Lady Vigilante (Episodes 16 – 18) (Lady Vigilante Crime Compilations)

by Hayley Camille

  Abraham looked at Jacob, his eyes deep and thoughtful, a mirror image of his son.

  “Now I see where your mind has been this past year, neshama sheli.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to tell you sooner. I needed some time.”

  Abraham just nodded. Golda Lawrence, having regained her color with a cup of tea, sat quietly on the couch, watching them.

  “Koev Li Halev, bubbeleh.” She finally said. “My heart aches for you both, having been through so much, so young. It was a tragedy, no matter where you stand, this side or that.”

  “The happy part of it all is,” Betty said, “that we all survived, and Donald Pinzolo is finally behind bars.”

  “Finally,” Abraham growled. “Twenty years digging up dirt on that momzer and I couldn’t make anything stick. You did good, Jacob.”

  “I had help from someone who knew how to get to him,” Jacob said. He looked at Betty, who smiled incandescently.

  “And that brings us to something rather urgent, I’m afraid,” Betty said, placing her cup on the coffee table. “Pinzolo has done a deal with the FBI. They’re letting him out, giving him control of the docks in return for – sensitive information. They think he’ll be able to sort out this serial killer fiasco and get the street gangs under control again.”

  “What?!” Abraham jumped to his feet. “After everything, they’ll let him go? What is this?!” He began to pace the floor. “This city is falling apart. I retired too soon! If I was still commissioner –”

  “Abba, please,” Jacob said, getting to his feet too. “I need your help. My only chance of keeping Pinzolo behind bars is to catch this serial killer first, myself, and prove we don’t need him to keep the peace.” He shot a look at Betty. “Ironically, it was Pinzolo who gave us the number of a contact who might help us figure out where the serial killer is hiding. Giving us this contact was a kind of bribe. Pinzolo thinks he’s better off letting us take down the Boudoir Butcher than getting into bed with her himself, so to speak. He’s cocky. He wants us to clear the path for him when he gets out. He thinks he’ll be let off either way.”

  “Will he?”

  “Maybe. But I need this serial killer off the streets. You’ve read the newspapers. The gangs are at each other’s throats. The city is under siege by criminals. It’s on me to put an end to it.”

  “What a job,” Golda said, shaking her head. “It’s too much for one man alone.”

  “I’m not alone,” Jacob said. “I have the entire force behind me and,” he looked down at Betty, “others. And with this contact Pinzolo gave us –”

  “You can find out where the monster is hiding and arrest her,” Golda finished. “So, call them then.”

  Jacob sat back down. Betty pulled herself straight.

  “We have,” Jacob said. “It was your number Pinzolo gave us. One of you knows something.”

  *

  “This is madness,” Golda exclaimed. “Why would we know anything? I don’t keep company with murderers and your father is retired. He has no business chasing criminals anymore.”

  Abraham held up his hand. He sat very still, as if his mind was whirring.

  “Perhaps, Abba,” Jacob said, sure that his father must be the one Pinzolo intended Betty to find, “perhaps you don’t know what you know, if you know what I mean.”

  Abraham nodded. “Tell me everything so far.”

  It was Betty who spoke. She began with the first murder, committed before the police realized that a serial killer was at large. Without revealing her source, Betty relayed the memories of Anastasiya, the terrified barmaid at Dom Serdets’, the dive on South Street where the Tin Man liked to court his potential killers. Betty inventoried the string of prostitutes he had manipulated to kill gang leaders across the city.

  The Tin Man’s first Boudoir Butcher, poor Lucille Wright. Platinum blond and washed out, her makeup gaudy and her dress thin. Down on her luck when she took Slim Fred’s ill-fated job, then locked away, lobotomized, and suffocated by Sister Murdoch at Greybone’s Lunatic Asylum for the Criminally Insane. An Angel of Death had caught up with her in the end.

  Next, Betty described the jittery bird, with un-ironed hair rolled high and a cigarette tight between her fingers. She was promised pennies from heaven to seduce and kill, but paid handsomely with her own life.

  Then, the Brooklyn harlot with a slurred, drunken tongue. That night, she was game for a rough and tumble that brought a knife to both of their throats.

  Betty next described the dark-skinned woman with her lips painted red. Not impressed by the Tin Man’s flattery, but soon lost in his voice. Her mouth falling slack, eyes hazed. And off to commit murder she went. Where her body lay now, nobody knew.

  Next, the exotic beauty from Spanish Harlem. Giggling over a gin rickey as she slipped under the Tin Man’s spell, never to wake up. She seduced and killed her victim, then the woman was murdered herself, Betty explained. They leave no evidence. No culprit. A greater scheme is in play. And on to the next.

  Tilly, with the vibrant red hair. The burlesque dancer who rolled and spun with a serrated dinner knife hidden in the sheets. Her victim’s face contorted with surprise. Writhing underneath her until his eyes were glass. She had escaped that first time, her mind shattered by the violence, still drifting in and out of nightmares when Betty had tracked her down at Kitty’s Kat House in a bathroom.

  Next, a new call-girl. A new Boudoir Butcher. This one middle-aged and blond with a skin-full of cheap wine. All in a day’s work, she’d begun, but by the end of the trick, they’d both come undone. Tossed into the Hudson, Betty surmised. The river full of bodies, beginning to rise.

  Next Carla Jackson, her skin hard and nights harder. Turning tricks by the dock, convinced to take a shy boy in hand and make a man of him. Directed to seduce, to murder, and then take a bullet for herself. She ended her lonely life in a shiver of clam shells and ice.

  Finally, Tilly again, her mind still shattered when she walked off the job and into the night. Relapsed under the spell of Violet Mills. But Tilly had held a knife to the Turk’s throat a little too long. He escaped, came after her, hell bent on revenge. It was Jacob who claimed him in the end.

  Seven women, perhaps more. Each a Boudoir Butcher by her actions, but none to blame. They were brain-washed, Betty explained. Commissioned to murder. Manipulated. Disposed of when done. The real Boudoir Butcher is still at large. And she is not working alone.

  “What else do you know,” Abraham Lawrence asked, looking more tired than he ever had.

  “Vladimir Malinov,” Betty said. “Russian. Moved across from California over a year ago. He has a small circle of followers, but he has connections to many more. He’s intelligent. A genius, perhaps. A sociopath.” Betty took a sip of tea. It was cold. “Malinov is the mastermind behind this grand scheme. They call him The Tin Man. Blond hair to his shoulders, bottomless blue eyes without a shred of humanity in their depths. But he can be charming, with his wide smile and flattering words. He lures the working girls in, wins them over, tells them about the job. Usually claims the man is a friend of his or some green wick too timid to approach them himself. Then, when the prostitutes are compliant with booze and beguiling words, his assistant steps in.”

  “Violet Mills,” Jacob took over, getting to his feet to pace the room. “Late twenties. Petite. Dark hair, dazzling blue eyes. American woman with a special gift for manipulation. She can bend others to her will, believe me, I know.” He exchanged a look with Betty. The bruises she had given Jacob, fighting him off while he was under Violet’s control were still fading. “The prostitutes acted under her direct influence. She gets inside their head and speaks to them. It’s otherworldly, like some soothing nightmare you can’t escape. Your body becomes just a vessel for following her orders. Your own mind is, I don’t know, it’s just gone. You cannot imagine how persuasive she is when she gets inside your head. Violet Mills could transform a dove into a demon on the flip of
a coin.”

  “How do you know this?” Golda asked, aghast.

  “Because she did it to me.” Jacob’s face lost its color, as he remembered.

  “Oy gevalt!”

  “It was hours before I felt right afterward,” Jacob continued, “I was completely under her spell. But at least I didn’t do anything I would live to regret.”

  “Not for want of trying,” Betty raised an eyebrow. Jacob gave an apologetic smile and paced back toward the fireplace, lost in that memory. “When you recover, you remember nothing,” Betty said, “or rather, just fragments of memory erupt from time to time. But the acts are so violent and unnatural, like the murder these women were made to commit, it affects them terribly. Poor Lucille Wright went mad. I saw her in the asylum before she was killed. It was as if she were existing on some precipice between normality and the terror of those fragments. It was tearing her mind apart.”

  Golda put her hand to her mouth in horror. Abraham’s expression was severe, his eyes intent on Betty, as if he was committing every word to memory.

  “They are lovers, the two of them,” Jacob took over again. “Vladimir and Violet aim to bring the New York underworld into such chaos and infighting that it collapses upon itself. First, they kill off the gang leaders, which they have nearly done. Without leadership, gangs struggle over territory. Their plan is working. Right now, the Tin Man is stepping in to take control, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood. It’s an ambitious plan that is only possible now that Pinzolo is out of his way. Tin Man has hired thugs working for him. Some have been taken care of,” he gave a half-smile to Betty, “but there will certainly be more. Our problem, I mean, my problem,” he corrected himself, “is tracking them down. These two are clever. They spend every night in a different place. But there must be one place, a central point, where they do their business.”

  “It’s impossible to co-ordinate something like this without a meeting place of some kind,” Betty added. “Extortion, drugs, bribes, negotiations. I grew up seeing this kind of business every day, favors, cash – it all changes hands at some point. Finding that secret place is our only hope of bringing them down. It’s our only hope of saving more women from being used as murderers. And for keeping Donald Pinzolo in jail.”

  “Right. Vladimir Malinov,” Abraham said, getting to his feet to join his pacing son. “Vladimir Malinov.” He was clearly wracking his brains for any memory of the man, or the name, that might have slipped into a lifetime of work in the NYPD. “Give me a moment. I need to think.”

  Golda looked at them all, frowning. “I feel so useless,” she said. “I just don’t know how to help. Murderers and thugs and ladies of the night! I’m no prude but I know nothing of these things, outside what your father has told to me of his work and those few poor, unfortunate cases that appealed to me for charity when they felt he wasn’t doing enough.”

  “Not doing enough?” Jacob asked, incredulously.

  “I know,” Golda sighed. “But to be the Police Commissioner is to be in the spotlight, as you are learning. Sometimes, the people saw me as a path to influence him and get their story heard. I did what I could of course, with charity work and all, but my job was here, raising you two boys. That was work enough at times, let me tell you. You with your teenage mischief and scrapes. And then –” she looked at Betty, reproachfully, her cheeks pink, “your grief and anger. Carried the world on your shoulders. And then Michael, well, he is an angel in comparison, but still, different children have different needs.” She straightened up, flattened her dress against her knees. “Betty, you would understand this, being a married woman now with children yourself.”

  “It can be exhausting, Mrs. Lawrence, I understand completely,” Betty agreed. “A mother is always a mother first. I wouldn’t change my children for the world.”

  “Would you –” Golda began. She paused. It was clear that although Betty had given a heartfelt and reasonable explanation for disappearing from Jacob’s life in the way she had, it would be a long time before she would be granted forgiveness for causing him such pain. Still, the allure of having a sudden grandchild was too much. “Would you tell me about your daughter? Nancy. My grandchild.”

  “I’d be delighted to,” Betty smiled. She glanced over at Abraham, who was staring into the glowing coals of the fireplace, muttering to himself. “Let’s put the kettle on.”

  They left Jacob sitting on the couch and made their way to the kitchen.

  “It’s been many years since you were standing in here, Susie.” Betty let the name hang between them. “You broke his heart, you know. He was never the same. He was an angry young man for many years. He tried to hide it, but – a mother knows what’s in her child’s heart.”

  “If I had stayed, my father would have killed him,” Betty said, her eyes imploring absolution from the woman she had once wished was her own mother. “Believe me, my father killed many others. And my uncle would have abused our child in the same way he abused me. By using her to fight his battles, to commit crimes. Besides,” Betty gave the older woman a sad smile, “what would you have done if Jacob had come to you and said he wanted to marry a non-Jewish girl like me? And that I was already pregnant at only fifteen years old? You knew my father was a criminal. That my uncle was one of the most notorious gangsters in the city. My mother was dead. I had nothing to offer and only trouble to bring into your lovely family. It would have broken your heart. I knew that too.”

  Golda leaned back against the kitchen bench, watching Betty with careful eyes.

  “Perhaps I would have been heartbroken, zeeskeit, but I never would have turned you away. My Jacob loved you too much. And I see that you did what you did because you loved him too.” She sighed and lit the stove, then settled the kettle on top of it. When she faced Betty again, her eyes were softer. “I’m sorry you were alone in the world with your little sheifale. There is nothing worse. Where did you go?”

  “At first I was homeless. Then I took a job cleaning at a boarding house for unmarried mothers in exchange for food and board. Then another home when the baby came. I got a job at a drug store counter selling cosmetics after a year and it’s there that I met my husband, George. Nancy was more than two by then. He was the first person who didn’t judge me.”

  “A good man, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Jacob has met him?”

  “He has.”

  “I see.” Golda looked shrewdly toward the open door leading to the sitting room, where her son was waiting. “I see.” The kettle let off a shrill wail, startling them both. Golda set to work preparing the tea while Betty gathered cups onto a tray. The crockery was modern and new, but everything was kept in the same place it had been over a decade before.

  “Tell me about my granddaughter,” Golda said, as they walked back into the lounge room.

  “She’s beautiful,” Betty answered. “And clever.” Golda nodded approvingly. “She reads endless books and has a very capable mind, though lately, seems to be more interested in how many ways she can contradict me in a day. Thirteen years old is a terrible age for being stubborn.”

  “I remember,” Golda laughed, lightly. “At thirteen this boy was all trouble in blue jeans. Thought he knew everything. Mischief is far more appealing than virtue to a teenage boy.”

  “And to a teenage girl, I’m afraid,” Betty said. “Still, I try. She’s a good girl.”

  “Perhaps, one day,” Golda said hopefully, “I can meet her?”

  “Of course, one day,” Betty said. “But she’s struggling at the moment, she’s only just found out about all of this herself –”

  “Malinov!” Abraham suddenly exclaimed. “Malinov! I knew I knew that name.” He turned to Jacob, his eyes alight. Betty set the tray on the coffee table and they all gave their attention to Jacob’s father. “I never met the man, but I was involved in a case where a man of that name, in California, was being questioned for a murder.”

  �
��Can you tell me about it?” Jacob sat forward eagerly.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Abraham said, coming back to the couch, his face triumphant. He sat down as Golda poured him a cup of tea. “It was a year or so after I was made commissioner. A red trunk had turned up in Grand Central, arrived on a 20th Century train on route from Chicago. It had been checked in as luggage under the name of a travelling doctor, but when the porters unloaded it, the man claimed it wasn’t his. It sat in the lost property room for a week, until the smell got so bad, a porter decided he’d better open it. I can tell you, he wished he hadn’t.”

  “A body?”

  “Takeh. A body. A couple of detectives were called down, and then, after they identified the corpse, I went to see the coroner myself. Normally I wouldn’t have stepped in, but this murder had ties to Pinzolo, and you know how long I’d been dogging him while I was working the beat.”

  “Who was it?” Golda asked, her lips twisted in distaste.

  “The underboss of the L.A. Mafia at the time,” Abraham answered, “a guy called Stefano Salucci – Stretch Salucci he was known as, on account of him being only five foot two. He was a big name over on the West Coast. Salucci was cut up pretty badly – multiple stab wounds to the chest, throat cut –”

  “That’s the same M.O. as the Butcher murders,” Jacob said, thoughtfully. “Except for the –” he glanced at his mother and cleared his throat, “– seduction of the victims first.”

  “Right,” Abraham said, his eyes still far away. “So, they hauled the doctor in, but he had no connection to the dead guy at all, so we figured someone had planted the trunk on him to get it out of town. Turns out this doctor had travelled right across from Emeryville, California in a sleeper, first a long ride with plenty of stops through the Rockies and across the Mississippi to land at Union Station in Chicago. From there he caught the streamlined Chicago to New York run overnight. He said the porters just kept checking his trunks through each stop, and this extra trunk with them, all the way across the country. He never saw his luggage until he got off.”