Don't Call Me Madame Read online

  There was a long dark-wood bar and there were small dark-wood tables. Tom’s whores always sat at the tables, never at the bar. Strictly speaking, they were not, quite, Tom’s whores: they were discreet young women, some not so young, who, for the privilege of working out of Tom’s Pub, paid him in advance, on the nights they worked, twenty-five dollars, which completed their transaction with Tom of Tom’s Pub. He did not pimp for them, nor did he have any personal connection with any of them. The girls made their own assignations, and could come back for more if they so wished, all for the same entrance fee of twenty-five dollars. Tonight, Tony had counted a baker’s dozen, thirteen, and had done sums in his head and had decided that Tom of Tom’s Pub did pretty all right for himself. Thirteen times twenty-five meant that Tom had already earned three hundred and twenty-five dollars, and all that aside from the sale of whiskey, which was quite brisk because the bar was crowded with men. Of course Tony’s arithmetic might be a bit off: John had warned him that some of the women at the tables could well be ordinary customers rather than lively ladies with bodies for hire. But whatever the intentions of the thirteen, none of them pleased him, and he was beginning to think of moving on when the blonde walked in.

  She was tall, she was slender, she had shapely legs, and when she turned toward a table he saw that she had a big round ass tightly encased in a shiny wet-look miniskirt. His heart began a wild thumping, and he made his move quickly, before she could be preempted by another. He did what he had seen other men do: he left the bar and went to her table. His bill at the bar was paid: Tom’s procedure was pay-as-you-go. Awkwardly, he stood over her.

  “May I?” he said.

  She looked up with narrow brown eyes.

  “Beg pardon?” A nasal twang.

  “May I … uh … buy you a drink?”

  A little grin with the corner of her mouth. “Not while you’re standing like a statue up there.”

  “May I … uh … sit down?”

  “Please,” she said.

  He sat down opposite her. It was a little table. His knees touched hers. His heart was thumping. His mouth was dry. “I … uh …” he began.

  And the waiter was there.

  “Your … uh … pleasure?” he said.

  “A bourbon and Coke,” she said to the waiter.

  “A Scotch and soda,” he said to the waiter.

  The waiter went away. His knees were touching hers. She could have moved hers away. She did not. Her grin was full now. She had gleaming little teeth.

  “You’re a quick one, aren’t you?”

  “Me?” he said.

  “I hardly just came in.”

  “You’re very pretty.”

  She was not pretty. She had a long nose and thin lips and a sallow complexion and she was at least thirty-five years old, maybe more. But her teeth were good, and her affable grin made dimples in her cheeks, and her bare arms were smooth and firm. Inside that shiny black skirt was a crazy, wonderful ass; on top she was wearing a flimsy, see-through blouse trimmed strategically with lace. “Very pretty indeed,” he said.

  “Don’t kid a kidder, buster.”

  “You are,” he said.

  “In the eyes of the beholder,” she said.

  “And you’ve got a wild figure.”

  “That, yes. That, in all modesty, I have to admit. Once upon a time I was a bellydancer. But my damn hips got too big.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Look, a woman, if she knows how, she can hang on to her figure. Like I’m a nut for calesthenics. I would say my figure’s just the same as when I was a girl. But the backside, excuse the expression, that you can’t do much about. When it starts bulging up on you, it’s like, well, a despair.”

  “Oh now, cut it out,” he said. “Look, I saw you when you came in, didn’t I? Gorgeous legs and a gorgeous, er, backside.”

  “In the eyes of the beholder.” She laughed.

  “Happens I dig a gorgeous backside.”

  “All I gotta say, you got plenty there to dig.”

  The waiter brought the drinks, the Scotch in a shot glass, the soda on the side, and the bourbon in a shot glass, the Coke on the side. Tony gulped the Scotch, sipped soda. As though taking her cue from him, she did the same: gulped the bourbon, sipped Coke. The waiter was still there. “Two more of the same,” Tony said.

  “Yes, sir,” said the waiter and went away.

  “Tell you a secret,” she said.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m stoned. I am stoned.”

  “It doesn’t show.”

  “If you’re a lady, you can carry it.”

  “Like you carry that gorgeous backside.”

  “Oh, you are an ass-man, aren’t you?”

  “Why do you think I got to you so quickly?”

  “There’s them that don’t dig ass, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  “I do.”

  “And I dig them that do. Crazy?”

  “No.”

  “Could be, my friend, you and I, we’re like soulmates.”

  “Could very well be.”

  “I got another secret to tell you.”

  “Tell me.” He was warming up to her.

  “I was here earlier tonight.”

  “Here in this joint?”

  “It’s not a joint. It’s Tom’s Pub.”

  “Here in Tom’s Pub?”

  “Met a guy and went out with him. Turned out to be a real creep, a square. Bored the agates off me. Turned him loose, and came back. Like I told you, I’m stoned. Figured I’d come back for a last look. If there was a guy around who pleases me, okay. If not I go home, knock down some more bourbon, and go to sleep.”

  “Do I please you?”

  “You please me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “One thing I gotta say about the creep — he was liberal. Are you liberal?”

  “You mean my politics?”

  “Oh, you’re a real funny fella, aren’t you?”

  The waiter brought the drinks. This time they drank slowly.

  “Lois,” she said. “My name is Lois.”

  “Frank,” he said.

  “Just Frank?”

  “Just Lois?”

  “Lois Maxwell.”

  “Frank Hunter.”

  He was registered as Frank Hunter. In a double room. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hunter.

  “Hi, Frank Hunter.”

  “Hi, Lois Maxwell.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Frisco,” he said. “San Francisco.”

  “How long you gonna be in town?”

  “Couple of weeks. Business.”

  “You’re cute. You’re a real cute kid, Frankie. You’re very handsome. And you got crazy eyes. Real shiny crazy eyes. What are you on, Frankie?”

  “I’m on you, Lois.”

  “You got all the answers, don’t you? What’s your business?”

  “Salesman.”

  She laughed. “No wonder you got all the answers.” And now the narrow brown eyes appraised him carefully. The suit was expensive, the tie was expensive, the shirt was expensive. He was too damn pretty for an easy john, but he wasn’t a cop. A cop couldn’t afford to dress like that. “Honey,” she said, “you want a party?”

  “Yes.”

  “You gotta be a big spender.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like how much?”

  “You tell me, Lois.”

  “Oh this cute kid, he’s real cute. Okay. I already turned my trick with the creep. I already earned my pay-day with a nothing. You I’ll enjoy. You’re an ass-man, you’re a crazy wild one, I know it. It’s no fast shack, you and me. We go for the night, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Can you lay a hundred on me?”

  “I can.”

  “You just bought me, baby. Pay the waiter.”

  He paid and they went out to the warm night.

  “Where’s your place?” she said.

  “Downtown.”
>
  “A hotel?”

  “A lousy little hotel, but it was the best I could do.”

  “Don’t apologize, out-of-towner. I know how you can get roped in. You got booze there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, let’s do something about that, hey?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am he calls me.” And she laughed.

  They walked until they found a liquor store. He bought a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of Scotch and the storekeeper wrapped the bottles into a neat package. They went out and waited at the curb until a cab came. They got into it and sat close together, she with her skirt hiked high, he with the neat package in his lap.

  He told the driver where to go.

  She sat closer. She snuggled a hand under the package.

  “Honey baby,” she whispered, “you’re going to thrill me to death. I know it, I feel it in my bones.”

  “I’m going to do that,” he said.

  FOUR

  CHAMBERS arrived at Goldie’s place at precisely nine-thirty. Goldie’s place was on the fifteenth floor of 905 Fifth Avenue, a sumptuous apartment with four telephones, each with a different unlisted number. He rang the bell and Goldie opened up for him: golden Goldie Dorn wearing black lace briefs and a black lace bra and a luminous smile of expensively jacketed teeth.

  “You’re early, sweetie.”

  “Nine-thirty on the dot.”

  “Jeez, and me not dressed yet. Excuse the attire.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful, sweetie. Come on in. Don’t just stand there and stare.”

  She was something to stare at. She was a huge woman with straight sturdy legs and a pair of breasts like enormous pumpkins. She had a big round face and big round eyes and a thick mass of golden hair and a big wide enthusiastic smile. Everything about Goldie was big, including her heart. She was fifty, looked forty, and had all the flair and joie de vivre of a youthful thirty.

  She looked at an elaborate antique wall-clock and shook her head.

  “Jeez, when it comes to time I’m a real dog.” And she grinned the wide white-capped grin. “Okay, me not even dressed when I insisted you be on time — I’m willing to pay a forfeit.”

  “Like what?”

  She pondered that for a moment. “Well, like a fast blow job. On the house.”

  He laughed, and so did she.

  “Goldie,” he said, “you and I, we’re past that kind of thing. We’re dear old friends. Remember me?”

  “Brother, do I remember your!”

  “That was long ago and far away.”

  “Yeah, long ago and far away, and I weighed about seventy pounds less at that time.”

  She shrugged, the massive but shapely breasts threatening to escape the imprisonment of the lace brassiere, then buoyantly strode to the bar and made him a drink. “Enjoy,” she said. “I’ll go get dressed. Be back in a jiff.”

  He sat on a high stool by the bar, lit a cigarette, sipped the drink, and thought about Goldie Dorn. They were old friends, were in fact dear old friends. Goldie, in the business of providing pulchritude-for-pay, was honest as a clean salt breeze from the ocean, as straight as a rapier, as fair and square (in the good old-fashioned sense of the word) as a Chinese box. In her day, Goldie had been a ravishing beauty. Early in youth, she had married a very rich man who had died, and had twice thereafter married rich men who had died. Either Goldie Dorn was a killer or she had selected husbands unfortunately fated for untimely deaths. Whatever, after her third widowhood, Goldie, rather broke (rather broke because all her life Goldie had been an extravagant spender), had permanently retired from the marriage-go-round. But what to do? How to live? How to make the income necessary to pander to her extravagant tastes? There was only one answer, and Goldie Dorn eagerly responded to it: she became a whore. But a tiptop whore. Tip. Top. Topmost.

  Goldie, still a svelte beauty then, had been, by virtue of three wealthy spouses, a flying jet-setter, and in the throes of the third widowhood had had a plethora of jet-setting contacts. When the masculine males of the jet-setting contacts learned that golden Goldie was willing to lay it on the line for loot, they laid their loot on the line to lay her, and her telephone tinkled ceaselessly, and golden Goldie Dorn became the most fabulously successful single practitioner in all of New York City — until age forty-one.

  At age forty-one Miss Goldie Dorn retired from active practice.

  At age forty-one Miss Goldie metamorphosed from miss to madame.

  Smart Goldie, nine years ago one hundred pounds overweight, still lively and joyous but now beginning to age, had considered her future and had decided upon a more venturesome venture. True, the miss became a madame — but a madame with aplomb and discretion. She did not use professional prostitutes in her new venture: she sedulously applied herself to the recruitment of working girls on working jobs who had the need and the spirit to put out for a fantastic emolument to be garnered from a charmingly interesting sideline. She chose photographers’ models, fashion models, nurses, airline stewardesses, dancers, actresses, nighttime entertainers, daytime receptionists, executive secretaries, salesladies, buyers, TV commercialists, filing clerks — even bookkeepers — provided they were young enough and dazzlingly attractive and bright in the head. Those were the criteria: youth, beauty, intelligence. Over the years she had interviewed a gross lot of palpitating applicants and had rigorously rejected most of them. Those selected had been intermittently supplied with rich, gracious, generous, discreet and gentle men for whom the girls in turn supplied their bodies and fifty percent of the take to Goldie Dorn. Her clientele was upper crust: society guys out for kicks, husbands whose wives were on vacation, wives (with lesbian tendencies) whose husbands were on vacation, Europeans in America, western businessmen east, southern businessmen north, statesmen from Washington, judges, politicians, senators, poets, artists, architects, Arab oil people, Israeli tycoons, faculty professors, militants black and white, moderates black and white, doctors doing field work in venereal disease, psychiatrists doing field work in self-analysis, and Hollywood stars anxious to be adorned by a beautiful girl. There were no rules. The gal was the guy’s at a properly representative fee — for dinner, a play, the opera, a ballet, for a whirl at a discothèque or as companion at a sedate party — but whoever the man, if he desired the body during its term for hire, that body was his at the asking.

  From the vast mass of eager applicants, Goldie had selected an elite who met all of her exacting requirements. Goldie’s girls reaped a golden harvest without the sowing of a single seed or running the risk of being cropped by the coppers. Goldie sowed all the seeds, and no vice squad guys complicated Goldie’s life. Her girls were not hustlers, not streetwalkers, not B-girls, not bar-creeps, not pickups-for-a-price, nor, even, did they entertain for profit in their own apartments (or Goldie’s). A call would come in on one of the four private wires, and Goldie would make contact with one of her girls, and the girl would go to the man, who would either be an old client or a new one recommended by an old client. And no private dates were permitted with any of the clients (and the girls knew that if they broke that rule they would no longer enjoy favor as one of Goldie’s golden girls). If a man liked a girl and wished in the future to see her again, he was to call Goldie — not the girl.

  Thus Goldie Dorn had established a thriving but quietly confidential commerce in a service necessary in these times of our lives (and other times of other lives). She had waxed fat but not indolent; Goldie was always on the ball. She respected her girls and they respected her: she was the mother-image (so many of them called her mama), she took interest in their problems, advised and assisted in their personal lives. When one of them married, or for whatever other reason retired, Goldie recruited a replacement from the long waiting list of acceptable applicants.

  And now Goldie Dorn, attired in an expensive but conservative linen suit, returned to the drawing room and joined Peter Chambers at the bar. She poured a b
randy, sipped, said, “Do you know a guy by name Barry Burnett?” She drank down the brandy and poured more. “You, in your line of work, you figure to know these types.”

  “I do,” Chambers said, “but you don’t figure. How in hell does a Goldie Dorn come up with a Barry Burnett?”

  Barry Burnett was rough, tough, mean, a momser, a professional killer high in echelon, an H-man rich enough to handle easily an $80-a-day habit, and he was one of Mark Montague’s star customers, but he figured far outside the periphery of Goldie’s respectable ken. Barry Burnett! That name belonged in Goldie’s mouth like a decayed front tooth, and no decayed teeth at all belonged in Goldie’s mouth.

  “He’s been bugging me,” Goldie said.

  “For what?”

  “A piece of the action.”

  “Honey, your kind of action is tight inside an exclusive circle. How does a Barry Burnett fit in?”

  “You tell me, sweetie.”

  “I’m afraid, madame, you’ll have to tell me.”

  “Don’t call me madame.”

  He grinned. “First you’ll have to tell me.”

  “I’m going to do that.” She looked at her wristwatch. “We still have time. Oh, that bitch. That Dorothy Steel. Oh, that little son of a bitch.”

  “Easy,” Chambers said. “Let’s take it step by step. Barry Burnett.”

  “He contacted me a couple of weeks ago, and he’s been bugging me since.”

  “For what?”

  “For fifteen hundred dollars a week.”

  “For what?”

  “For protection.”

  “Do you need protection?”

  “Like you need a hole in the head.”

  She drank brandy. She took a cigarette from a box on the bar.

  Chambers lit it for her. “Goldie, I’m going to have to ask some questions.”

  “Ask.”

  “Impertinent questions, but necessary if you want me to handle this guy.”

  “Ask.”