CHAPTER 1
MY STORY BELONGS on the front page next to a photograph the size of the Saint Louis Cathedral. That’s what the reporter told me. She said I should picture my name and hers in capital letters, and imagine showing her editor and the whole city of New Orleans that girls can be the heroes of stories and write them, too. But I know the truth—newspapers only care about girls who are rich and pretty and blonde, especially when they’re dead.
The real story is one the paper would never print.
The real story isn’t about me or that dolled-up debutante either. It’s about my best friend, Marion, undisputed queen of the Cloak and Dagger and definitely not a murderer, no matter what the cops and the papers said.
It started on the last night of 1929 with a knock on a door. That night, my aunt Cal had run off to Baton Rouge for a last-minute vaudeville engagement and left me in charge of her speakeasy, the Cloak and Dagger. In all the four years since my mother ditched me with her sister, Aunt Cal had never trusted anyone else with the club, so I thought something might be about to change for the better. Maybe I wouldn’t be stuck mopping floors, busing tables, and cooking Cal’s books forever. Maybe if this night went well, she’d let me quit school early and run the place on weeknights.
New Year’s Eve is second only to Mardi Gras in the French Quarter, but Cal said I shouldn’t expect any more than the usual amount of trouble. The beat cops were bribed extra, the hidey-holes were stocked with double the hooch, Marion was getting beautiful in his dressing room, and while Frank the bouncer broke up a fight over a boy between two sailors, I was running the door.
So, when the girl knocked, I was the lucky one who slid back the slot in the club’s front door.
“Jittersauce,” she said confidently through the sandwich-size opening. All I could see of her were long-lashed eyes and one bright curl plastered to the middle of her forehead. She wasn’t a regular, but she was pretty and about my age and, most important, she had the password. I lifted the latch and let her in.
Right away, I regretted it. She swept inside the club, leading a conspicuously wealthy pack, all of the kids except her sweating in oversize raccoon-fur coats. Even in dead winter most nights in New Orleans produced no worse than a clammy chill, but the girl was the only one with the sense (or the vanity) to leave the fur at home. She wore a slinky dress covered with an angular pattern of gold beads, and enough jewelry to fuel the fencing trade in the French Quarter for a month—a gold necklace with translucent green dragonfly wings spread across her collarbone, an emerald ring, and nickel-size emerald earrings that sparked light under her helmet of silvery-blonde curls.
I tried not to roll my eyes as the Uptowners stopped just inside the door and gaped at the scene before them, tugging their fur collars away from their necks. The sign hanging over our door said we were a soda shop, but everybody who made it this far knew the truth. Including the cops we bribed to keep the feds off our backs and overlook some of the less-than-lawful things going on inside. My aunt’s club was a risky joint to be seen in, for lots of reasons, but we still got our share of looky-loos, mostly kids my age or so, who came purely for the sensation of being somewhere scandalous once in their strait-laced lives.
Oftentimes, folks like these wandered in, took one look at the boys dancing with boys, girls with girls, and wandered themselves right back out again. This bunch looked like they were about to do the same, but their blonde ringleader jabbed an elbow in her date’s ribs, and he skittered forward like an agitated crab.
“Go find a table,” she told him imperiously. His hair was equally platinum and looked like it was molded out of porcelain. “Please,” she said a little nicer. “I’ll be right there.”
“You got it, peach,” he said agreeably, and the others followed after him into the smoke-hazed belly of the club.
The girl, though, stayed put and turned to me. She opened her handbag, all covered in gold beads to match her dress. For a second, I thought she was going to give me a tip, and I’ll admit, I wasn’t going to turn it down.
“Hello, Miss . . . ?” she said, like she was waiting for me to fork over a last name.
I leaned forward on my stool, fingering the collar of the tuxedo jacket Aunt Cal didn’t know I’d borrowed. “Call me Millie.”
“Okay. Millie.” She looked flustered all of a sudden, different from when her friends were around. It made her seem younger, less like a queen. She held out a small photograph. “Have you ever seen”—she edged closer, as if afraid of being overheard, though the jazz band’s blasting made it unlikely—“a boy who looked like this? In here?”
“Can’t say that I have.” I adjusted Cal’s top hat over my chin-length black hair to avoid taking a closer look at the picture. It was one of Cal’s rules for all of us working at the Cloak and Dagger club; you didn’t give out names and you didn’t confirm you’d seen anybody here. We’d had wives and husbands come looking, fiancées, boyfriends, mothers. They didn’t get far with us.
The girl’s tidy penciled brows came together in a frown, and she stamped her little gold-clad foot. “But you didn’t even look!”
Two knocks sounded on the door, and I held up a finger to silence her. I flipped up the panel in the door. Three of the Red Feather Boys, which is what Marion and I call his most devoted fans, waited outside. I didn’t bother to ask them for the password and jerked open the door on its squealing hinges.
“Welcome! Welcome!” I said, sweeping off the top hat with a flourish. The boys grinned, and I waved the hat toward the bar. “Drinks are thataway, fellas!”
“Lookin’ swell, Millie,” one of them said, nudging me with an elbow. “Is that lipstick I see?”
“Nah,” I lied. “Just ate half a jar of maraschino cherries.”
Truth was, I’d found a tube of stage lipstick in the flotsam on Aunt Cal’s dresser and swiped it on, then quickly rubbed it back off with a handkerchief. It’d felt too waxy, too red, and false as a three-dollar bill.
Not that I minded a good lie. It just had to be one that suited me. And red lipstick didn’t. That was Marion’s affair.
When I turned back, the rich girl was still standing there. I sighed and stuck my hands in my trousers pockets, touching the pearl-handled switchblade in one and a brass money clip in the other.
“Please look again.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked up at me through those unreasonably long lashes. She was a number, all right. Too flashy for me, but maybe our waitress Olive would like her. Might even steal her away from that porcelain-doll date for a smooch at midnight. Not that I particularly liked the thought of that either.
I rolled my eyes heavenward, but I plucked the photograph from Blondie’s hand, only to make a show of taking a closer look.