Legs Chapter 6: John Thompson's Man Summary & Analysis

Summary

Shortly before the end of Jack's run, the police recovered a peculiar piece of plaster from his house. One side of it was covered with wallpaper, which was marked with twenty-five squiggles. The police assumed it was some kind of hidden code for a booze run. Alice told Marcus that it was actually a relic from their honeymoon. They hardly left the hotel, and after they'd had sex five times, Alice decided to keep track of their lovemaking by tallying it on the wall. When they checked out of the hotel, Jack removed the marked-up piece of plaster from the wall with a tire iron.

Alice is constantly in the public spotlight while visiting Jack during his stay at the hospital. The press asks her about Kiki, but she will not answer their questions. Alice has what she calls a "Mormon" dream about Jack bringing home another wife to live with them. Alice says special prayers for Jack, hoping to save his soul. She also understands that by staying with Jack, she is allowing evil into her life. She asks Jack about Kiki, but he says that she no longer has a place in his life. Marcus recalls that when Alice was killed, she was sitting in her Brooklyn apartment, looking at an old newspaper picture of her and Jack at the Polyclinic. She had written "my hero" on the clipping.

This is an idyllic time for Alice and Jack. Marcus and Lew Edwards, a childhood friend of Marcus's and a Broadway producer, come to visit them one day in Acra. Lew proposes that Jack should say he's had a change of heart, take up religion, and become a preacher. Lew says that millions of people will become interested in the Holy Ghost's sudden possession of the gangster. Jack will start out performing in vaudevillian theaters, move on to churches, and finally fill Yankee Stadium and tour the world. Alice loves the idea. Jack asks what Marcus thinks. Marcus likes it too, but Jack says the idea rubs him the wrong way. He would feel like a hypocrite. In the next room, Alice reads in the Mirror that Kiki Roberts, now dancing in Chicago, receives a phone call every night at 7:30 from Legs Diamond. Alice storms into the room; Jack tells her not to believe everything she reads. Alice realizes that Jack is always out of the house at that hour, and packs her bags.

Kiki lies naked in bed with Jack, happy that she has seemingly driven Alice away. Still, she is frustrated because Jack has not made love to her yet that night. She goes downstairs to check on the fudge she had made Jack. The fudge hasn't hardened yet. Jack and Kiki sleep in separate rooms, as they always have. Kiki thinks back on the evening. They'd gone out to dinner and were on their way home when they came upon a man named Streeter, who hauls cider, and a boy named Dickie Bartlett. Jack pulled out his pistol and made the man pull over. When Streeter said he did not know where the still was located, Jack took them back to his place, sent Kiki inside, and brought Streeter and Bartlett into the garage. He burned Streeter's feet and nearly hanged him, but Streeter still would not talk. Jack fired a few shots by Streeter's head but finally gave up and let him go.

Kiki walks into Jack's room, naked, hoping to surprise him. She strokes his cheek, and he wakes up and puts a gun to her face and bends her fingers back. She passes out from the pain. When she wakes, Jack apologizes and calls his doctor, the coroner. Afterward, Kiki checks on the fudge, which is still liquid. She feeds it to the cat.

Marcus says that years later, he heard Clem Streeter telling people in the barbershop that he told a judge what Jack Diamond did to him. Streeter did have a still, but he said he'd be darned if he was going to give up an extra hundred and thirty dollars a week for some guy from New York.

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