Page 61 of If Looks Could Kill

The Lion’s Den is quieter at midday. A few patrons nurse mulled drinks. Cold has frosted over the plate-glass windows. A pianist in a corner practices while a singing girl stretches her legs.

Pearl looks up and down the barroom, taking in the velvet-curtained stage and the polished bar. She has entered every kind of saloon and tavern and stale beer joint and dive in the Bowery. The Lion’s Den’s expensive gleam sets it apart. More sophisticated. More false.

“Get you something, miss?” asks the barkeep.

“I want to speak to Johnny Leone.”

The barkeep’s expression stiffens. “He ain’t here.”

Pearl takes a seat at the bar. “I’ll wait.”

She feels her Medusa self coiled just below the surface, ready to strike.

A man sidles up to her. “What brings a pretty thing like you here?”

She turns and looks him straight in the eye. “Vengeance.”

He makes a show of starting to laugh, then remembers his own barstool is elsewhere.

“How long will it be,” she asks the barkeep, “before Mr. Leone returns?”

“How can I help you?”

She feels him standing behind her before she hears his voice. He is well named. There is something feline about him, moving about unseen, silent and watchful.

She turns toward him slowly and watches recognition dawn. “My Salvation Army friend,” he says smoothly. “To what do I owe—”

“I need to speak with you,” she says. “Alone.”

He gestures with one long arm toward a high-backed corner booth. She follows him there, then slides into a seat. He folds his long limbs into the opposite one.

He wears a black shirt and black trousers with red suspenders and a red cravat. His long-fingered hands are manicured, and his dark hair gleams.

“What a coincidence that you should appear,” he says. “I thought of you this morning.”

Pearl hadn’t expected him to take control of the conversation. “That seems unlikely.”

“On the contrary,” says Johnny Leone. “When I lose a high-paying tenant because she tells me a pair of young Salvation Army Hallelujah girls came in, laid out her men, and shot the place up , naturally, I would think of you.”

Johnny Leone’s heavy-lidded eyes watch Pearl intently. He thinks he has her there.

“Rose is livid,” he adds. “Not the forgiving type. It wasn’t wise for you to come today.”

Pearl leans in closer. “Are you threatening me?”

He angles back and holds up his hands pacifically. “Not I,” he says. “Though I may send you the plasterer’s bill for the bullet holes. Which, by the way—guns? Do they issue you those along with your Bibles and your, what is it, War Cry s?”

Don’t toy with me, Mr. Cat, thinks Pearl. I’m not the mouse you think I am.

He seems mildly surprised that Pearl isn’t reacting more to his words. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is Rosie’s turf. Even if she’s relocating her girls somewhere else.”

“Another of your properties?” she asks. “I’ll bet you’d scramble to keep a ‘high-paying tenant’ like her on your books.”

He nods approvingly. “I don’t expect to find such business acumen among our local Salvation maidens.” He sighs. “But I have nothing to offer her. She’s moving up to the Tenderloin, and I’m in search of new occupants.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to fill an apartment,” she says. “Lots of families looking for homes.”

He shrugs. “So they say.”

“But you don’t want to put a nice family there.”

His brow furrows. “What was it…” His eyes light up. “Pearl. That’s it. I see I’m right.”

Pearl fails, just enough, to keep her surprise hidden.

“Pretty Miss Pearl,” he goes on, “and her witty companion. Let me think. Woods? Woodroe… Woodward?” He smiles. “You should never play poker, Miss Pearl.”

The small hairs on Pearl’s arms prickle.

“I’m glad you came,” he tells her. “I’d been trying all morning to remember your names.”

“Why?” She knows why.

“You two are the talk of the neighborhood.” He smiles. “Salvation fever is spreading.”

“She has nothing to do with this,” Pearl says. “Leave her alone.”

Again, the shocked innocence. “You wrong me, Miss Pearl,” he says. “I wouldn’t dream of laying a hand upon anybody.”

“You might not,” parries Pearl, “but you don’t work alone.”

“You’re correct,” Johnny says. “I employ a sizable staff to help me in my business of selling refreshments to hardworking New Yorkers.”

Pearl fumes. “Don’t patronize me.”

She steadies her breath. She has come for a reason, which now feels riskier. Or perhaps more urgent. She can’t be sure. But she must do something.

“You said, that day we met, that you attend Mass.”

Finally, she has surprised him, but he pulls back his composure immediately. “Ah.” He smiles. “The spiritual part of the interview. You’re concerned for my soul.”

She ignores this. “Do you go to confession?”

He turns, eyeing her sidewise. “I do.”

“What does the priest tell you?” asks Pearl. “What absolution does he prescribe for you for padding your pockets renting space to a madam who gets rich selling human flesh?”

He leans back in his seat.

“Let’s see,” Pearl continues. “Greed. Pride. Lust. Gluttony. Envy. Sloth. Wrath. Every one of the seven deadly sins is tangled up in the sex trade.”

He blanches as if her shocking language has offended his finer feelings.

“And where,” he asks, “does wrath enter into it? For my academic enlightenment.”

“Through the wrath of God,” she says, “which will haunt you in hell for eternity.”

He chuckles. “If you say so.”

“And the wrath,” adds Pearl, “of all the girls and women beaten, abused, and violated under your roof, with your consent.”

“Wrath?” he muses. “The females you refer to don’t generally seem too frightening.”

“Wait and see.”

Pearl feels her snakes grow restless, itching to be unleashed.

“I am a businessman,” he says. “A man of property looks for the best price he can get.”

“Greed,” says she. “Does your priest agree that profit is more important than principle?”

He places one hand atop the other. “Even unfortunate girls need a place to sleep.”

“They deserve to sleep in their own homes, in their own beds, with family close by.”

For a moment, the mask slips. “I am a busy man,” he says. “What is it you want?”

Pearl’s heart sinks. None of her arrows has dented his armor. Instead, she has unlocked his memory of both their names. So much for hunting. She is the one who walked into a trap. All she has left is white-hot fury. All she knows is that she hates this cologne-scented man.

So she tells him what she thinks. “You are a despicable human being.”

“Am I?” He shakes his head sadly. “You may despise me, Miss Pearl, but I admire you. It’s not often you find someone with passionate convictions such as yours. I congratulate you.”

She scowls at him. “I don’t want your congratulations.”

“And because I admire you, I’ll do you a greater kindness than you would ever do me.”

“By giving up this polluted business of yours?”

“By not going upstairs right now,” he says, “and telling Rose, who is there ordering her movers about, that you are here.”

Pearl watches him through narrowed eyes. Upstairs, even now.

“She will pay a handsome price to anyone who helps secure you for her.”

“ Secure me?”

“Recruit you, naturally,” he said. “She intends to take her revenge upon you in the most lucrative way possible.”

Pearl closes her eyes as a memory crashes over her.

“Which would be a shame,” he says. “Say what you will of me, but I do hate to see nice girls like you fall victim to such a fate.”

She grips the table edge till her knuckles whiten. “What about the girls who’ve been up there all this time?”

He leans across the table, closer to Pearl.

“They’re mostly Jewish,” he whispers conspiratorially.

“Rose, the girls, the pimps, the clients.” He spreads his hands wide.

“I wouldn’t rent the space to someone keeping all Christian girls up there.

But what Jews do to their own kind is scarcely my affair. ”

Something explodes inside Pearl then. The sight of Freyda, crouched on the floor upstairs, bruised and crying, fills her vision.

A memory of a barn and a bale of straw. The weight, pressing down upon her, of an entire city filled with girls whose assaults are scheduled, negotiated, bartered.

Where the girl must, herself, cooperate in soliciting her own violators, dancing in trainside windows, or be beaten.

Be beaten regardless. Burn out life’s brief candle and too quickly die when her health and sanity can’t endure the pain.

Pearl boils in the heat of it. Writhes and stretches and unhinges to plant herself firmly, to brace herself for all the hurt. She wants all of it, so her rage can be fully justified.

A city. A nation. A world of men who have no problem with this state of affairs. Who find it convenient and preferable. A world of women who feel they have no better option.

Johnny Leone shifts back in his seat, satisfied. “So you see,” he says, “things are rarely as simple as they seem at first glance.” He gives her a complacent smile. “Not even me.”

She rises from her seat and bends herself close to a baffled Johnny Leone, till he seems to think she plans to kiss him, till he has no choice but to gaze into her roiling eyes and to watch her golden curls slide into serpentine life.

“Neither am I.”