While Drowning in the Desert by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online Page A

visual display that she was, and Arthur put his foot down.
    “Of course, Eileen was a nasty piece of work. A tramp. Kept company with a no-goodnik mobster from the Schultz gang named Benny the Blade. Wore spats. Trash.
    “So one day Arthur sends out the new kid, an Irish kid. Stupid like you. Arthur sends the kid to Wolffs to get him a pastrami on rye with Russian mustard. Wolff’s had great pastrami, wonderful pastrami. Wolff knew delicatessen. In those days you could go to a deli and get a sandwich would choke a horse for twenty-five cents and it was good deli. Not this trash they serve you today. They just opened a deli in Palm Desert. Two Jews from Los Angeles open a deli and charge seven bucks for a sandwich which is trash. Stringy fat. It got caught between my teeth, right here. I was with Murray Koppelman. Do you know Murray? Had a for-shit comedy show on CBS? ‘Murray, Murray, Murray’ they used to sing? Murray would come out surrounded by shiksas with legs to their chins and roll his eyes. Audience would scream, I don’t know why. I do know why, free tickets, that’s why, and some boob holding up a card says Laugh. We didn’t have these cards in burlesque. Our audience was waiting to see girls take off their clothes. We had to be funny. If you held up a card that says Laugh in a burlesque house, they would throw garbage at you and they would be right.
    “I saw that happen one afternoon to a magician. The Great Bandolini. Magicians always had to give themselves Italian names, I don’t know why. You never saw a magician named ‘The Great Lefkowitz.’ Anyway, Bandolini had an act where he would pull doves from his coat. You’ve seen the act. First he opens his coat, no doves. He says some words in Italian, opens the coat again, and bingo —doves. Except, this one afternoon he is coming in from Philadelphia on the train and the porters lose the case that has Bandolini’s doves in it. What’s Bandolini going to do? He goes to talk to Myra DeLovely who had a striptease act called Myra DeLovely and her Doves of Love, in which Myra stripped and the doves landed in strategic spots to prevent the Decency League from shutting her down. Bandolini asks can he borrow the doves to make them appear out of his coat. Myra is reluctant, but a good sport, and she says okay.
    “What nobody thinks about is that these doves are not trained to sit quietly hiding in the secret pockets of the coat. Bandolini gets onstage, opens the coat, and says, ‘No doves’—except that there are doves. There are doves rustling around, cooing, flapping their wings. The audience boos, the doves get spooked and fly into the house. The doves are flying around the ceiling, very upset, and you know what a nervous dove does. So now you’ve got Bandolini yelling, the audience booing, and the doves are shitting all over them. Myra comes out screaming at Bandolini, hitting him. Audience starts throwing garbage. Tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, even liverwurst they threw. Bonbons they threw.
    “Myra slips on a bonbon, throws her hip out of joint. A very bad injury for a burlesque girl. Nowadays she’d sue, of course, but people didn’t sue in those days. Myra goes to a doctor in Gramercy Park, Dr. LaFramboise, a Frenchman. This LaFramboise puts her hip back into joint and his own joint … You get the idea. Myra gets in a family way and the doctor acts like a mensch and marries her. They have a daughter who grows up to be a singer, except this girl cannot carry a tune in a bucket. The girl cannot sing! Myra and LaFramboise don’t know what to do! What to do with a daughter who is a singer who can’t sing?! Fortunately she marries the son of LaFramboise’s accountant, a kid named Koppelman. Koppelman and this girl who can’t sing produce a son who can’t get a laugh except when they hold up a card that says Laugh and that turns out to be the for-shit comic, my good friend Murray Koppelman. ‘Murray, Murray, Murray.’
    “So Murray says,