Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (35 page)

“Aren’t you going to stop by Schofield’s?” I asked.

He paused and gave me a curious look. “You trying to get rid of me already?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’ve been away for a long time. Schofield’s can wait.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

As soon as he was gone, I got busy trying to clean up the mess I’d made while he was away. After our exchange in the bedroom, Shep hadn’t pressed me again about how I’d managed while he was away. It was clear that part of him didn’t want to know. Evelyn and I were supposed to make a liquor run that day, but given the Izzy situation and Shep’s being back home, there was no way we could do it.

When I telephoned Warren Steel, his voice was tight, polite but with an edge.

“What do you mean, your circumstances have
changed
?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be doing any more selling for you.”

His tone turned cold and brittle. “You realize that you had me order another two hundred cases for you.”

“I know, but you see—”

“Listen to me, Miss Abramowitz, I don’t care if you sell those cases or not—that’s your business—but either way, you owe me five thousand dollars.”

I was shaking when I hung up the phone.

The next call with Felix Marvin didn’t go much better.

“And this news you tell me over the telephone? I’m sorry to hear this. This upsets me. But you should know that I’ve already committed to my people. They’re expecting a delivery. I need at least a hundred cases. I would hope that a nice girl like you wouldn’t leave me high and dry.”

I was already doing the math in my head. Even if Evelyn and I managed one last run, that would have satisfied Felix, but it still left Warren with a hundred cases to move, and us twenty-five hundred dollars short. I had about half that stashed away, but with Izzy dead, Evelyn was going to need every penny she’d earned the past few months. And realistically there was no way we could make that last run. Shep didn’t have the Meridian anymore and that meant he’d be home all the time—at least for the time being.

It had never occurred to me that getting out of the liquor trade would be harder than getting into it.

•   •   •

T
he next day I told Shep I had to run an errand and went straight to Tony’s hotel room. I was barely inside his room before he kissed me, told me he’d been going crazy thinking about me. He kissed me again and started to unbutton my dress.

“Wait—I can’t.” I twisted myself away from him. “I have to get back home.”

“What? You just got here.” He stood back and jangled some coins in his front pocket.

“Oh, Tony.” I swallowed hard. “We have to talk.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Shep’s back. He’s home.”

He studied my face for a moment and shoved a matchstick in the corner of his mouth, his jaw twitching back and forth. “Well, we knew he was coming back sooner or later.”

I glanced at my hands. My wedding ring was glaring at me.

“We just have to be careful, that’s all.”

I shook my head. “He’s my husband, Tony. I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Yeah, well, he was your husband while he was away, too. That didn’t stop you.” He pulled the matchstick from his mouth and pitched it onto the bureau.

“That was different and you know it.” It sounded like the right thing to say, but it was still a betrayal.

We both grew silent, and Tony turned his back to me. “So he’s in and I’m out. Is that it? You expect me to just walk away. Bow out?”

I didn’t say anything.

With one step he was at my side. He grabbed me, pulled me close, and kissed me.

“Tony, no! I mean it!” I twisted out of his arms.

“So you’re just gonna throw it all away.” Tony slammed his fist to the wall. “You really love to jerk me around, don’t you.”

“That’s not true.”

“You’ve been doing it to me from the very start. ‘I can’t see you anymore, Tony. Go away—I’m scared we’ll get caught. Come back to me, Tony—I miss you. I love you.’”

He wasn’t wrong about that. I never saw it from his point of view before, but he was right. I pushed him away and pulled him to me, only to push him away again.

“Make up your goddamn mind, Vera. Or better yet, you know what—just do me a favor and leave. Go on. Just get the hell out of here. And the next time you have a body to get rid of, tell your husband to take care of it. Not me.”

I let myself out of his room. He never even said good-bye.

I was too upset to go home and face Shep so I drifted along the sidewalks, past the shops and street vendors. I never meant to hurt Tony. I never meant to hurt anyone. Eventually I made my way up to Grant Park. The sunlight was blinding, and I found a shaded bench beneath a giant oak tree, where I sat and cried, ignoring the passersby who stopped and stared, asking if I was okay. . . .

I cried for Tony. For Shep. I cried for myself and even for Evelyn and Izzy. Everything was coming to a head and I was responsible for so much pain, so much damage. If it weren’t for Hannah, I would have given anything to turn back the clock, to be in my mother’s house again with a chance to start over. Maybe I could have persuaded Shep to get out of the rackets, to become a legitimate businessman. Maybe I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him in the first place. All I knew was that I’d wasted my time chasing after all the wrong things. I had money now and a big house, I had more fancy clothes than I knew what to do with and none of it meant a thing.

I dried my eyes, blew my nose and took out my compact to retouch my makeup.

When I came through the front door that afternoon, Shep was working in his study. I stepped inside without knocking and when he looked up, he leaned back in his chair and smiled.

I sat in his lap and wrapped my arms around him. Despite it all, I wasn’t sorry I’d fallen in love with him. “Let’s start over, you and me, huh? Let’s forget about the time you were away and let’s just start fresh again. Can we do that?” I kissed him and rested my head on his shoulder. We’d both come back home now.

MORE SECRETS TO KEEP

I
t had been three days. Three days since Shep had come home. Three days past due for Warren Steel and Felix Marvin. And three days since anyone had heard from or seen Izzy—though I thought I’d seen him plenty of times. If a man with dark hair was seated in a café, or walked across the street, or went by on the trolley and the sunlight hit him just right, my heart would stop and I’d do a double take. I’d need ten minutes after that for my pulse to stop jumping.

In the days that followed, just as Tony had hoped, the members of the North Side Gang were convinced that Capone was responsible for whatever had happened to Izzy. No one suspected Evelyn. The girls and even the men all rallied around her. Evelyn turned out to be quite the actress, impressively shedding tears at just the mention of Izzy’s name. Only I knew what fueled her outbursts.

Unlike Evelyn, Shep was gripped with genuine grief. Each day that passed with no sign of Izzy compounded his agony. He combed Izzy’s hangouts looking for him, asking questions. He and the guys scoured the lakefront, back alleys and quarries searching for Izzy.

One night, as soon as Shep walked through the door, I knew something was up. I was worried that they’d found some part of Izzy. Or maybe they’d found his ring. Tony said he’d get rid of it, but what if they’d found it?

Shep fixed himself a drink and handed me the late edition of the
Daily Herald
. “Do me a favor,” he said, pointing to the photo of Izzy on the front page. “Read that. Tell me what it says.”

Though he’d sold papers as a kid, Shep was never one to read newspapers. Until he met me, he never even had a paper in his house. He said they were filled with lies. Nothing but yellow journalism. So I was surprised that this time he wanted to know what it said. I thought maybe he had handed the task over to me because he was too distraught to read it himself.

“Just tell me what it says, huh?” His jaw was set, his eyes focused on the newsprint.

I sat down and began to read:

Search Is On for Missing Gangster

A citywide search continues for Isiah “Izzy” Seltzer, a top lieutenant of the so-called North Side Gang. Last seen on July 18, 1927, the twenty-six-year-old missing gangster is a close associate of gang leader Vincent “Schemer” Drucci, George “Bugs” Moran, and convicted mobster Shepherd “Shep” Green. . . .

When I finished reading the article, Shep dropped into the chair opposite me. “Anything else in there about him? Does it say anything about Capone?”

He got up and paced while I leafed through the pages of the front section, scanning the columns. “I don’t see anything. Here,” I said, handing him the paper, “see if I missed anything.”

Shep shook his head and backed away with his hands up like I was tossing him a bomb. “I can’t . . . I can’t read that.” A deep crease formed along his brow, and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was about to cry.

“It’s okay,” I said, setting down the newspaper.

“No! It’s not okay! It’s not okay, goddammit!”

In all the years I’d known Shep, I could have counted the times he’d raised his voice on one hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“Shep—”

“You really want to break me? Now? Of all times?”

“Shep . . .”

He was panting hard, like he’d just run a mile. “Don’t make me say it. Do you really need to hear me say it out loud?”

“Say what? Why are you getting so angry with me?”

“I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself. Jesus . . .” He ran his fingers through his hair and tried to calm himself.

I didn’t know what we were fighting about.

He turned his back and muttered, “I can’t read that paper. Okay. I can’t read
any
paper.”

“What?” I still didn’t get it.

“Why the hell do you think I never wrote to you when I was away? Why do you think I don’t read to Hannah?”

I sank down on the sofa, dumbfounded. Shep still had his back to me, his shoulders rounded and slumped forward. I thought about all his books, how he had arranged them according to color and size, not by author or even subject. . . . How he always wanted me to read to him . . . I thought about the files I’d found in his drawer—how everything had been typed by someone, but there was no handwriting. It struck me then that aside from his signature, I’d never seen Shep’s handwriting. It was all making sense. It should have made sense all along.

He came and sat next to me, but still, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I hate this about myself.”

“Don’t say that.” I leaned over and rubbed his shoulders.

“I had to drop out of school when I was just a kid. Hell, I never even made it past the first grade. I can do numbers. They come easy to me. They make sense. But words—letters—they just never did.” He hung his head and I began to massage his neck.

“How come you never told me this before?”

“I didn’t want you to think you married some stupid loser.”

“I never would have thought that. Look at you. Look at what you’ve accomplished.”

“Yeah, look at what I’ve accomplished.” He laughed bitterly. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not too proud of. And now half my friends are dead because of it.” He polished off his drink, got up and poured himself another. “I just can’t keep this up anymore.”

“You’ve done great, Shep. I know men with a wall of diplomas who aren’t half as smart as you. So what if you can’t read. If you can’t write.” He winced when I said that. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

“I never wanted you to know. I never wanted anyone to know. Izzy . . . He was the only one I ever told.”

“Izzy?” Just the mention of his name flooded me with guilt.

“He used to do all my reading for me. My writing, too.” He blew out a sigh and rubbed his temples. “I don’t know how I’m gonna manage without him.”

I leaned over and cupped his face in my hands. “You have me now. I’ll help you. Whatever you need. You bring it to me.”

He turned away and looked at the bookcases. When we moved into the house I had the housekeeper alphabetize the volumes. I remember when he saw them rearranged, he said they looked sloppy.

“Dion always said it was important to surround yourself with good books. I always thought someday I’d get to read them.”

“You will.” I wrapped my arms around him. “I know you—I know the kind of man you are, and someday, I know you’ll read every one of those books.”

PAYBACK TIME

E
velyn and I made two failed attempts to square our business with Felix Marvin and Warren Steel. Both were interrupted by funerals of two North Siders, one found in the trunk of his car, the other shot two days later on the front steps of his house.

Still, Evelyn and I were able to pull together twelve hundred and fifty dollars of the twenty-five hundred owed—but that was based on if we could deliver the hundred cases to Felix. We were hoping that if we could meet with both parties, face-to-face, and hand over the liquor to Felix and the money to Warren, then Warren might pardon the remaining twenty-five hundred dollars. I couldn’t think about the other twenty-five hundred dollars I owed him on top of that.

But with Shep back and working the phones from his office at home, it was impossible for me to disappear for the ten or twelve hours it would take to get up to Milwaukee, meet with Warren Steel, make the delivery to Felix and get back home.

While Shep was down at Schofield’s one afternoon, I telephoned Warren, hoping to buy us more time.

“I’m a patient man, Miss Abramowitz. But even I have my limits. You’re testing me—you should know that.”

“I can give you about half the money now and—”

“I’m not interested in half.”

“But I promise—”

“You keep promising but not delivering. I trust this is the last time we’ll have this conversation.”

Before I could say anything more, the telephone line went dead.

About a week later, I was standing at Dearborn and Division, waiting for a taxicab. It was a hot, balmy afternoon, and the sky was a sheet of uninterrupted blue. Pigeons waddled about, pecking at the sidewalk. I fanned myself with a magazine and squinted as the sunbeams bounced off the windows, shiny hoods and fenders of the motorcars parked along the street.