Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties (8 page)

“So,” I said in a whisper, “do you know where all the secret passageways are in this place, too?”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

He grabbed my hand and we went up to the second floor. I looked around at people hitting the slot machines while others leaned over the tables playing blackjack and roulette. It felt like a different establishment upstairs. A mix of men and women were laughing, singing along with the music, toasting one another with their cocktails. Halfway through my first drink I began to relax.

Tony’s game was craps, and when he took to the table he drew a crowd. I didn’t understand craps, but I blew on his dice and watched the bets go down and the stack of chips in front of Tony climb higher.

“See,” he said, scooping up a handful of winnings, “you’re my lady luck.”

“So I shouldn’t remind you that you lost because of me the first time we met?”

“Well, you’re redeeming yourself now.”

When he was up forty dollars, we went back downstairs and I was thankful he led me away from the ominous crowd at the bar. We sat in the back at a quiet corner banquette upholstered in red velvet and studded with gold rivets. Tony was talking about some Russian leader who’d recently died when I noticed one of the men at the bar getting up. I thought he was coming over to our table. I braced myself, feeling my body go stiff, but he was only going to the men’s room.

“So did I tell you I just saw Houdini?”

“Huh? What?” I gazed over at Tony.

“Houdini. I saw him.”

“Really?”

“Watch this.” Tony flashed his hands before my eyes and produced a cigarette from behind his ear.

“Hey, how’d you do that?”

“It’s magic. I’m no Houdini, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

We drank scotch that night and sip by sip inched closer together. He had a way of looking at me—or I’m sure at any girl—that reeled me right in. I had forgotten all about the men at the bar. I had almost forgotten about Shep, too.

Tony was smart. As a young boy, he’d gone to private schools, and though he had been accepted to the University of Chicago, he decided college wasn’t for him.

“Second semester there I got into a fistfight with one of my professors.”

“Why?”

“He was giving me a hard time. Didn’t want to accept a paper just because I turned it in late.”

“Well, they are known to do that sort of thing, you know.”

“At least I won the fight.” He smiled. I melted.

Now he owned a string of tobacco stores and said he made more money than his father, who was a doctor. I was intrigued. Private schools, college—he was book smart and street smart, too. Something about that combination got me excited. It didn’t hurt that he let me know he was rich, too. Plus he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen and all I wanted him to do was lean in and kiss me.

Tony pulled out a cigarette—this time from the pack of Chesterfields he’d placed on the table—and ran a hand through his hair, causing that one disobedient lock to dangle down. “I need a haircut,” he said.

“No, don’t cut it!” Before I could stop myself, I reached up and touched his hair. I was already blushing as I pulled my hand away.

He smiled and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “You are one beautiful-looking doll. I bet you must have a million guys after you.”

“Not a million.” I laughed, leaning into his touch. “Just one. And he doesn’t seem to take no for an answer.”

“Yeah, who is he? I’ll get rid of him for you.”

I thought that if anyone could stand up to Shep it would be Tony Liolli, but I smiled and said, “He’s not the kind of guy you get rid of so easily.”

“And why’s that?”

“You ever heard of a guy named Shep Green?”

As soon as I’d said it, I knew that he had. Tony ground out his cigarette and looked at me, his usual easy, carefree expression replaced with one of concern. “That’s him?
That’s
the guy you’re seeing?”

“I
was
seeing him.”

He took a long pull from his scotch. “You know who he is?”

I nodded. “Yes, but I didn’t
really
know. Not in the very beginning, anyway.”

Just then an older, balding man with a slight frame and close-set eyes came up to our banquette and slapped Tony on the shoulder. “What are you doing hiding back here?”

The two went back and forth, and I was waiting to be introduced but that clearly wasn’t going to happen, so I busied myself with a cigarette instead.

“Didn’t you have some business to take care of tonight?”

“It’s handled,” said Tony, leaning over to produce a light for me.

“Good.” The man nodded and straightened his necktie. “They tell me you were at the tables again tonight.”

“Did they tell you I won?”

“Watch yourself, you hear me?” He gave Tony a severe pat on the cheek.

“Who was that?” I asked, after he walked away.

“Johnny Torrio.” He paused for my reaction, as if the name should have meant something to me. “This is his place,” he continued. “I do a little work for him on the side.”

“He’s not very friendly.”

“Aw, he’s okay once you get to know him.” Tony finished his drink in one gulp. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

We left the Four Deuces and drove out to Municipal Pier. It was cold that night but once Tony and I started kissing we steamed up the windows good and fast. He had perfect lips, and he knew what to do with them, too. His kisses alone got me fired up. Even Shep’s kisses never traveled down my legs, making my insides quiver like this. Just being in Tony’s arms did something to me. I felt safe and sexy and I craved him. I’d never felt that kind of desire before. That had to have meant something. It had to have been a sign. Shep wasn’t right for me but maybe Tony was.

Tony and I carried on like that until the sun came up over Lake Michigan.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

T
he next morning, on less than two hours’ sleep, I dragged myself to the streetcar. After settling in, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes, thinking about Tony Liolli. I’d never let a man put his hand up my skirt before. I’d always had so much control with other men. I was in charge and no one went where I didn’t want them to go. But something about Tony made me come undone. He couldn’t have touched me there fast enough.

The conductor clanked his bell as the streetcar jolted forward, scooting along the tracks heading south. I opened my eyes and gazed out the window. At that early hour, the city was awake with motorcars crowding the streets, dodging in and around the trolleys and occasional horse-drawn carriages. People rushed along the snow-covered sidewalks with their collars turned up, hats held in place, all bracing themselves against the winds gusting off the lake. Even the buildings looked cold, as if huddling close together for warmth, block after block. As the streetcar continued heading south, I gazed out the window to the west. The Chicago River had frozen over, frosted on top like a chilled martini glass.

Farther south the skyscrapers were replaced by less imposing buildings with water tanks on their roofs, separated by alleys strung with clotheslines full of bed linens and union suits even in the freezing cold. The pungent scent of manure, guts and animal blood began to fill the air. I reached inside my pocketbook for a handkerchief to cover my nose and mouth. I was on my way to the Union Stock Yards to see my mother.

There weren’t many women at the stockyards other than the ones who worked in the canning departments or the cafeterias. Some others may have done clerical work but they certainly didn’t own meatpacking plants. My mother was the exception. After my father’s murder, she had stepped in and taken over Abramowitz Meats.

She always assumed that someday I’d work for her and was outright offended that I’d wanted to get a job with someone else and move out. Oh, how we argued over that. There were tears and slamming doors before we came to an agreement: one visit per month. And since my mother worked seven days a week, our visits always took place at the stockyards.

The streetcar hummed along, heading straight toward the center of the stink. Even the Chicago River had not been able to escape the effects of the stockyards. I glanced into its murky waters. It was so alive with the puckering gases of dumped animal carcasses, it was nicknamed Bubbly Creek in this part of town.

The conductor clanged his bell again as the streetcar came to my stop. I got off and headed toward the main gate of the Union Stock Yards, passing underneath the cow’s head that crowned the massive limestone archway, keeping watch over all four hundred and seventy-five acres. In the distance, to my left, hundreds of rail lines crisscrossed one another like a game of jackstraws. A drover tipped his cowboy hat and gave me a smile as he trotted past on his horse. Train whistles blasted as dozens of other drovers saddled up on horseback, moving the livestock from the freight cars toward the pens. Everywhere I looked there were wire-meshed pens packed with sheep, goats, lambs, cattle, and hogs. Each and every one of them waiting to be slaughtered.

Abramowitz Meats was up ahead. The company occupied two redbrick buildings. My mother’s was a tiny operation compared to Swift, Armour, Wilson and the other big companies surrounding it. There was a small white sign out front with
Abramowitz Meats
spelled out in blue lettering. A Jewish star, the Mogen David, dotted the
i
in Abramowitz.

It was a kosher meatpacking house, which was ironic, seeing as we weren’t observant Jews. My mother didn’t keep a kosher home. But my father’s father had started the business back in the 1860s. Before he became a meatpacker, he’d been a
shochet
who traveled to all the packinghouses and performed kosher slaughters. Eventually, he scraped up enough money to open Abramowitz Meats. When my father took over around 1885, he grew the business, married a young bride twenty-three years his junior, and had a baby.

Four years later, in 1910, he was murdered during what we thought was a dispute among the stockyard workers. After a group of laborers had walked off their jobs one day, violence broke out between the meatpackers and the workers. My father’s torso was found two days later. It was only the scar on his left shoulder—caused by a meat hook accident—that allowed my mother to identify him. The police thought the disgruntled workers did it. At the time of his death they didn’t know about the Black Hand Gang. That didn’t come out until later.

And I didn’t find out about the Black Hand Gang until later still, when I was twelve. That was when I came across the cigar box my mother had hidden beneath some old blankets in the front hall closet. I found the letters inside. All six of them were addressed to my father. They were yellowed and worn at the folds, as if my mother had read them many times over. As I started to read the first one, my mouth went dry and a lump gathered in my throat. They’d written to my father, threatening to
make you a very sorry man
unless he delivered a hundred dollars to them the next day. The second letter demanded two hundred
or else your wife and child will never see you alive again
. It went on and on like that, up to fifteen hundred dollars. I remembered sitting on the floor, leaning against the closet door with my knees up close to my chest, reading through the letters one at a time.

When I was finished, I couldn’t move. I stayed like that on the floor, staring at the wall as the sunlight coming through the window slipped away. Each letter was signed the same way, with a black handprint and a dagger.

When I asked about the letters, my mother was furious and told me it was none of my business. But it was my business. He was my father and I had a right to know how he’d gotten involved with those people. And were they done with us, or were they coming back for more?

I later found out that the Black Hand Gang had disbanded years earlier, but had been replaced by street thugs and gangsters. It was a struggle for control, and whoever had the most power was in charge. That was one of the reasons I was so drawn to Shep. I thought he could protect me from people like the Black Hand Gang. But that was before I’d met his friends, Vincent Drucci and Hymie Weiss. They scared the hell out of me.

•   •   •

H
aving made my way to Abramowitz Meats, I climbed the stairs of the slaughterhouse and went inside. Ida Brech was there, seated at her desk, where she’d been for as long as I could remember. As a young girl I considered her the original Gibson girl with her glossy brown hair pinned up and her bright, hopeful smile. Funny, I always thought she was so pretty and I wanted to be like her when I grew up. But the years had left Ida behind and she’d been sitting at that desk—where my mother would have gladly made a place for me—all this time. Instead of letting young men court her, show her a good time, maybe learning to paint or play piano and one day getting married and having children, Ida had been working at Abramowitz Meats. Now her hair was streaked with gray and the lines around her mouth were set in a deep, resigned frown. Ida represented everything I feared I’d become if I’d stayed with my mother.

“Your mother’s on the kill floor,” she said as she spun a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter. “She told me to send you over when you got here.”

It was cold on the kill floor and I could see my breath before me. Hundreds of carcasses were strung up, hanging from the track of meat hooks in the ceiling, their guts split open, innards sticking out, stomachs looking like slimy gray balloons. On the far end, a dozen cattle were hanging upside down with blood pouring from their throats while their bodies twisted, kicked and thrashed. It would go on like that until they bled out. That was the kosher way.

A few of the men looked up from their work, acknowledged me and said my mother was in the back. I found her standing on a worktable over a giant vat of animal gizzards and hearts and God knows what else.

“Ma? What are you doing up there?”

“Oh, good, you’re here! Hand me that wrench over there, would you? This pipe’s leaking.”

“Why don’t you have one of the men fix it?”