where people sat sweating, gossiping about sports, taxes, television programs, best sellers, or chatting about Acapulco and numbered bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. I didn’t know but what this old fence had one of those infamous cabanas near the swimming pool to which young chicks were invited for the siesta. There had been some scandal and protest over this. What was done behind drawn drapes in the cabanas was no one’s business, of course, but some of the old guys, demonstrative and exhibitionistic, had been seen fondling their little dolls on the sun-terrace. One had removed his false teeth in public to give a girl soul kisses. I had read an interesting letter in the Tribune about this. A retired history teacher living high up in the club building had written a letter saying that Tiberius—the old girl was showing off—Tiberius in the grottoes of Capri had had nothing on these grotesque lechers. But what did these old characters, in the rackets or in First Ward politics, care about indignant school-mams and classical allusions. If they had gone to see Fellini’s Satyricon at the Woods Theater it was only to get more sex ideas not because they were studying Imperial Rome. I myself had seen some of these spider-bellied old codgers on the sundeck taking the breasts of teen-age hookers into their hands. It occurred to me that the Japanese houseboy was also a judo or karate expert as in 007 movies, there were so many valuables in the apartment. When Rinaldo said he’d like to see more Accutron watches, the fellow brought out a few dozen, flat as wafers. These may or may not have been stolen. My heated imagination couldn’t be relied upon for guidance here. I was excited, I admit, by these currents of criminality. I could feel the need to laugh rising, mounting, always a sign that my weakness for the sensational, my American, Chicagoan (as well as personal) craving for high stimuli, for incongruities and extremes, was aroused. I knew that fancy thieving was a big thing in Chicago. It was said that if you knew one of these high-rise superrich Fagin-types you could obtain luxury goods at half the retail price. The actual shoplifting was done by addicts. They were compensated in heroin. As for the police, they were said to be paid off. They kept the merchants from making too much noise. Anyway there was insurance. There was also the well-known “shrinkage” or annual loss reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Such information about corruption, if you had grown up in Chicago, was easy to accept. It even satisfied a certain need. It harmonized with one’s Chicago view of society. Naïveté was something you couldn’t afford.
Item by item, I tried to assess what Cantabile wore as I sat there in soft upholstery with my scotch on the rocks, his hat coat suit boots (the boots may have been unborn calf) his equestrian gloves, and I made an effort to imagine how he had obtained these articles through criminal channels, from Field’s, from Saks Fifth Avenue, from Abercrombie & Fitch. He was not, so far as I could judge, taken absolutely seriously by the old fence.
Rinaldo was intrigued with one of the watches and slipped it on. His old watch he tossed to the Japanese who caught it. I thought the moment had come to recite my piece and I said, “Oh, by the way, Ronald, I owe you some dough from the other night.”
“Where from?” said Cantabile.
“From the poker game at George Swiebel’s. I guess it slipped your mind.”
“Oh I know that guy Swiebel with all the muscles,” said the old gentleman. “He’s terrific company. And you know he cooks a great bouillabaisse, I’ll give him that.”
“I inveigled Ronald and his cousin Emil into this game,” I said. “It really was my fault. Anyhow, Ronald cleaned up on us. Ronald is one of the poker greats. I ended up about six hundred dollars in the hole and he had to take my IOU—I’ve got the dough on me, Ronald, and I better give it to you while we both remember.”
“Okay.” Again Cantabile, without looking, crumpled the notes into his jacket pocket. His performance was better than mine, though I was doing my very