Vixen (42 page)

Gloria leaned against the car, tapping her foot impatiently against the powdery pavement, trying to warm up. The snow felt cool against her face. Her pulse was still racing, pounding in her temples and all the way down to her feet.

She hugged herself against the cold. Jerome was taking forever.

She just wanted their lives to start already—in the car, on the road, on the train, en route to their final destination. Her heels clicked on the pavement like chattering teeth against a fork. She tugged her dress down as far as it would go, trying to warm her legs, her purse dangling around her shoulder.

Footsteps, coming fast from behind her.

Two figures emerged from the snowy dark.

Gloria felt her throat close up. “Jerome,” she tried to call out.

But then the men were there, pushing her against the trunk of the sedan.

“Don’t make a sound, girlie.”

The accent was unmistakable. She twisted her head around, meeting his ruthless gray eyes as he pressed her body into the car. The rest of his face was wild, teeth exposed as if they were fangs. His companion was a guy she recognized from the club, whose name she couldn’t recall, whose body was as thick as a side of meat.

“Please, Carlito,” she whimpered, and felt a gun jab into her side.

“Didn’t I say not to make a sound?” Carlito wrenched her
arms back, cutting off her circulation, the gun poised at her ribs.

Gloria felt no pain. All she could think was
Jerome, Jerome, Jerome
.

“So you like the black boys, huh?” Carlito whispered into her ear, his breath stinking of tobacco and booze. “How do your mama and daddy feel about that? Their little girl running off with—”

Gloria kicked backward, hard.

Carlito grunted and stumbled back just as Jerome came bolting out of the front door.

“Gloria!” Jerome shouted. But before he could reach her, the other mobster pounced, hurling him to the ground.

Then Carlito was on her again, slamming her back against the car.

Jerome swept his leg around and knocked the gangster off his feet. The minute he was down, Jerome leaped up and kicked at the guy, but that was all Gloria heard before Carlito smacked her head back down sharply against the trunk.

Gloria yelped. She couldn’t help herself: It hurt.

Then Carlito was yanked off Gloria and flung away.

Gloria put a hand to her head—it was bloodied—and turned and saw Carlito lying in the snow, Jerome standing over him.

Jerome came to her and gingerly touched her head. “Are you hurt?”

“Watch out!” she shrieked as Carlito rose up behind him.
Carlito backhanded Jerome in the face so hard it spun Jerome around. He tripped backward into the curb and stumbled to his knees.

Carlito lunged. “Stop!” Gloria shouted.

But Carlito didn’t stop. He punched Jerome in the eye, then snapped his knee against the side of Jerome’s head. Jerome keeled over and lay on the sidewalk, coughing. “You should have known better than to mess with me,” Carlito said. He let loose a vicious kick, and Jerome curled into a ball. Carlito laughed. “Tony,” he said, “take out the trash, will ya?”

Gloria hadn’t seen the other mobster—Tony—quietly get up and come to Gloria’s side with his pistol outstretched. He shuffled over to where Jerome lay on the pavement.

Calmly, Tony drew back the slide on his pistol, unlocked the safety, and swung the weapon toward Jerome’s head.

Gloria screamed out in horror. “No!”

A shot rang out.

The world became hushed, peaceful almost, save for the crunch of something hitting the snowy pavement. Then there was just the silence. Gloria looked down at her shoes: They were like two black petals against the pure white snow.

She was suddenly conscious of the gun in her hand, of its dark weight. She let it go and dropped to her knees. The snow seeped through her stockings, but all she could feel was the sound of the shot, vibrating through her body. She was shaking now; somebody was shaking her.

“Gloria!”

A face she knew. Arms raising her up, holding her close.
You’re alive
, she thought, clawing at Jerome’s chest.
How are you alive?

Red ribbons stretched toward her like fingers in the snow. A body lay facedown, unmoving. At her feet, the gun was cool and dark and dead, like a second body.

She had killed a man.

She gasped and the world snapped into focus. Her hand was numb from the pistol’s recoil, and there was a stink of burned gunpowder in the air, and she was cold, so cold. “Oh God,” she whispered.

“It’s going to be all right,” Jerome said softly. “I promise.”

But how could it be? “No,” she mumbled.

“Gloria,” Jerome said, taking her shoulders in his hands. “You saved my life.”

Gloria’s head wouldn’t clear. “Where’s Carlito?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Jerome said. “He took off running right after you—after the gunshot.”

Before she could fully take that in, another set of footsteps was pounding toward them.

“Vera?” Jerome said. “It’s just Vera, Glo. It’s only my sister.”

Gloria couldn’t look away from the body. It was snowing harder now, the flakes coming down furiously out of the
darkness. The gangster’s corpse was fast becoming shrouded in white, but the red didn’t go away. It just got darker.

Vera reached them, out of breath. She stopped when she spotted Tony’s body and covered her mouth with her hand. “I thought I heard a shot, but I didn’t—” She looked from Gloria’s slack face to Jerome’s bloody one.

“Carlito came out of nowhere,” Jerome said. “With one of his goons. They knew we were leaving, I think. Someone must’ve tipped them off.”

Vera looked around nervously. “Wait, what are you doing with that?” she asked, spotting the gun at Gloria’s feet.

“They were going to kill me. Gloria got the drop on them.”

“It’s Bastian’s gun.” The words came out of Gloria’s mouth before she knew what she was saying.

Vera’s face shut down completely. “Leave,” she said quickly. “Leave now. I’ll take care of everything.”

“Vera, I can’t let you—”

“I said,
leave!
I’ll get Fred and Doug to get rid of the body. Ain’t no cop going to dig too deep to figure out what happened to some two-bit gangster. You two need to go, and fast.”

Jerome gave his sister a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll write you from New York.”

Jerome slid into the driver’s open door and turned the ignition. The car shuddered and rumbled to life.

Gloria stood frozen, her eyes locked not on the body but on the red snow.

“Gloria.” She felt Vera gently shaking her arm. “You have to go, before the police come.” Vera guided her around to the passenger-side door. Before she opened it, she put her forehead against Gloria’s. “You take care of my brother for me, okay? I’m trusting you.”

It was the nicest thing Vera had ever said to her.

“Okay,” Gloria heard herself say. “I will.” And then the door of her mother’s car was shut, and with Jerome at the wheel, they drove slowly down the street, the snow filling their tracks as quickly as they made them.

They had made it.

On the platform at 11:52, awaiting the midnight train, Gloria stood half a car’s length away from Jerome. They didn’t want to appear to be together in case anyone saw them. He had cleaned up the best he could in one of the bathrooms at the station, but his lips and cheeks were cut, and a bruise was taking over his right eye. He had pulled a fedora low over his face, and the hat’s brim hid the worst of it.

As the clock ticked closer to midnight, she walked past the other people on the platform and up to Jerome. “I don’t care who sees us together,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. This was not how she’d imagined starting her new life with Jerome. This was not how it was supposed to be.

“I want you to listen to me,” Jerome said. “As far as you’re concerned—as far as
anyone
is concerned—I killed Tony.”

“But, Jerome—”

“
Listen
to me,” he said. He moved his face close to hers. “I killed him, and that’s that. The Mob and the police will both be after me—I’m nothing but one more worthless black man to them, better dead than alive.

“So I have to run. But even when I get to New York, Carlito and Capone’s guys will try to track me down. I’ll be living as a fugitive.

“But you, Gloria,” he said softly, “you don’t have to suffer. You can stay here, safe.” He stared hard at his hands, then back up into her eyes. “I love you, Gloria. And because I love you, I can’t let you come with me.”

Gloria felt her chest crack open. He was right—she knew he was right. As long as Carlito lived, any life they had together would have to be forged in the shadows. And it was all her fault. If she hadn’t gone back to the Green Mill, she would have never run into Carlito, and he would never have attacked her, and Jerome would never have had to defend her, and—

A piercing whistle.

The train pulled into the station with a hiss of steam. Gloria looked up into Jerome’s eyes. “I love you,” she said,
and the words swept everything else away. Her fear of Carlito’s revenge, her worries about their uncertain future, everything.

The conductors went down the line, opening the cabin doors.

“All aboard!” one conductor called out. “Midnight train to New York City! Final stop: Grand Central Terminal!”

Jerome took a risk and kissed her cheek, a farewell kiss, and pried himself away. “Be a good girl, now,” he said, shouldering his trunk and picking up his suitcase.

Jerome moved down the platform, as if in slow motion, leaving Gloria behind.

“Jerome!” she shouted out, but he had already climbed the steps to the train, stopped, turned around to gaze at her.

“I almost forgot,” he said, digging into his pocket. He produced an earring—her grandmother’s—the one she had lost that night in the Green Mill. He held out his hand. “That’s what I went back into the apartment to get.”

Gloria ran to him and mounted the steps. “I’d rather be with you—wherever you are, no matter how bad things are—than anywhere in the world without you.”

“Are you sure?”

The whistle blew its warning cry. Around them, people flooded into the train cars, taking seats, putting away their luggage. “It won’t be easy,” Jerome said. “Easy is over with. I won’t hate you if you say no. I’ll understand.”

Gloria gazed at this man who had changed her life, who
had opened himself up to her, who had taught her how to sing—not just on the stage, but in life. This man she had killed for. She thought about their being together in New York, with Carlito hunting them. She thought about being alone in Chicago if she stayed.

Make a decision
, Gloria thought.
It’s now or never
.

“All aboard!” the conductor cried.

VERA

“I told you never to come here,” Bastian said as the elevator doors shut. “That was our deal.”

“That was before you
broke
our deal,” Vera said, storming into his apartment. “Before my brother almost ended up dead.”

Bastian closed the door. “Now I’m going to have to make up a story about needing a new cleaning lady.”

“Fat chance of anyone believing
those
horsefeathers at two in the morning.”

Vera knew it was risky. Not only coming to an all-white neighborhood, but to an engaged, rich white man’s apartment. At night. But she had no other choice. She was responsible for what had just happened.

The two of them had never been alone before. It made her very uneasy.

In the past, they had met on a pair of benches along the east side of Washington Park, or in one of the Chinatown eateries in Hyde Park, where no one would take notice of a white man eating dinner with a black woman.

“May I take your coat, Miss Vera?” he said with mock hospitality.

“Can the act,” she said, not wanting to expose the skimpy dress she was wearing beneath her coat. She’d gone straight from work at the Green Mill to say farewell to her brother. She hadn’t expected the blood, the body, or Jerome’s battered face.

“Then may I at least get you a drink? It might warm you up,” he said, walking over to a bottle he had sitting out.