Olive reached into her unassuming plaid satchel and pulled out the ruination of my life—that manila folder. She handed it to the doormen. This was a bold tactic, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Nick took the folder, opened it, looked at the photos, and let out a low whistle. Then he looked from the photos to me, and back to the photos. Something changed in his face. Now he knew me.
He gave me a raised eyebrow and a lewd grin. He said, “We haven’t seen you around here in a while, Vivian. But now I see why. I guess you’ve been busy, huh?”
I seared in shame—while at the same time understanding: This is just the beginning of it.
“I will ask you to take care with how you speak to my niece, sir,” said Olive, in a voice so steely it could have drilled a hole through a bank safe.
My niece?
Since when did Olive call me her niece?
Nick apologized, cowed. But Olive wasn’t done. She said, “Young man, you can either bring us to see Mr. Billingsley—who will not appreciate your rude treatment of two people he essentially considers to be family members—or you can bring us directly to Mr. Winchell’s table. You will do one, or you will do the other, but I will not be leaving. My suggestion is that you bring us directly to Mr. Winchell’s table because that’s where I’ll be ending up this evening—regardless of what it takes me to get there, or who has to lose their job along the way for trying to stop me.”
It’s amazing how frightened young men will always be of dowdy, middle-aged women with stern voices—but it’s true: they are terrified of them. (Too much like their own mothers, or nuns, or Sunday-school teachers, I suppose. The trauma from those old scoldings and beatings must run very deep.)
James and Nick exchanged a glance, looked at Olive one more time, and then decided as one: Give the old bird whatever she wants.
We were delivered straight to Mr. Winchell’s table.
—
Olive sat down with the great man, but gestured at me to remain standing behind her. It was as though she were using her squatty little body as a shield between me and the world’s most dangerous newspaperman. Or maybe she just wanted to put me at a far enough remove from the conversation that I wouldn’t speak and ruin her strategy.
She pushed Winchell’s ashtray aside and placed the folder in front of him. “I’ve come to discuss these.”
Winchell opened the folder and fanned out the photos in front of him. For the first time, I could see the photos—though I wasn’t close enough to make out the details. But there it was. Two girls and a man, all entwined in each other. You didn’t need the details to understand what was going on.
He shrugged. “I’ve seen these. Already bought them. Can’t help you.”
“I know,” said Olive. “I understand you’ll be publishing them tomorrow in the afternoon edition.”
“Say, lady, who the hell are you, anyhow?”
“My name is Olive Thompson. I’m the manager of the Lily Playhouse.”
You could see the abacus of his mind doing a quick calculation, and then he landed on it. “That dump where City of Girls is playing,” he said, lighting a new cigarette off the still-burning ember of his last one.
“That’s correct,” confirmed Olive. (She took no issue with the word “dump” as applied to our theater—though, honestly, who could have debated it?)
“It’s a good show,” Winchell said. “I gave it a rave.”
He seemed to want credit for this, but Olive wasn’t the sort of woman to hand out free credit—not even in this situation, when she was essentially coming before Winchell on bended knee.
“Who’s the little rabbit hiding behind you?” he asked.
“She’s my niece.”
So I guess we were sticking to that story.
“A bit past her bedtime, ain’t it?” said Winchell, giving me the once-over.
I’d never been this close to him before, and I didn’t like it one bit. He was a tall and hawkish man in his midforties, with baby-smooth pink skin and a twitchy jaw. He was wearing a navy blue suit (pressed to lacerating creases), with a sky blue Oxford shirt, brown wingtips, and a snappy gray felt fedora. He was wealthy and powerful, and he looked wealthy and powerful. His hands never stopped fidgeting, but his eyes were disconcertingly still as he took me in. His was a predator’s stare. You might have said he was good-looking, if you could release your concerns about when he was going to eviscerate you.
A moment later, though, he had dropped his gaze from me. I’d failed to keep his interest. He’d quickly browsed me and analyzed me—female, young, unconnected, inconsequential—and then dismissed me as useless to his needs.
Olive tapped one of the photos in front of her. “The gentleman in these photographs is married to our star.”
“I know exactly who that guy is, lady. Arthur Watson. Talentless sop. Dumb as a bag of hair. Better at chasing girls than he is at acting, by the looks of this evidence. And he’s gonna take one hell of a pasting from his wife when she sees these photos.”
“She’s seen them already,” said Olive.
Now Winchell was openly irritated. “How’d you see them, is what I want to know. These pictures are my property. And what are you doing, showing them all over town? What are you—selling tickets to these pictures?”
Olive didn’t answer this, but just fixed Winchell with her firmest stare.
A waiter approached and asked if the ladies would like a drink.
“No thank you,” said Olive. “We’re temperates.” (A claim that would have been soundly refuted, had anyone been close enough to smell my breath.)
“If you’re asking me to kill the story, you can forget about it,” said Winchell. “It’s news, and I’m a newsman. If it’s true or interesting, I got no choice but to publish it. And this item here is both true and interesting. Edna Parker Watson’s husband, running around like that, with two loose women? What do you want me to do, lady? Look down at my shoes demurely while famous people make whoopee with showgirls right there in the middle of the Street? As everyone knows, I don’t like to publish items on married couples, but if people are gonna be this indiscreet about their indiscretions, whaddaya want me to do about it?”
Olive continued to level him with her iceberg stare. “I expect you to have some decency.”
“You know, you’re really something, lady. You don’t scare easy, do you? I’m beginning to piece you together. You work for Billy and Peg Buell.”
“That’s correct.”
“It’s a miracle that junky theater of yours is still operating. How do you keep your audience, year after year? Do you pay them to come? Bribe them?”
“We coerce them,” said Olive. “We coerce them by providing excellent entertainment, and they, in return, reward us by buying tickets.”
Winchell laughed, drummed his fingers on the table, and cocked his head. “I like you. Despite the fact that you work for that arrogant louse Billy Buell, I like you. You got some nerve. You could be a good secretary for me.”
“You already have an excellent secretary, sir, in the figure of Miss Rose Bigman—a woman whom I consider a friend. I doubt she’d appreciate you hiring me.”
Winchell laughed again. “You know more about everybody than I do!” Then his laughter vanished—never having reached his eyes. “Look, I got nothing for you, lady. Sorry about your star and her feelings, but I’m not killing the story.”
“I’m not asking you to kill the story.”
“Then whaddaya want from me? I already offered you a job. I already offered you a drink.”
“It is important that you do not print the name of this girl in your newspaper.” Olive pointed at one of the photographs again. And there I was—in a picture taken just a few hours (and a few centuries) earlier—with my head thrown back in rapture.