?” I asked her.

“Ten dollars mostly; fifteen for something special!” I decided I didn't really need to have her explain what “special” in a Texas whorehouse meant.

“Did they work every night?”

“Day and night, six days a week.”

“That's a lot.”

“Well, we were always very busy, sittin' in the middle of so many colleges like we wus. The girls got time off for their monthlies,” she told me, as if to say it wasn't hard work at all—plenty of time to relax. Meanwhile I did some fast mental calculating.

“So I figure that they made about four or five hundred a week.” I thought my figure was high, but Edna looked at me as if I were some kind of idiot.

“Any girl who couldn't keep three to four thousand as her share was out of the house in a week.” I was so stunned I kept my mouth shut for at least ten miles. Finally, though, my curiosity kept driving me nuts, and so I pressed on: “I just don't know how a girl could earn so much money in a week doing
that
.” Edna took a beat and—without even bothering to look over at the ninny sitting next to her in the front seat—said: “Grease and slide, girl. Grease and slide!”

It was becoming clear we were going to be not only late, but very late. The drive was turning into a marathon that looked like it would last at least six hours. “The sheriff will be long gone by the time we get there. I hope you know how to reach him.”

“Oh, he'll be there, all right,” she assured me.

“But we're gonna be more than three hours late.”

“I can see you know nothing about men!” That shut me up. I knew truth when I heard it.

*   *   *

Indeed she was right about T. J. Flournoy. Sheriff “Jim” was waiting at the Cottonwood Inn just like she told me he would be. He was a lot to take in all at once. This ample man stood an intimidating seven feet tall in his bare feet, and seven feet two with his boots on. Add the cowboy hat, and he was a mountain. He had a red bulbous nose as large as my entire face, and it bore evidence of having enjoyed much good liquor every now and then—probably more then than now.

He, like her, was no spring chicken. He was still, however, a big bad guy with a big bad reputation. Looking at him, no one would want to mess with him. Larry told me he was reputed to have killed his own brother. I could only imagine the Texas-size circumstances (I was quickly beginning to understand that everything in Texas was outsized) in which that incident took place. The tale about the “brother” may be apocryphal, no more than part of the Flournoy legend, but the story upon which the musical is based is absolute truth.

When Marvin Zindler, the well-known TV consumer advocate from Houston, came to La Grange to shut down the whorehouse, Flournoy picked him up by the seat of his pants and put him through the plate glass window of the department store he'd been broadcasting in front of. The crash sent Zindler to the hospital for weeks. While it would have been great fun to explore these memories with Flournoy, that's not what I was there to do. I had to make the deal, and so I cut off the small talk. The little I learned about TJ that afternoon, however, came as a delightful surprise.

Notwithstanding how intimidating he appeared, he was as sweet and polite as a well-mannered child, and he was clearly happy to see Miss Edna. When he said he'd waited lunch—given that it was now past five—I realized for certain that she knew a whole lot more about men than I did.

We all sat down for a meal of the house favorite; a fattening feast of chicken-fried steak. It had enough thick white gravy covering each piece of meat to wade in up to the ankles. Fortunately I was talking so much I didn't have to get the whole meal down. After explaining the plot of the musical, and how, as the sheriff, he functioned in it, I got around to making him the offer. He looked at me as if I had just fallen out of a tree. “Are you talking about givin' that kind of money to me?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “We think that's a fair amount for using a character based on your life.” To begin with he couldn't believe anyone like him was going to be in a musical show. From his modest conversation I could tell he did not think he was interesting, regardless of what anyone else thought. I noticed that one of his hands mostly remained under the table. It could've been in his lap, but it wasn't hard for me to imagine it in Miss Edna's instead. (Both of her hands were aboveboard.) He looked a bit twitchy, and reflecting he was uncomfortable with accepting money, I offered to give it to his favorite charity. After thinking for a minute or two, he looked directly into my baby greens and said, “Well, ma'am, I just cain't possibly take that money. Y'all should give it to this little lady sittin' right here next to me.” I sat stock-still. I needed to make sure I heard right.

“Are you sayin' [I was now talking like him] that you want me to give the entire amount to Edna?”

“You heard me right.” And that was that. For Edna this was more than just the bird's nest. The whole aviary had just landed at her feet. She had made seventy-five thousand that day. Better pay than the whorehouse.

“Okay, we have a deal,” I said. Flournoy and I shook hands on it. My long fingers got lost in his baseball-glove-size mitt.

I did in fact send him a script, and he sent back a letter approving it, telling me that was contract enough for him. He didn't need to talk with an attorney. Edna had endorsed the project, and he was willing to go along with anything she wanted. Also he foresaw no political trouble for accepting a contractual fee for the rights to his life story. That had nothing to do with his refusal to take the money. The sheriff simply wanted to give a wonderful gift to the woman he had loved. This had been speculated in the play script. His gesture ended all speculation about whether or not there truly was a love story between them: This happily married man loved her still.

After lunch, Edna took us to the La Grange hospital, of all places. There, on a brass plaque, was her name, above all the others. In the funding of a new hospital for the town, she had been the biggest contributor. The whorehouse had also paid for the Little League uniforms and contributed to all the worthy causes in La Grange. Edna was shrewd, and she had been anxious to be the town's best neighbor. She didn't want any trouble when her girls came to town for a manicure or a meal in a restaurant. How many of her contributions amounted to bribery, and how many came from the deepest and most charitable place in her heart? We can guess, but we'll never know for sure.

*   *   *

In real life, at the end, the consumer pest Marvin Zindler won, and the Chicken Ranch was closed, much of it destroyed. But on the ride up to La Grange, Edna told me that there was still a small part left standing. As long as I was already there, and the whorehouse was near, I wanted to see it, stand in it, and try to imagine what the girls felt when they were standing there. Edna picked up her head housekeeper so that we could all go over to the place together. The woman lived in a once-thriving black community that had sprung up on the outskirts of town to provide the support personnel the whorehouse needed. The Chicken Ranch had been a cottage industry responsible for lots of good-paying jobs.

The diminutive woman Edna collected was every bit as delighted to see her as the sheriff had been. She got into the car, and within five minutes we were at the place where so many famous lawyers, doctors, state senators, and politicos of all stripes had come for relaxation and entertainment.

The housekeeper took me into the only remaining bedroom. It had a double bed with a chenille coverlet. There was a nightstand by the bed with a cheap lamp on it, with one of those frilly shades tied with a thin red velvet ribbon. And there was a sink. “The girls would wash every customer beforehand,” she told me. “We wus very healthy about the place,” she said with pride. She opened a drawer in the nightstand, from which she took a thin, scrawny-looking cotton rug. “Look at this, look how beautiful. This rug set right here by the bed.” And she made me hold it so that I could savor it and understand its luxury as she did. I was touched. Then we sat in the kitchen (the only other room left standing) reading Edna's rules of the house, which were still posted on the wall. I include them here for your amusement, and because I love them:

1. Absolutely no narcotics are permitted on these premises—if any are found, the Law will be called Immediately.

2. Drinking is not permitted during visiting hours, and anyone doing so will be asked or ordered to leave. In short, DOPE-HEADS, PILL-HEADS and DRUNKS are not permitted to live here, regardless of who they are.

3. Thieves, liars or robbers are not wanted or needed here.

4. Beds are not to be wallowed in. That's what hogs do.

5. I don't want any Boarder to receive more than one phone call per day—and that is from home. Three (3) minutes is sufficient time for anyone to talk concerning their family business. MONEY is not to be discussed on the phone at any time.

6. As I have said this is not a “white slavery place” and it never will be, as long as I have anything to do with it. Therefore I will not have a Boarder in my house with an excess amount of bruises and a lot of tattoos on their body. Cattle are branded for identification, tattoos are much the same as brands. I can remember my name without them. Can you?????

7. Boarders are permitted to see their lover or pimp only one night a week. Phone calls are subject to be Monitored. Remember—don't let your mouths overload your capabilities.

8. Long, sad faces look like hell to me, and I don't like them in my parlor. A smile doesn't cost anything but it could prove expensive not to smile.

9. When you go to town dresses worn should not be shorter than two inches above the knees. Pants or shorts prohibited in town.

10. Filthy talk can wait forever.

I rescued a red oil lamp sitting on the kitchen table to bring home. I would have stayed longer simply soaking it all in, had not Edna warned us that it was getting late and we still had a distance to drive to get back to Austin.

We decided to stay in Austin for the night and fly directly out of there to New York in the morning. We offered to put Edna up because it was a long drive back to Dallas on the endless unlit Texas roads. Edna said she had to check with her husband to see if that was all right with him. When she came back she told us she was leaving right away. I imagined then, and I believe to this day, that she went back to La Grange to thank the man she had once loved for the very generous gift he had given her that day.

*   *   *

Somewhere in the process of putting the show together, I decided that it would be a publicity bonanza if Edna came to New York to do a walk-on in the show. She'd only ever been in Texas (and Oklahoma, where she was born), and she said yes right away. Every newspaper was anxious to have its chance with her, and if she didn't turn out to be quite the scintillating madam of their imaginations, she did manage to satisfy each interviewer's curiosity. What was printable got as much space as it deserved. Unfortunately it wasn't long before she thought she could play the leading lady's role, and it was easier to send her home than to talk her out of it.

There wasn't a thing about Zindler that hadn't already appeared in the press, so he was considered public domain by the legal eagles, and accordingly wouldn't be entitled to any payment for life-story rights. I spent an hour with him, just for the hell of it, and I was persuaded of two things; one: He was the world's greatest authority on every subject and, two: a sizable portion of his ample earnings had gone to some bad cosmetic surgeons.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Broadway Gets a Whorehouse

“You better hire a good general manager,” my theater friends said, “because you don't know what you're doing.” So I hired Joe Harris. They all told me he was one of the best. I told him what I wanted to do, and he said, “You don't know what you're doing.” So I fired him. More balls than brains, but listen—he wanted to go the conventional tryout route, Boston or Philly, and I wanted to open in a big old movie house off-Broadway. I thought it would save money. If it worked, we would move uptown quickly with sets and costumes already made to fit a Broadway stage.

Well, it worked. We saved a million dollars. I'd like to think it worked exclusively because it was a great show, but it was definitely helped to success because Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis showed up on the third night. When our press agent, Jeffrey Richards, received a call that she was coming, he arranged to have cameramen there. “Don't bother her,” I told Jeff, but he was smarter. We got a shot of her under the theater marquee, which of course had the word “whorehouse” in it, and it was a press bonanza. After that we were golden. The carriage trade, rank-and-file theatergoers, and anyone who was anyone wanted to see the show. If you wished to be up on your cocktail conversation, you
had
to have seen
TBLWIT
. We were a hit.