Ingenue

by Jillian Larkin

  “Yeah, but those eyes of yours are unforgettable.” Jerome kissed her on the forehead as his stomach growled. “Now … have we got anything to go with this?” He produced a wedge of bright orange cheese from his coat. “I might have stumbled into a cart on the way home.”

  Gloria sliced the grainy loaf of bread while Jerome cut up the cheese, and asked, “So, any promising leads today?”

  He shook his head. “Charlie at the Marble Room just hired a singer, and they’re going to bring back their old piano player.”

  Jerome’s buddy Lenny had promised Jerome and Gloria a gig at his piano bar in Greenwich Village, but by the time they showed up in New York, Lenny had changed his mind. He said that maybe having a white singer and a black piano player wasn’t the greatest idea—too risky. He’d been wide-eyed and terrified. Someone had put the scare in him. “Someone threaten you?” Jerome had asked quietly.

  Lenny had mopped at his face with a bar towel. “Shouldn’t have advertised who my new piano player was.”

  After that, Gloria and Jerome used aliases for their auditions. Jerome worked through the names of the guys in his old band—“Easier for me to remember who I’m supposed to be,” he explained—while Gloria took names from novels she’d read.

  But it didn’t matter what they called themselves: No one was hiring. Every club owner they went to assured them that they were a little too different, a little too radical for the club’s usual audience.

  Jerome cleared his throat. “I was thinking, Glo. Maybe we should try splitting up. I look for gigs uptown, you look downtown?” He loosened his bow tie. “Just until something better comes along, you know?”

  “Sure. We could try that.” Gloria fiddled with her napkin. “We could also try talking to my father,” she said quietly.

  Lowell Carmody had been living in New York since he’d sent Gloria’s mother a telegram informing her that he was leaving her for a dancer named Amber. Gloria could have reached out to her father at any time, but the only things Lowell Carmody cared about were himself and his money, and a scandalous daughter would be bad for business. Gloria was worried that he would ship her right back to her mother in Chicago. And to Bastian. He certainly wouldn’t approve of Jerome. But at this point Gloria was willing to risk it.

  Jerome looked down at his plate and chewed quietly.

  “After everything he put me and my mother through, he owes me, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do. And that’s why I would never accept any help from him.” Jerome patted her hand. “I said I’d take care of you, honey, and that’s exactly what I’ll do. End of story.”

  Jerome got up and went into the bedroom. When he returned, Duke Ellington’s smooth piano wafted through the apartment. Jerome held out his hand. “May I have this dance?”

  Gloria grinned and stood up into the circle of his arms.

  And then they danced. It was easy to forget their worries when his hand was at the small of her back and he was spinning her slowly around the small apartment, their bodies pressed oh so close together. So close that nothing could ever separate them. He was as exquisite a dancer as he was a piano player, and the two of them moved with a liquid grace that had her smiling until her cheeks hurt.

  “Pretty good dinner tonight, don’t you think?” Jerome asked.

  She looked up at him, and for a moment her mind spun with everything that was wrong—money, hunger, constantly hiding from gangsters and the police. And none of those concerns was even the most obvious one. But as Jerome gazed at her, as if she were the only person in the world who mattered, the soft tones of the piano and the copper flecks in his eyes took over her thoughts once again.

  And so she simply leaned her cheek into his chest and let him sweep her away.

  LORRAINE

  Lorraine was peeved.

  She crossed her arms over her silky blue Lanvin dress. “Jimmy, put the rosewood wardrobe with its back facing away from the wall. How are we supposed to get at the gin?”

  A young man with shaggy dark hair smacked his head with his hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Lorraine. We’ll get that fixed up right away.”

  Once the wardrobe was turned, the two men felt around for a small catch on its side. A door embedded in the back of the wardrobe sprang outward, revealing a hollow space behind the false back. Dozens of bottles of clear liquid were stacked within. Jimmy and another man began removing the bottles and placing them in an already half-full crate.

  The back room of Saunders’ Furniture on West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village was buzzing with activity. Lorraine strolled around with her clipboard, watching the men sweat under the bare lightbulbs overhead, and eyeballing the ugly furniture that filled the space.

  A shipment of bureaus, desks, and wardrobes had recently come in. As always, the Opera House crew dealt with the shipment the night before Saunders and his sons brought the pieces to the front of the store. Much of the furniture would then be shipped off to waiting customers—some still with concealed liquor bottles and some without.

  This deal worked out well for everyone—Puccini De Luca, the owner of the Opera House, had an easy way of getting eel juice into the joint and a respectable front for the speakeasy if the cops came sniffing around. And crotchety old Saunders was able to move some of his plug-ugly furniture at crazily marked-up prices.

  Lorraine ticked off items on her list. “Twenty-four bottles Kentucky mash whiskey—check. Watch that you pack those with straw.”

  Both men nodded, saying, “Sorry, Miss Lorraine!” and “We didn’t know!”

  “That’s why I’m here, boys,” Lorraine said, and swept past. Power was exhilarating. She was eighteen and beautiful—in the right light, anyway—and these men feared her.

  All the liquor had come in; she’d leave it to the boys to crate the bottles and lug the crates through the halls and down the stairs into the Opera House. Heavy lifting was men’s work! Lorraine pushed through the storeroom’s back door and out into the hot summer night.

  The dim alley was lit by a lone bulb sticking out of the wall above the door. Though it was only nine-thirty—a good couple of hours before things got busy—a line of hopefuls had already formed along the alley wall. At a second door, a muscle-bound man with a mustache stood guard. Beside him was a shorter and less muscular man (but still huge by any standards a girl could think of).

  Lorraine walked down the alleyway toward them and tapped the taller man on the shoulder. “Hey there, Vin.”

  “Well, hello there, Rainy Day.” Vinny Roberts was a big teddy bear and one of the few employees at the Opera House whom Lorraine genuinely liked. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “Just loitering.” She leaned against the building. “God, how I love leaning against a nice brick wall. Really straightens out the spine.”

  Vinny just laughed. “Rainy Day’s still silly as ever.”

  The eyes of the men and women in line kept flicking toward her—in admiration and jealousy, probably. Lorraine had always worn the most fashionable outfits, but when she moved to New York, she’d raised the stakes: She’d had her dark bob cut into the newly fashionable shingle style. Now her hair was even shorter and tapered to a V at the nape of her neck. “How is Reggie settling in?”

  Vinny clapped the smaller man on the back. “Oh, just fine. Ain’t that right, Reg?”

  Reggie crossed his arms, making his biceps bulge. “Yes’m, settling in great.”

  Lorraine met his brown eyes. “What’s the password tonight?”

  Reggie glanced at the line of customers and lowered his voice. “Applesauce.”

  She gave one nod. “And you never let anyone in without the password.”

  “Never ever!” Reggie affirmed.

  “Unless?”

  He gave a wry grin, tipping his hat. “Unless I see a dish that looks good enough to send Puccini’s way.”

  Lorraine patted his arm. “Attaboy. I’m heading down for the night. Shipment came in late, so they’re gonna be bringing booze dow
n after the first rush of customers.”

  Lorraine opened the steel front door and turned left down the hall, following the sounds of Rob tuning his upright bass and Felix doing scales on the piano. The hallway ended in red velvet curtains and, just beyond them, an open area and the rickety spiral staircase that led down into the speakeasy known as the Opera House.

  To the right of the stairs was the club’s long bar; to the left was a row of red leather booths, and stretching away across the golden hardwood floor was a sea of small tables, votive candles set square in the centers of the black tablecloths. At the far end was the stage, which was dimly lit as the band got ready. Red-tinted images of New York City landmarks—Times Square, Central Park, the Woolworth Building—covered the walls. It was a heckuva swanky joint.

  The place was pretty deserted still—only a few regulars sat alone at the small tables, nursing drinks in mugs. A group of businessmen filled one of the booths, having bought early admission with a fat roll of cash. Bernice and Hazel, two cigarette girls, said hello, but Lorraine pretended they didn’t exist. It was important that they remembered she was the boss.

  “Well, lo and behold, have we got a looker here,” a gravelly voice said from behind her.

  Lorraine turned to see Dante Vega, a close friend and business partner of Puccini’s. Dante was a bit of a piker, always coming in to mooch free booze, scaring the customers with his dark buggy eyes, his enormous nose, and the jagged scar running down his left cheek. Dante always said “Lo and behold” when he saw Lorraine. He thought it was hilarious.

  She forced herself to smile. “No small thanks to you, sweetheart.”

  Dante had given Lorraine the blue Lanvin dress the day before. Dante was Puccini’s best friend. So if Dante gave a girl a gift, she’d better be wearing it the next time he saw her.

  “Shipment come in okay?” Dante asked, leaning away to light his cigar. “Greasy Fred’s gonna have a real problem if he keeps dawdlin’ with our product.”

  Lorraine nodded. “The boys are crating up the last of it now.”

  “Good. And you check on the band?”

  “I was just about to, but then you had to go and start distracting me.”

  Dante knocked back the shot of Scotch that Cecil the bartender had placed in front of him. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.” He leaned closer, his breath reeking of cigars and something less pleasant. “Unless of course you want to be distracted.”

  Lorraine gave him another smile. “Not while I’m working, honey.”

  He waved her off with a fat hand. “Aw, such a hard worker! Bet you got straight As back in that fancy school of yours in Chicago. Hard work and smarts’ll take you a long way.” Dante picked up his brown derby from a nearby table and put it on. “I’m gonna tell Vinny to start lettin’ the birds in, so be ready.” He ambled away toward the stairs.

  The only place Lorraine wanted her “smarts” to take her was the Barnard campus in September. Working at the Opera House was a nice little summer job, but it wasn’t what Lorraine Dyer was about, no sir. It was just a sweet gig at the cool and sophisticated kind of place where Lorraine was sure she belonged.

  But it turned out that working in a speakeasy was still work: checking on the band, making sure the hired boys mopped up the alcohol-coated floors, keeping track of all those tiny red chips that the dealers used on poker nights. And even the merest thought of the club’s bathroom made her want to run back to Chicago as fast as her legs could take her.

  Not that anyone would have welcomed Lorraine if she had.

  Her parents had barely spoken to her since the night she’d exposed that lying tramp Clara Knowles. Just like everyone else, Lorraine’s parents had blamed Lorraine for the scandal that erupted. They’d proposed that she could “mend her ways” by spending her summer doing charity work. But Carlito Macharelli had proposed something else, something much more interesting than spending her days chaperoning filthy little orphan children in Chicago’s Astor Square Park. And Lorraine had leaped at it. Her folks were only too happy to have her packed off to college early—or so they thought—and no longer their problem. “The university will instill in you a more refined morality,” her mother had told her.

  Instead, she’d ended up here, working for a gangster.

  It wasn’t as if Puccini were the worst boss in the world. Just last week, he’d given Lorraine the night off for her eighteenth birthday. Not that she had anything to do or anyone to do it with, but still, it was a nice thought. She had spent the evening alone, listening to records and rearranging the two chairs and couch—she called it a davenport, because that just sounded better—in her new apartment on East Twelfth Street.

  Lorraine looked up and saw Cecil smiling at her from across the bar. “Dante giving you much trouble?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.” There had been a time when Cecil’s flirtatious attention would have had her dashing out to the alley for some necking. But since that fateful night at the Cloak & Dagger months earlier, Lorraine was swearing off bartenders jusqu’elle … jusqu’à nouvous … however that went. She was swearing off them until further notice. She maybe shouldn’t have tossed her French textbook in the trash on graduation day. Tant pis!

  “So, we ready to open officially for the night?” Cecil asked.

  “Yep. I’ve just gotta make sure the village idiot is ready, too.”

  “Hey now, Spark’s a good egg. His mama just dropped him on his head one too many times when he was a kid.”

  “You ask me, his mom should’ve dropped him a few more times and done us all a favor.”

  A group of giggling women with feathered headbands descended the stairs. “Here we go,” Cecil said as he poured vodka into two shot glasses. “Time for one quick belt, if you’re up for it.”

  Lorraine stared at the shot glass, filled to the brim with throat-burning, world-fuzzying, wonderful, beautiful liquor. A drink would be pos-i-lute-ly lovely, but … she couldn’t risk even the slightest bit of foggy-headedness at this job. If she messed anything up, it would get back to Puccini. And then Puccini would send a telegram to their mutual friend back in Chicago. And then Carlito would come to New York and teach Lorraine a lesson.

  Cecil could drink and work, but not Lorraine. She pushed it away. “Don’t tempt me.”

  Cecil threw back both shots, one after the other. “I guess you’ll have to be responsible enough for the both of us.”

  Lorraine remembered sitting next to Carlito in his reserved booth when he’d told her his plans for her. It was a few weeks before graduation, and Lorraine had become a regular at the Green Mill. Carlito paid her to hang around and be a pretty face for the male patrons to look at. It was easy peasy work, made Lorraine feel desired, and gave her something to do after all her so-called friends had abandoned her. And she kind-of-sort-of liked Carlito.

  The thing she’d tried to explain to anyone who would listen was that Carlito was very attractive. Not just handsome—though his slicked-back hair and dark eyes were good-looking enough—but powerful and fearless. She had no idea whether Carlito was actually strong, but everyone treated him as if he could break a person with a snap of his fingers. It was a little bit frightening and a lot sexy. Lorraine had never met someone so young who seemed so confident and dangerous.

  “So,” Carlito had said, shuffling a few poker chips through his fingers, “you’re leaving for New York and Barnard soon, isn’t that right, Lorraine?”

  She narrowed her eyes. Maybe she mentioned Barnard a lot—it was a big-deal school, and people needed to know that she was a smart cookie—but she didn’t think she’d said anything to Carlito. And why would she have? Her deal had been to work for him at the Green Mill until graduation. And then she could go back to how her life was supposed to be.

  “Maybe at the end of the summer,” she said.

  Carlito laughed and draped his arm around her. “I’ve gotten very attached to you these past few months, doll. You work hard, and you’re feisty. Perfect
for a position I’m looking to fill over the summer.”

  “No thanks, Carlito, I—”

  He patted her thigh. “So I guess you don’t want Jerome Johnson and what’s-her-face, that Gloria dame, to pay for what they did to you?”

  She almost sprayed her drink all over him. Gloria. She hadn’t heard that name since Jerome had run off with Gloria months earlier. There were rumors about what had happened—one of Carlito’s goons had gone missing around that time, and no one seemed to wonder where he’d disappeared to. Which meant he was dead. A tiny part of Lorraine worried that Gloria had been involved in the gangster’s murder, but a much larger part hated Gloria for abandoning her, and that part won out every time.

  “What exactly do you have in mind?” she’d asked Carlito.

  Six weeks later she was here at the Opera House, living off her paycheck and her allowance from her parents (to whom she’d promised “progress reports” from the summer classes she was taking before Barnard started in the fall) and stopping Spark from abusing the musicians. “The bass goes behind the piano, not on top of it,” he was saying to Rob. “You think you’re fronting this band?”

  “Leave him be, Spark,” Lorraine said, striding toward the stage.

  Spark was a skinny man who liked to wear brightly colored bow ties and vests. With his wispy brown hair and stupid straw boater hat, he looked like a child playing dress-up.

  “Why, hello, Raine,” Spark said, removing the boater and pressing it to his chest. “Whatever did I do to earn the privilege of your attention? I figured you were just gonna stay at the bar and let me do all your work for you.”

  Spark was supposed to be Lorraine’s comanager, but they both knew that Lorraine gave the orders and Spark took them. He was ten years older than Lorraine, which sometimes seemed to make him think he was smarter than she was.

  Lorraine looked at the band on the stage. “They all set?” She got her answer when the band launched into an upbeat tune. The blond piano player, Felix, was hitting on all six, his fingers flying over the keys. He was one of the best piano players Lorraine had seen, second only to … well, Felix was definitely the best piano player Lorraine knew who wasn’t also a murderer.