Gretchy grew up strange, ashamed of her old man–a gang stooge and occasional killer. She took her old lady’s maiden name and buried her head in books, loving arithmetic tricks, figures, calculations–stuff that proved she was smart. She also took up with a rough South Milwaukee crowd. One crazy Polack boyfriend beat her silly every night for a week straight when she was fifteen. Mo found out, put the kid in cement skates, and dumped him in Lake Michigan. Father and daughter were happily reunited by the revenge.
Mo moved up in Jerry Katzenbach’s organization; Gretch got a bundle together tricking the hotel bars in Chicago. Mo installed Gretchen Rae as sixteen-year-old pit boss of a swank whorehouse: movie star surrogates, the rooms bugged to pick up gangland and political skinny that might prove valuable to Jerry K. Gretch got friendly with stock swindler Voyteck Kirnipaski; she just happened to be listening through a vent one night when Howard Hughes and a cadre of army three-stars were cavorting with Jean Arthur, Lupe Velez, and Carole Lombard, greenhorn versions. Gretch picked up lots of juicy Wall Street gossip, and realized that this could be the start of something big. Mo contracted stomach cancer about that time and got the word: half a decade tops–enjoy life while you can. Cash skimmed off Jerry Katzenbach’s books provided class A treatment. Mo held his own against the Big C. Jerry K. got bum press for his whorehouse, kiboshed it, and banished Mo to the Coast, where Mickey Cohen welcomed him with open arms, using his juice to get Mo’s two statch-rape indiscretions plea bargained to bubbkis.
Back in Milwaukee, Gretchen Rae audited business classes at Marquette, and hauled Voyteck Kirnipaski’s ashes for free when she learned he was working for Jerry K. and was dissatisfied with the pay. Then Mo had a relapse and came back to Milwaukee on a visit; Voyteck Kirnipaski skipped town with a bundle of Katzenbach’s money so he could bankroll stock swindles in LA; Gretchen Rae, always reading the papers with an eye toward political repercussions, put her overhead dope from Howard and the high brass together with whispers on the Korea situation and decided to get more info from the man himself. Mo took some lung shots of his little girl and mailed them to Big How; he bit; Gretchy glommed leads that the on-the-lam and hotly pursued Voyteck was hanging out at Scrivner’s Drive-In, and, wanting to enlist his aid in possible squeeze plays, got a job there. Mickey Cohen’s crush on her put a monkey wrench into things–but she thought, somehow, that the little big man could be tapped for juice. She became his consort concurrent with Howard, father and daughter pretending to be strangers at Mickey’s nightclub get togethers. Then, at a Santa Monica motel, she located Voyteck, terrified that Katzenbach triggers were right behind him. Mo gave her the key to Mickey’s Mariposa Street hideout; she ensconced Voyteck there, moving back and forth between Howard’s fuck pad, pumping information subtly and pumping Kirnipaski blatantly–attempting to lure him into her web of schemes. She was making progress when Fritz Steinkamp made the scene. And damned if Gretchy didn’t rise to the occasion and throttle, scald, and frying pan him to death. She attempted to soothe the terrified Voyteck afterward, but he went into cardiac arrest: the volatile combo of a murder attempt, a murder, and a murderess’s tongue. Gretchen Rae panicked and took off with Voyteck’s pilfered cash–and was currently trying to unload “secret insider” prospectuses on Hughes stock to a list of potential customers Kirnipaski had compiled. The girl was holed up someplace–Mo didn’t know where–and tomorrow she would be calling at the homes and offices of her last wave of potential “clients.”
Somewhere in the course of the story I started liking Mo almost as much as I liked Gretchen Rae. I still couldn’t see any way out of the mess, but I was curious about one thing: the girly gewgaws, the appliances, all the squarejohn homey stuff Gretchy had glommed. When Mo finished his tale, I said, “What’s with all the clothes and gadgets and stuffed animals?”
Morris Hornbeck, worm bait inside six months, just sighed. “Lost time, Meeks. The father and daughter act someplace safe, the shtick we shoulda played years ago. But that’s tap city, now.”