The Beaufort Sisters Page 20

  She didn’t query him as to how he knew where to find Scarlatti. They pulled into a parking lot on West 12th Street; then he led her across the street. It was lined with bars and strip joints; she was in a totally foreign country only five or six miles from home. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a sign: – In The Flesh Tonite. Three men came out of a bar and stopped and stared at her: a well-dressed dame in dark glasses and a dinge, going where? George took her up a narrow stairway next to the bar, closing the door into the street in the faces of the gawking trio.

  The door at the top of the stairs said: Peter M. Scarlatti, Theatrical Agent. It sounded legitimate and somehow she felt less nervous. She did not know what she had been expecting. Peter M. Scarlatti, Hoodlum?

  The door opened right into Scarlatti’s office. There was no need for an outer office; he employed no secretary. The walls of the small room were papered with glossy photos of girls contorting themselves to show as much as possible and still be exhibited in a public place. The walls looked like a gallery of acrobatic September Morns, a calendar picture that Margaret remembered from her childhood. But these nymphs had more flesh to them and their virginity looked like something remembered from their own childhood.

  ‘I do something for you?’ Scarlatti was one of the fattest men she had ever seen; he looked obscene even dressed and by contrast the girls on the wall behind him suddenly looked innocent. He looked Margaret up and down and recognized class: she was no hooker or stripper looking for a job. ‘You looking to buy some entertainment, lady? I got all sorts.’

  ‘I’m here to buy some names,’ said Margaret.

  Scarlatti had too much flesh on his face to furrow into a frown; but he succeeded somehow in looking puzzled. He peered at them out of slits of eyes; then he leaned forward, staring at George. He looked at George’s hand, then he let out a loud hiss and put his own huge hands, which reminded Margaret vaguely of udders, on the worn desk in front of him.

  ‘Jesus Christ – George Biff!’

  George said nothing, but took some girlie magazines from a chair, dropped them on the floor and offered the chair to Margaret. His whole air was that of ignoring Scarlatti and Margaret saw at once that it was unsettling the fat man. She sat down.

  ‘My name is Minett, Mrs Frank Minett. You gave my husband the names of some men to see in Chicago, some businessmen. I’d like their names. I want to go up to see them. Tomorrow.’

  Scarlatti seemed to drag his eyes away from George. He let out another hiss, softer this time, took a tablet from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. ‘Mrs Minett? Well, I dunno, Mrs Minett. I give your husband them names in confidence, you know what I mean? I don’t know if the – the businessmen up in Chicago would want me handing out their names to everyone – ’ His voice was the only pleasant thing about him, a deep bass. “What you want to see them for?’

  ‘Business. Call them and see if they will see me at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Call them now, Mr Scarlatti. I don’t have much time.’

  Scarlatti looked at George again, then sank his head into the thick fat of his neck and shoulders, the reverse of a shrug. He dialled a number, got long distance and asked for a second number. Margaret picked up a pencil and wrote it down on the back of a photo of a fan dancer that was one of a pile on the desk. But Scarlatti reached across and the photo was crumpled in one of the huge hands and tossed into a drawer of the desk.

  ‘No numbers, Mrs Minett. You forget you heard that number, okay? … Hello, this is Pete Scarlatti … No, Scarlatti. Down in KC. Kansas City, for Crissake. I give a guy an intro to you people some months ago … Well, I’m sorry about that. How was I to know? He couldn’t of had better connections, could he? … Well, I got someone else here. The guy’s wife. She wants to see you tomorrow, ten o’clock a.m. in the morning … Hold it – please. This is the guy’s wife – she’s got even better connections than he’s got, you know what I mean? What?’ He looked at Margaret. ‘He wants to know what you want to see them for?’

  ‘Tell him I want to give them some money.’ She was an innocent in this world: the girls behind Scarlatti sneered at her, looked at her over their shoulders with swindlers’ eyes. Yet she felt confident: as Scarlatti had said, she had connections. The Beaufort name meant something even here among the cheap display of flesh, the tatty end of show business. ‘A business deal. But they are not to contact my husband until after I have seen them.’

  Scarlatti relayed the message, listened, nodded and hung up. ‘They’ll see you. Here’s the address – no names, they said, till you get there.’ He scrawled an address on a slip of paper, pushed it across the desk. Then he turned the paper over, saw a name on the back of it and scratched it out. ‘She’s a bubble dancer. You won’t be wanting her name.’

  Margaret stood up, took some money from her pocketbook and laid it on the desk: she did not want to touch one of those repulsive hands. ‘A hundred dollars, Mr Scarlatti, for your trouble. And don’t you get in touch with my husband.’

  He flicked the money with a teat-like finger. ‘That’s pin money, Mrs Minett. I’m worth more than that.’

  She looked around her, at a wall of bottoms and breasts. ‘None of your clients would make that much in a night, Mr Scarlatti, let alone in a few minutes as you have done. That’s your commission – take it.’

  ‘Shove it,’ he said, but didn’t shove the money towards her. ‘I tell you, I’m worth more than that – ’

  George Biff came round the desk, stood over him. ‘Mr Scarlatti, you twice the size you were when you done me over – you wouldn’t be able to move too fast now. Also, you ain’t got that other feller with you, the one held me while you shot off my fingers. You better take the money or I’m gonna send Mrs Minett downstairs and I’m gonna beat the hell outa you. I can do it, even with one hand.’

  Scarlatti glanced from one to the other without moving his head. He hissed again, then picked up the money and put it in his pocket. Without another word George opened the door and ushered Margaret out. When she got downstairs and out into the street she felt her legs trembling and she began to perspire. She was relieved to see that the three inquisitive drinkers from the bar next door had gone.

  ‘George, I was afraid you were going to kill him!’

  He grinned, took her arm and escorted her across the street. ‘I ain’t a killer, Miz Meg. I might of roughed him up a bit, but not in front of you. But there wasn’t no real worry. He used to be tough when he was Johnny Lazia’s man. But not any more. He just small stuff now. Well, not exactly small – he damned fat!’ And he began to laugh, was still laughing when he handed her into the Buick.

  She also began to laugh, with relief. She looked at the piece of paper with the address on it. ‘Do you know Chicago?’

  ‘I played a gig there once. Three weeks. Then the joint was shot up by some guys and it went outa business. I come back to KC.’

  ‘George, what a life you’ve led!’

  ‘Everybody got his own living to do. You got a long way to go yet.’

  Margaret would never know how she got through dinner that evening without giving herself away to Frank. But, without her realizing it, she was already establishing her character, or at least her public personality, for the future. So we lay bricks in the building of ourselves and never know the blueprint.

  ‘You see your old man?’ Frank said.

  ‘No. Magnus is helping me. Your problem should be over by tomorrow night.’

  He gazed at her across the table, absent-mindedly picked a tooth with his little finger: a habit she thought she had cured him of. ‘It had better be, Meg. I’m sick to my stomach – .’ His plate, the food only picked over, had been pushed away. ‘I’m getting desperate.’

  She felt no sympathy, no feeling at all for him. ‘I’m doing all I can.’

  ‘What worries me is the kids are going to be the pawns in this game.’

  ‘I’m not the one who’s using them. If we keep the divorce quiet, it’ll just be between you and me.’ Th
en, because she was curious, she asked, ‘When you pay off these men, what happens?’

  ‘I dunno. I’ll own the land, I guess. But it’ll only be worth half, maybe less, what I paid for it.’

  ‘Half a million? You’ll still be better off than when you married me. Rich, almost.’ She couldn’t help herself: she was driving the needle in deeper.

  He uttered a half-laugh. ‘I was aiming higher.’

  Then he got up and left the room and a few minutes later she heard him go out of the house and drive away. She was glad and relieved: if the conversation had gone on she might have given herself away. Her satisfaction, revenge perhaps, had to wait till tomorrow night.

  Frank left at 7.30 next morning for his office, as he always did. Five minutes later she and George drove out the gates. ‘How did you manage to get away from Daddy for the day?’

  ‘I told him I got a sick sister over in Independence. That one good thing about a big family – you can always have a sick brother or sister.’

  ‘Has he left for his office yet?’

  ‘He went out same time as Mr Frank. He driving himself. One thing about your daddy, he ain’t a proud rich man. Not like some of them I seen over in Europe. They go nowheres without their sho-fers.’

  ‘Oh, Daddy’s proud all right. You know that as well as I do. Now get a move on or we’re going to miss the plane to Chicago.’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind if we did just that.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to come, remember?’ Then she said, ‘I’m sorry, George. That was mean. I’m grateful to you, truly.’

  ‘You girls,’ was all he said and she wasn’t sure whether he was condemning all women or just the Beaufort sisters.

  They made the plane to Chicago with just minutes to spare. They flew through a shining morning that turned to wind and cloud as they landed. Lake Michigan was like chipped green marble and the occasional flags on the city’s buildings stood stiff as metal pennants. It was not a day for feeling confident about meeting strangers.

  Margaret rented a car, asked the clerk for directions and she and George drove north. She had expected to finish up in a business district; she had never been in Chicago before and knew nothing of its layout. But they drove through a residential district, then they were in what she recognized as country club territory; she was getting her first lesson in the geography of America’s cities. The houses continued to improve, the grounds got larger; they were on a street that reminded her of Ward Parkway. Then George pulled the car in before high wooden gates set in a high stone wall that stood back from the roadway. A man, who must have been waiting for them, came out of a small side gate and approached the car.

  ‘You Mrs Minett?’ He was dressed as if for business: suit, collar and tie, polished shoes. Margaret was too inexperienced to notice, but George saw the bulge of the gun under the man’s armpit. ‘The boss is expecting you. Who’s this?’

  ‘My adviser,’ said Margaret.

  The man looked suspiciously at George, then went back inside the wall and a moment later the gates opened. George drove the car in and up a long curving drive to a Tudor mansion, circa 1948. Margaret, who knew her history, hoped she was not going to be subjected to the same sort of double-dealing as there was in that long-ago reign.

  Two men, business-suited, came out of the front door of the house, stood waiting at the top of the steps. ‘Just like home,’ said George. ‘Only they got more security fellers than your daddy got.’

  He got out of the car with Margaret and one of the men came down the steps. ‘This way, Mrs Minett. You stay in the car, boy.’

  ‘No,’ said Margaret. ‘He comes inside with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Minett.’ The man, young and burly, was roughly polite. ‘Mr Gentleman don’t allow Negroes in his front door.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mr Gentleman, the boss. Tony Gentleman.’

  ‘Mr Biff works for my father and he has been coming in and out of our front door for as long as I can remember. He comes in with me now or you’d better ask Mr Gentleman – ’ the name was a joke: she wanted to laugh ‘ – to come out here and talk to me.’

  The young man looked up at the other, older man at the top of the steps. The latter went back inside and returned in a moment. ‘The boss says okay.’ He shook his head as George followed Margaret into the house, as if he didn’t know what the world was coming to, a spade going in the front door of a house like this.

  The house was beautifully furnished: Margaret saw that at a glance. There was as much evidence of wealth here as there was in the big house back in Kansas City. There were perhaps too many paintings on the walls for her taste, but all the paintings were good: she thought she recognized a Titian, though it might have been just an excellent copy. All the paintings were of the Italian school: it struck her that perhaps Mr Gentleman was laundering his money by investing in the art of his homeland.

  There were five men waiting for her in the huge living-room. Four of them were elderly and dressed as soberly as any of her father’s banker friends back home; the fifth was a young man in a tweed jacket, a button-down shirt and silk repp tie. One of the old men came forward, a silver-haired slight man who walked with a limp.

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Minett.’ He looked at George a moment, then nodded to him to take a chair. ‘You know my name. This is my son Philip. The other gentlemen are my partners. They’re no relation,’ he added and she saw that he enjoyed the humour in his own name.

  The unnamed, unrelated gentlemen smiled and nodded their heads. They did not look at George at all, but they were obviously pleased that they were going to be dealing with a beautiful young woman. They all sat down, arranging the creases of their trousers as they crossed their legs. It occurred to her then that they were all too well-dressed, that they were uncomfortable inside their expensive suits and custom-made shirts. She saw that the soles of the brilliantly-shined black shoes were almost unmarked and she wondered, irrelevantly, if they had all gone out and bought new outfits to meet her. She wanted to smile at their determined respectability, but this was no time to be snobbish.

  She got down to business at once, not wanting to stay in this company longer than was necessary. ‘I understand my husband owes you a million and a quarter dollars, part of the collateral being land he has purchased in Platte County, Missouri.’

  ‘He owes us a million, one hundred thousand, Mrs Minett.’ Tony Gentleman had a soft high voice that instantly made a mockery of everything that surrounded him: the banker’s suit, the elegant furniture, the art collection. There in his throat was everything he was trying to leave behind: the Maxwell Street ghetto, the battle for survival against the Irish mick kids, the hoodlum youth. ‘That includes the interest.’

  They were being honest: the double-dealing was back home in her own house, where Frank had hoped to make $150,000 out of her or her father. ‘May I see the note?’

  Philip Gentleman took a legal-looking document from a briefcase and handed it to one of the old men who passed it on to Tony Gentleman. Margaret noticed that all the old men moved stiffly, awkward with arthritis and old age and (she wondered) old wounds. She took the paper and read it.

  ‘If I pay you the money, the one million one hundred thousand, this makes me the owner of the land?’

  ‘In effect, yes. But we don’t want to get into no argument between a man and his wife. Your husband looked like he was gonna renege on our deal, but he’s still got a husband’s rights.’ The other three old men nodded; but Margaret thought she saw a slight smile from Philip Gentleman. Somewhere in this house, she thought, there are women who know their proper place. ‘You gotta talk it over with him.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll talk it over with him, be sure of that. May I take this with me?’

  ‘You got the money with you, Mrs Minett?’ Gentleman smiled, a surprisingly kindly smile, grandfatherly. ‘A cheque, I mean. Not cash.’

  ‘A cheque for the full amount will be deposited this afternoon. Do you have a bank in Kansas C
ity?’

  Gentleman smiled again and nodded. ‘We have banks all over, Mrs Minett. Who’s gonna write the cheque – you?’

  ‘My attorney Magnus McKea will draw the cheque on his private account. Give me the name of your bank and I’ll phone him now.’

  Gentleman gestured to a phone on a secretaire against the wall. Magnus came on the phone as soon as Margaret asked for him, asked at once about her safety. ‘I’m all right, Magnus … Yes, everything is all right. Now listen …’ As she spoke she ran her hand idly over the porcelain plaques that decorated the top of the secretaire; she recognized them as Sèvres and knew this was a piece of furniture her mother would love to possess. Tony Gentleman, advised by someone, had surrounded himself with what a gentleman would appreciate. She wondered if he did appreciate it or if this was just another way of laundering dirty money. But she could not afford to be contemptuous: she was about to launder some more money for him: ‘Can you have the cheque deposited in the next hour and then have the bank call Mr Gentleman to let him know? … What?’ She looked at the old Italian. ‘Whom do we make the cheque out to?’

  ‘The Christopher Columbus Trust. It’s an exploration fund.’

  Then he laughed, a high croaking laugh, and so did his partners: old men enjoying a joke that had taken them years to achieve. Even George Biff smiled and the old men looked at him and accepted his sharing of the joke, because he did it with the proper respect that a nigger should.

  Margaret gave the instructions to Magnus, assured him again that she was all right, then hung up. ‘May I keep this note?’

  Tony Gentleman looked at his partners. As far as Margaret could see none of them nodded his head, but Gentleman knew his colleagues. He smiled at Margaret. ‘If we can’t trust a Beaufort, whom can we trust?’

  She acknowledged the compliment, said goodbye. The old men stood up, stiffly gallant. They smiled at her, said how pleased they were to have met her. None of them so much as looked at George; that way they didn’t have to say goodbye to him. Philip Gentleman escorted Margaret and George out of the room and down the panelled hall.