The matilda hunter murde.., p.33
The Matilda Hunter Murder, page 33
“Yes, Mister. That’s it.” She revolved her head, and was regarding Trotter over her shoulder as one presenting a sort of safety island to her dubious position in this assemblage. She half turned to him now, as intuitively discerning that he of all these watching individuals could know she spoke the truth. “He—Camera here—said he’d acted in a revival—a revival—that’s relig’is, ain’t it?—them meetings they have in a tent an’ pray?—but that’s jes’ what he said—a revival of the No plays.” She looked desperately at Trotter. “Mister, honest, that’s what he called ’em. No plays.” She spelled it painstakingly out. “N—O, No.”
“The No is a certain form of native drama of Japan,” said Trotter reflectively, but towards Callahan. “A collection of short tragic 15th century pieces, popularized in the Tokugawa period later. One of the early shoguns himself, Tsunayoshi, appeared in them.” He turned to the girl. “Proceed, my child.”
“Well, Camera here said—he said he was undastudy to a big Jap actor what played a big part in them—them No plays. And the big guy got sick. An’—an’ he got the part. And he brought down the house. He—he panicked ’em. So he said. He said he could go back to Japan and get a job any time in them No plays. He said the newspapers there said there wasn’t a actor in—in Japan—could do any better as him. But he said he wasn’t actin’ now because he was really workin’ for—for—now he said it like My-God-Oh—but I don’t think that was it exactly. It—”
Callahan leaned forward, face tensed. “Mikado? Was that the word?”
She nodded vehemently. “Mikado. That’s it, Mister! He said—he said he was workin’ for that Mikado. He said he wasn’t a big—well, a big shot right now, but he and a couple of friends of his, guys like himself, was all in cahoots on a prop’sition—it come to ’em like a inside tip o’ some sort an’ they wasn’t sayin’ nothin’, see, to the guys that was over ’em—and anyway, if it went right, it’d shoot ’em all up way high in the Jap empire—the whole three of ’em—him, too—lift ’em right out—out o’ their bootstraps. That he’d have money—ever’thing.”
“And what did you say?”
“Me? I said, ‘Gonna buy me a fur coat, Camera? Winter’s comin’.’”
“And he?”
“He said sure—he’d—he’d buy me anything on earth.”
“Well what did you think of his story?”
She laughed. “Gee, mister, the stories us girls hear in them dance shops! Every guy we dance with—he’s got a fish-story ’at makes him better or more wonderfuller ’n’ every other guy. Us girls jus’ laugh about ’em in the smokin’ room durin’ intermission. A girl I know—she’s been in high school—she’s just in the dance-racket because that coin’s jus’ as good to her as any other kinda coin—she calls them stories—calls ’em Ro—Romancin’. I worked in a white hall once—the biggest of ’em all—you know, Mister, the old State-Polk—gee, you’d oughta know—you went and closed it on us, and that’s why I hadda get into this Chinky dump. Yellow flesh or none, I gotta earn my livin’. Well, Mister, there was a line of spiels that’d knock you for a row. One guy’d say he’d been all over the world and got nearly et by cannonballs in Afferca. Another’d have a millionaire father livin’ on Lake Shore Drive. Another’d be a big gun; to hear him talk, Al Tetroni himself was shiverin’ in Cicero f’r fear this guy’d put out the high sign to ring curtains down on Al. A lot’s like that, Mister—big guns. One guy said Bugs Moran took his orders from him. But one night he steps on a Polack’s foot who’s sailin’ by, an’ the Polack says he’ll knife him. And does that guy get his lid in a hurry and blow the place. Oh baby—does he!” She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh sure—I know—the Polacks an’ Dagoes an’ ever’thing startin’ fights all the time is why you closed the State-Polk. O.K.! The low-downest ticket-taker in Chi, allus raggin’ me ’cause I didn’t shove my half ticket out fas’ enough to him, lost his job too when you closed the State-Polk. O.K., says I.” She paused. Her lips were now hard-pressed against each other, and her eyes half closed, as of a woman who possesses at least the retrospective satisfaction of having seen a male enemy go down to his own destruction. Then she came sharply to herself. The straight line of her lips faded, broke; her eyes opened wide again. “But I was tellin’ you about the lines us girls gets. Them lines the guys peddle. Gee, Mister, them stories each of ’em pulls. One guy who used to come up a lot says he was a chief scout, in disguise or something, f’r Earl Carroll—gettin’ dancin’ talent for to put on a big Earl Carroll girl show. Another guy was a famous arthur—he wrote books—but he hadda ast me how to spell Marie when I slipped him my name. Another guy was a champeen middle-weight. He’d knocked out ever’body in the fight game; but the muscles in the arm he slipped ’round my waist was soft as a girl’s! He was a good scout though—allus tipped me a buck and bought lotsa tickets w’en he did blow in. But lemme tell ya about th’ guy that allus wore checkered green shirts. He never talked about hisself; so he had me figuring. I figured he was in a real racket all right, all right. That he wasn’t no oil-can like the others. But one night he comes to the Dance so hoarse he can’t but just barely talk. And he tells me confidential how he gets that way. He’s a hootch-runner. An’ he’d been runnin’ a truckload of Scotch down the night before from the Canadian line. He’d got past all the cops between Detroit and Chi, an’ then hadda go turn over in the Calumet river. The end o’ the truck pinned him down in th’ mud, and he laid in icy water—it was spring then—f’r six hours, with the water ripplin’ just past his chin. Couldn’t call out ’cause the Law—the Law’d git him; and the $30,000 worth o’ hootch’d git grabbed. An’ one of his gang, scoutin’ out along the roads, finally got to him and got him out.” She shook her head, with a still persisting wonder. “An’ do you know, I met ’at guy’s brother th’ same night, his brother what roomed with him, an’ that guy—the one what said all that about layin’ all night in the water—was a shirt salesman at the Boston Store, an’ he got that fog in his pipes just from sleepin’ with his feet out of the bed in a window draft. Gee, I couldn’t buhlieve it till I went over to the Boston Store myself an’ seen him, from behind a post, sellin’ shirts at a dollar-nineteen sale.” She made a curiously significant gesture with her two hands, extending them palms out, and dropping them derisively. “No, us girls get twenty new tales every night. Each guy, to hear him spiel, is somebody—and every other guy in th’ world is nobody. So we learn not to never believe nothing we hear—when it comes out o’ men’s mouths.” She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the silent Jap. “So I jes’ figgered in Camera’s case—more bull. Although them Chinkies—” She pondered. “—them Chinkies don’t do it quite so much as—as the white men. Still, though, they does it enough at that.”
“He’s not a Chinky, Marie. Don’t you know the difference between Chinese and Japanese?”
Her green-brown eyes opened wide. “Why, ain’t Filipinos an’ Japs an’ Chinks all the same?”
Callahan smiled wearily. “No.”
“Why-I—I—”
But at this juncture the Jap stepped forward and fell on his knees at her feet. He clutched at the hem of her flimsy, plush, rabbit-trimmed coat. “Oh Mahree,” he said desperately, “you have ruin me—by them tales you tell. I tell them you—I tell them you, Mahree, becoze I wan’ that you love joos’ me. Me, I am jus’ houseboy—but I love you. I cam’ back from Burleengton becoze I no can stan’ leev’ so far from you. I—I am joos’ house-boy, Mahree. But I weel stoddee hard at—at Loos Institoot. I weel be enganeer—mak’ moch monee. Becoze I—I love you. That is for w’y I am buy you them coat, an’ them shoes—an’ them jewel heels, an’ them hat—and all them nize things. Tell Mister Poleezman that I am veree drunk when I say them things, and all Japanese say them things to dance-girls in—in Blue Moon. Tell him—tell him, Mahree.”
CHAPTER XXVI
A Little Drama Out of Taxidancedom!
The tiny blondined sprite from the highly materialistic land of taxi-dancing gazed down at the kneeling Jap, hard-eyed, granitic in her mien.
“Lissen,” she said sternly, “there—there ain’t no use your lovin’ me, Camera. If you’re big enough fool to buy me things—then that’s your lookout. Do you think a girl like me what’s had white guys nuts over her is goin’ to eat dinner with a Chink and all that, for nothin’? I give you my time, didn’t I? Wasn’t I allus nice to you? Did I ever ast you to buy more tickets?” Her voice rose. “Did I? Did I? Did I?”
He shook his head dumbly, looking up at her. “No. I buy them—gladlee.”
“Get up, Camera.”
She turned to the detective head. “The Law, Mister, I can’; afford t’ git tangled up with the Law. There’s—there’s reasons. There’s reasons, that’s all. An’ now on top of all this, I s’pose my folks in Hutch Falls, Ohio, ’ll hear all about me dancin’ in a Chink hall—and me supposed to be sek’tary to a lawyer, here in town.” She sighed. Sato had risen, and stood hands behind him, eyes cast on floor. “It’ll just bust my mother all up—her, with my dad dead, an’ workin’ from mornin’ to night tryin’ t’ scratch a measly livin’ for herself an’ ten kids, all younger’n me, too, outa a piece of 20-acre scrub an’ rocks, and milkin’ a skinny cow to death f’r the youngest ’uns. Sure, it’ll be in the papers. This guy slaughterin’ a man! And me—his white queen livin’ in a love-nest with nonsense a-burnin’ in a brass dish. I know them Chicago American reporters. To hell with a girl’s rep. Tear it to pieces—and—why—why this guy ain’t never even stepped foot in my housekeepin’ room. Oh sure,”—she threw her hands outward in a swift but helpless gesture—“he give me these clothes. These shoes. Sure—I admit it. God, Mister, you ain’t got no idea how it is—the way shoes wears out in that dance racket. Seems like you got ’em on your feet one night, all trim an’—an’—shiny an’—an’ spiffy-like, you know, an’ then almost like as if it’s the next night, almost, they’re goin’ through, toes, soles ’n’ ever’thing. The dances, you see; dance after dance, dance after dance, an’ worse yet, ever’time th’ ’tendance falls off, th’ bosses makes the musicians play a few extra sheets o’ music for each dance—that’s to give each customer more for his dime—but it means more turns around the hall f’r each girl—for her nickel outa that dime—more shoe leather, wearin’, wearin’, wearin’, always wearin’ away.”
She shook her blondined head helplessly from side to side. “Shoes! God, Mister, them’s my nightmare. Shoes! A girl in my racket’s gotta look right in her pins, you know. The guys looks at your legs as well as your face. An’ sloppy shoes an’ stockin’s ain’t goin’ to get no dances, you can jes’ bet on that. ’Tain’t so bad-like about the stockin’s, though. You can get them picot-tops f’r seventy-nine cents, and you c’n mend the runs yerself with a fine needle, when they’re on the backs. An’ when holes comes on the feet what you can’t mend, well you c’n still wear ’em—and if one hole starts cuttin’ your big toe, you c’n take a scissors, and make the hole bigger, and let your big toe come out—and go on still a couple days longer. Oh stockin’s—” She shook her head emphatically. “Gee, stockin’s ain’t no problem at all. But the shoes. Oh, boy! Ever’time a girl begins to git a few dollars ahead, she’s gotta toss another pair of shoes on her old shoe heap, an’ dig up again. Shoes! Ever’night, seems t’ me, I dream about ’em. When it’s a nightmare, it allus runs jes’ the same. Funny, too. It allus opens up, like a drammer, with me sittin’—but you don’t wanna hear about no dreams of no dancin’ girl in the taxi-dance racket. You—”
“Let us hear your nightmare, child,” said Trotter paternally. “I have read some 20,000 books in my day, from cover to cover, but you are a small and vivid pamplet yourself on a phase of life which nothing in my library has ever treated. Then, too, a psycho-analysis of your dream should prove decidedly off the beaten path of such things.”
She looked at him a bit suspiciously, her greenish brown eyes narrowing markedly when he referred to her as a “pamphlet”; it was plain that her first inward comment was “Dotty.” Then as though suddenly realizing that this same benign old gentleman had been the one individual who had corroborated her seemingly unintelligible statements about the No drama of Japan, she beamed on him. Now she turned to him.
“Well, Mister, it’s allus the same—if it’s a nightmare. It’s allus about—what I been tellin’ this gentleman behind the desk: shoes. W’en th’ dream—this here nightmare—opens up, I’m gittin’ ready to go to the Dance, jes’ like I does ever’ night in real life. Sittin’ in my bloomers on a kitchen chair in front o’ my mirror, propped up on my dishpan, puttin’ on th’ last touches o’ my war paint. Seems like I’m quite happy. It’s a Sattiday night, you see—in th’ dream. An’ all th’ guys has got their week’s wages, rarin’ t’ dance their heads off, an’ the dances’ll be short an’ fast. No rain nor sleet nor nothin’. Ever’thing swell. See? While I’m puttin’ th’ Maybelline on my eyelashes careful-like, with my little brush, I’m thinkin’ what ever’ dancin’ girl in the world is thinkin’ at·that moment. What dress’ll pull best tonight? Dresses is awful funny things, Mister. One’ll pull dances swell on a Monday night, but let you down with a flop on any other night. Another’ll pull any night in th’ week if ’at night’s a rainy night—but if it’s a dry night, why—the dress won’t pull at all! Some dresses pulls dances good any night but a Sattiday night; but if it’s rained or snowed that Sattiday, they ain’t worth nothin’ for getting’ guys to dance with you. Then there’s dresses ’at shows a lot o’ your neck—but if you puts a yoke ’r somethin’ around ’em, a yoke what’s of a different color than th’ dress, they pulls even still better. Why is that, Mister? It sure beats me:” She shook her head again. Life, and all the mysteries of psychology, was an unfathomable enigma to her. “Gee, but how you do gotta study ’at all out about dresses, an’ which ’uns pulls, an’ when; and after you dope it all out, you sure gotta jest live by it—or the nickels comin’ outa them corn-shredders’ pockets is goin’ to crawl into some other girl’s handbag. See? And so tonight—this bein’ a sorta dream-Sattiday night where nothin’s quite the same like as in the real world, I’m studyin’ an’ studyin’ what to wear. Shall I put on my yella taffeta with the glass beads on it? I made six dollars one Sattiday night with it on. Still, another Sattiday night, I on’y took in four twen’ny-five an’ a quarter tip. Or shall I try my pink chiffon ’at I bought secon’-han’ from the Resale Shop? Still, th’ hall’s too crowded on a Sattidy night. Ever’body bumpin’ an’ elbowin’ ever’body else—an’ gittin’ inta traffic jams in the four corners. It’ll get just about tore to pieces. Maybe my green crepe de chine, then, what I made outa my white dress by takin’ off th’ lace collar an’ dippin’ th’ dress in Rit. Or shall I wear, maybe, my brown taffeta with the purple yoke—’at pulls good on Sunday nights. Never tried that ’un on a Sattid’y. Might be a gold mine. Or my black lace what I bought off my girl friend Jessica for $8 when she married some cuddle-cootie ’at used to come up an’ dance with her. Jessica usta slay ’em with that dress. But Jessica ain’t me. Or maybe my blue velveteen with the rhinestone shoulder buckle—still, when I took off the hem what was worn so bad, it left th’ skirt awful short, an’ maybe the boss’ll send me home ’count o’ the Law coming up on Sattid’y nights to give the place the once-over.
“Anyway,” the girl continued, “it allus works out—I winds up, decidin’ on one o’ my dresses, or maybe another. Three hundred an’ sixty-five days a year a taxi-dancer’s got that problem to figger out. An’ havin’ figgered it out in my dream, an’ finished my eyes, with maybe a little pat o’ vaseline on th’ lids, I hooks my stockin’s onto my supporters, drops my dress—whichever ’un it is—over my head, and then I commences the usual worry—whether the shoes ’at oughta go with that dress ain’t too far gone theirselves—and had I better change. But I lifts up the counterpane o’ the bed to see what old Mother Hubbard’s got in her shoe cupboard tonight, and there’s my whole row o’ shoes, not one of ’em no good at all in th’ dream—ever’one of ’em with gapin’ holes in ’em or somethin’. Gee, am I desp’rit now. I tumbles ’em about wild-like. The straps is offa the black satin ones, the on’y decent ’uns I had anyway. The tan ones what was dyed black is scuffed so bad in the toes, that th’ toes’d hafta be Jettumed—only the shoes theirselves is busted out the side: My leather network slippers with the diamon’ buckles ain’t got no heels on ’em, an’—an’ the soles is both flappin’ loose! And my heart drops. The clock says nearly nine. In a few minutes th’ girls’ll be linin’ up along th’ side o’ th’ hall—and me—me—me—I’m in my stockin’ feet—no shoes, nothin’ to get me there, no way to get none—and can’t get in on that dough that’s bustin’ its way out of the guys’ pockets. Sattiday night—an’ no shoes! Sattiday night—and me knocked out from playin’ in the nickel rassle, jes’ ’count of my shoes. Hell—that’s what it is. Why—why’d it gotta be Sattiday? Why couldn’t it be Monday, th’ punk night in th’ week? Or any other night, even? But I’m sunk. Sattiday night. An’ no shoes. An’—an’ about there I allus wakes up in a cold sweat. And I finds it’s all a dream. All a dream. Gee—what a fierce dream! An’—an’ sometimes I even get up out o’ bed, and takes—takes my good shoes—whatever good pair I got—back to bed with me, so’s I can get to sleep again.
“But it ain’t allus a nightmare, them shoe dreams, Mister,” she added, regarding Trotter who appeared to be her most receptive auditor. “When I’m happy, an’ things is goin’ halfway decent with me, then sometimes—sometimes I have happy dreams—but they’re about shoes again. Always shoes. I dreams, maybe, ’at I goes into a swell shoe shop on Mich’gan Avenue, and a beautiful propri’tor with a waxed mustache steps for’ard an’ says, ‘I’m glad you’ve arrove, my daughter. Will you kindly selec’ all the shoes you wish; for they been paid for a’ready by a very rich lady whose tooken a fancy to you.’ And I sees myself in my dream, goin’ out of the store loaded down with big packages o’ shoes, shoes, shoes, an’ more shoes! Shoes for a year, to come. Shoes f’r ten years. Never no more worryin’ about shoes. An’ I—” She stopped with an uneasy laugh, and gazed off over the sun-gilded chimneys of Chicago’s West Side. “Oh boy! But it’s a gay life, makin’ your livin’ on shoe leather what you gotta keep buyin’ an’ buyin’ an’ buyin’ outa the livin’ you make!”
