Ingenue

by Jillian Larkin

  Lorraine walked over to the table where the pint-sized gangster sat. She held her hand out for the clipboard. “Fine. I’ll write a new set list.”

  “Not so fast, doll,” he said, sneering. “Before you do this, you gotta get someone to take those posters back to the printers. They’ll look better with red lettering.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “But between her hair and her dress … isn’t that kind of a lot of red?”

  Thor puffed on his stogie. “Oh, you think so? How about I call up Carlito, see what he thinks about splashing some red around here? I think he’d like the idea just fine.”

  Lorraine snatched the clipboard. “Fine, I’ll get Jimmy to do it.”

  “Attagirl. And get that old codger to mop the floor again. I want to be able to see my reflection.”

  Lorraine counted to ten in her head. And then she made herself smile. “Why, sure thing, Thor.” She wished she could just ignore everything Thor said, but he was Carlito’s right-hand man, and her safety depended on keeping Thor happy.

  He grunted. “I don’t know what you’re so happy about. Me, I’m never happy. Life is a vale of tears, Lorraine. And when I’m done with you, you’ll appreciate that.”

  The day after Jerome and Gloria had slipped out of Lorraine’s grasp, Thor had shown up at the Opera House.

  “What are you doing here?” she’d asked him.

  “I work here now,” he’d said.

  “Not if I don’t say so. I’m the manager!”

  “Not anymore, sweetheart.” He’d beamed at everyone else in the room. “Say hello to your new general manager. Lorraine, why don’t you run and get me a coffee?”

  “Let me guess,” Lorraine had asked. “Small?”

  That day she’d gone home with an enormous coffee stain down her dress.

  Thor had immediately taken full advantage of his new position. Suddenly nothing could be done in the club without the “Thor stamp of approval.” As per Carlito’s orders, Thor kept an eye on Lorraine at all times.

  Sure, Lorraine disliked Spark. And she practically hated Puccini. But that was nothing compared with the way she felt about Thor.

  Thor seemed to take great joy in taunting her and bossing her around. “And please tell me you were smart enough to stock the special brandy for when Frankie Balzini comes in with his new moll?”

  Lorraine blinked as she stepped behind the bar. “I’ll go get it.”

  She pulled Jimmy out of a poker game with Spark in the office and sent him off to the printers. Then she handed the set list to Spark—for once he didn’t even complain. At last, she carried the expensive bottle of liquor back to the bar.

  Hank brushed Lorraine’s fingers with his as he took the bottle from her, giving her a sympathetic look.

  Lorraine knew she must’ve looked tired and haggard, but Hank was his usual unkempt-in-the-sexiest-possible-way self. Today he wore dark gray slacks and a pale blue V-neck sweater. His practically black hair was getting a little long and kept falling into his eyes. But it didn’t look sloppy: it looked adorable.

  The truth about how Lorraine had come to work at the Opera House hadn’t scared Hank away—if anything, he’d become more devoted than ever. He stopped by her apartment every morning to walk her to work, even on days when he wasn’t working. He kept trying to convince her to quit her job or go to the police, promising he would protect her.

  Not that Hank’s knight-in-shining-armor act wasn’t sweet—it was. But it was also kind of stupid. Lorraine could only imagine what Carlito would do to her if she tried to back out on the deal now. Thor had tried to fire Hank the day he arrived, but then he’d seen how quickly Hank mixed drinks and had allowed him to stay.

  “Who’s Frankie Balzini, anyway?” Lorraine reached for a lowball glass from a tray and went back to drying.

  “Only one of the top bootleggers in the city—a good buddy of Owney Madden.” Thor took another puff on his cigar. “Raine, how about you get me a shot of that brandy? I’d better sample it before Frankie does, make sure it’s top-notch. In fact, better make it a double.”

  Hank cleared his throat. “I can get that for you, boss—”

  “I told Lorraine to do it,” Thor growled. “You go on upstairs and help the boys unload the shipment. Dryin’ dishes is woman’s work, anyway.”

  Lorraine wanted to wring his neck. She’d never dried a dish before now!

  Hank reached under the bar to squeeze Lorraine’s hand, then crossed the barroom and walked up the stairs.

  Thor hopped onto one of the bar stools. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that bartender’s carrying a torch for you.”

  Lorraine felt her cheeks redden.

  “I can’t imagine why,” Thor went on, smacking his lips. “You’ve got some nice gams, I’ll give you that, but even you know you need about ten pounds o’ paint to make that mug look presentable.”

  She handed him his drink. “At least I can ride all the rides at the carnival.”

  Thor pushed the glass right back. “Don’t be stingy, sweetheart.” He wove his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “So the canary and her spade boyfriend are coming in for her debut tomorrow night, right?”

  Lorraine nodded. “Yep, at eight.”

  Thor grinned. “Now, there’s one choice bit of calico. Though I doubt she’ll look so good once Carlito’s through with her.”

  Lorraine stopped drying. What was Thor talking about? “Carlito would never do anything to Gloria,” she said. “It was the piano player who killed Carlito’s partner, not the singer. He’s the one who’s gonna get it.”

  Thor barked out a little laugh. “You really don’t know anything, do you? I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He lowered his voice. “Jerome wasn’t the one who took Tony out—it was that little bluenose.”

  Lorraine’s blood went cold in her veins. “I don’t believe you.”

  Thor took a sip of his brandy. “Carlito covered it up—imagine how it’d look if word got out that a seventeen-year-old girl knocked off one of his top guys?”

  “So—so what is he going to do once he catches them?”

  Thor shrugged. “Who knows? But the boss has got big plans.” He chuckled and then ran the flat of his hand across his neck, miming the slashing of his throat.

  Lorraine looked away in horror.

  Thor knocked back the rest of his drink. “Well, I’m off to the little boys’ room,” he announced, jumping off his stool.

  Lorraine waited until he’d disappeared into the men’s room. Then she dashed up the stairs and found Hank in the alley outside. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “I’ve only got a minute before he tracks me down. It takes him forever to get up those stairs, what with those tiny things he calls legs.”

  Hank cocked his head. “What’s up?”

  She relayed what Thor had just told her. It had never—not even for a second—dawned on her that Carlito would want to physically hurt Gloria.

  Lorraine was a lot of things—she knew that. She could be a bitch, a drunk, a doormat, a backstabber … sure. Was she proud of all those things? No. But a girl did what she needed to do. She wasn’t a killer, though. She wasn’t an accomplice to murder. And no matter how bad things had become between them, Gloria Carmody had been her best friend for most of their lives. Whatever bad things Gloria might have done, she didn’t deserve to be killed for them.

  “Carlito promised me he was just going after Jerome, that he was only going to rough him up and send him away. He promised me he wasn’t going to kill anybody—that’s why I took the job!”

  Hank rolled his eyes. “And you believed him?”

  Lorraine dropped her face into her hands. “Yes!” she cried hopelessly.

  Hank put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need to worry, Raine. I’ll help you.”

  Lorraine shook him off, angry tears welling up in her eyes. “What can you do? You’re just a stupid bartender!” Her eyes widened as she heard the words come out of her mouth. “No,
no, I didn’t mean you’re stupid—but you are a bartender.”

  Thankfully, Hank didn’t seem offended. Instead, he just gripped her shoulder tighter. He was so strong! “We can warn them. You’ve got their address, right?”

  The door of the club banged open. Thor stood there, angry, his face red. “What are you doing out here?”

  Hank held up a cigarette. “Just came out for a smoke, boss.”

  “Get back in here, Lorraine,” Thor commanded, his expression unchanging.

  As Lorraine turned to follow Thor inside, Hank started talking again. “Actually, boss, I’ve got to run over to the butcher’s to pick up those special steaks the Balzini party ordered.”

  Thor glanced back. “Make it quick.”

  “They’ll need a manager’s signature.” Hank gave his million-dollar grin, holding the door open for Thor and Lorraine. “I know the butcher is awfully fond of Lorraine. They usually knock down the price if she tags along.”

  Hank really must have had a lot of experience with gangsters: Their inherent cheapness when it came to business always won out above all else.

  “All right.” Thor crossed his arms, then sighed. “But don’t you take any wooden nickels, Raine—you understand?”

  Lorraine nodded, glad that in addition to being a sweetheart and absurdly handsome, her boyfriend was clever. Maybe bartenders were smarter than she’d thought.

  Lorraine stared up at the ugly brown building. “Eew. Are you sure this is it?”

  Hank pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. When they’d run to Lorraine’s office to get her purse and hat, Hank had copied down the address they had on file for Gloria. “Yep, here we are. She didn’t list an apartment number, though, so we’re just gonna have to ask around.”

  Lorraine clutched Hank’s arm as they walked up the steps. How wonderful it was to walk on a man’s arm, even with all the terrible things going on. At six feet, two inches, Hank made Lorraine feel ladylike instead of like a too-tall ugly duckling. She imagined what it would be like to have him by her side at Barnard, how all the other girls would swoon over him (of course they would, he was swoon-worthy!) and then want to be her friends. And Lorraine would wear glamorous clothes, and Gloria would be safe, and safely out of Lorraine’s life, and Hank would maybe go to school himself and stop bartending—well, he would mix her drinks at home—and the two of them would get married and have beautiful babies. And get nannies to take care of the babies.

  What a grand new life that would be!

  But first she had to clean up the mistakes of the old life.

  In the lobby of the shabby apartment building were a few people—Italian factory workers and young families passing through, and two men talking by the stairs.

  Hank tapped one man on the shoulder. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but we’re looking for a friend of ours. Her name’s Gloria Carmody. She has short wavy red hair, green eyes, very pretty?”

  Lorraine tried not to bristle at the fact that Hank had called Gloria pretty.

  The man tugged on his mustache. “She young like you, yes?” he said in a heavy accent. “I see her here, there.”

  Lorraine grinned. “Wonderful—do you know which apartment she’s in?”

  Her face fell when the man shook his head. “No, I only ever see her here, in lobby,” he replied.

  The other man pointed at a door. “Always seems to be heading to the basement. Nothing down there but the boiler room.”

  Gloria had dumped her perfect life so she could sing in a speakeasy and fall in love with a poor black man, and now she was living in a boiler room? The girl did some crazy things.

  Lorraine followed Hank down a rickety set of wooden stairs to a dirty cement-floored basement. Piles of unidentifiable objects covered with tarps filled the room, with only narrow spaces between them. Lorraine sneezed as their feet kicked up dust, and she tried not to touch any of the sooty pipes that snaked through the room. “I hate dirty things,” she said.

  Hank appeared to be looking around for something. “Jerome and Gloria both listed this building as their address, right? But everyone we saw in the lobby was white. No way would the landlord let a colored boy live here. And from what the tenants were saying, it doesn’t sound like Gloria lives here, either.” He picked up a canvas bag he found on the floor and looked through it. “Aha!”

  “I don’t really think you should be going through people’s things,” Lorraine said.

  “What if Gloria only pretends to live here? This building is right on the edge of Harlem. Say she and Jerome live in one of those buildings, and Gloria sneaks through this one and into a black building through the back? A colored landlord wouldn’t take any more kindly to her living in his building than the landlord in this building would take to Jerome.”

  “Sounds far-fetched.” Lorraine wanted to tell Hank that he should stick to bartending and leave the detective work to someone else, but she bit her tongue.

  “Not if she has a good disguise,” Hank said, tossing the canvas bag to her.

  Inside were a long black coat and black gloves. Lorraine checked the label on the coat—it was from the House of Beer in Paris. Quality goods. Exactly the sort Chicago Gloria had owned. “There’s nothing here that would cover her hair.”

  Hank shrugged his big, beautiful shoulders. “She probably keeps a hat in there. Maybe she took it with her.”

  He opened the back door and went outside. Walking to the ragged fence at the back of the lot, he started pushing on each wooden slat. A scarred piece of wood swung aside at the gentlest poke. Lorraine followed him through the wide gap in the fence.

  They found themselves in the backyard of a building that was in even worse repair than the one they’d left. Two older black women narrowed their eyes at Hank and Lorraine as they walked through the back door, but made no move to stop them. Lorraine had spent her life looking at and through colored people in the exact same way that she was being looked at now—it felt strange to be on the other side of that look.

  Gloria had lived here—in this dump? “What now?” Lorraine whispered, wincing at the scraggly grayish carpeting beneath her brocade pumps.

  “I doubt they live on the first floor,” Hank replied, deep in thought. “Why go to all this trouble if Gloria was going to hit all the foot traffic coming from the lobby? If I were trying to hide, I would live on the top floor.”

  “Why?” Lorraine asked, intrigued by Hank’s detective skills. “Not that I don’t love the view from a penthouse, of course.”

  “Let’s say someone was able to find out where they were but didn’t know the apartment number. They’d start knocking on doors on the first floor and work their way up, right?”

  Lorraine shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “So let’s start at the top and work our way down,” Hank said, heading toward the stairs.

  Lorraine groaned and trudged after him. They eventually reached the top floor, which turned out to be the fourth. She tried to catch her breath and watched as Hank knocked on the nearest door.

  A young black man looked as surprised as Lorraine when he opened the door. “Yes?” he asked warily.

  “Hello, I’m Paul Seymour and this is my fiancée, Betty,” Hank said, slinging his arm over Lorraine’s shoulder. “We’re getting married soon and we were wondering if you’d be willing to play the piano at our reception.”

  The man blinked. “I’m sorry, sir, I think you got me confused with somebody else.”

  Hank was all flustered embarrassment. “Oh, I am so sorry! Aren’t you Jerome Johnson?”

  The man shook his head. “The piano player? Naw, that music comes from over in Four D.”

  Hank smiled back. “I must’ve written the address down wrong. Thanks.”

  Lorraine stared at Hank as they walked down the hallway. “Did you used to act out there in California, too? What else do you do that I don’t know about?”

  “What can I say? I’m a man of many talents.” They stopped in front of 4D. “Are
you ready?”

  Lorraine exhaled. Now that they were finally here, her stomach was knotted into nervous coils. Surely Gloria still hated her. But Lorraine would just have to force Gloria to listen. For her own good.

  She nodded. “I’m ready.”

  Hank rapped on the door; a moment later a young man answered. A white man. He was dressed far too well to be living in a place like this, in a navy blue suit, and his dark hair looked as if it had been trimmed by a professional barber. The man didn’t say anything—he just crossed his arms.

  “Uh, we’re here to see Jerome Johnson,” Lorraine said nervously. “Or Gloria Carmody. Or both, really.”

  The man gave a crisp nod. “Wait here.” He closed the door.

  “Who’s that?” Hank whispered.

  “I’ve never seen him before.”

  A moment later the door opened again. The man waved them in, reminding Lorraine of a butler. “Please come inside.”

  Lorraine looked around at the dingy apartment, noting its peeling wallpaper and the tacky fact that the door led straight into the kitchen. The oak dining set screamed “flea market,” and the doors on the cabinets looked as if they were ready to fall off their hinges.

  Lorraine couldn’t imagine Gloria—model-student, well-mannered, diamonds-and-lace Gloria Carmody—in this apartment. Lorraine felt a guilty lump welling in her throat. How much must Gloria have loved Jerome to put up with these hobo-camp living conditions?

  The only other person in the room was an older man sitting in a chair by the window. His bronze hair was shot through with silver, as was his mustache. He was dressed in an impeccable gray suit that probably cost more than a year’s rent on this tiny apartment.

  Lorraine took a quick, short breath as the man turned toward her.

  “Why, Lorraine Dyer,” he said. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

  CLARA

  When life gives you lemons, sometimes you need to stash them in the icebox and make a martini with olives instead.

  Clara patted her short golden hair as she turned onto Tenth Street.

  For once, she wished her hair were long enough to twist into a sophisticated knot at the nape of her neck. Her boyish party-girl bob clashed with her outfit, but otherwise she looked the part of a real journalist: Her burgundy blouse and black skirt were fitted enough to be flattering but conservative enough to look professional. She even had a notebook and a pencil in her purse.