Roy Carroll - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 4, April, 1953

One minute a man can be sitting and drinking — the next, he can he dead.

All it can take is.

New York is lousy with night clubs. There are strip joints, clip joints, jive joints, live joints, square joints, hip joints, crash joints, splash joints, crumb joints, class joints.

The Long-Malamed is class. All the way.

It is located on Fifty-fifth Street at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue. It is a narrow, two-story, rust-red building with a shimmering, scarlet, patent leather canopy, and a shimmering, scarlet-adorned doorman. Three steps up are heavy translucent glass doors and, when you push through, you’re in the small ante room which is the cocktail lounge of the Long-Malamed.

Separating the cocktail lounge and the night club room are two winding white marble stairways, each — I had been informed by Tobias Eldridge, the amiable genius behind the bar — leading upstairs to the well-furnished town apartment of Joe Malamed, one of the owners of the club.

I had never met Mr. Joe Malamed. He had recently moved up to the big time, coming from Miami and forming a partnership with a young man of many dollars, one Melvin Long. Joe Malamed had a wife, and I had heard, too, that she took an active interest in the operation of the club.

I was seated at a hinge in the bar, near to the door and opposite the check-room, working on a tall scotch and water, and watching Miss Irene Whitney.

Nothing had been stacked like Miss Irene Whitney since the Pyramids. Miss Whitney was tall and perfect. Miss Whitney has a shock of tousled short-cut iridescent auburn hair that was practically indecent, a lovely nose, and dark blue eyes. Miss Whitney also had legs.

At the hazard of a guess. I would suggest that Miss Whitney had been hired by the Long-Malamed on the strength of her legs. That, anyway, is what her uniform declared. She wore spike-heeled black shoes, black opera-length nylons, a tiny flounced skirt (that was one flounce and no skirt), a black silk sash, a white silk blouse and a short sequined monkey jacket. Miss Whitney was a serious student of the drama, attending a dramatic school in the daytime and acquiring the wherewithal to do same by checking coats in nightclubs at night, and offering cigarettes and fuzzy little pandas for sale. Miss Whitney was a floor show on her own.

The floor show moved to me at the bar.

“Hi,” I said. “How’s Yale?”

“Yale.” Disparagement made wrinkles on her nose, adding to its effectiveness.

Yale was a young man who attended Yale University, a school of learning. Weekends he came into town for the avowed purpose of giving a rapid rush to Miss Irene Whitney. My name is Peter Chambers, and I am neither as young, handsome, unsubtle or rich as Yale, but I was in there pitching too. This was Miss Whitney’s second night in the employ of the Long-Malamed, and I’d been there both nights. “Drink?” I said.

“Not with the boss sitting at the other end of the bar,” Irene said.

Two men were seated at the far end. The one nearer to the archway was pale, slender and immaculately attired. He handled his drink with delicate fingers. He had straight white hair, parted in the middle, and neatly combed. He looked on the good side of sixty. The other was perhaps fifteen years his junior, a small man, a rugged little man with a ruddy sun-creased neck and a face as pink as the shrimp-fed flamingos at Hialeah. They seemed in the midst of a gentlemanly argument, the slender man’s voice quiet and modulated, the small man’s intense and rasping.

“Which one?” I said to Tobias.

“The one with the white hair. He’s Joe Malamed.”

“Who’s the other one?”

“Remember Frankie Hines? Used to be a top jockey. Top jockey in the whole country. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Frankie Hines?”

Sure I remembered Frankie Hines.

“That,” I said, “was a long time ago. I thought he was dead, or something.”

“Ain’t dead nohow. Retired. Got a million enterprises. Got more loot than King Midas. Who the hell, Mr. Chambers, was this King Midas, anyway?”

I sipped and I smiled at Tobias Eldridge. Tobias was an old friend who had worked many of the top bars in our city of New York, as had I, except I was generally on the other side of the stick from Tobias. He was tall and thin with a shock of black hair falling over his forehead. He had a long inquisitive nose, a young face, and the knowing, old, ageless eyes that are the special prerequisite of bartenders born to be bartenders.

“King Midas?” I said. “A myth. Everything he touched turned to gold.”

“That’s Frankie,” said Tobias. “Frankie Hines is loaded.”

“Loaded,” Irene said, “reminds me of the customers in the back room. They should be in the mood now for the cute little pandas, purveyed by yours truly, don’t you think?”

“I think,” I said.

Irene went to her check-room and I watched, appreciatively, as her hands went up over her head, attaching the strap about her neck. She came out bearing the tray of cigarettes and the pandas, winked at me, and proceeded with undulant grace through the archway and into the darkened room.

“You going in to see the show, Mr. Chambers?” Tobias asked. “It’s going on any minute.”

I was about to answer when Joe Malamed rapped on the bar for Tobias’ attention. Tobias moved off, stumping the wooden bridge behind the bar, and refilled Malamed’s glass.

The argument stepped up a notch, audible to me.

“Look,” Joe Malamed said to Hines, “I owe you the dough and I admit it. But you’re making a pest of yourself. Quit hounding me, and you’ll get-paid faster.”

Frankie Hines said, “If I quit hounding you, I’ll never get paid. And I’m sick and tired of waiting.” He opened his knees and got off his stool. “If you want me to put the squeeze on, Joe, I got friends what can squeeze.”

Malamed smiled up at Tobias. “Now he’s threatening me.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Tobias, blandly.

“Nothing,” Malamed said. “Forget it. And you forget it too, Frankie boy. You’ll be paid inside a week. Now go in and enjoy the show.”

“Can I sit at your wife’s table?”

“Be my guest,” Malamed said. “She’s sitting with our book critic friend, Charles Morse, and a few other people. You know Charley?”

Frankie Hines had already disappeared into the darkness through the archway. Tobias returned to me.

“What’s the hassle?” I said.

“Search me. When it’s the boss who’s in an argument, the bartender wears earlaps. You know how it is, Mr. Chambers.”

The M.C.’s voice came through from the darkened room.

“... and now, ladies and gentlemen, Calvin Cole... the great Calvin Cole... the one and only... in an Afro-Cuban fantasy on the drums... assisted by Manaja... the dancing dervish.” Now he made his joke. “Hold on to your pockets, ladies and gentlemen. Darkness will descend upon the room. Total darkness.” His voice rose to a high pitch. “Calvin Cole... and Manaja.”

All the lights went out. A tiny spot played on the glistening features of Calvin Cole as he rapped out his rhythms against the skin-tight drums he held between his knees.

“You going to watch?” Tobias said.