Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (33 page)

My heart was beating fast. I was losing myself just looking into his eyes. Before I could say anything, he kissed me, and son of a bitch, he was right. I couldn’t see straight.

THE ACCOMPLICE

N
ow that it was summertime, beer gardens and outdoor cafés were open and business was busier than ever. Evelyn and I had just gotten back after delivering an extra sixty cases of whiskey to a warehouse up north for Felix Marvin. It was our third run that week.

After the night Tony had spotted us in my mother’s truck, Evelyn and I were too afraid to take it out again, so we bought a new truck—a business expense. It was another Ford Runabout, but plain black and unmarked—without any Abramowitz Meats signage on it. Our new truck looked just like a hundred other black trucks on the road, which was exactly what we wanted. In between runs we kept it parked out back behind Evelyn’s building since it would have been too conspicuous in my neighborhood.

It had been a smooth run, as most of them were, but I was tired. As I was sorting through the mail, Drucci called with an update on Shep’s case.

“The lawyer’s still working on the appeal,” Drucci said. He must have been calling from a phone booth. I could hear street traffic rumbling by in the background.

“Vinny, it’s June already and Shep’s been in the penitentiary for six months. He spent three months in jail up here before that. At this rate he’s going to end up serving the whole sentence.” I shuffled through the envelopes.

“I know it seems like that,” said Drucci as a streetcar clanked by in the background. “But we’re working on it.”

“I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“You know as much as we do. I promise you.”

“Please, Vinny. Don’t insult me.” I pressed my fingertips to my head and closed my eyes. “All I want to know is when my husband’s coming home!”

I hung up the telephone and tossed the stack of envelopes onto the desk. Bills and more bills but not a single letter from Shep.

Shep’s
going away
had set off a chain of events that I could never have seen coming, not in a million years. Drucci, Bugs and the others offered little comfort. Comfort was what I needed. And Tony Liolli was there to provide it.

In many ways it seemed like Tony and I had never been apart. He had a room at the Plymouth Hotel where we’d meet in the afternoons. Moments after I’d arrive, my clothes would be tangled in a pile on the floor. I was helpless when it came to him. No one but Tony had ever made me feel so defenseless. And his kisses . . .
I hadn’t been kissed in so long. I hadn’t felt that surge of excitement rush through my body since forever. He left me drenched in sweat, panting for breath, my mouth gaping open, my legs so shaky I didn’t think they could hold me up.

But when he was finished with me, there was a shift in me, as if a switch had been flipped. All I could think about then was Shep passing his days inside a prison cell.

One afternoon, Tony lay stretched out on his back, practicing a new trick of making a coin appear and disappear from one hand to the other. I collected my clothes off the floor and worked my way into my dress. I could feel his eyes on me, watching me, willing me to come back to bed. He had wanted me to stay, but I was antsy. After he’d drained the heat out of me I had shut down. I didn’t want to think about what we’d just done, didn’t want to bask in the afterglow. No, all I wanted was to go home, make dinner for my daughter, tuck her into bed and read to her.

Tony reached for a cigarette, striking a match on the underside of the night table. He took a drag and stretched back out on the bed, exhaling toward the ceiling. “Get your fine behind back over here,” he said with a laugh, when he saw I was just about dressed.

“I can’t.” I stared at the clock on the nightstand to keep from looking at him. “Really, Tony. I do have to go.” I clipped on my earrings and slipped into my pumps, using my finger as a shoehorn. “I’ll see you on Thursday. I promise.” I was reaching for my pocketbook when he got off the bed, came over and kissed me, long and deep. I closed my eyes, not out of passion but out of disgust. With myself. I felt like I was suffocating. It was the kiss good-bye that was the hardest for me, always tasting bitter on my tongue.

I slipped out of his room and called for the elevator. Stepping into the lobby, I checked around, looking left and right. No one seemed familiar. A man I’d never seen before made eye contact with me and I looked away, walking as fast as I could and almost bumping into one of the bellhops. Once I cleared the front doors and made it around the corner, I let myself breathe. Everywhere but inside Tony’s hotel room, I was still Shep Green’s wife.

And Hannah’s mother.

That night, as I was putting Hannah to bed, reading her a bedtime story, she was chatty. She pointed to her quilt and said, “That’s my bankie. That’s my bankie.”

“Yes, that is your blankie.”

As I was putting the book back on the shelf, I heard her say, “Mama, bahdol, bahdol.” My heart stopped. I turned around and she was smiling, proud of herself, pointing to her bottle. But what I heard, what I swore I heard her say was, “Mama bad girl. Bad girl.” I thought she could feel my guilt when I held her, could hear it in my voice when I read to her.

“Yes, that is your bottle,” I said, trying to recover.

After I got her to sleep, I sat down and wrote Shep a six-page letter.

Two days later, I woke up thinking about Tony, feeling all that heat building up inside me again. I got aroused just thinking about being with him. Six more hours and I would see him again.

And that was how the days and weeks were passing. I was raising my child alone, because my husband was in jail, and I was transporting illegal liquor while carrying on a passionate affair with another man. Who was this woman? How did I get so far off-track? This wasn’t the life I’d planned on leading.

•   •   •

L
ater that night Evelyn telephoned me, hysterical. It took several minutes to calm her down enough for her to tell me what had happened.

“I did it, Vera. Oh, my God, I didn’t mean to but I did it.”

“What? What did you do?”

“Oh, God! I shot him. I shot Izzy. I think he’s . . . he’s dead. I think I killed him.”

I dropped Hannah off at Dora’s place, and when I got to Evelyn’s apartment, I knocked. I could hear her breathing on the other side of the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s okay, Ev. It’s me.”

She cracked the door a slice, her eyes shifting from left to right before she let me inside. She was pale and trembling. Blood was splattered on her forehead and cheeks. She was still holding on to the gun—Shep’s six-shooter that I’d given her for our liquor runs. I wasn’t sure if she was drunk but I could smell the whiskey coming off of her.

“I didn’t mean to do it. He was yelling at me and calling me names and I . . . I just snapped and the gun was right there and I . . . I shot him.”

“Where is he?” I asked, prying the gun from her fingers, setting it on the table.

She pointed toward the bedroom door. “I just wanted to shut him up.”

I held my breath as I crept into the bedroom. The first thing I saw was the broken lightbulb and the base of the lamp shattered on the floor. There was blood sprayed across the wall and drenching the bedsheets. I let my gaze fall on Izzy. His face was frozen with one eye closed, his mouth gaping open. She’d shut him up all right.

I ran out of the room, thinking I would be sick. I gripped onto the back of the sofa until the nausea passed, until I was able to speak. I blew out a couple deep breaths and got my brain working again. Evelyn was a wreck, and I knew I had to be the cool and calm one. “We have to get him out of here.”

“I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t want to go to jail.”

“You’re not going to jail. We just have to figure this out.” I reached for a cigarette, my hands shaking so I could barely get the match lit. I went over by the window.
Think, Vera! Think!
We needed to get help; we couldn’t move him alone. I didn’t know if Basha and Dora would know what to do. Cecelia was our best bet, but she would tell Drucci, and that could spell disaster for Evelyn. Actually, Basha and Dora would have surely said something to Squeak and Knuckles, too.

There was only one person I knew who could help us.

I finished my cigarette thinking of every reason why I shouldn’t make the call. Then I went to the telephone and dialed Tony’s hotel.

I didn’t tell him anything over the phone other than that I was in trouble and needed him. I gave him Evelyn’s address and poured myself a drink.

Halfway through my bourbon, I started explaining why I called Tony. “Do you remember that night when we got stopped on our way back from Milwaukee? Remember the man who let us go . . . ?”

Evelyn was still in shock over what she’d done to Izzy and though I was painting a pretty obvious picture, I knew she wasn’t putting the pieces together. Still, I had to tell her, and I had to trust her with my secret.

When Tony showed up, he took one look at me and then at Evelyn. “What’s going on here?”

“There was an accident.” I pointed toward the bedroom.

Tony went inside and a few minutes later he came out and planted his hands on his hips. “Izzy Seltzer?” He looked at me, dumbfounded. “You
whacked
Izzy?”

“It was an accident,” I said, shaking my head. “It was self-defense.”

Evelyn wasn’t saying a word. She was seated on the edge of an ottoman, rocking back and forth like she was in a trance.

“What do we do now?” I asked him.

“We gotta make him disappear. Give me a second here.” He went over to the bar and poured himself a drink, and after a few sips, he said, “But before we go any further, whatever happens here tonight, no one—you hear me”—he pointed to Evelyn—“no one can know I had
anything
to do with this.”

He went back in the bedroom for a few minutes, and when he came out, he had a plan. “Get me some sheets and blankets,” he said to Evelyn. “As many as you have. You still have your truck?” he asked me.

“It’s out back.”

“Go get it and park it in the alley.”

The rest was a blur. I raced down the back stairwell to avoid the doorman and ran out back where we kept our truck.

By the time I got back upstairs, Tony had already wrapped up Izzy’s body, and Evelyn had collected all the blood-soaked bed linens. When it came time to move him, Evelyn couldn’t bring herself to touch Izzy’s body. I grabbed hold of one end, Tony had the other, and together we walked what was left of Izzy down the back stairs. His hand was sticking out of the bloody sheets, hanging there, bobbing like a tree branch. I could see where Tony had removed Izzy’s ring and probably any other jewelry that could have identified him. Tony had hold of most of him, but still, Izzy’s body felt like a side of beef. When we hefted him up and hurled him into the truck, he landed in the cargo box with a thud.

Without a word, I handed the keys to Tony. Evelyn and I slid in close together, all three of us riding in the front seat. It was hot inside the cab and we rolled down the windows, finding little relief from the stagnant nighttime air.

We drove through downtown, the streetlights glowing beneath the skyscrapers and along the bridges. People were out walking along the sidewalks, coming in and out of restaurants and hotels. We cut west on Randolph and then south onto Halsted. Evelyn kept her eyes shut for most of the ride while I smoked one cigarette after another. Tony was quiet, concentrating, still working out the details of how we were going to get rid of Izzy.

As we headed farther south, the stench began wafting in through the windows and I realized where we were heading. With each passing mile the stink intensified.

A sick feeling was mounting in my gut, but I didn’t say a word as he drove up to the stone archway of the Union Stock Yards.

“Which way?” He looked left, then right.

“To where?” I held my breath, knowing where he was going.

“Abramowitz Meats.”

“Oh, no. Tony, please not there. Please—”

“You want this handled? He can’t be buried. We can’t dump him into the lake. We can’t risk having him wash up. He can’t be found. Izzy needs to disappear. Vanish.”

I sighed and squeezed Evelyn’s hand. “Go left and at the end of this road make a right. It’s the red building at the end.”

We left Evelyn out in the truck with Izzy’s body while Tony and I got the spare key that my mother kept hidden around the back of the building and we went inside. It was cold on the kill floor, about forty degrees cooler than it was outside. Even from the entrance there was dried blood splattered on the walls and some still puddled in spots where the floor wasn’t level, the aftermath from the slaughtering that had taken place earlier that day. Half a dozen skinned cattle carcasses were still strung up, hanging from the meat hooks in the ceiling.

“Where are the cleavers?”

I couldn’t speak as we worked our way past the crates piled high with skinned heads, eyeballs bulging from their sockets, tongues hanging out, resting against a rake of teeth.

Tony grabbed the biggest cleaver hanging off the back wall, the one with the twelve-inch blade. We went back out to the truck and drove around to the edge of Bubbly Creek. Tony and I dragged Izzy’s body out of the back of the truck, watching as the blood-drenched bedsheets fell to the ground. The sound of cicadas and other insects buzzed as a swarm of mosquitoes hovered over the churning, murky waters.

Evelyn couldn’t watch. She crouched in the corner, her back toward us, her hands covering her ears. I stood transfixed, unable to turn away. I half expected to hear Izzy scream when Tony first lifted up the cleaver and, with two whacks, severed the head. I thought there would be a fresh spray of blood, but Izzy’s blood had long since stopped circulating. My father flashed through my mind. Was he already dead before the Black Hand butchered him? I’d never thought of that before.
Please, God, let him have already been dead.
One more thrust and Tony cracked the skull in two. That one made even Tony pause and take a deep breath. He was covered in blood. I was standing back but even so, every few whacks, the blood sprayed over me like a mist. Next was the breastbone. We heard it split. One more whack and it went right through the heart, shooting out blood clots the size of chicken livers. With each new thwack, I shuddered and gagged. The whole thing—the dismembering of Izzy Seltzer—could have taken an hour, maybe less, maybe more. I was in a fog, unaware of time passing.