The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  “If we can convince someone at Bloomingdale’s to start us a line of credit for the house,” Ella said, “we’ll try to get something decent to wear.”

  A nice fat bill would serve their father right for thirty years of miserly catalogs.

  “Then we’ll go to the Swan and look pretty like our lives depend on it,” she said. “We’ll make what we can of it, and pray it’s not the Funeral Parlor Supper Club once you get in the doors.”

  The twins gave her blank looks—of course, she thought; they’d never been to the cramped little club from years ago.

  The only other three who would know that joke were scattered through the city somewhere, missing and frightened and maybe alone.

  Ella composed herself.

  “Are we looking out for anyone, there?” Mattie ventured.

  Ourselves, Ella thought, but that was too theatrical a thing to say, even for her.

  Looking for the other girls tonight was too soon. They were all smart enough to find their feet, but if their father was as terrifying as he seemed (Jo’s screams had curdled Ella’s blood for a reason), then doing something too soon might get them in more trouble.

  Until then, she couldn’t worry about what had happened to Jo, or run through the city in a panic about the others. (Had Lily and Rose even made it out of the shadow of the house?) She had to look out for the two sisters who were with her now, who had the faces of two flappers in a Cinemascope and matching silver shoes that weren’t yet worn out.

  They had to go somewhere for the night—there would be no camping out in this cold. They knew how to look like they belonged to a dance hall, by now.

  And inside, there were men who’d pay money for the company of the right girl.

  There were girls who needed money enough to be company.

  “We look for them tomorrow,” she said, fighting to keep her voice from shaking. “Tonight, we’re going out.”

  • • • • • •

  Rose and Lily were close enough to Ella and the twins when the truck came rattling past that, if they wanted, they could have followed them.

  It would have been the smart thing to do. It would have been second nature; they’d been taught young how to follow well.

  They reached the other side of the street in time, and watched Hattie and Mattie and Ella become three little shapes in pale dresses huddled in the shadow of a building, coiled in terror and ready to run. Two brown heads and a blond one were turned in the same direction.

  Rose and Lily saw where they were headed, could have joined them before they ran—there was time, still, to catch up with them, and run all together to wherever it was you ran when there was nowhere to go.

  Ella would be kind to them, and maybe even the twins would be, and they wouldn’t have to worry about being in this wide, snarled city all alone.

  But it was the first time they had been outside in the daytime without a nanny keeping watch; it was the first time they had been without orders coming down from Jo and could do as they chose.

  They didn’t move.

  (It was terrifying, but here they were, and they were together.)

  It was the first time they had been alone with each other outside their little room, and for the first time they were running hand in hand, like twins.

  Without a word they linked their fingers tighter, angled their path away from all the other girls, and ran as if they would never stop.

  twenty-two

  AFTER YOU’VE GONE

  The first night at the Marquee nearly killed Jo.

  As much as pulling things into line had been her stock in trade for twelve years, and despite how used she was to proving herself at night to a room of four hundred people, one way or another, Jo realized that the stakes were very different when you were pretending to a throne.

  “Funny, I haven’t heard much about you, Miss Renaud,” Ames the bandleader said warily when she introduced herself that first afternoon.

  He was younger than her father, but enough older than Jo that when she folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, unimpressed, he seemed surprised.

  “That’s too bad, then, I suppose,” she said, “because I know you like foxtrot right after Charleston, and that one of your trumpet players goes a little sharp on ‘Forgetting You,’ and that I’d just as soon keep you, and that you charge more than any other bandstand in the city, and that while Tom’s away, I’m the new management.”

  After a second, his expression changed, and he said, “Did you want to talk about the contract?”

  “It would send me over the moon,” she said, and at last, his face slid into a smile.

  • • • • • •

  When the band had left rehearsal for dinner, Jo pulled Henry aside.

  “I’ll need a dress,” she said, trying as hard as she could to sound as if it had just occurred to her. “I simply haven’t a thing worth wearing.”

  • • • • • •

  Henry knew someone who could carry a message to a shoe store on the Lower East Side, where there was a woman who couldn’t risk stopping by a speakeasy in full daylight but who had impeccable taste.

  Can’t dress myself worth a damn. If you could send help to the address the gentleman mentions, will save me from being a laughingstock. Jo.

  Two hours before the Marquee opened, a nervous girl appeared at the front door, carrying a flat dress box.

  She couldn’t have been older than Sophie; Jo pushed down a pang.

  “Oh,” said the girl, “I’m—is this—?”

  “I’m Miss Renaud, yes.”

  The girl tried a smile.

  This is what it looks like when a girl is new to the vales of the wicked, thought Jo.

  She wondered if they’d looked like this, she and Lou and Doris and Ella, the first time they went out dancing.

  She took a breath. “Come in, then,” she said, and managed a smile. No sense in looking standoffish. She’d need to dress herself, for as long as this lasted, and she had to at least look like she knew what she was doing if anyone was going to buy it.

  But the dress Myrtle had chosen was just Jo’s size, and the netting beaded gray and gold was finer than anything Jo had ever worn, cut high across the collarbones so that her neck looked almost elegant. Little gold earrings danced just beneath her earlobes, the screws in the back two reassuring points of pain.

  “Myrtle said you seemed like the practical type,” the girl ventured, setting down a pair of black shoes, “but that if you want anything that’s actually stylish, just send word.”

  They had a sturdy heel, but the T-strap was embroidered in gold, and when Jo put them on they fit like a fairy tale.

  Araminta would love them.

  The girl peered at her. “Do you—are they all right?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Elsie,” the girl said, with the air of someone who wished she’d thought up something fake.

  “Elsie, they’re perfect. Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you? Did you want to stay for the dancing? You’re my guest.”

  “Oh, no, not tonight,” Elsie said, glancing at the door a little wistfully. “I have to get home. I don’t like being out after dark much. My mother would worry.”

  “Of course,” Jo said. “Can’t have that.”

  • • • • • •

  The Marquee opened for business at ten in the evening.

  At nine fifty-five, Jo was ready to have a heart attack. Her new shoes weren’t sturdy enough to run in, not like catalog shoes, and her dress made too much noise, and if anyone thought she was a fraud, this would be the last mistake she ever made.

  “I don’t suppose Tom had some sort of marshaling call ahead of the doors,” she said as she took a last tour of the room. The floor was spotless, the chairs aligned on the grid, the bandstand setting up and tuning. “Any wise things he used to say?”

  “ ‘Don’t drink with the customers or I’ll fire you,’ ” Henry recited.

  “Timeless words.”r />
  He raised a bottle. “You want one?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  The room had its own momentum; it was too late to call it off. The doors were going to open whether she stood here or not.

  But she had been terrified the first time she took the others out, and terrified the first time the cops descended, and terrified the first time she realized Tom was never coming back.

  Terror didn’t matter; only that you stood your ground.

  She nodded to Ames, who struck up a gentle waltz, and the bouncer at the door (McGee, Jo remembered) opened the door, and the guests began to trickle in.

  If she was fighting not to gnaw off her nails until the room had two hundred people in it; she thought that was only fair for a first-timer.

  If she looked at every face in case it was a sister, she tried not to mind it. Either they were smart enough to stay away, or she might get one or two back safe again.

  • • • • • •

  On the third day, someone told their alderman that Tom had disappeared, and a girl was in charge.

  When McGee summoned her, she came downstairs and saw the alderman’s lieutenant (Parker, McGee had told her) waiting at a table, a bottle of their finest whiskey open in front of him with a couple of rounds already knocked out, and Henry behind the bar, polishing the same glass over and over.

  Parker had a broad face and sharp blue eyes and the expression of a man who got his own way.

  Still, the stakes here were lower than any time she’d been summoned to her father’s office.

  She took a seat.

  “Strange that Tom never mentioned he was going to skip town,” he said by way of introduction.

  “That is strange,” she said. “That doesn’t suggest you’re in his confidence much.”

  “He and I were discussing prices before he left.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “The cost of doing business has gone up.”

  She didn’t answer. He frowned.

  “I’m here for my money.”

  Why this seemed familiar, she couldn’t say. She’d never had any money worth fighting for, until now.

  “Well,” she said, “I doubt you see much of it. Bosses have a way of walking off with the profits if there are any—have you noticed that? I mean, Tom pays me fair, but I bet sometimes you look at the money you’re carrying home and just wish.”

  Parker snarled. “I get paid fine. A damn sight more than you do, I bet.”

  She changed tactics. “No doubt,” she said. “Glad to hear your boss isn’t hurting for money, then.”

  “I’m here for what Tom promised.”

  “He’s not here for the next little while,” she said. “You want a deal, you’ll have to strike it with me.”

  “I don’t do business with women.”

  She suddenly recognized what was so familiar about being here.

  This was how her father did business.

  She could do this. She knew how to herd someone who had to ask you for something. She knew the lure of unknown resources to someone who was desperately guessing.

  She folded her arms. “Maybe not with your clothes on, but I’m sure you can adjust.”

  “You keep giving me lip and I’m going to teach you a lesson,” he said.

  “You can try it,” she said, “and then you can see what contingency plans Tom left me with. He knows the oddest people, in offices you wouldn’t expect.”

  He froze halfway to a word.

  She smiled. (She held it until it softened—it was time to back off the challenges and get him on a path out the door.)

  “Didn’t Tom ever mention that police protection costs the kind of money that eats a man’s livelihood?”

  “We never—”

  “And this is a generous place,” she said. “He’s been looking out for your alderman every week, and he told me to look out for you, too. Your alderman charges a fair price, he told me. I want to believe that’s true. We all try to take care of our own.”

  She sat forward, arms crossed.

  “What, exactly, was your alderman looking for?”

  “Three hundred more a week.”

  She laughed quietly, gave him the look of a man to his fellow soldier in the trenches.

  “I can’t pay that and our supplier,” she said. “I don’t want to give up doing either—being safe is less exciting with only second-rate gin—but I just don’t have it. I don’t have half that.”

  Parker’s face had lost its dangerous edge. “I’m under orders.”

  “I understand,” she said. “Me too.”

  She paused, like she was thinking it over. “I can give you two hundred more, to start with,” she said. “And when Tom hears how fair you’ve been, I’m sure he’ll agree.”

  She smiled just shy of kindly, as the sidelong warning sank in.

  “Of course,” he said vaguely.

  “Wonderful,” she said, letting her smile get bigger, genuine. “Listen, I have to start putting my curl papers in, but I hope you’ll come by tonight? I’ll keep the rest of this bottle behind the bar, and you can go right to Henry there for anything you need. Have you ever been here at night?”

  “No,” he said, “never made it.”

  “Well, if you can get away from the boss, you should. This bandstand is the bee’s knees, and it’s the least the alderman can do, making you do the rounds before the fun starts. I’ll tell McGee. Come by around eleven. We’ll be expecting you.”

  Parker stood up with his hat in his hand, looking slightly concussed, and said with the air of someone who suspects a trap he can’t see, “I’ll present your offer to the alderman.”

  That was less than reassuring, but she’d take a respite; a respite meant another round of negotiation—another shot at winning.

  “Wonderful,” she said again, and gave him a firm handshake on his way out. He looked a little concerned, a little glazed, and too late, Jo wondered if he’d brought a weapon.

  The door closed behind him.

  Jo rested a hand on the table for balance.

  Henry came up beside her, the whiskey bottle in his hand.

  “I thought you were bluffing before about Marlowe willing you the gig, but he picked the right man for the job. Those are decent tricks.”

  “I’m my father’s daughter,” said Jo.

  • • • • • •

  That night, as the crowd filed in, she felt as though she’d lost something.

  She checked inventory, but they were stocked. The bandstand showed up on time. Even Parker showed up close to midnight, in the same suit and a nicer tie.

  (She sat him at a table close to the dance floor on the far side of the room from the bar. A man who was dancing all night was a man who wasn’t keeping a close eye on volume.)

  Four times, she checked in with the boys at the door to see if they’d felt that any of the newcomers were plainclothes constables.

  It was near closing when she realized it was Lou she had been looking for.

  It was Lou, because for the last twenty years, if Jo had done something, terrible or not, Lou heard it first.

  Jo had been trying to tell Lou, all night.

  • • • • • •

  She went into the basement, took heavy breaths in the darkness for three minutes until it felt less like she was going to cave in.

  They won’t be there when you go back upstairs, she told herself sternly. Get ahold of this. They aren’t there, and you have a business to run, and you have to pull yourself together.

  (I’ve failed them all, she thought, and her throat closed tight. I marshaled them because I could, and now they’re gone and there’s nothing I can do, and that’s the reason that when I go back upstairs, everyone is going to be a stranger.

  I’m my father’s daughter, she thought, and she wanted Lou beside her, to lie and say it wasn’t so.)

  • • • • • •

  What really killed Jo about the Marquee was watching the crowd dancing eve
ry night.

  What killed her was her old, unbreakable habit of looking for sisters who weren’t there.

  She was relieved, most of the time, once she’d thought it over calmly.

  (She needed to think about it calmly once or twice a night, whenever the band struck up “Charleston Baby of Mine,” and she was flooded with the memory of them scrambling for the dance floor, Hattie and Mattie skipping at the front of the line with their arms already over their heads, and Jo had to blink carefully for a second until her eyes were clear.)

  It was for the best that they had scattered. If any of them ever showed up at the Marquee, it would be because they had run into trouble everywhere else and were willing to seek sanctuary in a place they’d been to only twice.

  As long as they were elsewhere in the world, then Jo could imagine that all ten of them had made it out all right and were enjoying their freedom in daylight hours, at long last.

  She hoped it was true. She liked to imagine them as a flock that made their way through the city and came to roost at sundown, together and happy.

  (Dance had only ever been meant as a way for them to pass the time, until the worst was over and they could surface. Jo hadn’t known, back then, how long the worst would last.)

  But even as she tried to believe they had all landed on their feet—they were clever, and the world couldn’t be any worse on them than their father had been—there was always the chance that something had gone wrong.

  There was always the gnawing fear that none of them would ever come here again, because one way or another, their father had gotten hold of them.

  That’s what killed Jo.

  twenty-three

  SOME OF THESE DAYS

  Jo called Three Willows one afternoon, asking if it was possible to speak to “Miss Hamilton.”

  It was not. Staff were not permitted to discuss patients of the institution.

  “I’m Mr. Hamilton’s secretary,” she tried, but whether he had warned the staff about it or their policies simply forbade it, it got her nothing, except a request to come in and make the request in person, if she was willing.

  (She was not.)

  • • • • • •

  “Henry,” she asked one afternoon as they were setting up, “if you had a sister and she had to run away, where would you want her to hole up?”