Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (43 page)

Once on board I take a seat toward the back and look out the window. We pass one bungalow after another, and somewhere beyond the horizon, in the distance, I picture the Wrigley Building and the downtown skyscrapers towering over the city. I miss the hustle-bustle of downtown and think about moving back all the time, but my mother needs me right now. It’s the least I can do, since she was there for me after Shep’s murder. My mother, more than anyone else, knew what I was going through.

After the massacre on Clark Street I was in shock. I hadn’t even had a chance to absorb what had happened to Tony when I found out about Shep. If it weren’t for my mother and Hannah, I don’t think I could have gone on. For Hannah’s sake I had to pull myself together. And it was only then that I realized that when my father died, my mother never let me see her broken. I had to be just as strong.

I remember I wouldn’t look at the newspapers until after Hannah was in bed asleep. The next day the
Chicago Tribune
had photos of Shep and all the other victims, along with pictures of the crowds gathered outside the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage. The headline split me down the center:

North Side Gangsters Gunned Down in Cold Blood

The reporter had coined the phrase “the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” and according to him, “The bloodbath was a carefully orchestrated scheme, designed to execute key members of the North Side Gang.” Apparently those weren’t real police officers who raided the garage. They were gangsters—presumably Capone’s men—dressed in police uniforms, out for slaughter. It was all staged. There was no raid.

I tore up every newspaper, every article. I still haven’t told Hannah exactly what happened to her father. There’s time for that, and hopefully by then, I’ll find the words to explain it all to her.

The conductor calls out my stop, and I get off the streetcar and pass through the giant limestone gate along with the other workers heading in for another day. It’s mostly men in tattered overcoats with some teenage boys and a few women mixed in. Ever since the stock market crash a lot of people are out of work, but you wouldn’t know it down here at the Union Stock Yards. Money is tight for everyone now but people still have to eat.

I step inside the main office and Ida Brech looks up from her typewriter. “You’re in early today,” she says, handing me a stack of messages.

I shuffle through them while Ida preps me for the day ahead. I have two appointments with cattle salesmen and one with a new salt vendor. I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit at my desk, returning to the stack of messages, deciding who to deal with first.

I call Otto at the tannery down the street. “Tell him it’s Vera with Abramowitz Meats.” Two seconds later, Otto’s on the line. “...Yeah, Otto, you bet I’m not happy. You’re chiseling me. . . .” I look at Ida and roll my eyes. “Listen, we had an agreement and I expect you to honor that. End of story . . .” He’s yapping on and I’m making notes for my next call. “Well, now,” I say with a laugh, giving Ida a wink, “that’s more like it. Just don’t let it happen again. . . .”

No sooner do I end my call than I hear Ida say, “Well, look who’s here.”

I glance up and set the telephone back down. There is my mother coming through the doorway. “Ma, what are you doing? You need to rest.”

“Feh!”
She shakes her head and leans on her cane as she makes her way across the room, favoring her right side. I get up from the desk and help her into the chair. This is the first time she’s been back to Abramowitz Meats since her stroke in August. That was when I sold the house and Hannah and I moved back home so I could take care of her. I worried that Hannah wouldn’t want to move to Brighton Park, but when I told her, she sprang to her feet and said, “Really? We get to go live in the same house you grew up in?”

I see where my mother’s missed a couple buttons on her dress and I reach over and make it right. She’s never gotten her full strength back, and fastening a button can be as monumental a task as opening a jar.

“How are you feeling, Mrs. Abramowitz?” Ida gets up to fix her a cup of coffee.

“I’m managing just fine,” she insists. “I’ll be back here before you know it.”

Ida looks at me, and all I can do is shrug.

“Let me see the ledger.” My mother motions to me. “Let me see what you’ve been up to while I’ve been gone.”

I pull out the leather-bound book and place it in her lap. With her finger, she traces over the numbers and mumbles something to herself. At least her nails are clean now. She finally let me file them and remove the dirt underneath. Maybe one day she’ll even let me polish them. Looking up, she smiles at me with half her face; the other half is frozen. “You’ve done good,” she says.

And so I have, even during these tough times. Last month I purchased a machine that does the work of six men. I’ve also cut a few good deals with our vendors. It’s gritty and nasty as ever down at Abramowitz Meats, but it doesn’t bother me as much anymore. Maybe it’s because I’m older now. Or maybe because I’ve seen things much uglier and darker than the Union Stock Yards.

My mother lowers her head as a strand of drool lands on the open pages of the ledger. She doesn’t notice it. I reach for my handkerchief to wipe her mouth, but she swats my hand away. She’s proud. I have to respect that.

•   •   •

I
make my way out to the theater lobby, waiting while my eyes adjust to the light. I’ve just seen
42nd Street
with Bebe Daniels and Ginger Rogers for the third time.

When I step outside the movie palace I hear the paperboys shouting the headlines from every street corner: “Extra, extra—read all about it! ‘Prohibition Ends Tonight! Liquor to Flow Again! The Dry Spell Has Been Broken!’”

It’s official. After thirteen years, the “Noble Experiment” has proven to be nothing but a colossal joke. Everyone knew the Volstead Act was going to be repealed and now they’re all getting ready to celebrate. All the downtown hotels, dance halls, and cabarets are throwing big bashes.

The December wind is lashing out with all its fury. I turn away with my back toward the lake, facing the patina clock outside of Marshall Field’s. It’s after four o’clock and I need to get home. Hannah and I are going to bake cookies later.

The sun is setting and I walk by a speakeasy just as the doors fly open, letting a cluster of people empty out onto the sidewalk.

A man motions to me from the doorway, holding a martini glass in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other. “C’mon in, doll!”

It gives me a shiver when he calls me that because it’s so close, too close, and I know no one will ever call me Dollface again. I shake my head and keep walking past a dozen or so taverns and saloons, officially back open for business. I look in the picture window of a restaurant and see people pouring champagne freely, clinking their fluted glasses in toast after toast.

A couple of drunks in front of me weave their way back and forth down the sidewalk with their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, singing, “Oh, how are you goin’ to wet your whistle when the whole darn world goes dry . . .”

You would think it was New Year’s Eve, the way people are carrying on. Everyone’s blotto.

Everyone but me.

When I get home that night, I feed my mother and give her a sponge bath. Hannah and I make snickerdoodles and sugar cookies for her to take to school. After she’s in bed, I clean up the kitchen and change into my bathrobe and nurse a bourbon while I listen to the festivities over the radio, coming live from the Knickerbocker, the Palmer House and every other hotel in town.

It’s the end of an era and I can’t let the moment pass without remembering the good times we had, despite it all. I can’t help it; it chokes me up, and I wipe a tear rolling down my cheek.

“Don’t cry, Mama.” Hannah comes and sits next to me.

“What are you still doing up?” I clear my throat and drag my hand across my cheek.

“I thought you seemed lonely tonight.”

“Now, how can I be lonely, huh? I’ve got you.”

She comes and sits next to me and rests her head on my chest. I brush my hand through her hair, pushing her bangs back off her forehead. That’s when I glance down and see what can only be the start of a widow’s peak. Just like her father’s.

She snuggles in closer and says, “If you want, you can go ahead and suffocate me again.”

I wrap my arms around her and squeeze with all my heart.

•   •   •

“W
ell, what do you think?” Evelyn holds out her hand, showing me her engagement ring.

“It’s beautiful,” I tell her, holding her hand in mine. “I’m glad to see that after four years he’s finally making an honest woman out of you. I’m happy for you.” And I am. Irwin’s one of the good ones. And he’s out of the rackets now, doing what he can to keep his factory doors open and his workers employed. “It figures,” I say, “you and your big boobs would end up marrying a man who makes brassieres.”

Evelyn laughs. We’re sitting in the parlor at my mother’s house, just like we used to do when we were girls. She reaches inside her pocketbook for a roll of Necco wafers and tells me about the wedding plans.

“Wow. That’s soon,” I say when she tells me the date.

“I know, but like you said, after four years, it’s time already.” Peeling away the waxed-paper wrapper, she pops a lime candy in her mouth and hands the roll to me. “But it’s gonna be a small wedding. You’ll come, won’t you?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”

“You know the others’ll be there.”

“I know, but that’s my problem, not yours.” I don’t keep up with the girls anymore. Dora ratted me out, so there’s no love lost there. I heard she had a couple more miscarriages and I think she always resented me because I’d had a baby and she couldn’t. The other girls don’t bother with me now, either.

“Is Basha still dating that old guy?” I ask.

Evelyn laughs. “Wait till you meet him. You’ll die. He’s old enough to be her father.”

“Yeah, but I hear he’s rich.” I laugh, imagining what it will be like to come face-to-face with the old gang again, after all these years. “Aw, we had some good times for a while there, didn’t we?”

She nods. “Absolutely.”

I place a clove Necco disk on my tongue and let it dissolve. “Feels like a lifetime ago.” After the massacre there was nothing left of the North Side Gang. Capone had broken them that day on Clark Street. They didn’t have the time or the men or even the heart to rebuild. I bite down on my wafer, cracking it in two. “What do you hear from the fellas?” I ask, dusting the Necco powder off my fingers. “Do they still keep in touch?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same. Irwin told me Bugs is back to safecracking and that Knuckles is knocking off jewelry stores with a couple of the Little Pishers.” She fluffs her hair off her neck. She offers me another Necco before she opens her pocketbook and drops the roll inside. “You know Irwin’s friend David will be at the wedding. And he’s coming alone.”

I smile. “I’m not ready for anything like that. Not yet.” I look out the window at the old neighborhood. I do think someday I’ll meet someone. A nice man who’ll be a good father for Hannah. I imagine we’ll have a nice place to live. We’ll go see some shows, take in a movie now and then. We’ll be just another regular married couple. We’ll have holiday dinners together and plan a family vacation to the beach every summer. We’ll watch Hannah grow up and argue over how she is wearing her hair, or the length of her skirts, or which boys she wants to date. We’ll make nice, respectful love once, maybe twice a week. Maybe I’ll even have another child someday. I’m twenty-seven now, almost twenty-eight, but who knows? Could still happen . . .

When I lay it all out like that, normal doesn’t sound like such a bad life. It sounds kinda nice. And nice doesn’t sound so dull anymore, either.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

O
ne of the luxuries of being a fiction writer is that we can take creative license, which I’ve done consciously throughout this novel. Having far too much respect for historians and nonfiction authors, I present
Dollface
not as a work of historical fact, but as one of fiction based on historical fact. Those well versed in the history of Chicago and Prohibition will see where I’ve altered some events and time lines. These include the Sieben Brewery Raid, which occurred in May 1924, as opposed to March 1924. This was a pivotal event in which Dion O’Banion set up a double cross that landed Johnny Torrio in jail and was the impetus for O’Banion’s murder. The North Siders vowed to seek revenge, resulting in Chicago’s infamous Beer Wars. The Hawthorne Arms shooting was in September 1927, not August 1927. Vincent Drucci was ironically buried with military honors for his service during World War I; however, he was murdered in April 1927 rather than August 1927. Seven members of the North Side Gang were murdered in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. For the purpose of this novel, I added an eighth member by having Shep Green perish in the massacre as well.

Many real-life gangsters and gun molls from the 1920s are featured in
Dollface
. They include Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Dion O’Banion, Hymie Weiss, Vincent Drucci, George “Bugs” Moran, Cecelia Drucci, and Viola O’Banion. The female bootleggers were based loosely on the famous female rumrunner Mrs. Willie Carter Sharpe. All other characters are fictional.

While conducting my research I read a great deal of fiction and nonfiction and want to pay credit to the following:
City of the Century
, by Donald L. Miller;
Outlaws of the Lakes: Bootlegging & Smuggling
from Colonial Times to Prohibition
, by Edwards Butts;
Chicago Gang Wars
, author unknown;
The Jungle
, by Upton Sinclair;
1929
, by Frederick Turner;
Oh, Play That Thing
, by Roddy Doyle; and
The Wettest County in the World,
by Matt Bondurant.

I also made use of other sources while writing this novel, including the Harold Washington Library Chicago newspaper microfilm holdings and the Untouchables Tours in Chicago, hosted by Craig Alton, who was also kind enough to give me a guided tour of the Back of the Yards and what remains of the Union Stock Yards. He also arranged for a tour of Chiappetti’s, one of the last standing slaughterhouses in Chicago. Additional inspirations and factual content came from the following:
The Speakeasy
and
The St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre
, both produced by the History Channel, and
Chicago’s Gangland Graves
, produced by Untouchable Tours, with David Gault. There are also countless Web sites devoted to the 1920s and Chicago’s gangland activities of that era. The following sites were particularly helpful: Crime Magazine: An Encyclopedia of Crime (www.crimemagazine.com), “Whacked by the Good Guys” by Allan May (crimemagazine.com/whacked-good -guys), the Lawless Decade by Paul Sann (www.lawlessdecade .net), Hymie Weiss (www.hymieweiss.com), and My Al Capone Museum (www.myalcaponemuseum.com).