Splashy décor surrounded individual cafe tables arranged freely before an expansive, elevated stage. A full jazz band commanded the rear stage and downstage the most beautiful scantly-clad showgirls performed nightly to an always packed house.
Most tables were encircled by thick, pliable vertical rubber bars, and patrons would part the bars gingerly to access the gilded and cushioned chairs. Waiters wearing prison garb, gray overalls with horizontal black stripes and matching pillbox caps, rushed to serve them with rum and Cokes, Seven and Sevens, icy English gin martinis, and the best cabaret food in town. Only the rival 21 Club, located just a short walk away, could even begin to match the Prison’s overall quality.
The main clubroom sat at street level; the brothel, consisting of ten small, well-furnished bedrooms and intimate lounge area, occupied the second floor.
On the topmost third floor, an exact mirror-image nightclub stood silent and unused. On those periodic occasions when the downstairs club was raided and padlocked by prearrangement with the local authorities, the third floor was brought to life and open for business the very next evening. As soon as Cosenza and his legal representatives had attended to all legalities and fines, the downstairs club would reopen and the good times would roll uninterrupted until the next scheduled raid.
Now, on this particular night, Lily O’Rourke Cosenza peered out at the women standing before her and sighed: They were just children, really, and Lily, at twenty-seven, having to deal with them all.
“All right, ladies,” she said, in her very best mother-of-the-realm voice. “Just about time for us to open up for business. But before we do, I need to ask for a couple of volunteers.”
The “ladies” — eight prostitutes in various stages of splendid boudoir attire — returned Lily’s casual smile with icy hostility.
“We surely ain’t none of us volunteerin’ for nothin’, Lil, so just go on and pick out the ones of us with the fattest asses and get it over with,” said one young thing, Mabel McGuire, twenty years old and five foot five, one hundred and forty pounds if an ounce, and hard as a Packard’s chrome bumper.
Lily allowed her smile to grow cold and her eyes to dull.
“Well, now,” she said, dabbing a forefinger at Mabel, “that would be you, honey, sure as Jesus wore sandals to Sunday school.”
Mabel frowned as the girls around her giggled.
“Figured as much,” she said with resignation.
Trying as it was at times, Lily enjoyed running the second-floor brothel for her husband, the man known to one and all as “Big Dom.” It beat peddling butts or shaking a leg on some smoky speakeasy stage, both of which had served as careers in her recent past. Yes, she liked madaming a whole lot better: easier on the feet and on the soul. And it didn’t hurt one little bit to be married to the boss, her brooding and leathery-tough ex-prizefighter-turned-saloonkeeper. It provided a powerful touch of job security to her position.
Lily allowed herself a softer smile before speaking. “Girls,” she continued, cooing comfort at them, “you all know how this works. Every once in a time, the coppers raid the joint to show the citizens how honest they are. It’s like that for every speak in the city, every speak in the country, I figure. The deal Big Dom cut this time was they could take out the downstairs and grab two girls from outta here. They’ll hit us tomorrow night and then the joint reopens upstairs the next night, same as usual, and we here in the cathouse, well, we just keep on purring, just with two less girls. Big Dom pays all bails, legal fees, and fines, and a few days from now he opens back up on the ground floor and the two girls get cut loose and come back to work. Everybody comes away happy — saints, sinners, cops, and citizens.”
Mable McGuire inserted a finger into her right ear, furiously working it against a dry-skin itch she’d been suffering ever since the weather had turned so damn cold. “Excepts me,” she said. “I winds up gettin’ goosed by some horny coppers and dyke-rubbed in the Women’s Lockup.”
Lily brightened her smile. “Why, Mabel, dearie, I know that feeling. That’s why I got my man to make it right this time. Big Dom says there’s twenty dollars a day in it for each girl that volunteers.”
An excited chatter and raising of hands suddenly surrounded Lily, and cries of “Take me!” and “I’ll do it!” rang in her ears.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said sweetly. “If I didn’t know any better I’d just swear you ladies only do this for the money. Well, I will be damned.”
Later that evening when Lily entered the cluttered first-floor office, she found Big Dom hunched over his massive mahogany desk, an unlit Cuban cigar clenched between his yellowed, uneven teeth, a scowl working at the corners of his mouth.
“Sit,” he said gruffly, without raising his eyes to her.
She dropped heavily into one of the upholstered dark blue velvet chairs before the desk and sighed. He seemed in a black mood, and Lily, who, except for her somewhat voracious sexual appetites and the rather irksome necessities they entailed, had little tolerance for men in general, had even less for those in a foul mood. She sat silently, waiting for him to speak again.
When, after a few moments, he raised his heavy-browed, flat black eyes from the ledger book before him and met the pale gray of her own eyes, she smiled demurely.
“Hello, dearie,” she purred. “How’s my big guy?”
He knotted his hands together on the desktop and slowly leaned his massive upper body toward her. Big Dom made a strong and conscious effort to ignore her stunning beauty, despite the inviting glisten from her bobbed chestnut hair and the promise of warmth from her body.
“You line up two broads to get pinched tomorrow night?” he asked, his voice hard.
Lily could see, without needing to look, the coarse pubiclike hair that matted the back of his large, gnarled fighter’s hands on the desk before her. It caused the hair at her nape to stir.
“Yes,” she said, her tone neutral and matter-of-fact. “Mabel McGuire and Shakey Miles.”
Now his scowl deepened, the cigar tip dipping against the increased clench of his teeth.
“Shakey? Why Shakey? She pulls in nearly a C-note a night. Get one of the others, another pig like Mabel.”
Her smile deepened as she thought: How fortunate it was that Big Dom owned one of the city’s most profitable speakeasies. He’d have little influence over man or woman otherwise.
“Okay, honey, if that’s what you want.”
“Yes, that’s what I want. Now beat it, I’m busy.”
She stood slowly, admiring the sparkle of the three-carat diamond on her finger as it tossed the glow from the green-shaded desk lamp about the room. As she turned to leave, she heard him bark once more but did not bother to turn and face him.
“And Lily,” he said, “I’ll tell you somethin’ else I want. I want you and that Joe Rudi to knock it off. There’s more than some might say I was crazy, but I ain’t blind and I ain’t stupid. I hear about you and that bull-necked Sicilian goon playing footsies just one more time, I’m gonna rip his lungs out. Then I’m gonna bust up that pretty face of yours real good and put you to workin’ the kitchen steamin’ pots with the Chinks. You hear me?”
Still without turning, she answered, keeping her voice light, her tone singsong. Lily had been around, and she knew when a dangerous man was mad, and she knew when one was bad mad. Big Dom Cosenza was bad mad.
“Nothin’ going on there, lover. I swear on my soul, but I hear you. Joe and me won’t even speak on a single thing but Prison business — Big Dom business.” She paused and waited for the dismissive grunt she knew was coming, then left the room. Softly.