It was a gray stone building that looked very much like the other buildings on the block. All the buildings were so old and stately compared to the ramshackle houses and skinny churches in Montreal.
There was a guard standing at the door. He looked the couple over as they walked up the steps of the establishment. They had not expected it to be so beautiful inside. They were used to the Montreal whorehouses, which were just duplexes converted into brothels. This was a regular hotel, and a rather splendid one too. The large lobby featured a pianist playing a grand piano. Wooden staircases rose on either side of the lobby, polished and shiny. Everything was so clean. Well-dressed men sat around tables, playing cards. A mural of baby angels cavorting hung on a wall. The chandelier was magnificent, with hundreds of little pieces of crystal hanging down from it and tinkling.
Pierrot and Rose sank a little bit into the carpet, which was covered in a pattern of pink and blue flowers. They stood there looking at their feet, wondering if the ground would continue to swallow them up. It did not.
The whores were all magnificent. Rose had, of course, heard tell that Jimmy had the most beautiful whores in the city. But she had had no idea what that meant. She had had no idea how one type of woman could be considered more beautiful than another. She saw that they were all buxom. Their asses were huge and lovely, and when they sat down it was like giant parachutes descending. She saw that they weren’t only better looking but also so well groomed. They smelled so good when they walked past her that she wanted to inhale deeply. One girl, wearing white stockings over her muscular legs, looked like she had the limbs of a unicorn.
A man appeared with a bullet hole in each cheek: one scar from where the bullet went in, and one scar from where the bullet went out. He led Rose and Pierrot upstairs and down the hallway to meet Jimmy.
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MCMAHON AND JIMMY were each the head of a crime syndicate. Professionally, they were equally powerful men. But they presented themselves very differently to the world. McMahon kept a small, makeshift office in downtown Montreal so he didn’t draw attention to himself and his criminal activities. He was very safe. He isolated his home life from his criminal life. He wanted to eventually wrap up the criminal world and become an upright citizen.
Jimmy didn’t have a double life away from the Romeo Hotel. He loved an ostentatious display. He loved to rub his ill-gotten wealth in everybody’s nose. Even in the police officers’ noses. Even if it ended up getting him arrested. Even if it was his downfall. He didn’t really think that life was worth living unless people were watching him live it and were impressed with how he was living it. His life itself was an ornate Broadway production.
Jimmy had made a fortune when booze was illegal. A crime that wasn’t really a crime—only temporarily a crime. Now that Prohibition was over, he continued to engage in all sorts of other crimes, amassing more and more wealth.
But he didn’t have a pretty wife at home who he cheated on and whose self-esteem he ruined. He had never had a serious girlfriend. He slept with different prostitutes. Sometimes he slept with one girl for a few weeks, but never for much longer, and he never deluded her that he was sticking around. All in all, it has been suggested by some that, murders aside, Jimmy was a more moral man than McMahon.
He wasn’t pretending to be anything other than who he was and who he was raised to be.
He was elevating crime. He was making the underworld a part of everyday life. He was making sure that the criminals ran the city. He wanted everyone to look up to criminals and wish that they could grow up to be one.
Jimmy had thick, dark brown hair that always flopped messily about. His nose was too big. Even when he was a little baby, people worried that his nose was going to end up being too big. He had heavy, arching eyebrows that made him look skeptical, and fantastic blue eyes. When he smiled, all his perfect and big teeth lined up, and his eyes grew wide and their blueness took away from the overall darkness of his face.
His face matched his unpredictable moods. You couldn’t be bothered to think of killing him or overthrowing him. He doused his words in alcohol and set them on fire. They were inflammatory. The reason he was so successful wasn’t that he was a calculating workhorse, the way McMahon was. The reason he was so successful was that he took wild risks, his moves were inscrutable, his intuitions almost uncanny.
And here was Rose sitting on the chair across from his desk with her partner. McMahon had told Jimmy that after she had delivered the heroin and the show’s run was up, he was welcome to shoot Rose between the eyes and put her out of her misery. He was also supposed to kill the love of her life, Pierrot, who was certain to show up with her.