Chapter Seven
Polly
New York, New York
Thirty days, I think as the bars slam behind me with a decisive clank. I can do thirty days in the House of D, as my girls call the Women’s House of Detention on Greenwich Avenue in downtown Manhattan. I’ve endured far, far worse.
“Don’t think you’ll get any special treatment here because you’re Polly Adler,” the guard yells over her shoulder, the sound of her jam-packed key ring clanging along with her footsteps.
“No, ma’am,” I reply. My volume is quieter than its usual boom, but loud enough for the guard to hear. I can’t risk her thinking I’m disrespectful with a voice too soft or too boisterous.
“You better get used to mingling with lowlifes like yourself instead of hobnobbing with the rich and famous,” she calls back, her words receding into the distance.
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply. She’s gone so far down the corridor that I doubt she can hear me. But I’m not taking any chances or leaving any doors open for retaliation.
My infamy may well work against me in here, it seems. Worse even than I’d envisioned.
I hadn’t kidded myself that it’d be pleasant in the slammer.
True, I won’t be scrounging for food, as I had to do when my cousin kicked me out at seventeen—out on my own, after I’d been in America for not quite five years and I was in dire straits—and I had to hunt for work that wasn’t exactly forthcoming.
Yeah, there will be three squares, but by all accounts, the House of D fare is near-poisonous.
No, I won’t have to spend my nights hustling for clients for the house and scanning for danger and protecting the girls and pretending like everything is all right.
Acting as if my deepest desire isn’t to leave this life behind me.
But still, the life of a madam is better than being locked up.
Or is it? Time will tell.
The cell couldn’t be more than five feet by eight feet, and a bunk bed and toilet are squeezed between its narrow walls.
Tiny, I think, even for me. There’s barely enough room to turn around, and my cellmate isn’t even in here yet.
Where is she, anyway? I should just be thankful for a few minutes alone in this overcrowded, dangerous place.
Just then, I hear whimpering from the cell next door.
Peering through the bars, I can’t crane my neck enough to get a look at her.
The poor thing sounds pathetic. I’m guessing she’s not one of the tougher types—the pickpockets and drunks and hookers and career criminals—who have called the House of D home.
I wonder if she’s one of the “wayward” girls, those “wrong” women who can be arrested and detained indefinitely for disobeying their parents, dressing like men, or liking other girls.
How silly that sort of judgment is. I’ve had had a front-row seat to all sorts of sexual predilections over the years, and an attraction to another woman is hardly the worst thing I’ve seen.
This latter group of inmates is forced to wear prison garb that’s got a D—for degenerate—stitched on the front.
I stare down at my own drab prison uniform.
This worn, scratchy, dun-colored dress is the only one assigned to me for the foreseeable future; I better keep it clean.
I wonder whether the guards will emblazon it with a letter of their own—maybe M for madam or S for sinner?
This horrible prison uniform isn’t the worst thing I have to wear, though.
I had to relinquish my heels in exchange for flat-soled work shoes, and I feel diminished without the added height.
Looming over everything is my astonishment that the usual tactics didn’t keep me out of the slammer altogether.
With every other arrest, I was able to count on a cocktail of pleading innocent, lawyering skills, well-placed bribes, and the press’s fascination with me to keep me out of the Big House.
Today I had to take extreme measures to land only a thirty-day sentence, the sort of measures I had promised myself I would never take.
But why? Why was the judge so determined to wield that gavel harshly on me and me alone?
Why was the high-ranking Dodge handling my trial himself?
Is it just the heightened crackdown on crime citywide?
The rivalry between Dodge and Dewey to prove which one is the toughest on crime?
These are the questions plaguing me. Just when I’d felt certain my arrest was simply an unlucky roundup, I got caught up in some political machinations between government lawyers, most like.
At least my girls got off easy.
Lowering myself onto the rock-hard lower bunk bed, I review the trial day.
My girls went before the judge first, and I was so dang nervous I couldn’t watch.
So I slipped out of the courtroom—leaving the sea of reporters behind with their cameras and notepads—and hid in the bail bond office across the street from the courthouse.
I nodded to Jack McDonough, the bail bondsman who runs the place—we are well acquainted—and paced the space.
I’d planted my trusty, young, innocent-looking runner in the courtroom to give me regular updates, and I just prayed the judge went easy on the girls.
I wasn’t alone in the bail bond shop. A few odd-looking fellows were on and off the pay phone and treading around as well.
At first, I chalked their presence up to having family members in various states of distress across the street; they didn’t look like the disgusting pimps who usually hung out here.
But then, one of the fellows approached me. “Polly Adler?”
I didn’t reply. Did the scruffy-looking redhead know me from the newspaper coverage of this arrest, or perhaps others?
There had been a particularly unflattering but very clear picture of me stepping out of a police wagon on the front page of a newspaper when the police brought me to the station after the raid.
Mercifully, my father, Moshe Adler—who emigrated alone to America from Russia several years ago and lives in Chicago with my brother Berl, now Ben—would never see that photo, since it was a local New York rag.
For now, my family can continue to believe that I manage a corset factory.
Not a bordello. A shiver passes through me at the thought of them finding out about my work.
“It’s admirable, the way you support your girls. Very few madams do that,” the redhead said.
My hackles were raised. What was this man’s game? Was he a reporter? A detective trying to trap me into admitting I’m a madam? I said nothing and walked away from him.
But that didn’t stop his yapping. “You could sidestep a lot of this trouble if you joined our group. We call it our little Combination. For just ten dollars per girl a week, I can promise you bail money if your girls get arrested. And none of our girls have ever been convicted. We’ve got that sorted with our lawyer and inside connections. It’s the best money you’ll ever spend.”
I kept my lips sealed shut. What was this hooligan talking about with this Combination nonsense?
A consolidated group for prostitutes? Some pimp trying to gather streetwalkers and organize their tricks, I could see, although it roiled; there’s very little I loathe more than pimps, those exploiters of women without care for their safety or well-being.
Men who never put themselves on the line.
Men who drug women to make them pliable.
But a Combination that included high-end brothels like mine?
That makes no sense. The exclusivity, hand-selected girls, and coddled environment of my house are what make it a success, singular even among the more rarified of bordellos.
Lumping my house in with prostitutes of all sorts would undermine everything.
And I’ve got my own connections; I don’t need this lowlife to barter and bribe on my behalf.
Fortunately, in that moment, my runner raced in. Breathless and sweating, he informed me that the girls had gotten suspended sentences in exchange for pleading guilty, and I’d been summoned.
When I walked over to the courthouse and entered the packed room, my head was held high.
Given the judge’s treatment of the girls, I expected the same leniency as quid pro quo for pleading guilty on pandering charges.
But from the moment I spotted District Attorney Dodge and Assistant District Attorney Wahl, I knew I was in trouble.
From the terrible smiles on their faces, the question wasn’t going to be whether I’d get jail time, but how much; we all knew the charge could lead to years in jail.
And I could never, ever plead innocent and subject myself to a full trial, where the names of my rich and powerful clients would become public. I’d never make it out of jail alive.
Only one path was open to me.
As I settled into my chair at the defense table, I signaled to my runner and whispered in his ear. This poor sod—who’d never so much as flinched at any of my other directives—pulled away and stared at me. All I could do was nod and push him in the direction of the door.
I then made a big show of clutching my stomach. I pled illness to my attorney and then the judge to buy myself some leeway for my runner to finish his task. I didn’t expect that the judge would grant me more than an hour—or two, if I really hammed it up—and he didn’t. But that was enough time.
When the slam of the gavel sounded on the judge’s bench and he announced thirty days and five hundred dollars, I knew the secret deal had been struck. I’d received the lowest possible sentence for the charges, and Dodge and Wahl were shocked and furious. They’d expected I’d rot behind bars.
As I held out my hands for the handcuffs, I felt a pit form in my gut. Not because I was being carted off to the cooler, but because of the price I’d have to pay for the brevity of my time there. Yet without my own fancy footwork, I’d be in the House of D for God knows how long. Three years, four?
The courthouse guards kept the press and the onlookers and the protestors at bay as I made my way down the aisle toward the courtroom exit.
Only then did I see her, in a row in the back of the courtroom.
Assistant District Attorney Carter, who I now know for certain is part of Dewey’s special team.
As the cops led me out of the courtroom, my hands cuffed behind me, we locked eyes.
And I didn’t break my gaze until I’d been dragged out of the courthouse.
—
The clang of a billy club on the steel bars brings me back to the terrible present. It’s the same sour-faced guard who led me to my cell. “There’s someone here to see you. A lawyer.”
Why would my lawyer be here so soon after the sentencing hearing?
Is there a problem? I’m torn between hope that—maybe, just maybe—my sentence was reduced further and terror that the judge extended the sentence to three years.
Even though I know the judge technically has no mechanism for reopening the sentencing once the hearing is concluded, stranger things have happened in my world.
And I know the power of bribery; it’s a necessary tool in my work.
Dangling her crowded key ring in front of my face—a taunting reminder of my current powerlessness—the guard opens my door, if the metal gate can be called that. Cuffing my hands behind my back—unnecessarily, I think—she beckons me down the same hallway I just came through not even an hour ago.
Once we’re through two more sets of steel gates, the guard settles me in a stark meeting room.
Pea-green walls and bolted-down tables and chairs constitute the decor.
I wait for my attorney to enter the room and put my nerves at rest. Either way, I can handle it; I just need to know how long I’ll be in this god-awful joint.
But when the door opens, I see that I’ve been misled. Assistant District Attorney Eunice Carter stands before me.
I jump up. I feel impossibly small, and I’m forced to stare up at the woman. “No way am I talking to you.”
I rush to the door and start banging on it. “Let me out of here!”
I want—no, I need—everyone in this prison to hear me protest this meeting. And when the guard doesn’t arrive, I only get louder.
“Miss Adler,” Assistant District Attorney Carter says at a normal volume. When I don’t reply, her voice grows louder. “Miss Adler, I only want a minute of your time!”
I will not turn in her direction. And I will not stop my hammering for even a second.
But, without looking in her direction, I do reply.
“Are you a fool? One minute is one minute too long. This prison has eyes and ears that report directly to some unsavory characters, and I cannot be seen talking to you—especially not willingly. I’ll be dead within a day, and who knows?
You might be, too. Or someone in your family.
You got a husband, kids? Then you need to get out of here.
Because they’ll get all of you. That’s what happens to snitches and the people who work with them. ”