Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (31 page)

“Because I’m broke again and I need the money.”

“What are we going to do, make two trips up and back?”

“I thought about that, but it’ll take too long and I don’t think Warren and Felix are too crazy about our methods as it is.” I lit a cigarette and turned off the radio. “We’ve come this far. We can’t turn back now.” I smoked down half my cigarette, thinking. “What if I . . . I borrow one of my mother’s trucks?”

“A truck!”

“I’ll tell her I’m having car trouble. She won’t question it. Business is slow, so I know there’s a truck just sitting there. Besides, Buster’s already been using the other one for liquor runs.”

The truck was my mother’s 1925 Ford Runabout, a black Model T pickup. She’d paid two hundred and eighty-one dollars for it and if my calculations were right, Evelyn and I would be making almost that much delivering liquor one day a week. If I’d thought for one minute that we would be making regular liquor runs, I would have suggested getting our own truck. But this was temporary, just something I had to do until Shep came home.

“What if something goes wrong?” Evelyn asked when I picked her up.

“It’s not going to.”

“But what if it does?”

I reached across for the glove compartment and pulled out two of Shep’s handguns.

“Oh, Jesus, Vera!” Her eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.

“They’re loaded, so be careful. One for you.” I handed her the six-shot. “And a Browning Hi-Power for me.”

“I don’t know how to shoot a gun!” But even as she said this, I saw Evelyn grip that six-shooter like she’d held a dozen guns before. She angled it this way and that. “It’s so heavy,” she said, not taking her eyes off the barrel.

“You can put it away now,” I told her.

It took another few minutes before her fascination wore off and she was able to part with the gun and put it back in the glove compartment where it belonged.

When we arrived at Warren Steel’s warehouse, he wasn’t waiting for us like he had before. But he must have heard the truck pull up, because it didn’t take long before we saw him standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. When I said we were taking fifty cases and promised him an extra ten dollars if he had his men load the truck for us, he didn’t exactly smile, but I did see his top lip curve upward ever so slightly.

“I told you, Mr. Steel, I’m more than fair.”

We pulled the truck up to the dock and fifteen minutes later all the whiskey was loaded on. We kept the liquor hidden beneath layers of cowhides and rigged a heavy canvas tarp over the top and fastened it down to the sides and back of the cargo box.

It was only as we pulled away from Warren Steel’s warehouse that the realization of what we were doing began to sink in. The drive up hadn’t fazed me. I’d driven my mother’s trucks plenty of times before. That morning we’d just stepped onto the running boards, climbed into the cab and were on our way. Just two women in an empty truck. But now that the truck was loaded with liquor it was a different story. I could feel the weight of the whiskey in the cargo box. It was like I was hauling the weight of the world behind me. I sat up close to the steering wheel, my fingers gripping tight with both hands.

Twice I thought I saw a police car and my heart all but stopped. Turned out it was only my mind playing tricks on me but it didn’t help that Evelyn kept telling me I was driving too fast.

“You’re only drawing attention to us,” she snapped.

“I am not! I’m going twenty-five.” I gripped the wheel tighter. “Stop making me nervous!”

“This was such a stupid idea,” she hissed under her breath.

“What did you just say?” I turned and glowered at her.

“We should have stuck with smaller runs. In the car.”

“Why are you bringing this up now? We agreed to do this, so just shut it!”

“Don’t tell me to shut it.”

“Shut it!
Now!
”

We didn’t have much more to say to each other until we reached our dropoff point in Chicago, where two of Felix Marvin’s men were waiting for us. They unloaded the truck, sending crate after crate down the coal chute.

As we were driving away, I turned to Evelyn. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“I’m sorry I was making you nuts.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the tension going away. “You do that really well, you know—make me nuts!”

“Years of experience.” She laughed. “So how much did we make today, anyway?”

“Let’s find out.” I pulled off to the side of the road and removed an envelope from my pocketbook. “Let’s see. . . .” I counted out a stack of bills on the front seat: two hundred-dollar bills and the rest fifties and twenties. “After Warren takes his cut, we’ve got a hundred and twenty-five. Plus the first hundred and twenty-five we already got from Felix.”

“Not bad for a day’s work.”

And it got even better after that.

A few weeks later, Felix increased his order to seventy-five cases, and then one hundred cases, and by the end of our second month, we were up to five hundred cases. His business was up, Warren was happy, and Evelyn and I were making money. Turned out that selling illegal liquor was easier than I thought it would be.

One night we were driving a truckload back to the city and Evelyn and I were sharing a cigarette—the last one either of us had—passing it back and forth, me scissoring my fingers, waiting for the handoff.

“Will you let me drive on the next run?”

“No! What do you think I am, crazy?” I took a drag and handed her cigarette back.

“Please?” She looked at me all wide-eyed and hopeful.

“You barely know how to drive a car, let alone a truck.”

“Well, it’s not like you’re such an expert driver. Remember when we first took the truck out? You wouldn’t even let go of the wheel. You were such a nervous Nellie.”

“That’s because I didn’t want to get us killed.”

“Yeah, and look at you now. You just slouch back in the driver’s seat. You remind me of my father when we’d drive to the lake house in Michigan. It doesn’t look so hard. C’mon. I just want to try it once. It’ll be fun.”

“Maybe I’ll let you do a practice run one day. Maybe!” I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror and caught myself smiling. Really, it was just as Evelyn had said:
This is easy!

“So what did Felix want to talk to you about?” she asked.

He’d pulled me aside as we were leaving earlier. “Oh, he just mentioned that he has some friends who need liquor.”

“That’s good, right? We should do it!” She sat up, eager, her eyes dancing. “Why wouldn’t we? Warren’s got an endless supply of whiskey looking to find a good home.”

“I know, but I don’t want to get greedy. We have a good thing going right now. It’s manageable. I’m afraid that if we take on more jobs—if we get any bigger than we are—word could get back to the boys. We can’t risk that. And besides, I’m comfortable dealing with Warren and Felix.” I glanced at Evelyn, trying to get a bead on her. I didn’t want to let her down. “I just don’t think it’s a smart idea. We’re doing great right now. I don’t see any reason to ball things up over a couple extra dollars here and there.”

“Whatever you say. You’re the boss.” She smiled, and even if she wouldn’t admit it, I could tell she was relieved. Evelyn was no more a gangster than I was.

That night after I’d picked up Hannah and put her to bed, I went to my room and counted my bills, separating the hundreds from the fifties. I even had two five-hundred-dollar bills from a previous run, and I put those on top of the stack.

In exchange for the calculated risk we were taking, I had been able to make sure there was coal for the furnace and plenty of food and warm clothing for my child. I was even able to hire back my housekeeper, something that hadn’t met with Dora’s approval. She’d wanted me to save my money and let her watch Hannah, until I asked if she wanted to clean my house as well.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I only have the housekeeper three days a week. I’ll still need a babysitter from time to time.”

In addition to the housekeeper, I also went back to my weekly hair appointments at the beauty salon and treated myself to some new outfits. I even paid a visit to the pawnshop and was able to buy back the pieces of jewelry that were still there.

I’d restored my credit and my reputation with the department stores around town, and I’d done it on my own. It was one thing to be surrounded by money, and another thing entirely to know that you generated it yourself, even if it wasn’t through the most legitimate channels. That was the one part of the equation I didn’t want to look at. I was a mother and a businesswoman. That was how I chose to see myself. I wasn’t a bootlegger, and I certainly wasn’t a gangster. But I had my own money, and I felt as powerful as any man.

“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Basha said, eyeing my new cloche hat, “but you’d better be careful.”

“I’m not up to anything.” I’d just arrived at Carson’s where she’d been saving me a seat for a fashion show.

“Baloney.” She leaned in closer to whisper, “New shoes?”

“Oh, you’ve seen these before.” It was the first time I’d ever worn them.

“All I know is you’ve been crying the blues, saying you’re broke, and now you’re living the high life. And I know it ain’t coming from the fellas. Squeak’s even had to cut me back.”

“My mother helped me out.”

“Mm-hm. Sure she did. . . .” She shook her head and looked again at my shoes. “Just watch yourself; that’s all I’m saying. While Shep’s away, you’re on your own. You get yourself into trouble and you’ll have to fend for yourself. You might want to pass some of this advice on to Evelyn, too. . . .”

Dora also had her suspicions. “Where are you and Evelyn off to this time?” she’d asked when I’d dropped Hannah off at her house.

I’d invented a sick aunt up in Milwaukee.

“I see. All of a sudden you and Evelyn sure do have a lot of aunts up there, don’t you. Say hello to Aunt Millie for me.”

THE MARKED RIG

I
t may have been April, but Chicago winters didn’t always coincide with the calendar. The snow started at daybreak and was already accumulating. By nine o’clock that morning there were five inches on the ground, with heavy winds producing snowdrifts peaking twice that high.

As Evelyn and I climbed inside the Ford Runabout, I knew it was going to be a tough run. The Wrigley Building had all but disappeared against the white sky and traffic crawled along the snow-covered roads. Even the el moved slower than usual. But still, Felix needed his delivery, and I didn’t want to lose our momentum or give him reason to think that if we were men we would have done better.

As we inched along, the wipers swished back and forth, clearing away another fresh dusting of snow. Evelyn and I were both quiet. I was tired from a restless night of sleep and she was upset over an argument she’d had with Izzy. For a long while the only sound we heard was the rattle of the empty cargo box and the crunching of our tires rolling over the snow-covered road.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, breaking the silence as I used my glove to wipe away a clean porthole on the window fog.

“No,” Evelyn said with a sigh, but then launched into it anyway. “I can’t stand how he talks to me sometimes. Just because he’s drunk doesn’t give him the right to call me names—tells me I’m an idiot.
Me
”
—
she gave off a bitter laugh—“
I’m
the idiot here!”

“I’ve never heard you talk about Izzy like this before.”

“Well, I’m fed up. I’m sick and tired of the way he treats me. The way he pushes me around.”

“You know you’ll get no argument out of me. I think you should have left him long ago.”

“I didn’t say I was going to leave him.” Evelyn lit a cigarette and cracked her window, letting the smell of sulfur and tobacco fill the cab, along with a few snowflakes. “Let’s talk about something else. . . .”

When we made it to Warren Steel’s warehouse, Evelyn and I stayed in the truck to keep warm while his men loaded up the liquor. Forty minutes later, we were back on the road. It was still snowing, coming down hard. It hadn’t let up all day.

The truck bounced up and down over the bumpy back roads, the bottles rattling inside their crates in the cargo box. Everything was dark except for the beams from our headlights, snow pouring into them like sheets of rain. We were nearing Kenosha and still had a long drive ahead of us.

Evelyn had picked up her diatribe. “...He’s the idiot. If Izzy only knew what we’re doing right now he’d
plotz
—I tell you, he’d faint and drop to the floor.”

“I just don’t understand why you stay with him.” I took my eyes off the road just long enough to glance at her.

She turned away and looked out the passenger-side window. “Let’s just say he’s got his virtues.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what? Name one.”

She laughed like a naughty schoolgirl. “None of your business.”

“Oh, none of my business! Ooh-la-la!” I slouched down in the driver’s seat and started singing “T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do. . . .”
I drummed my fingers along the dash with my free hand, tapping out the melody.

Halfway through the second verse, Evelyn looked at me. “Vera, what’d you do with that money I gave you?”

“What money?”

“The money I gave you for singing lessons.”

We burst out laughing as Evelyn imitated my singing, making her voice crack and go flat.

The two of us were howling, wiping the tears oozing from our eyes, when I glanced up and spotted a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror. They were coming over the hill behind us, moving fast, shooting off a spray of fresh snow on either side.

The road was icy, and I put both hands on the wheel to keep us moving steadily. Evelyn went on humming that Bessie Smith song, and every few minutes or so I’d eye the rearview mirror. They were inching closer, narrowing the distance between us.

Evelyn eventually noticed the headlights, too. “If they’re in such a hurry why don’t they just go around us?”

“I’m already going twenty as it is.”

Those headlights stayed on us as we bounced around, the engine grinding, the wheels hitting every icy patch and every snow-covered gully. Finally the other car made a move and whipped past us, kicking up a blinding spray of snow that forced me to swerve off the road. After a series of skids, I brought the truck to a screeching stop as Evelyn and I lurched forward in our seats.