Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante Page 4

  Leap, wrote Maxie decisively.

  After that there was a series of word associations, with printed instructions which told Maxie to write rapidly, without thinking. That was fun! Next to Knife she wrote “fork.” Table prompted “chair.” Girl—“girl-friend,” Mirror—“lake,” Home—“prison,” Mother—“death,” and so on.

  At the end there was a page of inkblots, and Maxie was to choose the description that corresponded most closely to what she saw. She couldn’t help amending some of the choices she circled. To “a butterfly” she added “with two heads,” and “Man with a mustache” became

  “Man (?) with a mustache.”

  Finally she had circled her last answer, filled in her last blank. Fatigued, her head aching with the unusual mental activity, Maxie stumbled out of the storeroom and handed the test to the waiting Miss Watkins.

  Miss Watkins shuffled the scrawled pages on the bar, aligning the edges neatly. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve made my analysis,” she said briskly.

  “Can’t you give me a little hint?” Maxie pleaded. “Just a teensy one?”

  “You are in a hurry,” Miss Watkins observed, her pleasant smile becoming a trifle fixed. “But you see, interpreting the Personality Penchant Assessment is never the work of a moment.”

  “It’s just”—Maxie let her shoulders droop and looked as woebegone as possible—“I’ve lost my allowance, and my girlfriend told me I was too impossibly empty-headed to find employment. I know I won’t sleep a wink tonight without some sort of hope for the future!”

  Miss Watkins laughed gaily. “No one with your persistence and persuasive powers need worry about that! And I’m sure this test will bear out my personal observation . . .” But as she glanced at the assessment, the career counselor’s voice trailed away and she knit her eyebrows together. Sitting down on an empty barstool, she spread the test before her, studying it intently.

  “This is odd,” Miss Watkins murmured to herself. Maxie felt a shiver of anxiety.

  “Have you ever been involved in planning illegal activities?” the personnel head asked the nervous girl abruptly.

  “Not the planning part.” Maxie tried to be honest.

  “How about show business or religion? Perhaps you’ve produced some sort of extravaganza or organized a revival?”

  “I was just an assistant stage manager for summer stock. What is it?” Maxie couldn’t take the suspense. “Am I abnormal or something?”

  “Of course not!” Miss Watkins almost snapped. “But these results are highly unusual—in fact, almost unique in my experience.”

  “Is that bad?” asked Maxie, half suspecting the test showed signs of mental deficiency and Miss Watkins was trying to sugarcoat the truth. Maxie’s great-aunt Alta had recently declared that she was Queen Christina of Sweden, and was quickly committed to a sanatorium outside the city. “Don’t I have a penchant for anything?” Maxie demanded plaintively.

  “The peculiar thing is that you have so many penchants!” Miss Watkins told her, clearly perplexed. “Ordinarily the PPA eliminates all but a few. But according to this, I might equally well encourage you to become a private investigator, a professional gambler, or to open a motel franchise!”

  Maxie thought all these possibilities were intriguing, but Miss Watkins was still talking. “There are bewildering contradictions at an even deeper level.” She flipped to the inkblots. “Cold logic coexists with intuitive insights. You show every sign of high-functioning within the group, while at the same time you have a better-than-average chance of surviving a prolonged period of solitary confinement with your sanity intact!” Miss Watkins’s voice rose as she spoke.

  Maxie’s head was spinning. The personnel head recovered her professional poise. “I certainly need more data and the time for a really in-depth analysis before I can make any firm conclusions.” She put the test in her satchel. “I want you to take the test again, sober. And please provide me with all your educational records, including any Girl Scout badges.” Miss Watkins smiled reassuringly at Maxie. “One thing you don’t have to worry about is being ‘empty-headed.’ You’re an exceptional girl, and I feel sure you have a unique and rewarding career path before you . . . What’s that flashing light?”

  Maxie had been so intent on Miss Watkins’s words that she hadn’t noticed the red and blue light flashing on the wall. Girls were clustered below the two high windows of the cellar bar, standing on their tiptoes and trying to see what was going on outside. Maxie went over to Dolly, who’d climbed on a chair and was peering out.

  “It’s a police car,” reported Dolly. “It’s parked right outside. I wonder what’s going on—do you think there’s been another mob hit? Mamie wrote in her column there’s going to be a gang war!”

  “Don’t believe everything you read,” cautioned Maxie, speaking as a seasoned newspaperwoman. She knew better than anyone how shaky some of Mamie’s sources could be.

  Just then, the door to Francine’s swung open, and footsteps descended the short flight of stairs. All eyes turned to the man in blue, standing on the bottom step, surveying the crowd with a slow, cold stare.

  Chapter 5

  A Visit from the Police

  “Get down from there,” ordered the police officer when his gimlet gaze reached Dolly, still standing on the chair. Hastily Dolly descended, her mouth agape in astonishment.

  “Shut it,” muttered Maxie, elbowing the shocked actress.

  She couldn’t blame Dolly. Francine’s had never had a visit from the boys in blue before, not in Maxie’s memory. The girls at Francine’s felt safe, secure. Francine’s was okay, they told each other, not like the Knock Knock Lounge with its catfights and raids, the rendezvous of lowlifes and petty criminals. At Francine’s, the twilight world they all lived in took on a rosy, cozy hue. Now Francine’s customers exchanged uneasy glances as the man in blue stalked to the bar.

  “We’ve had a report that two females in this establishment were dancing together and otherwise engaging in a lewd and lascivious manner,” he told Tobey in a voice that was heard throughout the hushed room.

  “That’s all wrong,” Tobey said as she nervously wiped down the spotless bar. Maxie reflected that, strictly speaking, Tobey was telling the truth. Not just two, but dozens of women had been dancing together in the course of the evening.

  The policeman turned away from the bar, a sneer on his face. He strolled slowly around the room, shooting suspicious looks from side to side. He was searching for some violation, Maxie realized. He intended to shut Francine’s down!

  “That’s a man’s tie!” He stopped suddenly at a table, addressing a woman Maxie recognized as a teacher friend of Netta’s.

  “This? Why this is my favorite foulard,” the woman faltered, fingering the paisley-figured neckpiece nervously.

  “Are you making fun of me?” The policeman’s heavy brows lowered.

  “No, no, not at all,” her friend quickly broke in. “You can see this very item advertised in the Grunemans catalog as ‘Foulards for Femmes de Mode’—that means for women of style,” she translated helpfully.

  “He certainly doesn’t know his fashions,” Maxie whispered to Dolly.

  The policeman seemed stymied. “I’m keeping my eye on this place,” he told Tobey, retreating up the stairs.

  As soon as he was gone, a low murmur of talk broke out, which grew and swelled like a tidal wave until it drowned out the jukebox. Almost simultaneously an exodus began. “I’m afraid my fun is over for the night,” declared the woman in the paisley foulard as she and her friends hurried past Maxie, leaving their half-drunk beers behind. Other patrons finished their beers first, but exited just the same.

  “This is poor policy on the part of the police!” expostulated Phyllis. “We ought to protest, not play along with the game!” Phyllis seldom got angry and then only on matters of principle. But now she radiated indignation to the ends of her crinkly blond-brown hair.

  “Who can afford to?” Janet was pragmati
c. “I know I can’t.” With a sigh she picked up her purse. “At least I’ll get more studying done!”

  After Janet’s departure, Lois asked in a troubled voice, “Do you think he’ll be back?”

  “You can bet on it!” declared Dolly. “It’s what I was saying earlier, a gang war! That mob that runs the Knock Knock is trying to get more territory—turf, I mean to say—and they’ve set their sights on Francine’s!”

  Maxie heard similar rumors racing around the bar like frightened bunnies. Someone said that the mob hit last week was connected. Another girl knew someone in the anti-racketeering task force, and her source said a new boss was in charge of the Larsen gang. “You mean the Swenson gang,” objected a third. “And I heard it’s an out-of-town organization muscling in.” Several girls agreed that all these gangs should be deported back to Sweden, Norway, and the other faraway Northern European countries they’d come from. Immediately an opposing group argued that it was unfair to punish all Scandinavian Americans, just because there were a few bad apples.

  The high-pitched arguments, fueled by unspoken fears, swirled around the room as Francine’s patrons grasped at any straw to explain the sudden shattering of their safe haven.

  Maxie looked around the familiar surroundings, the warm patina of the worn oak bar, the framed photos of Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a smiling woman in a feather hat said to be the bar’s namesake. The floorboards were worn with the tread of oxfords, saddle shoes, ballet flats, boots, and pumps. The square of linoleum in the back had been polished by everything from the foxtrot to the frug. The old jukebox, the new cigarette machine—at the beginning of the evening they’d seemed as certain as death and taxes. Now the whole shebang was threatened.

  It was certainly a day for upheavals! Maxie decided.

  Dolly and Phyllis had fallen into conversation with a motley group of Francine faithfuls. “They’ve already knocked over the Knock Knock, I heard,” reported an earnest young co-ed, pushing up the glasses that were almost sliding off her nose. “My soc prof’s awfully excited about it. He says it’s a chance to study the criminal underworld in action!”

  “Sure, but while you’re studying the underworld, where are we going to get a quiet drink?” queried her friend mournfully.

  “I always knew Francine’s was too good to be true,” put in an older woman in a voice of triumphant doom. “I remember when we just had house parties. We had a darned good time then, and we can again!”

  No one else seemed enthused by this prospect. “There’s always the Blue Danube.” The earnest student named a restaurant popular with all members of the third sex.

  “It’s not the same,” Dolly objected. “You can’t dance and they’re always after you to order food.”

  “What do all these gangs want with Francine’s anyway?” demanded one of the students.

  “Protection money,” the earnest one explained patronizingly. “Weren’t you paying any attention in class last week?” She turned to Tobey, who was glumly washing glasses. “Isn’t that right?”

  “The less you know the better,” Tobey said to the student. It had been her stock answer all evening long.

  “I don’t think Francine Flicka will be a pushover, as they say in mob parlance,” remarked Miss Watkins as she picked up her leather satchel.

  “You mean, Francine is still around?” Maxie was amazed. “I’ve never seen her.”

  “She’s hardly ever comes into the bar anymore,” explained Miss Watkins. “And it was never more than a sideline to her true calling.” As Maxie wondered what Francine’s true calling was, Miss Watkins took a card from her purse and gave it to Maxie. “Are you free to meet me at my office on Monday, for our follow-up?”

  “I have a part-time job as an assistant for Mamie McArdle, the crusading columnist,” Maxie told her. “But I pretty much make my own hours.”

  “Ah!” Miss Watkins was impressed. “That’s very fine. Your PPA did show signs of a penchant for the written word.”

  “Really?” Maxie lapped up this crumb of encouragement like a hungry bloodhound. Pamela had never approved of Maxie’s job with Mamie—another thing she had in common with Maxie’s mother. “I thought I’d ask Mamie about a full-time job at the Sentinel.”

  “An excellent idea,” approved Miss Watkins.

  Suddenly red and blue lights began flashing their garish warning on the walls of Francine’s once more. A universal groan rose from the remaining patrons.

  “Good-bye, Maxie, I’ll see you Monday.” Miss Watkins gathered her gloves and set her hat at a jaunty angle. “Keep your chin up, Tobey. Apparently you’ve chosen the right time for a career move.” She led a second exodus up Francine’s stairs and out the door.

  “Time to go, Phyllis,” Dolly told their frizzy-haired friend, who was studying the photo of Francine. Lois was long gone.

  “I’m staying right here,” Phyllis declared. “I’ll show those goons they can’t push the little people around!”

  Dolly took her elbow firmly. “Don’t be a dope, Phyll,” she said, not unkindly. “It’s late and it’ll be even later by the time you get done with night court.” She escorted the recalcitrant policy maker up the stairs, and Maxie trailed behind.

  The unemployed heiress had been struck by an idea. If that sociology prof found career opportunity in gang warfare, why couldn’t Maxie? She could sell the Sentinel a series of stories! PART I: INSIDE A RAID, she planned mentally.

  When she reached the street, the flashing lights had just winked off. Maxie guessed that they’d served the policeman’s purpose—they’d emptied the bar as fast as a fox empties a dovecote.

  Maxie stopped in the shadow of the brick building and watched curiously as the policeman got out of his car. Was he going to pull in poor Tobey and Jill, or drunken Mattie Bye, who’d fallen asleep at the back table? But the cop walked past Francine’s entrance and turned into the alley, casting a glance behind him.

  Now Maxie’s investigative instincts were aroused. She followed him, peering cautiously around the corner. No one was in sight. Feeling her way along the brick wall, she went down the dark alley to where it joined another alley, the one that ran behind Francine’s.

  There was the policeman, deep in conversation with a second figure. Heart pounding, Maxie hid behind a clump of metal trash cans. Her brown two-piece melted into the shadows, except for the white piping, which made Maxie feel as conspicuous as a glowing firefly. She made a mental note to eliminate white from her wardrobe.

  Maxie peered over the top of the trash can, ignoring the sour smell of stale beer. A light went on in the rear window of one of the apartment buildings, giving her a look at the mystery man, as he talked with the cop.

  Why, he’s just a kid! she thought. And a good-looking one at that. He stood in the dark alley with the easy grace of an athlete, nonchalantly slapping something against his left hand. The policeman talked on in a monotonous murmur.

  “Good enough,” the youth finally interrupted. He handed the policeman the thing in his hand. It was a thick envelope.

  A payoff! Maxie realized, and the light went out. She couldn’t restrain an ecstatic sigh. Maybe this was the new crime boss they’d been talking about in the bar! No—Maxie dismissed the idea. No crime boss worth his weight in Cuban cigars would stand around in a dark alley making payoffs himself!

  She heard footsteps coming and crouched back down. The policeman didn’t glance her way, as he counted the money in the envelope. He pocketed the tainted money, shaming the very uniform he put it in, Maxie mentally composed her lead.

  Then she turned her attention to the man who had made the payoff, the—what was the term Mamie used? The bagman. PART II: INTERVIEW WITH A BAGMAN; that would be a stunner. If she could just get it across to this fellow that her only interest was as a journalist—

  “Excuse me,” she began boldly, but the mob flunky was closer than she’d thought, and the two collided as she emerged from behind the trash can. “Hey!” he exclaimed, and grabb
ed Maxie, whether to maintain his balance or hold her captive, she wasn’t sure.

  “Sorry—I just wanted to ask you a few questions—anonymously, of course—could you please let me go!” With a final twist Maxie partially freed herself. “Why—you’re a girl!” she gasped.

  “That makes two of us.” The husky voice vibrated in Maxie’s ear and raised a crop of goose bumps on her bare arms. He—no, she—released Maxie and retreated a step. Maxie felt a queer twinge of regret.

  “You paid off that policeman to make trouble at Francine’s!” she accused the stranger. “How could someone like you be party to such a thing?” The discovery that the bagman was a girl, and a distinctly boyish one, had turned Maxie’s journalistic objectivity into indignation.

  The girl seemed amused at Maxie’s anger. “Did I interrupt your sorority do?” she drawled. “The Knock Knock is still swinging—why don’t you go there? Too hoity-toity?”

  “So you’re from the Knock Knock,” Maxie sniffed. “I should have guessed!”

  “Why?” demanded the stranger. “Because of the way I look? I’m not respectable, not the kind you want at Francine’s, is that it?” There was resentment in her voice as she flung out, “You college girls make me sick!”

  “I never went to college,” retorted Maxie. “What have you got against college girls anyway?”

  She felt oddly excited as she peered at the stranger’s face, trying to make out her features. She sensed the mannish girl was doing the same. They were standing quite close to each other now, and Maxie felt that funny tingly sensation all over, even as she told herself that the girl’s part in the raid was reprehensible.

  “Maybe one of them broke my heart.” Now the stranger’s velvety voice held a teasing note.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?” Why, I’m flirting with her! Maxie realized, half horrified. What’s the matter with me?

  “You’d know something about heartbreakers, wouldn’t you?” The stranger’s voice dropped a notch and became infinitely more suggestive. She moved a fraction of an inch toward Maxie and lifted her hand to fluff Maxie’s tousled tresses. “You’re all mussed,” she murmured.