Max Collins - Target Lancer

Still, there was something about the place that felt quaint, even old-fashioned-especially compared to the plush Playboy Club on Walton Street, with its Bunnies spilling their beauty-contestant bosoms from sleek, satiny, colorful, cottontail costumes, cut thigh-high to expose lushly nyloned legs. The Silver Frolics, from its ornate hoop-skirted floor-show costumes to the inevitable pasties and G-strings (never more, or rather never less, not at the refined Frolics), seemed damn near nostalgic in its approach to naughtiness. Strippers teased. Bunnies promised.

Working on a rum-and-Coke, I was seated somewhat away from the stage and relieved to be, as right now dark-haired yuck-it-up stripper Tinki DeCarlo was dumping various items of discarded clothing on the heads of ringside customers. It was a Christmas routine, and she came out Mrs. Santa Claus and was down to electric pasties that glowed red like Rudolph’s nose and a bunch of sleigh bells dangling off her G-string.

“She’s good,” I said to Helen, able to converse easily over the small orchestra, “but I don’t care for funny strip acts. Maybe I take sex too seriously.”

We were two at one of the four-seat tables.

“It makes men feel uncomfortable,” Helen said, with a knowledgeable nod; she was between sips of her Champagne cocktail. “They’re already a little embarrassed, just coming to a place like this. But you’re right, for that kind of thing, she’s not bad.”

Helen was flying under the radar tonight, nothing overtly Sally Rand about her, in her navy-blue dress with white Peter Pan collar and her blondeness pinned up in curls-an extremely attractive middle-aged woman who might still turn heads, anywhere except a club where girls in their twenties were peeling down to their most appealing.

I wore a dark-green Stanley Blacker hopsack blazer, my tie striped dark orange and white, shirt a very light orange. My slacks were brown H.I.S., and my shoes darker brown Hush Puppies. But the most distinctive aspect of my dressed-to-kill ensemble was the shoulder-holstered Browning, Lytton’s in the Loop having tailored the blazer without spoiling the line.

Because I wasn’t going anywhere now without the nine-mil.

We had arrived around ten P.M.-the place didn’t open until nine-thirty-and were here to talk to manager Ben Orloff about the possibility of a booking for the world’s most famous fan dancer. This had taken a good deal of discussion, since the Frolics was, for all its pretensions, a strip club. But none of the legitimate nightclubs in town had offered Helen a firm date, despite half a dozen meetings and gracious reception from all concerned. Nobody wanted to insult a living legend in the burlesque biz. Just seemed like nobody wanted to hire one, either.

I had frankly little hope for the Frolics, as they had never hired the big-name exotic dancers like Gypsy Rose Lee or Tempest Storm, preferring to stick to their own stable of younger unknowns, none older than early thirties. But Sally Rand was a Chicago institution, and I’d done a couple of jobs for Orloff, so when I called him, he issued a positive response in his gruff baritone: “Stop by tonight.”

Helen and I had dinner at the Cape Cod Room at the Drake, in part because it was the best seafood in Chicago (narrowly edging out Ireland’s) and also because back in 1934, when we had first become friendly, Helen had lived in a suite at the hotel. Some very friendly times, in fact, were spent in that suite.

The show ran two hours, and would start back up in half an hour, lengthy enough a break to clear some of the tables out for newcomers. During the hiatus, Ben Orloff came trundling over, all smiles. He was short, balding, heavy-set, in a well-tailored brown suit with a brown and green tie a little too wide for the fashion-like his club, he looked fine but out of step.

He bowed to the seated Sally Rand and took her hand with respect, as behooved such flesh-trade royalty. She liked that and beamed at her host.

“Miss Rand, a real, genuine honor. Where would any of us be without you?”

I know he meant this nicely, but it reminded her that she was a museum piece, and anyway, lovely as Helen had been in her prime, I had a hunch if she’d never existed, guys would still be paying to see good-looking women take their clothes off.

“Mr. Orloff,” she said, “I can’t believe we’ve never met. This has to be the most beautiful club of its kind. And your girls are stunning.”

Orloff took the chair nearest Helen. There had been a nod between us that sufficed.

“Please call me Ben. And is Sally okay?”

“Sally is fine.”

“I guess you know,” he said with a shrug, “we don’t normally book big acts in here. But … we might consider an exception for a star of your stature. And with your special connection to Chicago.”

“At risk of reminding you that I’ve been around a while,” she said, her smile as broad as it was beautiful, “we are celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the fair.”

He grinned and his eyes damn near popped. “I’ll never forget going to that wingding! I was still in high school, and had to lie about my age to get in to see you.”

Her smile remained, but turned strained. She was aware of an inescapable fact-like the Frolics itself, she was an anachronism. Like strippers.

Like private eyes.

I was wishing I’d never suggested this, but the club manager surprised me.

“I will tell you right now,” he said, taking her hand and patting it, “no beating around the bush whatsoever, that I am prepared to book you in here.”

Nothing strained about her smile now.

“That’s wonderful, Ben,” she said, almost purring.

He raised a cautionary finger. “But here’s the thing-we may not be here long.”

“What? Why?”

Her question got an answer out of him, but he aimed it at me: “Nate, it’s that son of a bitch Wilson. Do I have to tell you he’s shuttered half the clubs in town?”

I shook my head-very old news. Plenty of the other strip joints had converted to movie houses, showing nudie-cutie fare like The Immoral Mr. Teas and Not Tonight, Henry . Apparently Mayor Daley’s reform police commissioner, Orlando Wilson, had less objection to cinematic skin than the genuine article.

The Summerdale police scandal a couple years back-eight cops had formed a burglary ring in their off hours-had forced Hizzoner to finally do something about police graft here in the City That Worked, hence Commissioner Wilson and his new broom. (Wilson’s presence probably had something to do with Dick Cain leaving the PD and winding up with the sheriff’s department.) I didn’t mind this Wilson character cracking down on some of the rampant police department corruption, but enough was enough. A guy might want to get a parking ticket fixed.

Ben was talking to both of us now. “We had a bad incident last month, and the hammer could fall any time.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Anything I can do?”

He shook his head glumly. “We had a bunch of doctors in here. I don’t know if you know much about doctors, when they decide to let their hair down, but they go wild, turn into one nasty bunch of assholes, in my experience. They caused a lot of trouble, got very plastered, threw tables and chairs around like a bar fight in a John Wayne picture, and played the kind of grab ass with our girls that we don’t put up with in a respectable club like the Frolics.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Our bouncers dragged them outside, beat the shit out of them, and dumped them in the gutter. What would you have done?”

Maybe something a little more diplomatic.

“Anyway, they filed a complaint,” Ben said, in a whaddaya-gonna-do manner, “and that gives Wilson just the ammunition he needs. Meaning we may be in the last days of this grand establishment.”