“Uh, hello,” she replied. “I’m Gina Ricci. The new ciggie girl.”
“I know who you are,” he snapped back. “What I want to know is, what are you doing here?”
“Just taking my break,” she replied. “The Signora told me to—”
He waved his hand impatiently. “Why are you working here, at the Third Door?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, faltering a bit. He seemed really angry. She started to edge away from him. “Lulu told me about the opening here, and—”
“Your father didn’t send you?”
“My father? What—? No. Why would he?” she asked.
“Your father. I heard what Big Mike said. He’s Frankie the Cat. Frankie Ricci, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Did you know him? Do you know why he was called that?”
Marty ignored her questions. “Your mother—” Here the photographer swallowed, his pronounced Adam’s apple rising sharply in his throat. “Your mother was Molly O’Brien.”
Was. She noted his use of past tense. He knew her mother had passed away. He knew her name.
“Yes,” she said, her voice dropping. “What’s it to you?”
“You don’t know who I am?”
“You’re Marty Doyle, the photographer here. In fact, I was keen to know more about what you do. I—”
He held up his hand, once again effectively cutting her off. “You, Gina Aileen Ricci, are my cousin’s daughter.”
Gina studied his face, taking in his dark features and blue eyes. “I never heard of you.”
“It seems your father didn’t tell you about me. I can assure you, lass, your mother and I are—were—cousins.” He paused, looking up at the exposed pipes in the ceiling. “She could well have been my younger sister. We grew up together, over on the North Side. She was a bit of a favorite of mine.”
“Then how come I never met you?” Gina demanded, still not convinced. “All these years, I never heard of you. I certainly never heard from you, or any of Mama’s kin. If she was such a ‘favorite’ of yours? Why is that? Why has my father never spoken of you?”
“Bad blood, I suppose. I remember when your mother marched away, on your father’s arm,” Marty said, his face softening at the memory. “Quite a ruckus, when she left home. Your mother’s kin didn’t take too kindly to her running off with an Italian from the Near West Side, I can tell you that. Especially not with ‘Frankie the Cat.’” He grimaced. “They wanted her to marry into the Daleys.”
The Daleys were a well-connected Irish Catholic family on the North Side. More of her mother’s people, it seemed. “You’re kidding.”
“No.” Sadness crept into his voice. “I should have stood up for her. But I was busy with my own life, I suppose.” He coughed. “You said Lulu told you about the job. You two are good friends, I take it?”
“Well, not exactly,” she hedged. Something in his stern gaze reminded Gina of her mother, prompting her to continue. “Honestly, I haven’t really spoken to Lulu in years. I ran into her at the market, and we struck up a conversation. I ended up mentioning that I was looking for a job, and then she told me about the opening here.”
Gina bit her lip as she reflected back on that conversation with Lulu. Was that how it had occurred? Or had Lulu begun talking about the Third Door, how exciting it was, how much jack she’d made each night, and then she’d mentioned there was an opening? Had they run into each other, or had Lulu sought her out? Maybe the conversation had gone a little differently than she had initially recalled. What did it matter now anyway?
“I don’t like it,” Marty muttered, more to himself than to her. “Molly’s daughter! Working here? Why now?”
“Why not now?” Gina demanded. “I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
Gina stiffened at the rebuke. “Not for me.” She hesitated and then plowed on, her anger making her bold. “If you had ever bothered to get to know us, you’d know that my papa’s not well. He can’t work. It’s up to me to take care of everything, to put food on the table, to pay the rent. So don’t tell me there’s a choice. Because I don’t know what that choice is!”
He grimaced. “I’m sorry to hear your father’s not well. And you’re right. I should have known. I shouldn’t have let all these years go by.”
“Well, why did you?” Marty didn’t reply, only began to fiddle with his camera case, opening and shutting the latch in a nervous way. “Could you introduce me to the rest of the family?” she pressed. “Maybe they’d want to meet me.”
His laugh was bitter. “Not likely. Sorry, kid.” Then, before she could ask more questions, he lowered his voice. “Something about this isn’t right. I just don’t get why they hired you.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something I need to find out first.” He looked at her intently. “Keep all of this to yourself, all right?”
Before she could reply, a sound outside the door startled them both. The other girls would be coming in soon to get ready for their song-and-dance number. Giving her a warning look, he picked up his camera and left the salon, leaving Gina with a swirl of questions.
* * *
Her break over, Gina went to retrieve her tray, dumbfounded by what she had just learned. To think, after all this time, that she had met a relative. For so long, it had just been her and Papa. And she believed the photographer’s claim. The family resemblance couldn’t be denied. I have just met my mother’s cousin, she thought, feeling absurdly pleased.
But what about the other thing Marty had said? About something not being “right” about her hiring. What had he meant by that?
She watched as Lulu and the other waitresses passed by her in a flutter of giggles, changing for their first set of the evening. Had Lulu sought her out directly, as Marty seemed to have implied? Though questions burned, there was no time to ask Lulu anything now. Besides, she had promised Marty she would keep everything to herself, at least for the time being. The urgency in his request was hard to ignore.
Moving over to the far end of the bar to see if Billy had any drink orders, Gina ended up next to two men, both hunched over their glasses of whiskey. One was tapping his fingers on the table, keeping the beat with Ned’s ragtime melody. The other, an older man who might have been in his seventies, looked lost in thought. He was wearing a white shirt with suspenders connected to gray slacks; his jacket was slung carefully over the back of his chair. He looked familiar somehow. Maybe she’d seen him around the neighborhood.
She approached the man who was keeping tune. “Cigarettes, sir?” she asked. “Or perhaps a cigar?”
Instead of answering, the man gave a mirthless laugh. He put his hands to his high collar, which had a loosened tie wrapped around it.
“Don’t do it, Joe,” warned the other man.
Billy Bottles wagged a finger at the man from the other end of the bar. “Don’t do it, Joe,” he echoed.
Curious, Gina couldn’t refrain. “Don’t do what?” she asked. The next minute she wished she hadn’t.
Half fascinated and half repulsed, Gina watched as Joe slowly loosened his tie further and even more slowly unbuttoned the rest of his collar, revealing a deep slash across his throat. A slash that had been meant to kill.
“What in the world—?” Curiosity overcoming her mild sense of nausea, Gina peered at the scar, much to the amusement of the other men. “I guess no smokes for you, then, huh?”
The other men chuckled. The man made a funny sound then that almost sounded like a laugh. It quickly became a harsh wheezing, and Gina backed away.
The old man leaned over and pounded him on the back. “Better watch it, Joe. Don’t want this gal feeling guilty if you keel over now.”
Joe took a drink but then staggered away toward the restroom, still coughing, leaving half his whiskey in the glass.
“Jeepers!” Gina exclaimed, when he was out of earshot. “What happened to him?”
“Aw, don’t
mind Joe Lewis,” Billy Bottles said. “Hasn’t spoken much since Capone got his hands on him.”
“Holy cow! What did he do?”
The bartender shrugged. “Not for me to say. However, Mr. Darrow here”—he gestured to the man with suspenders—“well, he might know something of it.” With that, he moved away to the other end of the bar, where he began mixing some other cocktails.
Gina looked back at the older man in surprise. No wonder he’d looked so familiar. This was none other than Clarence Darrow, the famous defense attorney. She’d seen him on the front page of the newspaper many times. “You defended the boy murderers.”
It was hard not to remember that case of Leopold and Loeb. Several years ago, the strange murder of a teenage boy at the hands of two University of Chicago students had been front-page news. It was the perfect murder, some had said, except that one of the men, Leopold, had accidentally dropped his glasses at the scene. Darrow had been brought in to defend the two men, getting them life in prison rather than the death penalty.
“Successfully,” he added, sipping his whiskey. “I’m rather afraid, my dear, that you have me at a disadvantage. You know that I am Clarence Darrow; I only know that you are the new cigarette girl.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said. “Gina Ricci.” She wondered if he was going to say something about her dad being Frankie the Cat, as others had done when they heard her full name. When he didn’t, she gestured in the direction the man named Joe had just gone. “What happened to that guy? Billy said Capone—?” She mimicked the gesture of someone slitting a throat.
The attorney took another drink, like a man with all the time in the world. “Story goes that Joe Lewis didn’t want to renew his contract over at the Green Mill. He was a song-and-dance man, you know. That’s one of Capone’s establishments.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You can probably follow the tale from there. One of Capone’s men allegedly cut Joe’s tongue and throat to keep him from singing somewhere else.” He tugged on his suspenders again. “Now how about you let me choose a cigar?”
* * *
As she waited for some giggling coeds to pay for their smokes, Gina found herself looking around the speakeasy for Marty. “My mother’s cousin,” she whispered to herself, then looked around nervously, hoping no one had heard.
She had downed a shot of bourbon a few minutes before, on a patron’s quarter, and was now feeling a bit squiffy. She put a hand on the back of a chair to keep herself from swaying. The girls were still pawing through their handbags, trying to find a few more dimes between them.
“These cocktails are expensive! Seventy-five cents each!” she heard one of them mutter to the other. “We need someone to pay for them.”
“Exactly, Trixie,” the other replied. “I told you that before we came.”
The woman called Trixie clutched her companion’s arm. “Maddie, we’re saved! Isn’t that Professor Adelson over there? With Professor Rothchild?” Putting a dime on Gina’s tray, Trixie pointed to two bearded men in the corner engaged in a very earnest conversation. “You can bring us some gin rickeys in a few minutes, after we’ve settled in over there.” She smirked. “Those gentlemen will be paying.” Gina watched them slink their way over to their professors, who looked startled at their approach. After what looked like an awkward exchange, though, the women were invited to sit down.
It was then that Gina spotted Marty standing in that shadowy corner, camera in hand, not moving about the floor the way he usually did. Questions from their earlier conversation still burned inside her. Was there something odd about the way she had gotten the job? She thought again about what Marty had said. Something about this isn’t right.
Time to get some answers, she thought, winding her way toward him, twisting between drunk couples clinging to each other and staggering through the Lindy.
Marty looked toward her then, and it was clear that he’d been tracking her movements as much as she’d been tracking his. When they caught eyes, he shook his head at her almost imperceptibly. The message was clear. Not yet. Stay away.
That only made Gina more determined. She pressed forward until someone grabbed her arm. “Say, miss, we’d like some smokes.”
A man in his fifties was looking up at her, while his white-haired companion peered onto her tray with dissatisfaction. “This all you have? The other girl, Dorrie, she always made sure she had Palinas on hand.”
“I’ll check with Billy,” she replied absently, still intent on watching Marty. He seemed to have turned his attention to the Signora, following her movements as she circled through the speakeasy, conversing in her sultry way with the patrons. “He’ll know what Big Mike keeps in the humidor.”
“Well, get to it, then,” the man said gruffly. “We’ll be here.”
Her eyes still on Marty, she watched as he began to thread his way purposefully through the patrons, following the proprietress through the beaded doorway and into the corridor that led to her private salon.
Unhooking her tray from around her neck, Gina called over to Billy. “I need a quick break. Some customers are asking for Palinas. Table five.”
Without waiting for the bartender to reply, Gina went through the same doorway that she’d just seen Marty disappear through. She could see that the Signora’s salon door was shut. As she edged closer, she could feel the sweat collecting under her arms and on her forehead. Glancing up and down the corridor, she edged over to the door. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to her if Gooch or, worse, the Signora caught her eavesdropping. She just had to know what Marty and the Signora were talking about.
Luckily, Marty’s angry words carried easily. “You brought the lass here, and I want to know why!”
The Signora murmured something inaudible, although Marty’s shouted reply was perfectly clear. “Baloney!”
The Signora continued speaking, this time in a calm and chilly way that was more audible. “Frankly, I’m a bit puzzled as to why you are so put out. I understand now that she’s a relative. Do you suppose we’ll treat her badly?” Even through the door, Gina could hear the menacing quality that underlay the Signora’s silken tone.
Without thinking, Gina crossed her arms around her own body, as if to ward off the sudden chill. Stop talking, Marty, she wanted to shout through the wooden door.
The Signora had continued. “Perhaps you are dissatisfied with how we treat you?”
Almost as if he had heard Gina’s plea, Marty’s tone became more conciliatory. “No, no, Signora. Forget I brought it up. I was wrong to do so. Forgive me, Signora.”
His voice seemed to be closer to the door, and Gina leapt out of the way as it opened. Though she tried to feign innocence, there could be no doubt as to what she’d been doing in the otherwise empty corridor. Seeing her, Marty scowled and put his finger to his lips, indicating that she should stay silent. He passed her by without another word.
“Marty?” she called, racing after him. “What did the Signora tell you?”
“The Signora said she had no idea who you were, or that you had any connection to me.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“Time to get back to work.”
She started to protest. “But—”
He grabbed her arm. “This is not a coincidence,” he whispered harshly in her ear. “You’re a fool to think it is. Talk to your father.”
“Papa? Why?”
“Gina!” he said. “You know where you work, and who you work for. Maybe it doesn’t matter why.” He stalked off.
Gina leaned back against the wall, trembling a bit from the unexpected vehemence of their encounter. What could Papa know about any of this? She had to speak to him as soon as possible.
CHAPTER 5
Gina watched her father take his last bite of toast, chewing slowly and carefully. She knew he’d had a bad night the night before, the medicine working on the shakes only some of the time. But she could no longer put off the questions that had been
raging inside her since she first heard them. “Papa?”
“Yeah?”
“Why were you called Frankie the Cat?”
He pushed the plate aside, a spasm crossing his face. “Where’d you hear that? I haven’t been called that in years.”
“Mike Castallazzo. He owns the Third Door.”
“Castallazzo!” He spat out the name. “That double-dealer! Didn’t know Big Mike owned that joint. I’d never have let you work there.”
Though startled by his outburst, Gina pressed on. “His wife, the Signora—she’s the one who hired me. He hadn’t realized who I was until we met.” She paused. “He said you were friends. That you ran together in the old days.”
“Yeah. The old days, sure. We were pals. Back when he was still Little Mike.” He said the last with a snort. “Big Mike came later, after I was already out.”
“They said you were Frankie the Cat. What did that mean? Why did they call you that?”
“It’s just a name from around the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s on account of my nine lives. Like a cat. Got myself in and out of a lot of scrapes when I was a youth.”
“Scrapes?” Gina asked, taking a seat across from him with a bowl of her own. She pulled at a chunk of the Italian bread that Mrs. Angelo sold at her corner market. “What sort of scrapes?”
“Back in the orphanage. Stupid stuff. Came in handy though when I started boxing. Name stuck.”
“Oh!” Her father rarely talked about his days in the ring. Suddenly there was a gleam in her father’s eyes, one she hadn’t seen in years. “That chest on my dresser. Bring it here,” he commanded. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
After retrieving the chest, Gina set it on the table. With shaking hands, her father lifted the lid. There were several yellowed photographs of him as a young man, striking a fighting pose, along with some newspaper clippings mentioning his time in the ring. On one, which had a picture of him knocking out his opponent, someone had written, “Frankie the Cat, jabbing a good one.”
Gina inspected the picture. Seeing her father as a young man, full of muscles and a stunning vitality, was a stark reminder of all he’d come to lose. “How many years did you box?” she asked, fighting the sudden lump in her throat.
Murder Knocks Twice Page 6