Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (22 page)

I couldn’t finish the article. I crumpled up the newspaper and stuffed it in the garbage pail.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t straddle both worlds. What happened to the man I married? When did he become this cold-blooded hit man who’d run out the door at the drop of a hat to chase down Capone?

SMALL WORLD

I
looked out the window as my streetcar swept along the track. Trees were in bloom, the grass was green again and spring was alive and thriving. We’d made it through the bulk of the winter without incident, and I was beginning to think the North Side Gang’s obsession with killing Capone had run its course. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Shep mention Capone’s name.

Covering my nose and mouth with my handkerchief, I continued to watch as my streetcar hummed past the familiar brick buildings and the long stretch of railroads. It was my third visit to the stockyards that month. Ever since Hannah was born, I found excuses to see my mother. It was hard leaving Hannah, even for a few hours. I’d miss her and worried that I was missing something: her putting new words together, learning to play by herself with a toy. But if I didn’t get away I was no good for her. Exhausted from lack of sleep, I’d grow irritable and short, bursting into tears over the slightest little things. So, reluctantly I’d leave my baby with the housekeeper or Dora, who was forever volunteering to stay with Hannah. My mother always wanted me to bring Hannah along, which surprised me at first. I hadn’t expected her to embrace her “illegitimate” granddaughter, but apparently she liked being a grandmother more than she liked being a mother. As for me, I wasn’t about to expose Hannah to the stockyards. She was only fifteen months old, and she’d already seen enough things I wished she hadn’t.

Maybe it was guilt that brought me back to my mother’s, or maybe it was because I understood her more now that I was a mother myself. My mother had to have had her share of sleepless nights, raw, chafed nipples, fatigue and frustration, and yet all of that would have been set aside for the needs of me, her child. I understood that now and it choked me up. She may not have known how to show it, but how could I have doubted that she loved me as much as I loved Hannah?

I got off the streetcar along with a cluster of other passengers and waded my way through the main gate of the Union Stock Yards. A young girl wearing a babushka and tattered shoes lumbered her way alongside me. She had the posture of an old woman, and when I caught her eye, she gave me a smile without a speck of resentment for my cloche hat or my new Mary Janes. But still, I couldn’t look at her again and was relieved when she veered off the path, heading in the opposite direction.

I walked past a group of men unloading flatbed wagons full of cowhides piled on top of one another, stacked up like carpets. Flies swarmed everywhere, huge ones, buzzing around my head, loud as bees. In between each cowhide there was a layer of salt. Four men grabbed hold of a skin, two at one end and two more at the other, and together they lifted it above their heads, shaking the hide like they were airing out a blanket. Pellets of salt flew in all directions, landing on the sidewalk at my feet.

As I walked by, someone called to me, “Vera? Hey, Vera?”

“Buster? What are you doing down here?” I was surprised to see him and relieved that he was still alive. Instead of that flashy suit he always wore, now Buster was in a pair of dusty bib overalls and a graying undershirt. His fedora was replaced by a soft cap and he was missing a couple teeth and two fingers on his left hand. I glanced at the knobby stubs, stopping at his knuckles.

“Well, how have you been, Mith Vera?” he asked, walking over to me. He spoke with a lisp on account of his missing teeth.

“What are you doing here, Buster?”

“I’m working at the thockyards now.” He took off his cap and put it back on riding backward on his forehead. He chomped hard on a piece of gum and it struck me that, aside from that night when Dion knocked his teeth out, I couldn’t remember when he wasn’t chewing gum.

“Yep,” he said, “working real hard down here at the thockyards.”

“No fooling, huh?”

“Yeah, I got out of the rackets.” He stared out at the livestock pens. He asked about Shep and before I could answer, he said he’d recently gotten married himself. I pretended not to notice when he glanced down at what should have been his ring finger.

“Did you now? Well, that’s real swell, Buster.”

“Yeah. I married Thally.”

Sally? I was blank for a minute but then I remembered Sally—Big Red, the redhead he’d brought to Dion’s party.

“She’s a good girl. Her father’s worked down here for years. He’s the one who got me a job here.” He pointed toward the Abramowitz sign.

“Here? You work here?”

“Yep. Been here ’bout thix months now.”

“Six months, huh? Doing what?”

“I drive a truck. Make deliveries. Mostly I run hides over to the thanneries. Make a few runs to the butcher thops around town, that thort of thing.” He reached in his pocket for a stick of chewing gum and offered me a piece of Juicy Fruit.

I shook my head and looked at the delivery trucks with
Abramowitz Meats
stenciled along the back and side panels. There were two of them, parked by the loading dock.

He folded a fresh stick, and before he shoved it into his mouth, he spit out the wad he’d been chewing. I glanced at the ground and noticed Buster’s shoes. Brand-new, expensive-looking. More than he could have ever afforded on a deliveryman’s salary. Those were rich men’s shoes, and only someone like Buster would have been stupid enough to wear them around the stockyards with his overalls. I looked up at Buster, noticing the gold chain on his watch dangling down from his pocket.

Buster was a nothing in Dion’s outfit. Nothing but a Little Pisher. They used him as a driver, had him load and unload cases of liquor and barrels of beer, but not much more. He wasn’t making the kind of money at that point that he could have afforded shoes like that, not to mention his watch. He was getting his money from someplace now, though. And if he was married to Big Red, then his connection had to be with Capone. I glanced back at the trucks parked along the side of the building.

“What brings you down here, anyway, Mith Vera? Or should I say Mithess Green?”

When he said that, I got a funny feeling. He’d called me Mrs. Green with such disdain. Could he have possibly seen me standing on the stairwell that night, watching everything that Shep and the others had done to him? “Visiting a friend, that’s all.” I forced a smile and shrugged. For some reason I didn’t want Buster knowing that my mother was his boss. Buster never knew my maiden name, and he wasn’t going to find out now.

“Well,” he said, turning back toward the others, gesturing to the flatbed of bloody cowhides, “I’d better get back to work.”

We said our good-byes and I went inside.

My mother sat at her desk, talking on the telephone. A stack of papers had collected at her side and the day’s mail was fanned out before her. Four men stood around, talking softly among themselves, waiting to speak with her about a salt order, how many head of cattle they needed to purchase, how much ice they needed for the cooling rooms. She’d been complaining that business was slow, but it didn’t look slow to me.

I stood back watching while she finished her phone call and issued orders to her men. “And don’t come back here without that contract signed, you hear me?” she called to one of them as he was leaving. “Jessie,” she said to another worker, “remember I want that cattle pen fixed before you leave here today.”

As I observed my mother, something struck me at my core. I realized that she must have been about my age when she took over my father’s business. I tried to imagine what she must have gone through back then. My mother, like me, had been an only child. She’d married my father, twenty-three years her senior, just three months after his first wife died, which set off a scandal. His family didn’t approve of the marriage and by the time I was born, they wanted nothing to do with me—even after my father was killed. My mother had no family to help her, and I’m certain she was terrified that the Black Hand would come back looking for more money.

How dare I complain about anything!
I didn’t work. I went to lunch and shopped. I went to meetings with a bunch of women who believed a cookie could solve the world’s ills. And while I may have been learning to cook, I had a housekeeper who did most of the cleaning and helped with the baby. The two days each week she wasn’t there, I could barely get the beds made. But here my mother had stepped into a man’s world, learned how to run a business and mastered all the ins and outs of an ugly industry.

I’d seen her negotiate a heard of cattle for an unheard-of price. I’d seen her throw many a salesman out on their ear because they came in thinking they could swindle a woman. I’d seen her scold a grown man, reducing him to tears. My mother could be every bit as tough as a man and God knows she was a hell of a lot smarter than most of them.

After her workers had left and she’d sent Ida down to the kill floor, I wanted to tell her I was proud of her, but instead I said, “Since when do you hire bootleggers?”

“Bootleggers?” The corners of my mother’s mouth turned downward as she gathered the papers strewn across her desk. “What are you talking about?”

“That guy, Buster, out there”—I gestured toward the front door—“he used to make liquor runs for the North Side Gang.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense. He’s a nice young man. His father-in-law’s worked here for years.”

“Yeah, well, I’d keep an eye on him if I were you. And your trucks, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s using one of them for bootlegging.” I sat on her desk, letting my legs dangle down in front, my heels knocking against the side panel like I used to do when I was little. Thinking about Buster’s shoes and his watch, I said, “Looks like Buster’s lining his pockets pretty good, Ma.”

She checked some totals on her ledger. “At least someone’s getting rich down here. All I’m doing these days is losing money.” She opened a file drawer, dropped the ledger inside. “If your friend out there wasn’t such cheap labor, he’d be out of a job.”

“Are things really that bad? You seem so busy.” I leaned back and looked at her.

My mother went into a full stretch and yawned. “At least the bank gave me another extension on my loan—that’ll buy me some time.”

“An extension? Ma, if you need money, why don’t you come to me? I’ll ask Shep for it.”

My mother sat up straight and shot me a look like she just ate something rotten. I should have known better than to make that kind of an offer. Usually Shep’s money made me feel superior; now it made me ashamed. My mother knew Shep’s money was dirty, and I felt dirty for having it.

THE BALANCING ACT

J
udging by the half dozen cigarette butts in the ashtray, Basha must have been waiting at the café for half an hour or so. She uncapped her flask and poured a splash of bourbon into her teacup and then mine. It was a gorgeous summer day and it was just the two of us, seated outside at a garden café, surrounded by ladies who probably had never added anything to their teacups other than a wedge of lemon or a teaspoon of sugar.

“So what is this all about?” I asked. She’d called earlier, saying it was urgent. She needed to meet with me privately.

“I need your help.”

“With what?” I opened my menu.

“I’m gonna do it.” She nodded as she examined her cigarette holder, rolling its bejeweled stem between her fingertips. “I’m gonna off her.”

“Oh, Basha.” I shook my head and laughed. “So what’s it going to be this time? Are you going to throw a bomb through her kitchen window? Or maybe just set her house on fire?”

Lighting up a fresh cigarette, she leaned back and exhaled. “There’s this poison I can get.”

“Uh-huh . . .” I closed my menu, setting it aside.

“She’ll never even taste it. It’s this white powder. It dissolves right away. Costs a damn fortune but it’ll be worth it. They said it takes about four hours to work. All I have to do is find a way to get it in her coffee or her food. And I need you to—”

“Wait a minute. Hold it.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Are you serious?” I looked into her eyes. Her long dark lashes didn’t flutter; her heavily lined lids didn’t blink. “Oh, good lord. You
are
serious, aren’t you!”

“I can’t take it anymore. I can’t stand the thought of Squeak being with her. He doesn’t love her.”

“But he loves his children.”

“But he loves me more.”

As a parent I could have set her straight on that score, but I didn’t.

“She’d meet with you. You could call and invite her out for lunch. Or coffee. I’ll do the rest. I just need you to help me so I can put it in her food.”

“Basha, put this crazy idea out of your mind.”

“You don’t know what it’s like for me. It’s different when you’re a wife. I’m only the moll. It’s not the same. And yeah, sure, Squeak’s got me in a nice place but he’s with her two, sometimes three nights a week. And when do I get a Saturday night? Hardly ever. And the holidays, forget it. I’m the one sitting home alone while he’s with her. It tears me up inside.”

“Then maybe you should look for a man who’s single and available.”

She winced, making her face look as though it were cast in plaster and on the verge of cracking. “I have to do this, and I can’t go to Dora—she’s friends with the bitch. So is Cecelia. The old wives’ club. And Viola’s still a mess over Dion. I can’t ask her. Squeak’s wife’s doesn’t really know Evelyn, so you’re my only hope.”

I reached for my bourbon and took a burning gulp. “I’m not going to be any part of this.”

“You don’t understand. Squeak’s everything to me. I never had a family. My father was a drunkard. My mother went crazy, thought there were spiders crawling on her all the time. She picked her arms and legs raw trying to get the spiders off. I hated being in that house with them. I was miserable until I met Squeak.” Her eyes began to glaze over. It was the first time I’d ever seen her close to showing any real emotion, let alone shedding an honest-to-God tear. Under that rough, brash exterior was another lonely romantic. “I love him,” she said. “I can’t stand to be away from him. It hurts. It makes me ache for him. Do you have any idea what it’s like to love a man that much?”