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By Root 797 0

” under their local laws—the same laws that let them arrest people for carrying benzedrine tablets across the city line. And Louis was booked for possession of that pistol without a permit. They slapped a high-assed old bail of seventy-five hundred dollars each on us. In a lot of places you can kill somebody and get sprung for less. Louis told them he’d been arrested years before in Pennsylvania when he was a delinquent kid. He’d done some time for it, too—one more thing we have in common. Both of us can split a match four ways, that’s one of the important things you learn in jail. So the police pulled out his card file with the picture on it of the way he looked as a kid. Naturally they made a big thing of that and announced it to all the papers. Then we were hauled over to the Philly county jail. It’s got two entrances. One is marked “His” and one “Hers.”

I begged the matron to let me keep my money and my clothes. I’ve only been to the fifth grade, but I know a few things about jails they don’t teach you in school. Once they get your clothes put away and your valuables locked up, there ain’t no bondsman on earth can get them out for you in a hurry.

I told them I didn’t have nobody to take care of Pepi, so they let me keep him in the cell with me. He gave them a hard time. He was so little he could slip out between the bars, and they knew it. Every matron or turnkey that came by, Pepi would bark up a storm. There were some things in there, crying and screaming as they took the cold-turkey cure on the cement floor. Every scream that came from outside, Pepi would bark back.

There was nothing in the cell but a toilet and a long plank to lay down on. Pepi is so delicate he would get pneumonia in a minute, so I was busy worrying how to keep him warm. I spread my blue mink coat on the board and used it for a mattress while I cuddled that dog to keep him warm. But it wouldn’t work. We were cold on top. So I pulled out my mink and threw it over us. Then we were cold on the bottom. When I wasn’t worrying about Pepi, I was worrying about Louis on the other side without any topcoat. But the men in that jail treat each other better than the women do.

I had been on my feet since nine-thirty the night before when I went to work, and I was beat. But I couldn’t even catch twenty winks in that place.

They only let you make one phone call. I used it to call a friend in Philly and ask her to start scrounging for the thousand dollars or more it would take in cash to get me and Louis out on bail. The ban on telephone calls wasn’t too tough on me. Newspapers are good for one thing—they let your friends know you’ve been busted.

It was five o’clock that night before the bondsman got me out. I walked out of that jail and went back to the hotel. That little one room looked like a cyclone had hit it. I got on the telephone and arranged to get an advance on my salary so I could get Louis out. Then I pushed a pile of my gowns off the bed, fed Pepi, and tried to take a nap.

In a few minutes two friends from New York came in the hotel. They got me something to eat and a drink. By the time I fixed my hair and found a dress that hadn’t been pawed into a mess of wrinkles, it was time for my first show to go on.

The club was packed. Most of them were customers, but a lot of them looked like fuzz. I closed my first set with “My Man.” If the customers didn’t know from reading the papers that Louis was still in jail, the fuzz did. They told me I’d never sung it any better. I’m sure I never felt it more.

At least one member of the Vice Squad was caught with a tear on his cashmere coat. But they recovered after the show and took my accompanist off, shook that poor boy down, made him take his clothes off, and looked in all his wrinkles to see what they could find. When I saw them carrying off that boy, I felt so sorry for him and so helpless I was ready to cry. When they couldn’t find nothing on him, they let him go. It was real big of them.

Then I went to the office and made a deal with the bondsman. He found a judge to sign the paper, then he drove