The Hoods (20 page)

“The truth is, Maxie, I have a job that only you boys can do.”

Max raised his eyebrows. She misunderstood. She lifted her hand reassuringly.

“Don't worry. I'm willing to pay you well for your trouble.”

“Peggy,” I cut in with a smile, “you have given your services gratis and generously in the old days to all of us, and I think we should reciprocate. We'll help you without pay.”

Maxie puffed on his cigar, flicked his ashes on the floor, made a courteous bow and said, “Yep, Noodles is right. Our professional talents are always at your service, Peg.”

I was watching Maxie's courtly and respectful attitude. It was a lesson we had learned from our old friend, the Professor. I well remembered his oft-repeated aphorism, “Treat a whore like a lady and a lady like a whore.”

Max acted and spoke like a gallant. “But as far as taking money from a lady, you know, Peg, we don't work that way. That we leave for the pimps.”

Peggy opened her purse and flashed a thick roll of five hundred dollar bills. “Come on, Maxie. I'm doing okay. I don't want something for nothing. You know I'm no free loader. I like to pay for services rendered.”

Maxie puffed on his cigar meditatively, took his roll of bills out of his pocket and peeled off ten one hundred dollar bills and put them on the table.

“As long as you're anxious for it to cost you something, I'll tell you what, Peg—as long as you insist, mind you, only because you insist— cover this grand and we'll send it over to the Settlement House for their summer camp, and I guarantee to solve your problem, whatever it is, okay?”

Peggy's face brightened. “That's a swell idea,” she said. She smiled and matched Maxie's thousand dollars saying, “It's cheap at double the price.”

Maxie turned to Cockeye. “Okay, boy. You're elected the good Samaritan.”

Cockeye picked up the money.

As he opened the door to leave, Maxie called after him, “Bring a receipt back or a letter of acknowledgment.”

Cockeye stopped, looked at Maxie with resentment and asked, “What's the matter, after all these years you don't trust me?”

“Don't be so goddamn sensitive,” Maxie replied. “I want the receipt for my income tax.”

I wondered what prompted Max to suggest a donation to the Settlement House. How come? What sudden queer twist of mind gave him that thought? None of us had ever frequented the place. We considered it a place for sissies. The streets were our recreation center. Was it some realization of what we had missed in our youth? It was something for a psychiatrist to probe into—Maxie's generous Robin Hood gestures. No doubt about it. Like those psychoanalysts claim, everything has a cause.

Peggy reached for another drink, lit a cigarette and blew smoke out of her thin nostrils and sighed. “Do you know, Max, I'm operating a high-class joint uptown?”

“Yep. So you tell me. So-o-o. Let's get down to 'tachlas.' What's your problem, Peg—cops or shake-down artists?”

“Neither.”

Peggy frowned and shook her head. “You know cops are the least of my trouble. Whitey is the police captain in my precinct, and you know he has always been my sweetie pie.”

She gave a coquettish tilt to her head.

Maxie, Peg and I laughed. The three of us remembered.

Patsy asked drily, “That old bastard got anything left yet?”

Peggy pinched Patsy on the cheek. “Baby, you would be surprised.”

Cockeye asked, “Enough to keep you satisfied, Peg?”

Peggy wriggled her hips. “You know I never get enough to be satisfied.”

“Cops are okay, so what else could be bothering you, Peg?” I asked.

“What's bothering me?” she repeated.

Her eyes flashed angrily and her face flushed through her rouge. She tapped the table with her forefinger, indignantly emphasizing each word.

For the past month, every week on my busiest day, Friday, some sonofabitch mysteriously appears, God knows from where, lines up all my girls and clients against the wall and heists them. It's getting goddamn annoying.”

We laughed at her angry complaint. “What the hell, Peg. The guy's got to eat,” I said. “Live and let live.”

“It's all right for you guys to laugh, but to me, it ain't so funny. All right if it only happened once. But it's getting queer, three weeks in a row. Besides, it's getting monotonous. The same thing every goddamn Friday night. Besides ruining my business, it scares my clients away. My girls get so nervous they can't keep their minds on what they're doing.”

“That's beside the point,” I said drily.

“Besides, I see what you mean,” Maxie said, smiling.

Peggy made a hopeless gesture with both hands. “All right, you guys, laugh. Here it is. It's all yours. You'll handle this guy for me, will you, Max? Will you, Noodles?”

“Yeah, I guess so, Peg, we'll handle the situation. Don't worry,” I said.

“The sonofabitch knows I can't report him to the cops, and I don't want to involve Whitey, so he takes advantage of a lady, the lousy bastard,” Peggy said plaintively.

“Don't worry, Peg,” Patsy was smoothing her blond hair. “After we get through with him, he'll think it healthier and safer to heist a bank than clip your joint.”

Peggy put her arm around Patsy's waist, and smiled seductively up at him. “You can imagine, Pat, how my clients feel. In the middle of a little tete-a-tete with a pretty chippy, being interrupted by, 'Hold it. This is a heist.' Embarrassing, ain't it? How would you feel, Patsy?”

“If the tete-a-tete was with you, I would ignore him completely,” Patsy laughed. “I would go about my business.”

Peggy pressed Patsy closer, she smiled amorously in his face. “That's for me, a real conscientious worker.”

Maxie was serious. He asked, “What does this shmuck look like, Peg?”

Peggy stood up, absentmindedly pulled her girdle down, and gave a tantalizing wriggle to her hips.

“I don't know. He's a pretty tall guy, I guess. About Patsy's build.”

She gave Patsy a come-on smile. Patsy ate it up. I was thinking Patsy was going to be elected Peggy's swain for tonight.

Maxie took out his fountain pen. “Give me the address of your place.”

She gave it to him, an address on the Upper East Side near Park Avenue. Maxie kept tapping his pen on the table. He was puzzled.

“Tell me, Peg,” he asked, “how does this crumb-bum get into your joint? You keep the door locked unless you recognize your clients, don't you?”

“That's the mystery, Max. Sure, I got the goddamn door locked, and just when my clients are in the midst of their festivities, this bastard comes in from nowhere.”

Maxie scratched his head. “Well, what the hell. Don't worry, Peg, we'll have to spend a little time in your joint.”

Patsy's face lit up in anticipation.

“We'll unriddle this riddle for you, Peg,” I said.

Cockeye walked in, handed Maxie an envelope. Maxie took a sheet of paper out of it and read aloud. It was a letter of thanks from the Settlement House.

Maxie said, “I feel like a Boy Scout after a good deed; for this,” Maxie waved the letter, “I will guarantee complete satisfaction.”

“That's my slogan,” Peggy said. “Well, I have things to attend to.”

She had one more drink. She kept looking suggestively at Patsy. “Well, I guess I'll run along. Do you mind driving me uptown, Pat?”

I knew Peggy had chosen him for the evening. But the invitation caught Patsy by surprise.

Over Patsy's face came such an expression of delight as he had when we were kids after breaking into our first candy store when we had all the trays of candy and charlotte russes before us.

“I'll ride you uptown, downtown and sideways all day long, Peg.” He drew her closer. “Complete satisfaction is my slogan, too.”

She acted shy, like a schoolgirl. “Fresh boy,” she murmured.

“We'll be over early Friday morning,” Maxie called to them as they walked out together holding hands.

Patsy came back the next afternoon. Maxie looked at him and smiled.

“You look limp like a herring.”

Without comment he threw himself into a chair. Patsy waved his hand for a drink. He finished it in one gulp and whispered hoarsely, The Madame is better than any chippy in her own joint.”

I wondered how he came to that conclusion. I was sure he couldn't have had a chance to compare, for Peggy was all any normal man could handle in one evening.

He retired to a corner, stretched out on two chairs and in a few minutes was fast asleep. We laughed at the state he was in.

We started a game of stud poker, and played all day long. Maxie sent Cockeye out for a pot of kreplach from Rappaport's. It was cozy and quiet that Thursday afternoon.

That evening, we had a chore to do for the Combination: we escorted a moving van full of whiskey from the unloading point in Long Island to a drop-off in New Jersey.

Early Friday morning we went up to Peggy's place. She had a better layout than the average whore house. It was a brownstone private house with about twelve rooms, on two floors. Ten of the rooms were well-furnished bedrooms. When we arrived Peggy was the only occupant of the house; it was too early for the girls and the trade.

Peggy informed us she had ten girls working for her. From what she intimated, they were kept pretty busy. She ran a ten dollar joint. And for the call trade, she charged thirty bucks. She split fees with the girls at the usual fifty-fifty arrangement. She was more generous than the ordinary Madame, for she permitted the girls to keep their tips.

Maxie figured out, “With the booze profits and rolling a lush here and there, Peggy's take must come close to five grand per week. Not bad for the little business woman, especially for a former Delancey Street piece of charity ass.”

“A lot more money than the President of the United States makes,” I observed.

“That's free enterprise,” Maxie replied. “Everybody has equal opportunities. Maybe Hoover and the country would be better off if he ran a whore house instead of the country.”

“You got something there, Max,” I agreed. “Then instead of his slogan 'a chicken in every pot' he can supply a chicken in every bed.”

“Which would the people prefer, I wonder?” Maxie chuckled.

After Maxie got a picture of the layout of the place, he said to Peggy, “We'll stay in this room. This seems to be the central room of the house. Nobody is to know we're here. Nobody, you understand? Not even the girls.”

“As you say, Max; can I offer you boys a bottle of Mt. Vernon?”

Maxie nodded. “That's okay, Peg.”

Peggy came back shortly with a bottle and glasses. As she put it on the dresser, she said, “When and if you grab this guy, fellas, can you do it as quietly as possible? No fireworks, please?”

Max shrugged. “We'll try not to make much noise, but this bum carries a rod, doesn't he?”

Peggy nodded. “But try not to make too much of a disturbance, the neighbors think I run a private dancing school.”

“The only difference is they do it with their clothes on and standing up in some private dancing school, and you supply beds. Hey, Peg?” I said.

She gave me a knowing wink and left.

Maxie sent Cockeye out to Katz's. “Get twenty-five assorted sandwiches, mostly hot pastramis. And this is important, Cockeye,” Max said. “On the way back, stop at a hardware store and buy a large brace and bit.”

“Brace and bit?” Cockeye asked.

I looked at Maxie, wondering what the hell was he going to do with a brace and bit. Then it dawned on me. I broke into a broad grin. “We're going to have a peep show.” I marveled at Maxie. He thought of everything.

When Cockeye got back, Maxie stood up on a chair and drilled holes clear through the walls into the next bedrooms. Our room was more or less centrally located, facing the entrance door right off the foyer. The foyer was luxuriously furnished with fancy chairs and little tables, on which were scattered pornographic pictures and booklets containing French treatises on sex enjoyment.

Since we were on the upper floor, Maxie sent Cockeye down to see what kind of a room was under us.

Cockeye reported, “A cozy little bedroom.”

Maxie bored a hole through the floor, then another in the door, which gave us four observation peepholes. Peggy came in. She saw Maxie at work. At first she was peeved at the damage to the walls. Then she laughed it off.

“You've given me an idea. I can rent these holes out for ten bucks a night,” she said.

“For a two-fold purpose, hey, Peg?” Max laughed.

The phone rang. Calls came in quite often. Peggy was busy on the telephone taking orders from the call trade for evening appointments. She motioned for me to sit down beside her. She wanted me to listen in on her conversation. She was proud of the well-known names calling in for girls.

Some of them surprised and even impressed a guy like me. Quite a few were in the limelight. There was a judge, a literary critic on the
Evening World,
a big industrialist and a banker who wanted ten girls for a private party he was throwing for some of his business associates, a lesbian woman athlete, acclaimed in the sports world, and a few lonely citizens in the everyday walks of life. I got bored listening in after awhile and joined the stud poker game the boys were playing in the room with the peepholes.