Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (42 page)

I’d never had the chance to call and tell Tony I wasn’t going with him. I was so worried all night about Shep, calling Tony was the farthest thing from my mind. He must have come here to get me, assuming Shep had already left for the garage. He had no way of knowing Shep was running late.

“Well, well, well.” Shep started down the steps. “Look who’s here.” His voice was so calm, so void of emotion, it was unnerving.

Shep walked past the gate and over to Knuckles. “I’ll take care of it from here,” Shep said. “This one’s personal. This one’s mine.”

Knuckles nodded and put the gun back in his pocket as he backed away.

Tony was dumbfounded. He turned toward Shep and then toward me. The look in his eyes said it all. He’d never expected me to say anything to warn Shep. Tony really believed that I would have just let my husband die.

“You’re just in time,” said Shep, still in a tranquil, even tone. “I was just leaving. She’s all yours.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions here,” Tony said, trying to sound just as composed as Shep. “This isn’t what you think.” He acted like he was ignoring everything Shep had just said, but I heard the tremor in Tony’s voice. He knew what was really going on here.

Shep let out one sharp laugh. “First you fuck my wife and now you insult my intelligence. Get in the car, Liolli.” He was so in control, so smooth in his delivery that it took a moment before I realized he’d reached for his gun.

“Shep,
no
!” I raced down the steps, heading for the gate, but Knuckles rushed in and grabbed me, holding me back just as Tony lunged for Shep. I screamed as he drove Shep back into the gate, going for his gun. “No! Stop it! Stop it!” I was struggling against Knuckles, trying to break free, when I heard the gun go off.

Shep and Tony stood still. A wind gust kicked up, sending a mist of snow all around them. The white powder sparkled and glistened in the air while Tony began to stumble forward. As soon as Shep stepped away, I saw the blood and saw Tony sink down into a snowdrift. His eyes went wide as his hand reached up to his chest, blood gushing over his fingers. He tried to get up but Shep fired again, and this one hit Tony in the forehead, sending a spray of blood and gore out the back of his head and onto the snow-covered ground.

I screamed again and tried to break free, but Knuckles still had a firm hold on me and my feet were slipping on the ice. I couldn’t get to Shep or Tony.

Shep gave Tony a nudge with his shoe before he called to Knuckles. “Get rid of him,” he said as he headed for his motorcar.

Knuckles nodded, and as soon as he let me go I ran after Shep, stumbling over the ice and snow. “Shep! Shep, no! Wait—you can’t go!”

By the time I reached his car, Shep was already in the driver’s seat and starting the engine.

“No! Shep! Don’t! Don’t go!” I was pounding on the door, running alongside the car as Shep pulled away. I slipped and fell into the snowbank at the curb just as a neighbor across the way opened her front door and then closed it fast. I dropped my head to my hands and sobbed.

I stayed like that, stunned and paralyzed, until I was finally able to push myself up against the snowbank and get up. I couldn’t speak or look at Tony as I made my way back toward the house. I stood, holding on to one of the limestone pillars. The wind was blowing the snow up around my legs. I watched, horrified, as Knuckles dragged Tony’s blood-soaked body away from the gate, his lifeless head slumped forward. I closed my eyes and turned away. I couldn’t watch anymore. It was bad enough when I heard the thud of Tony’s body landing inside the trunk of his car. I forced myself back inside the house, and when I finally looked out through the front window, I saw that Knuckles had covered the bloody ground beneath a fresh blanket of snow. He was already behind the wheel of Tony’s automobile, driving the body away.

Everything turned quiet then. I was alone, and that’s when my legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed, weeping into the crook of my arm. My body shook while everything spun inside my head. Tony was dead. He was dead because of me. My husband murdered him. My husband—was he ever coming back to me? He was walking into a deathtrap.

I had to stop him. I had to. I couldn’t let him go down to the garage to meet Bugs.

•   •   •

I
was still in shock as I ran back inside the house and got my coat and pocketbook. I rushed back outside to hail a taxicab. It felt like an eternity before one stopped for me. Finally I was heading north, praying that I’d get to the garage in time. I kept searching out the window but Shep’s Cadillac was nowhere in sight.

I had the taxicab drop me on the east side of the street, at the corner of Dickens and Clark. Snow was coming down, and the sidewalks were slippery. I passed a man outside his hardware store, shoveling the walkway out front, when I spotted Shep rounding the corner.

I ran toward him, sliding over the snow and patches of ice. As soon as Shep saw me, he grew angry. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You can’t go in there! You have to believe me.” I stood in front of him with my hands out, trying to stop him, the words running loose—I couldn’t get them out fast enough.

He stopped and gave me a look that was so cold and hateful, it wounded me more than his fist ever could have. “Go home. Get the hell out of here.” He stepped around me and kept walking.

“Please. You can’t go in there. Not now. I’m telling you. It’s a trap! It is!”

“Go home, Vera. You don’t belong here. Just go!” He kept walking.

I trailed after him, trying to keep up, calling to him, but he wouldn’t listen. There were motorcars and trucks rumbling up and down Clark Street and he darted in between them, crossing to the west side of the street. The traffic was too heavy and I couldn’t make it across in time. All I could do was stand helplessly, watching him head toward the S.M.C. Cartage Company garage. A German shepherd chained to the post out front let out a yelp when he saw Shep. I called to him one last time as he disappeared through the side door.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t leave with him in there. The wind howled as it whipped in and around the buildings. I turned to shield my face and noticed Bugs walking down the sidewalk. He was less than half a block away when a police car pulled up in front of the garage. When I looked again for Bugs, he was gone. He must have seen the cops and darted inside a building on the corner.

Four men got out of the squad car: Two were policemen; two were dressed in dark overcoats.

A raid? Shep was being raided!
Capone couldn’t carry out a hit if the garage was being raided. I didn’t care if they arrested Shep and put him back in jail, just as long as Capone didn’t kill him.

It was freezing outside, the temperature barely in the teens. I couldn’t feel my feet or fingers anymore and ducked inside the coffee shop across the street from the garage to wait it out. A string of bells chimed when I stepped inside, bringing a gust of wind in with me. A handful of customers seated at the counter, still with their coats on, looked up at me. I took a front table by the windows. An inch or so of snow had piled up on the ledge and the glass was frosted over from the cold. A half curtain hung down, doing a poor job of blocking the draft.

As I was staring out through the parting in the curtain, the waitress came by and asked if I was okay. I didn’t answer and instead ordered a cup of coffee and as she was filling my cup, a loud noise bellowed out from across the way. It sounded like an eruption, followed by a couple of loud booms, one right after the other.

My heart stopped. The waitress flinched and missed my cup, spilling coffee on the table instead. Everyone in the coffee shop looked up, their forks and spoons suspended above their plates for a moment, before they returned to their meals and conversations. I peered through the parting of the curtain and everything seemed fine, normal. A few people walking by outside had stopped when they heard the noise, but then kept going.

The waitress was still wiping up the spill when I looked up and saw the cops walking out of the garage with their machine guns pressed to the spines of the two men who had gone into the garage with them earlier. I’d never seen either of them before but whoever they were, they weren’t members of the North Side Gang. The men they’d arrested had their hands in the air as the police put them into the back of the car and drove off, the exhaust billowing out against the cold as their car disappeared down Clark Street.

I began to breathe again and leaned back in my chair, looking out the parting in the curtain every few minutes, watching for Shep.
Thank you, God, for not letting him get arrested. Thank you.
I thought the police must have come for someone else, not Shep. Although I didn’t understand why they had left with the same men they’d arrived with. It nagged at me, but I couldn’t think about it, because just then the sight of Tony lying bloody in the snow flashed through my mind. I closed my eyes, trying to clear the image. Then all I could think about was Shep. My thoughts rapidly shifted back and forth between the two: What had I done to Tony, and how could I salvage my marriage. I heard the faint whine of sirens off in the distance when the waitress came by again, and I ordered a refill of coffee.

What would Knuckles do with Tony? Would Shep be charged with his murder . . . ?

The sirens were drawing closer, their shrill squeal drowning out my thoughts. I pulled back the curtain just as two police cars drove up in front of the S.M.C. garage. Everyone inside the coffee shop rushed to the windows, their faces pressed to the glass, looking to see what was happening. The neighbors lurked in their doorways, while passersby gathered out in front of the garage.

My pulse quickened. Someone let out a round of screams so piercing it cut through the sound of the sirens. I screamed, too, as I grabbed my pocketbook, jumped up and raced out of the coffee shop.

Before I’d even made it across the street, the entranceway of the garage was crowded with gapers, people with hands clasped over their mouths, the shock visible on every face. A photographer was already on the scene with his camera raised, trying for the first pictures. There was chaos with everyone shouting, hollering all at once. I pushed and shoved my way toward the front. The German shepherd was still chained to the post outside, baring its teeth. A man who had just come from inside the garage brushed past me, shaking his head, a hand pressed to his forehead.

I stopped him, grabbing hold of his arm. Even though I knew, I still had to ask. There was a sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”

“It’s awful,” the man said, removing his hat, smoothing down his hair. “All those men in there—everyone inside—they’ve all been shot. They’re all dead.”

He said something else to me but I just held on to his arm. I could barely breathe. I was aware of people rushing back and forth, but everything—all the sounds, all the movement—was distorted, until eventually, everything around me grew small and quiet and dark.

THE DRY SPELL HAS BEEN BROKEN
REPEAL, 1933

H
annah sits on the side of the bed waiting patiently while I scoot my way behind her to finish braiding her hair. It’s thick and shiny and long enough so she can wear it any way she wants. Mine was just like it when I was a young girl. “You’re lucky,” I tell her. “You’re gonna thank me for this hair someday.”

“Oh, Mama, you always say that.”

“Say what?” I lean forward to get a good look at her.

“‘Oh, Hannah,’” she mimics me, “‘you’re gonna thank me for your eyes. For that nose. Oh, and of course’”—she rolls her eyes—“‘for that charming and delightful personality.’” She leans back against me, giggling.

She turns nine this year, nine going on twenty-nine. She’s wiser than I was back then, but she looks just like me when I was her age. She’s feisty, too. Feistier than I was at her age, though my mother disagrees.

I tie two satin ribbons to the ends of her braids and give her a squeeze from behind.

“Help, help!” she teases, flailing her arms. “I can’t breathe. You’re suffocating me!”

“You want to pick out what I should wear today?”

She lights up. She started doing this when she was six or seven, thinking it was only fair that since I picked out her school clothes, she should pick out my work clothes. We go into my room and she races to the wardrobe in the corner. “How about this?” She pulls out a red gown with a cape collar and circular flounces.

“Don’t you think that’s a little fancy for work?”

“But it’s so purdy.” She places her hands primly beneath her chin and bats her long lashes.

“What do you think of this?” I hold up a steel gray peplum frock.

Hannah tilts her head and contemplates. “Do you think you’ll be warm enough? It’s going to be cold today.”

Always, from the time she was a baby, Hannah in her own way has taken care of me. It’s instinctive in her. She must have gotten it from Shep, because I know she didn’t get it from me.

“I think I’ll be fine.” I slip into the dress and my shoes before we head down to the kitchen for breakfast. While I put on the percolator for coffee, I peer out the window. The trees out back are bare and the sky is gray. There’s a chill inside the house but I don’t dare fire up the furnace. We’re rationing coal, trying to save it for the truly cold winter days ahead.

I fix Hannah’s breakfast and pour my coffee. She reaches for the toast as I butter it and takes a bite. “Uh, uh, uh—sit down at the table.”

She goes to where her place is set and takes a sip of milk.

After breakfast, I walk Hannah to the schoolyard and bend down while she wraps her arms around me. She gives me a kiss and says, “Now go have a good day.”

I look back and wave. She’s standing where I left her, at the edge of the schoolyard, watching, waving back. I walk a few more feet and turn around and she’s still there, waving to me again. This is what we do. Every morning. I know that she’ll stand there and wave to me until I turn the corner. Then in her mind, I’m safely on my way to the streetcar. As soon as she’s out of sight, I start to miss her.