by Marlowe Benn
Wallace smiled, reclaiming her attention. “You asked about Goldsmith. We met that night at Carlotta’s. Beyond that, I don’t know him. We move in different circles. Why?”
“I wondered if he might be the murderer. He certainly had good reason.” She hoped Wallace might offer up some good cause to overturn her dismal conclusion that Goldsmith by nature was not a killer, at least not by a close-range gunshot.
Wallace laughed softly. “Plenty of people had reasons to wish Leonard harm, and most had very good reasons. By all means add Goldsmith to the list if you like. Anything to find Kessler a better suspect than Eva. Preferably one who confesses or hauls out that tatted-up gun.”
A silver tureen of consommé brunoise arrived. The waiter ladled the steaming broth into two china soup plates, and the sommelier replaced their champagne with a bottle of 1899 Château Tujean from Wallace’s collection in the restaurant’s cellars. Both men disappeared again, pulling a heavy velvet curtain across the entrance to their booth.
Julia took a deep breath. She’d intended to follow his lead in speaking of Eva, as if she didn’t know what he’d admitted to Kessler. But in that moment it seemed only to add a second deception between them, when she much preferred there be none. For better or worse, she put down her spoon and said, “I know she’s missing. Philip told me.”
Wallace laid down his spoon as well. He examined her face for a good ten seconds before dropping his eyes. “I apologize. I should have told you the truth. I had hoped to spare you the worry, as there’s nothing you could do.” He gave a small smile. “Though I must confess it’s nicer not to have to sidestep the issue. She is missing. I don’t know where she is. But I also don’t think there’s serious cause for worry.”
“If only I could talk with her,” Julia said. “I just want to know she’s all right.” She wanted to ask Eva a great deal more, but that agenda was best left covert.
“We all do,” Wallace said. “But in this case, no news is good news. She’s safe as long as things stay quiet. The boys at Carlotta’s are starting to settle down. I’m lending them Ethel Dunway for a few weeks, to get their floor show back on track. Ethel’s may not be a household name to you, but in that neighborhood he’s quite the celebrity.” He gave a hollow laugh. “Eddie or Ethel—it all depends on the whim of his wardrobe. Quite entertaining in a strictly late-night sort of way, but he packs the house. The best thing for Eva would be to get Carlotta’s up and running at full power again. Busy cash registers to keep Leonard’s men occupied.”
“You did that to help her?”
“Keeping a lid on things is good for me and mine. But yes, for Eva too.”
“You’ve been a good friend to her.”
Wallace leaned back. His voice dropped to a quieter register. “I’ve known Eva for a long time, since she was a kid just up from the South somewhere. I’ve seen her grow up, turn into a real swan.”
Julia poured him more wine to encourage the story. This was something she wanted to hear, in as leisurely a fashion as he cared to tell it. She suspected there was a good reason he’d stepped forward to help Eva, and perhaps this would explain it.
“It’s not that much of a tale. Ours is strictly a business acquaintance. I could see early on that she had talent, deserved better than the small stage where she worked. I persuaded Leonard to take her on when he opened shop, even though she’d never worked one of the big clubs before.” He smiled. “I doubt she even knows that.”
Julia wondered, “If she could lie low until Kessler finds the murderer, or at least a better suspect, do you think she could ever work again, at another club? She’s beautiful and talented. With time, couldn’t she pick up where she left off?”
“It’s nice to think so.”
“You helped her before. Could you help her again, once all this is sorted? I mean hire her?”
He watched the colors of the Bordeaux splintering in the candlelight. “Even assuming the business of Timson’s murder goes away, hiring her would not be as simple as you think.”
“I understood you owned a few clubs.”
“I keep a hand in just three. Only one might be a possibility. It’s called the Half-Shell.” He gave Julia an amused glance. “You see how partial I am to oysters. It’s a small place but gaining a fairly select clientele. The better downtown sorts, who expect to pay what I’d charge for a show with Eva. The place is more, shall we say, discreet—for those who enjoy what needs discretion—than the flash and strut at Carlotta’s.
“I suppose we could make a place for her, eventually, after everything blows over,” he mused.
“What about your other clubs?”
“The Tupelo Room on West 143rd, and Slim Sal’s even further up Lenox. Rough and rougher. Both are for coloreds, and frankly, I leave them to my managers. Eva wouldn’t last long in either place. She needs to play to folks like us.”
He touched the curve beneath her jaw. “Like you.”
Did Eva need a white audience? Would colored patrons resent her? Julia remembered Eva’s trouble finding work, the rejection she’d faced for being too light and yet not white. Or might colored audiences bristle to see images of slavery bathed in glamorous golden light? Julia wished she could ask Eva what went through her mind to be part of that spectacle, gaped at by throngs of what could be the wealthy descendants of slave owners, pelted by their gifts of worthless rings. It was yet another conversation she longed to have with Eva.
Later, after the filet de boeuf en croûte had been served and cleared away, Julia’s thoughts returned to the arrogant amusement in Arthur Goldsmith’s eyes, and then for the hundredth time to Eva’s broken hobble as she’d been yanked from Kessler’s office. This last image of her enigmatic friend troubled her, and she flinched. The wine in her glass swayed.
“No news might be bad news,” she said. “Don’t you have some idea where she is?”
“None, I’m afraid.”
“What if she’s trapped somewhere? What if someone forced her out of that apartment?”
Wallace’s head rocked back in exasperation. “Julia, please. Leave it. I will find her.”
“I wish there was something I could do.”
“Do not even think of looking for her yourself. You could stumble into any number of hornet nests. More than that, you could make things worse for her.”
What did that mean?
“I’m serious. It could be dangerous. You can’t take risks you don’t understand.”
Julia willed reticence into her eyes. She was not a child. She understood the risk. The danger was precisely why she wanted to find her friend.
Wallace took the glass from her hand. He drew the inner length of her forearm across his chin, lingering at the crook of her elbow. Her hand dangled above his right ear. Julia watched the slow turn of radiant colors from the diamonds in her bracelet, as if she were deep underwater. “Do not involve yourself. Do not ask questions you don’t understand of people you don’t know.”
He lowered her arm and slipped it inside his jacket. Guiding her palm across his crisp shirtfront, over the steady postprandial thump of his heart, he pressed it hard onto a gun sleeping against his ribs.
She jerked upright and tried to pull free.
His grip tightened, forcing her fingers over the contours of the weapon. “Good. You should be frightened. Guns are everywhere, Julia. This”—he jiggled the weapon beneath her hand—“gives everyone time to think. And if it fires, I’ve lost, not won.”
The curtain stirred, and beyond it a throat was cleared with forced vigor. “Telephone call for you, Mr. Wallace, sir.”
He squeezed her hand before lifting it for a kiss. “Trust me on this.”
With a wry half smile Wallace slid along the cushions and disappeared. Julia gripped her water glass and took several calming sips. By the time he returned, she had gathered her handbag and resigned herself to the conversation, and likely the evening, being over.
“I must apologize,” he said, settling beside her. “I
had hoped to advance my cause with you this evening. But it seems that hope must wait.”
“Your cause?”
“My suit, if you prefer.”
“Your seduction. Let’s be clear about these things. Your conquest.”
She spoke with a facetious lilt, but Wallace’s nose tightened in distaste. He laid his palm flat against the white linen tablecloth and tapped twice with his forefinger. “I loathe those terms. Any intimacies I enjoy are freely given. I despise any notion of conquest.”
Julia felt chastened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was glib of me.”
“And I’m sorry for abandoning the evening.” He brushed a knuckle across her cheek. “A problem has come up at the Half-Shell I must attend to. I’ve called for the car. Edgar will take you home. I promise fewer distractions next time.”
He helped her from the booth and guided her through the hushed room. Reaching the entrance, he kissed her cheek and transferred her to the waiting doorman.
Julia felt every moment of his gaze as she descended the seven steps to the pavement and the solicitous Edgar. When the Duesenberg eased into traffic, she smiled. Although curtailed and unsettling, the evening had deepened her interest in Martin Wallace, and she felt certain the attraction was mutual. He would be an exquisite lover.
The familiar ache tipped her head back into the smooth leather. But something else eluded her, perplexed her. She wanted more than his carnal attention. She could dance that dance, but why settle for the pastime of the bored and disillusioned?
Yes, Wallace desired her. But she was still a bauble to him. A prized bauble, one whose qualities he discerned and valued, but a bauble nonetheless. She would be patient, relish the wait. Soon they’d understand each other. She smiled at her reflection in the window. At last. What a pleasure it was to finally know such a man.
Even if he carried a gun.
CHAPTER 21
The following afternoon Julia paid the driver and turned to the entrance of the handsome West 135th Street branch of the city’s public library. Four young Negro boys in enormous caps sprawled with tangled legs across the steps. One tried to whistle at her, but what emerged was a high-pitched hoo-hoo. They rolled from side to side, laughing and pointing.
“Hot choo,” another called out. “Whatchu jig chasin’?”
They hooted as she crouched to see their faces, shading her eyes from the glaring pavement. “Them rags some scratch. To da bricks, looksa. Ooo-wah.” Their glee was like a new kind of mysterious music. Were they mocking her? Cursing her? Possibly both, but they were right to laugh at her. She was dressed for Fifth Avenue; here she was a ridiculous sight. The smallest boy, whose crooked spectacles magnified a lazy eye, brushed the peacock feathers stitched to the brim of her straw cloche. The others crowded around. Hand after hand petted the exotic feathers, straying to her crepe de chine hem, the picot edging of her sleeve, and even the tiny clocked chevrons marching down her stocking toward her ankle.
Julia removed her hat. With a swift tug she dislodged one of the feathers—for which she’d no doubt paid a premium to Mademoiselle Reynard in Rue de Phénicie last winter—and laid it in the child’s dirty palm. Christophine could replace it in a trice and otherwise improve the hat while she had her needle handy. The boys whooped and escorted Julia with two-booted hops up the steps to the wide front door, but they scattered when she motioned them to join her inside.
It smelled of lilacs, newsprint, and floor wax. A fistful of languid blooms drooped over the oak counter of the circulation desk. The large room was quiet, bathed in warm light streaming in the tall windows. Some half dozen women were working at small desks behind the counter. She approached and waited. One of the women hobbled forward as if her shoes were too small.
“I wonder if I might speak with a young man who works here,” Julia said in a low voice. “Mr. Logan Lanier?”
The woman glared at her. “He’s working, miss.”
“Yes, I understand. I won’t take but a few minutes of his time.”
“This is no place for that. You can talk to that boy all you want on his own time, honey.”
“Could you at least tell me when he’ll take a break? I’ll wait.” Julia folded her hands on the counter.
“Can’t say.”
An older woman approached. She patted the first woman’s arm. “I’m sorry, miss, but employees are not allowed visitors during their shifts. Too many distractions here as it is.”
Julia offered a sympathetic nod and leaned forward, resting her forearm on the ancient wood. “I’m here from Vanity Fair,” she whispered. “I’m under an awful deadline and really must speak to Mr. Lanier today. I haven’t been able to reach him any other way.”
The woman looked more flustered than stubborn. Julia heard a rustle from the workers seated behind the counter, but when she glanced at them, their eyes dived elsewhere.
“May I simply—” Julia began again when a door at the back clanked open and Logan hurried over. He must have been alerted that someone was asking for him.
“I’ve been here since eleven, Mrs. Crowder,” he said. “I’m due for a break. Or,” he continued, nearly stammering, “I could sort out the retrieval baskets that came in last week. She could talk to me—whatever this is about—while I work down there.”
“I decide when you’re due for a break,” she said. “And what tasks you boys take on.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He had not yet looked at Julia.
“But those baskets have gone unsorted long enough,” the woman conceded. “She can go with you, but make it quick. Answer her questions and get back to work. I want her gone in fifteen minutes. And see me before you leave today.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He turned and signaled for Julia to follow. As they passed through the flotilla of small oak desks, the staff twittered, bosoms bouncing in a hiss of whispers. It was English, of course, but like nothing she’d ever heard. “She yo Sheba, Mistah Logan-berry?” “Dinge got hisself a pinktail.” “Ain’t yo arnchy!” She understood only that the barrage was demeaning.
Julia followed him down a flight of linoleum-covered stairs, bristling at his meek obedience and acceptance of those women’s scorn. He deserved respect, not derision. In silence he led her to a basement room with a cement floor and two small windows, cased in heavy grillwork, high on the wall. He yanked the string hanging from a light bulb in the center of the room, releasing a weak yellow light and a galaxy of dust. Several baskets full of books sat under a table beneath the windows. At last he turned. “What in God’s good name are you doing here?”
His tone startled her. “I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you any trouble. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but it’s important, and I don’t know who else I can ask.”
“Stick with Pablo, Miss Kydd. Do your sightseeing with him.” Logan heaved one of the baskets onto the table and upended it. Miss Kydd, not Julia. He was angry indeed if their fragile start of a friendship meant nothing now.
“Stop that.” Julia reached to break the fall of books. She straightened those that had fallen spine up, their pages buckling open. “You’re angry with me, not them.”
Logan tossed the empty basket beneath the table. He pulled books out of the jumble and began to set them on their fore edges. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Julia righted the books more carefully and ordered them by the Dewey numbers penned on their spines. Something more was tormenting him. “Why do those women taunt you like that? Don’t they know you write prize-winning poetry?”
Logan swung his jaw in frustration. Footsteps shuffled in the hall. He waited until the stairwell door banged shut. “You have no idea how ridiculous I am to most of the folks up there.” He swung his fist toward the street beyond the narrow windows. “Poetry! Jesus! It will be bad enough explaining you.”
Logan paced across the room and back. When he spoke, the words nearly choked him. “You know what? I can speak three languages, write a damn decent villanelle, and lecture on Shakespeare or Yeat
s, but in the end I’m still just a sorry-ass buck to those hyenas. And I’d better never forget it. Those women make damn sure I don’t.”
Julia didn’t understand. Logan Lanier was a talented poet and scholar. It pained her to hear anyone, least of all Logan himself, refer to him with derision. In each of their conversations, she’d felt a growing regard for his intelligence, his brave aspirations, his gentle demeanor. He deserved respect, yet somehow her visit—and her presumed friendship—had instead stirred others to scorn and ridicule him.
“I’m sorry.” She was sorry for her apology too. It was feeble and thin, unequal to the embarrassment she’d caused.
He shook his head to cut short her apology, to change the subject. “Why are you here?”
“I need to talk with you.”
“Ask Pablo. He’s the expert.” Logan emptied a second basket of books onto the table, less violently, and began to sort them into place with the first batch lined up against the wall.
Julia helped when he edged aside to allow it. “Do you know where Eva Pruitt is?”
He punched out a sharp breath and kept working. “No.”
“Haven’t you heard anything? A rumor? A suspicion?”
“No.”
“Eva needs your help, Logan.” Julia kept her voice low. “You must have some idea where she’s hiding. Or Jerome Crockett?”
“Nope. None.”
The spilled books made a puddle of scuffed and fraying buckram in drab shades of green, blue, tan, and maroon. Library bindings, they were called, corners bulging with an extra thickness of the sturdy, starched cloth. They reminded her of children muffled beneath layers of coats and scarves, unable to play or dance or speak. “She could be in terrible danger.”
“Leave it alone, Julia. Wherever she is, Eva Pruitt got herself into this mess, and she can get herself out of it.”
It was a brutal thing to say. Julia remembered Eva’s fond introduction at Duveen’s party, her generous words. “I thought she was your friend. She had only good things to say about you, about your poetry. And now she’s in desperate trouble.”