Private Dick Casefile 01 - Lily White Rose Red

Marguerite; she was taller, slimmer, and her face was lovelier. More innocent, perhaps. For a while, at least.
    She hit the headlines on the arms of a lot of men, high rollers, casino owners, and shady-looking fellas.
    After a while, she narrowed it down to one man, Max Hamilton, who owned only one hotel and casino at the time: the Rising Star. I wondered if he’d named it for Lily. Or maybe he was honoring himself.
    Of course she appeared on his arm after she hit it big. He wanted the best, only the best. He was the type who saw something beautiful and had to own it. And for a while, he owned her, squiring her to openings, shows, dinners. He even gave a dinner for the mayor, and she was there as hostess.
    Of course, he couldn’t stop fooling around with other dames. A guy like him, why should he? He would never have thought of pledging constancy to a woman; they were there for his pleasure. And sometimes in the photos, I could see a little hurt and jealousy in Lily’s expression when the novelty of owning her wore off and Mr. Hamilton began looking at the other dames again.
    They were still appearing together, but less frequently, by March of that year. And then the stunner: there she was on Davie Berman’s arm. Another casino owner, which meant mobster, a friend of Bugsy’s.
    Bugsy Siegel, in case you didn’t guess. After that I never found another picture with Lily and Max Hamilton in the same frame. A guy like Mr.
    Hamilton? He wouldn’t forgive a public slam like that.
    And Lily? She looked triumphant, but spiteful. Not a happy woman. Her run with Berman flared up and then burned out in two months. After her came a tall ash blonde like a cool drink of water, and Lily disappeared from the papers.
    It was a whole year before her picture appeared in the papers again. The caption read, “Back from her triumphant tour through the Northeast.” I pondered that. A high kicker like her, she’d have been a hit on Broadway. And usually if a star made a splash in the Northeast, that’s the pool she would have dived into, opening at Ziegfeld’s Follies before hitting the bright lights on Broadway. And a star like her, she would have made sure to tell the paper all that. So that was probably Lily White, Rose Red: Grey Randall, Private Dick Casefile #1
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    when she was off giving birth to Marguerite.
    Why the big secret? In those days, everyone assumed a dancer was a tramp, especially if she hung out with bosses like Max Hamilton and Davie Berman. No shame in popping out a kid, it even lent a certain cachet. Lily hadn’t been very forthcoming with me at all, I decided. What else was she hiding?
    Moving along, I found articles on Lily: what she liked to eat for breakfast, why she preferred silk for her underwear, and how she trained her famous legs by putting her feet on two different chairs and sliding them apart as she went into a split in midair. The picture that accompanied that article really caught my attention, and I blanched, imagining the strain on the inner thigh. And what happened if you got tired and slipped?
    “Grey,” Charlie said. “Stop staring at that revolting picture and look here.” She pointed to a magazine from two years ago.
    There was Lily, on Max Hamilton’s arm again, smiling at the camera at the opening of his second hotel, the Lucky Star. I’d heard Max Hamilton described as looking like a retired admiral, but he was more my idea of a modern-day pirate, tall, handsome, a charismatic but devilish smile as if daring the world to take him on, iron-grey hair, well-fed—
    My eye stopped along with my heart when I saw another snap of Mr. Big, AKA Mr. Beautiful, AKA Mr. Phil Martin, the very guy I sucked off last night, frolicking with two of the finest female refreshments Vegas had to offer: a beautiful blonde dame on one arm and a lovely brunette on the other. I wondered if he ordered dessert off both sides of the cart. Given what happened the night before, I would have sworn he came down firmly on the blue team’s side. Maybe he thought he’d be safer disguised with two beards. A man can hope.
    It suited him. Philip was kind of silky on the tongue. I imagined calling him Phil.
    Phil, could you get me some coffee? Phil, give me the paper. Phil, could you lick my cock?
    Martin. Businesslike, crisp, no nonsense, powerful. There he was at the same party with Max Hamilton. Laughing with him like he knew 98

    CATT FORD

    him. Wait, hadn’t he said this was bigger than