Chapter Eighteen
Polly
New York, New York
“I really wish you’d stay at the house tonight,” the Lion says. Her voice is quiet, but no less firm for its low volume.
“No one should bother the place since the girls are out at the Waldorf for a private party, and I’ve put the word out about that.
I don’t expect they will come around if the girls are gone,” I say, hoping to placate her, if indeed her worry is that the lowlifes in league with Murph and Johnny—who have visited my house three times now to “make clear” to us that we will be joining the Combination—might overtake the place when she’s alone.
“And anyway, Jerry is on guard, and he hired a second man to help him. Just in case.”
“That’s really kept them away so far,” she snorts, and I know she’s right.
I believed I had lost control of my house and my girls when I made my deal with Dutch.
But I’d been wrong. I hadn’t fully appreciated that with Dutch around, I still retained all decision-making about my girls, the clients, and the management of the gambling and bar.
Tolerating the constant presence and occasional outbursts of Dutch and his men had been the biggest sacrifice.
I could still protect my girls, which is always my foremost concern.
But now that power is under urgent, imminent threat by this so-called Combination.
“Well, Jerry has kept the violence to a minimum. If not the destruction,” I admit.
My house has been torn up several times before—more often than not by Dutch and his men—but this experience with these new thugs has shaken me.
The way these upstart gangsters, low men on some other mobster’s totem pole, saunter into my house as if they own the joint—destroying my property and taunting my girls in the name of “fun”—signals an unpleasant change afoot.
Their boss is making a move to consolidate and control the brothels, mine among them.
“You misunderstand me. I’m not worried about what will happen here while you’re out.
I’m worried about what message you’re sending while you are out,” she says, her tone more insistent now.
This is an oddity for the Lion, who is always watchful and protective and free speaking but never strident.
“This task you’ve set for yourself tonight is not just a fool’s errand.
It’s also a sign of weakness when you need to be telegraphing strength. ”
Her hands are on her hips now. She is serious about squashing this impulse of mine to see if we can get out of this business before the Combination—whatever that really is, whoever is in charge of it—takes over.
Tonight, I’m going to test Dutch’s bold, terribly disheartening proclamation that once you’re tagged as a criminal, you’re tagged forever.
I want to try to get myself, the Lion, and my girls out.
I want to give Mabel, Virginia, Kit, Angelica, Rosalie, and the Lion the sort of protection and fresh start I was never, ever granted myself.
“Listen,” I say to the Lion with a clasp of her hand, “I know you mean well. No one is more loyal or well-intentioned than you. But the weight of this house and our well-being doesn’t rest on your shoulders. It rests on mine.”
—
“Polly Adler, as I live and breathe!” a voice calls out, and I pivot away from the coat check, where I’ve handed over my coat.
Burly arms encircle me with such force, I nearly topple over onto the floor in the foyer of Lou Richman’s Dizzy Club on 52nd Street. “Harold! I didn’t know you’d be this happy to see me!” I call back.
Standing on my tippy-toes, I glance up at the six-foot-tall, silver-haired Harold Montague, who spent an inordinate amount of time at my house when he and his wife briefly separated.
A New York gadabout who knows everyone who’s anyone, Harold is the sort of person who’d be in the loop on business opportunities I might be able to join.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you since, since—”
He doesn’t want to say prison, so I fill in the blank for him. “Since the House of Detention?” I ask with a swagger, tossing my fur stole over my shoulder.
Giving me a smile that more closely resembles a grimace, he says, “I didn’t know if you’d feel comfortable talking about it.”
I playfully slap his arm as the ma?tre d’ leads us to our table for two. “Please, a stint in the clink only adds to my cachet!”
“Especially since you kept your clients’ names quiet, instead of trading on them like so many other madams would do,” he says.
We order drinks, take in the scatty jazz, make some small talk, and then I can wait no longer. “So, what did your friend say?”
I’d rung Harold earlier in the day to make my business inquiries.
He mentioned that he’d just lunched with a friend who was opening a factory in New Jersey and looking for someone to take charge.
The friend would grant the right person—even a woman—twenty-five percent interest to do the job, as long as they could invest a small amount of money in the factory as a show of good faith.
Harold had asserted that if I could run the city’s most famous brothel, I could easily run a factory—and he put me forward for the role.
How full circle it would be for me—the girl who’d been kicked out of her own factory job at seventeen because the supervisor raped and impregnated her—to run a factory myself, I think.
I’d finally have a job I could be proud of when writing to my parents or when they came to visit—if they ever came.
Instead of the lies I usually tell them about managing a corset factory.
“Well.” Harold quaffs his drink and signals to the waitress for another. Then he shoots me an apologetic smile. “You see, Polly, my friend is worried that a partnership with Polly Adler might hurt his credit and his Dun and Bradstreet rating.”
“I should’ve known better,” I snap at him, although it’s hardly his fault.
It was a pipe dream. I reach out and touch his arm.
“I’m sorry, Harold. You were just trying to be a pal and connect me with your friend.
It seems I’m stuck with myself and my past. I guess I’ll just go back to the whorehouse, where I belong. ”
“No, no, Polly, don’t be that way about it.” He places his hand over mine. “I’m sure something will surface. I’ll keep my ear to the ground for you.”
“You’re a swell guy, Harold. You know that?” I say with as much lightness as I can muster. Never mind that I feel as heavy as a baby grand.
I chitter-chat with him as long as I can stand it, then push myself to standing.
Claiming “duties at the house,” I wave off his protests to stay longer and weave through the tightly packed tables toward the foyer.
I know that if I stay here and make small talk any longer, emotions might bubble to the surface, and I can’t risk showing how much his words upset me.
Queuing at the coat check, I spot club owner Lou Richman chatting with the ma?tre d’. Scuttling in his direction, I call out, “Lou? Is that you?”
“Polly?” he calls back, leaning toward me and bussing me on each cheek in the European manner, leaving a slight slick of his ubiquitous hair oil on my cheek. “What a pleasant surprise! You should have told me you were coming. I’d have rolled out the red carpet.”
“Very kind of you, Lou, but not necessary. I was meeting a friend, and he took care of the reservation.”
“If there is anything else you need, you know I’m here for you, Polly.”
I appreciate the offer. Lou and I have had a symbiotic relationship over the years, where we’ve fed each other clients, albeit of a very different sort. But now I wonder, Is there something he could actually do?
“You know, Lou, there might be something you can help me with.”
He steps closer to me, not wanting the little crowd in the foyer to overhear us. Given my profession, he probably assumes our conversation may not be appropriate for all ears. And usually he’d be right.
“Anything, Polly. I think you know that by now.”
“Late one evening at my King Tut bar, you said that you found my ability to handle people so impressive that you’d like me to partner with you. In a legit business. I’m curious as to whether you meant it.”
Tilting his head, his expression goes soft and apologetic. “Oh, Polly. I wish that was possible. But with your notoriety and the recent prison stay, there might be too much heat. Especially with this whole Dewey crackdown. I don’t think the police would ever leave us alone and—”
I cut him off. Listening to two rejections in the span of an hour is more than I can bear.
Painting on a smile like so much lipstick, I force my tone to sound bright.
“Just a fantasy, Lou! And I broker in fantasies, don’t I?
Nothing for you to apologize for. I should know when a fantasy hits up against reality. ”
Turning away from him, I approach the now-available coat-check girl—undoubtedly a wannabe showgirl—and hand her my ticket.
I cannot get out of here fast enough. The Lion was right: I’ve got to keep up a show of strength so word doesn’t spread that Polly Adler is weak and desperate to get out of the brothel business.
As I watch the girl paw through the racks of coats, I think that no one would even hire me to work in a coat check or cigarette concession.
I’d never pass the new legislation that requires all coat check and cigarette concessionaires be fingerprinted; my criminal past would be clear.
As I wait for the Broadway hopeful to find my coat, I hear a familiar female voice in my ear, saying my name.
I turn to face the woman, a statuesque, six-foot-tall blond beauty.
Even if we weren’t already acquainted, I might have guessed she’s the infamous burlesque dancer–turned-madam Diamond Lil.
The diamonds in her ears and clothes and hair and even implanted in her teeth are the giveaway.
If I didn’t know that she was actually born to a Montana cattleman—and that everything about her is a fiction—then her height and her periodic encroachment on my territory might irritate me more.
Trying to keep my voice bright, I say, “Evening, Lil.”
I brace myself for some nasty remark about my prison term from my rival Lil. To my surprise, her usually wry, sometimes combative expression changes, and she takes another step toward me.
She whispers, “Have you been approached about this ‘Combination’ yet?”
So I’m not the only one, I think. Who is running this Combination, and what’s their endgame? And why are the highest of high-end brothels, like mine and the one Diamond Lil runs, being targeted? It simply doesn’t make sense, even from a business perspective.
But I hesitate before I reply. How should I answer? I don’t trust Diamond Lil as far as I can throw her. Yet I need to know what she knows, and I won’t get anything out of her unless I give a little.
I take a leap, but only a small one. “I have.”
“Me, too.” She pauses, undoubtedly weighing her next move as carefully as I did. “Were you approached by a redheaded gentleman?”
“If you could call his visit to my house an approach,” I reply. “And if he qualifies as a gentleman.”
Lil chuckles in response, saying, “He sure knows how to make an entrance and charm a gal.”
“That he does,” I say. Knowing it’s my turn to offer a bit more, I add, “Have you seen him or any of his friends since he delivered his invitation?”
“Yes, have you?”
“Yes, which leaves me a bit on edge on when he may pop in again. And with who.”
“Same.”
“Do we know who else the redhead might be working with?”
Her face grows more serious, and the pause before her answer gets longer and longer.
Lil’s back must be against the wall, or she’d never take the next step toward trusting me.
“I’ve heard a rumor from a friend. That the Combination is being formed by Lucky Luciano.
The whole thing is his idea, part of his plan to oversee every racket in the city. ”
Any hope I harbored that Murph is a minor gangster trying to gather and control the city’s prostitutes disappears.
If this endeavor has been orchestrated and blessed by the kingpin himself, I don’t stand a chance at staying independent.
Or getting out. In that moment, I realize that Dutch was right: I will never be allowed to leave this life.
I lean against the wall and close my eyes, absorbing Lil’s words. When I open them again, she’s gone. As I knew she’d be. There may come a time when we must unite against a common enemy—one that threatens to undo all we’ve built—but that time is not now.
In the meantime, I have only one choice, and it won’t involve fleeing the madam life. Since it seems I can’t live my reputation down, I’ll have to live up to it.