The Paragon Hotel Read online

  I thrash. He wrenches my neck, so I hear rather than see the remaining witnesses slip-snick their doors shut.

  This lot clearly possesses the usual prostitutes’ keen eye for self-preservation.

  “No respectable woman would ever spend her time studying niggers, so lucky for you to have met the likes of me, isn’t it?” he growls tenderly as he propels us toward a room where we can still see a sliver of lamplight shining. “Because I know you’re no respectable woman. So I can give you exactly what you want.”

  Officer Overton isn’t particularly large. But he’s hard as a rope keeping a freighter tethered dockside, and as I try to bite and thrash and shout through my nose, I begin to fight not just my attacker. I’m fighting an instinct born in me a long time ago.

  You’re not even here, so he can’t hurt you. Just be Nobody.

  Nobody at all.

  He throws me on the bed. The ceiling has a crack, and Portland’s habitual weather beads along it like the liquid welling from a knife wound. Overton stands over me, not even bothering to shut the door, his hands are on his belt, and my vision is tunneling. There’s an oil lamp here, I can smell it.

  If he gets close enough, I can set him on fire.

  If he gets close enough, I can kick him where it counts.

  If he—

  “Step away from her, Officer Overton, or there’s going to be a tunnel where your nose used to live.”

  He turns with his pants undone, a snarl on his lips.

  Blossom stands in the doorway. She’s breathing hard—from running, not from fear. Her arm trembles the way a pool’s surface does when a breeze passes over it. That’s not from fear either, though. It’s from illness and outrage and aiming the Remington over-under double-barreled derringer she’s holding.

  “There you are,” Overton jeers. Or he attempts to. “It was never any good, you realize, pretending you didn’t know your way around the second floor.”

  “Gracious, certainly, I have plenty of girlfriends up here who like to sit over a hot cocoa at five in the morn.” Blossom’s tone is as chiseled as her features. “I am sorry over any confusion. Now, back away from Miss James. Whatever . . . tour of the Rose’s Thorn you were treating her to has reached its denouement. Come to that, what was this exactly? A touch of theatrics to really give her the full panorama? What a truly remarkable soul you are, I’ve always said so. We’ll be going now.”

  Overton bares his teeth like a hyena. “Supposing I decide she stays? Supposing I decide you both do?”

  “But I really don’t think you will, honey,” Blossom purrs. She holds her left hand out and I make my way over to it.

  “You watch your sass with me or I’ll burn that whole disgusting monkey house of yours to the ground,” the policeman grates.

  “You watch yours,” she replies serenely, “or I’ll blow your fucking head off. The river’s still exquisitely cold this time of year, but you wouldn’t care about that if we did it my way.”

  She’s won—it crackles in the room like a thunderstorm, and I drop her hand.

  “Well, in that case, you girls will want to be getting on back to the Paragon Hotel before the weather gets any worse.” Overton produces a serrated smirk. “There’s some swells already, hefty swells, and I’d hate to see you capsized.”

  “I really think you would too,” Blossom murmurs.

  We’re almost to the threshold when Overton calls, “Oh, what’s this about that half-breed kid going missing? Heard it from the chief himself we were to keep an eagle eye out.”

  He is, at long last, doing up his pants as he asks this. Taking his leisure about it, adjusting for comfort.

  For the first time since leaving Harlem, I wish Mr. Salvatici were here.

  Overton coughs, adjusts his cuffs. “I want to be the one to find him, you know. I’d take special care with him.”

  For a dragging moment, I think Blossom is actually going to shoot the wretch. And I’m fully ready to roll up sleeve and tip him into the waters of forgetfulness with her.

  She turns instead and walks away, and I follow.

  By the time we make it to the foyer, we’re as drained as hourglasses. I’m about to ask someone to send for Mr. Lucius Grint when a gentle hand touches my shoulder.

  “Alice?” It’s Gregory, lips tightly knotted. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Gregory, yes, I . . . there was the nastiest argument! I’m sorry to have abandoned you, and when you were so nice.”

  “Well, never mind, I’m a grown man, aren’t I? Have you gone and changed your hair? It already looked swell, but this is nifty too. Miss Fontaine, isn’t it? I’m Gregory Churchill.”

  “Charmed, Mr. Churchill,” Blossom manages.

  “An argument, huh?” He cocks a pair of elbows and we take them gratefully. “I’ll have you in a boat quick as blinking.”

  The ferries await like patient dogs. As soon as they spy Blossom, there’s a general hubbub, but she selects one with her usual aplomb and my dancing partner soon has us handed safely aboard. The fact I’ll probably never see him again shouldn’t cut so deep. But he’s like Max, the cape-in-the-gutter-to-spare-a-lady’s-shoes sort, and that makes whatever fragmented Nobody I am want to hunker down for a hot pillow-drenching session.

  “Beg pardon, but I saw you in San Francisco once, Miss Fontaine. You were incredible,” he says, saluting to shield his vision from the rain. “I never forgot it.”

  “Oh, how kind,” she answers dully. “I never have either, you know.”

  We’re safely back to the western shore, our arms tight around each other and the rain running down our cheeks like fresh tears, before we speak again.

  “How did you find me?” I ask.

  “Lucius said you’d be in my dressing room.” She wipes the precipitation from her throat. “You weren’t. My heart, I swear, it stopped. Overton was negotiating for me to go upstairs, you see. He does that every few months, threatens to shut the Rose’s Thorn down if I don’t. Lucius always wriggles out of it—the man is terribly nimble for a gopher. Anyhow. When I didn’t find you, I knew what had happened. I can’t apologize enough.”

  “You can’t apologize once,” I object firmly.

  “Thank Christ for firearms. I only hope that this will deter him for good.”

  “If it doesn’t, I’ll help you. I’ll be there with you,” I vow.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I simply abhor waste, Alice,” she replies as she pulls herself away from me and continues up the electrically glinting slope alone.

  ◆ Fifteen ◆

  THEN

  The true, authentic Mafioso almost invariably behaves modestly, speaks with restraint and similarly listens with restraint, and displays great patience; if he is offended in public he does not react at all but kills afterward.

  —ANGELO VACCARO, “La mafia,” in Rivista d’Italia, Rome, 1899

  You know I ain’t one for signs or prepositions, Miss James. I ain’t cuckoo. You’s being escorted as per the usual by a flat-footed guy, one with boots on solid pavement.”

  “Were you any sturdier, you would be a shoehorn,” I assured Officer Harry Chipchase. “But why say you?”

  “’Cause I’s got a real bad feeling about this.”

  Harry Chipchase had a bad feeling about most aspects of everyday life. Ominous winds. Stock fluctuations. Sunrises.

  But this time, I did too. Puffing my breath into my cheeks, I made a hearty show of trying to twist out of Harry Chipchase’s grip. My uniformed guardian bellowed into the balmy August night, plentiful why-I-oughtas and I-swear-to-Christs, and everyone who’d been looking at us ceased, bored. Just a copper and his captive headed to the station house in 1917. And since I was dressed in plain pressed homespun and bellyaching, I probably deserved it.

 
“Quitcher wiggling or I’ll bruise you for reals, kid,” Harry complained.

  “You won’t either. Buck up, Harry old chum, we mustn’t succumb to depression.”

  Harry Chipchase was on the graft, and for a dozen years loyal to Mr. Salvatici, which made him a bosom companion of your humble servant. He had a retired boxer’s physique, soft padding with a hard center, and a busted-up nose forever politely suggesting that we turn left. And he was paid extravagantly—mainly to follow me or to plant evidence or better still, to make evidence go away. I found the combination of a regular stick-in-the-mud gifted with the jolliest name on the planet ever so droll.

  “Do you want me to cut loose at the station house entrance, give the boys in blue a performance?” I asked. Trying to cheer Harry Chipchase never worked, which made the attempt irresistible. “You can catch me when we’re done and lock me up to thundering applause.”

  Shrugging, Harry’s body kept on in a steady line while his nose pleaded we veer off course. “They wouldn’t give a mouse turd.”

  “Then they are Philistines.”

  “Well, today I ain’t in no market for extra excitement.”

  “Right, then.” I heaved a greedy breath. “Nice knowing you!”

  Kneeing him in the stomach, I fled, and Harry Chipchase howled in exaggerated pursuit. When I reached the end of the block, I flung myself at a fire escape. The hot breeze tickled the banners of laundry lines, and the puffs of dragon steam from the manholes receded behind me. I hadn’t far to go. Just across a rooftop, to prove to dear old Harry I wasn’t being tailed by anyone other than him.

  When I crested the roof, I paused, catching my breath. Stars above and streetlights below, winking lustily at one another. The great black patch of Central Park. The Hotel Arcadia visible to the south, where Mr. Salvatici forged connections. Sent swift-spiraling birds into the air.

  Plotted assassinations.

  Jumping down to the pavement in the rear alley, I panicked a trio of chickens and slipped through the back door of the Harlem greasy pasta joint known as Bruno’s Café. The floor was littered with dinner service’s onion skins and artichoke trimmings, and I didn’t bother to nod at the cooks as I donned an apron.

  No need. Heaving a tray of steaming silverware, I headed into the restaurant proper.

  Bruno’s was a big operation, with a rear eating hall and an elegant front dining room for the plush. The saloonkeeper was a strongman type, hulking shoulders balanced precariously on a slim waist.

  “I’m the new girl, sir. May I have a rag to polish the flatware?”

  Grunting, he nodded. When he returned with the dish towel in hand, I was clutching the bar top.

  “Hey, what gives?”

  “I’m so sorry, I. Forgive me. I’ve not eaten since . . .”

  He studied my powder-pale cheeks and the violet pencil smudged artfully under my lashes. “Today’s bread’s not thrown out yet. Sit down at the end here and keep quiet and then tackle the silver.”

  Muttering humble thanks, I hunched over a plate of thick crusts and a bowl of olive oil. The house pianist finished a melancholy ragtime tune and stood, gathering up his music.

  Leaving yours very truly, the bartender, and one table which had long overstayed their welcome. Or so the owner of Bruno’s had formally complained to Mr. Salvatici.

  Load torpedoes, and take careful aim.

  “What a porca puttana,”* the cherubic man was bragging. “I fucked her so hard, her grandmother felt it in Florence. And she’s been dead these twenty years.”

  A roar of cheer blasted forth from the restaurant’s finest front-window table. Where to start with Sammy the Saint? Baby-faced young sport who flirted outrageously with every holy grandmother and desperate tart who crossed his path. He was also responsible for our Danny “Bones” Ricci’s demise, strangled with his own father’s belt. Sammy was no saint—he just had awfully long eyelashes.

  “You’ve got a spiderweb in the corner—just there,” I whispered to the bullish bartender.

  Instead of answering, he poured me a glass of cheap grappa, something that a cleaning woman might be given gratis, and leaned down to polish the waxed countertop.

  “You’re with the Spider, then?”

  I dunked a bit of bread.

  “You know about them?” He jerked his neck.

  “Plenty.”

  He lowered his voice further, scrubbing at an imaginary spill. “I need these sons of bitches out of our bar. They stopped paying three long months back. And I’ve only got half a case of my best Chianti left.”

  Well, they’ll be showing up awfully seldom henceforth.

  Within ten minutes, the barking of lewd conversation lulled to a buzz as they patted their bellies. Nearly through, drunk enough to be careless. One said something under his breath and his neighbor shot a look to Sammy.

  “Knock over my glass,” I ordered the barkeep.

  “Why—”

  “Just do it.”

  As the liquid arced toward my clean apron and I beat a startled retreat, I edged several barstools closer. Not having been able to hear very well previously.

  “I ain’t never said it was full of holes, Sammy!” one of his collaborators hissed as he refilled the wineglasses. “I said it could be, if it went all over sideways!”

  “Hai un chiodo fisso in testa,”* Sammy the Saint flashed a beatific smile and continued in Italian. “It’s risking a little more than we may have previously, true. But it’s also blessing our entire organization with the fruits of our courage. Is everything in readiness?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Checked and triple-checked.”

  “The Clutch Hand wanted five for the job, but I’m keen to hedge our bets,” Sammy mused, belching. “I want at least four to arrive for the second set, camp out inside, and another three in the car.”

  A small chill coursed through me. Second set meant a music club. And if he was sending backup in a getaway car, they had more on their mind than watching girls do high kicks.

  “We got it taken care of,” the thug to his right promised.

  “After tomorrow, it’ll all be settled,” another soothed.

  “No, it won’t nearly be settled,” Sammy replied with knife points in his eyes. “But the account will be closer to even, so say all of Corleone.”

  Oh holy Mother Mary, I thought as my stomach swooped into my shoes.

  The Clutch Hand was, in 1917, a resident of that most infamous vacation retreat, Sing Sing prison. But apparently it didn’t matter a soggy bowl of cornflakes that Giuseppe Morello was eating his breakfast with a tin spoon—he was still running his Family from jail. So all of Harlem was still petrified of the cagnolazzi. Well, nearly all. Not the Spider, who spelled incarceration as opportunity. We’d been edging in for long, elegantly mapped years now. A hijacked pallet of San Marzano tomatoes here, a docked Corleonesi-operated freighter exploding there. We weren’t as strong as the Family. And we didn’t go in for the shaking-down-widows-and-orphans stuff. But we were cunning as foxes, and just about as deadly when it came to snapping rats’ necks.

  So if the Clutch Hand wanted Sammy the Saint to act, and act tomorrow—I knew exactly whose door was getting knocked on.

  Our door. At the grand opening of the Tobacco Club.

  Sammy’s goons returned to talk of tail and where to come by it. Sliding off the stool, I moved to where the hinged countertop let the bartender exit and rapped my knuckles. He approached instantly. I passed him a pair of greenbacks.

  “Hey, hey, that was on me,” he said warily.

  “No, you just gave me supper. And Sammy the Saint.”

  “One more drink, then, to the Spider and his crew?”

  I waved him off, already yanking my apron strings. This was dreadfully witless of me—terrible luck to refuse a toast like that, simply as dense as any given rock. But I had othe
r, more important things on my mind. The old girl wanted out of the slum duds.

  Because by 1917, at age twenty-one, I fancied myself head over heels in love.

  * * *

  —

  Half an hour later I was at the Arcadia—and my escort, Harry Chipchase, had been happy enough over my swift exit that he actually managed half a smile. But I was no longer the respectable and impoverished Nobody at two o’clock that morning. My friend Sadie was hooking me into an ice-blue gown. Its plunging V neckline was edged in copper lace, and more of that blinding substance peeked from beneath the pooling skirt. I loved it unreasonably.

  “Ow! Why do you torment me?” I lamented as Sadie yanked another hook and eye into place.

  “Torment! There’s gratitude. Nobody, this thing is about three miles long. So unless you’re fixing to fall on your face, I’ve got no idea what to do with you.”

  “Then pour a parched sailor a drink.”

  “No drinks until you try that plate I brought.”

  “I ate every scrap of bread remaining at Bruno’s.”

  “Mr. Salvatici’s been driving you like one of his Loziers. Eat the damn waffles. And the fried chicken.”

  By 1917, a combination of dry wit and a head for figures had enabled Sadie to throw off the mantle of maid altogether. Mr. Salvatici primarily employed her as a secretary—and paid her awfully sweet dough too. Sadie had three necessary ingredients for success in Harlem: a heaping helping of brains, amber skin that could mean anything, and an address at the Arcadia. She used all three to live as she pleased, and we were thicker than peanut butter.

  “Wait, I’m genuinely curious.” I lifted the perplexing plate of grub as she finished my bow. “I’m asking: Is this breakfast?”

  “No.” Sadie adjusted her own outlandishly spangled costume.

  “Then is it dinner?”

  “No.” Sadie fussed with the black feathers adorning her pretty circlet of braided hair.