The Paragon Hotel Read online

  “Then how do I eat it?”

  “I expected too much, didn’t I? When you first arrived, I had to explain what a salad fork was.”

  “That is just . . . outrageously unfair.” Had I known I was shaking a piece of fried chicken at my friend, I sincerely hope that I would have ceased all operations along those lines. “That was years ago! I know how to speak, how to dance, I know long division, and I know how to eat!”

  “Oh, good. And you don’t look a bit ridiculous waving a chicken leg at me. Take a bite of it. No, with the waffle. God, it’s like teaching a snake to play tennis.”

  Obeying, my eyes widened to saucers. “What on earth.”

  She giggled. “Beats just about anything, doesn’t it?”

  “Whence came this alchemy?”

  “Bob serves it up the street at his diner, says he learned it in Philly. But some say it came from the South. Now, Alice: What time is it right now?”

  “Just after two in the morning.”

  “And is this delicious?”

  “Of course it is. I’m Italian, not dense.”

  “And even you being the brightest Italian on the planet isn’t going to tell you whether two in the morning is dinnertime or breakfast time, now is it?”

  Laughing, I went to my washbasin and rinsed my hands. The Nobody in the glass didn’t have her hair bobbed yet. But I could hold my head like a society waif as well as like a charwoman, and—because I was proud that I’d pinned Sammy the Saint—I felt despite our predicament incongruously happy.

  “Well, aren’t you the cat with feathers in its teeth. What’s up, then?” Sadie wondered.

  “Sammy the Saint is going to attack our opening night tomorrow.”

  “And you’re smiling about that?” she demanded.

  “Oh, don’t you see, Sadie? I’ve tipped off Mr. Salvatici with plenty of tidbits before—the alliance of Lupo the Wolf with the Clutch Hand, the mastermind behind the ice protection racket. But this is my biggest discovery yet.”

  “He’ll kill them,” she said quietly.

  I regarded her in the mirror, but I wasn’t really seeing Sadie. I was seeing old Mr. Benenati stuffed into a barrel, his lipless mouth like rows of dominoes. All that had been taken away from us.

  Taken away from Nicolo. And thereby, taken Nicolo away from me.

  “And I’m glad,” I concluded. “Now let’s go. You’re being dreadfully negligent about pouring me any champagne, and this is a night worth celebrating!”

  But that night was only the very beginning of a terribly long ending. Disaster. Not then, and not for years, but catastrophe all the same.

  * * *

  —

  My dear young lady, how fortunate I sent you.” Mr. Salvatici passed me another full flute of the genuine French article, quite the sought-after commodity during a War year. “I’d heard inklings that Sammy was itching to strike, but not so soon. Well done indeed.”

  Champagne was squarely up my proverbial alley. Praise from the Spider even more so. But I was only half listening. Because it was the night before the opening of the Tobacco Club, and its final after-hours dress rehearsal.

  Which meant Zachariah Lane was dancing.

  Mr. Salvatici’s interest in power notwithstanding, the man was completely gone on two things: music and his pigeons. Plenty of other nightclubs had been opening since the advent of ragtime, places from sawdust on the hardwood to crystal on the table. But Mr. Salvatici wanted to bring together the best of Tin Pan Alley, the darkest Memphis blues, the maddest of the moon-addled crooners, the wildest fox-trotters, women wearing Louis heels and ostrich feathers, food and drink and diamonds and dervishes, gents whisking ladies through the grizzly bear and the tango.

  Rye outshone them all.

  I leaned against the balcony rail, watching my friend the former doorman dance. The band was going full tilt on “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” and he was tapping fast enough to set the stage on fire.

  I’ve got some good news, honey,

  An invitation to the Darktown Ball,

  It’s a very swell affair,

  All the “high-browns” will be there,

  I’ll wear my high silk hat and frock tail coat . . .

  “So if you’ll excuse me, there are arrangements to be made. I’m calling in a favor from your old childhood friend Nicolo Benenati.”

  That got my attention.

  Rye, with an impossible smile on his face—one beginning to be toxically wide—was just finishing a step so intricate I couldn’t even see it. But I turned to the Spider, who had planted himself companionably beside me. He closed the thin seam of his mouth around his champagne glass.

  “Whatever for?” I asked.

  “He hates the Clutch Hand, and by extension, Sammy the Saint.”

  “Of course he does. But why wouldn’t you use one of your men?”

  A pucker formed between Mr. Salvatici’s dark brows, a fond but admonishing expression. “Because Benenati is too powerful to keep at arm’s length any longer.”

  He brushed his hand across my hairline, the commonest of his affectionate gestures and one that always soothed me. And Mum had been right. The Spider never looked at me the way my occasional gadabout beaus did. The way I wanted Rye to. Despite everything, in his own unique fashion, I truly think he loved me the whole time.

  It’s better for me to believe that, and it doesn’t do anyone any harm. I’d curl into a shell and never emerge otherwise.

  “Ah. Here he is now, right on schedule.”

  My heart gave a jolt, and not the sort it suffered whenever Rye called me “darlin’.” For Nicolo Benenati stood below us, on the spotless new Venetian-tiled floors. Placidly removing thin leather gloves, flanked by his gang’s lieutenants: Dario Palma, Cleto the Crow, and Doctor Vinnie.

  “I didn’t know our Sammy problem would be accelerated in quite this manner, but it’s timely that I made contact with him,” my guardian said calmly. “Now an introduction will simply become a meeting. Have him join me upstairs, will you?”

  I swallowed an intemperate gulp of champagne.

  “You can manage him, my dear young lady.” He patted my shoulder. “Just don’t disappear with this one. He watches you too close.”

  The song ended, Rye struck a final triumphant pose, and the entire Salvatici outfit erupted in heady applause. The Spider made for the discreet stairs to his office.

  And then Nicolo raised his eyes, found mine, and he smiled.

  For an instant, nothing had changed. His ax-like profile was chiseled at age twenty-three, his lean physique filled out, his raw charisma undiminished. He was the leader of a sinister brotherhood—one ruled by his own iron fist, universally terrifying, and avoided even by the likes of the Clutch Hand’s impressive array of scurmi fituzzi, allowed to operate on the outermost edges of what passed for law in our streets. His mother lived quietly above the cigar shop Nazario managed. And I lived avoiding Nicolo, because I could see the death’s mask behind his sallowing skin and I was still tied to him in that almost musical way childhood friends are. When you hear the same song on the air whenever you’re in the same room, because you share a set of interlocking memories like bass and treble notes on a page.

  Then Dario touched his shoulder, and the smile froze, and all that was left was the body of my old friend.

  I started down the stairs.

  After slaughtering Giuseppe Morello’s horse, he’d divided his time between gathering darkness around himself like a cloak, punctuated by rumors of unspeakable violence, and seeking me out. But when he saw I was cared for with Mr. Salvatici, I think he smelled blood on his own hands and stopped trying as ardently. Or maybe murdering cagnolazzi and recruiting his vicious pack dogs took precedence. I didn’t know. I cared deeply, but not knowing felt safer. I didn’t want him kissing me again, didn’t want the ghost rin
g I could see on my left hand whenever he glanced at it. So our meetings eventually were reduced to a quick embrace in the streets as I stammered excuses and he regarded me as if to say, I know. But I must do this.

  I remember how we used to be, and I know.

  Dario and his repellent friends fell away respectfully when I approached. Nothing to do with yours very truly, naturally. But they’d sooner cut off their own noses than offend Nicolo Benenati.

  “Alicia.”

  Nicolo kissed me on either cheek and I wasn’t shivering, I won’t disappear, I can manage him. He smelled of his late father’s bitter-orange shaving balm, and of himself, something sharper and searingly familiar.

  “Nicolo, it’s been months. Isn’t that dreadful?”

  He studied me. It would have been a fond expression, but tiny muscles in that dear face had petrified. “I ask after you, you know, often. I would know if you weren’t well.”

  “You’re a love.”

  “I miss you, topolina.”

  I miss me too, sometimes. But not as much as I miss you.

  “Well, here I am. And Mr. Salvatici wants to see you up in his office.”

  “I’ve always meant to thank him, you realize, for taking you away from the Step Right. At the time, I . . . couldn’t. Meeting him professionally will be an honor.”

  I pulled my fingertips down his jacket lapel. “Well, you’d better—”

  “Alice!” Sadie appeared at my elbow, breathless. “Beg pardon, but there’s a situation developing. It’s Rye,” she added more quietly.

  “Oh Christ,” I exhaled. “Nicolo, I’m sorry. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yes, I never meant to keep the Spider waiting. I know very little about him except that he takes superb care of you.” As if on impulse, he kissed my knuckles before turning on his heel.

  But it hadn’t been impulsive. He’d been thinking about it for a long, lonely time.

  “Where is Rye?” I demanded as Sadie pulled me away.

  “In his dressing room.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Worse all the time. But we knew that already.”

  Rye had been finished performing for about five minutes. Sadie and I rushed backstage, dressing rooms still smelling of whitewash and already redolent of greasepaint and clean sweat. Politely shoving past bejeweled houris and top-hatted crooners. Five minutes might not seem like long enough for a jazz hound to get himself into any serious scrapes.

  With Rye, two was more than ample.

  “Hey there!” he exclaimed when we tumbled through his door without knocking. “Lord, just the sight of you gals is enough to celebrate, never mind the grand opening tomorrow! Come on and join the party.”

  Zachariah had been rehearsing relentlessly for weeks now. And he considered his body something akin to a wind-up toy—limp with exhaustion one moment, but hey presto, a little oil, tinker with a cog, and the mechanism could be forced back into action. The remedies on this occasion looked to be one empty pint of liquor and a depleted bottle of Bayer’s wildly popular heroin tablets, with a side of their heroin-laced water-soluble cough salts.

  “This isn’t a party, it’s a pharmacy,” I attempted.

  Rye smiled. It didn’t even reach the friendly sacks under his eyes, let alone the irises.

  “I’m going for a pot of coffee.” Sadie wheeled.

  I walked to him, my own heart going rabbit fast, and slid the heroin bottles behind me, sitting on the dressing table.

  Out of sight, out of mind. At least for the next ten seconds.

  “Isn’t the cough any better?” I pressed the backs of my cool fingers to his burning cheek.

  “It comes and goes, darlin’.”

  Sometimes—never for very long, because we can’t change affections any more than we can change gravity—I wish I’d given my heart to someone who wanted to live. Because Rye did not. So I walked around with a cavern beneath my ribs, and he with the weight of an unwanted organ in his pocket. It wasn’t about lacking affection. His back was one of the frequentest slapped in Harlem and his mother knew how he liked his eggs. Zachariah Lane, I think, was born unable to close his eyes. And when he looked within, he saw garbage. Rye could sail to the moon on someone else’s love song, but what he’d been born with couldn’t even get him out of bed on some days.

  What baffled me was that he didn’t find a woman to hit or a dog to kick. Most people like sharing their suffering. Rye kept it all to himself. And if it hurt me that I wasn’t enough to make him think life was bearable? Well, that was my own doing. A person doesn’t crawl into a seaside cave and then rail at the tide for coming in. I wasn’t a virgin in 1917. I’d had flings, fumbles, tears on Sadie’s shoulder. But not a soul under the sun had yet afflicted me the way Rye had, and we’d never even kissed.

  “Why do you look so sad?” Rye rubbed at his temple. “Pretty girls like you shouldn’t look sad, darlin’. Buck up and have a drink.”

  I poured two and rested my dancing shoes on his knee.

  “What are we going to do with you?” I whispered.

  “Today? Not a thing. Tomorrow? Let’s open this here cabaret and then after we’re rich, hop a steamer to an island someplace. Just me, my pal Nobody, and the sand and the deep blue sea.”

  It was a beautiful picture, and even more beautiful because neither of us believed in it. Rye started tapping his tumbler against my toes, humming “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” a song he found just dreadfully humorous to regale me with and I found vaguely excruciating.

  I would sail away with you, if you asked me, I thought wildly. There has to be some thing, some place, on this vast fucking planet that would make you feel better.

  I sat there, watching a lovely lie unfold while Rye’s breath grew shallower and his speech more off-key. Waiting for Sadie and coffee. Never imagining that the real impediment to our hoisting anchor on the morrow wouldn’t be his self-loathing, or even my self-doubt, but that I was going to be awfully preoccupied over getting shot.

  ◆ Sixteen ◆

  NOW

  Gaping, bullet pated, thick lipped, wooly headed, animal-jawed crowd of niggers, the dregs of broken up plantations, idle and vicious blacks. . . . Greasy, dirty, lousy, they drowsily look down upon the assembled wisdom of a dissevered Union. Sleepily listen to legislators who have given them their freedom and now propose to invest them with the highest privileges of American citizenship.

  —“REGARDING THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT,” The Eugene Weekly Democratic Review, Eugene, Oregon, March 2, 1867

  All right. Supposing that good luck comes in threes, and the horse is as white as you say it is, we’re going to call forth the dandiest run of serendipity you ever did see.”

  We’re not terribly far from the Paragon Hotel, Wednesday Joe Kiona and me, at Southwest Park Avenue and Southwest Main Street. Still in the heart of downtown. We have a date with a horse—but first, with a tree. Thankfully, this greensward is as lousy with plants as Harlem is with tenements. Tall pines, low boxwoods, swarms of wild lilies hoisting themselves up through the mud.

  “You’re sure you found the first hairpin?” the young chap insists. “You didn’t, you know, leave it there to come by the next day?”

  “I stepped on it. What do you take me for?”

  “Well, I dunno exactly.” Wednesday Joe scratches his head under his flat cap. “But seeing as you’ve been so keen to find Davy, I guess . . . a friend?”

  “Heavens, sir, you do me honor.”

  Spitting into my hand, I proffer it for shaking. He takes it with a manly squeeze. I’m glad of the affirmation, because Blossom and I stirred the pot a bit on our return to the hotel in the after hours, melancholy as drowned cats and almost as wet. We collided with Mavereen arriving home from the trenches, no sign of Davy Lee, her stately bulk seeming to have deflated in search of him.

  I won’t go into wha
t Blossom looked like at the news that there was no news. Some expressions are so raw, thankfully they defy all description.

  Mavereen was heartsick and exhausted and demanding to know what was the matter. Blossom snapped out the truth in suitably vague terms, minus any mention of where events had actually taken place. But following Mavereen shouting over the dangers inherent in pulling a gun on the likes of Officer Overton, and the vitriol Blossom returned over what choice she’d had exactly, Mavereen all but confined us both to quarters. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d gone for the wooden spoon.

  Meanwhile, I still have a headache, my wound nags but I know better than to treat morphine like lollipops, and Wednesday Joe and I had to sneak out through Miss Christina’s kitchen.

  “Okay, so you found the hairpin and that’s definitely lucky,” he allows. “Here’s a pretty low branch.”

  “Ideal, my good man. Have you the string?”

  Wednesday Joe produces kitchen twine. We step up to the rhododendron tree, a paint spill of pink so berserk you can imagine it staining your fingertips, and tie the pin to a limb.

  “Right. That’ll make the luck stronger.” Joe sends the tiny wire merrily swinging.

  “Next step, then.” I pull another hairpin from the pocket of my plain grey sack dress, bend it double, and throw it reverently over my left shoulder.

  “And that ought to bring a friend.” My companion’s face pinches. “Wait, how do we know the friend it’ll bring will be Davy?”

  “We don’t. But we’re ever so set on it, and that ought to help. Produce the apple and lead us onward.”

  Wednesday Joe displays a shiny-skinned red apple. We amble across the park in pursuit of the white horse that will bring his small cohort back to us. But I haven’t risked Mavereen Meader’s wrath just to court kismet, as strong as I am for the stuff. I hunger zestily for information, and I sling my hand over Joe’s elbow.

  “It seems to me that we’re not being terribly good detectives,” I suggest. “All hail Lady Luck, but what if we tried a bit of the Sherlock Holmes act to boot? You’re familiar, yes?”