Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (32 page)

Two men got out of the car and I swallowed hard. The panic was mounting inside me as they walked toward us with their fedoras and tommy guns silhouetted in the glare of the headlights.

I saw Evelyn going for the glove compartment. “No! Keep the guns hidden,” I said. “Keep them out of sight.”

When the first man reached our truck I stared at his tommy gun, my voice trembling as I asked what he wanted.

He didn’t say anything. He just eyed the truck and then me. My heart was beating so hard, I was sure he could see it pounding even through my coat.

The only thing in our favor was that we were women and that threw him off. But not entirely. There were female bootleggers, not many of them, but they were out there. I looked straight ahead, watching as the second man came toward the truck. It was freezing outside but I was sweating, clutching the steering wheel.

I looked again at the man coming toward us. There was something about his walk that seemed familiar. Or maybe it was just that tough gangster gait they all had. But as he cut through the headlights and came closer, I got a feeling in my gut. An absolute certainty. I knew this man.

He came over to my side, leaned toward the window, and said, “What seems to be the problem—” Tony Liolli got a look at me and stopped midsentence.

I didn’t say a word and prayed the expression on my face wouldn’t betray me. The other man told me to roll down my window and I did, letting in a gust of frigid air. Tony Liolli had his tommy gun raised, gripped with one gloved hand. He was a gangster, and gangsters were loyal to their gangs, not to women they’d run out on. If he knew we had liquor in the back, there was no question what he’d do to us.

Tony and I looked at each other, our breath hanging before us, suspended in the freezing air like rolling plumes of smoke. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want Evelyn to die.

The other man walked around the back of the truck and over to Evelyn’s side. “This is the rig,” he said.

“You sure?” Tony hadn’t taken his eyes off me.

“C’mon,” the first guy said, yanking open Evelyn’s door. “Get out!”

I reached across the seat and squeezed her hand. She was trembling. I didn’t know if she’d recognized or even remembered seeing me with Tony Liolli that first night I met him at the Five Star.

Tony’s eyes burrowed through me. He wasn’t just looking at me. No, he was studying me, searching for a crack in my composure, to see if I was hiding something—that something being booze. He kept his tommy gun raised and I stared into the barrel. The metal was shinier at the tip, like a bronze statue that’d been rubbed too many times for luck. I felt my bottom lip quivering and knew the tears were building up behind my eyes. Even in the freezing cold, beads of sweat formed along my brow and upper lip. I didn’t move; neither did he. A vein in the side of his neck was pulsing as he rolled his tongue inside the pocket of his cheek, something I’d never seen him do before. We were at a standoff, and he was starting to wear me down. I was losing my nerve. I didn’t know what he might do.

Just as I was about to crack, Tony lowered his chin and then the tommy gun. “Let ’em go,” he said.

I clutched my chest and drew a deep breath, my shoulders dropping back down in place.

“But this is the rig,” the other man was saying. “There’s a run coming through here and we know Buster’s been shortchanging us. They’re probably driving this for him.”

“Look at them!” Tony shook his head, like we weren’t worth the bother. “Do they look like they got anything we want?”

“But I tell ya, this is the truck—it says right here, ‘Abramowitz Meats.’”

“I said, let ’em go.” Tony looked at me and then turned and walked away.

After they had returned to their car and after it was clear that they weren’t going to kill us, I began to breathe again. Evelyn gasped, as if she’d been holding her breath the entire time, too.

I pulled the truck around and we got back on the road. I drove fast, even in the snow, my face close to the wheel, hands squeezing tight.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Are you?”

I didn’t answer her. The snow continued to shower down. Visibility was next to null. It didn’t matter though. All I saw the whole drive back to Chicago was Tony Liolli’s face.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CAN’T SEE STRAIGHT

T
he following day I stood on the el platform shaking snow off my scarf and the sleeves of my coat. The bitter cold seemed to mask the stench of the stockyards, so it was almost bearable that morning. Nothing like in the summertime when the rot and decay wafted for miles in all directions.

I had just dropped off my mother’s truck—which was what I did after all our runs. Now I was heading back up north, where I planned to pay a condolence call to a young widow whose husband had been gunned down outside a pool hall, and then I was going to sleep away the rest of the day. I was so exhausted, even my bones ached. I wondered if I had the nerve to make another liquor run after what had happened to us.

When I got home the night before, the first thing I did was check on Hannah. Dora had brought her to the house earlier and had fallen asleep in the rocker in the corner of the nursery. I placed a blanket over her shoulders and went back to Hannah, asleep in her crib. I couldn’t help myself; I had to pick her up and hold her. I had to. Nothing had ever felt so good to me in all my life. She stirred and fluttered her eyes open, looking at me for a moment. Her mouth curled into a faint smile as her tiny hand reached out to touch my cheek. I blinked back my tears as I stroked her dark brown curls. Not a moment later, she fell back asleep, resting her head on my shoulder. I could have stood there and held her all night.

A gust of cold air struck me, cutting into my thoughts as I stood on the el platform. The winds shifted and I was hit with that peculiar scent of creosote on the railroad ties and the dank smell of wet, cold limestone mixed with the faint odor of the stockyards. Another
whoosh
of cold air rushed toward me as the train approached, slowing, slowing, and finally coming to a stop. The doors slid open and I was about to step inside when someone grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me away from the train.

I tried to scream, but nothing came out. Worried they were after my pocketbook, I clutched my bag with both hands. A tall man had hold of me and at first all I could see was his dark overcoat, his face hidden by the brim of his hat. Then he looked up.

“How you doing, kid?”

I froze for a moment, taking him in. “Tony?”

“I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been waiting at this stop most of the morning. I was counting on your having to return that truck.”

He looked at me and I felt that dull ache for him trying to resurface.

The next thing I knew, we were outside a doorway tucked beneath the el tracks at Lake and Randolph. I should have resisted, should have fought him on it. The two of us had no business being seen in public together. The last thing I needed was word getting back to Shep that I’d been spotted with Tony Liolli. He assured me no one would bother us here.

Two quick knocks and a circular cutaway in the door flipped open. A man scanned Tony and a moment later the door creaked open onto a dark, cozy den with wood and brass accents. Luckily it was quiet inside. A handful of older men who took no notice of us sat at the bar, puffing on cigars, sipping whiskey and scotch from teacups. Tony led me to a banquette way in the back.

“So, Vera,” he said after we sat down, “what in the hell were you doing on that road last night? And how’d you get ahold of Buster’s truck?”

Buster’s truck!
I wanted to set him straight, but I wasn’t ready to answer him yet. Seeing Tony scrambled everything inside my head. As much as I’d once wanted him, now that I was face-to-face with him, all I felt was anger. I was that pregnant girl again, left standing in a hotel lobby, scared and all alone. I glanced around the room, my heart thumping, the blood pounding inside my ears.

“At least tell me how you’ve been.”

“I’ve been fine, no thanks to you.” My voice was cold, but shaky; my hands trembled. I stuck my elbow in a sticky spot on the table.

He didn’t acknowledge what I said or how I’d said it. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and slapped them on the table. “The thing I can’t figure out is how you got hooked up with Buster in the first place. He’s one of our boys now. You know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, please. Do you think I’d give Buster the time of day?”

“Well, you didn’t just magically appear in his truck. He had that rig loaded up with eight hundred cases of gin.”

“And if you’d bothered to check, I bet you would have seen that he made his delivery just fine. Jesus! What makes you think it was his truck, anyway? That truck belongs to my mother. Abramowitz Meats—Vera Abramowitz. Put the pieces together. Buster works for my mother. And no, she doesn’t know he steals her truck at night.” My mouth was dry; my breathing turned heavy. “If you think I’d have anything to do with a putz like Buster, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were. And if you were so damned sure we were driving liquor, why didn’t you search the truck? How come you let us go?”

“You really have to ask? You know what would have happened if we’d found something? I couldn’t have saved you then. Not without hanging myself.” Tony signaled the barkeeper. “Hey, Frankie, bring us a round over here, will ya?” He turned to me. “Still a bourbon drinker?”

I nodded.

“Two bourbons.”

He latched onto me with his eyes and it got to me. I was angry and couldn’t hold back: “You said you loved me. Said you couldn’t keep away from me. I was pregnant, dammit. You said you’d help me and instead you left me! What kind of cruel bastard does a thing like that?”

He looked at me, but said nothing.

There it was, out on the table like a spilled drink running over the edges. It came out all wrong. Too emotional. But I couldn’t help that now. “How could you do that to me?”

“I messed up.” He surrendered with his hands. “I got scared. I panicked.”

“
You
got scared? How do you think
I
felt?”

The front door opened and Tony and I paused, both of us holding our breath, worried that it might be someone who would recognize us. But it was just another older gentleman going to take his place at the bar.

“Listen”—Tony scooted in closer—“I was going through a rough time back then. I had a couple of bad bets. Got myself into some trouble. I owed a lot of money. Capone was breathing down my neck. And then you got pregnant and . . .”

“Well, I’m sorry if it wasn’t convenient timing for you.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. You wanted me to find you a doctor and I did. But I didn’t know if he was reputable. And it wasn’t like I could go around asking about him.” He shook a cigarette from the pack and pulled a matchstick from his pocket, striking the tip against the sole of his shoe. “I didn’t know anything about this doctor. What if something went wrong? What if something happened to you?” He lit his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “It’s a small circle we move in. Christ, Shep was one of Dion’s lieutenants. You think he wouldn’t have found out? You think he wouldn’t have put a bullet in my head? Yours, too.” He took another drag off his cigarette. “I admit it—I panicked. I fucked it up. But I never meant to hurt you. And even if Shep never found out, you would have regretted not having that baby. You would have blamed me for it. You would have made me take you to that doctor, and we both know I would have, ’cause, baby, I can’t say no to you.”

He made it
almost
seem logical, as if leaving me was the only thing he could have done. It almost made me feel sorry for him.
Almost
.

“So where did you go, anyway? Where’d you disappear to?” I set my elbow in the sticky spot again.

“I didn’t go anywhere.”

“You mean you were here in town? This whole time? You just changed hotels?” I closed my eyes and shook my head. I’d pictured him in New York, Atlantic City, maybe San Francisco. I don’t know why it stung, but knowing he’d been here all along cut me deeply.

“I kept tabs on you, though,” he said. “I heard you married Shep.” He took another drag off his cigarette and gave me one of his long looks. “So,” he said finally, “how’s the kid?”

The kid?
I could have smacked him for that. “The
kid
has a name.”

“Well?” He hiked up his eyebrows.

“Her name’s Hannah.” I reached for his pack of cigarettes.

“So, is she mine?”

“What difference does it make now? She has a father and she sure as hell doesn’t need you.”

“Well, her so-called father seems to be incarcerated at the moment.” He smiled.

“Oh, shut it.” The bourbon hit me and hit me hard. I fished out a cigarette from his pack.

Tony leaned in and lit it for me. “Tell me something. And be honest with me.”

“You want me to be honest? That’s rich, coming from you.” I inhaled hard off my cigarette and took another gulp of bourbon.

“Do you love Shep Green?”

“Yes. I love him. I love him more now than ever.”

He ran a finger along the inside of his collar and finished off the rest of his drink. “Don’t you wanna know if I still love you?” I knew where he was going. I could hear it in his voice. “Because aside from whatever you
think
you feel for Shep, I know you still love me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Oh,” he said with a laugh, “you do love me, Vera. You love me so much you can’t see straight.”

“You have a real high opinion of yourself, don’t you?” This conversation was a mistake. I reached for my pocketbook and gave the ashtray a shove. “Swell seeing you again, Tony.” I stood up and as I turned to storm off, he reached out, grabbed my arm, and pulled me onto his lap.

“Don’t go!” His tone changed and now he sounded desperate. “Don’t leave me, Vera. I never meant to hurt you. I swear I didn’t.” For the first time, I saw his gorgeous brown eyes glass over. “You think it hasn’t torn me up inside? What I did to you?” He shook his head, looked around the bar and back at me. “I wanted to come back to you so many times, but I heard you got married and there was nothing I could do. But when I saw you last night, I knew there was no way I could stay away from you. Why do you think I came looking for you today? Why do you think I let you go last night? I love you, Vera. I’ve always loved you.”