The woman smiled at her friends and then at Claire and Seth. She waved her friends to come to help her. Ruby jumped up and followed Louise into the kitchen. They returned with two tea pots, a plate of cookies, and a freshly cut loaf of pumpkin bread.
“Wow,” Claire said. “So beautiful. Thank you.”
Seth smiled. He was thrilled to have a chance to talk to these women, but his patience for people was wearing thin. He sighed a little. Claire looked in his direction.
“You’ll have to forgive, Seth,” Claire said. “He’s been working a lot and played all morning. He’s a little worn out.”
Seth smiled at her and then nodded to the woman as they made soothing sounds. There was nothing he hated more than being the lame man in a sea of capable women. Seth loved strong, capable women so he was often in this same situation.
The women poured tea and passed the plate. At Claire’s direction, Seth was given a beautiful flowered China plate with a piece of cake and a cookie, as well as a cup of tea with a little cream. At least in this company, the lame man was well fed. He drank down the tea and was poured another cup instantly.
“I heard you were working on the symphony written by Andy,” Justine said. “You remember Andy, don’t you? Seth brought her around that last year or so before Di and Bud died.”
“I remember Andy,” Ruby said. “I saw that horrible Wilma bothering a young woman who looked just like her at Big Daddy’s party. Your daughter?”
“Sandy,” Seth said. “My eldest. I have two others. One’s in the Marines. The other is married to my agent. Claire has three girls as well.”
Claire smiled and nodded.
“My youngest has just finished her medical residency,” Claire said. “She’s taken a position in Boston.”
The woman clucked their sympathy at her daughter moving away.
“My eldest works as a big data analyst, whatever that is, here in New York,” Claire said. “My middle girl got married early and is raising two sets of twins — both girls.”
Claire nodded.
“You grew up,” Hazel said with a sniff.
“I think it’s nice that you and Seth are still friends,” Billie said. “You were so close when you were kids.”
Claire looked at Seth. He smiled.
“She’s the first real family I ever had,” Seth said. “Do you remember a piano player named Bernie? Seth Bernstein?”
In the middle of drinking tea or eating, the women nodded.
“Handsome,” Louise said. “Piano player and a friend of Bud’s.”
“He’s my father,” Seth said.
The women looked uncomfortably at Seth for a moment. Seth laughed.
“I guess you knew that,” Seth said with a laugh.
Claire smiled when the woman either nodded or looked away.
“Where’s Bernie now?” Billie asked.
“He lives with me,” Seth said. “He’s in his 90s, still plays piano every single day. I just met him as my father last year.”
“That can’t be true,” Billie said. “He came down with you a few times from that school you went to.”
“I didn’t know that he was my father,” Seth said. “I thought that O’Malley fathered me.”
The women’s faces soured.
“Yes, I didn’t like him much either,” Seth said with a snort.
“We just know him through Bernie,” Louise said.
“That agent of yours, too,” Billie said. “What did you call him?”
“Schmidty I-V,” Seth said. “He died last year. Brain cancer.”
The women made sympathetic clucks and focused on their tea. Seth noticed the cognac glasses were empty. He suspected they were ready to talk to him.
“It’s lovely to see you, but I can’t help but wonder if there was some other reason you asked us here,” Seth said.
“You don’t think us old gals want to catch up?” Billie asked with a twinkle in her eye.
“No,” Seth said and shook his head.
The woman laughed at his abrupt word. Claire pushed him, and he grinned.
“We used to work for Di,” Billie said.
“All of us,” Ruby said. “I was ‘Road Runner’ because I like to run.”
“Magpie,” Billie said as she placed a hand on her chest.
“Ibis,” Hazel said.
“Heron,” Justine said.
“Peregrine,” Louise said. “We were friends with Delilah and Delmer.”
“We heard that Delilah and Delmer’s remains were being used in a new investigation, and . . . Well . . .” Ruby stopped talking.
“I heard from Carl that you were in the building,” Louise said. “I called everyone and told them to get ready. If we were going to talk to you, this would be our chance.”
Louise looked at Billie, who nodded.
“We talked about going to the police, you know, when we heard about Delilah and Delmer,” Billie said. “We decided to find you and talk to you. You showing up here is like fate or an answer to our prayers.”
“Thank you for coming forward,” Seth said. “It’s good to have your input. Claire’s helping with the investigation, so I know she’ll be interested to hear what you had to say, too. We don’t judge, so feel free to speak openly.”
“First, you should know that most people don’t know what we did for Di,” Billie said.
“What did you do?” Claire asked.
“We danced, mostly,” Ruby said. “Swing dancing was popular and not a lot of people could dance well. We were young, pretty, and great dancers.”
“We took dance lessons in the hours that the club was closed,” Hazel said. “We worked hard to be the best dancers on the floor.”
“We were the best dancers on the floor,” Ruby said.
“We were also ladies of the night,” Billie said. A flush came to her cheeks. “The money was better than the dance money, so we all did it. There were a lot more GI’s then, so we worked for them.”
“The morality of the time was that no decent white man would marry a girl he’d fooled around with,” Justine said. “So there was a lot of fooling around that came to ladies like us.”
“It wasn’t as bad as you might think,” Billie said. “And Di was fierce. She never let anyone abuse us or hurt us in anyway. Because of that, we had really nice men who preferred us over something more adventuresome.”
“Delmer kept guard,” Ruby said. “He’d intervene if anything bad happened, which mostly it didn’t. We showed men a great time on the dance floor and in the bedroom.”
Ruby nodded.
“We all needed the money,” Louise said. “Our parents were poor.”
“My parents had been slaves as children,” Hazel said. “I was the last of sixteen children. My mother was broken by what she went through as a child. My father was like iron — the harder times were, the harder he became. The other kids moved out and on. I was stuck with them.”
Hazel shrugged.
“It wasn’t like it is now, where anyone cared what happened to us kids,” Hazel said. “If we were breathing, we were working to help our families. The money I made went to feed my mother and father. On the dance floor, I could pretend to be a beautiful, high-class girl. Even if it meant sex and all that, I loved it. I think we all did. It was a break from what we were living with. But at the end of the day, we did what we did for the money.”
“Our families needed money,” Louise said, using different words to say the same thing. “It didn’t harm anyone.”
“Then Delilah was killed,” Justine said. She nodded her head to Hazel. “Delmer, too.”
“They closed the Savoy only a few years after that,” Hazel said. “But for us? It’s something we can point to where things seemed to change the very next day. You know?”
There was a knock on the door. Louise got up, and soon R.J. joined them. He greeted the woman. He turned around a chair from the dining room table and sat down.
“We were talking about the Savoy, Reggie,
” Ruby said.
“Sorry to interrupt,” R.J. said with a nod.
“We’re cousins,” Ruby said.
Seth looked at Ruby and then at R.J. and nodded.
“I can see that,” Seth said.
Ruby and R.J. smiled at each other.
“We wanted to tell Seth about Delilah,” Louise said.
“Don’t let me get in the way,” R.J. said. “I’m just trying to keep Seth and Claire safe.”
Seth noticed the women didn’t ask why Seth would need to be kept safe. Instead they just nodded.
“Di was really careful with us,” Hazel said. “She didn’t want any of us to have to endure the burden of a baby outside marriage. Di kept track of our periods. But Delilah got pregnant.”
“We all thought she did it on purpose,” Justine said. “She wanted someone to take her away from her life. She told the father, and he beat her. Horribly. There weren’t hospitals like there is now. Di called the Negro doctor. He patched Delilah up, but . . .”
“We took turns nursing her back to health,” Billie said. “By the time she was on her feet, she was heavy with the baby.”
The woman fell silent. Ruby poured a round of Hennessey, and this time, the women drank down the alcohol.
“Di was furious,” Justine said, picking up the thread. “She banned him from ever coming to the Savoy again.”
“Who was the father?” Seth asked.
“Your friend, Panteli Jr.,” R.J. said.
“Alanzo Panteli, Jr.,” Seth said with a shake of his head. “He must have been young then.”
“Sixteen,” R.J. said with a nod.
“I don’t know if Delilah really loved Panteli or if she just thought he was the ticket out of her life,” Billie said. She looked down the row of women, who were shrugging or shaking their heads. “Di refused to allow Panteli, Jr. anywhere near the Savoy. He was banned at the door and in her stables. But he was a ‘made-man.’”
“At sixteen?” Seth asked. “Because of his father?”
The women nodded. Billie waved away Seth’s surprise.
“Just a different time,” Billie said. “Then, if you were a made-man, you could do whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted — especially to a Negro whore. There was no real way to keep him away.”
“Don’t forget that some of it was Delilah,” Hazel said. “She refused to believe that he was a monster. She kept thinking that he would marry her and that they could raise their child in the suburbs somewhere.”
The weight of this truth was too heavy for comment. The women looked down while they thought about Delilah.
“She was my best friend,” Justine said. “I met her in school. It was because of me that she started working with Di. Delmer, too. He was my boyfriend.”
Justine nodded.
“She had just turned sixteen when she had her son,” Ruby said. “He was not right, you know, in the head. The doctors weren’t sure if it was because Delilah had been beaten up so many times or if the Lord saw fit that he was just made that way. The child had nearly white skin, so he was treated as special — not as crazy or dumb like he would have been if he’d been dark. And he was sick. Delilah spent a lot of money trying to figure out what was wrong with him.”
“Anyone figure it out?” Seth asked.
“No, but there was one girl who had some medicine that worked,” Billie said. “She was from Louisiana. She knew all kinds of remedies for all kinds of ills. She kept that child alive those first years of his life. Di kept track of it all.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“You were talking about Panteli Jr. and how he killed Delilah and Delmer,” Seth said.
“Oh, no,” Billie said. “It was nothing like that.”
“It was the child,” Ruby said.
“What do you mean?” Seth asked. “You’re saying that Panteli Jr. didn’t kill Delilah and Delmer?”
Looking uncomfortable, the women drank their tea or ate a cookie. Seth realized that they likely believed that he didn’t believe them or thought they were lying. He groaned internally.
“Can you tell me what happened that night?” Seth asked.
Twenty-One
“Delmer fought Alanzo to keep him out of the club and away from his sister,” Justine said. “But Alanzo brought a bunch of his dad’s goons. They beat Delmer. Bad. He was unconscious when I found him. I set him up in my room and went to find Di.”
Justine’s eyes flicked to Louise.
“I found Delilah,” Louise said. “She’d borrowed my dress, and I wanted to wear it that night. She’d been out the day before — probably at the doctor with that kid of hers.”
“We always traded clothes,” Hazel said. “It’s hard to believe because we look so different now, but then we were dancing for hours a night. We could share clothes. Shoes.”
“Anything expensive,” Billie said with a nod. “We shared like sisters.”
“It wasn’t like Louise was mad,” Justine said with a nod. “She just wanted to wear her dress.”
They fell silent. Louise sighed.
“I went into her room and found her,” Louise said.
“Beaten to death,” Seth said.
“Her throat was cut,” Louise said. “There was blood everywhere. The kid was sitting in the corner, grinning from ear to ear. He had the knife between his hands like this.”
Louise held her hands about six inches across to show what she meant. Seth blinked at Louise. For a moment, no one said anything.
“I mean, can you imagine it?” Louise asked. “There’s this three-, maybe four-year-old child, covered in blood, giggling with glee at his handiwork.”
Louise shook her head.
“I screamed,” Louise said. “I mean, I’d seen a lot of things in my life, but Delilah . . . I mean everyone loved her. And there she was . . . The blood just dripped off her . . . drop, drop, drop, drop . . . onto the floor.”
Ruby poured Louise a shot, and she drank it down before continuing.
“I still have nightmares where I see Delilah and . . . and . . .” Louise said, swallowing hard. “Drop, drop, drop, drop . . . that look on the kid’s face . . . blood and bliss . . .”
Louise visible shivered.
“I was on my way to get Di when I heard Louise scream,” Justine said. “I got there just as Louise was getting hysterical. I yelled to the kid to go get Di and tried to get Louise out of the room. Di came a few minutes later and took charge. One thing none of us wanted was the cops.”
“Because of the prostitution?” Seth asked.
“Because they would want handouts,” Justine said. “There wasn’t a business in the city that the NYPD or the mob . . .”
“Or both,” Ruby said.
“ . . . didn’t have their hands in,” Justine said.
“One mob was Italian, and the other mob carried badges,” Hazel said.
“Di was trying to figure out what to do next when we heard another scream,” Louise said. “Billie found Delmer.”
“Where he was passed out?” Claire asked.
Billie shook her head. The women waited for her to fill in the details, but Billie had nothing else to add. She looked down at her hands.
“Throat cut, like Delilah,” Louise said. “The kid was in there. Di fought with the kid and somehow got the knife away from him. She got one of the bouncers to take him out of there.”
“We . . .” Ruby started and shrugged. “The long and the short of it is that we simply could not believe what our eyes were telling us.”
“If you had told me that this simple kid would kill his mother and uncle, I’d . . .” Louise shook her head. “But I was there. I saw him with my own eyes.”
“The kid lived with Delilah and Delmer,” Justine said. “They weren’t cruel or mean, so don’t you go thinking that he did it in retribution. The child was not right. And that night, the look on his face . . .”
Ruby shuddered.
“It was like he cut their throats for th
e sheer fun of it,” Ruby said. She gestured to her head. “This was the first time I’d seen the child laugh or smile. He was positively joyful at what he’d done. I was so shocked that I couldn’t get my mind to work. It’s like it just stopped working.”
The woman shook her head.
“I didn’t know that children could be like that,” Ruby said. “I don’t think any of us could even imagine it. If I wasn’t right there, I would have figured it was an accident or . . .”
The women fell silent. Seth took a breath to ask a question, but Justine started talking instead.
“We had to get rid of the bodies,” Justine said. “The bouncers dragged Delmer out to the street and called the cops. While the cops were outside, we wrapped up Delilah and put her in the back of Delmer’s car. Ruby drove it away from the Savoy and left her in a parking lot.”
“It felt awful, so wrong. And we . . .” Louise gestured to the women. “We were just destroyed. We sobbed as we cleaned up everything. Ruby had to take Delilah to the parking lot by herself. She was the only one who wasn’t a puddle.”
“Ruby never got over it,” Justine said with a nod. “She still has nightmares about it.”
Ruby refused to meet anyone’s eye.
“We loved Delilah,” Justine said. “I was going to marry Delmer. He was my life. I guess I never got over it, either.”
“What happened to the kid?” Claire asked.
“He lived with the Pantelis for a while,” Louise said.
“He stayed with them less than a year. They put him in an institution until he was eighteen,” Hazel said. “We were just glad he was locked away. But, like I said, the Savoy ended a few years later. Billie got married. Louise left for Detroit. We had the chance to work for Big Daddy. A few of us did, but most of us got married, had kids, and tried to forget about our friend Delilah.”
“We never forgot that kid,” Louise said.
“I had nightmares for years that he cut my throat in my sleep,” Billie said, in a hushed tone.
“None of us talked about it,” Ruby said. “Not a word, until that Cigarette Killer case. Our old friend Seth O’Malley was putting away the monster of the Savoy. We watched the news together every night to keep track of the trial.”
The Cigarette Killer Page 16