Chapter Twenty-One
In Leviticus, it reads that it is better for a man to cast his seed into the belly of a whore than onto the ground. Perhaps, even God recognizes the need for women like me, and perhaps, prostitutes won't be so damned in the next world. One of the things that has caused me to wonder is that a man is allowed to redeem himself, but a woman isn't. A drunk can quit drinking or a criminal can reform and the world will treat him like a hero. But a woman? She's told to get back to the whorehouses where she belongs. The only way a chippy can reform, is to move far away, change her name, dye her hair, and hope that none of her customers ever recognize her. If someone does, she might as well hang out the red lantern.
There is a poem, a verse that I dearly love. I have it written down on a scrap of paper and keep it in my dresser. Sometimes, I'll open the drawer, read it slowly, and go about my business with the little comfort it gives me.
Some there are who tell of one who threatens he will toss to hell.
The luckless Pots he marred in making-Pish!
He's a good fellow and all will be well
I have read that no custom, tradition, or institution will survive unless it is useful or needed. Whether this is true of prostitution or not, I will leave to the men in ivy towers to debate. Whether I am a necessity or an unneeded evil, I don't know, but I do know that many men have taken advantage of my availability. Somehow, I doubt if prostitution has changed very much since the days of Rahab.
Nor has the tons of material written about the evils of prostitution served to keep women out of the brothels. I think that just as many have been eager to become prostitutes now as there ever has been. There was hardly a week went by that some woman didn't ask me to take her on. They ranged all the way from teen-agers on up to women in their late forties. The stock excuse that they all gave was that they needed the money and I suppose it would take a doctor to find out their real reasons.
During the next few months, I spent long and hard hours following my profession. A brothel looks a lot different from the inside out than it does from the outside looking in. There is nothing glamorous, exciting, or romantic about prostitution. If it's anything, it's just a monotonous but lazy way of earning a living.
I don't hate the men who come to me, whether they are nice to me or if they try to abuse or shame me. I've learned not to expect or hope for too much from my customers. I try to show them a good time and give them their money's worth. If I got a "thank you" or a kind word, I'm satisfied.
I ran my house as a place of business. I had to in order to stay in business. Competition is pretty keen along Green street and when it came to a customer, it was every girl for herself. Each morning, I would drive around town in my convertible to advertise Miss Wanda Lane. I guess everyone in town got to know my face and my car and my name. I had reached the point where I felt no shame when women stared at me when I drove down the street or if men let out cat calls.
The only thing that caused a ripple along Green street was that they found the man who had run over Bill. It had been an accident.
I heard from John occasionally and I answered his letters. He said he was doing fine and asked me to visit him. I never did. I knew I would break down if I did. Occasionally, I saw Tom when I went up town, but he would always look the other way. I knew that it was over between us and I mailed back the ring he gave me. In my letter that I tried to write, I tried to explain things. But it was impossible. The words wouldn't come out on paper, so I mailed the ring back without a word.
I was the most popular and most notorious prostitute on Green street. My total earning were a third greater than any other chippy on the street, but I also hustled more hours than any of them did. I kept my sign on and my door open eighteen to twenty hours at a stretch. I would doze in the chair beside the window while Rosie watched the street for dates.
The small hours of the-morning were the hardest. The street outside was vacant and silent. I would sit and wait, and often for no reason at all, would burst out crying. Once, I called home, but when my father heard who was calling, he hung up without saying a word. When they learned I had become a prostitute, that was it. They have told the people back home that I am dead. My mother can't forgive me and she won't even answer my letters. I just hope that God won't be too angry with me.
Yet, most of the time, I didn't mind being a prostitute, and like most of the women in this business, I felt that a woman who worked in a store or factory was a sucker. She could earn a lot more a lot easier, just by selling it. I helped several women place themselves in whorehouses.
Despite the fact that we are outcasts, prostitutes, especially the ones in houses of prostitution, have certain business ethics. The first one is to always protect the identity of a customer. If she wanted to, a Madame could engage in blackmail and so could some of her prostitutes. But a man's name and reputation is safe in a brothel as far as the girls are concerned.
One of the hardest rules to learn is never to speak to a customer out in public. It gives a girl a jolt to have a guy come to her, joke and be real friendly with her, then to meet him out in public and see him turn his head because he's afraid she'll speak to him.
There are few prostitutes who will stoop to rolling a drunk or to steal money from a customer. In real life, it is the other way around. A prostitute is in constant danger of being knocked in the head by a thug pretending to be a customer. I keep my money hidden in the kitchen and carry only enough to make change in my room.
Once in broad daylight, while Rosie and I were gone, someone broke in and ransacked the house. They took about a hundred dollars and a diamond ring of mine. The police never found them.
But our greatest worry is pickpockets. You would be surprised at the number of men who have their minds on other things when they get into bed with me, and a prostitute soon learns that her bra or her stocking top is a very poor place to store her roll. I've found that the safest place to carry money is in my shoe. It's pretty hard for a customer to explain why he wants to take my shoe off when we're in bed. Still, I've had guys who tried it.
Early one morning, almost three months after Bill's death, Thomas called me and told me that I was to be at the Longbow Hunting Lodge at seven that night. But he wouldn't tell me why. It was the first time I had seen or heard from Thomas in several months. I gave Lois a call and she agreed to hustle for me.
The lake was about seven miles west of town and Longbow Hunting Lodge was set on a secluded part of the north beach. It was supposed to be an exclusive hunting club for millionaires and the like. To keep from being recognized, I drove Lois' car and I was stopped twice by men on the road up to the lodge. They searched the car and I had to prove to them who I was. I had never seen any of the men before.
When I got to the lodge, the yard was filled with cars. I was stopped again at the front door and had to wait until someone identified me. It was Grace. She took me inside.
Gathered in the bar were five big time politicians, several of the owners of the gambling joints and night clubs, and two Madames from Green street; Grace and a Madame named Doris. Chief of Police Smith was there, acting very nervous and laughing in a high pitched voice at every little joke. There were other men there whom I recognized as either being on the city council or holding some county political office. From the talk, I gathered that this wasn't the first meeting like this.
A man, now a judge, who was running for the state legislature or something, stood up and banged on the bar for order. The men sat down at the tables.
"Now folks, I'll be straight about it and right to the point," the judge said. "If the other boys get in, you can look for things to be shut up tighter than a drum. Now, you've read the speeches that Johnson (the opposition mayor) has been making and I don't have to tell you that he'll follow them up."
"What's it going to cost us?" a gambler spoke up. He didn't seem mad or anything. He had just asked a simple question, the same way he might have asked what time it was.
"It's going to cost plenty to beat them," the judge answered.
"How much is it going to cost us?" the gambler repeated. He threw his cigarette into the fireplace.
"About thirty thousand."
"O.K." He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. The other gamblers followed him.
"Now, how much can you ladies raise?" The judge turned towards us with a flimsy smile.
"We can't raise thirty grand," Grace answered.
"We were thinking about twenty."
I watched Grace bite her Up. The other Madame coughed.
"May I ask a question?" I asked. The judge looked at me with surprise and nodded.
"What's this all about? Why should we raise money for you?"
"It's like this; we keep you open and give you protection. If the other party gets in, they'll put you out of business. It's that simple," he answered, then looked at Grace. "Can you raise twenty thousand on Green street?"
Grace nodded.
That was it. They had got what they wanted from us and Grace told me later that the reason they had called us together like that was that they had been expecting a squawk from the gamblers. Otherwise, they would have come around and told us.
Grace, Doris, and I met in a roadhouse that night. We went over the list of Madames and based the tab on the number of girls they were keeping. It came out roughly five hundred for each girl and five hundred for each Madame. My share was a thousand dollars.
"How come I was called to that meeting?" I asked. I'm just a chippy."
"Don't let them kid you," Doris answered. "You've got more pull than you think."
In a week's time, we raised the twenty grand and two weeks later, we got the word to raise another ten grand. They were taking almost every dime that we were making.
On election night, the party that was in took a beating. Johnson won by a landslide. I turned off the TV and went to bed. Two nights later, I got a call from Thomas to be at the Longbow. Grace and I went together. Every Madame on the street watched us leave and were waiting for us to come back. It was funny, but all this was above the heads of the girls. They hardly knew or seemed to care what was going on. They knew that the street might be closed, but it meant nothing to them except a move to another brothel.
"Here comes the whipping," Grace said with a wry smile when we went into the hunting lodge.
The same Madames and gamblers were there, but the others had changed. I recognized Johnson from his photos and then I almost fell in my tracks. Thomas was the new chief of police. Johnson didn't say anything. He just sat back and listened, but his campaign manager did the talking and he had plenty to say.
"Now, you folks gave and gave plenty to the other guys," he said and tried to make it sound like we had done something wrong. "We ought to close you down for it, but we won't. We'll let things stand like they are."
"What about the Sheriff?" one of the gamblers asked. "He's a renegade now."
It took me a moment to figure out what he meant. The Sheriff still had two years to serve on his term and he was about the only one of the old party still in office.
"He's your headache, we can't do a thing with him," Johnson laughed. "There's nothing to keep him from closing you down if he wants to and remember, he'll be up for re-election in two years."
"Then he's your problem as much as he is ours," I said. "Just think of the smear that he could give your side. But can he raid the houses that are inside Parkville?"
"There's nothing that can stop him," Johnson nodded. He rubbed his chin with his finger, "However, there is another point. I made some promises to the voters and I should like to keep them. I want things a little more quiet on Green street. For example, take down those horrible neon signs."
We went home, a little worried. We had been given a lease on life, but it sounded like a short one. The only difference between the old and the new party was that we now paid graft to new faces. But the amounts remained the same. Jergens called and wanted to sell his share of the business for five thousand dollars. I was afraid to buy him out.
Two days later, the Sheriff had himself a ball. He was a renegade and he was playing it to the hilt. Instead of waiting until his election came up, he was beating the incumbent party to any glory. The front page of the morning paper showed him lustily swinging an ax to a roulette wheel. The rumor that hit the street was that we were next on the list.
We did what the mayor asked us to do. The neon signs came down and the fronts of the houses were dark. We sat in unlighted windows and watched the street. We were still there, but if you drove down the street, you might suppose that we were gone. We took customers in through the back door and only at night.
When I read the morning paper, I decided to take a long chance. I called the Sheriff on the phone and asked him to meet me.
"What for?" he almost bit my head off.
"Maybe we can work out a deal," I said.
He hung up on me. I figured it was over, but about three in the morning, he knocked on my back door. I turned out the lights and we sat in the darkness.
"What kind of a deal did you want to make?" he asked.
"I can give you third interest in my joint, if you'll keep the street open."
"No dice."
"Why not, you've taken money from this street," I snapped.
"Yeah, I have-so did the boys who were in office, but those days are gone," he said. "Have you been reading anything in the papers besides the funnies?"
"Orphan Annie is sad enough for me."
"There's been a couple of preachers trying to get this street closed. They helped get the old guys out and the new guys in," the Sheriff explained. "Johnson doesn't want to keep the whorehouses anyway."
I stared in the darkness at his shadow and heard him chuckle.
"There's a vice mob that wants to move into Parkville. The town gets a reputation for being a nice town and the boys in power have been promised more graft than the way things are now," the Sheriff chuckled. "They can arrest any whore who doesn't hustle for the mob and make a good showing on them. They won't have whores on just one street, they'll be all over town-out in the residential district, the hotels, even in the taxies. It'll be ten times worse than having the whorehouses."
A match flared bright and orange in the darkness and I caught a glimpse of his eyes when he lit a cigarette. They were blue and steady.
"Even if Johnson wanted to keep the whorehouses, the preachers wouldn't let him," he continued. "So when they crack this street, they'll bust it wide open and they'll show who owned what. That'll go for your fanny too."
I sat there in the darkness and drummed my fingers against the table.
"There's been a Grand Jury formed and they are going to start asking questions," he said.
"So to protect the boys, you've got to raid us. Is that it?"
"I'm afraid it is."
"How much time have we got?"
"Until two tomorrow morning," he answered. "Tell the Madames to get some of their girls out of town," he gave a long pause. "What about you?"
"I'm pretty big, ain't I?" I said slowly. "I guess it would look funny if I wasn't here."
"I'm afraid it would."
I'll leave the front door unlocked-don't bust it down."
That day, I spread the word to the other Madames. They didn't act too surprised and they started telling some of their girls to get out of town. I rented a hotel room and moved most of my clothes and the things I valued most to it. I stored my jewelry in the hotel safe. I burned any records that I could find.
Rosie stayed with me until almost nine that night and then I made her pack up and leave. We kissed each other good-by and both of us were crying when the taxi came for her. I settled down to wait.
The raid was quiet and business-like. None of the girls knew that it was coming off and several were caught in bed. When two deputies led me out of the house, a news photographer took my picture. I threw my shoe at him. We spent two hours in police court and were released on five hundred dollars bail.
The next day, we pleaded guilty either to being an inmate of a house of prostitution or a keeper of a house of prostitution. Our fines were five hundred dollars apiece. The judge ordered the brothels to be padlocked for a year and a day. It meant that Green street was no more. It would probably never return. I was given twenty-four hours to get out of town.
I had saved no money. The fines, the rake-offs, and the contributions to the campaign elections hadbled me white. I had to let my car go back and I cried when they took my beautiful white convertible away and put it on the sales lot. I had no choice but to sell my furniture to a dealer. All that I had to show for my efforts was two steamer trunks of clothes and about two hundred and fifty dollars. I probably could have done better working at the dime store.
I called Little Bits, the Madame who ran the brothel in Marshal, and told her my story. She said she would be glad to keep me. Whether I went to her sex parties or not depended on me, but I knew that I would. I wanted my convertible back.
Just for luck, I called Tom Sterling. When I told him my name, he hung up. When I went to the bus depot, a man handed me a box of candy. Inside, I found a note that said, 'Thanks" and five hundred dollars. I was sure that Thomas sent it.
Little Bits ran the only whorehouse in town and it was upstairs over a vacant drug store on a dark side street. The men came in through the drug store and up the rear inside stairs. The bedrooms were in a row down a narrow dimly Ik corridor and we waited in our bedrooms for the men. When a man came into my room, Little Bits would punch a hole in a card that I carried. I got two bucks for every hole she punched. My first day and night there, I took on sixty men.
I was there two days when a pimp came into my room. I was sitting on my bed, fixing my face.
"Little Bits says you ain't got no man," he said.
"No, I'm on my own."
"Now, that's no way for a gal to be," he said. "A gal like you needs someone to take care of her. I'll be your man."
It was as simple as that. I didn't have anyone to stand up for me and even if I had, I wouldn't have asked him to. For some reason, I just didn't care anymore. Sam, my new pimp, had another girl hustling for Little Bits. He waited in his car and at closing time, Little Bits would throw our cards down the stairs to him, so we wouldn't try to hold any money back from him.
One night, I had pulled back the blind to get some air and I saw Tony drive up. The pimp who had tried to move in on me in Parkville. I watched him and Sam talk for a moment, then Tony took a punch at Sam. I watched their shadows move back and forth as they fought. They were fighting over me, but who won didn't seem important.
It was Tony who came up the stairs. He came to my room and paused at the threshold. His lips were bleeding, his shirt torn, and his shoulder had been rubbed raw against the concrete.
"You're my girl now," he stated in a flat voice. I guess he expected me to argue, but I didn't.
T know," I said. "Come here and let me fix your face-you're a mess."
He sat down on the bed and I washed the blood off his face. A customer knocked on my door and I called out, "Busy," without turning my head.
"Tony, be good to me, will you?" I whispered.-"I will, Baby, I will," he promised.
I looked into his face. He wasn't much of a man, but a woman like me couldn't expect very much in a man. Tony was about all that a whore like me could expect or hope for. I looked at him and smiled.
"I'll earn you plenty," I promised.
He went on out, leaving my door open. My room seemed cold and empty. A man came down the hallway, I wiped away a tear and smiled at him. I hoped God wouldn't be too angry with me.