Confused, Frank stayed close to his phone. There was nothing else he could do. An hour went by. Another. A third. It was getting dark outside before the telephone finally rang.
“Hello!” Frank snatched it up on the first ring.
“Do you know a man with a power?”
“Look, Fig, get the hell off the phone and stay off!”
“You’re supposed to say ‘What power?’ ”
“I haven’t got time for childish--!”
“I only wanted to know if you’d like to have dinner together tonight, talk over old times—”
“Screw old times!” Frank shouted. He slammed the phone back on the cradle.
More time passed. The street fights were on outside now. Frank mixed himself a drink. He would have liked to go out for some dinner. But he didn’t. He stayed there and waited. It was almost midnight when the phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Pollener?” The voice on the other end had a badly stuffed nose.
“Yes. Mr. X?”
“No names, please. Just state your business.” It came out “Dus date chue bizdezz.” The nose was very badly stuffed indeed.
“That’s a bad cold you have there,” Frank remarked.
“Idz dot a code. Hay fever. Allergy. Had lasagdya for didder. Allergig to Italian food. All by wife knows how do coog. Always briggs od ad addack.”
“That’s too bad.” Frank went on to explain about the raid on the Venus Observatory. “What I want to know is how we can square the beef with you, Mr. X-whatever the beef is-—-so that’ll you’ll take the pressure off the local mucky-mucks so we can come to some arrangements with them.”
“I odly agded od advice frob our logal executive id the field. Policy is dot do miggs id such matters udless asked do. Udderstad you a fred of our mad Carrera. Lige do help you sidz he vouches you’re a fred. Tell you wod. I’ll pass word od to City Hall to lay off if you cad straighted it oud with our local mad Rockwell. Bud I won’t interfere udless you cad do thad. Ker-choo!”
“Thanks and gezundheit,” Frank said. “I’ll contact Rockwell right away. Goodbye, Mr. X.”
“Do dabes, blease.” Mr. X hung up.
Frank arranged a meeting with Hal Rockwell for early the following day. The Negro Mafioso was pleasant, but businesslike. “Here are the comparison figures.” He tapped a sheet of paper in front of him on his desk. “They don’t lie. Firstly, our cut of what the Observatory paid our girls three months ago was almost double what it is today. Since you started bringing in unmarried scabs, less than half the original work force is getting anything like full part-time employment from your organization. Secondly, the figures show a ten percent decrease—and that percentage is on the upswing—of the business our own outlets are doing since you started paying unmarrieds for the sex they used to pay us to get. Thirdly, this isn’t just a management problem. If it was, I would have contacted you and tried to work something out instead of asking Mr. X to put pressure on the local power structure. You see, I’m under pressure myself. Because of this Venus situation, our girls have organized. This is the first time that’s ever happened. Do you realize what a threat to the Syndicate that is? And they’ve been pressuring us for a bigger cut of the take since your outfit has cut into their piecework pay. We’re faced with a labor force that’s working itself up to union solidarity. I’ve even heard some whispers that the Teamsters may try to come in and take over, use the organization here as a foothold to unionize prosties on a national basis. So you see, I had to deal with the threat here and now before it got out of hand. And that meant cracking down on competition from Venus. And I can’t ask Mr. X to have the establishment take the pressure off you unless you can figure a way to get the rank-and-file off my back.”
“How do I go about doing that?” Frank wondered.
“Search me. The best place to start, I guess, would be at Mother Tucker’s place.”
“Mother what?”
“Tucker.” Rockwell came down hard on the “t” sound.
“Oh. I thought you said--”
“A common mistake. The name is Tucker. ‘T,’ as in ‘tail’.”
“I see.” Frank nodded. “Why there particularly?” he asked.
“That’s where this union the girls are getting up is steamrolling. Here’s the address.” Rockwell jotted it down on a piece of paper. “You can use my name. But I don’t know if it’ll help.”
Frank thanked him and left. That evening he took a cab to Mother Tucker’s. He mounted the steps of the brownstone house and rang the doorbell.
“How much is it?” The small girl in the French maid’s costume who answered the door dug into the pocket of her short apron and came up with a bill and some coins.
“Beg pardon?” Frank was confused.
“Aren’t you the fellow from the drugstore?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Oh. Sorry. See, they promised to send over some stuff for this--umm—-condition I got, and I thought you-”
“It’s all right,” Frank assured her. “I’m here to see Mother Tucker.”
“Damn! What good’s all that advice on the matchbook covers if you can’t ever get a lousy delivery from the lousy druggist? At this rate, by the time I get it cleared up, I’ll be too old to— Well, that’s not your red wagon, it’s mine. I guess you’re after some fun. Come on, I’ll take you into the parlor where the girls are.”
“I just want to see Mother Tucker,” Frank tried to explain. But she was already leading the way to the parlor and he found himself following along in her wake. “I don’t want—”
The maid’s mind was on her own troubles. She seemed not to hear his protest. “You the fellow Erasmus said he was sending over?” she asked.
“No. I don’t know any Erasmus. And I don’t want to go into the parlor either.” Frank stopped following her and stood firmly in his tracks.
“You don’t? Then what—?”
“What’s the trouble, Gertrude?” A tall, spare woman with no make-up emerged from a room off the hallway. Her face was strong, the bones pronounced, a square, stubborn jaw jutting out under shrewd brown eyes. She might have stepped out of a Grant Wood painting.
“There’s no trouble, Mother,” Gertrude started to explain. “This gentleman just—”
“I just want to see you. If you’re Mother Tucker, that is,” Frank guessed.
“I’m Mother Tucker. But my position here is strictly supervisory. Why don’t you let Gertrude take you inside and introduce you to some of the young ladies?”
“I’m not here for that. Can’t we talk privately for a few minutes?”
“What about?” Mother Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Are you from the police? I already took care of-—”
“I’m not from the police,” Frank interrupted.
“Well, all right. Come on in.” Mother Tucker led him back into the room from which she’d emerged and closed the door behind them. The room was furnished as an office, as utilitarian and businesslike as the impression conveyed by Mother Tucker herself. She sat down behind the desk and motioned Frank to take a chair. “Now what is it?” she wanted to know.
Frank told her of his efforts to settle the Observatory’s latest trouble and ended by relating Hal Rockwell’s suggestion that he go to her establishment.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Mother Tucker told him. “When the madams called a meeting to decide what action to take, they picked me to draw up our complaints and present them to Mr. Rockwell. Also, one of my girls heads up the union the workers formed. You’ll have to come to terms with both of us. I think I can speak for the management echelon. What sort of a settlement do you propose?”
“I think I can persuade the Observatory to hire say half a dozen madams as expert consultants. The salaries should make up for any loss you’ve been suffering from business falling off because of the Venus program. Mind you, I’m not being altruistic in this. I think you have something to contribute to their researches into erotic response patterns in human beings. Anyway, if we can work out satisfactory wage-scales, will you take the pressure off Rockwell?”