Max Collins: Neon Mirage

“I was a pretty wild kid,” she said, echoing her uncle’s words.

“I remember.”

“I never did sleep around much, Nate. You were one of a select few.”

“It was my honor. My pleasure, actually.” I felt awkward about this, but was immediately taken with this older version of the fresh young girl I’d once bedded and then lectured and sent on her way.

I’d met her at a party at a fifth-floor suite in the Sheraton. My boxer friend Barney Ross, who’d grown up on the West Side with me, and some other big shots in the sporting world were going to a wingding tossed by Joe Epstein, who ran the biggest horse-race betting commission house in Chicago. Epstein was an overweight, meek-looking little guy in his early thirties, with hornrimmed glasses and a disappearing hairline; but he was a sucker for the night life, and when he wasn’t hitting the local night spots he was throwing his own bashes.

Epstein had a girl friend who’d been around town since the World’s Fair in ’33. She’d danced a pretty fair hootchiekoo for a kid from the sticks-an Alabama girl with a sultry lilting accent and lots of chestnut hair and baby-fat curves and a full pouty mouth. Her name was Virginia Hill and she was looking pretty sophisticated these days, greeting Joe’s guests with a smile and giving them a look at a couple of yards of creamy white bosom; her clingy black gown didn’t leave much of the rest of her to the imagination, either.

“You’re Nate Heller, aren’t you?” Virginia had said, taking my hand. You could’ve camped out on this girl’s tits.

“Yeah. Surprised you remember me.”

“Don’t be silly,” she beamed. “You used to catch pickpockets at the fair.”

“You used to attract crowds,” I shrugged. “That attracts pickpockets.”

She walked me into the suite, a modern-looking job appointed in black and white, the furnishing running to armless sofas and easy chairs, on which were poised pretty girls in their early twenties, wearing low-cut gowns, drinking stingers and the like, waiting for male guests. Paul Whiteman music was coming from a phonograph, louder than a traffic jam.

“Afraid I never gave your girl friend Sally Rand much of any competition,” she said, talking over the music.

She was still holding onto my hand. Her hand was hot, a friendly griddle.

“Sally isn’t my girl friend,” I said. “Never was. We’re just pals.”

“That’s not what I hear,” she said, wrapping her accent around the words, making them seem very dirty indeed.

“Last I saw you, Ginny, you were a waitress at Joe’s Place.”

Joe’s Place was no relation to Joe Epstein: it was a one-arm joint at Randolph and Clark where the waitresses were pretty and wore skimpy skirts and V-neck blouses. A lot of men ate there.

“That’s where Eppy met me,” she said, finally letting go of my hand, her smile a self-satisfied one.

“I heard,” I said, with an appreciative nod for her accomplishment. “You been seeing a lot of him, huh?”

“He’s a wonderful guy, Eppy. A real genius.”

“Where did he find these girls? They look a little young and fresh to be pros.”

Barney and his pals were mixing with the quiff. Drinks and dancing and laughter. Loud men and giggly girls.

“Skilled amateurs,” she explained, walking me to a nearby bar, behind which a colored bartender in a red vest mixed drinks dispassionately. “Party girls.”

“Secretaries and business-college gals and the like, you mean.”

She nodded. “Get you something?”

“Rum,” I said.

“Ice?”

“No ice. No nothing. Rum.”

“Rum,” she said, shrugging, smiling, nodded at the bartender, who poured me a healthy snifter.

“Just girls who want a good time, huh?” I asked.

“Some of ’em might take some money if you forced it on ’em. Why?”

“Some of ’em look a little young to me. You can go to jail for having too much fun, you know.”

She shrugged. “Most of these girls have been around some. They all do some modeling on the side.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. For the local calendar artists. A friend of mine’s tight with the boys who run Brown and Bigelow, the St. Paul advertising firm?”

I nodded. “They put out all those calendars.”

“Right. Several of their regular artists are here in Chicago, and I scout up models for ’em.”

“These little dishes look like they walked off them calendars, I’ll grant you that.”

“See one you’d like to meet?”

“I sure do.”

And the girl had been one Peggy Hogan, who was a little sloshed when we were introduced, but very cute nonetheless. She told me about her ambitions to be an actress, despite her family’s insistence that she go to business school, and I listened. I was a little sloshed myself by the time we wandered into the Morrison Hotel, where I kept a residential apartment, and she was more than a little sloshed when we tumbled into bed together. Despite my condition, that sweet roll in the hay was a memorable one, one I can look back on fondly even now, practically smell her perfume, which was like roses; but the next morning I had been hung over, guilty, and took it out on the girl.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I told her.

She’d looked at me sad-eyed, sitting up in bed, covers gathered around her, her eye make-up smeared from sleep, putting racoon circles around the impossibly violet eyes.

“I had help,” she pouted.

“I’m not proud of myself, either,” I said. I was standing next to the bed, looming over her like God in His underwear. “You’re a nice kid. You shouldn’t oughta sleep with strange men. Where are you from, anyway?”

“I live on the North Side.”

“Yeah, yeah, you got one of them flats behind the Gold Coast, right? Right. But where’s your family live?”

“Englewood.”

“That’s a nice little neighborhood. White lace Irish. Your father own his own business?”

She nodded.

“And he’s sending you to business school, so you must’ve finished high school.”

She nodded. “With honors.”

“Figures. You’re a smart kid, so you can go to parties every night and still cut the mustard in your classes. You oughta be ashamed.”

She swallowed.

“This is no life for you. That guy Epstein, he’s a glorified bookie.”

Ingenuously she said, “I thought he was an accountant.”

“He is. From what I hear, he works for the Capone mob, on the side-helping Jake Guzik with the books. Making sure nobody else goes to jail over income tax.”

She smiled a little. “I met Al Capone before.”

That didn’t make any sense. Capone was sent up in ’32. She was about nineteen years old.

“We go to the same church,” she explained. “I’ve seen his wife a lot. St. Bernard’s. I dated one of her bodyguards.”

“Swell! That sort of life appeals to you, huh? Do you know my name?”

She thought hard. Then she said, “Nat?”

“Close but no cigar. Nate. Don’t sleep with strange men. My name’s Nathan Heller, and I’m a private detective. I carry a gun sometimes.”

She smiled, showed me her wonderful white teeth; first thing in the morning and they looked brushed without brushing. “Really?”

“You think that’s swell, I suppose?”

She shrugged. “I don’t see why life has to be dull.”

“Take my advice,” I said, throwing her blue satin gown at her. “Go to school. Find a job. Find a husband. Stay away from Virginia Hill. She’ll make a whore out of you.”

That made her mad.

She got out of bed and stood there stark naked and shook her finger at me. I’d never seen a girl-or a woman for that matter- just stand before me naked like that without a thought about it. As she shook her finger, her delicately-veined, perfect little breasts bobbled. Her pubic triangle was bushy and near black and a gentle trail of hair tickled its way up to her belly button.