Up under the red-and-white stage canopy, Ina Mae, a pretty blonde in a slinky red gown, was swinging a mean baton. She and her musicians were indeed “all-girl,” though many of the formerly all-male bands these days had women sprinkled throughout, particularly in the string sections.
I wondered if Miss Hutton, and tonight’s headline act, might be a little hep for this somewhat over-the-hill crowd. The audience on this perfect Florida Saturday night was mostly middle-aged and older, although a few sailors on leave with their girls were mixed in, so some wild, throw-her-over-the-shoulder jitterbugging was going on here and there, challenging even the pulchritudinous Melodears for public attention.
Maybe it was the man shortage, or maybe it was just money, but there were a number of older men with younger women here this starlit night, and one such couple-seated ringside-particularly caught my eye. The redhead was petite and pretty and twentyish, slimly attractive in a green gown; twice her age, her well-dressed sugar daddy had close-set eyes, a lined face, a weak chin and a tan from God. He was also small, almost as small as she was.
A fairly ordinary businessman type, he wouldn’t have caught my eye, despite the dame, if it hadn’t been for the burly bookends seated on either side of them: bodyguards. Was this nondescript little businessman connected? Probably. This was Florida, after all. No shortage of oranges, bathing beauties or mobsters.
Once the Al Dexter tune had abated, and the applause, Ina Mae spoke over a timpani roll, introducing the featured performer of the evening.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the little lady who made so many fans with her own famous fans, first at the Chicago World’s Fair, and more recently, the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition on Treasure Island…direct from her command performance before the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Nassau…Miss Sally Rand!”
To the big-band strains of “Clair de Lune,” she slipped from behind the stage out onto the dance floor, fluttering the enormous pink ostrich plumes, her steps mincing, her smile sweet, blond curls shimmering to bare shoulders, a pink flower in her hair. Applause greeted her, and she acknowledged it with a shy smile, as she began her graceful dance. She moved like the ballerina she was, granting fleeting glimpses of white flesh (no body stocking for Helen, not even at forty) to tommy-gun bursts of enthusiastic clapping. Her pirouettes, as she stood poised on the toes of her high-heeled pumps, saw her caressing the feather fans, like a lover; she seemed lost in a trance, as if unaware anyone was watching.
Of course, they were-many of the men with that agape expression that gets them kicked under the table. Although Sally Rand was, as she’d said, respectable now; a show-business legend, an American institution, her sweet, naughty, only slightly erotic performance pleasing even the ladies.
I’d seen her many times-this, as well as her equally famed bubble dance; she alternated them, doing several shows an evening, although wartime curfew and liquor-sale restrictions had the show closing at midnight, after the required playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I never tired of watching her, though, and she never seemed to tire of being watched-she had that uncanny star ability to make each audience feel she was performing something unique and just for them, something no one else had ever seen.
The performance lasted a mere eight minutes, but when she lifted her fans high in her famed Winged Victory pose, breasts high and bare, lifting a leg coyly to keep one small secret-one she had, happily, shared with me many a time-the Biltmore crowd, over-the-hill or not, went wild.
She covered herself with her fans and took several bows, giving the delighted audience the sort of warm, intimate smile that would make them remember this evening. Then she fluttered coyly out, making herself the center of a sandwich of the two plumes as she did. Intentionally comical, it got a nice laugh that eased any lingering sexual tension.
I sipped my rum and Coke and waited for Helen; this had been her last show of the evening. Tomorrow, or maybe Monday, I would head back for Chicago. What the hell, I could afford to lay back and loaf a little: I’d just hauled eleven thousand bucks ashore, for my little Nassau sojourn.
Actually, I really only worked one day, but several more had got eaten up by questioning and such. I had given my deposition to the Attorney General himself, in one of those pink colonial buildings off Rawson Square.
Attorney General Eric Hallinan was a long-faced, long-nosed, dour Britisher with a tiny mustache and eyes that mingled boredom and distaste, even as he thanked me for my cooperation.
“You’ll be asked to return for the trial, of course,” he told me, “at the expense of the Bahamian government.”
“What trial?”
“Alfred de Marigny’s,” Hallinan said, quietly smiling, as if savoring the words.
It seemed the Count had been arrested, on the say-so of the two Miami dicks. Their investigation had lasted less than two days-I wondered if they had anything on him, besides a few singed hairs and me placing him near the scene of the crime.
Helen had done me the courtesy of sticking around through all this, and even talked me into doing some Bahamas-style sight-seeing, including taking a glass-bottomed boat ride to view those Botanical Gardens Miss Bristol had recommended. Watching a bunch of exotic-looking fish swim around amidst exotic-looking coral may not have been my cup of chowder, but it beat hell out of staring at the walls of my room at the British Colonial.
I repaid Helen by agreeing to keep her company for a few days at the Miami Biltmore, during her engagement that opened midweek. I’d have had a better time if the horses and dogs had been running, but we played a little golf, sat on the sand so I could take a tan home with me (Helen hid her precious white skin under a beach umbrella), and, well, reminisced.
When Helen returned from backstage, she came around through the hotel; wearing a floral sarong-style dress, she was a knockout, but few people recognized her, out of the spotlight, as anything but another of Florida’s many beautiful women: her makeup was toned down and the long, platinum-blond tresses were gone, a wig left behind in her dressing room, her own darker blond locks tucked up in a braided bun.
As she skirted the edge of ringside, heading for our little table, high heels clicking, she was recognized by one customer: that little businessman with the redhead and the bodyguards. Helen stopped and chatted with him for some time; she didn’t sit, but he rose, politely, and they seemed to know each other.
It was all very cordial, and when he gestured for her to join him, causing the redhead’s eyes to tighten, Helen gave the little man a wide, gracious smile and declined.
I pulled the chair out for her and she sat. “Who’s your friend?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?” she grinned. She withdrew a pack of Camels from her clutch purse. “I figured you guys must go way back.”
So he was a mobster.
“He isn’t from Chicago,” I said. “So he isn’t Outfit. East Coast?”
“East Coast,” she said, nodding, amused. She blew out smoke. “That’s Meyer Lansky, Heller.”
“No kidding.” I let out a soft laugh. “So that little monkey-faced shrimp is the New York syndicate’s financial wizard….”
I glanced over at him, trying not to be obvious, and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t looking over toward me. Or us. I hoped it was Helen he was gazing at, but somehow I didn’t think so, because his two brawny bodyguards were leaning over in conference with him, and were also glancing my way.