Chapter 1
OTHELLA
State Street, Chicago, Illinois
The train from Chicago to Kenosha, Wisconsin, departs from the Northwestern Terminal at midnight. I’ve checked the schedule every day for the past two weeks, so I know I’m right. I also know I’ll be on that train by hook or by crook.
I just wish it were easier said than done.
My old man, Perry Merriweather, lies in bed next to me.
He doesn’t know I plan to hightail it outta town and outta his life before the day is done.
I can’t be saddled with no man, no matter how handsome or what promises he makes, not when I can be something more, someone else in a new town with a new name and a different occupation.
There has to be more to me than gold-digging, picking pockets, and lying.
Rolling onto my side, I glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. For heaven’s sake. I wanted to be long gone by now. But Perry with his pockets full of stolen goods from our very late night out only got in bed an hour ago.
I shoulda set the alarm, I think, as I ease out of bed.
“What time is it, Othella?”
Damn it. Why I keep forgetting he’s a light sleeper? Then again, I usually ain’t awake before him.
“Four o’clock,” I reply.
He grabs the lace trim of my silk briefs. “Where you going? Why don’t you stay in bed with me for a spell?” He squeezes my bottom, wanting something he ain’t gonna get. There will be no last-minute roll in the hay for him. Not today—not ever again.
“Can’t a gal go to the bathroom when she wakes up?”
He turns onto his side, and I swear the mattress groans. One day, he’ll break those worn-out springs.
I’m halfway across the room when his heavy feet thud against the floor.
“If you ain’t coming back to bed, make me some coffee,” he snarls. “I got places to be.”
“Give me a minute.” I close the bathroom door and feel my legs buckle.
Stumbling forward, I grasp both sides of the sink.
How am I gonna get outta here with him up and moving about?
I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Only nineteen, yet I feel like I’m forty-five.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and urge my insides to calm down.
I open my eyes. Okay. The truth is, I’m still a pretty girl with smooth brown skin and a curvy figure—and I can still get outta this house. I just have to use my wits.
Except Perry is muttering under his breath on the other side of the bathroom door, and he’s about as patient as a starving raccoon.
Madness inspires madness.
That’s my mother’s voice in my head. She used to say that when I was a little girl and worried about something I shouldn’t worry about. I wasn’t sure what it meant back then, but two weeks ago, I learned how quickly sanity can slip away.
Perry and I had swindled a wealthy widow in Bronzeville. We got so caught up in the thrill of the con that we lost ourselves. Or rather, Perry lost himself, and I just followed along.
Without a fuss, the old gal handed over her pearl-handled switchblade, which I slipped into my clutch purse along with her wedding ring.
So why did she refuse to unpin the diamond brooch on her lapel?
Perry beat that old woman half to death and scared me silly.
We’d roughed up marks before, I told myself, but those folks were younger and swung back.
That widow woman wasn’t gonna hurt nobody. But as horrified as I was, I just watched.
That night, I made up my mind. I had to get outta this racket. I stashed some cash and trinkets and packed a suitcase while Perry was out drinking with his brother. Then I hid everything in the back of the closet, where he never looked.
Now, the only thing left is to get out of the apartment in one piece.
The bathroom door suddenly swings open, and there stands Perry, fully dressed, swinging my bag of cash in my face. “What the hell you doing hiding this shit from me?”
My vision blurs, and I might faint, but what good will that do? I have to think fast. Lord knows, I can’t tell him the truth, but I can change the subject. Maybe make him feel guilty.
“What you so mad about?” I demand. “I just set aside a few dollars for a rainy day. You spend nearly every penny we make on clothes, liquor, and automobiles. What if you get hurt or, even worse, get caught by some coppers and thrown in jail? Where would I be then?” I snort.
“Holding a bag of nothing—that’s where.”
“That’s a bucket of bull, Othella.”
I shove him aside. “It ain’t no bull.”
“I smell a rat,” Perry hollers. “I found your goddamn suitcase packed, too.” His fist slams into the wall. “You’re begging for a beatin’ if you think you’re leaving me.”
My heart pounds in my chest so hard that my whole body aches. “Stop flapping your gums at me. If I were gonna leave you, I woulda been gone.”
“You’re a liar.” He grabs me from behind and spins me around. I see his huge paw coming for my face, but I can’t get outta its way. He hits me in the jaw so hard that tears spring to my eyes. “If you stopped lying, you wouldn’t get hit.”
Rage and pain burn through my veins. I feel my face swell, tasting blood as Perry pulls back, getting ready to pop me in the jaw again.
Christ. He is pissed as hell, but damn it, so am I.
“You’re right!” I snap, and his fist halts in mid-air. “I’m a liar ’cause I am leaving you. And don’t even think about hitting me again. I swear, I’ll fight back.”
“Oh you will?” Perry laughs harshly. “Then tell me, how far will you get with a broken leg or two?”
He has me, and I am half-dragged, half-carried toward the living room, my legs sweeping the floor like a broom. His long fingers wrap around my throat. I claw at his wrists, trying to break free, but suddenly my feet leave the ground and I’m flying through the air.
I scream, bracing for a hard landing, but the sofa softens my fall. Then, quick as a cat, Perry is on top of me, holding me down.
“You want to leave me?” he shouts, blowing his stinking morning breath in my face. “No bitch leaves me!”
“Get off me,” I rasp, “before I hurt you.”
A harsh laugh bursts from his wide mouth.
He is gagging on laughter as if my words are a punchline he pretends to find funny.
He loosens his grip in that instant, and I see my opening.
I pull my knee in and, shifting my weight into the blow, drive my leg forward, striking him squarely in his private parts.
Screaming, he tumbles off me and crashes onto the coffee table, smashing it into pieces. He lies on his back, cradling his groin and cursing.
Rising as quickly as I can, I grab the handle of the Smokador, the carbon steel standing ashtray. Like me, it has some weight, and I slam it into his skull with all my might and rage.
Perry hollers, but I keep swinging, landing shot after shot until he stops moving and blood spurts from the gash in his head. His eyes flutter shut.
I drop the Smokador, dash to the bedroom closet, and grab the first outfit I can reach—one of my favorites: a blue-and-white, polka-dot, slim-waisted frock with butterfly sleeves.
I dress quickly, glancing into the living room to see if Perry has stirred.
I pin my long, coarse curls into a bun, then snatch up my suitcase and bag of trinkets.
But it’s the other bag—the most important bag—the one with my money—that I need to find.
Where did Perry toss it? I race through the apartment. It has to be here.
“Othella.”
Oh, God. Is that Perry calling me, or have I imagined it?
“You g-gonna pay for t-this. You little bitch.”
Shit. Any second now, he’ll be on his feet and coming for me. Money or not, I’ve got to go.
I’m out the door a second later.
My day isn’t going as planned. After leaving Perry on the living room floor, I make a stop I should’ve skipped—the AME Fellowship Church and Reverend Nathan.
I’ve known him for a long time and expected something different from him, but I end up leaving there quick and head to a juke joint a few blocks away.
All the while, my mother’s voice is in my ear as if she’s standing next to me, reciting her old-world sayings: “If you’re around the insane, beware—the symptoms spread. ”
I grip the handle of my tweed suitcase and squeeze my clutch purse under my armpit. It’s not a long walk, but I might collapse in this heat. If I do, I’ll be carted off by the police and thrown in a cell with wayward women, never to be seen or heard from again.
I wonder if that’s what happened to my mother—snatched off the street, with no chance to call home and check on me. But it no longer matters how or why she left—gone is gone.
Out of cigarettes, I spot a man across the street puffing on a smoke.
I stroll over and ask if he can spare a couple.
I think better with a cigarette in my hand.
I put a sad look on my face, appearing quite desperate and girlie.
He gives me a pack of cigarettes—bless him—and a handful of coins, all he can spare.
He has a job, a wife, and he’s a churchgoing man.
The only thing bulging in his pockets is a spare undershirt.
He claims he likes to change into a clean shirt before returning home to his wife.
Now, that’s a nice fella. I wish there were more nice fellas in the world like him.
I step inside the juke joint and ask the owner, who I know from one of the nightclubs where I used to work, if I can use the horn to make a call. He nods, and I dial the only number I have for Tony Schaefer.
One of his goons answers.
“Can the boss spare some time for me this afternoon?”
The reply is a quick yes. The man on the other end adds that Tony mentioned me just the other night.
That might be a coincidence, bushwa, or whatever—it makes me no never mind. I couldn’t care less about the particulars as long as Tony gives me enough dough to catch that midnight train to Kenosha.
I have to tread carefully around him. During Prohibition, his occupation was bootlegging, and Perry was one of his drivers.
I know that asking a bootlegging mobster for help shouldn’t be one of my first choices, especially if I’m trying to turn over a new leaf.
But a gal must do what a gal must do. I excuse myself to the bathroom, rummage through my suitcase, and slip into a gold chiffon dress with a plunging neckline and a slit up the middle of my right thigh.
It’s a bold outfit and hardly fashionable, but it will attract the attention I need.
When approaching a man like Tony Schaefer for a fistful of cash, a girl has to be a hot mama—or she can forget about getting out of Chicago anytime soon.