‘Goodbye,’ said Joanne.
Greg Peshkov was in love.
He knew that Jacky Jakes had been bought for him by his father, as his reward for helping to entrap Dave Rouzrokh, but despite that it was real love.
He had lost his virginity a few minutes after they had returned from the precinct house, and the two of them had then spent most of a week in bed at the Ritz-Carlton. Greg did not need to use birth control, she told him, because she was already ‘fixed up’. He had only the vaguest idea what that meant, but he took her at her word.
He had never been so happy in his life, and he adored her, especially when she dropped the little-girl act and revealed a shrewd intelligence and a mordant sense of humour. She admitted that she had seduced Greg on his father’s orders, but confessed that against her will she had fallen in love. Her real name was Mabel Jakes and, although she pretended to be nineteen, she was in fact just sixteen, only a few months older than Greg.
Lev had promised her a part in a movie but, he said, he was still looking for just the right role. In a perfect imitation of Lev’s vestigial Russian accent she said: ‘But I don’t guess he’s lookin’ too fuckin’ hard.’
‘I guess there aren’t many parts written for Negro actors,’ Greg said.
‘I know, I’ll end up playing the maid, rolling my eyes and saying “Lawdy”. There are Africans in plays and films – Cleopatra, Hannibal, Othello – but they’re usually played by white actors.’ Her father, now dead, had been a professor in a Negro college, and she knew more about literature than Greg did. ‘Anyway, why should Negroes only play black people? If Cleopatra can be played by a white actress, why can’t Juliet be black?’
‘People would find it strange.’
‘People would get used to it. They get used to anything. Does Jesus have to be played by a Jew? Nobody cares.’
She was right, Greg thought, but, all the same, it was never going to happen.
When Lev had announced their return to Buffalo – leaving it until the last minute, as usual – Greg had been devastated. He had asked his father if Jacky could come to Buffalo, but Lev had laughed and said: ‘Son, you don’t shit where you eat. You can see her next time you come to Washington.’
Despite that, Jacky had followed him to Buffalo a day later and moved into a cheap apartment near Canal Street.
Lev and Greg had been busy for the next couple of weeks with the takeover of Roseroque Theatres. Dave had sold for two million in the end, a quarter of the original offer, and Greg’s admiration for his father went up another notch. Jacky had withdrawn her charges and hinted to the newspapers that she had accepted a cash settlement. Greg was awestruck by his father’s callous nerve.
And he had Jacky. He told his mother he was out every night with male friends but, in fact, he spent all his spare time with Jacky. He showed her around town, picnicked with her at the beach, even managed to take her out in a borrowed speedboat. No one connected her with the rather blurred newspaper photograph of a girl walking out of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in a bathrobe. But mostly they spent the warm summer evenings having sweaty, deliriously happy sex, tangling the worn sheets on the narrow bed in her small apartment. They decided to get married as soon as they were old enough.
Tonight he was taking her to the Yacht Club Ball.
It had been extraordinarily difficult to get tickets, but Greg had bribed a school friend.
He had bought Jacky a new dress, pink satin. He got a generous allowance from Marga, and Lev loved to slip him fifty bucks now and again, so he always had more money than he needed.
In the back of his mind a warning was sounding. Jacky would be the only Negro at the ball not serving drinks. She was very reluctant to go, but Greg had talked her round. The young men would envy him but the older ones might be hostile, he knew. There would be some muttering. Jacky’s beauty and charm would overcome much prejudice, he felt: how could anyone resist her? But if some fool got drunk and insulted her, Greg would teach him a lesson with both fists.
Even as he thought this, he heard his mother telling him not to be a love-struck fool. But a man could not go through life listening to his mother.
As he walked along Canal Street in white tie and tails, he looked forward to seeing her in the new dress, and maybe kneeling to lift the hem up until he could see her panties and garter belt.
He entered her building, an old house now subdivided. There was a threadbare red carpet on the stairs and a smell of spicy cooking. He let himself into the apartment with his own key.
The place was empty.
That was odd. Where would she go without him?
With fear in his heart, he opened the closet. The pink satin ball dress hung there on its own. Her other clothes were gone.
‘No!’ he said aloud. How could this happen?
On the rickety pine table was an envelope. He picked it up and saw his name on the front in Jacky’s neat, schoolgirl handwriting. A feeling of dread came over him.
He tore open the envelope with shaky hands and read the short message.
