The Trouble Girls

by E. R. Fallon

  She’d been a little surprised the boss hadn’t wanted to meet her before, but she had assumed that Vito was high up enough in the organization that his word was good enough for the boss.

  “You have nothing to worry about, Camille,” the boss continued. “But I’m not going to get rid of Vito—unless he does come to me to try to convince me to disconnect my relationship with you and proves he’s a no-good rat—but you won’t be having any interaction with him from now on. I heard you know Billy; he can be your go-between.”

  Although Billy was a temptation she would probably never get over, he was better than dealing with Vito.

  Camille thanked the boss and he told her to ring him ‘anytime.’ She left the payphone and ran to meet Johnny. She knew she was late, and by the time she arrived at the bar, she had perspired so much that when she touched her eyes, she could see her mascara had bled. From the outside window she spotted Johnny having a drink at the bar. All the time she’d been with Johnny, she’d rarely seen him touch a drink, and she’d been a little surprised when he asked her to meet him there, but he’d explained that the place was owned by a Cuban couple and popular with his friends.

  Camille entered and kissed Johnny’s cheek at the bar. Inside it was packed with customers and lively with music and the sounds of glasses clinking.

  “Hi, beautiful,” he said and embraced her from his seat.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she told him, and luckily, despite the bar being crowded, there was a place next to him, so she sat down.

  “It’s no problem at all,” Johnny said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Camille realized then that she didn’t want to lose him. She wouldn’t tell him the secret tonight, and she knew that the longer she put it off, the more likely she wouldn’t tell him, but she couldn’t risk losing him. Keeping the secret had started to weigh her down and as she sat at Johnny’s side, her body rocked with guilt.

  “What would you like to drink?” he asked her, snapping her out of it.

  “Scotch and soda, thanks,” Camille said with a forced smile.

  Johnny was drinking a cola. He signaled the bartender and ordered Camille a drink.

  She started to explain to him why she was late.

  “I guess you could say I’m in with the Italians now,” she told him. “They’ve chosen me over the McCarthys.”

  Johnny beamed at her. “That’s great news,” he said. “You’re really good at this gangster stuff, better than me, I think.” He gave her another smile.

  “If you ever want to work with them, let me know. I can help you since I have an in with them.”

  To her surprise, Johnny said, “That would be great, thanks.” Many men would have shirked the offer for help, but not Johnny.

  “Though, I have to ask, because you’ve got me curious, and I know that they were with the McCarthys for a long time—how did you manage to accomplish all of this?” Johnny asked her.

  “My stepfather helped me,” Camille admitted, though she disliked giving Vito credit.

  “Right, he does work for them,” Johnny said.

  The bartender set Camille’s drink in front of her and she sipped. She noticed that Johnny didn’t order another drink despite being finished with his first.

  “And Billy helped me also,” she told him when the bartender left to tend to another customer.

  “Billy, your ex?” Johnny asked, and he seemed surprised.

  Camille nodded. “That’s right. I only found out that he had something to do with it when he came to see me and told me.” She didn’t want anyone telling her who she could and couldn’t speak to, and so she hoped Johnny would be understanding.

  Johnny’s posture tensed and he stared at his empty glass. “He came to your apartment when you were alone?”

  “Yes,” Camille said.

  “I thought you weren’t friendly with him,” Johnny said, looking at her now.

  “I’m not. We aren’t.”

  “But he feels entitled enough to go to your apartment. That’s bold of him,” Johnny said to her as though he disliked the thought.

  “Are you jealous?” Camille asked, setting her drink on the bar. It was becoming difficult to hear Johnny over the noise.

  “I am,” Johnny admitted and then he smiled, and she knew they were okay.

  “You have no need to be,” Camille assured him. “What Billy and I had is gone. I didn’t ask him to help orchestrate the deal with his boss, I just found out that he had when he stopped by. Nothing happened between us, and nothing will happen. I love you.”

  Johnny turned to her and held her hand. “And I love you.”

  Hearing the words gave her pleasure, but her guilt increased. You might not love me if you knew the truth.

  “Are you worried about what the McCarthys will do?” Johnny asked her.

  “There’s only Violet now.”

  “But she’s got men.”

  “I’ve thought about what she might do to me, yeah, but I’m not afraid of her.”

  “You should be,” Johnny told her. “I’m worried about you. Violet and her mother are very dangerous.”

  “I know they are,” Camille said. “But if I’m going to be in this business, I can’t think about that.”

  “I don’t want to lose you,” Johnny said.

  “You won’t,” Camille told him, but she thought of her mother losing her father and how her present situation reflected that. “I worry about you in the same way, but I’ve accepted who you are. I’m a trouble girl, Johnny, a gang girl, and if you’re going to be with me, you’ll have to accept that.”

  25

  Violet stood outside the ruins of the pub with Max at her side. The fire and smoke had long since dissipated and all that remained was a burned-out skeleton of what had once been the lively McBurney’s, and piles of ash around it. Violet had been at home with Tommy when the news broke of the fire and Max came by her apartment to tell her. Max had stayed with Tommy and she ran straight there in her bathrobe.

  “I’m glad no one was inside when it happened,” she told Max now. “Something could have happened to someone. Something could have happened to Tommy.” Her voice shook with anger at the thought.

  “Yeah, and it’s a good thing your mother wasn’t in the apartment.” The apartment above the pub had also been destroyed.

  “I’m glad she isn’t here to see this.”

  “Will you tell her what happened?”

  Violet nodded. “I’ll have to, when I visit her again. She’ll be devastated.”

  “Of course, she will be. It’s been in her family for a long time. What did the police tell you?”

  “You know how they don’t like us, but they told me they were investigating it as arson. They also said that cases like this are very hard to prove so we shouldn’t hold our breath. None of this would have happened if the guys had just left the Cubans alone. I asked them why they did it, and did they know the risk? You know what they told me? They said that they didn’t like that guy hanging out in their section and that he gave them a funny look. Some of them are quite hot headed so I’m not surprised they beat a guy for giving them a funny look. But do you know who I am surprised at? Jake. He had to go and kill that guy and cause a huge headache for me.”

  Max murmured in agreement. “It’s a good thing you kicked him out,” he told her. “And thank God he is gone from this earth.”

  She’d removed Jake from the gang for killing Pedro. It wasn’t easy to get pushed out of the McCarthy gang, but Jake had exceeded her limits. As far as Jake being gone from this earth, the night after Violet got rid of him, he had drunk himself to death and was found in front of a pub the next morning.

  “The Cubans—do you think they’ll retaliate?” Max asked her.

  Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. I would think that they wouldn’t want to start a war. Jake’s dead. Perhaps we’re even now and nothing will happen. I can only hope, right?” She gave Max a smile and he patted her back.

  “You have
a lot of strength, Violet, just like your mother and your grandfather.”

  “You sound like you don’t know how I can keep going after everything that’s happened,” Violet told him.

  “I did wonder,” Max said.

  Camille was encroaching fast on her territory, and now had the Italians on her side and Violet had lost control of the neighborhood gambling ring to her.

  “I did consider eliminating her after I found out,” Violet told Max. “But I figured she would be expecting me to, and I’d rather strike her when she isn’t prepared. Doing so would be risky, since the cops are watching us. If I get rid of her, they might catch me, and I don’t want Tommy to lose me.”

  “I could do it,” Max offered.

  “Thanks, Max,” she said, embracing him. “But they’re watching you, too, and I don’t want you to have to clean up after me. Camille’s my problem, and if I take a risk and she dies, I’ll be the one to do it.”

  “The police have to know about the drama in the neighborhood, perhaps they’ll start paying attention to Camille.”

  “Maybe, but it would take years for them to do anything, like it took years for them to finally get my mother.”

  “She isn’t going to stop, Violet. You’re gonna have to deal with her sooner or later. She’s like her father, once she digs in, she doesn’t give up.”

  “She hates you more than me,” she told Max. “Because of what you did to her father.”

  “I know that, and every time I’m out on the street, I’m always looking behind my shoulder.”

  “And to think that my mother wasn’t that concerned about her. But I agree with you, she’s dangerous. The new union leader of the dockworkers, is in her pocket now, thanks to the Italians.”

  “You still have me and the guys,” Max said, patting her back again.

  A woman stopped walking to ask Violet how she was.

  “Hey,” Max said when the woman left, “Lots of people in the neighborhood have been asking me how they can help you rebuild the pub,” he said, as though to take her mind off the dire situation. “What should I tell them?”

  “I’m not sure if there’s enough money to rebuild. Camille’s taking everything I have.”

  “Maybe we could raise money,” Max suggested.

  But Violet didn’t want to think about that right then, all she could think about was Camille and how the law enforcement keeping a close eye on her meant she couldn’t do anything yet—unless she wanted to risk it all. And maybe soon she would.

  It distracted her so much that she hardly spoke to Sam when he took her out to dinner that evening while Max stayed with Tommy. Tommy still didn’t like Sam, so she couldn’t bring him with her, and she didn’t know what she’d do without Max. Sam knew about the fire, and he had even offered to help her pay to rebuild the pub, but she couldn’t accept that kind of money from a man she was merely dating, she didn’t want to be tethered to him in that way, so she’d declined.

  “Are you all right?” Sam asked her when they were halfway through sharing the chocolate dessert that he had eaten most of.

  “How can you ask me that?” Violet replied in exasperation. Sam knew everything, he knew about the pub, and he knew about Camille taking control, because if Violet was going to be with Sam, she would have to be honest with him, and so far, he had accepted what she’d told him. Max had said that he must have really liked her not to have been frightened away by her gangster lifestyle.

  “I’ll get the check when the time comes,” Sam said, as though he thought that was why she was concerned, because they usually split the check.

  “No, you don’t have to pay for everything, let me help.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, as though she was broke, and while she wasn’t, she was edging towards being that, thanks to Camille.

  “I have to have some pride left,” she said.

  Sam nodded, though he looked unsure, and Violet sighed. She would find a way to pay for everything, including her mother’s expensive lawyer, but things had never been tight for her before and she didn’t know what to do, really. It angered her because she imagined that Camille would have a plan if she was in the same situation, as Camille was more accustomed to the school of hard knocks. Violet’s mother hadn’t sheltered her from the gang lifestyle, but she had sheltered her from poverty.

  “How’s Tommy?” Sam asked after a moment, as though he disliked where their prior conversation was heading.

  Tommy. Violet was preoccupied with much these days, but she thought of him often, whenever she wasn’t around him. And, thank God, Max had stepped up to help her with Tommy in her mother’s absence. He was like a father to her, and a grandfather to her son. What would happen to Tommy at the end of all of this? She knew that often it was the families who ended up being hurt the most in gang wars, because they were left to survive after everyone else was gone.

  Sam hadn’t seen Tommy since the day her mother had been arrested, and Tommy was perfectly fine with that as he’d been quite vocal about his dislike of Sam. He had loved Anton. But not Sam. It figured, because Violet really liked Sam, not quite loved him, but she liked him a lot.

  “He’s doing well,” Violet said, when times had been tough for her son, with his father’s death and then his grandmother imprisoned. And then the pub, which was like both of their second home, gone. “Considering,” she added, “everything that’s been happening.”

  “I meant it when I offered to help you rebuild the pub. I make all this money and it might as well be put to good use.”

  Violet knew he was trying to be kind, but his words rubbed her the wrong way, because she was tight on money and he wasn’t, and she resented him for that.

  “I don’t need you to pay for everything for me, Sam.” She needed to take out her frustration on someone, and she couldn’t take it out on Tommy or Max, or her crew, who needed her to convey optimism, so Sam was the easiest target.

  “Okay,” Sam said, a little blunter than she would have expected. “Do you have a plan for how you’re going to rebuild? I’m assuming the pub was a large part of your income.”

  Suddenly, she imagined the kind of life that Sam wanted them to have: suburban and clean, with retirement savings, and a college fund for Tommy. He wanted them to be like an ‘ordinary’ couple, and a part of Violet wanted that as well, but she almost laughed at the table. Underneath the surface her life had always been chaotic and complicated, and that was all coming up now, because although her mother might have been able to shield her from the reality of the criminal life they led, she now faced it head on.

  “The pub was a front for illegal activities,” she told Sam in a raised voice. When people at the other tables turned to see who was shouting, her face heated and she lowered her voice. “It was used for that ever since my grandfather’s day. It’s not my main source of income. Camille O’Brien is taking my main sources of income. Remember when I mentioned that she is moving in on the neighborhood?”

  Recently, after the pub fire, she had finally told him what Camille was doing, briefly, and she explained why the pub being gone wasn’t her sole problem. But she didn’t tell him the whole story, which was why Camille was doing it in the first place.

  “Why is she doing this to you, anyway?” Sam asked her now, and Violet saw that it was her chance to explain, but she didn’t want her family to appear more tainted or wicked in Sam’s eyes, so she replied:

  “I don’t know why. We used to be on pretty friendly terms.” Truthfully, she didn’t want to entangle Sam any more than she already had, she wanted to protect him. “Believe me, the less you know, the better,” she said when it seemed like Sam would ask her again.

  “I’ll admit I don’t know much about your business,” Sam said, and his endearing way made her smile. “But can’t you ask her if she wants to work with you?”

  Violet shook her head. Then she noticed Sam had finished the dessert, but she didn’t want much of it anyway. “No, she doesn’t want that. My mother’s in priso
n, so she’s out of the picture. Now Camille wants me gone. She wants to take over the neighborhood.”

  “Do you mean, she wants to start a war with you?” Sam asked, and his expression turned worried.

  “Possibly, yes.”

  “That’s serious,” Sam said. “Maybe you should go to the police.”

  “The police? We don’t go to the police. We handle it our own way.”

  “What do you mean, Violet?”

  She didn’t want to tell him what she meant, because she meant violence, if needed.

  “This doesn’t concern you, Sam. It shouldn’t concern you. This is just the way things have always been, and always will be.”

  “I am concerned, because I care about you.”

  “You said you understood, Sam, when I explained what being with somebody like me meant.”

  “I’m trying to understand but I don’t like what I’m hearing.”

  Violet shrugged. “It’s the way it is.” She’d grown up in the lifestyle, and Sam hadn’t been exposed to it until he met her, and she knew she should have been patient with him, but she didn’t have patience anymore.

  “Why does this Camille woman dislike you so much?” Sam asked as he signaled the waiter for the check. “There must be a reason.”

  “She has one, but we shouldn’t discuss it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to at the moment.” Violet paused and he frowned. “She has a vendetta of sorts,” Violet said without elaborating, to get him to cease asking her.

  “What does she look like?” Sam asked.

  “Why?”

  “I might have seen her around the neighborhood.”

  “She’s younger than me, tall and pretty, but tough looking.”

  “I’ve probably seen her, but, of course, I wouldn’t have known it was her.” He paused for a moment. “So, what are you going to do about the pub?” he asked, as though he didn’t wish to discuss Camille anymore, and neither did she.