Ingenue

by Jillian Larkin

  Carlito had told her that Jerome had stolen money from the Green Mill, and when Tony had tried to stop him, Jerome had taken out a pistol and shot Tony in cold blood.

  Lorraine hadn’t even had to fake her shock. Jerome was even worse than Bastian. Murder! Gloria had thrown away her friendship with Lorraine for a poor black piano player who went around killing people? “It’s just not right,” she said aloud.

  “I dunno,” Spark said. “I think they sound pretty good. But of course, I don’t have your educated ear, Lorraine.”

  She looked at Spark. “Your ears are so tiny it’s a wonder you can hear anything at all.” Then she turned on her heel and walked back through the swiftly filling room to the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY beside the bar.

  She didn’t look back to see whether Spark was following—she knew he was.

  Through that door and then another door was the Opera House’s tiny office. Dante, Lorraine, and Spark all made use of the place, and it was in a constant state of messiness—sticky rings on the oak desk left by glasses of Scotch (Dante), discarded headbands and gloves lying on the file cabinets (Lorraine), crumpled sheets of paper in the trash can and on the floor (Spark), and overflowing ashtrays on every possible surface (all three).

  Lorraine sifted through the mess and unearthed a folder. “I made some changes to our ad. Make sure to take it over to the Times first thing in the morning.”

  Spark sat down in the desk chair, propped his feet up, and opened the folder. He read through the advertisement. “This is a lot more specific,” he said.

  “We want a certain type,” Lorraine said.

  “But what was wrong before? Just saying we’re looking for a young, pretty singer with experience?”

  “I have a look in mind. A vision, if you will.”

  “Why’s she gotta be a redhead?”

  Good question. Lorraine bit her lip. “ ’Cause we want her to look Irish. Ireland is known for its jazz singers.”

  “Since when?” He shook his head. “Never mind. And she has to be five-three? What’s that about?”

  “Acoustics,” Lorraine said quickly. “That’s the perfect height for a singer to … project effectively. Everyone knows that.”

  Spark snorted. “Uh-huh. And what’s this business about her having green eyes?”

  “Spark!” Lorraine snatched the folder from him. “How about we just do what we were hired to do? I was hired to think, and you were hired to … why did Puccini hire you, anyway?”

  Spark stood up from the chair and bowed. “Why don’t I go and make sure Cecil isn’t giving away free hooch to his buddies again?”

  After he was gone, Lorraine looked at the ad one more time. It was the perfect bait. Gloria had been in New York for half a year; she had to be running out of money. Sure, an ad like this probably would’ve seemed fishy to the old Gloria. But desperation put a whole new shine on things.

  Carlito’s plan was simple. “There are two different ways to catch a bird,” he’d said. “Beat the bushes so it flies out. Or lure it into a cage. We’re gonna do both. My guys are gonna beat the bushes. You’re gonna build a gilded cage so that the birds fly right inside. You manage one of my clubs in New York, and you hire Gloria and Jerome. Then I show up to collect a debt. It’s that simple.”

  “What are you going to do to them?” Lorraine had asked.

  “Nothing to the girl. I don’t hurt women, it’s not my style,” Carlito had said. “As for the piano man, well … I’ll rough him up a bit and send him on his way. Teach him a lesson.” He’d leaned in a bit closer to Lorraine. “We’ll teach him a lesson.”

  Lorraine had liked the sound of that.

  Now Lorraine shivered a little and slipped the folder into Spark’s absurd yellow briefcase. She went back out into the bar.

  It was just the usual chaos. Sparkling young women and dapper young men, the girls sporting their sultry flapper best—all drop-waisted, shimmery, sleeveless evening dresses, and hair crimped and bobbed and caught in beaded headbands. They constantly checked their cigarettes and their cocktail glasses for lipstick marks, and they constantly laughed—they were desperate to be witty. The men were the same way, only without the lipstick and headbands. Lorraine could barely stand any of them. Had she been as dizzily vacant as the flappers who filled the club and cut a rug on the dance floor?

  She let out a heavy sigh. She missed the days when a speakeasy seemed like a rebel’s paradise, full of sparkling diamonds glinting in a smoky pool of soft jazz and even softer laughter. Now it was just a whole lotta hard work. She felt as if she was somewhere between being a waitress and a maid. Although she was pretty sure Marguerite had never had to scrape vomit off the floors of the Dyer residence. (Not that Lorraine did the actual scraping. But watching over Jimmy’s shoulder while he did it to make sure he didn’t leave any specks was almost worse.)

  But it was only for the summer.

  Once Gloria fell into Lorraine’s trap, Lorraine would tell Carlito where Gloria and Jerome were hiding. And Gloria would suffer. She would have to watch Carlito and his goons rough up her boyfriend. She’d have to go along as they ran him out of town. Then Gloria would wander back to her sad little New York life, broken and alone. Eventually, she would come crawling back to Lorraine, begging for forgiveness.

  And Lorraine would laugh. No, she would cackle! Like a witch!

  Gloria had made a huge mistake when she’d crossed Lorraine Dyer. Now Carlito would come and take Jerome away, just as Gloria had taken everything from Lorraine—Bastian, Marcus Eastman, the flapper lifestyle Lorraine had introduced her to—without a thought for anyone but herself.

  Once l’affaire Gloria was all wrapped up, Lorraine could start her real life in New York. She would have some positively scandalous stories to tell to her spectacular new Barnard friends about how she palled around with mobsters and ran their gin joints and how it was all so old hat for someone as worldly as she.

  Lorraine was almost done making nice with gangsters and doing actual work—her revenge on Gloria was so close she could taste it.

  So why did she feel so awful?

  CLARA

  Looks ain’t everything.

  Clara’s black feather fan looked like the perfect accessory to go with any slinky flapper dress—dark, intricate-looking, sexy. But as a fan, it didn’t work so well. She was no cooler after ten minutes of flapping, and now her arm was tired.

  She dropped the fan into her purse and pulled out her copy of the Illustrated Milliner magazine. She liked it for the pictures and the articles, which weren’t too literary but were engaging enough. She’d wanted to be a writer back in the old days, when she was living in New York with Leelee and Coco. Poetry mostly, but writing for a magazine seemed fun. Glamorous. A way to set trends and impress people.

  Clara laughed a little to herself. Who cared if she wasn’t a trendsetter anymore? The only person she wanted to impress was Marcus, and he’d fallen for her when she’d been stuck wearing dresses that were about as attractive as potato sacks—let alone anything that would be featured in a magazine. She shook the Cartier bracelet on her wrist and smiled. That was far more gorgeous than any stupid dress in the Milliner.

  But what Clara loved most about the glittering diamond and platinum bracelet was what it meant. Marcus had first given it to her when he still believed she was Country Clara, Gloria’s innocent cousin from a small Pennsylvania farm. And then even after he had learned the truth about Clara’s turbulent past, he had again clasped the bracelet on her wrist and asked her to move to New York with him for the summer.

  Clara hadn’t taken it off since.

  She knew that Marcus had imagined that she would be living in Upper Manhattan, close to him and Columbia, where he would attend college in the fall. Instead, she had chosen to live in Brooklyn Heights. She just couldn’t go back to Manhattan, not yet. She didn’t want to run even the slightest risk of falling back in with her party-all-day-and-all-night crowd—or into the lifestyle that went with them.
For right now, Manhattan was like a giant neon LOOK BUT DON’T TOUCH sign blinking at her from across the East River.

  Aside from Marcus, there was only one reason to visit Manhattan—to find Gloria.

  Clara knew that her cousin was in New York City somewhere. Gloria had promised she would send Clara a telegram in Pennsylvania once she and Jerome arrived safely in New York, but the telegram had never come. And now Clara herself had come to New York, and Gloria was no closer to being found.

  Clara leaned back on her bench and looked down the street, past the line of elegant brownstone town houses. She could just make out a tiny part of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was beautiful, just like everything else in Brooklyn.

  Her folks hadn’t been so enthusiastic about her returning to the very place where she’d lost her virtue. In fact, they’d forbidden it.

  But then her aunt Bea had stepped forward on Clara’s behalf and persuaded them to give Clara a second chance. “The mistakes Clara committed in the past,” she wrote, “have made her a better person.” Her aunt had testified that Clara had become a new woman in Chicago and a favorite of the smart set. And she’d praised the positive influence of Clara’s beau, the upstanding young man Marcus Eastman, one of the most sought-after bachelors in the great state of Illinois.

  So the Knowleses had grudgingly allowed Clara to return to New York. But she’d had to make promises: Not to fall back into her wild ways. Not to run with the same group of “dissolute girls.” Not to drink. Not to dance. Not to set foot in palaces of sin (as they called speakeasies). They sent Clara money from time to time at her Brooklyn address, but it was the absolute minimum.

  Clara had resorted to wearing dresses that had gone a little threadbare, and she couldn’t afford to replace her worn-out black Mary Janes. Her apartment was spacious and cheap, but that was only because it was such a long hike from the subway stop. She was making ends meet, but just barely.

  Clara jerked when she felt someone slide up close to her on the bench.

  “You sit with such style, miss,” a soft voice whispered. “You positively brighten up this dreary bench just by parking yourself on it.”

  She exhaled deeply and turned toward him.

  Marcus’s sky-blue eyes shone mischievously from under his hat—his eyes were the same color as her dress, only brighter. He was dashing in a tan suit and a light blue shirt. With each passing day, he looked less like an eighteen-year-old and more like a man. But then he’d smile, and his cheeks would dimple, and she’d see in his face the charming boy he would always be.

  She scooted away from him. “I don’t take kindly to strange men.”

  Marcus scooted right after her, wrapping his arms around her. “You’ll find that few strange men are as devastatingly strange as I am.”

  She laughed. “You may have a point. You are exceedingly strange.”

  “I exceed in everything, darling.” He kissed her softly on the lips. It wasn’t much more than a peck—there were children walking by, after all—but it still left Clara a little offbalance.

  Back when she was sixteen, she’d run off to New York in search of that intense, heart-wrenching, almost painful kind of love. She’d spun through parties, dinners, nights at the theater; dancing with men whose gorgeousness belonged within the pages of magazines. But only one thing was on those men’s minds, and it certainly wasn’t love.

  Who would have thought that she’d end up finding true love in that stuffy, flat, snobby, high-society nonsense world that her parents had always pushed her toward?

  “Were you waiting long?”

  “Years and years,” Clara replied, laying a hand across her forehead. “I was simply dying in the heat.”

  “Oh, that would have been tragic. I would have had to eat alone.”

  She pushed him away. “You’re a beast.”

  Marcus stood and offered Clara his hand. “You could have gone ahead,” he said. “I would’ve just met you at the restaurant.”

  “You know you would have gotten lost without me.”

  He grimaced at the street sign. “You may be right. Why can’t they just use numbered streets here like they do in Manhattan?”

  “They’re trying to force you to use your head every once in a while.”

  He huffed. “Never. There will be more than enough for my head to deal with in the fall.”

  “Marcus, your parents practically built half of Columbia. You probably won’t have to try too hard.”

  They walked arm in arm down Hicks Street and toward the Franklin Arms Hotel. A breeze stirred the treetops, but down here along the slate sidewalks the heat was stifling.

  “I hope you didn’t have too much trouble getting here,” Clara said. “A little trouble, of course—you need to work for love or it’s too easy. But not too much work, or it’s like … work.”

  He sighed. “It’s just so far, Clara. Why do you have to live all the way in Brooklyn? It’s like another country. People even dress differently here. Look at that man in that horrible coat.”

  Clara rolled her eyes. “That’s a woman in a maternity dress.”

  “You see what I mean?”

  “You know why I live out here.”

  “But I don’t know why you won’t let me help you out. It would be a gift to me more than anything, to have you closer. No more decade-long subway rides.”

  She smiled but murmured, “I can’t, Marcus.”

  Marcus gave her hand a squeeze. “Sorry to pester you about it. I just miss you.”

  The only way to reach the restaurant was through the hotel lobby. It was a grand old place, and bright with the golden light from a dozen wall sconces.

  The restaurant was darker and more run-down, but the room felt plush anyway. The red wallpaper was richly textured, and the long mahogany bar was beautifully polished, and even at lunchtime, intimate candles lit each table. A man played a slow tune on a glossy-white baby grand in the corner. Clara adored this place—it reminded her of the speakeasy Marcus had taken her to in Chicago on their first date.

  After the waitress took their orders, Marcus looked around. “We should come here at night sometime. The band’s supposed to be the cat’s meow.”

  Clara shrugged. “Maybe.” She would have loved to go out with him in Manhattan—it wasn’t as if her parents would ever find out—but a promise was a promise, and she was trying to be good. “I’m sorry I haven’t been the most exciting girlfriend.”

  Marcus laid his hand over hers. “I can’t think of anything more exciting than being here with you.”

  Lunch was lovely, but Marcus was in an odd mood. He seemed eager to finish as fast as possible. When Clara remarked on how quickly he was shoveling down his salmon, he grinned.

  “I just want to get out of here and take a walk across the bridge. It’s such a beautiful day.”

  Clara hiked an eyebrow. Sweet as Marcus was, he rarely gave a damn whether it was “a beautiful day.”

  The waitress returned and asked, “Dessert?”

  As Clara said, “Yes!” Marcus said, “No, thank you, just the check.”

  She frowned as the waitress walked away. “A cake-eater like you rejecting a slice of cake? I never would’ve believed it.”

  Marcus paid the check promptly, and then he grabbed Clara’s hand and pulled her back outside.

  Marcus had been telling the truth: The day was beautiful, the sky bright and blue, and a nice breeze off the water chased away the heat. Clara’s Mary Janes clacked on the wooden planks as they made their way across the bridge, her hand in the crook of Marcus’s arm.

  “You won’t get a better view of Manhattan anywhere,” he said as they strolled underneath the first arch.

  The farther they walked, the more clearly Clara could see the aquamarine Statue of Liberty raising her torch to the sky. Wind dimpled the water and twined the smoke rising from passing steamboats.

  When they came to the second arch, Marcus eyeballed the cart of a nearby vendor, one of the many who camped out on the Brook
lyn Bridge every afternoon. “On second thought,” he said, “I think dessert is a good idea.”

  “I’d kill for an ice cream,” Clara said.

  “No need for violence, Miss Knowles. If it’s ice cream you want, then it is ice cream you shall have.” He walked over to the vendor with two fingers raised. “I scream for—Oh, never mind. Two, please.”

  Clara turned away and leaned her elbows on the railing. She had a swell view of the Manhattan skyline—the tall white Woolworth Building, the spires of Park Row. She’d almost forgotten how idyllic the city could look from a distance, the way it did to newcomers.

  Marcus walked over with a cup of lemonade. “He was out of ice cream.”

  At times like these, Clara remembered that she really didn’t know Marcus all that well. She’d only been in New York for three weeks, and she and Marcus had spent the previous months with a few hundred miles between them. They’d had a small amount of precious time together when Clara had stayed with Gloria in Chicago, but for much of that time Clara had believed that Marcus’s interest in her was just a cruel joke he had cooked up with Gloria and Lorraine.

  And it had been, at first.

  But things had changed. She and Marcus had developed real feelings for each other. Clara had tried to tell him about her wild flapper life in New York and her affair with Harris Brown, but that desperate wench Lorraine had got there first: She’d drunkenly announced to the world the one secret Clara most wanted to keep hidden. Not only had Clara had an affair with an engaged man—she’d become pregnant. And then had lost the baby.

  Clara had been sure Marcus would leave her after that, but he hadn’t wavered.

  But what would happen when he started classes at Columbia in the fall?

  “Let’s sit for a second.” Marcus led her over to a metal bench and sat next to her, taking hold of her hand. “So, listen. I have a surprise for you.”

  Suddenly his strange behavior made sense. “Oh? I love surprises.”