“That’s all I know...” she smiled “...except for you, Chick.”
That was lunch. By ten o’clock that night, Gina Velker was definitely on her way to becoming a somebody.
To pull it off, I was calling in a lot of owed favors from news guys, columnists, and PR flacks. Thursday morning’s newspapers carried gossip column items about Chick Kelly’s new heartthrob, and one of the tabloids had a picture of us at Studio 54, non-dancing. Since most of the real celebrities were out of town, I was getting more attention than I actually deserved. By noon, the local TV gossip hens were on the phone, and I gave each of them a little tidbit to nibble on. For instance, my “no comment, give me a break, she’s a married lady” statement got us two whole minutes on the six o’clock news’ “People and Places” segment. I knew we were in clover when the junk tabloids started phoning in for the dirt.
But all this razzmatazz was nothing to what I had planned for Thursday night. It was snowing hard when I rang Gina’s doorbell at eight fifteen. I expected to find a wide-eyed lady who had been stunned by her instant celebrity. Instead, I was the stunned one and she was the stunning. For a second, I didn’t think it was the plain Jane dame I had dragged around town the night before.
“Elizabeth Arden,” she said, touching her perfectly manicured nails to her professionally made up face. Even the mousy off-blonde hair had been touched with soft gold. “Halston,” she went on, as she pirouetted to show me the flare of a sexy crepe outfit.
Damn it, the girl was a knockout, and I found myself wishing she weren’t a crook. But crook she was, at least so my further information from Tregannon, the private investigator, had indicated. It seemed that Samson Velker was so dumb and such a mope that dreaming up the criminal conversation scheme was beyond him, which left only my darling date as the heavy.
“Very nice, Gina,” I said, taking off my topcoat. “Must have cost a quid or two.”
She kissed me on the cheek. “That’s a thank you, not an invitation; at least not yet. Thank you for my chrysalis. I looked it up. It’s a butterfly coming out of the cocoon. I don’t mean just getting gussied up or buying new clothes, either. I got this dress on markdown. I’m a good shopper. Always have been, but until I met you, I never had the courage to buy one. Maybe courage is the wrong word. Confidence? Poise? I don’t know, but I feel like saying to the world, ‘Damn it, look at me!’ That’s always been my problem, Chick. I’ve been too shy. I was a wallflower at dances and a secretarial school dropout because taking dictation embarrassed me. Hell, I only had one real girlfriend in my entire life to share things with. I guess I ended up married to Samson because he posed no threat. Why am I going on like this? I salute you, Chick Kelly, my Pygmalion.”
I was half expecting an orchestra to play “I Could Have Danced All Night,” but the other half of my brain was taking care of business. “You realize that we are what’s known as an item,” I said. I wanted to see if she had gotten any flak from Samson. Obviously she had him on a string because she only kissed me again and said, “Good. I’ve always wanted to be an item. Is that champagne?”
I held up the gaily wrapped bottle and presented it to her. When I had asked Jack Mac to select a bottle from the joint’s wine cellar, I hadn’t realized he was going to make a packaging production out of it. “Ah yes, m’deah, a touch of the bubbly.” I gave her some James Mason.
“It’s like being with ten different people,” she said with childlike glee. Rich Little would have made her blow a fuse. “Let’s not open it now, Chick. I want to save this for a special moment.”
“Okay, then let’s get out our paint set and cover the town.”
We started with blanquette de pecheur at Lutece, some jazz and juleps at Bechets, and on to the eleven thirty show at the Rainbow Room. Later, we hit the Improv (I did six minutes — pro’s privilege) and the disco at Regine’s. Note that here I am trotting all over town when I own my own joint, but Jay Porter is picking up the tab, and besides, I want to spread the “hot item” stuff around.
All of this activity is mere prelude to my blockbuster, which came the next night, or rather at twelve twenty-seven Saturday morning. I know the exact time because that’s what the arresting officer put on the rap sheet when we were hauled into the 19th Precinct with the rest of the high rollers from Monk Doyle’s private gambling den on Third Avenue in the 70’s.
Of course, if Monk ever finds out that I had a hand in tipping the cops to his newest location (and arranging for the press to be on hand), it will be cement shoes and East River time for yours truly, but I never liked Doyle anyway, so I took the chance.
The guys with the flashguns had a ball, and thanks to our previous exposure, Gina and I got all the attention. Somehow or other, my lawyer, Ted Summers, got us out on a legal maneuver and Mario was waiting with his limo to whisk us to the Plaza, where I had reserved a suite.
“But why can’t I go home, Chick? A hotel is silly.”
“You won’t think so when you see the morning papers, Gina. Your phone won’t stop ringing, believe me, and chances are you won’t be able to get your number changed until Monday, so you’re better off at the Plaza.”
“No. I’m going home. I’m sorry, but that’s it. As for the phone, I’ll take it off the hook. Driver...” She gave him the address (which Mario already knew) and there went the frosting on my discredibility cake. She pecked my cheek goodnight at her front steps, said she was tired, and left me standing in a new snowfall.
“Whatcha think, Chick?” Mario says from the driver’s seat as we pull away from the curb. “She could be hip to the plan. Maybe the raid was overkill.”
“I don’t know, Mario. Something spooked her. Maybe it was the sight of all the blue coats and the seven minutes she spent in a cell. That could have put some cold reality into the consequences of breaking the law.”
“It’s early. You want to go to the joint?”
I looked out at the snow still coming down at a good clip and said no, and for the first time in twenty years, I was in bed alone at one o’clock in the morning.
Maybe breaking one lifelong precedent sets you up for another, because I woke up to an insistent buzzing. Half an opened eye told me it was two fifteen and the dark outside told me it was still ante meridian. The world knows that Chick Kelly does not speak on the phone before noon, but I broke another rule and picked up the receiver. Big problem. I’m listening to a dial tone with one ear and hearing the buzzing with the other. It’s the bloody doorbell, and if I don’t speak on the phone before noon, you can bet a bundle that I don’t answer front doors before one.
The buzzing suddenly turned to knuckle rapping, and as I lay there getting the blood reintroduced to my brain, I expected the next noise would be the baboom of a battering ram. Give ’em an inch and, well, you know the rest.
On my way down the hall and across the living room, I’m figuring out ways to kill whoever’s beating the hell out of my door. I know it isn’t the Girl Scouts with cookies because they’re a civil bunch, bill collectors always dun me at the club, and even my ex-wives’ lawyers always send their letters, threatening as they are, via express mail. I figured strangulation or bludgeoning by fist would have to do since I wasn’t carrying a gun but, to my surprise, my early morning caller was.
I don’t have to tell you that my entire attention was on the gun, so a description of its bearer will be scant. He was shortish and probably on the thinnish side under his soiled trench-coat. In spite of the gun, my comedian’s brain was wondering why a guy who works in a dry cleaners walks around with a filthy coat. Samson Velker looked even more haggard in the flesh than he had in Cy Tregannon’s telephoto prints.