“Hiya, Granny,” I said, on my way over to join him.
Granlund was a big lumpy-nosed Swede who wouldn’t have looked out of place at a plow in the middle of a field, if he hadn’t been dressed in tailored gray sharkskin with a silk black-and-white-patterned tie. Smiling in his avuncular manner, gray hair slicked back, eyes a dark twinkling blue, Granny-who was in his late fifties-leaned his chin on a hand bedecked with gold rings, exposing gold cufflinks and a gold wristwatch no more expensive than a new Plymouth.
“I heard you were in town,” he said, gesturing for me to sit next to him in the booth. “You and Fred should do well.”
Granlund knew both Fred Rubinski and me primarily from his stay managing the showroom at Chicago’s Congress Hotel in the mid-’30s, where I’d handled security.
“Thanks, Granny. Nice little joint you got here.”
“Not mine, exactly, but thank you, Nathan. How do you like my girls?”
“You still know how to pick ’em.”
“Yes, I do.” Gazing almost dreamily at the chorus line as the choreographer whipped them into shape, he said, “The Short girl wasn’t in the chorus, by the way. She was strictly a waitress-Mark hired her.”
That caught me like the sucker punch it was. I said, “You don’t fool around, do you, Granny?”
He beamed at me like a big Swedish elf. “You’re mentioned in the Examiner coverage, fairly prominently. I assumed someone from the press or the police would show up-rather relieved it’s you.”
“To my knowledge, the cops haven’t connected Beth Short to the Gardens.”
With a smile and a contented sigh, pleased by the array of pulchritude he’d assembled, Granny leaned back in the booth, withdrew a gold cigarette case from his inside suitcoat pocket, offered me a smoke, which I declined, and then lit up.
“The police will connect her with us,” he said offhandedly, “if the Examiner runs a story.”
“The Examiner is prepared not to mention the Gardens-not until, or unless, the cops make that connection.”
Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Really. Why? Has Jim Richardson come down with a sudden bout of compassion?”
“It’s on the assumption that you could provide a few exclusive leads on the girl.”
“Off-the-record tidbits?”
I nodded.
He sat and smoked and watched his girls dance, for maybe a minute-a long one. The bored piano player kept grinding out “Don’t Fence Me In.”
Then Granny said, softly, “I only spoke to the girl a few times. As I say, Mark hired her. She was strictly a waitress, albeit a very decorative one, but then all of the waitresses here are beautiful… You don’t come to the Florentine Gardens to see plain janes.”
“Having beautiful waitresses encourages drinking among male patrons.”
Half a smile dimpled one cheek. “Nathan… I know you too well. You’re trying to suggest that our waitresses are B-girls. That’s not the case. There’s no prostitution here. We did have a bad incident last year-”
“Those underage twins.”
Both eyebrows arched this time, smoke trailing out his nostrils. “You know about that?”
“I know you’ve always hired underage girls when you could get away with it, Granny.”
He shrugged. “What’s prettier than a pretty fifteen- or sixteen-year-old? And what’s wrong with displaying their charms, in a tasteful fashion? It’s just that one of the girls got involved with a customer, and… well, we were prosecuted for placing a minor in an ‘unsavory situation,’ and we’ve been most circumspect ever since.”
“How circumspect is it, this Lansom having your girls rooming over at his own house? Right behind the Gardens?”
Granny twitched a smile. “How off the record is this, Nathan?”
“All the way off-level with me about Lansom. This is for me, not Richardson.”
The dark blue eyes narrowed. “You have a… personal stake in this?”
“Yes.”
“Which is the extent of what you’ll reveal to me?”
“Yes.”
He gazed at his girls as they bounced to the piano. “I’m considering leaving the Gardens.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m not entirely… in tune with my employer.”
“And why is that?”
Granny’s thin lips formed a faint sneer. “Let’s return to the subject of Elizabeth Short, shall we? She’s rather a case in point. You see, Mark hires these girls as waitresses, implying that this is the next step to their being discovered by yours truly.”
“And placed in the chorus line.”
“Yes, or for the aspiring actresses, that I’ll put them in the movies.”
None of this was far-fetched. As a starmaker over the years, Granny numbered among his discoveries Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, and Alice Faye; and more recently, here at the Florentine Gardens, N.T.G. had hired and showcased Betty Hutton, Yvonne DeCarlo (another of his underage finds), and Marie “the Body” McDonald.
“Granny, no offense, but you’ve been known to… work closely with your ‘discoveries.’ ”
The choreographer was chewing the girls out again.
Granny said, “You’re not an angel, Nathan, nor am I. Mark generously provides me with an apartment, over his garage, where I can… provide guidance to my discoveries.”
Away from his wife, with whom he lived in a near-mansion near the Greek Theater.
“Granny, I’m not seeing the problem, here. Lansom’s hiring pretty girls and giving you a home-away-from- home to check out the merchandise.”
He frowned at me, and his voice had a sudden cross edge. “Nathan, I do not make false promises to these young women. Nor do I take advantage of their friendship… and it is friendship. I’m a big brother to them.”
Frequently committing incest, but a big brother.
“Granny, you’re making some fine distinction I’m just not grasping.”
He grimaced in irritation. “I don’t use who I am to fool young girls into giving themselves to me-that’s not who N. T.G. is. I am a judge of feminine beauty, a connoisseur, if you will… and I don’t use my position to deceive the fairer sex into rewarding me for something I am not prepared to give.”
I managed not to laugh, finally getting it. Banging Granny wasn’t the audition to get into the chorus line: the girls had to pass the audition, first-then Granny banged them. Funny, the different ways people learn to live with themselves.
“I simply don’t like being used to put girls in another man’s bed,” he said, quietly self-righteous. “Owner or not, Mark damn well knows my contract specifically grants me full casting-these were empty promises on his part. He’d screw them, and they would audition, miserably, and they would wind up in one of his dime-a-dance halls, downtown.”
“Did Beth Short audition, miserably or otherwise?”
“That girl was a case in point-Mark promised her a part in my revue-a featured role, of the sort I’m currently giving Lily St. Cyr.”
“And only you do the casting.”
“Precisely. Oh, the Short girl was a pretty thing, even glamorous… and perhaps, in a g-string, and high heels and ankle straps, she would have dressed up the stage.”
Undressed up the stage.
“I understand Elizabeth Short was fairly talented,” I said. “I’ve heard she was a decent singer and dancer.”
Granny was leaning on his hand again, watching the girls dance, the piano relentlessly grinding through the Cole Porter “cowboy” tune. Almost absently, he said, “I wouldn’t know-I never did audition her. Mark simply cast her, without approval, or permission. Foisted her upon me.”
“And what did you do?”
