Chesty's and Six Red Poppies

When I walked through the door of Chesty's at nine that night I was pissed off, had a hell of headache, was dead tired, and I needed a drink. It was all because of Alonzo Merini.

Alonzo Merini had been arrested and charged with theft after he'd asked to see an engagement ring in a pawnshop. After he'd looked at that ring, he told the owner of the pawnshop he'd like to see another ring. When the pawnshop owner bent down to get it from the case, Alonzo slipped the first ring into his pants pocket.

The pawnshop owner started to hand Alonzo the second ring, but stopped and asked him where the first ring was. Alonzo said he'd put it on the counter and the pawnshop owner must have knocked it off behind the counter. When the pawnshop owner looked down, Alonzo ran for the door.

He'd probably have made it if another customer hadn't been coming through the door at the same time. Since the door opened into the pawnshop, Alonzo ran into the door as it swung open and it knocked him cold. When he woke up, he was in handcuffs and the pawnshop owner was in the process of having Alonzo arrested for theft.

When Alonzo went before a judge, he told the judge he must have forgotten about putting the ring in his pocket. The judge didn't believe him, so he set a trial date and then set Alonzo's bail at a thousand bucks. Alonzo called Benny's Bail Bonds, and Benny bailed him out.

Alonzo apparently had a really shitty memory, because he also forgot about his trial date. Benny wasn't about to lose a grand, so he hired me to find Alonzo and take him back to jail.

I'd found Alonzo Merini shacked up with his girlfriend in an apartment downtown. Alonzo knew he was dead meat as soon as he opened the door, but he wasn't about to give up.

He started to run for the window and the fire escape so I tackled his ass. I had him on the floor and was putting my cuffs on him when his bitch girlfriend hit me in the head with a metal wastebasket. It didn't hurt all that much but it pissed me off because all the used rubbers in that wastebasket came out and landed on my neck and shoulders. It looked like Alonzo had fucked his girlfriend a bunch of times and he didn't tie the rubbers shut when he took them off. Those rubbers stunk like a two-bit whore's cunt and oozed Alonzo's cum all over me.

She hit me four more times before I got pissed and punched her in the gut. She folded up like a wet towel and started bawling her eyes out. I got my cuffs on Alonzo and yanked him to his feet.

"Say goodbye to your girlfriend, Alonzo. You got a date with Jerome down at central. Brought him in yesterday and Jerome's a little different. He told me he likes Italian men 'cause they got tight assholes. I'm told he doesn't even spit on his cock first. He expects his boyfriends to suck it until it's wet enough."

I took Alonzo down to Central Booking and after they gave me a receipt, I went to Benny's Bail Bonds to collect my money. Tony took one look at me and pinched his nose.

"Matt, you stink like a whorehouse at two in the morning."

"I know. Just give me my fucking money and you won't have to smell me anymore."

I walked away from Benny's two hundred richer and decided I needed some medicine for the headache Alonzo's girlfriend had given me. I went back to my apartment, took a shower, and changed clothes. Then, I walked the four blocks down to Chesty's.

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Chesty's Bar is a strip club run by Randall Gomolka, though he goes by Randy. I knew him from our time in the US Army. We were both drafted in Chicago, went through training together, and ended up in the 4th Infantry clawing our way into France via Utah Beach.

Randy was an all right guy and having him for a buddy saved my ass a couple times. The only thing a little shady about Randy was his side hustles. Now, don't get me wrong. When the bullets started flying, Randy was all balls and business and a good man to have beside me. It was when we got a break from the front lines once in a while that he sort of slipped. I thought what he did was great. The US Army probably wouldn't have thought so.

See, when the US Army went through some place, the goal was to blow shit up and kill German soldiers. As a result, there were a lot of farmhouses and towns in France and Germany that were a lot worse for the wear after the 4th moved on.

The people who lived in those towns and farmhouses often didn't have any place to live and not much to eat until the rest of the Army caught up with us. That's where one of Randy's side hustles came into play.

The truck drivers who hauled our supplies and the cooks and mechanics and doctors who were behind our lines and made life almost bearable usually never saw any real combat. That's not to say they weren't important. Without them, the lives of a bunch of combat troops would have been a lot more miserable than it already was. More of us probably wouldn't have come back home if they hadn't been there.

A few of those truck drivers and cooks and mechanics and doctors wanted war souvenirs, but they were never close enough to the action to get many. By the time they rolled in and set up, all the bodies were in the ground and all the weapons had been collected. Randy saw the opportunity and took advantage of it.

When the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, Randy would take a few buttons, belt buckles, and about anything else that he could quickly get off a dead German and would fit in his jacket and pants pockets. He'd save them until we were relieved for a couple days, and then use them to trade with the support troops.

Mostly he traded for food. A German Army field uniform button was worth one unit of C-Rations. A belt buckle was worth a number ten can of hot dogs. He rarely found any, but an officer's shoulder rank insignia was worth enough canned meat and vegetables to feed three people for a couple days. He found one dead SS guy with a silver skull on his cap and that silver skull got him a case of canned meat, a case of canned vegetables, and ten pounds of flour. I know this because I helped Randy collect those buttons, belt buckles, and other stuff.

Randy liked his women, but only the women who he knew were whores. There were always some around and it was obvious that they weren't amateurs. They seemed to show up as soon as our cooks set up a kitchen and the medics set up an aide station. Randy would pay them for their time with the C-rations. The going rate was one C-ration for a blowjob or a handjob, and three for an actual fuck.

When we had time, meaning after we'd found a whore or three to ease our battle stress, Randy and I would go looking for and find some woman with a couple kids, or maybe a couple old people. Randy would give them what food we had. The kids really liked the chocolate candy. A lot of times the mother or the wife of the older couple would hint that she'd repay us with sex, but we always said no. We figured they'd already been through enough.

Cutting the buttons and belt buckle off some dead German soldier might seem pretty fucking morbid to some and illegal to others. All I can say to that is when you're nineteen, have seen as much as we saw, and know today might be the last day of your life, you tend to not worry much about anything except keeping your ass from getting shot off. You don't even think about what might happen in the future. You don't have time to think about anything except what's happening all around you. Combat pretty much makes you immune to dead people too unless they're wearing the same uniform you are.

Like I said, Randy liked the whores, but he was smart about it, at least smart enough to use the six rubbers a month the Army issued us. Six a month wasn't enough for him if we got a break from fighting and were close to a town, but he had another side hustle to get more.

It didn't take Randy long to figure out the Catholic Chaplain for our unit didn't have any use for the rubbers he was issued. The Chaplain did smoke cigarettes though. Randy didn't smoke so he traded the cigarettes in his C-rations to the Chaplain for rubbers, one pack of five cigarettes for one rubber. He'd save them up for the next time we got a break behind the lines.

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When I got drafted, there were any number of young girls who thought it was their patriotic duty to give a soldier going off to war something to remember. I figured they were also looking for a husband because there were a lot of wartime marriages just before the guy shipped out. I wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment, so I let them feel patriotic by telling them I was already married.

I did break that rule one time while I was waiting to be shipped out to England. There was one woman I knew who had lost her husband in Tunisia. She didn't seem too broken up about it, but then, she'd only known him for a month before they got married and he shipped out. She wanted some company. I didn't know the company she wanted was a man with a stiff cock, but I was young and horny. She fucked me three times before I had to leave her. She taught me a lot in the process too.

Once we landed in England, those same girls were out there looking for an American GI. I didn't know anything about any of them, and I wasn't ready to take one back to the States assuming I made it through the war. I settled for hand jobs in England and through France and Germany whenever Randy and I got a couple days away from the front lines.

Randy seemed to not care how old the broad was as long as she was over twenty and had tits and a cunt. He once told me the best he'd had was a French whore in Cherbourg who was about fifty. I tended to like women a little older than my nineteen years. I figured they'd know more. I figured women older than forty might have forgotten some of what they knew.

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When the Germans surrendered and the Army got done figuring out when and how to get us back to the States, we came back home on a ship that was crowded and stunk like sweaty men. We didn't mind. We were going home.

The whole goddamned time, Randy talked my fucking ass off about how he was going to open a strip joint and make a shit pot of money. He said he knew he'd probably have some whores doing business there but he wasn't going to mess with any whores in Chicago.

"I'll have to deal with the Mob to run a club, but that's just a normal business expense in Chicago. You just hire who they tell you to hire and buy from the right people and they leave you alone. You make up the added cost in drink prices like everybody else does.

"The whores are a different story. They work for pimps who are trying to get a connection in the Mob. They're a crazy bunch of fuckers and they're always looking to show the Mob bosses how tough they are so they'll get noticed. You fuck over some pimp's whore and you wind up with busted kneecaps or worse.

"Me, I'm gonna find me a nice Polish girl, get married, and have a bunch of kids."

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I figured it was just talk, but turns out, he was serious. He used all his back pay and combat pay to put a down payment on a little bar on South Wabash, put in a little stage, and hire a small band. In a month, Chesty's Bar opened.

Randy named it Chesty's for a stripper who called herself Chesty Morgan we'd seen in New York while we were waiting on a train to take us back to Chicago. She had really long tits and she did this thing where she'd tuck one into each armpit so they stuck out her back instead of her chest and her nipples were facing backwards. They also hung down a bunch when they were in the right place so she didn't do much for me, but Randy loved her.

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I'd stayed in touch while I was figuring out what I was going to do. I'd go to Chesty's on a Saturday night and have a couple drinks with Randy while we talked about what we'd done in the war.

Figuring out what I was going to do took a while. After the war people had money but there wasn't much to buy because all the factories had been making war goods. When the GIs came home, the wives who'd been working those war jobs left so when the factories started making stuff for normal people, there were a lot of factory jobs available.

I couldn't see myself standing in front of some machine making screws or car fenders for forty hours a week. I also couldn't see myself sitting in some fucking office with a bunch of 4-Fs and keeping books or some other bullshit. I'd gotten sort of addicted to action.

One of my thoughts was that I'd join the Chicago PD. Judging by what the newspapers printed, there wasn't much boring about their jobs. There was always an article or two about how they'd chased down some guy who killed another guy or some guy who robbed a liquor store or some guy they'd shot when he started shooting at them.

After thinking some more, I realized there were three things wrong with that choice.

The first was that I'd spent a lot of years taking orders from some dumb-fuck second lieutenant who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground about combat. The only thing good about most of them was their fucking stupidity got them killed or wounded on a regular basis. I figured being a cop would be about the same. I'd be taking orders from some sergeant who got where he was because of who he knew.

The second was the money. I'd spent the last few years risking my life for sixty bucks a month plus another ten once I earned my Combat Infantry Badge. As a cop, I'd earn around three-eighty, but I'd have to pay rent and buy my own food and clothes and the risk of losing my life would still be there.

The third was what Randy told me.

"Matt, cops don't make shit unless they get in bed with the Mob, and you don't wanna fuck with those people. They'll pay you as long as you do what they tell you to do. As soon as you say no, you'll end up in Lake Michigan wearing concrete shoes."

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I met Nancy one Tuesday afternoon about four when I walked into Chesty's. Randy was busy doing something, so he wasn't sitting at his table where I'd normally have gone to sit. I looked around and there wasn't a soul in the place except for three older guys looking up at the girl on the stage. I wasn't interested in the girl, so I took a table at the other end of the bar.

This nice blonde walked up, said her name was Nancy, and asked what I wanted.

She was dressed to get tips, and by that I mean her top fit tight enough and her bra was loose enough her tits swayed when she walked. She was wearing a skirt that wasn't real tight except for around her waist and over her ass and that ass was a really, really nice ass. I didn't see her legs and heels until she walked away to get my double bourbon neat, but they were pretty great too.

When she brought my drink, she smiled.

"That'll be seventy-five cents please."

I handed her a buck and told her to keep the change. She smiled again and thanked me and then walked back to the bar.

In an hour, I'd finished my drink and was feeling pretty good. When I put the empty glass down, Nancy walked up and asked if I wanted another.

Well, ordinarily, I'd have said no and then left, but there was something about her smile that made me say I'd like another double.

That second double hit me about half way through, and I had four blocks to walk to get back to my apartment. I pushed my chair back and was starting to stand when Nancy walked up.

"Leaving so soon? You still have half a drink left."

I nodded.

"Yeah. I need to get home. If you see Randy, tell him I was here and I'll catch him on Saturday."

Nancy said she would. I walked the four blocks back to my apartment to get some food in me.

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That Saturday, I asked Randy about Nancy.

He grinned and said I didn't have a chance, and then told me what he knew about her.

Nancy was a really nice blonde that Randy hired to wait tables. She wasn't gorgeous like the strippers who stood on Randy's stage and bumped and ground their asses and wobbled their tits to the music. Now that I think about them, most of those strippers weren't all that gorgeous either. They just seemed that way after a few drinks.

No, Nancy was just an average, but pretty woman about twenty-four or so, with nice tits and a nice ass. Once I'd met her, she also seemed like she'd be fun.

Anyway, Randy told me that Nancy had married this guy a week before he shipped out to England in '43. She'd worked at Woolworth's and waited on the guy to come back. She got a letter from him just before he came home, and in the letter he said the Army was sending him to Ft. Leonard Wood and it would be better if she stayed in Chicago until they discharged him.

When one of his buddies came back to Chicago and looked up Nancy to say hello, she found out that the Army was keeping him in the base hospital at Ft. Leonard Wood until he was cured of the syphilis he'd caught from a whore in Paris.

The buddy thought she already knew and Nancy didn't tell him she didn't. She just had a cup of coffee with him and when he left, she went to a lawyer. The lawyer said that if her husband had contracted syphilis while he was in Europe and she was in Chicago, that was proof of infidelity and was enough for her to divorce the asshole, and she did.

While her husband was still in the Army, Nancy was receiving fifty dollars a month because of the Servicemen's Dependents Allowances Act. With that and what she'd earned at Woolworth's she'd been able to rent a cheap apartment and be able to live a relatively comfortable life.

The divorce meant she lost the fifty a month, so she applied for a waitress job at Chesty's. Randy said he wasn't paying her any more than she'd made at Woolworth's but she was raking in about twenty every night in tips. She moved to a better apartment and started buying some new clothes.

After I heard all that, I asked Randy why he thought I didn't have a chance.

"Randy, I'm not really interested in Nancy, but why wouldn't she be looking for another husband? Most women are."

Randy grinned.

"Better men that you have tried, me included, but she always turns them down. Doesn't stop them from tipping her though.

"I don't know for sure, but after what her husband did, I don't think she's looking for another man. Another woman maybe. She seems to spend a lot of time talking to a couple of my strippers, and I know those two girls are lezzies. Caught them kissing backstage a couple times."

I chuckled.

"Two of your strippers are lesbians?"

Randy sipped his vodka collins and then explained.

"I asked both of them about that. What they said was they could make better money stripping than working as store clerks and it didn't bother them if guys thought they were hot because they knew they were. They just didn't want some guy fucking them."

I shook my head.

"You know that and you keep them stripping for you?"

"Yeah. I never fuck my strippers anyway and they're bringing in a lot of business. I don't really give a rat's ass if they want to lick each other's cunts."

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The next Monday I went over the classified ads in the Chicago Tribune trying to find a job that wouldn't drive me crazy out of boredom. There weren't many, and what there were, sounded like they'd be boring as hell after a couple weeks. I mean, how exciting can it be to drive a delivery truck around Chicago? You'd wait at some loading dock until you were loaded up, drive somewhere and then wait some more at another loading dock while some guys unloaded your truck. I'd also be giving some of my pay to the Teamster's Union and Randy had told me that the Teamster's Union was really just another Mob hustle.

"Some day, the dispatcher will tell you to go to a certain warehouse and then go somewhere else and take a break for a couple hours. If you do, there'll be an envelope on the seat of your truck when you come back, and in that envelope will be maybe a hundred or so. You'll get told to do that again, and if you say you won't, they probably won't kill you, but after your broken legs heal up, you'll never get another driving job in Chicago again."