Last Night at the Telegraph Club(87)

“I know.”

“Will you go and strip the beds, please? I need you to start the laundry this morning.”

“Yes, Mama.”

But Lily hesitated before leaving the kitchen; the newspaper was sitting on the corner of the table, abandoned. She wanted to grab it, but before she could make her move, her mother sat down at the table and picked up the paper, flipping directly to the society columns in the back. Lily watched her for a moment, wondering if she’d go back to the front page, but she didn’t.



* * *



—

Lily had to wait until her mother left before she could use the telephone. By then it was late morning, and she could barely contain her anxiety. After making sure that Eddie and Frankie were in the living room, she went to the telephone and nervously picked up the heavy black receiver, dialing Kath’s number from memory. There was a click in her ear, and then the call connected. The brr-brr sound repeated over and over as she stood there waiting for someone to pick up, but no one did. After ten rings, she hung up, her heart racing.

She dialed the number again.

Once more she counted ten rings; once more there was no answer. This time when she hung up, she sank down onto the bench. She felt dizzy with worry. She told herself that the fact that there was no answer didn’t mean anything. Maybe they were just out—her own mother had gone out—perhaps everyone in Kath’s family had gone out, too. She briefly imagined the whole family at the market, or going to the park, or—

She suddenly remembered the newspaper article, and she jumped up and went back into the kitchen. She found the Chronicle in the trash can, the edges dampened by coffee grounds. She shook it off as well as she could and unfolded it. The front page was wet in the lower right quadrant, but the headline was still crisp and shockingly large.


TEENAGE GIRLS ‘RECRUITED’ AT SEX DEVIATE BAR




Police raided a North Beach bar known as the Telegraph Club Friday night, after receiving tips that the bar has long been a hunting ground for “gay” types that use the establishment to recruit teenage girls into debauchery. The club, located at 462 Broadway, has been under secret investigation for months. Inspector J. L. Herington of the San Francisco Police reports that at least a dozen teenage girls have been seduced by older women into a vice academy, in which they were introduced to marijuana and Benzedrine, and encouraged to attend secret parties after hours at the homes of sex deviates.



On the testimony of several teenage girls interviewed at the Youth Guidance Center, warrants were issued for the woman owner of the Telegraph Club, Joyce Morgan, and Theresa Scafani, who performs at the club as a male impersonator under the stage name Tommy Andrews. Both women were arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors, and Scafani was charged with lewd conduct.



Inspector Herington related a sordid story of abominable acts that are in some cases unprintable, involving high school girls ranging in age from 16 to 18, many from good families. “There was a pattern,” Inspector Herington explained. “Girls would go to the Telegraph Club to see a nightclub act, and once they were there they would be plied with alcohol and invited for dates by older women who were sexual deviates. Once a girl was ensnared, she would recruit her friends from school.”



At first, the girls would think it was a “lark,” Inspector Herington said. But soon, some of the girls started to wear mannish clothing and were known as “butches,” emulating the older women who had seduced them. These sexual deviates took the lead in inviting unsuspecting teenage girls to private apartments in the North Beach and Telegraph Hill neighborhood, where marijuana cigarettes were offered, and Benzedrine, known as “bennies,” were for sale.




The story continued on page five and included a sensational account of a cluttered flat in North Beach, reportedly the home of Telegraph Club owner Joyce Morgan, where a stash of marijuana had been found next to a detective novel. Although several teen girls were mentioned, none were named. Lily read the story several times, both hoping and fearing that she had missed Kath’s name, but it wasn’t there. Each time she read it, the story seemed more bizarre. It was as if the reporter had taken the truth and distorted it into a pulp novel. Reading it made her feel as if she had been splattered with something filthy, and no matter how hard she scrubbed, she would never come clean.

She crumpled up the newspaper and shoved it back into the trash, sick to her stomach. She poured herself a glass of water and then she couldn’t drink it, instead standing half frozen with panic while she stared blankly out the window. All she could think about was Kath. She remembered her beneath the stairs at the Telegraph Club, the darkness a cocoon around them as they kissed, the sound of Tommy singing in the background like an old record on repeat. She needed to find out what had happened to Kath.

She ran back into the hall, picking up the telephone and dialing Kath’s number again, but again there was no answer. She hung up in frustration, unsure of what to do. She wished she knew Kath’s address, so she could go there and wait for her to come home—and then she spotted the corner of the telephone book on the shelf beneath the phone. She pulled it out and knelt down on the floor, flipping to the page for Miller, and ran her finger down the numbers, searching for Kath’s. About halfway down the page she found it. She grabbed a pencil and tore off a piece of paper from the notepad by the phone, scribbling down the North Beach address.