Ingenue Read Online Free PDF Page A

New York City landmarks—Times Square, Central Park, the Woolworth Building—covered the walls. It was a heckuva swanky joint.
    The place was pretty deserted still—only a few regulars sat alone at the small tables, nursing drinks in mugs. A group of businessmen filled one of the booths, having bought early admission with a fat roll of cash. Bernice and Hazel, two cigarette girls, said hello, but Lorraine pretended they didn’t exist. It was important that they remembered she was the boss.
    “Well, lo and behold, have we got a looker here,” a gravelly voice said from behind her.
    Lorraine turned to see Dante Vega, a close friend and business partner of Puccini’s. Dante was a bit of a piker, always coming in to mooch free booze, scaring the customers with his dark buggy eyes, his enormous nose, and the jagged scar running down his left cheek. Dante always said “Lo and behold” when he saw Lorraine. He thought it was hilarious.
    She forced herself to smile. “No small thanks to you, sweetheart.”
    Dante had given Lorraine the blue Lanvin dress the day before. Dante was Puccini’s best friend. So if Dante gave a girl a gift, she’d better be wearing it the next time he saw her.
    “Shipment come in okay?” Dante asked, leaning away to light his cigar. “Greasy Fred’s gonna have a real problem if he keeps dawdlin’ with our product.”
    Lorraine nodded. “The boys are crating up the last of it now.”
    “Good. And you check on the band?”
    “I was just about to, but then you had to go and start distracting me.”
    Dante knocked back the shot of Scotch that Cecil the bartender had placed in front of him. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.” He leaned closer, his breath reeking of cigars and something less pleasant. “Unless of course you want to be distracted.”
    Lorraine gave him another smile. “Not while I’m working, honey.”
    He waved her off with a fat hand. “Aw, such a hard worker! Bet you got straight As back in that fancy school of yours in Chicago. Hard work and smarts’ll take you a long way.” Dante picked up his brown derby from a nearby table and put it on. “I’m gonna tell Vinny to start lettin’ the birds in, so be ready.” He ambled away toward the stairs.
    The only place Lorraine wanted her “smarts” to take her was the Barnard campus in September. Working at the Opera House was a nice little summer job, but it wasn’t what Lorraine Dyer was about, no sir. It was just a sweet gig at the cool and sophisticated kind of place where Lorraine was sure she belonged.
    But it turned out that working in a speakeasy was still work: checking on the band, making sure the hired boys mopped up the alcohol-coated floors, keeping track of all those tiny red chips that the dealers used on poker nights. And even the merest thought of the club’s bathroom made her want to run back to Chicago as fast as her legs could take her.
    Not that anyone would have welcomed Lorraine if she had.
    Her parents had barely spoken to her since the night she’d exposed that lying tramp Clara Knowles. Just like everyone else, Lorraine’s parents had blamed Lorraine for the scandal that erupted. They’d proposed that she could “mend her ways” by spending her summer doing charity work. But Carlito Macharelli had proposed something else, something much more interesting than spending her days chaperoning filthy little orphan children in Chicago’s Astor Square Park. And Lorraine had leaped at it. Her folks were only too happy to have her packed off to college early—or so they thought—and no longer their problem. “The university will instill in you a more refined morality,” her mother had told her.
    Instead, she’d ended up here, working for a gangster.
    It wasn’t as if Puccini were the worst boss in the world. Just last week, he’d given Lorraine the night off for her eighteenth birthday. Not that she had anything to do or anyone to do it with, but still, it was a nice thought.