Dollface

by Renée Rosen

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

America in the 1920s was a country alive with the wild fun of jazz, speakeasies, and a new kind of woman—the flapper.

Vera Abramowitz is determined to leave her gritty childhood behind and live a more exciting life, one that her mother never dreamed of. Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles, doing the Charleston in nightclubs and earning the nickname “Dollface.” 

As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing jazz, and money to burn.  She thinks her biggest problem is choosing between them until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are really mobsters from rival gangs during Chicago’s infamous Beer Wars, a battle Al Capone refuses to lose. 

The heady life she’s living is an illusion resting on a bedrock of crime and violence unlike anything the country has ever seen before. When the good times come to an end, Vera becomes entangled in everything from bootlegging to murder. And as men from both gangs fall around her, Vera must put together the pieces of her shattered life, as Chicago hurtles toward one of the most infamous days in its history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. 

READERS GUIDE INCLUDED

Release date: November 5, 2013

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 416

Sample

BOOK ONE

Chicago 1923–1924

THE ESCAPE HATCH

“You don’t smile much, do you,” said the man next to me.

“Smiling gets me into trouble.”

“I’m sure it does.” His eyes wandered the length of my body, from my shoulders to my shoes. I wondered if he could tell that I’d faked my stockings and that my seams had been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil. I tucked one leg behind the other, hoping to hide my ingenuity.

It was Friday night and I was at the Five Star, sitting next to this nameless man who’d just bought me my second bourbon. Glancing at my fingers, peppered with paper cuts and ribbon stains, I closed my eyes, trying to ease the headache I’d had since Tuesday. A chorus of Smith Coronas striking letterhead and the ping of two dozen carriage returns going back and forth nonstop echoed inside my head. I had just survived my first week as a typewriter for the insurance offices of Schlemmer Weiss & Unger. The job was dull—a real flat tire—and the pay was lousy. Of the twenty dollars I got in my weekly salary envelope, eight had already been grabbed by my landlady when I stopped by the rooming house to change out of my work clothes. I didn’t know how twelve dollars would carry me until my next payday, but I refused to admit that my mother was right. I was eighteen years old. Other girls my age got jobs and lived on their own. They managed. I’d find a way, too.

I took another sip of bourbon. It went down easy, smooth as Coca-Cola. I’d been in only a handful of speakeasies but I could see why they were so popular. Everyone was smiling and laughing, having a swell time. From the get-go, anyone with half a brain could have told you Prohibition wasn’t going to prohibit a damn thing. It only added to the allure of that forbidden fruit. People who didn’t even like to drink before 1920 now knocked on unmarked doors, whispered their way inside and lingered over rows of gin and whiskey bottles lined up like tin soldiers. If the Volstead Act had outlawed chewing gum instead of liquor, what do you think we would have chomped on with our friends, spent our last dollar on, and kept hidden in our garters? We always want what’s just outside our reach.

But Prohibition and speakeasies aside, I was no stranger to liquor.

“Good lord,” the man said, shaking his head, “how the hell can an itty-bitty dame like you drink so damn much?”

I wasn’t all that itty-bitty, not really. If I’d been standing, he would have seen that I was five-foot-three. But I was skinny. My body was as straight and sleek as my hair, which I wore bobbed to my chin with a thick row of bangs. Between my jet-black hair and dark eyes, made even darker thanks to my kohl eyeliner, I had that modern look, and it wasn’t lost on men like the one sitting next to me.

“I’m serious,” said the man. “How’d a little lady like you learn to drink like that?”

“My mother,” I said, swirling my bourbon in my glass. “She soaked my pacifiers in schnapps when I was a baby so I’d fall asleep.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He knocked back his drink and fished a cigarette from the crumpled package peeking out of his breast pocket.

I finished that round with him, slid off my barstool and went looking for Evelyn. I was bushed and ready to go home. As I teetered across the wooden floor, I knew it was too late to rethink that second bourbon or the meager bowl of soup I’d regarded as dinner. I perched my hand on the wall to keep the room from tilting.

The Five Star was packed, everyone sardined in, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Couples filled the dance floor, doing the bunny hug and the Charleston while the South Side Jazzers played onstage. I went upstairs and found the second floor was just as crowded. Cigarette girls roamed the room in their short skirts and top hats, peddling trays of Lucky Strike cigarettes and White Owl cigars. Clouds of smoke floated above the blackjack tables manned by dealers dressed in red vests and matching bow ties.

Off in the corner, I spotted Evelyn by the slot machines, standing alongside a man with an unlit cigar jammed in his mouth. She’d been end-of-the-week beat when we’d arrived but not anymore. Each time the man pulled the one-armed bandit, she jumped up and down, her long brown spiral curls bouncing as she clapped, hoping the cherries lined up.

I accidentally bumped into a man at the craps table who had a floozy on either side of him. I apologized without really looking at him. It wasn’t until after he threw the dice and his girls gave off an exaggerated round of “Awwwwwwws” that he got my attention. Tall, fit, and with his necktie askew and shirtsleeves rolled up, he had a slightly rumpled look about him that only truly handsome men could get away with.

“Can’t win ’em all, can you?” he said, giving me the once-over along with a mischievous grin, a kind of wonky, self-assured smirk no doubt prompted by the scores of innocent hopefuls who’d preceded me. It was men like him who ruined it for the next guy who came along. And there’d be the next one and probably one after that, because men like him were never anyone’s last stop on the road to happily ever after.

I was exhausted and not about to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was as good-looking as he thought he was. “Better luck next time,” I said, and turned to walk away.

“Hey, not so fast, doll.” He grabbed my hand, and it touched off a spark I wasn’t expecting. “I was winning until you showed up. What’s your rush?” He flashed that smile of his just as a few locks of hair fell forward onto his brow. Soft brown, the color of chestnuts. “If you don’t mind my saying”—he leaned in closer—“you’re a beautiful-looking woman. You must be a model.”

“Oh, c’mon.” I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Can’t you feed a girl a better line than that?”

“Okay, then how about an actress?”

“Please—do girls actually believe you when you say things like that?” I crossed my arms, hoping to stop my urge to reach over and brush that lock of hair aside with my fingertips.

“C’mon,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink. What’s your name?”

“Vera.” I looked over at Evelyn. She was still with that man at the slots, and there was no way she’d be ready to go. She’d no sooner leave his side than he’d leave a hot machine.

Even though I’d had those two bourbons already, I agreed to let him buy me a drink. He introduced himself as Tony Liolli and boy, I could tell right off he was some operator.

We had almost made it to the bar when a red light overhead flashed and an alarm sounded. I flinched, it gave me such a start.

Tony put his arm down like a crossing gate in front of me. “Oh, goddammit!” The alarm sounded again, longer this time.

“What is that? What’s happening?” I gripped his arm, sobering up fast, thinking the place was on fire. My heart was racing.

“Raid!” someone shouted. “It’s the feds! Raid! Everybody clear out!”

All at once people began hollering as they shoved past us, rushing toward the stairs. A dealer rammed into me, nearly knocking me over, while he and another barkeeper raced around, trying to get rid of any traces of liquor. I saw one of them pull a handle on the side of the bar and all the bottles on the shelves went whoosh and disappeared through a trapdoor. Two other men bolted past me, grabbed hold of the bar and flipped it upside down, making it look like an innocent hutch. Within seconds all the slot machines were spun around; their flip sides were disguised as bookcases.

“C’mon, we gotta get out of here.” Tony grabbed my hand and weaved me through the crowd, heading for the doorway. The alarm blasted again and again while everybody charged toward the staircase, knocking tables and chairs out of the way. I trampled over someone’s lost fedora and nearly tripped on an abandoned pocketbook.

“Wait!” I turned around, my heart pumping like mad. “Where’s Evelyn? Evelyn!”

“Who the hell’s Evelyn?”

“Evelyn. My roommate.”

“Forget Evelyn,” Tony shouted back, “unless you wanna see the inside of a paddy wagon.”

“Evelyn? Evelyn!”

“C’mon. Now!”

After one last look for my friend, Tony and I were on the move, working our way toward the front, when the direction of the crowd suddenly reversed and people started backing up, rearing into one another. The feds were heading in, and everyone who’d been trying to get down the stairs rushed back to the main room. A heavyset man wearing too much cologne stepped on my foot just as the agents burst inside with their whistles blowing shrill, high-pitched chirps.

“C’mon,” Tony said, pulling at me. “Over here.” He moved fast, yanking me toward the back of the room. When we dead-ended into a concrete wall, I froze. But Tony grabbed hold of a brass knob and turned it, and the wall slid to the right. It was just a facade concealing a rickety staircase. The dealers, barkeepers, waiters, and even the cigarette girls crowded in behind us.

“C’mon—hurry!”

I took one last desperate look around for Evelyn. “Evelyn? Evelyn!” It was no use.

Tony herded me and a dozen others down the stairs. There was no railing and not much light until we made it to the first-floor landing. Tony and another man unlatched a second doorway that led to another flight of stairs. We heard screams and cries coming from the upper floors. It sounded like a stampede.

When we reached the basement, Tony guided us to a long, narrow tunnel littered with garbage, smashed beer and whiskey bottles. It smelled of urine, and God knows what else. I began to tremble. I couldn’t see much, but I knew we must have somehow entered the sewer tunnel. Something scurried across the floor and I yelped, watching a long, skinny tail whip back and forth before disappearing into the shadows.

Tony hustled the cigarette girls and the other men toward the tunnel’s opening and one by one they vanished into the darkness. It was my turn. “Go on,” he said when I hesitated. “I’m right behind you. Go!”

It was freezing and though the air was stale and sour, I gasped for breath. The tunnel grew narrower, and something was dripping from above, landing in my hair and on my shoulders. I heard the sound of shoes sloshing through the water on the floor as the others made their way ahead of us. With each step, more filthy, icy water seeped in through my soles, soaking my toes.

Each time I asked Tony where we were, he said, “Keep going. Don’t stop, Vera! C’mon!”

“Okay—all right! I’m going, I’m going!” My feet inched along in the darkness, my fingers grazing the dripping, crumbling tunnel walls. The water was up to my ankles now and I could barely feel my feet; my toes had long since gone numb. Deeper into the tunnel, the shadows began to fade, eventually vanishing until everything became the blackest of blacks. I couldn’t see my hands in front of me. The wall was all I had, my only source of reference. I was surrounded by the sounds of sluicing water and rodents scratching and scurrying about. If Tony was still behind me, I had no sense of him. I was alone in that endless blackness, shuffling and groping my way forward.

When I thought I couldn’t take one more step, I heard the purr of automobiles and the rumble of the streetcars overhead. Shadows of the others came into view as we worked our way toward another set of stairs. A haze of light flooded down and I raced ahead, splashing through the sewer water.

Once I made it to the top, Tony was right behind me. I couldn’t believe where we were: We ended up on the sidewalk directly across the street from the Five Star. Paddy wagons were parked in front and federal agents were everywhere. I saw handcuffs on the man who’d bought me the bourbons earlier. He was being loaded into a paddy wagon along with everyone else who hadn’t made it out in time. I did another frantic search for Evelyn. Oh, God, please don’t let her be arrested. What if the feds had her? How would I get her out of jail? It took money to do that and twelve dollars was all I had to my name. Evelyn, where are you!

More people were hustled into the paddy wagons while others raced past us up and down the sidewalk, distancing themselves from the action.

Tony checked his pocket watch. “Think you’ll be all right now?”

“You’re leaving?” My voice went up an octave and I shivered. Goose bumps freckled my damp arms and legs. It was December, my feet were soaking and my coat was being held hostage inside the Five Star.

“I wouldn’t stick around much longer if I were you.”

“So you are leaving?”

He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “See ya ’round, Vera.”

“Yeah. Sure. See you ’round.” I stared at the tops of my waterlogged shoes. I was standing like a schoolgirl, pigeon-toed. I saw where the sewer water had washed away the seams I’d drawn on the backs of my calves. When I looked up again, Tony had already disappeared around the corner.

Don’t you dare cry. Do not!

Suddenly I spotted Evelyn halfway down the block, standing beneath a streetlight, hugging herself to keep warm. I began to breathe again. She searched up and down the street like a child lost at the fair, strands of her long brown curls blowing across her pale face.

“Evelyn! Hey, Ev!”

She saw me running toward her and raced in my direction. We collided, throwing our arms around each other, half laughing, half crying, both of us talking at once.

“Oh my God.” She clasped a hand over her heart. “How did we end up in the middle of a raid?”

“I can’t believe what just happened.” I was so relieved, I hugged her again. “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here.” I reached into my pocket for a dollar bill, waved it in the air and flagged down a taxicab.

DIAMONDS AND GEMS

A few weeks later, Evelyn sat on the side of my bed shaking me awake like she did most mornings. “C’mon, get up. It’s ten after seven.”

I groaned as I opened my eyes. It couldn’t possibly be morning already.

I’d recently taken a second job so I could make ends meet. One of the girls in the rooming house had told me about it. Said I could earn two dollars a night modeling jewelry for a man who worked fancy parties for Chicago’s elite.

The two dollars I’d been promised turned out to be a buck fifty, but I needed the money. That extra seven fifty or ten fifty a week, depending on if I worked every night—especially during the holiday season—meant I didn’t have to choose between making my rent and going to bed hungry. Plus, I got to wear pretty dresses and real diamonds and pearls. Working those parties put me smack in the center of a lot of impressive, glamorous people and you never knew who you’d meet. The day after a party I’d always see the photographs all over the society pages. Once I even managed to get myself in a picture. I recognized the dress first and realized the shoulder and back of the head belonged to me. I clipped the photograph and tucked it up in the corner of my mirror. Someday, I told myself, I would be important enough to be the subject of a society page photograph.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Evelyn said. “Was it very late?”

“After one.” I yawned. “I missed my train and had to wait forty minutes for the next one.”

“Poor thing.” Evelyn bent down and stroked my hair. She didn’t need to work a second job. She was a faster typist than I was and the best speller among us typewriters. Mr. Schlemmer insisted she proofread his most important documents, even if another girl had typed it. That right there made her weekly pay envelope ten dollars thicker than mine. Not that I begrudged her. She’d helped me plenty, lending me a dollar or two when I came up short, and it wasn’t as if she had much to spare.

“C’mon, now,” she said. “You have to get up! You’ll be late.”

“I’m always late.” I rolled onto my back and rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand.

Grabbing her toothbrush, Evelyn slung her towel over her shoulder and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom we shared with the other girls on the floor.

Evelyn Schulman and I had been best friends from the time we were seven. Hers was the house on the corner, the big one with the steep front steps. Evelyn’s father owned a sporting goods store on Grand Avenue and all five of the sisters had matching bicycles, lined up one after another on their front lawn. I was jealous—not of the bicycles, but of Evelyn for having all those sisters. I didn’t have any sisters or brothers. I didn’t even have a father. He died when I was four years old. They found his body behind a saloon on Whiskey Row. His head, hands and feet were missing. Butchered like an animal. My mother never talked about his murder. She’d never used that word or even said out loud that he’d been killed. When she did speak of him it was always followed by, “May he rest in peace.” She acted like the rest of it hadn’t happened. But whether we called it by name, whether or not we acknowledged it, I slept with a light on until I was fifteen. I kept a lookout, leery of unfamiliar motorcars parked outside our house and strangers coming down our sidewalk. That was how I spent the bulk of my childhood: keeping watch, waiting for and expecting something else to happen.

Growing up it was just my mother and me, and Evelyn, my chosen sister. When we turned sixteen, our mothers sent us to the Queen Esther dances. Every Saturday night in the summertime they held dances outside the synagogue, beneath a big white tent. The music was never any good and the boys didn’t know how to do the bunny hug or the black bottom. But still, we went week after week, until my mother heard that I’d been spotted behind the tent, sitting on a crate with my skirt hiked up to my knees, smoking cigarettes and playing five-card stud with a group of boys. That was the last Queen Esther dance for me. My mother was angry but not surprised. She was used to me stirring up trouble. By the time I turned fifteen I was sick of being too afraid to live. That’s when I got busy, making up for lost time. There was newfound freedom in acting daring and bold, taking risks and seeing how much I could get away with.

I must have dozed off again, because the next thing I knew Evelyn was standing over my bed. “It’s half past seven. C’mon. You’re not even dressed yet.”

I dragged myself out of bed, chilled as soon as my bare feet touched the hardwood floor. There was a draft coming in through the window where it didn’t seal all the way. Our room was cramped, barely big enough for our twin beds and a set of bureaus. The faucet in the bathroom down the hall dripped, the boiler in the basement clanked all winter long and everywhere you looked paint was chipping and peeling.

Evelyn and I had moved in six weeks before. We’d both recently turned eighteen and had wanted out of our parents’ homes. Evelyn’s parents were strict, setting curfews fit for a child, not letting her wear makeup or date college-age boys. And I knew that unless I wanted to end up like my mother—alone and chained to a miserable family business—I had to get out of her house. So even though I was stuck in a dilapidated shack, it was still better than living with my mother. Especially since she was the main reason I’d moved out in the first place.

I dressed quickly, changing from my nightdress into a white shirtwaist and long black skirt. It was exactly the same outfit Evelyn had on, the same as all the other typewriters would be wearing that day and every day. I supposed since they called us typewriters it made sense to dress us like a bunch of Smith Coronas.

With three minutes to spare, Evelyn and I marched into the building and took our places at the insurance offices of Schlemmer Weiss & Unger. I yawned off and on until noon, and while the others ate lunch in the cafeteria, I curled up on a chair in the back and napped, the wooden slats pressing into my spine. I was more tired than hungry and besides, a bowl of barley soup cost a quarter. A roll with butter was a dime. Coffee was another nickel on top of that. If you wanted applesauce or gelatin, that was another dime. I figured by skipping lunch I could save two dollars and fifty cents a week. Besides, I could usually sneak some appetizers later at whatever party I was assigned to.

At five o’clock, I said good-bye to Evelyn and the others and headed from the Loop toward the Drake Hotel on Michigan Avenue. I was scheduled to work a Christmas party in the grand ballroom for a prominent law firm. Hopefully the hotel would be swarming with successful, eligible bachelors. But all I could do was look and not touch. At least not while I was working. My job was to walk through the party, smile and hand out Mr. Borowitz’s calling card to anyone interested in purchasing his jewelry. I wasn’t to speak unless spoken to, and I wasn’t, under any circumstances, to discuss the jewelry or the prices.

When I reached the el platform, I found myself crowded in between rows of businessmen and factory workers, shopgirls and office clerks. The first train arrived and before I could inch my way toward the front of the line, the cars filled up and the doors closed.

I had time and decided to walk despite the cold wind coming off Lake Michigan whipping around and through me. Even in between gusts, I had to hold my hat in place. The sidewalks were crowded with holiday shoppers darting in and out of stores, their arms loaded down with parcels. The traffic was backed up to the bridge at Wacker with drivers blasting their horns as pedestrians weaved in and around the automobiles.

When I made my way down Michigan Avenue and arrived at the Drake, a footman, dressed in his red-and-gold uniform, held the door for me as I crossed from one world into another. I paused for a moment, rubbing the chill from my hands as I took in the garlands, the wreaths and glittery decorations on the walls. The clamor of motorcars and trolleys was replaced by the delicate clinking of crystal goblets and silver tines on bone china. The dark, winter cold was overcome by the warm hum of a healthy furnace and the glow of chandeliers hanging overhead.

Downstairs in the chambermaids’ quarters, I changed from my typewriter clothes into the blue silk dress waiting for me with my name pinned to the sleeve. It was a swell number and flowed off my shoulders like it was made for me. The hem was one of those handkerchief styles that showed my kneecaps when I walked. They even gave me a pair of matching shoes with a two-inch heel. Though my cheeks and nose were still red from the cold, I applied rouge and some lipstick. I brushed my shiny, inky black bob into place, smoothing down my bangs to cover the faint chickenpox scar above my right eyebrow.

When I was ready, I went upstairs to check in with Mr. Borowitz, an oversize man whose thick, fleshy neck doubled down, overlapping his collar. Three other girls were ahead of me and he carefully draped them in earrings, necklaces, brooches, cocktail rings and bracelets. I stood still while he trimmed me as if I were a Christmas tree, reaching over and pinching a diamond earring onto each of my earlobes before he finished decorating me, sliding an emerald bracelet onto my wrist and topping me off with a matching necklace. It was always a thrill when I heard the clasp lock into place. It meant those jewels were mine—if only for a few hours.

This was my favorite part of the job. After I was dressed and wearing my jewels, just before the guests arrived, I had five or ten minutes to wander through the busy hotel. Nobody knew that dress didn’t belong to me, and that I didn’t have ten others just like it hanging in my wardrobe back home. Nobody knew the gems weren’t mine, either. As the heels of my loaner shoes clicked against the marble floor, I felt people watching me and in that moment I could be anyone I wanted to be.

Each night I tried on a new identity along with the gown and jewels. Sometimes I’d be a famous chorus girl—a Ziegfeld girl, or a moving-picture star like Clara Bow or Lillian Gish. Sometimes I’d pretend I was the daughter of a banker or a wealthy industrialist. Other times I was just famous for famous’s sake, the type of woman men fought over and women envied.

At seven o’clock the band began playing a jazzy number, The Uptown Stomp, as we girls took our places inside the ballroom, trying to appear as inanimate as the gilt-framed portraits on the walls. A giant Christmas tree, with gold and red ornaments, stood in the corner of the room, its lights twinkling as the guests filtered in. The men were dressed in tuxedos with top hats and carried walking sticks; the women glistened in beaded gowns and matching cloche hats. They puffed on cigarettes and sipped champagne, their glasses kissed with ruby red lipstick. They flitted and fluttered while waiters worked through their effervescent wake, holding silver platters of pastries filled with crabmeat, butterflied shrimp, and deviled eggs topped with dollops of caviar. When no one was looking, I grabbed a few.

A photographer asked me to step aside while he arranged a group of couples standing to my left. After squaring one man’s shoulders, he asked another man to crouch down while scooching his date in closer. I imagined myself as part of this group, mentally inserting myself into the shot, taking my place between the two men, looping my arms through the arm of the taller one, my fingertips gently caressing the fabric of his expensive suit. After adjusting the bellows of his camera, the photographer told them to smile as he raised his flash bag and—poof—released a burst of light and smokeless powder into the air. As soon as he was finished, the cluster of couples dispersed like billiard balls after a solid break. I desperately wanted to follow them.

The band struck up a new snazzy number and I watched as more couples crowded the dance floor.

“You look like a gal who’d like to dance,” said a short, stocky man wearing a crooked bow tie and a Santa hat. He pointed at my shoes.

I didn’t realize I’d been tapping my foot to the music. “I’m afraid I’m working here tonight.”

“Oh?” His mouth dropped open as his hand reached up and pulled off his hat. “How much is a dance?”

“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “God, no. Not that kind of working.” Before I realized I’d just been insulted, I opened my silver card case. “That’s my boss,” I said, pointing to Mr. Borowitz’s name on the card. “He’d pitch a fit if I started dancing, but thank you anyway.”

After he’d replaced his Santa hat and moved on to the woman behind me, asking her to dance, I returned to my rigid modeling pose.

A young couple, looking like they’d just stepped out of a Marshall Field’s display window, stopped to inquire about my necklace. I listened as they debated whether it was the right length and size for a particular gown the woman was planning to wear to a New Year’s Eve ball. Evidently they weren’t sold on the necklace they’d seen earlier at Cartier. The woman was about my age and I would have bet good money that she’d never worked a day in her life. No doubt she thought the handsome, wealthy man on her arm was her birthright. I would have killed to slip inside her skin for just a day. Hell, just an hour. What did it feel like to have no worries beyond choosing a piece of jewelry that some rich man would buy for you? While they contemplated the necklace, a waiter appeared with a fresh tray of deviled eggs. My stomach growled as they both helped themselves, balancing their eggs on the embossed cocktail napkins.

“Exactly how much is this necklace?” the man asked.

As instructed, I opened my silver card case, and as I handed him Mr. Borowitz’s card, someone pinched my behind. I spun around, only to find half a dozen men within pinching distance who would look nei