No fast getaway necessary.
After I called from the bar downstairs, Cornell received me in his third-floor office. The Paddlewheel was open-it was around six-thirty-but business wasn’t bustling yet, as this was not exactly a place where you went for the early bird special.
He emerged from the bedroom, tying a black rope belt around his maroon dressing gown; his legs were bare and as tanned as George Hamilton’s neck and his feet were in slippers. He was lighting up a cigarette and his unblinking aqua-blue eyes narrowed, taking me in.
“What happened to you?” he asked, so concerned he flopped into the nearest overstuffed brown leather chair as he tossed a spent match in an ashtray.
I sat nearby on the matching couch. Cocaine ghosts haunted the glass coffee table.
I said, “Two of Jerry G’s greeters took me out back and beat the fuck out of me.”
His eyes tightened a little. “You all right?”
Was there an end to his compassion?
“I am, now. This happened Wednesday, or really Thursday morning, and I slept round the clock. Nothing broken. This is what that hazardous duty pay is for.”
“Drink?”
I had trained him not to say drinky-poo.
“I could stand a Diet Coke.”
He called, “ Chrissy! ”
The bedroom door opened and the little babe with the big yellow perm emerged, painting her nails red. She had on black panties and half a white t-shirt, the underside of pert breasts showing.
“What?”
“Fix me up with a drink, and my friend with a Diet Coke.”
She zombie-walked over to the bar, painting her nails all the way, not blessing either of us with a glance. She was efficient, though, and only two minutes or so passed before Cornell had a tumbler of Scotch and ice cubes and I had a cold can of Diet Coke.
“Thanks,” I said. “Things go better with Coke, you know.”
She said nothing, her lips almost forming a smirk but lacking the enthusiasm for that commitment. She padded into the bedroom, the perfect moons of her bottom exposed below the cut of the panties. She could have used a spanking. So could my dick.
Alone again, my employer and I made a half-hearted toast, and he said, “Why don’t you fill me in?”
“I don’t do details. I can tell you’ve I’ve determined, to my satisfaction anyway, that the old man is out of it.”
The tanned forehead formed white creases. “Out of…what?”
“It. Any contract on you, any aspect of running the Lucky Devil in particular and downtown Haydee’s Port in general, anything greater than putting on his pants, wiping his bottom and warming up some cocoa.”
He grinned, a white slash in the tan puss, but his forehead kept on frowning. “What is he, senile?”
“As good as. He’s had a bunch of little strokes, and Jerry G is Chief Big Shit now. Sonny Boy apparently hasn’t advertised papa’s delicate condition because the old reprobate has a big rep, and Jerry still needs to bask in it.”
Cornell shook his head. “I hate to say it, but Jerry G has something of a reputation himself. That’s one of the reasons why this Chicago conflict, between the Giardelli brothers, continues to just simmer, never boil over. The status quo is too appealing-me running the Paddlewheel effectively, and profitably…and Jerry G doing the same with his sleazeball operation downtown.”
“I believe Jerry G does more than just run the Lucky Devil,” I said. “I think some major drug-running is going on, and Christ knows what other contraband. We are right on the river.”
“I’ve heard the scuttlebutt.” He shrugged, swirled the liquid in its tumbler, studied it as if looking for tea leaves to read. “So-it’s just Jerry G, then. Are you prepared to go forward?”
“With what?”
He frowned. “What the hell do you think, love? Handling the Jerry G problem.”
“You want him gone, I’m fine with that. But I haven’t got the goods on him.”
The forehead creased again. “What goods are those?”
“Making sure Jerry G took out the hit. How do you know this didn’t emanate straight from Chicago?”
He waved that off. “No. No, it’s Jerry G. Has to be.”
“Dickie bird, I think he knew I was working for you, when he had me taken out to the woodshed. He could have had them kill me, but he didn’t. Why?”
His shrug was elaborate. “Perhaps Jerry G thought it would backfire on him-he’d get his ass in a wringer with the Chicago family, killing one of my people.”
“He’d fear that, but take you out? Does that really make sense?”
He smiled on half his face, his expression as patronizing as his tone. “Of course it does. One killing of a subordinate can lead to more such killings, which can lead to a battle here in Haydee’s Port that could become an all-out war in Chicago.”
“Whereas removing you would be the kind of single stroke that could change everything all at once?”
“Right-o. That’s how I see it, at least.”
I sipped my Diet Coke. Shrugged. “So the job is, take care of Jerry G?”
“Yes. Are we agreed as to price?”
“Considering the work I did eliminating the old man from the equation, let’s call it thirty.”
He considered that. Then he shrugged. “All right. For all the grief it’ll save me, it’s a goddamn bloody bargain.”
Soon I was downstairs on the main floor, heading past the dining room toward the Paddlewheel exit when a husky female voice called from the bar: “Jack! Come say hello.”
In a little black dress that exposed a nice amount of bosom, redheaded Angela was in her favorite booth, sitting with a yellow pad in front of her, smoking a cigarette as she made notes.
I joined her. “You go on this early?”
“No. This is just the closest thing I have to an office. Going over my set list. Making a few changes.” She turned the wide-set green eyes loose on me, and they quickly tightened in concern, as she took in my colorful face. “My God! What happened to you?”
“Couple of Jerry G’s guys took me through the Jane Fonda workout. Do I look slimmer?”
She touched my hand. “You take awful chances, don’t you? I thought…nothing.”
“What?”
“I hoped to hear from you. I…the other day, morning I mean, at your room…rather sweet. On the… special side, I thought.”
“A lot more pleasant workout, I’ll grant you. Hey, I’m sorry, I really did get my ass handed to me, and I’ve been recuperating.”
She gave me a smirky kiss of a smile. “Then you weren’t shacked up with some sweet young thing?”
“Yeah, right. I was cheating on you, screwing a twenty-year-old stripper.”
That made her laugh. I love telling the truth; often the best way not to be believed…
“You wouldn’t want to stop by and catch my last set? Maybe buy me breakfast?”
“I better take a rain check. I’m on the clock.”
The green eyes widened. “On the clock, around the clock?”
“Right now I am.”
Out that hallway, where the private elevator emptied, trotted Cornell’s little squeeze, Chrissy, yellow permed curls held by a hot-pink sweatband, making her head look like a ginger ale bottle that fizzed over. She was in tight jeans and a hot-pink shirt tied in a big knot under her pert boobs, and her feet were shod in sandals that showed off red toenails, to match the fingernails she’d been painting. All freshened up, pink lip gloss, blue eye shadow, and no white powder on her nose at all…
“What’s the story on baby Madonna?” I asked.
“She’s just the latest little lay on Dickie’s roster,” Angela said, light but with a bitter edge, letting smoke out her nose like a lovely dragon. “One little blow-up doll’s pretty much like any other.”
