The patronage was not of the richest, but she did fairly well, what with her beauty and affability. Then, one night, she was called to a private dining room upstairs, where some men were secluded in what seemed to be a heavy conference. At the head of the table sat a stocky, blond, not bad-looking fellow in his thirties, who bought a fistful of cigars and reached for a $10 bill. As he looked up he saw the girl—then he reached for a $20 bill.
Later he came down and went on the make. She turned away and told him she never went out with men. He laughed and asked her:
"Do you know who I am?"
She shook her light brown curls from side to side.
He put his face very close to her ear and said huskily:
"I am Dutch Schultz!"
In every walk of human life there is an upper class. Among the lifers in Alcatraz, who never again will freely see the light of God's sun or draw a free breath, there are classes. A man who has killed three cops looks down upon a piker who only kidnapped a child or robbed a post office.
The name he whispered had an electric effect. Among the prohibition aristocracy none stood as high as Arthur Flegenheimer, a tough boy from Yonkers, who not only controlled a large section of the beer business of New York but was the king of the policy racket—the numbers—in Harlem, with political connections that went right through to the White House. Through his pudgy, uncalloused, overmanicured fingers passed $100,000,000 a year.
Frances ran across the street, breathless, to Martha, and told her the news, in the same emotional exultation that would have possessed a debutante with a sudden invitation from the Prince of Wales.