with them. Nick continued shooting Julie until the film roll was exhausted and so was she.
He was a bit, too, and also curious if the spy in the secret passage would come back. “Want to take a break?” he asked. “Look at the albums from the Everleigh Club?”
Julie smiled. “Hef said something about those. They’re here?”
“I think so.” Nick picked a spot on the love seat with the best angle on the closed peephole, which now looked like nothing more than a strip of carved laurels.
Julie, still nude, picked up the open album and brought it back to the love seat so they could both look at the pictures.
The Everleigh Club girls modeled bustiers and corsets, some sporting headbands with oversize poppy rosettes to each side, the fashion of the era. White ink, neatly penned onto the album’s black paper, gave the names of the girls and the various special occasions. This album, dated 1902, featured a visit from the smiling, bearded, and mustached Prince Henry of Prussia. Ada and Minna Everleigh, the club’s eponymous proprietresses and madams, posed with the prince, a bevy of girls about them.
Julie giggled as she paged through the rest of the album, but Nick was distracted by the dual tasks of trying to monitor the peephole and the very close presence of a beautiful naked woman snuggled into the love seat beside him.
“Let’s look at another!” Julie closed that album and picked the next at random: 1908. Highlights included a tableau with the girls costumed as Eskimos, a pair of selkie maids in sealskin coats, and a polar bear played by a large woman clothed only in a polar bearskin rug, all fawning over Admiral Peary, the famed polar explorer. A page on, another nude woman played mama bear, but this time with a brown or at least sepia-tone bearskin rug, hunted by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. Beside TR, playing his guide and gun bearer while looking directly at the camera and grinning ear to ear, stood a young man with pale skin, dark hair, and dark soulful eyes, and an amusingly upturned pug nose.
“It’s Pug!” Julie exclaimed, pointing to TR’s pug-nosed guide.
Nick read the caption: Our intrepid guide, Gary Peterman, leads President Roosevelt to the lair of Ursula, the She-Bear!
“Who’s ‘Pug’?” Nick asked.
“Um, a child actor,” Julie answered. “He’s a friend of Will’s.”
“Here he is again.” Nick pointed to the next page, where Teddy Roosevelt posed formally if cheerfully with Ada Everleigh while Minna was escorted by Gary Peterman, again with the goofily charming grin, giving both thumbs up to the camera like the world’s cheeriest Roman emperor.
“Child actor?” Nick questioned. “I assume you mean on stage, right? Because this guy’s at least twenty and these photos are from 1908.”
Julie bit her lip and looked at Nick anxiously. “Um, yeah. On stage. Pug’s career didn’t make it into talkies. I mean silents. But he was hoping to start it up again.”
“Again? Is he still around? He must be in his seventies.”
“Um, I hope so. Will will want to find him. And he needs to see these. Sorry.” She got up, clutching the photo album to her ample chest as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and ran out of the room like the White Rabbit late for a croquet date with the Queen of Hearts. Naked croquet.
Nick felt the presence at the peephole again and took a picture of the eyes that appeared the moment it was opened. The peephole shut as quickly and the flashlight batteries retreated. Nick suspected Gwen and Constance. But eyes were distinctive and there were a lot of Playmate photos. What was more intriguing was Julie and Will. For as much as they maintained a playful affability, Julie was possibly Will’s daughter. They acted like they had a shared history, but not necessarily a sexual one.
But more to the point, Will had mentioned that he was a bastard, his mother an actress, his father presumably a rich and powerful man, but one who could be undone by scandal. Will Monroe, perhaps not the illegitimate son of F. W. Murnau, but the bastard son of Ada or Minna Everleigh and one of their prominent guests? Prince Henry of Prussia would certainly explain Will’s Germanic look, as would the Dutch origins of the Roosevelt dynasty. And Gary “Pug” Peterman, the former child actor, then apparently Ada and Minna’s trusted majordomo? Who better to act as surrogate father to the famous madams’ unacknowledged son and nephew?
This also explained Will’s interaction with Kennedy and for that matter Hefner. Teddy Roosevelt was long dead, Prince Henry likewise, but the senator was the closest Monroe might come to actually meeting his father, or at least a man like him. And Hefner was the closest thing Chicago had to a carriage trade brothel keeper like the Everleigh sisters.
Then there was the Everleigh sisters’ fortune. If Monroe was the unacknowledged bastard son of one, but could find proof in the albums Hefner had purchased from Ada’s estate, then he might have a good chance of suing for at least that half of his inheritance, maybe even extracting acknowledgment or at least hush money from the Roosevelts or whatever was left of the Prussian royal family.
So many possibilities. Nick didn’t know if he’d guessed the right one, but he meant to follow the rabbit hole down.
That night, the taping of Playboy’s Penthouse went much as planned: Nick was introduced as the new Hollywood photographer, then served as a foil for Kennedy to give his speech. Then Julie bounced in, introduced as nothing more elevated than a “prospective Playmate,” but that in itself was a civil rights statement, as was Kennedy’s conversation with her, pledging his support to the joker community.
Nick was rotated out for this, relegated to the sidelines of the penthouse cocktail party that was really just a soundstage at WBKB. Mayor Daley entered. Will Monroe stood beside Nick as they watched Julie hop to fetch drinks for Kennedy and Daley, Hef smiling, ever the genial host. Nick got out his cigarette case and wordlessly offered one to Will.
“Shorry, don’t shmoke,” Will told him, slurring his words. He’d been moved to the sidelines to keep up the Playboy image of social drinking, not wanton inebriation. “Y’shouldn’t either. Things’ll kill you.”
“These are filtered. Companies say they’re safe now.”
“They’re lying,” Will stated flatly. “It’ll come out. Trust me.”
He was curiously insistent about this, like a prophet. But Nick had heard fire-and-brimstone health warnings before, mostly recycled temperance rants like Carrie Nation going on about President Grant and his lips rotting off. “Well, Prohibition didn’t turn out too well either.” He nodded to Will Monroe’s scotch.
“I’ve got reasons to drink.” Will raised his glass. “Trust me on that too.”
“And I’ve got reasons for not drinking.” With that, Nick put his cigarette case away and lit his cigarette with one of the numerous matchbooks that littered the set. He then whispered sotto voce, “So, Kennedy reminds you of your father?”
“What?”
Some of the best clues were dropped by drunk people, so Nick pressed on. “Put two and two together. You think your father was someone powerful, maybe a politician. Julie ran off with the album with the photos of Teddy Roosevelt. You’re the right age. I’m guessing either TR or Prince Henry of Prussia, with an outside chance of F. W. Murnau.”
“Always loved his work, but that would be a trick.” Will Monroe guffawed and took a swig of scotch. “Murnau was gay …”
“Or maybe Admiral Peary?”
“No, try again.”
“Gary Peterman?” Nick prodded and saw Will Monroe’s eyes go wide. “I was thinking he was a surrogate father, but maybe he’s your actual father? Julie said Pug was a child actor, and you mentioned the psychic said your father was an actor …”
“Pug