The Kit Kat Club - 647 W High St
Located in one of the smaller old Georgian mansions on West High Street is New Jerusalem's most exclusive and luxurious night spots, the Kit Kat Club. The club was opened in 1939 in the aristocratic and segregated Uptown neighborhood. A large and well appointed venue, it is able to comfortably accommodate fifty people, but could service up to a hundred guests. It features a lobby and coat check, toilets and powder rooms, bars, restaurant, a floorshow, band stage, and dance floor. There are, off-limits to customers, offices, kitchens, and dressing rooms. Private quarters are above, cut off from the rest of the club.
The Kit Kat brings in some of the best acts out of Boston, and occasionally even New York, all of whom are willing to work the 'sticks' due to the generous pay the Kit Kat offers. The club is strictly segregated for patrons but has been known to bring in colored performers, and almost all the wait staff is colored as well.
The Kit Kat is owned and operated by Philip Seaton, 34, a descendent of one of New Jerusalem's "good" families, although of an admittedly less prosperous line of the Seatons. Rumor says that Danny O'Bannion is behind the club; more romantic types say that it isJoe Potrello who backs the place. Neither of these rumors could be more wrong. The Kit Kat Club is, in fact, controlled by Carlo Stompanato, a key figure in the Boston Syndicate. O'Bannion and Potrello both have the word and know that the place is strictly off limits to any pressures or interferences from them.
Philip Seaton's reputation as a nightclub promoter is simultaneously respectable and shady, successful and tainted by the past. A misspent youth gained him friends both useful and dangerous and a reputation for being involved with such people. He is doing his best to shed these dark associations, despite having to continue a relationship with Carlo Stompanato and the Syndicate.
Recently Seaton has been seeing a woman called Lilly. Lilly is a mysterious figure who few others have met, but she has started taking her new beau along to the private lodge of an odd group outside Boston a few times for some evening socials, with the intention of perhaps recruiting him to the group.
Pandora Moulin (A.K.A. Pansy Mullins) is the nightclub's hostess and the on again, off again girlfriend of Philip Seaton. She acts as the front person for the nightclub and its license. She has been around the block, so to speak, and maintains an upbeat front almost constantly. She trusts Philip implicitly and knows that he wants the club to work so that he can eventually become legit and respectable again.
Pandora feels that Lilly is a high-class dame slumming it. “That type always takes a powder when things get tough.” If she is ever confronted with the club's association to the Boston Syndicate she guardedly admits there is a connection. The way Philip explained it to her there was capital and there was protection.
Carey Hooper is an entertainer at the nightclub. Hooper is a 37-year-old bisexual male lead of the floorshow at the Kit Kat. Friends with everyone except Bob Quinn, he is observant and smart. Carey is torn between the knowledge that Seaton is having an affair with Lilly and his loyalty to Pandora.
Bob Quinn is the nightclub's manager and a spy at the club for Carlo Stompanato. The club’s new manager, aged 49, is a nasty piece of work with a thin veneer of charm. Quinn hasn’t really got the smarts to do what Philip does, but he thinks he has. This will eventually get him killed. He tells Philip whenever he is required to attend a Syndicate meeting, but more often he simply conveys their demands. Seaton is angry about the Syndicate’s diktats but knows he has to follow them to make the nightclub a success.
Denny McDaid is the head bouncer at the club and Seaton's bodyguard when necessary. A big comforting presence, McDaid previously did a lot of what Bob Quinn now does in the organizing of the club. Phillip is careful to ensured that McDaid knows nothing about his fling with Lilly, as he knows that McDaid is sweet on Pandora and that such would cause trouble in the future if things soured between them.
Comments