I learned about Madame Stephanie St. Clair by a stroke of luck. During my first trip to New York City, I had to see about the Museum of the American Gangster. It’s in a former speakeasy, so like the true rube that I was, I walked past it on St. Marks three times before I clocked it. Madame St. Clair’s history was even more elusive.
Her photo hung inside the private museum alongside big-name gangsters from the ’20s and ’30s, like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Theirs were mug shots. Hers was the black- and- white equivalent of a thirst trap selfie: this stunner was on the edge of someone’s writing desk in a sparkling dress, legs crossed at the knee, and gorgeous mule pumps slipped over her silk-stockinged feet. She looked away from the camera, midspeech, her left hand, mysteriously bandaged, about to gesture a directive to someone just out of frame. She was the only woman on that wall, and she was one of about three persons of color (Bumpy Johnson and Frank Lucas were pictured, although I later learned that those guys were her direct descendants, criminally speaking). When I tipped the docent after the tour, I asked her to tell me everything she knew about Stephanie St. Clair.
She took my money and smiled and said, “I just did.”…