Vices and passions too troubling for daylight flourish in a smoky nocturnal realm where the things respectable people pretend to believe by day are eclipsed by casual carnality at night. Here, social barriers are banished, and one-night stands encouraged between fashion models and bikers, debutantes and delivery boys, gangsters and housewives.
Some niteries, like the Copacabana and Stork Club, have been around since dry days, but Harlem's Cotton Club lives only in memory, like a sax solo fondly but dimly recalled. Lately El Morocco had been transformed into a discotheque called Arthur—an all-night party for the Broadway and Hollywood crowd opened out of revenge by Sybil Burton after hubby Dick dumped her for Liz Taylor.
It was a loud new scene, and a blast in its brash way, even if I'd rather be squeezed in at a tiny table at Jules Podell's Copa, listening to Nat King Cole or Bobby Darin out in front of a big band. But those days were fading fast, and even now, my columnist buddy Hy Gardner at the Herald Tribune was preparing to gather his loot and head into the happy sunset.
How long would it be, I wondered, before I didn't recognize my own damn town?
It was eleven when we got to the old warehouse on a side street in the East Village. This was an establishment that went to no great shakes announcing itself, almost like something out of speakeasy days. The only indication that the building wasn't abandoned was a small glowing white neon outline of a bird—a pigeon, apparently—that stuck out above the door, next to which stood a bouncer type in a white shirt, black tie, and black leather pants.
This guy eyeballed everybody who entered, and turned some away. His criteria did not seem to be a matter of dress code, since a straight in a nice suit and tie was half of a rejected couple ahead of us.
Velda had been working all day and hadn't had time to change—she was still in the white blouse, tan jacket, and black skirt. But a tall dark-haired beauty like her, even if she was a decade older than the kids standing around the sidewalk smoking, was not about to be turned away anywhere. Even accompanied by a charm-school reject like me.
Within, the senses were immediately assaulted, starting with a smokiness that suggested a fire, and music so loud it took a while to discern it as more than white noise. Passing through a crowded, fairly narrow holding area off of which was the coat check to one side and MEN'S and LADIES' to the other, we entered a high-ceilinged near-darkness that the black light only magnified.
The warehouse interior had not been remodeled much, except for varicolored Day-Glo spatter on the walls that I guessed was meant to suggest pigeon droppings. A thatched-roof tiki-hut bar would shoot you either left or right into a sea of tables, many abandoned for the dance floor beyond. More tables were at left, tucked under facing balconies that had stairs at either end, and most of these were filled, amber cigarette eyes staring out, the sweet smell of weed wafting through the tobacco stench.
An unpretentious open stage had been put in against the back wall and a band of shaggy fake Beatles were doing what I now could tell was a Chuck Berry song with a British accent, using huge black and chrome amplifiers whose collective sound wasn't any louder than a 747 taking off. The drummer was up on a platform of his own, trying to break his cymbals. In Plexiglas cages suspended over the left and right of the stage, girls with long straight swinging hair wore fringe but not much else as they go-go-goed.
And on the wall above and behind the band, right onto the bricks, a bizarre film was playing, a nonsensical, stitched-together thing that combined still images ranging from the beautiful (bright flowers) to the horrific (decomposing animals) with clips from old silent films and newsreels, even World War Two footage from the Pacific, my jungle memories jarringly intercut with a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.
Colored lights were flashing, and now and then a strobe effect kicked in. Weirdly, a ceiling-suspended mirrored ball, right out of a ballroom for squares, was rotating and catching and throwing around those lights, the dance floor near the stage arrayed with teenagers and adults in their twenties and thirties and forties, all flapping their hands, winglike, and bobbing their heads. A pigeon dance? I didn't know and I didn't care.
Velda was smiling, though, getting a kick out of it. She always stayed simple with her fashion choices, but I saw her taking in with interest the miniskirts—polka dots and stripes and geometric shapes—while I took in the legs beneath.
We were still stranded toward the back of the big chamber, getting our bearings. A blonde wearing a mini comprised of small yellow plastic discs seemed to be the hostess—she had a short, jagged haircut that looked like an accident. We got lucky, because right when the blonde approached us, the band took its break, and we had just long enough, before the disc jockey took over, to tell her who we were and that we were expected.
We were shown up carpeted stairs to a balcony where we seemed to be above the sound system speakers enough for us to be able to hold something like a conversation. The blonde seated us at a standard-issue round black bar table near an iron railing over the dance floor, and a girl in a pink mini-dress with very tall platinum hair and exaggerated makeup worthy of a transvestite came and took our drink order.
I asked for a Pabst and Velda requested a Tab, and they arrived sooner than I expected. I went to pay and the little tall-hair honey waved "no"—it was on the house.
The balcony was fairly empty. You could tell the tables were occupied from the jackets on chairs and the drinks left behind by dancers on the floor below. The guy spinning platters talked to the crowd over the P. A., building momentum and doing the personality bit like a radio DJ. I was thinking about lighting up a Lucky and then decided with all the smoke in the air, it would be redundant.
A tall slender man in a powder-blue suit cut in the mod style with lacy collar and cuffs approached us with a smile and a decided limp. His clean shoulder-length hair was shades of brown and golden blond, a combination unknown to nature but familiar to hairdressers, and he was deeply tan. His smile was big and toothy, his face handsome with high cheekbones but very lined for his age, and he wore sunglasses whose lenses were the same light blue as his suit. The need for sunglasses in this dark club was not great, unless maybe you had a medical condition requiring protection from the flashing and strobing lights.
He extended a bony hand and I stood and shook it, then sat back down.
"Welcome, Mr. Hammer," he said, in a midrange voice easily heard above the music. He didn't even seem to be trying that hard. How did he do that?
"Mr. Wren," I acknowledged with a nod. Making him was no problem: he wore the same big smile as in that debate-club photo. "Hopping joint."
"Thank you." He beamed at Velda. "And your lovely companion...?"
He was using a phony English accent. Not overdoing it, but from a guy born in Queens, it was a little much.
"My secretary," I said. "Miss Sterling."
"Yes, we spoke on the phone," he said, and took her hand as if about to kiss it. But he didn't.
He sat next to me, opposite Velda. Wren had a good two inches on me, but I had shoes that weighed more. I wondered if he partook of his own product, like Russell Frazer and the Junkman. Or maybe he just had the metabolism of a pigeon.
"I was pleased," he said, "hearing you wanted to meet with me."
"Really?" I was almost shouting.
"I considered approaching you, but ... what with your colorful reputation ... I decided against it. Let's begin with me assuring you that I had nothing to do with the attempts on your life."