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Melancholy Baby by Jeff Sherratt
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Not rated by the Author.
It’s 1947. Petty crook Johnny Rocco, masquerading as
Johnny Dalmas, a piano player at the notorious Seal Beach
gambling joint, The Airport Inn, has his eyes fixed on one last
score. But, Big Nick Capro, the crooked chief of police, has
other ideas. And when the take-down comes Johnny is in for
a life-size surprise, a surprise with ruby-red lips and a figure
you could pray to.
Melancholy Baby
A short story written in March of 1947
“If that rummy-eyed rodent asks for ‘Melancholy Baby’ one more time, I swear I’ll throw this one-note piano at him.”
Velma moseyed up to me. A cigarette dangled from her ruby lips. “What’s the matter, Johnny? Havin’ a rough night?”
I sat perched on the piano stool in the smoky, raucous bar at George Olson’s clip joint known as the Airport Club and Lounge. The sign outside on the door said, Johnny Dalmas tickles the ivories nightly for your listening pleasure. Judas Priest.
Velma was one of the pro skirts, a bombshell blonde who plied her trade in the no-star hotel upstairs. We had a pact: I wouldn’t sleep with the customers and she wouldn’t play the piano.
“Just the usual, Velma, loudmouth drunks giving me a migraine.”
“Come on up during your break, Johnny, and I’ll take the edge off for ya.”
“I need it, baby.”
The airport was long gone. But Olson’s gambling club along with its collection of hookers, hustlers, and lowlifes was still here, right here in Seal Beach, California, Sin City by the Bay, a tourist trap hugging the edge of the 63 million square miles of caustic solution known as the Pacific Ocean.
Being a beach town, every now and then a surfer wandered into the club, and when he did, he was promptly tossed out on his keister.
Everyone knew surfers had no money and Olson gave the word to his knuckle-draggers guarding the door, “Eighty-six the bindle punks.” Unless, of course, it was Joe Copro and his pals.
Copro’s old man, Big Nick, was the town’s chief of police, and one of Olson’s best customers. He was a slick greaseball with a small army of torpedoes to back him up. But, the chief’s salary wouldn’t pay the rent on the black cashmere overcoat that draped his enormous frame. Chief Copro’s sideline, extortion and bribery, kept him in osso buco and paid the high maintenance on Angie, his current boopsie of the month.
And one thing was for sure, it wasn’t healthy to screw with Big Nick Copro. You just ponyed up and kept quiet about it. Yeah, Big Nick was a blower and a goer. He’d blow you away, then go to your funeral.
My vig was a sawbuck, twice a month. I figured it was cheap insurance--real cheap--and Prudential didn’t peddle the kind of life insurance I needed.
While I sweet-talked Velma, my fingers continued doing their magic. I played “Stardust,” then a riff from “Heart and Soul.” Oh! but your lips were thrilling, much too thrilling.
I liked to mix it up. Tonight was my Hoagy Carmichael night, tomorrow... Christ, who cares.
“Melancholy Baby,” the drunk shouted out again, right in the middle of the second leitmotif.
Later, I followed Velma up the back stairs of the Show and Tell Hotel leading to our cozy hideaway on the second floor. Her gorgeous gams and the slow, smooth ripple of her liquid hips as she climbed the steps were more intoxicating than all of the rotgut downstairs in the Airport Club lounge.
She made her way to the pine dresser where a half empty bottle of Old Crow rye whiskey rested. “Let’s have one together. Okay, Johnny?”
“Swell, kiddo.” I pulled a rumpled deck of Camels out of my pocket and let my gaze sweep the room. Velma’s place wasn’t high-toned. Most mugs might find it a little shabby. One bed, the pine dresser, a flimsy wood table, a couple of overstuffed chairs, and dingy walls covered with fading lilies of the field on the yellowing wallpaper.
That was it, one ratty little room. But this bungalow of bliss was my pad-do-tare, my temporary residence, and it served my purpose well. I had been here for three months now and, although she didn’t know it, Velma was part of my scheme.
“How do you want your drink, Johnny?”
“In a glass.”
She handed me four fingers of rye. “Let’s make a toast,” she said, and hoisted her tumbler of whiskey.
I took a drag of my Camel and let the smoke curl out through my nostrils. “A toast to what?”
“To us. What else?” A shadow darkened her face. “You do like me don’t you? You said you did...when we...” She glanced at the bed.
“Yeah, sweetheart, I like you, but--”
She frowned. “But what?”
“C’mon, Velma. You know I’m gonna breeze soon.”
“Johnny, why do ya have to blow?” Velma looked at me with those haunting sad eyes. “Is it because of me being...on the hustle? Or is it heat coming from back east?”
“Baby, I don’t care what you do. But don’t mention back east again. Maybe, I shouldn’t have spilled it.”
Seal Beach had the personality of a dead mackerel, but who gave a fiddling fart. My plan was about to break open--I could feel it--then I’d scram. It won’t be long and I’ll be lousy with green, lollygagging on the sunny shore of Acapulco with a cool Margarita in one hand and a hot little tamale’s tit in the other.
I knew the little canary had been singing all over town. Velma chirped to everybody she bumped into about me. She couldn’t help her herself. Whispering that the man she shacked with, the two-bit piano player known as Johnny Dalmas, was really the redhot gangster from Chicago, Johnny Rocco.
“Oh, Johnny, I’ll never peep a word. I swear. I don’t even know what you did back east.”
Her look begged me to add something. I didn’t. She took a belt from her glass. I wagged my head. One day soon Velma will lose it: her looks, her carnal desire, and someday a devil will carry her to the big sleep, a devil with 100 proof horns and a bottle of rye for a spear.
"Go ahead, take another slug if it helps, kid," I told her.
A boozing broad like that would normally grate my nerves, but in her case I encouraged it. Without Velma’s yapping about yours truly how could I get the word out, the story that I was not who I pretended to be? You see, Copro and Olson were in cahoots. They had a drug running operation going, and I wanted them to think I was Rocco. But they wouldn’t buy it if I just walked up to ’em and said, Hey guys, I’m not really a honky-tonk piano player, I’m a big bad gangster named Johnny Rocco on the lam and I’d like to horn in on your action. Maybe even highjack a load and skip town.
Yeah, but thanks to Velma and her giggle juice, the word got out, under the table, so to speak. It’s insane, but the thugs bought into the rumor that I was Rocco, just the kind of scumbag they could trust. Yeah, my plan was working, hittin’ on all eight.
Now, here’s the real grift, here’s what nobody knew, I wasn’t Johnny Dalmas, that’s true , but...I wasn’t Johnny Rocco either.
I stubbed out the Camel on the bottom of my shoe. “Hey, Velma. Tell you what, tomorrow’s my day off. We’ll spend some time at the pier. Maybe take a ride on the rollercoaster. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, Johnny, will you buy me a red feather boa?”
“Sure, Kitten.”
She set her empty glass down and threw her arms around my neck.
“Take it easy, baby. You’ll wrinkle the material.”
The gloomy light of daybreak filtered through the Venetian blinds covering the window facing Main Street. I heard the rattle of the Big Red Car off in the distance as it started its first run of the day heading for downtown Los Angeles, fifteen miles north.
I glanced at the clock on the dresser and moaned. Velma stirred next to me and let out a whimper. Six a.m. I was about to roll over and catch a few more winks when someone pounded on the door.
My stomach lurched. I grabbed my army issue .45 from the top dresser drawer, slipped quietly to the door, and leaned against the wall next to it. Good news didn’t come knocking at six a. m. “Yeah, waddaya want?”
“Johnny, it’s me, Slick. The boss wants to see you.”
“It’s my day off.”
“Olson’s gotta a shipment coming in. Needs your help.”
My pulse redlined. This could be it, what I was waiting for, the shipment the real Johnny Rocco told me about before I glommed his ID and plugged him.
Rocco wasn’t too bright blabbing about Capro and Olson’s nasty sideline. It wasn’t smart telling me how a wise guy could rip off a shipment and be set for life; that is, if the guy knew how to unload the stuff. Yeah, Rocco was a real palooka. He even told me the buyer’s name and whereabouts, the guy with 50 G’s ready and waiting to take the stuff off his hands, no questions asked.
“Hey, Slick, I don’t get involved in that junk.” I didn’t want to sound too anxious but my guts were twisted in knots. “What about Stoker? Thought he handled the shipments. Are you pulling some kinda Chinese angle?”
“No, Johnny, nothin’ like that. Stoker’s outta town and this is a special shipment. The boss says you’re okay. He knows who you really are. He wants you take care of it. There’s a couple of yards in it for you.”
He slid an envelope under the door. Inside were two crisp $100 bills.
Maybe I shouldn’t trust this deal. The little hairs on the back of my neck said I could be wearing a wooden kimono before it’s over. Why didn’t Olson come himself? Why did he send this weasel? I glanced at the pair of C notes in my hand. Money talked and the Benjamins were screaming. But this could the real McCoy, and if I passed on it, they’d never give me another shot. I wondered how high the pile of century notes fifty large would be.
While I scrambled into my duds, Velma stirred. “Go back to sleep. No picnic at the pier today, baby. I got business. We gotta take a rain check.”
She raised her head, rubbed her eyes, leaned back and yawned, her breasts stretching the gossamer fabric of her silky nightgown. Christ, the girlie had a set of knockers that would melt rocks.
“Is it raining?” she asked.
I slipped out the door, gun in my pocket.
A cool breeze kicked up and a yellowing scrap of newspaper fluttered at my feet like a butterfly before settling on the wooden deck of the private jetty where I stood.
I tugged my overcoat and waited. The water taxi was due to arrive any minute now. It was coming from Tony Cornero’s floating gambling palace, the Lux, anchored three miles off shore.
I bent down and picked up the newspaper, the local Seal Beach rag. It had a story about a bunch of Jaspers that called themselves “The Good Government Group.” The story told of their efforts to shut down the Airport Club and rid the town of “the criminal element and people of that ilk who hang out there.”
Fat chance. I wadded up the paper and chucked it in the ocean. As long as Olson kept Chief Copro in broads, booze, food and casino checks, there would be no reform. The Airport Club and the Lux would stay alive and the supply of smack flowing up from Mexico would keep coming. Cornero’s gambling ship was the dropoff point. And his fleet of water taxis ferrying the highbinders and good citizens to and from the ship was a perfect cover to bring the stuff onshore, where Capro and Olson wholesaled it out of the Airport Club.
The water taxi, a wooden bumboat with a square deckhouse, cut through the water casting a white wake as it slid up to the jetty. The boatman tossed me a line and I wrapped it around a cleat.
“Where’s the package?” I hollered to the guy.
“She’s below powdering her nose. She’ll be up in a minute. Now fix that friggin’ line tighter.”
She? Did I hear him right? The package is a female? Olson had said nothing about a lousy chippy.
He’d said I was to pick up the shipment, haul it in my heap down the coast to Laguna, then take it to a certain room in the Blue Seas Hotel. I was to guard it with my life, and wait for his call. He said he’d tell Velma I had to leave on a little trip, might be gone for a spell.
I laughed inside while Olson jawboned about the setup. Won’t he be surprised when he finds out I snatched his goods and took a run out powder.
But now the boat guy was telling me the freight was a dame. I didn’t like this, not at all. Maybe this wasn’t the shipment. Maybe they were using me as a patsy. Maybe she’s just some Mexican twist Olson wanted to sneak into the country. What am I, a babysitter? Knowing Olson, she’s probably fat and ugly. I looked up.
Jesus Christ Almighty. The “package” stood on the boat deck with her left hand resting on her jutting hip. Her right hand was tucked into a big red purse hanging from a strap slung over her shoulder.
But wait, the purse could be where the junk was stashed. Yeah, that’s it. The dreamboat had the shipment in her purse and she was along to keep an eye on me.
“Hey, big boy,” she said in a breathless tone, “are you gonna just stand there or are you gonna help me get off of this barge?” The words oozed from her mouth like juice from an overripe peach.
My eyes started at her ankles, then traveled north along her sculptured legs and slowed down here and there to gaze at the scenery. There should be sign: dangerous curves ahead.
She was in her thirties, stacked, and had a tight black dress wrapped around her opulent torso. Her face was heaven, the face of an angel, a face you could pray to. She had high cheekbones, full red lips and a mass of ebony hair floating to her shoulders. But it was her eyes, her bright green enormous eyes that stopped my heart. It’s too bad I have to kill her.
I moved closer to the boat. “Yeah, I’m coming, baby.”
She glanced around, taking in the bay--a sailboat drifting on the horizon, a pelican plunging into the water after a fish, the ripples shimmering in the sunlight. She turned back to me and the air smelled like honeysuckle.
Her hypnotic eyes looked into mine like she was reading my soul. Hey, maybe she’d enjoy a vacation in Mexico. Yeah, that would be nice. Oh, I’d have to pop her someday, but in the meantime...
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I had to turn on the charm. I’d always had a way with women and this angel puss would be no exception. I moved closer to the edge of the jetty.
With a big grin plastered on my face, I reached out to take her hand. “Hi, baby," I said. "Where the hell you been all my life?"
“My name is Kathie.” Her hand came out of the big purse. “And, I’ve been waiting for this, Johnny Rocco!”
I froze, suddenly cold and stiff. Then everything turned white. I barely heard the shots, barely felt the bullets rip through my guts, and barely heard her say, “That’s for my husband, Tony, you murdering cocksucker.”
The last thing I felt was the boatman heaving my body overboard into the cold deep water of Anaheim Bay.
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