“Yes, please,” Samantha said, quickly getting up and following him.
Mike, who she’d almost forgotten, slipped her arm in his. He was looking at her oddly, as though he were warning her about something, but she didn’t have the time or inclination to try to figure out what was bothering him.
She followed the old man into a pretty yellow and white room that had a huge bay window looking out toward the sand and the ocean. Refusing to see the four men, two of them with dogs, walking up and down the area, she saw only the beauty.
The round table, with only two chairs at it, was set with a pretty teapot and two matching cups and saucers, and there was a large plate of little cakes that looked on the edge of being stale.
“Would you pour?” Barrett asked Samantha, pleasing her with his request. He refused to eat or drink, so she served only Michael and herself while Barrett sat quietly and watched her.
“With the right clothes and hair you could be Maxie,” he whispered. “Even your movements are like hers. Tell me, dear, do you sing?”
“Some,” she said modestly, for she had always liked to sing, but only for her family.
The three of them were quiet for a moment, Mike sitting on his chair looking like a preacher at a pornography convention. For some reason he seemed to be disapproving of everything she said and did. His absurd jealousy couldn’t extend to this sweet old man, could it?
“Would you like for me to tell you about that night?” Barrett asked.
“Please do,” Samantha said, sipping her tea and eating a small cake. “If you would like to tell us, that is. If you’re not too tired.” She ignored Mike’s foot stepping on hers to tell her that this is what they came for. She was not going to tire a ninety-one-year-old man just so Michael Taggert could write some nasty book about him.
“It would give me great pleasure to tell you,” he said, smiling at her. In the sunlight he looked older than he had in the living room, and Samantha had an urge to tuck him up on the couch so he could take a nap.
Barrett took a deep breath and began to talk.
“I guess it’s an old-fashioned term and it seems out of place now, but I was a gangster. I sold whiskey and beer to people when the government had declared it illegal to sell liquor or even to drink it. Because of some bad things that happened, we sellers of alcohol got a very bad reputation.” He paused to smile at Samantha again.
“I can’t offer an apology for what I did. I was young and I didn’t know any better. All I knew was that it was the Great Depression, and while other men were standing on bread lines, I was making fifty grand a year. And making money was important to a man when he was in love as I was.”
Barrett paused a moment in memory. “Maxie was
beautiful. Not loudly beautiful, but quiet and elegant, a real knockout.” He smiled at Samantha fondly. “Like you,” he said, making her blush.
“Anyway, Maxie and I had been a pair for months. I’d asked her to marry me hundreds of times, but she said she wouldn’t marry me until I went legit. I wanted to, but I was making too much money and I couldn’t see myself settling down somewhere selling insurance. But then came that Saturday night that changed so many lives. May the twelfth, 1928.
“When I look back on it, I wonder that I didn’t have a premonition that night that something was going to happen, but I didn’t. I was on top of the world. My right-hand man, Joe, a man who’d been my friend since we were kids together, had picked up the receipts that day and they were the best ever, so I bought Maxie a pair of earrings. Diamonds with pearls. Nothing big or flashy since Maxie didn’t like showy jewelry, but these were real nice.
“I went to Jubilee’s Place—that’s where Maxie was singing—feeling on top of the world. Right away I went to Maxie and gave her the earrings. I thought she’d be happy, but she wasn’t. She sat down on a chair and started to cry. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, and it took me a long time to get it out of her.”
Barrett’s voice lowered, as though what he was saying was very difficult. “She told me she was going to have our baby.”
Drawing in her breath sharply, Samantha wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t dare stop his story.
“Maxie was very upset about her pregnancy, but I was the happiest man in the world,” Barrett said, continuing, “because I knew then that she’d have to agree to marry me. But I was wrong. Even when she was going to have a baby, she still said she wouldn’t marry me unless I gave up the rackets.”
Barrett gave what on a younger man would have been described as a grin. “I agreed that I would. I would have agreed to anything that night if it meant having the woman I loved marry me. But between you and me, I don’t know if I would have stayed away from the rackets. Maybe in a year or so I would have gotten restless and gone back, but that night I meant it when I said I would get out.
“I wanted us to leave the club right then and go get married, but Maxie said she had to sing that night, that she couldn’t let Jubilee down. I agreed only if she’d promise that it would be her last time to perform in public. In those days there was no talk of a woman wanting a career. All Maxie wanted was what I wanted: a home for the two of us and our children.”
Barrett stopped and looked out the window. “She sang that night and I’d never heard her sing prettier. Like a bird.
“About ten o’clock, I guess, she took a break and I got up from my table to go backstage to see her. On the way I made a trip to the…you know, and when I was about to leave, just as my hand was on the door, I heard the first shots and the first screams. I knew right away what had happened. Back in those days I was small potatoes in the business. By that I mean I sold to only a few places, most of them up in Harlem. Most of the city was controlled by a man named Scalpini. I had already figured that Scalpini would have heard of our haul that day and I knew he’d be mad, but I thought he’d just send some of his guys over to try to work out a deal with me. But he didn’t do that. He sent eight men to Jubilee’s Place with typewriters—machine guns.
“I knew the men were after me, but all I cared about was getting to Maxie. I pushed open the door and already the club was full of screaming, hysterical, running people and blood—blood was everywhere. I had to push a woman’s body aside to get the door open, then I had to walk over two people who were screaming on the floor. The bullets were flying everywhere and I took one in my shoulder then a second one in my side, but I kept going. I was afraid Maxie would leave her dressing room and come out or that maybe Scalpini’s men would go after her because Maxie wasn’t the kind of woman to think of herself first. She’d never run out the back door if she heard shots coming from the front.
“I almost made it to the back when something fell and hit me on the head. I think it was a chandelier. Whatever it was, it knocked me out cold. When I woke, it was hours later, and there was a man in a white coat bending over me. ‘This one’s alive,’ he yelled and walked past me. I grabbed his ankle and tried to ask questions, but he shook me off. I think I passed out after that, because when I woke again, it was the next day and I was in a hospital, and my side and shoulder were bandaged. It was another day before I found out what happened. Scalpini had decided to get rid of me and all the men who worked for me, so he sent his men over to shoot all of us. It didn’t matter to him that there were probably a hundred people in the nightclub that night and that most of them had nothing to do with me. Scalpini meant to kill us all and he very nearly did. I lost seven men that night.”
He paused for a long while, and when Barrett spoke again, there was a catch in his voice. “I lost Joe that night. Joe was my childhood friend, and he’d saved my life when we were kids. He was the only person I have ever before or since trusted. Joe was dead, took a bullet right through the forehead, so he must have died instantly. And there were twenty-five or so others either killed or injured that night. But worst of all, Maxie disappeared. No one knew what had happened to her. For a long time after that I searched for her, but I couldn’t find any trace of her. She walked out, and I’m sure it was my fault. Maybe she knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything that wasn’t exciting, maybe she didn’t want her child raised with a gangster for a father. I don’t know. All I know is that I never saw or heard from her again.”
He stopped talking for a moment, then took some long, slow breaths to calm himself. “I changed after that night. I’d lost the two most important people in my life—my best friend, my only friend, and the woman I loved. Samantha, can you understand how miserable I was after that night?”