Her father waves his hand. “Oh, she knows. She’s my wife! Of course she knows.”
This keeps getting stranger.
“Okay, but we don’t want anyone to know who doesn’t have a need to know,” Rainy says. It takes her father a moment to figur
e out that by “we” she does not mean the family, but the army.
“Of course,” he says, straightening up and sending a glance in the direction of his wife.
“You just need to pass the word that we’d like one of our people to meet with him. No cops—this is not about the law.”
That sounds strange coming out of her mouth, but she will have time to consider the moral question later.
Her father nods. “I can tell someone who will tell someone . . .” He shrugs in a way that signals that after that it will be out of his hands. “But you, you don’t talk to Don Vito, you understand me? Some of those people, they’re animals, these dagos.”
Rainy gives him a kiss on the cheek and the doorbell rings. “I’m just passing along a message,” she says, sure that she’s telling the truth. No one with any sense would strike a bargain with a three-striper. “Please do make the call as soon as possible. My colo—my superior officer is in a hurry.”
Halev arrives looking perfectly respectable, wearing a dark suit and a yarmulke, shoes shined, hair combed, face scrubbed, fingernails trimmed, manner a bit intimidated and nervous. After enduring a thorough grilling from Rainy’s mother and father—an interrogation that is only slightly more gentle than what Rainy’s SS colonel endured—Rainy and Halev escape into the stairwell and finally into the glowing Manhattan night.
“Sorry about all that,” Rainy says. She breathes a long exhalation of relief. She’s bearded her father in his den, and Halev has not been frightened off by her mother, so now she can let herself relax, at least a little.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Halev says. “Just help me get these bamboo shoots out from under my fingernails.”
Rainy laughs. Then says, “Sorry about the uniform too. My good dress needed mending.”
“I wouldn’t have recognized you any other way,” he says, and adds with awkward gallantry, “Besides, you look better in a uniform than any other girl in a ball gown.”
The eternally logical part of her brain considers counterarguments to that obviously false statement. The rest of her brain tells her to shut up and accept the compliment.
They walk side by side, but not arm in arm, and descend into the subway before emerging on Fifth Avenue, just blocks from the club on East Fifty-Third Street. They race, laughing, to avoid a sudden shower.
The Stork Club is the place to see and be seen, and Rainy half expects to be denied entry. This is, after all, the epicenter of New York’s low society—actors and actresses, impresarios, promoters, theater owners, and writers—all presided over and reported on by the powerful columnist Walter Winchell.
The Stork Club’s owner, Sherman Billingsley, a garrulous, table-hopping force of nature and former bootlegger, greets them as they squeeze through the door just ahead of a woman in evening wear with gloves up to her biceps and décolletage down to . . . well, much farther than Rainy would ever have dared.
“So, you’re Saul’s boy?” Billingsley says, shaking Halev’s hand before bowing slightly to Rainy, raising her hand and not quite touching it to his lips. “And with a charming sergeant on your arm!”
They are not given the best table in the house. In fact they are shown to a small table far from the dance floor and far too near the banging kitchen door, but it is impossible to resent this in any way as the best tables are occupied by the rich and the famous.
“Is that Orson Welles?” Rainy blurts. “And . . . and . . . is that . . . is that really Frank Sinatra? He’s not very tall, is he?”
The room is all swank leather booths, crisp linen on the tables, glittering crystal, and rushing waiters. The band is just filing out onto the stage.
“This may not be a discreet question, but how did you get reservations here?” Rainy asks.
Halev smiles, leans across the table, and says, “My father is rather successful in the garment trade, and my uncle Max is tailor to probably a quarter of the men in the room.”
“Do tell me you’re rich,” Rainy jokes. “It will make my parents so happy. The only thing better would be if you were a doctor.”
“I am not in any way rich,” Halev says. “My father? My uncle?” He shrugs. “They make a living.”
They make a living. So, yes: rich, or close to it.
They sip cocktails and sneak discreet glances at the famous folk. They each order a shrimp cocktail to be followed by a steak with asparagus and potatoes au gratin. A very tall man trailing a small gaggle of men and women passes by and tosses a casual salute and a wink at Rainy. It’s not until the big man is past that Rainy recognizes him and very nearly stabs her fork into her tongue.
“Was that John Wayne?”
“Elisheva Schulterman,” Halev says, leaning back in his chair with an expression of great satisfaction. “You have just been saluted by the Duke.”