Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [56]
But they laughed at me and my hunches and went on ahead to the hotel. When I had finished taking off my make-up and getting into something comfortable I left the theater, and the hired chauffeur drove me to the hotel to pick up the boys. My dog Mister was in the back seat.
When we pulled up in front of the hotel I knew I was right. I could see through the windows. The lobby was full of cops. Quickly I told the chauffeur to pull around the corner. From the way he reacted, I could tell he wasn’t going to be any help. It’s awful to be in trouble with someone who doesn’t have the heart for it.
We stopped around the corner, and then I saw a federal agent cross the street and come towards us. He was an Indian chap. I recognized him. I had never driven a car in my life before. But that didn’t matter. I knew I had to do it that night and there wasn’t two seconds to waste taking any lessons.
I hollered to the chauffeur to get out from behind the wheel and leave the motor running. As the Treasury agent came towards us, I stepped on the gas. He hollered “Halt!” and tried to stop the car by standing in the road. But I kept driving right on and he moved. I pulled away through a rain of bullets.
My boxer dog Mister was in the back seat whimpering, scared. And the chauffeur was in the front seat the same way. I didn’t listen or stop for nothing. I knew I couldn’t do anything to help Bobby and Jimmy unless I could make it to New York. And I couldn’t make it to New York unless I kept my head and kept my nose on the road. I figured they might try to barricade the streets in Philly somewhere, so I made the chauffeur show me how to go over the river and come up through Camden, New Jersey. I’ll never know how I made it, but I made it.
This was Friday. I was scheduled to open at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street the next night. First I had to get a lawyer. Bobby was as innocent as a babe; he never used nothing; he didn’t even drink. He’d go to parties and have a glass of pop and have a ball, thinking he was loaded like everybody else.
I got Bobby out of jail and he joined me. He told me that a couple of federal agents had come to their room in the hotel, walked in without a warrant or anything, and searched the place. They said they found the “evidence” under the bed.
I opened at the Onyx and nothing happened. They didn’t even come around until the third night. They hung around from then on. And they let me work the full week. It’s always that way. While they were trying to get a case against me they were also doing the management a favor by not busting me on the premises.
But I knew they would try and get me again when the week was over. I was sick. I had been tailed for a year and I couldn’t face having it go on like that forever. I knew I could never kick again, and stay kicked, as long as they were after me. I could try. But that would take money. It had cost two thousand dollars before. It would probably cost as much now. And I couldn’t get it together without Joe Glaser’s help.
With my salary from the Philly week, plus the Onyx week, I could afford to get admitted to the best hospital in the country. Without it, they could hunt me down like a dog and send me to jail. Joe Glaser told me this was the best thing that could happen to me. And I had nowhere else to turn.
When I finished the week at the Onyx, I took a cab to the Hotel Grampion. Two agents were waiting for me in the lobby with a warrant for my arrest. They walked me to my room. Joe Guy was waiting there. The door was locked when we got there. While the Treasury agents knocked, I hollered, “Joe, it’s the fuzz, clean up.”
They arrested both of us and took us off, him to New York and me to Philadelphia. Most of my belongings, gowns, clothes, jewelry, were stolen from the hotel before Bobby Tucker could come back and claim them.
Most federal agents are nice people.