The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  “Back home,” Henry said.

  “Not helpful.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a big city. You can hide anywhere. A hotel, I suppose, if she had the money. Maybe boardinghouses, though they don’t give out names to strangers.”

  “How long would it take to go to them all?”

  Henry laughed like she’d been joking, and after a second, she smiled as if she really had been.

  • • • • • •

  At the end of her first week, a representative of the New York Police Department stopped by the Marquee to inspect operations and pick up the milk money.

  Jo had worried that she wouldn’t recognize an off-duty cop in this crowd—so many men looked edgy when they were underground.

  But when he appeared, Jo looked up and saw him and took the stairs smiling.

  “Officer Carson!”

  “Sergeant.”

  “Congratulations, then,” Jo said. “I remember when you were still manning the drunk tank and being kind to young ladies who had no one to call. You’ve moved up in the world.”

  Recognition dawned on his face, and he smiled.

  “So have you,” he said. He frowned, then said a moment later, “I mean, I hope.”

  Jo laughed, took his arm, and escorted him to the bar.

  She had no desire to discuss the past or the present with a cop (any cop, just in case), but it was good to cultivate kind people—you never knew when your alderman was going to turn sour and you would need a friend on the inside to let you know before the worst happened.

  But the milk money was behind the bar anyway, and it was just good business to make sure no valuable associate left still thirsty.

  • • • • • •

  She never moved out of the empty studio above the Marquee where she’d spent her only night with Tom.

  That one she tried not to think about; you can’t worry about everything, and she’d manage if it meant free room and board.

  Not that she was sleeping much. As things turned out, it was impossible to sleep well when you were used to eleven sisters around you, the floorboards and bed frames and rustling blankets making a little symphony that let you know you weren’t alone.

  • • • • • •

  Luckily, she was used to getting by on little sleep (who would have guessed her attic life had prepared her so well for employment of ill repute?).

  She was also used to spotting trouble just before it started, and putting out fires in short order.

  Once she saw a man who was getting too fresh for her liking, and she’d crossed the floor before she’d thought about it.

  “Who made you chaperone?” a guy asked, when she tapped him on the shoulder and told him to get his hands off the lady and get out.

  “She did,” Jo said. “Leave before I make you.”

  The girl was Elsie.

  Jo didn’t realize at first. Then she looked twice.

  She must have been staring; when Elsie said “Thanks,” she looked as nervous as she had with the handsy fella.

  Jo started to ask if her mother knew she was out on the town. But she wasn’t anyone’s general any more, and people had reasons for coming out nights.

  She only said, “Grab a drink at the bar. Tell him it’s on me.”

  She wiped her palms on her dress (left two wet spots near her hips), tried to shake it off.

  On her way to her office, Mr. Parker stopped her.

  “Didn’t realize you were running a boardinghouse,” he said.

  She half-smiled. “Sure thing,” she said. “I’m going out for a cig. If anyone else gets handsy, you just tell them to leave room for the Holy Spirit until I get back.”

  He watched her go.

  Outside, she looked up at the sky through the halo of the streetlights out in front.

  It was calm, and cooler here than inside with the press of bodies, and it was easier to sort things through.

  There was no harm in what she’d done. She had a business to run and couldn’t go getting sentimental, but all the same, no woman in this dance hall would get less than she’d given her sisters.

  Maybe someone was doing the same for Rebecca, somewhere, for the sake of this girl that she looked like.

  • • • • • •

  Jo stopped drinking.

  She started standing at the corner of Thirty-Eighth after the workshops let out, to scan faces.

  She started wearing black gloves at night.

  “I wish you’d tell me what the matter is,” Henry said, once. It was afternoon, and in the daylight he looked even younger, as blond and guileless as a prince in a play.

  “If wishes were horses,” she told him.

  He raised an eyebrow, said, “We’re low on champagne.” A little hesitation after it, some word he didn’t fill.

  (One of her sisters must have talked to Henry about her; whenever he was impatient with her, he called her General.)

  • • • • • •

  After dark, it felt like some magic kept the worst of the world at bay, and she was able to forget everything except the flow of the music, and the flow of the dance floor, and the flow of booze, and she presided over a room full of strangers every night.

  She saw girls who looked like her sisters. Every time a baby vamp came in with a dark bob and bright red lips and a string of fake pearls down her front, Jo checked twice, just to make sure it wasn’t one of the twins.

  Every time it wasn’t, she had to take a breath.

  Be clever, she thought, all the time, like the words flew out the door and into the streets. Be cleverer than I was.

  • • • • • •

  A few days later, Jo went to the post office near her old home (it was already her old home—it was somewhere she had lived a lifetime ago) and, as Mr. Hamilton’s private secretary, asked to see if there was any word from Lou.

  The man at the teller’s window looked at Jo a moment too long, asked too sweetly if Jo would wait just a moment before he disappeared.

  Jo knew by now what it sounded like when someone was going to turn you in.

  She vanished.

  • • • • • •

  It was her father’s best move yet, that he’d thought to warn even the post office against any stray women asking for letters. That little revenge cut her more than she’d thought he even could.

  (They had been at war, and she hadn’t realized; they’d been at war, and he was winning.)

  More than the idea that her sisters had run off in little knots and were working together to stay well, more than the idea that she was alone, it kept her awake at night to think that Lou might be trying to send some word or to beg for help and would never be answered.

  Three pairs of shoes were lined along an empty wall.

  • • • • • •

  After two weeks, Jo was wrapped up enough in her work that she could sometimes ignore the familiar knot in her stomach as long as the dance floor was moving smoothly and no one stood out more than the rest, as if the rise and fall of each bandstand set was a metronome she could time her worries to.

  (The waltz didn’t bother her much. Every Charleston, she ached.)

  Sophie’s white knight from the Kingfisher, Mr. Walton, made an appearance that week.

  Jo must have been more of a cipher than she’d thought, because she greeted him and guided him all the way to a table, and it was only when she asked what he was drinking that he recognized her.

  “You’re without your retinue,” he commented, after a hopeful glance around the room. “We’ve been missing them since the Kingfisher. Do they come here often?”

  She had a face she could hold up for things like this now, polite and still.

  (She wasn’t sure how fond Sophie was of Mr. Walton—she always seemed vaguely fond of everyone—and Mr. Walton seemed a little overfond of Sophie.)

  “Not for weeks,” Jo said, and tried to smile, “though I hope for them any day now.”

  That night, it hurt just to look
over the dance floor.

  • • • • • •

  Jo got used to dressing in an empty room, putting on makeup in the little mirror in the bath, so quiet that she could hear the beads on her dress as she moved.

  (Myrtle was making good use of her commission; Jo had a dozen dresses now, all her own, and three pairs of fine shoes, and earrings that clinked in the silent room when she lifted them up from a tray.

  But there were eleven ghosts that she always half-expected whenever she passed a window or a mirror or opened her closet too quickly and saw twelve dresses hanging, and that little heartbreak never faded.

  For weeks, she lived on champagne, and bread and cheese and fruit from the grocer down the street, and the thrill of working well in a place she’d never expected to see again, and the terror of not knowing what had happened to her sisters.

  (The terror fed her more than anything. She had taken to walking through the tenements downtown whenever she was out, peering up at girls on the fire escapes that looked too much like Sophie or Rebecca, ducking into every shop she passed just in case there was a familiar face behind the counter.

  She was wearing out shoes faster than she ever had when she was dancing.)

  But the Marquee opened every night, and the police hadn’t raided them, and the alderman hadn’t burned them out. Yet.

  If Jo felt like she was going to lose her mind from worry, she just had to make sure it wasn’t during business hours.

  It would be all right, she thought, if she could just keep from crumbling.

  Then Jake came to see her.

  • • • • • •

  Jo was developing a sixth sense for who was walking through the door—a benefit of a staircase that presented every entrant.

  It took away some of the romance of Tom coming to meet her the three nights she’d come here (watchfulness, nothing else) but made it easier to see when an old friend came to visit.

  He had the disadvantage, peering over the crowd as he took the stairs, but his sharp profile and slick dark hair stood out against the plaster walls, and she saw him all the way from the bandstand.

  She avoided the dance floor and took the stairs through the mezzanine, past tables scattered with gloves and hats and glasses (past the corner booth that always sat empty), and was at the bottom of the stairs before he reached them.

  Just seeing someone she knew robbed her, for a moment, of courage.

  His face was grim—he might be bringing bad news. He might be angry at her for being competition; he might be here to tell her the police were right behind him.

  As he caught sight of Jo, she moved forward to greet him like a businessman would.

  (It was the same way she’d met Carson, smiling and one hand out to shake, when you were still sizing each other up and deciding on your options.)

  But he came down the last two stairs in a rush and caught her up in a hug that surprised her so much that when he let her go again and stepped back, she still had her hand out to shake.

  “Hiya,” she managed.

  He smiled, but something behind it was too worried for it to stick. “God,” he said, “it’s good to see you doing all right.”

  (I’ve seen you look at Lou, she thought, this sort of nonsense will get you nowhere. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so—he looked, in this light, a little like Tom, and maybe it wasn’t fair to make fun of where someone’s heart was.)

  She said, “You, too. What’s happened?”

  “What makes you think something’s happened?”

  “It’s been a month,” she said. “Either something wonderful has happened that couldn’t wait, or you’re bringing me news you’d rather not.”

  Jake said, “Maybe it’s tricky to explain to your boss you want a night off to visit the competition, so you have to wait until everyone’s happy and the cops are off your case before you go sneaking around. Especially in a neighborhood that’s not always welcoming.”

  Jo made a face. “Point taken.”

  The staircase filled up for a moment as a little waterfall of people descended; Jo absently greeted two regulars, and realized she didn’t want to hear Jake’s news right here on the stairs.

  “Well,” she said when the others had passed, “as long as you’re risking it all, you should find out what the competition’s drinking. Bar’s this way.”

  He glanced down at her grip on his arm as she pulled them toward the back and then across the crowd to the bar, which was doing brisk business in between songs.

  “So this is how you run your place, manhandling your guests and getting them blotto?” He raised an eyebrow. “I approve.”

  “Not as much as you will,” she said, and flagged down Henry for two glasses of the good whiskey. It was expensive as hell but a step up from Canadian Club, and she kept it behind the bar just in case cops or old friends came calling.

  When she passed him his glass, he looked at her a moment too long. His eyes were dark and steady.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  A lot of things were changing, these days.

  “Josephine. Jo.”

  He nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

  “This way, smart aleck.”

  In the back office, she pulled up her chair, set down her glass, planted her hands, and waited.

  Jake tasted the whiskey, made an impressed face, and peered at the glass in the dim ceiling bulb.

  “Top-shelf stuff. Let me know if you ever need a bartender.”

  “For you, always.”

  He grinned. “Either I’m a fantastic bartender, or you’ve learned how to flatter people since you left the Kingfisher.”

  She didn’t answer. Too much had happened since she’d left the Kingfisher, and she’d played host as much as her nerves would let her. Now she needed the news.

  In this light, he sure looked like the bearer of bad tidings; he looked as if he’d aged ten years since she’d seen him that morning in the police station and he’d saved her hide.

  (It felt like ten years, to her.)

  “Jake,” she said finally, when he seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Be a pal.”

  He sobered and set down his glass.

  “Someone came to see me,” he said.

  Oh, God, oh God, the girls were in trouble.

  Her heart turned over, and her breath caught, and she pressed her hands into the desk so hard her fingertips hurt.

  When she trusted her voice she said, “Go on.”

  “I haven’t seen any of them,” he said at once, meeting her eye. “I’m coming to see you now because I couldn’t be sure this news was the right stuff. I tried to find out more, but I know so little about—” He stopped and frowned, as if surprised at his own frustration. “I just didn’t know what to do about any of it, and it was driving me batty not being able to find out.”

  Jo remembered the night he’d led a handful of them to safety, the look he’d given Lou when he thought no one could see.

  He went on. “I was only able to find out that Tom left town and there was some woman running his shop. The rest of it seemed so under the table I didn’t know what to do, until I could come see you myself.”

  There had, apparently, been no doubt that she was the woman running the place.

  “It’s still nothing much to go on.”

  She didn’t blame Jake for thinking this might all be something untoward—for fearing the worst, as his grim face gave way.

  Something terrible had happened. Oh God.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  twenty-four

  LUCKY DAY

  “Some man was asking for you,” Jake said.

  Jo couldn’t breathe. “What?”

  Jake said, “You, or any news of you. I didn’t know your name—well, yet—but I could guess who he meant. Not many people answer your description, not the way he gave it.”

  She could imagine.

  “He called you Jo.”

  She knew Jake was watching her, and she should
n’t give anything away, but she felt hope creeping in, all the same.

  “I wasn’t about to tell anything to some stranger,” he said, “but it struck me how sure he was that I would have heard from you already. I don’t know what to make of it. Said his name was Sam.”

  Jo had to wrap her hands around the edge of the seat to keep from screaming.

  Sam Lewisohn. Sam Lewisohn had been to see her.

  • • • • • •

  She didn’t even bother to change clothes. If what Jake had told her was true—if even half of it was true—what she was wearing wouldn’t matter.

  As soon as the floor was swept and the locks thrown, Jo was in a cab headed for the Lewisohns.

  Even though the streets were nearly empty this early in the morning, it felt as though the cab was crawling, and Jo pressed an open hand to the door as if to speed it forward.

  Every second was too long now.

  • • • • • •

  She didn’t know whether Doris was even with him any more, if she’d ever been with him, or if he’d seen any of the rest—he hadn’t said anything about the sisters to Jake.

  (She’d told Jake some of the facts—if he was going to be her friend in earnest, she owed him a little of the truth.

  “Sisters?” he’d repeated, and frowned, as if trying to reconcile the picture of twelve strange and disparate and near-magic girls swanning over the dance floor with the dull notion of sisters being brought one at a time into the fold. “You’ve had your hands full, then.”

  “Until a few weeks ago,” Jo agreed, and told him the bare bones of what had happened with their father.

  It had gratified her that Jake hadn’t laughed it off as an adventure, or suggested anything to her as though it would be simple enough for her to force her father’s hand if only she would speak to him sharply.

  Instead he’d said, “Then I hope he ends up taking a long walk off a short pier,” and Jo had smiled and said, “Me too.”

  Then she’d told him about Lou and Tom; that had been harder.)

  • • • • • •

  Jo tried not to hope. There was still every chance that her sisters were scattered and lost.