The City Beautiful

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The City Beautiful Page 8

by Aden Polydoros


  “Aaron thought that someone was re-creating the Jack the Ripper killings,” she said. “I tried telling him how foolish it was. I mean, most likely those body parts are just from bad business down in the Levee. The Valley Gang or the like. But he wouldn’t let it go. He was fixated on it. He had heard of a place down in the Levee, somewhere called the Whitechapel Club. Whitechapel was the part of London where the Ripper’s victims were found.”

  “The Whitechapel Club,” I echoed. The name taunted me. I could have sworn I had heard about it before, during my time in Frankie’s circle. My memories of that year were a revolving world of dark alleyways and breezy rooftops, dingy taverns and dance halls. But there were some places even Frankie refused to go.

  “Personally, I thought it was just another journalist’s legend. But if the Whitechapel Club really does exist, it would be one of the last places Aaron visited before his disappearance.” She scowled at the wall. “I just wish there was someone who knew where to find it.”

  I took a deep breath. “I think I know someone who does.”

  10

  There was only one place Frankie would be on a night like this, and that was the Levee District cradling the city’s southern edge, a labyrinth of saloons, dance halls, and brothels. It was where it had all started for me, and where I had ended things.

  Though dusk hadn’t yet unfurled into night, clusters of people gathered under eaves and in doorways, their faces lost to the gloom and weak gaslight. There was something solemn and reverent about the way they huddled within those shadowed niches, their voices soft enough to be indistinct, as though they were praying in tabernacles.

  As I passed a boisterous group of workers released from their assembly lines, I yanked down the brim of my newsboy cap, afraid someone would recognize me.

  I had spent the last year trying so hard to re-create myself, just being seen by an old pal would feel like bridging a dangerous gap between my current self and who I’d once been. Same for running across a member of my shul, although I doubted any of them planned to spend their evening in Chicago’s decadent underbelly.

  I broke away from the crowd. Down streets, through alleys, my palm pressed over my nose to block out the nauseating odors rising from trash heaps. At the end of an alley, when my route was cut off by a heap of crates and half-rotten lumber, I climbed a ladder to the roof.

  Like any warren, the Levee had passageways known only to its inhabitants. The buildings were placed so closely together, it was easy to leap from rooftop to rooftop or race across rickety planks stretched over alleyways. During my first year in Chicago, I had become well-acquainted with this skyward route.

  Finding solid ground on the level above, I wasn’t surprised when I spotted a lit lantern several rooftops down. I studied the buildings around me, refamiliarizing myself. Some roofs were fitted with new chimneys or water towers, while other structures had fallen into further ruin. Still, even in the mounting darkness, I was able to pinpoint where I was and where I needed to go.

  Squatting around their lantern, a young boy and girl startled when I landed beside them at the brink of the rooftop. A small treasure trove was scattered at their feet—pocket watches, coins, jewelry. As the girl scooped up her finds, the boy rose to his feet. I seized his wrist before he could bolt.

  “Wait,” I said in English as he tried to pull away. “Calm down, I’m no cop.”

  Once the kid stopped moving, I let go of him. He backed up, rubbing his arm warily. His friend shoveled their spoils into a burlap sack.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked. “German? Yiddish?”

  The girl and boy exchanged looks. They couldn’t be older than thirteen.

  “What do you want?” the girl in the mariner’s cap asked in Yiddish. Her accent was tauntingly familiar.

  “You’re from Romania,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s it to you?”

  “Are you from Piatra Neamţ?”

  “No. Fălticeni.”

  Fălticeni. The town was less than eighty kilometers from Piatra Neamţ. My family had traveled there twice for the annual trade fair, perched in a creaking wagon amid bolts of cotton and crepe. It was like a punch to the gut, knowing that a girl born there could end up a common pickpocket in the slums of the Levee. It made me feel as though my encounter with Frankie’s crew hadn’t been some freak accident, but predestined. That it had been written in the soil of Romania long before I was born.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Bailey,” she said, which probably meant that it had once been something like Baila or Bine.

  “Are you with Frankie?”

  The attic his pickpocketing crew rented could be accessed through the roof of this building. In the past, I had regularly gathered here with the others.

  Looking back at those days, I was both appalled and impressed by how bold I had been, how risky, intoxicated by life on the edge. Frankie didn’t know it, but he had given me more than just a means of surviving my first year in this city. He had been an anesthetic, a way to numb the pain of my father’s death as well as any laudanum. And whenever I had stolen something, it was as though I had been transferring a bit of that grief to others, until the only time I felt alive was when I had stolen coins spilling from my hands.

  All things had to end, and my time with Frankie’s crew had been no different. The night I left him, he inadvertently showed me the truth about what it meant to survive in his world. It wasn’t just running, excitement, or numbing myself with the thrill of the hunt. Sometimes, it meant staining one’s hands with another man’s blood.

  “How do you know Frankie?” Bailey asked.

  “We’re friends. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “He doesn’t sleep here anymore. He says he needs to maintain appearances.”

  Considering the amount of money Frankie had invested in his new wardrobe, that didn’t surprise me. For him, it had always been an upward climb. “You know where I can find him?”

  “What’s it worth to you?”

  “Do I look like I have any money?”

  Bailey glanced down at my clothes and sighed. “I’ll bet all you have in your pockets are mothballs.”

  I winced inwardly. That wasn’t too far from the truth. “Nu? You going to tell me where I can find him?”

  “Oh, fine. He’s probably at a place over on South Dearborn, called the Masthead.”

  “Is that a gentlemen’s club?”

  “There’s nothing very gentlemanly about it,” she said cryptically. “It’s a big brownstone building with an old figurehead over the door. You can’t miss it.”

  As the two thieves descended the fire escape, I called down to them, “If you want to find honest work, go to Hull House on Halsted Street. They’ll be able to help you.”

  Neither one answered, or if they did, the howling wind drowned out their responses. I picked up their lantern and smothered the flame.

  Against the ink-black expanse of Lake Michigan, lightning bolts rippled through the clouds like strange currents. This world was so much larger than I had once thought. I felt swallowed by its vastness. As the lightning faded into darkness, I descended the fire escape and continued on my way.

  11

  Nearly an hour later, I found myself at the doorstep of a stately two-story brownstone. True to Bailey’s word, the lintel above the door was adorned with a figurehead carved as a mermaid, flakes of green peeling from her tail.

  “Excuse me, but is this the Masthead?” I asked the man smoking a pipe on the front steps.

  As the man turned to me, the gaslight fell upon his face. I winced involuntarily. He had a shaved head that looked like it had been used as a stickball one too many times.

  “What’s it to you?” The light glinted off his war-scape of a mouth; half his teeth were missing, the rest broken or capped in silver. “You kn
ow the word? Huh?”

  “What word?”

  “Bug off.” He made a swatting motion with his hand.

  I refused to budge. “I’m looking for Frankie Portnoy.”

  “I told you to bug off, before I do you a hard one.”

  I didn’t know what a hard one was, and I wasn’t very eager to find out.

  “Fine, fine.” I lifted my hands, backing away. “I’m leaving.”

  As I trudged off, I felt his gaze boring into me. I continued down the street, waiting until I was out of his sight before turning the corner and approaching the building from the other side.

  I entered the alley that stretched alongside the Masthead. Empty bottles, bins of rubbish, crates. There was a locked door and a window cracked open, wisps of fragrant steam curling from the gap. I stopped by the window, breathing in the scents of stale beer and roasted meat. Low voices, the clatter of porcelain and metal. A kitchen.

  Stepping away from the door, I studied the rest of the wall. About three meters up, there was a window.

  I dragged one of the crates over and upturned it on its side, spilling out mounds of sodden wood shavings. As I clambered onto the crate, it shook and groaned beneath my weight. I pressed my palms against the wall, steadying myself, before testing the window above.

  The pane creaked open when I pushed on it. I crawled through the opening and landed in a heap on the floor two meters below. I stumbled to my feet, rubbing my sore butt. No shouts of alarm or running guards. The noises from the kitchen must have drowned out the sound of my entry.

  The corridor’s walls were a deep forest green adorned with maple wainscoting. Amber-glass shades softened the gaslights. The hall opened up into a large room, where gentlemen sat smoking at lounges and seats. I stood afar, conscious of my worn clothes. What in the world was this place?

  A bell rang.

  “Ten minutes until showtime,” a man with a white mustache announced from his seat by the hearth. He gave two more prim rings of his handbell. “Are all your bets placed, gentlemen? Hmm? Any last-minute wagers?”

  More money exchanged hands. The mustached man was collecting cash and writing down names. I didn’t have to count the bills myself to realize that they were betting the equivalent of my monthly paycheck.

  Gentlemen were rising now, drifting in a cloud of cigar smoke toward the same threshold where I stood. I backed away as they entered. The men paid no more mind to me than if I had been a ghost, and when I followed them down the corridor, no one asked me what I was doing in this place.

  Maybe it was my clothing that offered me this rare invisibility. With the tassels of my tzitzis tucked into my pants and my newsboy cap pulled low, I was indistinguishable from any Christian. These men passed a thousand like me every day—the nameless doormen, the scrawny bootblacks, the chimney sweeps, and newsboys, and lamplighters—and they were so used to us, that we had become a part of the scenery.

  At the rear of the building, a door led into the cellar below. The stairs creaked beneath my feet. A medley of unpleasant odors hung in the stuffy air—rotten teeth, sweat, stale beer, cigar smoke, animal piss. Gaslights illuminated a large brick chamber centered around a sunken stage of the sort used for rat-baiting and cockfighting. Except, instead of roosters or rats, the entertainment of the night appeared to be human.

  Two young men faced each other in the ring, both barefoot and shirtless. I froze at the edge of the crowd, stunned.

  The gaslight burned harsh on Frankie’s face, stoking a fire in his tawny eyes and carving his features into cruel angles. Our gazes met only for a moment, but long enough for his opponent to lunge forward.

  The other boy took a swing at Frankie, clipping his shoulder and sending him staggering back.

  Frankie regained his balance and began circling the boy once more. His motions were smooth and effortless, refined, as though he were dancing a waltz. The boy made another lunge for him, but Frankie dodged the blow and delivered a punch of his own.

  A coarse gurgling breath pushed from the boy’s mouth. Reeling back, he spat out a bloody froth and a broken tooth onto the sawdust-strewn floor.

  The other boy had several centimeters on Frankie, but Frankie had the lithe, compact build and ruthlessness of a Carpathian lynx. I quickly realized he relied on swiftness and ferocity to even the playing field. Before the boy could recover from the first strike, Frankie had already hit him a second time, then a third, pummeling his face.

  I flinched with each blow, recalling the night I left him and the burglary job that had gone terribly wrong. It had been a different man Frankie had beaten, first with the butt of a revolver and then with his fists, but the sounds had been the same. The steady thud of knuckles striking flesh, the groans and ragged gasps, the scuffle of feet on the floor. I shivered.

  On the fourth blow, his opponent crashed to the floor of the pit, adding to the dried bloodstains of his predecessors.

  Frankie stepped back, his chiseled chest rising and falling in steady breaths. Blood flecked his knuckles, but it was not his own. As the dim, humid space filled with booing and shouts of triumph, Frankie met my gaze again and challenged me with a smirk.

  I didn’t smile back. I wished I’d never sought him out at all.

  As he climbed out of the pit, I stepped to the corner of the room. He appeared to be in no hurry to join me, and instead spent the next five minutes mingling with the patrons, basking in the glow of his victory. He spoke to men. He shook hands. Several gave him calling cards, which he slipped into his pants pocket. Just when I thought he intended to ignore me entirely, he strolled over.

  “Come with me,” Frankie said quietly. We walked up the stairs, back into the dim corridor, and up a second narrow stairway to the floor above. He pushed me through the first door we came across, which led into an empty billiard room.

  “I have an hour until my next match.” After lighting the gas lamps, Frankie walked over to the counter, where a decanter sat on a silver tray. He splashed some liquor into two tumblers, returned to my side, and handed me one.

  “L’chaim,” he toasted. To life.

  “L’chaim,” I echoed reluctantly, and tapped my glass against his.

  He took a sip. “Try it. It’s Kentucky bourbon.”

  I sampled the liquor. Just a nip was enough to sting my throat. When I set the glass on the counter, he lifted his brows.

  “Too much for you?” he asked, polishing off his tumbler.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You have no taste at all. I bet all you drink is kiddush wine.” Frankie poured some more bourbon into his tumbler, took a sip, reconsidered. The cut crystal chimed as he set it down. He had smeared bloody fingerprints across the glass. “So, what are you doing here? With the way you ran off yesterday, I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “You’ve got blood on you.”

  “Well, don’t just stare.” He wiped his hands on the seat of his pants. “Speak up. How did you find me?”

  “I went back to our old place. You’re recruiting girls now?” It shouldn’t have made a difference, but all I could think of was my own sisters. I never wanted them to live the life that I had.

  “That’s correct,” Frankie said smoothly, with not an ounce of shame. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You know, when I found Bailey, she was working in a brothel. They had taken her clothes so that she wouldn’t leave. Can you imagine the horror of that, Alter? The humiliation? The despair?”

  His stark questions caught me in a stranglehold. My cheeks burned. I felt like a foolish child.

  “No, of course you can’t.” He answered his own question with a charming smile. “Ah...forgive me. This conversation is too uncouth for someone like you. You come from a good family, a good upbringing. You weren’t born into this life; you fell down into it, your family’s fortune gone in an instant, like something out of a bubbe-meise.
Isn’t that right?”

  He maintained his calm demeanor, but his voice held a hint of venom. I felt myself shrink under his hooded gaze, all my words evaporating in an instant. I wished I could be like him, that I could wield my voice as brutally as a weapon. But I was so taken aback, I couldn’t even respond.

  “That’s what I thought,” Frankie said curtly, like a killing blow. “I never ask them to give anything away. Only take. And I have a code of honor. You have no right to judge me for what I do.”

  He was right. How could I judge him? Over and over, I had seen the truth on the washing table—this goldene medina demanded you to sacrifice your body. You must bleed to live here; you must give your sweat and tears. Then once Chicago had gorged itself on your suffering and sucked you down to the marrow, it would leave you for dead.

  “I’m not here to judge you, Frankie,” I said shakily, finding my voice.

  “Then to what do I owe this pleasure?” Frankie asked, crossing his arms over his bare chest. The gaslights caught the gleam of sweat on his skin, accentuating the composed lines of his muscles, the steady rise and fall of his breast. “I don’t suppose you’re here to gamble?”

  “No, I came here to ask for help. I’ve heard that there’s a place somewhere in the Levee. Something called the Whitechapel Club. Have you ever heard of it?”

  His eyes narrowed in recognition. “Whitechapel Club, you say?”

  A spark of excitement rose inside me. “You know it?”

  “I’ve been there,” he purred, a dangerous light entering his eyes. He leaned forward, his breath tickling the side of my neck. “It’s not this kind of club, to put it lightly. I have no desire to go back there.”

  “Can you tell me where I can find it?”

  “I don’t know, you sure you want to go? A good mensch like yourself ought to stick to something a bit more, dare I say, kosher.”

  “Frankie, I’m serious.”

 

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