Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (11 page)

Then he kissed me and led me to his bedroom.

Afterward I was quiet, staring at the ceiling, feeling a little sad, or maybe disappointed. Making love with Shep wasn’t what I’d been expecting. With Tony, he didn’t let up until I was dizzy and my ears were ringing and my legs were too weak for standing. But with Shep I hadn’t reached a climax. I kept waiting for it, but it never happened.

He did hold me afterward. Oddly, with Shep, that part—the cuddling and the kissing—was in some ways just as satisfying.

A GANGSTER’S GIRL

S
aturday nights could have been tricky, but as luck would have it Tony had a standing poker game, and by ten o’clock, he was either broke, passed out or both. That freed me up to go out with Shep. No excuses, no explanations required.

It was a damp rainy Saturday night. I had been seeing Shep again for almost six weeks when he took me to dinner with some of his friends at Legends down on Monroe and Dearborn. I’d passed by that restaurant hundreds of times, wondering what kind of people could afford to dine there, and now I was about to find out. The interior did not disappoint. There was a harp serenade as you walked inside and a fish tank, big as a bathtub, loaded with lobsters. The waiters all wore tuxedos and carried silver trays with folded monogrammed towels strung over their forearms. It was crowded when we arrived with customers waiting a good hour or more for a table.

“You think you can fit us in?” Shep reached into his pocket and held out a fifty to the maître d’. “There’s six of us. We’re just waiting on the other girls.”

“Of course, Mr. Green.” He smiled and bowed slightly.

Was there anyone Shep couldn’t sway with money? I wasn’t sure if I found this trait of his annoying or incredibly sexy.

“Good.” Shep tore the bill in two and slapped one half in the maître d’s palm. “You get the other half when we get the table.”

Shep’s buddies busted out laughing but I was still shocked that he’d torn a fifty-dollar bill in two. Meanwhile the maître d’ made the people at the front table move, and a buxom woman eyed us, saying we had some nerve. Her companion whispered something that made her jaw clamp shut as she pressed her fingers to her mouth like she was blowing herself a kiss.

“Ah, here comes Dora and Basha,” said Shep, gesturing toward a tall blonde and petite brunette coming our way. “Wait till you meet these two. You’re a cream puff compared to them.”

“Is that Chanel?” Basha asked, eyeing my dress after we were introduced. She leaned over and pinched the fabric of Barbara Lewis’s favorite loaner dress with the beading down the front. “Oh, well.” She frowned.

“Oh, cut it, Basha.” Dora snickered. “You wouldn’t know Chanel if it bit you in the ass.”

“I’ll have you know,” said Basha, “this is a Jeanne Paquin.”

Dora rolled her eyes and pulled out a gold compact and a tube of crimson lipstick from her pocketbook. She didn’t notice—or maybe she didn’t care—that people were staring. I stared, too. It was the sort of behavior reserved for the powder room, and I couldn’t believe she was doing it in the middle of an elegant restaurant.

Dora was married to a man named Nathan Sloan but everyone called him Knuckles. “He’s my little roly-poly, aren’t you, sweetie?” she said with a wink.

Knuckles was short and thick around the middle with a bald head and a bulbous nose. But Dora, she was something else. She was a tall, striking blonde with fluttery blue eyes that rivaled a kewpie doll’s. The rock on her finger was enormous, and so was the diamond in her matching necklace.

Basha stood next to me, barely coming up to my nose. I thought she had something on the side of her face before I realized it was a beauty mark. And she was beautiful, but not in the same way as Dora. No, Basha’s beauty sneaked up on me, and I noticed then that a lot of men were looking at her, too, admiring her permanent marcel-waved hairdo, or maybe it was the mink stole draped over her bare shoulders. She had a cigarette holder with so many gems on it, it practically blinded me each time the light caught it just right. Basha was with Stanley, a handsome man they called Pip Squeak, or Squeak for short.

“How long have you and Stanley been married?” I asked.

“Oh, boy!” Knuckles started to laugh.

“Shut it,” Basha snapped, and with her jaw set and her lips barely moving, she said, “I’m
not
the wife.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my face flush red. “I didn’t know. I’m so—”

“Shep”—Knuckles was still laughing—“didn’t you tell her Squeak’s double-breasted?”

I turned to Shep, bewildered.

“Squeak here’s got two sets of breasts,” said Shep. “One set belongs to Basha and the other pair belongs to his wife.”

Basha drew a long, luxurious puff from her cigarette before dramatically tilting her head back as she blew a stream of smoke toward the chandelier.

As I looked at Dora’s sparkling diamonds and Basha’s mink, I felt like a schoolgirl in comparison. I was still cursing myself over my earlier blunder with Basha, afraid I was making a horrible first impression. I hoped I hadn’t embarrassed Shep.

Dora poked her platinum blond hair with a handful of red-lacquered fingernails and said, “What’s taking them so long to get our table ready?”

“What’s your rush?” said Basha. “You gotta train to catch or something?”

Just then, the maître d’ came to seat us, and everybody in the restaurant turned and looked, thinking they were somebodies. I felt like a tagalong, someone’s kid sister who had wandered in behind them.

I watched how Dora sat, so easy-like, her elbow resting on the back of her chair, her fingers dangling down, fluttering as she flashed her rock. Basha was just the opposite. She leaned in on one elbow, keeping her chin cradled in the heel of her hand. In her other hand she held her cigarette holder, using it as a pointer each time she talked. I liked the effect. It made everything she said seem important.

The restaurant owner came over and shook Shep’s hand. “I’m gonna take special care of you and your party.” Without our even ordering, two waiters brought out big round trays hefted on their shoulders, loaded with fancy salads, lobster tails, and prime rib. The food kept coming and the men dug in.

Everyone was clowning, having a swell time, until a tall, dark-haired man came into the restaurant. He was well dressed and wore a bright red bow tie with a matching handkerchief peeking out of his jacket pocket. The blonde on his arm sported half a dozen strands of pearls, one of which had lassoed her left breast.

“What the hell’s he doing here?” said Knuckles.

“Shit!” Squeak threw his napkin onto the table.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

Dora silenced me with a look.

Shep, Knuckles and Squeak stood up as the manager rushed over, waving his arms. “Please, Shep, eh? No trouble tonight, huh?”

“C’mon, ladies.” Basha dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin and rose from her chair. “Time for us to powder our noses.”

I followed Basha and Dora into the ladies’ lounge, a big pink velvet room with gold statuettes mounted on marble pedestals and a long, mirrored wall. We were the only ones in there aside from the bathroom attendant, a middle-aged black woman in an aproned dress to her ankles. She’d just cleaned the sink and was standing to the side with a bar of soap in one hand and a towel in the other. Her tip jar was filled with nickels, pennies and a few dimes.

Sitting on one of the pink settees, I pinched open my pocketbook. “What was that all about?” I asked, reaching inside for my face powder.

Basha turned to the attendant. “Give us a minute in here, will ya?” She dipped into her satchel and dropped a quarter in the tip jar. After the attendant left, Basha lit the cigarette sticking out of her gem-studded holder.

“What’s going on?” I asked again.

“One of Johnny Torrio’s men showed up, that’s all.”

I remembered meeting Torrio when I was with Tony at the Four Deuces. I hadn’t liked him either. But the men’s reaction seemed like more than simple dislike. “Why’s that a problem?” I got up and set my lipstick on the ledge below the mirror.

Dora shot me a look. “Do you
know
who Johnny Torrio is?”

“Yeah, he owns that place—the Four Deuces.”

“Girlie, you’d better wise up.” Basha gripped her cigarette holder with her back teeth. “Torrio owns a hell of a lot more than just the Four Deuces.”

Dora pulled me aside. “Here’s the story. You got the north side of Chicago and the south side. Johnny Torrio and Al Capone run the south side, and Dion O’Banion and our boys run the north side.”

Basha checked herself in the mirror and said, “The whole city’s in on it. Dion’s got the cops, the politicians, even the judges on the payroll.”

“Don’t look so surprised.” Dora glanced at me. “It’s true.” She said the Meridian was a front for Shep, just like Schofield’s Flower Shop was a front for Dion. “But that’s not where they get their money from—not their serious money, anyway.”

The Black Hand flashed through my mind. I got that woozy, detached feeling, like when a drink hits you too fast, too hard.

“Schofield’s is the North Siders’ headquarters,” said Dora. “And the Four Deuces is the South Siders’ headquarters.”

I almost lost my balance and stumbled, banging my hip into the ledge. The Four Deuces was Tony’s hangout. I closed my eyes and rubbed my fingers across my brow. My head was suddenly throbbing.
Damn him!
He didn’t just own a string of tobacco stores. He didn’t go to the Four Deuces just to gamble.

Basha knocked her cigarette ash into the sink that the attendant had just cleaned. “The thing to remember is the North Siders and the South Siders hate each other’s guts. So when one of Torrio’s lugs shows up on Dion’s turf—like that punk out there tonight—it gets the boys cranky.”

“C’mon,” Dora said, giving me a wink. “Let’s get back out there before they kill the poor bastard.”

I snapped my pocketbook shut. I felt like such a fool. What did Tony take me for—some silly girl from the stockyards who let him have his way with her? And what about Shep? I believed him when he said he owned a nightclub.
Now I find out it’s just a front
. I couldn’t look at Basha or Dora. If what they said was true about the South Side Gang and the North Side Gang, I was in trouble. Real trouble. Somehow I had gotten myself in the middle of all this, and now I had to find a way to get myself out.

I closed my eyes, willed myself not to cry and told myself to breathe.
Just breathe.

BEHIND ENEMY LINES

“I
did not lie to you!” Tony held my wrists back, pinning me to the wall in his hotel room the next afternoon when I confronted him.

“Liar!” I strained to get free but he had a grip on me.

“Calm down, Vera. It’s not the sort of thing you go around talking about.” He dropped his head to my shoulder and whispered, “I didn’t lie to you.”

“I should have known the minute you took me to the Four Deuces. How could you have taken me in there when you knew I was dating Shep Green! How could you have put me in that position?”

“That was before I knew about him. And I
never
took you back there.”

“You told me you own tobacco stores.”

“I
do
own tobacco stores.”

I continued to struggle against the weight of him. “What kind of a fool do you take me for? You work for Torrio and Capone, you son of a bitch!”

He moved in closer and had my back flush against the wall, his body pressed to mine. I could feel the heat coming off him, the warmth rising up inside me, but still I wanted to hit him, slap him, push him away.

“C’mon, don’t be like this. Nothing’s changed.”

“
Everything’s
changed.”

“Don’t say that.” He started to kiss me and I bit down full-force on his lip. He reared back and touched his mouth and his fingers came away red. His eyes moved from his fingers to my face. He kissed me again. I twisted and thrashed, trying to pull away but he kept kissing me. The metallic taste of his blood was on my lips and then my tongue. He had me and he knew it. As much as I tried, I couldn’t fight it anymore. In that moment, all I wanted was him—right there, against the wall, I gripped onto Tony while my body shook, trembled and surrendered.

Afterward, the two of us sat slumped on the floor, our backs leaning against the closet door. A draft blew across our naked bodies. We shared a cigarette, and as I watched the smoke wafting above our heads, my mind began to drift.

The night before, after we left the restaurant, Shep and I had gone back to his apartment. I was quiet and when pressed, I questioned Shep about Dion O’Banion and the North Side Gang.

“Just how involved are you?” I had asked, hands on my hips, my toe tapping his plush Persian carpet. “Basha and Dora said the Meridian’s just a front.”

“If all I needed was a front, believe me, there’s a hell of a lot simpler setups I could have gone for. Do you have any idea what it takes to keep that place going?” Shep removed his hat, passing it from hand to hand. “Vera, I don’t know what Dora and Basha told you tonight, but I do run a nightclub. And you can’t have a nightclub without serving liquor. It’s as simple as that. So yes, I bring in liquor and I can’t do that without the help of someone like Dion. Every hotel, every restaurant, every speakeasy in this town is doing the same thing.”

“So that’s it? You buy liquor from Dion? That’s all?” It made sense. Or maybe I just wanted it to.

He sat me down on the couch and cradled my chin in his hand. “Listen to me, Dollface. I’m crazy about you.” He paused and shook his head. “No, I’m not just crazy about you. I’m falling in love with you. Don’t you know that?”

When I let my eyes meet his, I had to blink back the tears. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be loved by him, but it was too complicated now. I felt torn. How could I love him back when I’d been cheating on him this whole time—and now I find out it’s been with a member of the South Side Gang.

“And you don’t have to say it, Dollface. I know you’re falling for me, too.”

A single droplet leaked from my eye. He stopped it halfway down my cheek with his thumb. “C’mon now, you’re supposed to be happy. You know the kind of guy I am. This has nothing to do with what happened to your father. You have to trust me on this.”