Sin in the Second City (11 page)

Bathhouse John Coughlin.

Laws should be like clothes. They should fit the people they are meant to serve.

—C
LARENCE
D
ARROW

A
fter the Club’s first night passed, and weeks tumbled into months, the Everleighs did not so much settle into a routine as construct one, carefully: how to discipline courtesans who stepped out of line, how much (or little) to interact with neighbors, which guests to admit, which to refuse, which to entertain gratis, and which to accommodate, no matter how bizarre or outlandish the request. They adopted madam personas that both reflected and exaggerated who they were. Ada was the executive, more adept at balancing books than making small talk; Minna was the mixer and mingler, who underscored each movement and italicized every word. Their moral code had all the stringency of a preacher’s but none of the hypocrisy, and they understood, from experience, that some threats intensified only when acknowledged, while others carried a force all their own.

The Levee had its own list of commandments, long established but mutable, that kept the district functioning as efficiently as the Union Stock Yards. There was, it seemed, always a grand jury investigating something or other, always a crackdown or a raid in the works, always a reform group shouting from the sidelines about liquor licenses and closing laws. Yet such distractions remained peripheral as long as you knew where the boundaries were drawn and, more important, who ensured they stayed in place.

I
ke Bloom, the Levee leader who had stopped by on the Club’s opening night, kept his promise and visited again. His real name was Isaac Gitelson, and along with his brother-in-law Solly Friedman, he operated a dance hall called Freiberg’s on 22nd Street. It was a famous resort, but typical of its kind—a bar in the front and a long dance room in the back, with tables scattered along the walls, an orchestra in the balcony, and platforms upon which prostitutes gyrated and beckoned to every man who entered. An office occupied a small room upstairs, where once a week Bloom sat behind his desk and waited for the delivery of hundreds of envelopes fat with cash.

In an attempt to keep the reformers at bay, he advertised his dive as a “dance academy.”

Bloom had rules for his place, too, ethically flexible though they were: After 1:00 a.m., the official closing hour, a label marked “HONEY” was slapped across beer bottles, and seasoned patrons ordered whiskey by requesting “seltzer water.” His girls were required to report in by 9:00 p.m. every night and coax men into spending at least 40 cents for every round of drinks. When they asked the bartender for “B” ginger ale highballs, the glasses were filled with colored water. It was an ingenious ploy: The girls made their quota, while Bloom saved money on booze. Long before customers caught on, the girls lured them away to the nearby Marlborough Hotel, where the price of a room was $5—most of which, naturally, was kicked back to Bloom.

Slowly but surely, Minna heard, Ike Bloom was nudging meeker men aside and assuming power throughout the district. Every time a new police captain rose through the ranks or was ushered in with a new mayoral administration, Bloom called him to “make arrangements” for protection payments, a request invariably taken in stride. So integral was Bloom to the web of Levee graft that his portrait, handsomely framed, hung in a prominent place of honor in the squad room of the 22nd Street police station. Together, Bloom and the cops determined the scale of prices:

Massage parlors and assignation houses, $25 weekly

Larger houses of ill fame, $50 to $100 weekly, with $25 additional each week if drinks are sold

Saloons allowed to stay open after hours, $50 per month

Sale of liquor in apartment houses without licenses, $15 per month

Poker and craps, $25 per week for each table

Bloom sent George Little, a Levee ruler he’d usurped and displaced, to make collections. The sisters agreed to the protection rates for a house of their caliber, amounting to about $10,000 annually, but were coy on the subject of buying their wine from Solly Friedman, or their provisions from four certain grocery stores in which Bloom and two powerful aldermen had part interest.

“Positively,” Minna said, “the dive-keepers feared Ike Bloom more than the 22nd Street police captain or any inspector ever placed in charge of the district.”

But the sisters, just as often, found Bloom unintentionally hilarious, a character whose vicious streak was well concealed by bumbling antics and awkward mannerisms. He always got Minna’s name wrong, calling her “Minnie.” He dispensed $2.50 gold pieces to his friends and cronies, and when his circle of devotees grew, he cut costs by switching to silver dollars. Those who knew him recognized the gesture as heartfelt. He wasn’t buying friendship, but commemorating it. He relished publicity, bad or good or even deadly. A stabbing or shooting or overdose at his hall would only attract more customers.

One day, Bloom burst through the Everleigh Club doors, waving a paper and tearing at the few remaining hairs that sprouted from his scalp. “Now see what they done to me,” he yelled. “They’ve changed my name. It says here in the paper that I am Ike Blossom—what’s that, a rosey-posey?”

Minna bit her cheeks and felt the tip of Ada’s boot kicking her shin under the table. Ike
Blossom—
good God, if someone had paid the papers to make such a mistake, it couldn’t have been any better. Imagine, Ike Bloom, big, bad Levee leader—a
queer.

“And why?” Ike raged. “I’ll tell you. Last night a dame from one of Monkey Face Charlie Genker’s Morgan Street joints drove a hat pin into a gent’s stomach. He ain’t going to die or nothing, but he has some kind of a pull. Look, here it is in the paper.”

He threw it down on the table with a splat and watched the sisters read the headline:

FREIBERG’S CLAIMS ANOTHER

RICH VICTIM

GIRL STABS WEALTHY MAN

Ike Blossom, as Usual, Maintains Silence

in Latest Underworld Affray

Minna could barely contain herself.

“Don’t think I didn’t bawl out the editor,” Bloom ranted. “I gave him a piece of my mind. And what do you think he told me?”

Minna shrugged, afraid to open her mouth. If she began laughing at him, she might never stop. Ada tsk-tsked and shot Bloom a practiced look of consolation.

“He said they didn’t want a libel suit,” he said. “Who would I sue? I never sued anybody yet. My name is Ike Bloom, and the next time anybody turns it into Blossom I’ll smack a house down—it’s defamation of character. Have I got a claim, or haven’t I? I wish I knew an honest lawyer.”

Catching his breath, he reached into a pocket and pulled out two silver dollars, tossing one to each sister.

“Now you know where you stand with me,” he said, smiling, and Minna at last freed her face and did the same. “Any time you want anything come over to Ike Bloom.”

And he showed himself out.

“B
ig Jim” Colosimo, whose power in the district nearly equaled Ike Bloom’s, didn’t need the quotes around his name. He shared one fashion preference with Minna: Every finger bore a diamond ring, his cuff links were diamond studs, and an enormous diamond horseshoe accented his vest. He bought loose diamonds from thieves and won them from gamblers. When bored or distracted, he’d play with the jewels, pouring them from one palm to the other. He wore “paper suits,” as he called them, made of slight seersucker material—so thin that you could see through it in the summertime—complemented by a matching derby with a black satin rim and a white bow tie, over which his ample chin dropped in a waterfall of flesh. He was enormous, with hulking shoulders and a deliberate, lumbering gait. His mustache, besides drawing attention upward and away from his chin, was thick and bristled enough to conceal his expressions. His was a natural poker face, but always betrayed by his cyclonic personality: He was the kind of man you sensed before you saw.

He visited the Everleigh Club occasionally, either when the sisters inquired about protection payments or of his own accord, boxes of spaghetti tucked under his arm and a jar of his special sauce—“red ink,” he’d say with a wink—pinned beneath his chin. A bag of grated Parmesan cheese peeked from his pocket. He headed straight for the kitchen, and Minna and Ada knew to wait for him there.

“Draw up a couple of chairs,” he said, motioning to both sisters. “Where’s them big boilers?” He poked his head in a cabinet, crashing pots and pans. “Never mind, here’s one.”

Within minutes, Big Jim had wrapped an apron around his white suit and fragrant bursts of steam clouded the air. “What’s up? Ike Bloom been bothering you again?” he’d ask rhetorically. “What’s eating Ike, anyway? I always said he goes too far.”

Minna despised spaghetti. Slimy noodles slathered in boring red sauce—what was the appeal? Forcing herself to clean her plate, she ignored the way her guest slurped his sauce and gnawed his bread, the crumbs that burrowed stubbornly in his mustache. It wouldn’t do to offend Big Jim.

His stories, however, were fascinating. He described his early childhood in Italy and the boat ride to America when he was just ten years old. His father found work in Chicago, and Big Jim spent his first days in the city learning the Levee streets and how they worked: the pickpocket’s quick dip and flick of the wrist; the pimp’s bowlegged saunter; the unseeing stare of the addicts and freaks. He needed to help his family, he told the sisters, so he sold newspapers at first and then became a bootblack. He couldn’t forget the scent of the polish on his fingers, etched in the ridges of his skin and beneath his nails. He smelled common. When he had money, and he was sure he would, his fingers would instead be covered in diamonds. Minna could relate.

By eighteen, he said, he picked pockets better than anyone he’d ever seen and had forayed into pimping. Six girls depended on him for protection and praise. On the side he was a Black Hand collector, extorting money from established Italian businessmen (and his eventual success came with an unfortunate bit of irony: Black Hand blackmailers now targeted him for payments). He went straight for a while, heading up a team of street cleaners that evolved into a labor union of sorts—a potential voting bloc that caught the notice of the city’s Democratic machine. Big Jim was appointed a precinct captain, which marked the end of his time as a law-abiding citizen.

With his madam wife, Victoria, he operated two dives, the Victoria and the Saratoga, neither far from the Everleigh Club. He talked of his soft spot for harlots—more than once he roamed the Levee streets after a teary outburst, mascara stains blotting his lapel—but this image as a benevolent overlord was marred somewhat by his latest, and most lucrative, source of revenue.

Big Jim, the sisters heard, ran a white slavery ring.

His reputed partner was a wily Frenchman, Maurice Van Bever. A preening dandy who rode through the Levee streets every afternoon, driven by a coachman clad in a high silk hat and jacket trimmed with solid gold buttons, Van Bever also operated two saloons, the Paris and the White City. He and Big Jim, according to the rumors, organized a ring with intercity connections, working with similar outfits in New York, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. Just like their Levee forebear, Madam Mary Hastings, they imported girls to Chicago with promises of good jobs and secure homes and sold them to brothel keepers—or forced them into their own houses—once they arrived.