Murder For Love

"What's a Bosom Caresser?" he asked.

"I have no idea," I said. "Our waiter asked me if I wanted one, and I said yes, and he brought it to me."

"What's in it?"

"Mickey," I said, "what's in a Bosom Caresser?"

"Talk about fresh!" the redhead said, and rolled her eyes.

"Are you asking what I would put in a Bosom Caresser?" Mickey said. "If I were making such a drink?"

"Who is this person you're talking to?" the redhead said.

"A friend of mine," Mickey said. "This is Maxie," he said, and squeezed her knee.

"How do you do?" I said.

"This is Richie," he said.

"Familiar for Richard," I said.

"I'm familiar for Maxine," Maxie said.

In the other room, the band started playing "Mexicali Rose."

"If you want a Bosom Treasure, you got to tell me what's in it," Angelo said.

"Bosom Caresser," I said.

"Whatever," Angelo said. "I have to know the ingredients."

"Mother's milk, to begin with," Mickey said.

"You're as fresh as he is," Maxie scolded, rolling her eyes at me and playfully slapping Mickey's hand, which was working higher on her knee.

"Laced with gin and egg white," I said.

"Ick," Maxie said.

"And topped with a cherry," Mickey said.

"Double-ick," Maxie said.

"We don't have any mother's milk," Angelo said.

"Then I'll have a Rock V Rye," I said.

"I'll have another one of these, whatever it is," Mickey said.

"Ditto," Maxie said.

"Hold the fort," Mickey said, getting off his stool. "I have to visit the gents."

I watched him as he headed toward the men's room. He stopped at my grandmother's table, planted a noisy kiss on her cheek, and then moved on.

"Was he really a war hero?" Maxie asked me.

"Oh, sure," I said. "He was in the battle of-"

"Just keep your damn hands off me!" Dominique shouted from the dance floor.

I was off that stool as if I'd heard an incoming artillery shell whistling toward my head. Off that stool and ru

"Let go of me!" she shouted.

"No."

A smile on Mr. Noland's face. His hand clutched around her narrow waist.

Maybe he didn't see her eyes. Maybe he was too busy getting a big charge out of this slender, gorgeous woman trying to extricate herself from his powerful grip.

"Damn you!" she said. "Let go or I'll…"

"Yes, baby, what is it you'll do?"

She didn't tell him what she'd do. She simply did it. She twisted her body to the left, her arm swinging all the way back and then forward again with all the power of her shoulder behind it. Her bunched left fist collided with Mr. Noland's right cheek, just below his eye, and he touched his eye, and looked at his fingertips as if expecting blood, and then very softly and menacingly said, "Now you get hurt, baby."

Some people never learn.

He had called her "baby" once, and that had been a bad mistake, so what he'd just done was call her "baby" again, which was an even bigger mistake. Dominique nodded curtly, the nod saying "Okay, fine," and then she went for his face with both hands, her nails raking bloody tracks from just under his eyes- which I think she'd been going for-all the way down to his jawline.

Mr. Noland punched her.

Hard.

I yelled the way I'd yelled going across the Marne.

I was on him in ten seconds flat, the time it took to race through that arch and charge across the dance floor, the time it took to clench my fists and hit him first with the left one and then with the right one, bam-bam, a one-two punch to the gut and the jaw that sent him staggering back from me. He rubbed his jaw in surprise. His hands came away with the blood from Dominique's fingernail-raking. He looked at the blood in surprise too. And then he looked at me in surprise, as if trying to figure out how some madman had got inside this civilized speakeasy. He didn't say a word. He merely looked surprised and sad and bloody, shaking his head as if wondering how the world had turned so rotten all at once. And then, abruptly, he stopped shaking his head and took a gun out of a holster under his di

Just like that.

Zip.

One minute, no gun. The next minute, a gun.

Dominique took off one of her high-heeled shoes.

As she raised her leg, Mr. Noland looked under her skirt at her underwear-black silk panties in my grandmother's "Sirocco" line, $4.98 over the counter in any of her shops. Mr. Noland then realized what Dominique was going to do with the shoe. What she was going to do was hit him on the side of the head with it. Which was possibly why he aimed the gun right at her heart.

I did the only thing I could do.

In reaction, Mr. Noland bellowed in rage and doubled over in pain, his hands clutching for his groin, his knees coming together as if he had to pee very badly, and then he fell to the floor and lay there writhing and moaning while everywhere about him were dancers all aghast. Bruno rushed to him at once and knelt beside him, his hands fluttering. "Oh, God, Mr. Noland," he said, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Noland," and Mr. Noland tried to say something but his face was very red and his eyes were bulging and all that came out was a sort of strangled sputter at which point one of the women with the purple hair came ru

Which is when I grabbed Dominique's hand and began ru

"A bootlegger, a narcotics smuggler, a hijacker, and a trusted friend of an even bigger gangster named Little Augie Orgen, that's who Legs Diamond is."

All this from Mickey Tataglia, who hurried us through tu

"He also owns a second-floor speakeasy called the Hotsy Totsy Club on Broadway, between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth streets, that's who Legs Diamond is. You did a stupid thing, both of you. Do you know who arranged the murder of Jack the Dropper?"

"Who is Jack the Dropper?" Dominique asked.

High heels clicking, long legs flashing through dusty underground tu

"Jack the Dropper," he said impatiently. "Alias Kid Dropper, whose real name is Nathan Kaplan, who all three of him was shot dead by Louis Kushner in a trap the Diamonds set up."

"The Diamonds," I said.

"Legs Diamond," Mickey said. "Alias Jack Diamond, alias John Higgins, alias John Hart, whose real name is John Thomas Noland, who all five of him will not like getting kicked in the balls by a fucking dope who shot himself in the foot."

"Richard did not shoot himself in the foot," Dominique said heatedly.

"I'm sure the Diamonds will take that into consideration when he kills you both. Or if not him, then one of his apes. The Diamonds has a lot of such people on his payroll. I wish you both a lot of luck," he said, and pressed another button. A wall swung open. Beyond it was an alleyway.

"You're on 88th Street," Mickey said.

We stepped outside into a dusky evengloam.

Mickey hit the button again.

The door closed behind us.

We began ru

We got to Pe