In A Pair of Aces, two women from opposing social and legal spheres forge a powerful alliance to dismantle a patriarchal criminal enterprise. The partnership between prosecutor Eunice Hunton Carter and madam Polly Adler demonstrates that female solidarity, born from a shared goal of protecting vulnerable women rather than from personal friendship, can transcend societal divisions to achieve justice when conventional systems fail. Their collaboration, built on mutual need and eventual respect, becomes the unexpected force that brings down one of the US’s most untouchable mobsters, Lucky Luciano.

The alliance is born of necessity after both women find themselves stymied by male-dominated power structures. Polly, a successful madam who prides herself on protecting her girls, finds her autonomy and their safety threatened by Luciano’s “Combination,” a mob-controlled system designed to centralize and exploit sex work. After Virginia’s abduction by Luciano and the growing threat of the Combination to her remaining girls, Polly recognizes that her underworld connections are no match for the Mob’s systemic power and decides to contact Eunice. Simultaneously, Eunice, the only female and Black prosecutor on a high-profile anti-crime task force, struggles to convince her boss, Thomas Dewey, that organized sex work is a serious racket worth pursuing and realizes that she needs an inside source to build an undeniable case. This mutual desperation culminates in their first secret meetings, where they establish a transactional arrangement that serves both their interests.

The partnership thrives on the strategic fusion of each woman’s unique knowledge and social position, bridging the gap between the criminal underworld and the legal system. Polly leverages her deep understanding of the sex-work industry to provide Eunice with a roadmap of the Combination’s hierarchy and operations. She identifies key figures for wiretaps, explains important relationships like the one between booker Pete Harris and his madam-wife, Mildred Balitzer, and ultimately masterminds the plan to find credible, independent witnesses among the staff at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Eunice, in turn, translates this raw intelligence into legal action. She secures the wiretaps that capture incriminating conversations, builds the evidentiary chain linking the racket to Luciano, and orchestrates the massive city-wide raids that break the Mob’s immediate hold on the brothels. Their clandestine meetings in anonymous public spaces like a coffee shop, a park, and a train station reflect this clandestine union of two disparate worlds, both operating in the shadows to achieve a common goal.

Though Eunice and Polly never fully become friends, their alliance evolves into a deep mutual respect as they recognize their shared struggle against male exploitation. Eunice is moved by Polly’s story of being sent to the US alone as a child, and Polly is impressed by Eunice’s tenacity in a hostile professional environment. This solidarity culminates in Polly relaying vital intelligence about a witness to Eunice, who then uses it to bargain for her place on Dewey’s trial team. Their final exchange of looks across the courtroom after the guilty verdict is a silent acknowledgment of their joint victory. Calling themselves “a pair of aces” (358), Polly encapsulates their dynamic as two powerful, independent figures who, when played together against a stacked deck, proved to be an unbeatable hand. By crafting a story about an alliance between two highly dissimilar historical figures, Benedict and Murray call for women to set aside their differences and work together against the common enemy of patriarchal oppression.