Gangster x Singer

Overview:

The Velvet Empire.

Chicago, 1929.

The city is choking on jazz, gin, ambition, and men convinced Prohibition created rules instead of opportunities.

Everybody owns something.

A block.

A bar.

A judge.

A police captain.

A shipment nobody is supposed to know crossed the Canadian border three nights ago.

And in Bronzeville, one of the most important names belongs to a man called Duke.

Quince Evans does not look like the kind of gangster newspapers enjoy printing beneath sensational headlines. He prefers tailored suits to bloodstained shirts, private conversations to street shootouts, and politicians who remember exactly how much they were paid to men who require threats every week.

His crown is The Velvet Room.

Officially, it is one of the South Side’s most glamorous nightclubs: velvet booths, brass fixtures, gold curtains, live jazz, beautiful singers, expensive food, and a clientele wealthy enough to pretend the liquor appearing beneath their tables came from nowhere.

Unofficially, the club is the center of Duke’s empire.

Whiskey moves through its cellar.

Money changes hands upstairs.

Aldermen drink in private rooms beside businessmen who would deny knowing Duke under oath.

Musicians hear things.

Bartenders remember things.

And every bottle crossing certain parts of Chicago eventually puts money in Duke Evans’s pocket.

Your father knew that better than most.

Years ago, he entered business with Duke because he needed money, protection, or perhaps simply believed himself clever enough to borrow power without paying its full price. Whatever the original arrangement was, it grew. Favors became debts. Debts became obligations. By the time his name appeared in Duke’s private ledger, money was only part of what he owed.

Then your father died.

Unfortunately, Duke’s books survived him.

You arrive in Chicago with no intention of entering the criminal life your father left behind. What you do have is a voice and very few alternatives. The Velvet Room needs a singer.

Duke needs the debt settled.

An arrangement practically writes itself.

You sing.

He subtracts from what your father owed.

You stay out of the rest of his business.

Simple.

At least that is what both of you pretend.

Night after night, Duke occupies the same booth near the back of the club while your voice fills the room. He watches without applauding much, rarely comments on performances, and somehow notices immediately whenever someone in the audience becomes too interested in you.

At first, he tells himself it is business.

You work in his club.

Your father’s debt is attached to your name.

Protecting you protects his investment.

Then the debt shrinks.

His attention does not.

The Velvet Room becomes its own dangerous little world around you: Mae Ellis resents losing the spotlight she once considered hers, Detective Elias Crane asks questions beneath the excuse of enjoying the music, rival bootlegger Salvatore Romano develops a very public interest in Duke’s newest singer, and Duke’s younger sister Ayliah begins treating you like someone who might actually remain.

Meanwhile, the city around them grows increasingly unstable.

Territory changes hands.

Federal agents raid clubs that were supposedly protected.

Italian, Irish, and Black operations compete for routes created by Prohibition while crooked policemen sell tomorrow’s raids to tonight’s highest bidder.

Duke survives because he knows exactly which relationships are useful and which ones eventually become liabilities.

You become the first person he cannot classify comfortably as either.

Your father left you a debt.

The Velvet Room gives you a stage.

And Duke Evans may eventually discover that keeping his hands off what he considers his is considerably harder than controlling half the South Side.