The moon-drenched branches of a wind-mauled tree outside the bedroom window cavorted spectral shadows about the suite. Raucous March gales screeched off Lake Michigan. I felt a bleak loneliness, a nameless apprehension. I chain-smoked as a blond console in the living room issued Ellas’s new hit wail about the loss of her “Little Yellow Basket.” I was startled from my counting of the gold satin ruffles on the bed’s canopy by the jangle of the telephone on the nightstand. I froze and stared at the phone for a long moment. Three A.M.! Was it Phyl, my one and only mud-kicker calling from the slams? Had some mugger on Sixty-third Street slugged and robbed her? Had some trick maimed her? I picked up with vast relief to friend Gold Streak’s frog-in-a-log voice. “How ya doing, Slim?” he shouted above a background of honky-tonk pandemonium. “Great, Streak,” I said. “You must be balling at Small’s Paradise, or maybe at the Cotton Club?” He laughed. “Your ass, buddy. I’m back in Chi!
