MARCH 5, 1919—ESPLANADE RIDGE
The whorehouse was a traditional shotgun with a side porch that faced an inattentively tended garden of orange snapdragons, lavender swamp irises, and cream calendulas. It stood at the edge of Esplanade Ridge, a site chosen for strategic reasons. It was convenient to wealthy married men who might not want to traffic the city’s more louche precincts, and inconspicuous among the surrounding cottages and manors in the leafy residential neighborhood. It was about halfway between the grimy cribs of the Tenderloin and the sumptuous vulgarities of the Ritz Palace, Rosalba Bucca’s old Storyville bordello, with its three terraced stories and red awning embossed in gold lettering, designed to resemble the Ritz Hotel, or at least a chintzy fairy-tale approximation. Upon entering the Ritz Palace, a maid checked men’s shoes to make sure they were well-heeled; a waiter served tumblers of Raleigh rye; a ragtime band played in a drawing room decorated with robust leather chairs, oil paintings of the Normandy coast, and wine-colored damask drapes dense enough to block daylight. Every hour Rosie’s women, the Palacettes, presented themselves like debutantes in ball gowns along the staircase. They coated their faces with powder, rouge, eyeliner, and Rosie’s tawdry pink lipstick. They looked expensive, like jewelry or rare coins. This was not the Ritz Palace.
“Ma’am,” said Raymond, as he helped Beatrice to the curb, “you want I should escort you?”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“No, ma’am. I sure won’t.”
A woman dressed in a man’s grimy overcoat opened the door. Her hair drooped in greasy clusters and her mouth was dismal with sagging gums, though, in a nostalgic touch, the lips were painted Rosie Bucca pink.
“Rosie!” the woman shouted over her shoulder. Her coat flapped open, exposing a tattered turquoise chippie that hung above the knobs of her blackened knees.
If Beatrice had been able to come up with a better plan, she would have tried it. But she had to protect her son and protect herself, and there was no time. For she had become certain that Giorgio, poor dundering Giugi, was the one they called the Axman. After reading about the Besemer attack in July she checked her files and was unsurprised to discover that Besemer’s grocery was on the yellow list—the list of addresses, written on foolscap and running a dozen pages, that she kept locked in her library bureau. The yellow list included not only the groceries but bars, laundry services, millinery shops, tailors, cobblers, newsstands, and pharmacies—every business engaged by Hercules’s shadow wing. Many were owned by Sicilian families, but not all—in recent years they had expanded to Negro bars in the Battlefield, ignored by the police, whose owners were grateful for the protection. Each time an ax attack was reported, she consulted the list. She had an ember of hope when she could not find Arthur Recknagel’s name. Then she located his grocery’s address; the previous owner had died and his sons sold the business to Recknagel, who changed its name. Joseph LeBoeuf was on the list, as was Joseph Romano. The pregnant woman, Mrs. Schneider, was not—she had no connection to a grocery or any other shadow business that Beatrice could determine—but when Beatrice read in September about the break-in attempt at the grocery run by Paul Durel, Jr. (son of Paolo Durello, native of Taormina), she could delude herself no longer.
Her first thought was to have Giorgio arrested, but it took no time to realize that an investigation would expose the entire shadow business to the corrosive air of public inquiry, destroying not only Giorgio but also Hercules and herself. Nor, heaven forbid, could she have harm done to him—the thought alone was unconscionable (though late at night, tormented by Sal’s grandfather clock, she had occasionally been consoled by an image of Giorgio smiling moronically from the safety of a wheelchair). She might discuss the matter openly with Giorgio, urging him to stop committing violence, but she had already done so in subtle ways, giving him every opportunity to absolve himself, without success. Giorgio had noble intentions, she was certain of it. In his own way, he must have felt that he was helping Hercules, or at least the shadow business, eliminating risks, enforcing rules, putting the fear of death in anyone who considered cheating the family. His sudden assertiveness in the business, after such a long dormancy, might have charmed her if it hadn’t taken such gruesome form. It almost did charm her, she admitted to herself, but more than that it scared her. He had come under the sway of primitive urges for which filial devotion was no match. She had long ago accepted that she could not control him with commands or reprimands. It was like training a bear for the circus: the act might go off without trouble for months or years but inevitably the day would come when the bear leaped into the audience and mauled a child.
Her solution derived from a principle that had never, in her experience, been disproved. A man could be deterred from the path of violence by a steady application of venery. The method was as old as civilization. Every Italian child learned in primary school that the Romans would still rule the world were it not for the rampant dissipation of the rulers, first in Rome, later in the court of Ravenna. The converse was equally true. During the war the Italian generals ordered soldiers to avoid female contact for one week before battle, lest they lose their nerve. Gavrilo Princip was a nineteen-year-old virgin who abstained from liquor, raised by Christian peasants who were strict even by the standards of their superstitious village; was it a surprise that such a man would be driven to murder a prince famous for his lust marriage to a lowly countess? The principle had held for Giorgio’s father too. Sal lost his mastery of the family business once he began debauching. His own venery had achieved what his rivals never could.
There was only Giorgio’s relationship with women to consider. They seemed suspicious of him. He had never figured out how to be gentle. He would not caress but paw. Did he know, when he kissed, not to bare his teeth? It was probably Beatrice’s fault: she had never figured out how to be gentle either. It was not a quality that interested her, gentleness, but desperation had driven her to it. She saw now that gentleness, when deployed ruthlessly, could be effective. Gentleness could save lives.
A whorehouse offered a relatively safe, controlled environment, enabling easy supervision. It was just a question of selecting the right whorehouse. Sal had always supervised the crib collections, and after his death she had handed them to the cousins, so she wasn’t familiar with, so to speak, the lay of the land. With prostitution outlawed, protection services were in higher demand. But Beatrice couldn’t consult the cousins and she didn’t know any sporting girls directly, save one: Rosalba Bucca, native of Linguaglossa, known in the Tenderloin as Rosie the Mouth.
Beatrice could only guess how Rosalba acquired the nickname, but it suited her. It was, after all, Rosie who, despite never having met Salvatore Vizzini’s wife, had alerted Beatrice to the unscrupulous activities in which he engaged during the final year of his life. A summary of Sal’s transgressions had arrived in a pale blue sealed envelope dropped off not at the Vizzinis’ home but at Canal Street Chapeaux, a millinery shop of which Rosie was a silent owner. When Beatrice made her weekly visit to the store, the salesclerk handed her two envelopes, the regular collection envelope and a second, unmarked. A request for a meeting was written in a simple, uneducated hand.
Beatrice was not prepared to take seriously the slander of a prostitute but she had begun to nurse suspicions. Rosie’s information confirmed them. Beatrice met with Rosie twice to confirm certain details but never bothered to thank her afterward. What would she say: Thank you for ruining my life? Since Sal’s death, she had seen Rosie twice in public, but did not acknowledge her: in Jackson Square, walking alone, and at Antoine’s on a date with an out-of-town businessman, her amaranth lipstick smudged thickly over her enormous mouth, giving her the appearance of having been caught devouring a fresh carcass.
When Beatrice returned to Canal Street Chapeaux last September, shortly after the Durel grocery break-in, the salesclerk took one glimpse of the gold rings on her fingers and went pale. The girl reversed the CLOSED sign on the door, pulled the dead bolt, a
nd, after an inaudible mumble, ran out the back. She reappeared with the owner, both of them panting. Beatrice left soon after, carrying a black box tied with velvet string. It contained a slip on which was written Rosalba Bucca’s new address: 2631 DeSoto Street.
* * *
“You can wait in the parlor,” said Rosie’s pink-lipped employee. She sank heavily into the nearest chair.
Beatrice followed her inside. Before her eyes could adjust to the gloom—the windows were covered by louvered shutters—she became aware of a repeated percussion: the sound of a rusty bed traveling, a centimeter at a time, across the floor. The rate of locomotion seemed gradually to be increasing. But she was spared from further sordid contemplation by the appearance of Rosie the Mouth.
“Go to the back,” said Rosie.
The pink-lipped woman delivered a profound sigh and, with heroic effort, pulled herself to standing. She dragged herself out of the room.
“I’m all fixed with protection, ma’am,” said Rosie. “I squared with your agent the day before yesterday.” Her accent—flat, nasal, squeaky like a sharpening knife, several octaves removed from the rich Sicilian dialect of her birth—made Beatrice grind her teeth. It drove her crazy, the immigrant instinct for assimilation, the panicked desire to out-American the Americans. “I think it was Efigenia?” said Rosie. “Maybe Elba. I get them confused.”
“I’m here to talk about my son. Maybe you’ve met him.” Rosie began to respond but Beatrice interrupted with a wave of her hand. She didn’t want to know. “I am promoting him from his supervisory job at the canal. He is available to assume new responsibilities.”
“Mr. Vizzini will be the new collector?”
The hammering grew louder.
“We are countrywomen. You did a great service for me. I haven’t forgotten.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This operation isn’t much to admire.” The commotion in the bedroom was becoming intolerable. A thin film of sweat coated the back of Beatrice’s neck. She removed her scarf. The whole scenario was highly distasteful but there was no better solution. She had thought about it plenty and there was no better solution.
“No, ma’am.” Rosie’s accent was broadening, losing the crass Americanismo. “I concede this.”
The unseen woman shrieked. She screamed obscenities. And begged. Begging and screaming, in alternation. Beatrice and Rosie stared at each other.
“What is the hourly rate?” said Beatrice finally.
“Eight dollars.”
Beatrice removed one of her gloves, opened her purse, and found a ten. “I cannot take it anymore.”
Rosie stuffed the bill into her dress and walked through the bedroom where the pink-lipped woman lay sprawled on a mold-spotted mattress, oblivious. Rosie knocked sharply on the door of a second bedroom. The noises abruptly ceased. The door opened a crack. A terse communication concluded with the emergence of a portly, red-faced man, in an undershirt and white drawers, cradling the rest of his clothes in his arms. He was made to dress on the porch.
The two women resumed their conversation. It wasn’t much of a conversation: Beatrice spoke, Rosie nodded. The deal was simple. Rosie’s Ritz Palace would be allowed to continue operations. Rosie would receive from Beatrice a weekly installment of three hundred and fifty dollars. In exchange, Rosie would hire Giorgio Vizzini as manager. He would be responsible for developing a more profitable business model. This, at least, was what he’d be told. What he would not know and would not be explained to him under any circumstance was that Rosie would be the one providing the protection. She would be protecting Beatrice. She was to keep careful record of Giorgio’s behavior and activities, noting his movements in a letter that she would deliver to Beatrice at the end of each business day. Her sporting house would by this means become a shadow business to the shadow business.
“The more time he spends here, the more you will be able to observe him, and the more value you will have to me.”
“What if he doesn’t want to be here?”
“Then you are to make him want to be here.” Beatrice did not feel it necessary to elaborate. From Rosie’s response, or rather her silence, it was clear Beatrice didn’t have to. She produced an envelope containing the first payment. “Use that to get some cleaner girls.” She glanced meaningfully at the pink-lipped woman passed out in the next room. The last thing Beatrice needed was for Giorgio to acquire some awful infection.
“Vi ringrazio, signora,” said Rosie, and her accent was perfect, as syrupy and sun kissed as the island of Sicily itself.
* * *
Operation Ritz Palace, Beatrice called it, when she presented Giorgio with her plan for an important new endeavor at supper the following Sunday. She chose her words carefully. The closure of Storyville, she explained, presented a major business opportunity. The grand sex alcazars were demolished and the madams had gone underground. But that did not mean that they had to go sleazy. The men who patronized Arlington Annex or Mahogany Hall did not feel comfortable stalking like criminals to hovels in the Tango Belt. Why not offer clean, discreet houses in affluent residential neighborhoods, businesses so respectable that they could be operated in plain sight without raising suspicion? The sporting girls would no longer dress in diamonds and ostrich plumes but—at least when entering and exiting the premises—in attire that made them resemble the daughters of an Uptown family. Yes, she assured him, she was as determined as ever to retire the shadow business. The Industrial Canal remained more than a year from completion, however. There was still time to entertain, in a cautious way, other opportunities. But she needed someone in charge whom she could trust.
Giorgio, to her surprise, accepted immediately. He said he was tired. He would be happy to take a break from the canal. It might even allow him more time to work on his osteopathy business. In fact, he announced, he would move into the apartment in Jackson Square he kept for his practice and leave the house on First Street for good.
To think—he had needed just the slightest push. She only regretted she hadn’t thought of it sooner. On the night that Giorgio accepted his new assignment, for the first time since Sal’s death, Beatrice went to bed without a headache. The ticking of the grandfather clock was a lullaby in her ears.
MARCH 6, 1919—THE BATTLEFIELD
As he fumbled with the key, the door opened. Orly wore her blue terry-cloth bathrobe, the only thing she owned that still fit.
“Hush,” she said, before he could speak.
“What is it? Your mother?”
She closed the door behind her and cinched her belt. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Some part of him wondered whether she was about to give birth. He knew it made no sense, but where was the sense in taking a walk at one thirty in the morning?
“I was hoping to get off my feet,” he said. “I’ve been upright twenty hours.”
“We’ll go to Sis Pinky’s.”
Now he knew there was trouble. Orly didn’t like going to bars even when she was in a good mood, and particularly not Sis Pinky’s, which she called Piss Stinky’s. She must have appreciated how tired he was, his first day of working a second job, an apprenticeship for Drag’s deaf old uncle at the Pelican Cooperage. But she appeared not to care.
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I was thinking about you.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“And I can’t find a comfortable position.” She patted her stomach. “She’s up, so I’m up.”
It was the first time Orly had said she. He didn’t understand how she could know but he didn’t doubt her. He rested his palm on her stomach. The movement inside was no less bizarre than it had been the first time he felt it. It was irresistibly, exhilaratingly bizarre, an alien life frantic to escape.
“When did we even see each other last?” Orly wore a jacket over her robe but the terry-cloth hem glided just inches above the sidewalk.
“Monday?” said Isadore.
“You were asleep when I got ba
ck from the Tiltons. Sunday.”
“It’s not enough.”
Orly had worked longer hours, knowing she would have to miss at least a couple of days of work when the baby came; she worried Mrs. Tilton would replace her. Increasingly she slept Uptown, in the maid’s room. And now Isadore was working nights.
“It’s too long,” she said, “when you can’t remember the day.”
Sis Pinky’s wasn’t such a bad place to talk—it wasn’t exceedingly dirty, the drinks were strong, and ever since Pinky had negotiated a protection arrangement with some Uptown Italians, the rougher Battlefield characters tended to keep away. Tonight it was nearly empty: an old drunk slumped at the last stool and a youngish couple chatted conspiratorially at one of the tables. Neither looked up when the Zenos arrived but old Pinky herself was tending bar and she missed nothing.
“Boy, you smell like a barnyard.”
Isadore tried to formulate a retort about how her bar reeked of piss, but his exhaustion rendered him mute.
“Look at this!” Pinky exclaimed, noticing Orly’s stomach. “You’re fixing to burst! Just hold till I get the mop.”
Orly gave a weak smile. “Two whiskeys straight.”
“Yours is a double.”
“Single will do.”
“It’s on Sissy. You’re drinking for two, ain you?”
“Thanks, ma’am. She could use a nap, to tell the truth.”
“So could her mam.”
Isadore held the stool beneath Orly as she settled herself. Pinky poured the drinks and splashed two extra drops into a small glass, which she swirled and held to her nose, inhaling histrionically to cleanse her nostrils of Isadore’s odor.
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