The Wicked City: A stunning love story set in the roaring twenties

by Beatriz Williams

  Well, naturally I didn’t. Lord Almighty, I was only seventeen! I had so little experience of the world outside the walls of that school. But—in the usual way of childhood advice—Sister Esme’s words return to me with new meaning as I slouch upon a metal bench in my cell at the Sixth Precinct, cheek by miserable jowl with the other female patrons of the Christopher Club that January midnight.

  Now, I don’t mean to startle you, but I’ve never landed in the pokey until tonight, though you might say the visit’s overdue. I guess the place is about what I expected. We’re a tawdry lot, sunk into nervy, silent boredom. Dotty’s chewing her nails; Muriel’s worrying a loop of sequins on her sleeve, such as it is. One girl, gaunt and ravishing, leans cross-armed against the damp concrete wall, staring right through the bars to the tomato-faced policeman on the chair outside. She’s too beautiful for him, and he knows it. Looks everywhere but her. I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her around. She’s wearing a shimmering silver dress, ending in a fringe, and her arms are white and bare and cold. Someone once told me she was Christopher’s girl, and I guess it might be true. Nobody ever bothers her for a smoke and a dance, for example. She sits by herself most nights at the end of the bar, staying up past bedtime, sipping cocktail after cocktail, trailing a never-ending cigarette from her never-ending fingers, disguising the color of her eyes behind ribbons of smoldering kohl. The kohl’s now smudged, but the smolder remains. Liable to ignite the poor cop’s tomato head any second. She gave her name as Millicent Merriwether—I pay close attention to these details, see—but then none of us told the booking rookie our genuine monikers. Where’s the fun in that? And I’ll be damned if this vamp is a Millie.

  There’s a clock on the wall, above Tomato-Head’s cap. A damned slow clock, if you ask me. For the past half an hour, I’ve amused myself in priming my nerves for every twitch of the minute hand, moving us sixty seconds farther into the morning, and each time I’m early. Each time I teeter on the brink, unable to breathe, thinking, Now! and Now! and Now! until finally the stinking hand moves. As amusements go, it’s a real gas. Millie the Vamp turns her head and regards me from the corner of one pitying eye. I shrug and resume my study. By the time three o’clock jumps on my spinal cord without any kind of notice from our hosts, without any sign at all that anyone’s left alive in the rest of the Sixth Precinct station house, I’ve had it. I call out to Tomato-Head.

  “I don’t guess a girl could bum a cigarette, if she asks nicely?”

  He makes this startling movement. Clutches his cap. Turns from tomato to raspberry.

  “No? I guess rules are rules.” I lift my hands and stretch, an act that creates an interesting effect on my décolletage, don’t you know. “I don’t mean to be a nuisance, officer, but I do have a breakfast appointment I’d rather not miss. And this fellow happens to prefer me scrubbed up and smiling, if you know what I mean.”

  Tomato-Head looks to the ceiling for relief.

  “Now, don’t be embarrassed. We’re just a mess of girls, here, the nicest girls in the world. It’s a shame, the way they turn honest girls into criminals these days, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, shut your flapper, Gin,” Dotty says crossly. “It ain’t his fault.”

  “No, of course not. Poor little dear. He’s just doing his job. Why, I’ll bet he’s seen the inside of a juice joint or two himself, when he’s not on duty. He doesn’t look like teetotal to me, no sir. He looks like the kind of fellow who enjoys a nice time on the town, likes to make a little whoopee—”

  “Says you.”

  “Don’t you think? A friendly-faced cop like that? I’ll bet he’s on our side.”

  “Him?”

  “Sure. Because why? Because it’s the first time the joint’s been raided, isn’t it? And Christopher’s been around since the start of the Dark Ages. So—”

  “Oh, give it up.”

  “So I say there’s a rat. A rat in the house. Somebody squealed, didn’t they? Hmm, officer?”

  Tomato-Head chews his lips and looks ashamed.

  “You see? Someone ratted Christopher out. I’ll bet it’s someone on the inside, too. I’ll bet—”

  Millie turns so fast, her fringed hem takes a minute to catch up. “Be quiet, Ginger, for God’s sake. You don’t know a thing.”

  In all the excitement, my legs have come uncrossed. I sit back against the wall and lift the right pole back over the left. Slide my arms back together over my cold chest. Bounce my shoe a little. Bounce, bounce. “Seems I’m right, then. The question is who.”

  She narrows her eyes until they just about disappear between the charcoal rims. Turns away and says, into thin air, “No. The question is whom.”

  “La-de-da. Someone’s got an education.”

  “So do you, Ginger. I’m just not ashamed to show it.”

  There’s the littlest emphasis on the word Ginger, which those of you born with fire in your hair will recognize. I consider the back of Millie’s neck, and the exact tender spot I’d stick a needle, if she were one of those voodoo dolls they sell in seedy little Harlem shops. Behind my shoulders, the wall is cold and rough and damp, and the air smells of mildew. Our guard yanks a packet of cheap cigarettes from his breast pocket and starts a smoke. The brief illumination of the match scorches my eyes. Three oh four. Ticktock. As the familiar scent of tobacco drifts across my teeth, the eyelids start to droop. The vision of Millie’s pale, smooth neck starts to blur. Not ashamed to show it, Ginger. Not ashamed, Ginger. Ginger. GINGER!

  An elbow cracks my ribs.

  “Ginger! Jesus! Wake up, will you?”

  I straighten off somebody’s shoulder. Adjust my jaw. Blink my eyes. Test my bones for doneness. You know how it is.

  “Ginger Kelly?” A man’s voice, a man from Brooklyn or someplace.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Tell that to the judge,” Brooklyn replies, and the next thing I know the keys jingle-jangle, the cell clangs open, the handcuffs go snap around my wrists, and let me tell you, when a girl hears that much metal rattling around in her neighborhood, she’d better start sending up every prayer the nuns ever taught her, sister, because the devil’s at the door and the Lord don’t care.

  6

  MY THOUGHTS turn to Billy as this uniformed meathead drags me down the corridor, past this cell and that cell, contents murky and unknown. I wonder where they put the poor boy, whether they let him off because he’s a Marshall, whether he’s frantic about me now. Of course he is. That’s the kind of fellow he is. Dear Billy-boy. I guess I shouldn’t feel this kind of regret; after all, I didn’t exactly lead him blindfolded down the path of debauchery. Debauchery found him before I did. That first kiss wasn’t his first, and he knew one end of a martini glass from the other. Still. But for me, he might have spent the evening in the convivial atmosphere of his eating club, idly debating such innocent matters as the blackballing of unsuitable freshers and the prospects of the Tiger baseball team for the season upcoming, instead of getting himself arrested for consumption of Gin.

  But no lovesick voice wails my name—either real or assumed—as I stumble past the cages of the Sixth Precinct station house, and when we reach the stairs at the end of the corridor I conclude I’m simply sola, perduta, abbandonata. The old story. The stairs lead rightward up to the booking desk, but Officer Brooklyn turns left instead, opening a metal door with a metal key, and the sharp garbage breath of a late January alleyway strikes my nose like a billy club.

  “Say! What’s the big idea?” I demand, but Brooklyn takes no notice, just tightens his paw around my bare upper arm and hauls me up the steps to alley level, where a black sedan rattles and coughs next to the sidewalk, rear door open, exhaust clouding the atmosphere in a great gasoline fog.

  And you’ll forgive me for hoping that the dear, familiar head of my Billy-boy will pop free from the smoke of that backseat—the final death of my native optimism is still some weeks away—but there’s only room for two on the
leather bench, and Brooklyn, pushing me inside, clambers in right behind me. Go, he grunts, and the tires squeal and the car lurches from the curb, and my forehead hits the front seat, and nobody says Sorry or even You all right? Nobody offers me a cigarette or an overcoat. We just zigzag down the frozen, bitter streets of the Village, straightening out at Fourteenth Street, while my teeth chatter and my brain aches, and a thousand smart remarks rise to my lips. I bite them all back, of course, because for one thing I can tell Officer Brooklyn hasn’t got the intellect to appreciate them, and for another—well, anyway. I merely observe aloud that we seem to be headed to the Hudson River piers—obvious enough—and Brooklyn grunts something or other that might mean Yes or else Shut your yap, and silence reoccupies the cab, except for the hum of the engine and the steam of our breath. I sit back and make myself small against the cold. When we slam to a stop outside a rusty tenement at Tenth Avenue and Twenty-Second Street, I permit myself a tick of triumph. You can hear the shouts of the stevedores, the busy clang of ocean liners obtaining coal and stores. If I’m not mistaken, those three black-tipped funnels over there, finding the moon above the triangular tips of the Chelsea docks, belong to the great RMS Majestic herself. Bound for England tomorrow morning. Lucky bitch.

  But for now. The tenement. That’s my real concern, because Officer Brooklyn is opening the door and dragging me across the seat to the crumbling sidewalk outside, and those sallow brick walls aren’t looking any more inviting on second glance. An old saloon occupies the ground floor, windows all boarded up, and a few piles of hardened gray slush decorate the flagstones outside. My pretty shoes slide right out from under me. I don’t think Brooklyn even notices; he just carries my weight on the slab of his right arm as I glissade across the granite. Behind us sounds the imperative whistle-chug of a New York Central steam engine, hauling freight up the middle of Tenth Avenue. He doesn’t notice that, either. Just bangs on the door next to the boarded-up saloon until it opens.

  “Oh, no,” I say. “Not on your life.”

  Brooklyn turns his head at last. He’s not a pretty fellow, our Brooklyn, all jaw and no forehead, eyes like a pair of walnuts begging for a nutcracker. Shoulders about to burst from a plain uniform-type navy overcoat. The raw color of his nose and cheeks suggests either excessive cold or excessive whiskey, though you can’t rule out both. Or even possibly some kind of emotion. Those walnut eyes goggle almost out of his skull, and who can blame him? I’m about half his size, a third his weight. My hands are cuffed at the back, and I can’t feel my toes.

  “I bite, you know,” I add.

  Brooklyn shakes his head and pulls me through the doorway. A sign flashes by, one of those brass plaques, sort of tarnished, but you don’t stop to read plaques when someone’s hauling you into a tenement to commit the Lord only knows what foul crimes on your person. Your mind spins, your stomach lurches. Your eyes fasten instead on inconsequential details, like the rough woolen texture of Brooklyn’s sleeve, and the overlapping pattern of scuffs on his brown shoes, and the worn-out sway in the center of each step, right where your foot goes, and the cold, moldy smell of the joint. You think, Damn it, this might be my last sight on earth, why can’t I find something beautiful? As if it matters. And all those taxis and fancy private automobiles will be lining up in the dawn smoke, one by one, to disgorge humanity onto the gangplanks of the goddamned Majestic, and no one will notice the item in the newspapers the next day, about a woman found dead in a Tenth Avenue tenement: some kind of prostitute, the detectives believe, and from the state of the corpse she must have put up a good fight.

  Because I will, by God. Put up a good fight. I’m putting up a fight right now, kicking and biting, deboning my limbs such that I slither momentarily from the shelf of Brooklyn’s arm, only to be scooped up again and hauled into oblivion. But there’s nothing to bite except wool and glove, nothing to kick that actually notices it’s been kicked. We swing around the landing and up another flight, and I’m breathless now, panting and jabbering, while the stained walls slide past, the color of misery, lurid bare electric bulbs, linoleum hallway, door thrown open by muscular hand, Gin thrown inside, toe catching on edge of Oriental rug, crash splat. Voice like a hurricane. “What the devil, Bulow? She’s not a sack of grain.”

  “She’s a damned hellcat. Bit my cheek.”

  “I expect you deserved it.”

  Have you ever donned a narrow dress and metal handcuffs, laid yourself out flat on a beery Oriental rug, and then tried to rise? Well. It’s not as easy as it sounds, believe me. All the dignity of an eel on a hook. Still. I’ve just about got my knees under me when a pair of hands clamps around the joints of my shoulders and lifts me straight into the air and back down on my feet. Spins me around, demands a key from Brooklyn. Brooklyn delivers, though his face suggests he’d rather swallow it whole. Seems he’s right, I did bite his cheek. What do you know. Fresh, new blood trickles to his jaw. The handcuffs loosen. Brooklyn steps back and folds his arms across his three-foot chest. I hate to boast, but he does look sort of mauled. Nasty scratch on the side of his neck. I stretch my wrists and wriggle my nerveless fingers and turn to face his boss, whose face bears down on mine like a mountainside. Not that I’m the kind of girl who backs down from mountains. Not me.

  I tap his chin with a schoolmarm finger.

  “Tarzan. I had a hunch you were up to no good.”

  7

  THE FIRST thing Tarzan does is return to his desk and press some kind of button. Then he rests one haunch on the desk, folds his hands together, and asks me if I want coffee. I say why not. Door opens, feminine voice makes inquiry. Coffee for Miss Kelly, please. Door closes. No word from Brooklyn; maybe he’s gone.

  Tarzan gestures stage left. “Please sit down, Miss Kelly. I expect you’re exhausted.”

  “No, thanks. I’d rather stand.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Quite. Is this your office? I love what you’ve done with the place. All those padded armchairs and old masters. And that thrilling modern wallpaper! Or have you got a leak?”

  “It’s a place of employment, not a parlor.”

  “Oh, employment! I’m glad you mentioned it. What exactly is your line of work, Mr. Tarzan?”

  “My name is Anson.”

  “Mr. Anson.”

  “And my job, put simply, is to intercept the illegal transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors.”

  “Lord Almighty. You’re a Revenue agent.”

  He shrugs.

  “Well, that’s a relief. I can confidently say that you’ve got the wrong girl, Agent Anson. I’m more in the consumption line, if you know what I mean. Transportation and sale is not my concern.”

  “Not at the moment, maybe,” he says, “but it will be.”

  “Now, see. That’s just exactly what I didn’t want you to say.”

  “Your choice, of course. But I do hope you’ll help us. Good, here’s the coffee.”

  Thank the Lord for the pause that ensues. Allows me to haul in my breath, corral the runaway gallop of my heartbeat. Wipe my palms on my sequins while everyone’s turned to the poor young secretary in the navy suit and cream blouse who carries in the coffee on an old enamel tray, the kind your parents might have brought out to entertain callers in a more civilized age. As it turns out, Brooklyn hasn’t left the room after all. He’s taken a chair near the door, a poor spindly thing that shudders under his weight. (The chair, I mean, not the door.) I take my cup—cream, one lump—and carry it to the seat I refused earlier, which looks as if it were bought cheap from the shuttered saloon downstairs.

  “Are you cold, Miss Kelly?” Anson asks as the door closes behind the minion.

  “Not at all.”

  “You look blue.”

  “I’m just mad.”

  He removes his jacket, walks around behind me, swings the old thing over my shoulders. I consider shrugging it off, just on principle, but a jacket like that trumps any principle you care to possess. Wholesome silk lining, se
nsuous warmth, scent of shaving soap. Is there anything more delicious than a gentleman’s wool coat cloaked around your shoulders? Even when the gentleman’s not yours.

  “Why are you angry?” he asks, returning to the desk.

  “Let me count the ways.”

  He casts a cool look in Brooklyn’s direction. “I apologize for my methods.”

  “As you should. I’m bruised all over. I’d show you where, if I weren’t a lady.”

  “But aside from the physical harm—”

  “Oh, aside from little old that—”

  “I had no choice. I couldn’t just ask you to come of your own free will. You wouldn’t have agreed, for one thing, and frankly I needed a little of what the financiers call leverage.”

  “Leverage?”

  He places a thumb next to the corner of his mouth and brushes away an imaginary something-or-other. “Mr. Marshall.”

  “Billy! What have you done with Billy?”

  “He’s not in any danger. Not at the moment, anyway.”

  “You’ve got no right. He’s as innocent as a lamb.”

  “A lamb. And you, Miss Kelly? Are you innocent as a lamb?”

  “I have the feeling you already know the answer to that. I’m as innocent as the next girl, I guess.”

  Anson gives the ceiling some mature consideration.

  “Now, see here, Mr. Anson. We both know you’ve got no business persecuting a working girl like me for taking a sip or two of this and that. I’m not the crook. It’s those gangsters out there on the Lincoln Highway in the middle of the night, it’s that hillbilly with a dozen stills blowing off the roof of his barn—”

  Snap go the fingers of Anson’s right hand. “Is that so, Miss Kelly? Hillbillies? What do you know about hillbillies?”

  I could swear the lightbulb flickers in its socket above my head. But maybe it’s just the lightbulb going off inside my head, the Jesus Mary, Gin, you dumb cluck! hollering up from my unconscious mind: the part of your head that does all your best thinking, everybody says. Too late now. Outside the window, New York lies nice and quiet, the dark night speckled with various pinpricks of human activity, of people not giving a damn what happens here in this room at this particular hour of the twenty-four. A few feet away, Anson’s granite face stares and stares, no expression whatsoever, calm as you please.