Chapter 13

I’d begged Daddy for weeks for a pair of roller skates and, though we never seemed to have much money for extras, he somehow scraped together enough to present me with a pair of skates on the first day of summer in 1924. He said they were a reward for earning all As in the fourth grade, in spite of our move from Detroit in the middle of the school year.

The skates were a brand-new pair of Winchesters, shiny silver with bright red wheels and red leather straps to go around my ankles. I sat right down and slid the toes of my Keds between the metal clasps, then buckled the straps. Daddy tightened the skates with the key, which Mother then put on a shoestring so I could wear it around my neck. I spent all afternoon skating up and down the sidewalk in front of our apartment building and never once fell down. I fancied myself a natural athlete, so much so that over the next few weeks I dreamed of being a famous ballroom roller dancer or maybe even a movie star who skated her way through musicals, singing and dancing flawlessly on wheels.

My skates and I became inseparable. I took them everywhere, even to my best friend Ariel’s party when she turned ten. She knew she’d be getting her own pair of Winchesters for her birthday, and she asked me to stay after the party so we could go skating together.

Ariel’s family lived in the upstairs portion of a duplex on Arundel Street, not far from the Commodore Hotel. Since its opening four years earlier, the hotel had attracted the rich and the famous, and was particularly well-known for the wild parties thrown there by F. Scott Fitzgerald and his eccentric flapper wife Zelda. That meant little to me, as I knew nothing about being either rich or famous and was certainly not acquainted with the people who were. I was just a kid with a pair of red-wheeled skates that summer day in 1924.

Once her new skates were attached to her shoes, Ariel became timid and uncertain and so moved along the sidewalk at a cautionary pace. I, on the other hand, was a cannonball to her tumbleweed, which made me feel rather superior, since I was still nine years old to her ten.

We skated south on Arundel to Holly Avenue and turned left toward Western Avenue. That whole corner was occupied by the Commodore, a huge multistory redbrick fortress with a gated courtyard in front. By the time I’d turned onto Western, I was half a block ahead of Ariel and gleefully racing forward in a reckless blaze of glory. I was passing the wrought-iron gates that led into the courtyard when it happened. The wheels of my right skate met a buckled crack in the sidewalk, and before I even knew I was in trouble, I was airborne like a ballplayer stealing home plate. After a split-second freefall, I skidded onto the pavement, ripping the hem of my party dress and scraping the skin off both knees. I was stunned senseless. I heard Ariel calling my name—“Eve! Are you all right?”—but I couldn’t answer. It took me a few long moments to gather my wits and turn over. I sat with my legs sprawled in front of me, saw the torn flesh of my kneecaps and the blood oozing out of the wounds, and that’s when the pain set in, along with the humiliation. I started to cry, and through my tears I saw Ariel pawing her way clumsily toward me, pounding the sidewalk like someone smashing grapes instead of gliding on the wheels beneath her. I wanted to laugh at her but couldn’t. I’d been so smug about my skating, yet here I was, on the ground with tattered knees and—I finally noticed—palms furrowed with scratches and dusty white with concrete, which made me cry all the more.

I didn’t want anyone to see me like that, but, of all the rotten luck, the heavy wrought-iron gate of the Commodore squeaked open on its hinges, and three men stepped out of the courtyard and onto the sidewalk. One walked out in front while the other two shadowed him like wings. The one in front was a heavyset man smoking a newly lit cigar. He wore a white double-breasted suit, a white fedora, and black-and-white wingtip shoes. The only color on him was the black parts of his shoes and the rose-colored silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. When he saw me, he stopped and squatted down, his great weight balanced on the balls of his feet. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and tossed it aside. “Hey, kid, you all right?” he asked, his shaggy brows knit, his gray eyes tender with a kind of fatherly concern.

I tried to nod but I could do little more than stare at this oversized angel hunched clumsily beside me. I stared not just because he was there, but because his face was so badly scarred, as though a three-fingered monster had clawed him, leaving gouges from his left ear almost all the way to his mouth.

“You all right, kid?” he asked again, and though I saw his purplish lips move, I still couldn’t answer. His raised his brows and gazed at me quizzically.

He must have decided my tears were the only answer he was going to get, because he shrugged and lifted a hand toward one of the dark-suited men. Though he didn’t say a word, the man knew what he wanted. A handkerchief was put into the pudgy fist of my rescuer, who used it to dab at my bloody knees. It hurt, but I didn’t want to say so. The tears were still flowing and my nose was leaking, and since I had nothing to wipe my face with, I tried vainly to sniff everything back inside. The sound was so pitiful, the man in white held up his hand again, and the second shadow handed over his handkerchief, which the angel gave to me with the word, “Blow.”

I blew my nose and wiped away my tears. By now, Ariel had caught up with us; she stood slack-jawed on the sidewalk, staring at the scene unraveling before her.

“Listen,” the man said, “why don’t you give the skates a rest and walk home? That the key?” He pointed to the key on the shoestring around my neck.

I nodded. He lifted the key over my head and unlocked the skates. Then he slipped them off my feet and laid them aside. “Anyway,” he went on, “I think the bleeding’s stopped. Why don’t you go on home and have your mother put some iodine on these cuts?”

“All right,” I said shakily, finally able to respond. I glanced at Ariel. I knew she was staring at the man’s scars and wondering about his peculiar accent. He sounded like he’d come from somewhere out east, like New Jersey.

The man stood and adjusted his fedora. One of the shadows grabbed my wrists and pulled me up. Neither he nor the other shadow ever said a word; they simply stood there looking impatient and annoyed.

When I was back up on my feet, the angel said, “You gotta be more careful, little lady.”

I nodded again, meekly. “I will,” I promised.

A long sleek car pulled up to the curb, and one of the shadows opened the back door. The man in white took a step forward, then stopped and turned to me. “Say, you like elephants?” he asked.

I was so shaken by the penetrating eyes, the scars, the whole imposing white figure that I couldn’t speak till Ariel nudged me in the ribs. “Sure,” I said. “I like elephants.”

He reached into the pocket of his slacks like he was searching for spare change, but what he pulled out was a miniature ivory elephant, hardly bigger than a radish. “Here you go, kid,” he said. “It’ll bring you good luck.”

I held up a trembling hand, and he laid the elephant in my palm. I stared at it, afraid to lift my eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered.

I was hardly aware of the men climbing into the car, but when the doors slammed shut, I realized I was still clutching the handkerchiefs. “Hey, mister!” I yelled. I knocked on the back window until it rolled down. The man’s face appeared without the fedora. His thinning brown hair was brushed straight back and his forehead glistened with sweat. His right side was toward me so the scars were largely hidden.

“Don’t you want your handkerchiefs back?” I held them up. They were soiled with blood, mucus, and tears.

The man looked at the other fellows in the car and laughed heartily. Then he turned back to me. “Naw, you keep them,” he said. “Another little gift from your friends in Chicago.”

The window rolled up and the car moved down the street. Ariel and I looked after the car until it disappeared.

Her voice lilting with awe, Ariel asked, “Who was that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But he was nice.”

“Yeah. Let’s go home. Mom will put some iodine and bandages on your knees.”

Six years would pass before I could identify the man outside the Commodore Hotel. In all that time I didn’t have a clue and had almost forgotten about him until his smiling face appeared on the March 24, 1930, cover of Time magazine. With one eyebrow raised and a rose in his lapel, he looked cocky and self-assured, as though he’d just been named Man of the Year. I’d seen smaller photos of him in the papers, but with his life-sized mug on the magazine cover, his now infamous scars were glaringly apparent. He was well-known for his dealings in bootlegging, gambling, racketeering, and prostitution. He was also a ruthless murderer, as well as the prime suspect behind the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 when seven of Bugs Moran’s men were gunned down in a warehouse in cold blood. He’d been named Public Enemy Number One by the Chicago Crime Commission and nicknamed Scarface by the newspapers. By 1930 both his name and his nickname were household words, but I didn’t connect him to my corpulent angel until I saw the cover of Time.

Ariel and I stared at that cover a good long while, unable to believe that the man who’d helped me when I fell was Al Capone.