by Michelle Cox
“Would I report back to you?” she tried to ask as innocently as possible.
“Why, yes,” he grinned at her. “Of course you would.”
Henrietta smiled to herself and turned back to the dresses. “Oh, all right,” she said, attempting a bored voice. “I suppose I’ll do it. I’ll try, anyway. Maybe I won’t even make the audition.”
“Oh, something tells me you will,” he said behind her. “The audition is in two days’ time. Nine a.m. sharp. Monroe and Riverside, near Canal.”
“Got it,” she said, determined not to look back again, but she couldn’t resist and turned to him, her dresses all in her arms now.
“Do you need help getting those home?” he asked genuinely.
“No. I’ve got some things to do first.”
“I see. Well, good luck, then, Miss Von Harmon. I’ll be in touch. I presume you’re on your way to warn Miss Smith, so say hello from me.”
Henrietta blushed at the fact that he had seen through her again! She opened her mouth to deny that she was planning on heading over to Polly’s, but he was already out the door, having left as silently as he had come in.
CHAPTER 5
Henrietta struggled under the weight of the dresses. She had managed to get most of her belongings into a dusty old carpetbag she had found in the dark recesses of the Promenade’s back room, but she still carried two of the dresses draped over her arm, which had proved decidedly awkward on the motorbus over. Luckily she was not in heels on top of it but was still in Eugene’s boots, having come straight from the Promenade dressed as she was. When she had emerged from the backroom, balancing her load with not a little difficulty, she had looked around, hoping to catch another glimpse of Inspector Howard, but not seeing him, she had left and headed for Polly’s.
Polly lived at Mildred and Wrightwood, on the upper floor of a three-flat in Lincoln Park, a decent enough neighborhood, mostly factory workers. Henrietta had only been over to Polly’s a handful of times, usually after the curler demonstrations on Saturdays if they had ever happened to get off early, having not attracted a large enough crowd to prolong the demonstration. It was a tiny apartment, just a few rooms, but Henrietta had envied the fact that she had the place, and especially a bed, to herself. Though Henrietta had asked from time to time, Polly did not often speak of her family, and Henrietta got the feeling they either did not exist or perhaps lived far away.
Henrietta now stood outside Polly’s back door, breathing heavily after climbing three flights under the weight of the carpetbag, and grateful that Polly hadn’t opened the door immediately upon her knocking, as it gave her a chance to catch her breath. The back stairs, leading up from the alleyway, were not enclosed, and Henrietta relished the cold air that whipped past her. It had been a warm March so far, but the air was still frosty at times. Polly always used the back stairs, saying that the front door of the building often stuck and that, likewise, the lock on her own front door was loose and didn’t always like to open. Once, she had told Henrietta, she had been trapped in the front stairwell for a couple of hours before her downstairs neighbor had arrived home and heard her calling for help. After that ordeal, she had resorted to using the back stairs no matter what the weather.
Henrietta knocked again, this time louder. “Polly!” she shouted, and leaned her ear toward the door. Perhaps she wasn’t home yet from her mysterious errand. Henrietta had just resigned herself to sitting down on the top step to wait for her when she thought she heard the click of Polly’s heels on the other side.
“Who’s there?” came Polly’s voice, sounding almost shrill.
“It’s me, Henrietta!” she shouted, moving back toward the door. “Open up, will you?”
The door opened a tiny bit, and Polly peered out. She looked as if she might have been crying. “Poll, what is it?” Henrietta asked anxiously.
“You alone?” Polly asked, looking out onto the tiny porch as if someone might be standing behind Henrietta.
“Course I’m alone,” Henrietta said, puzzled, turning to look behind her as well.
“You better come in,” Polly said, opening the door wider for her now. “What’s all this, then?” she said as she observed Henrietta’s bundle. “Moving in?”
“Not quite. May I?” she said, nodding toward the little table in the kitchen. Not waiting for an answer, she deposited the bag on the table and draped the dresses over a chair. “God, that’s better,” she said as she looked over at Polly, who had her arms nervously crossed in front of her.
Polly’s hand appeared to tremble a bit as she lifted her cigarette to her lips for a deep drag.
“You look terrible! Like you’ve seen a ghost or something,” said Henrietta, dismayed that the normally cool, sarcastic Polly was in any way disturbed. “What’s going on, Poll?”
Polly took another deep drag of her cigarette and shrugged. “Don’t really know where to start, doll.” She looked away then, as if she were about to cry again.
“Come on, let’s sit down,” Henrietta suggested, not knowing what else to do. “You need a drink. Got any whiskey or anything?”
Polly nodded. “Under the sink.”
“You sit down. I’ll get it,” Henrietta said, gesturing toward the “front room,” which Polly had cleverly created by hanging a thick curtain to divide the one long room into a kitchen and tiny dining area on one side and a parlor of sorts on the other. Usually, though, Polly had one of the panels tied back to make it easier to get in and out, and she ducked slightly under one of them now as she went in and sat down stiffly in the worn armchair nearest the radio.
Henrietta meanwhile hurried over to the sink and pulled back the thin blue-and-white checked cloth that hung below and found a cheap bottle of whiskey hiding there. She took two glasses from the cupboard above and quickly went back to the front room, where she poured them each a glass and handed one to Polly, who seemed almost startled by it, so lost was she in her own thoughts.
Henrietta sat down opposite her and crossed her legs. Resting one elbow on her knee and cradling her chin in her hand, she studied Polly carefully. When she didn’t speak, however, Henrietta finally broke the silence. “What’s going on, then, Polly?” she asked.
Polly didn’t respond but simply took a large drink of her whiskey, gasping at the burn as it went down.
“Poll, you don’t know anything about . . . about Mama Leone’s death, do you? You . . . you went back in last night. Did you see something?”
Polly looked at her now and nodded slowly, seemingly relieved that Henrietta had somehow guessed the source of her woes. “I did go in. I . . . I wanted to ask Mama Leone something . . . Well, never mind what it was about. I . . . I waved to Mickey as I went past the bar,” she said absently, trying to recall all of the details of the night. “He was alone, counting the money. I walked past to her office. I knew she was probably still there; she had just paid us all out. The light was on”—she stopped to take a drag of her cigarette—“and I . . . I heard voices. Threatening her, it sounded like . . . ”
“Not Artie and Al?” Henrietta asked, hesitantly.
“For God sakes, no! It wasn’t those two. It was someone else, two of them, I think. Never heard them before. Mama Leone was trying to tell them off . . . but I could tell her voice was scared. I ran to get Mickey, and we hurried back. Mickey listened at the door for a minute and then told me to beat it, that he’d take care of it . . . I didn’t want to leave, but then I heard Mama Leone scream, and Mickey busted the door open and shouted for me to scram before someone got hurt. I . . . I ran, then, Henrietta. I just ran. And now he’s gone!” she burst into sobs.
“You mean Mickey?”
“Of course I mean Mickey!”
Henrietta let her cry for a moment, more for lack of something to say than anything else. “It’s okay, Poll. It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry; the cops will figure it out.”
“No, it’s not okay!” she said, lifting her head from her lap, her makeup smeared from her tears. �
��I’ve tried to find him. I went ‘round to his place today after I left the Promenade, but he’s gone. No sign of him.”
Henrietta wondered how she happened to have a key to Mickey’s apartment, but she didn’t ask.
“Now the police will think it’s him.”
“Well, they suspect everyone at first, don’t they?” she suggested, not wanting to tell Polly that she was apparently a suspect as well. “They’ll eventually work out that it wasn’t him,” she said, though she did wonder why he would have disappeared if he really were innocent—but then again, so had the Rhythm Section.
“It’s not so simple, Hen. If he does turn up, they’re sure to figure out he was skimming the till.”
“He was?” Henrietta asked, trying not to show her surprise.
“Just a little, like. Thought it was his due since Mama Leone was such a tight bitch. He could do time just for that!” Polly said agitatedly.
Henrietta didn’t know what to say to that. She knew Mickey was a rough character; she supposed it fit. But why was Polly so attracted to him, anyway?
“Or what if those thugs last night did him in?” Polly continued anxiously. “I mean, you don’t think they killed him, too, do you?” she asked, her hand trembling again as she brought the cigarette up to her lips.
Considering what had happened to Mama Leone, Henrietta believed it to be a distinct possibility, but she didn’t say so. “Course not. He’ll turn up, I’m sure. He’s just laying low for a bit.” Henrietta took a sip of her whiskey, studying her friend. “You should be careful yourself, though, Polly,” she added, thinking of the inspector.
Polly stared ahead absently, deep in thought. “Yes . . . that’s just it, Hen . . . ,” she whispered. “I . . . I think they might have seen me.”
“Who?”
“The thugs . . . you know, the ones who stabbed the bulldog.”
“Oh, Polly!”
“I might be imagining things, but I . . . I thought I might have been followed on the way home today.”
“In broad daylight?”
Polly shrugged. “Just a feeling . . . probably nothing.”
“Why haven’t you told any of this to the police? They think you’re holding back, you know. Which you obviously are!”
“I can’t tell the police that Mickey was involved!”
“Well, right now they think he’s a suspect, when obviously he’s a witness. And anyway, Mama Leone doesn’t strike me as the sort who kept the books very clean, if the state of her office is any indication. Nobody will be able to tell he skimmed some out of the till. Believe me, I had plenty of chances to dip my hand in at Poor Pete’s, and Mr. Hennessey, conscientious as he was, would never have known.” She took another sip of whiskey. “You’d better go to the police, Polly. Tell them what you saw.”
Polly’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Henrietta as if considering something. “How do you know they think I’m holding back, anyway?”
Henrietta looked down at her drink and swirled it before looking back up at Polly. “That Inspector Howard . . . or whatever his name was . . . ,” she fibbed, “he . . . he found me in the back while I was packing up my stuff,” Henrietta gestured toward the pile of clothes in the kitchen. “He questioned me again. Trying to figure it all out, I guess.” She put on a smile, then, and tossed back the rest of the whiskey in her glass. “Even offered me a job,” she said, wincing at the burn as she glanced nervously at Polly for her reaction.
“Oh, yeah? Doing what?”
“An usherette, turns out. Sounds simple enough.”
“Where?” Polly asked in a slow, even way.
“The Marlowe. Ever hear of it?” Henrietta answered, with a slight toss of her hair.
Polly’s face went deathly pale. “No, Hen,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Not the Marlowe!” she said standing up anxiously. “You stay away from that place. You have no idea what that place is like!” She poured out more whiskey in both glasses.
“It’s not what you think,” Henrietta said, hastily trying to repeat Inspector Howard’s own words to her. But not only were they eluding her, she was also momentarily having a hard time remembering why she had agreed to this in the first place.
“No, it’s not what you think!” said Polly, taking a large pull from her glass. “It’s a gangster’s hangout, Hen. Real rough types. You think Casanova was bad,” she said, “just you wait. He’s a pussycat compared to the bruisers at this place.”
“How would you know?”
Polly lit another cigarette, her hand trembling again. “My sister once worked there.”
“Your sister? I didn’t know you had a sister! Why didn’t you say?”
“Because.”
“Is she still there?” Henrietta asked, hoping for a friend at this apparently horrible place.
“No,” she said, barely above a whisper. “She went missing about a year ago. Police never found her.”
“Oh, God, Polly!” Henrietta said, standing up and putting her arms around Polly, who had begun crying again. “Oh, God. I didn’t realize. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I don’t know,” Polly sighed, trying to wipe her smeared mascara. “It never seemed the right time. And anyway, I’ve been trying to keep a low profile.”
“What . . . what happened?” Henrietta asked, not knowing what to say.
“I . . . Libby came up here a couple of years ago. From Missouri— that’s where we’re from. She’s older than me; I was still at home with my grandmother. My parents are both gone, so that’s who we lived with. Libby . . . Libby thought she could find work up north, but it turns out it’s just as hard to find something here as it was in our little speck on the map. Well, almost, anyway. She . . . she finally found something at the Promenade, though she didn’t say doing what. Then she wrote one day and said she got a new job, a better one, but she didn’t say where. Then the letters stopped coming altogether. My grandmother got worried then. We waited and waited, but no word ever came. Finally we went to Levy’s drugstore and worked up the courage to call the Chicago police, but they didn’t take it seriously. Said girls go missing every day, that she’d turn up eventually. So I followed her here. Got a job at the Promenade, just like her; wasn’t too hard, as you know. I . . . I used a different name.”
“You did?” Henrietta asked, surprised by the flood of information that the usually unemotional, chilly Polly was now offering up.
“Yes, I’m really Polly Shoemacher.”
“So what happened?” Henrietta asked, not sure if she really wanted to hear the end of this.
“I . . . I couldn’t find her, of course. A couple of the girls told me they thought she had got a job at the Marlowe,” Polly said, looking intently at Henrietta, who consequently felt a wave of fear pass through her.
“I eventually went to the police myself. There was a search, if you can call it that. It went on for about a month, but nothing came of it. Just another nameless, faceless girl that went missing. I confronted Mama Leone about it, but she denied everything. Said she had no idea what happened to Libby. Here one day, gone the next. But I know she was lying. That’s what I went back in for last night. I just had to ask her one last time. I knew she had been drinking more than usual. I thought maybe it would have loosened her tongue, but I never got the chance.” She rubbed her brow as if in pain and took another drink of whiskey. “Henrietta, you can’t go work there. There’s something not right. I know it’s linked to Libby’s disappearance, but I can’t quite figure it out. I . . . I even tried to audition for the usherette job, but I didn’t get picked, of course.”
“Well, maybe I won’t either. You never know how these things will go. I . . . I’m not sure if my legs will pass,” she said, looking down at her overalls.
“Who are you kidding? You’re a shoe-in. Henrietta, please,” she said, grasping her friend’s arm. “Please don’t.”
“I need the money, Polly. The inspector said he’d pay me double what I made at the Promenade!
I just can’t pass that up.”
“There are some things worth more than money, Hen,” Polly said bitingly.
“Yes, I know,” Henrietta said, thinking of her father.
“Who’d you say put you up to this?”
“That inspector that was nosing around. Inspector Howard, I think his name is,” Henrietta fibbed again.
“Didn’t he come in last night and dance with you? What was that all about?”
Henrietta bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know, actually. He seemed very interested in Mama Leone and the backstage stuff, come to think of it.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that Mama Leone turns up dead the next day? I wouldn’t trust him, Hen. Something he’s not saying.”
“That’s funny. That’s what he said about you.” Henrietta couldn’t help but smile, despite the situation.
“This is serious, Henrietta!” Polly said fiercely. “Jesus, what are we going to do?” Polly began pacing the floor, her hand on her forehead as if to think.
“About what?” Henrietta asked, mystified. “Listen, Polly, it’s just a short-term thing to help the cops. They think Mama Leone’s death might have something to do with some guy there named Neptune. I’m just supposed to look for anything suspicious . . . you know.”
“Suspicious? What does that mean, exactly? The whole thing’s suspicious!”
“Look at it this way, Poll. If I make it in, then I can maybe find out about Libby,” she said hopefully.
