The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  “Thank you,” he said warmly. “That will help us put it behind us. It’s been a long road.”

  “Well, for your sake, I’m glad of it,” the woman said, her voice familiar, its tone like polished brass. “But if Judy harasses Elaine and my son again, I won’t use my influence to help you.” Moira Closs!

  “You’ve been good to us,” he said. “I’m sorry for her behavior. I’d never want her to hurt you or your family, especially after what you’ve been through.”

  “I know you’re doing your best with her. Sons are easier to manage than daughters. I’ll grant you that. But you must be strict, Barton.”

  Judy swung open the study door with a clumsy bang, and the voices stopped. She was holding a document of some sort. She was pale and swayed unsteadily, as if she’d just been knocked off balance. Acting quickly, I shoved her back inside, hoping for another escape route. I managed to squeak out: “They came in from the alley. They heard us—” Then Bart and Moira were there on the threshold, glowering.

  “My office is out of bounds!” Bart said, his sweaty brow furrowing. “Why do you think you can just disregard—”

  In a delayed reaction, Judy attempted to conceal the document in her sweater pocket that was already stuffed with her rolled-up True Crime magazine. Bart stepped forward, caught her wrist, and ripped the papers from her. He glanced at them, then stuffed them into his pocket. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said, his voice lower, but still shaken. “You shouldn’t be going through my things.”

  Both Moira and Mr. Peabody were still wearing their outdoor coats. Moira coolly observed the commotion from above her fur collar.

  Judy was seething, but she wasn’t speaking up. Something in her demeanor lacked force. What had she discovered? What was that document?

  Moira stepped forward and placed her gloved hands on the sides of Judy’s arms as if about to embrace her. The leather of her gloves stretched and crackled as her fingers bit into Judy’s flesh. A faint smile, if you could call it that, crept into her lips. She released her and brought her palms together. “Barton,” she said with delight, “you know what she needs—an environment that encourages structure and discipline. I know of some wonderful all-girls schools. Madeira. Foxcroft. Agnes March. I even know a few headmistresses socially. I’d be happy to make introductions.”

  He turned to me, a twinge of distress in his eyes. “What do you think, Philippa? You’d go away if your father saw it fit to send you, wouldn’t you?”

  I blurted out, “He’d never do that.” I didn’t want Judy to be taken away, and besides, she’d loathe boarding school.

  “Well,” Moira said, disappointed by my response, “these schools shape girls into women and keep them out of trouble.” She looked at Bart. “Act now, before she ends up pregnant or a dope fiend, or worse, dead. The big city is a dangerous place for young women.” Another threat.

  Bart gave a meek smile. He ordered Judy to go to her room, and Moira guided me out, resting her gloved hand in the small of my back, like an adder waiting to strike. When we were in the alley behind the Peabodys’, she slid her hand away and said, “Your father is a lawyer. A JAG, right?”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “I would so like to meet him—and your stepmother, too. Bonnie, is it? I hear they’re good people. I’m always willing to widen my social circle for good people.”

  A chill cascaded through me.

  “You’re a sensible girl,” she said as we parted. “Make sure Judy stays far away from me for her sake—and for yours.”

  * * *

  When Bonnie first moved in, I fantasized that my mother hadn’t died. In my eleven-year-old brain, I imagined that she might’ve developed amnesia from the trauma of childbirth and wandered out of the hospital in a daze. The doctors, embarrassed they had lost a patient, showed Dad another woman’s body (as if he wouldn’t know the difference!). After she’d recovered from her amnesia—it took many years—she’d come looking for Dad and me and would appear on our doorstep one day. We’d have a tearful reunion between father, mother, and child, and Dad would send Bonnie packing. It was a ridiculous idea, and I’m pretty sure that I stole it from a radio show. But it helped me, at least for a time.

  As I walked home from the Peabodys’, I wondered if Judy’s conviction that Miss Martins was her mother was a bit like my melodramatic daydream—a strong wish, but not grounded in reality. If it was true for some crazy reason, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Our teacher would’ve sought out Judy, but why hover so close and not say anything? Then, I thought of Moira, the imperial queen bitch, and her threats. This is about more than lost mothers, abandoned children, and grieving grandmothers. There’s something more at stake—perhaps a cover-up of a murder?

  When I came in, the phone was ringing. Bonnie, who was busy tending a pot on the stove—beef stew of some sort—picked it up and handed it to me. “Don’t be long,” she whispered. “Dinner will be ready soon.”

  “Hello,” I said, pulling off my coat and wedging the receiver between my shoulder and chin.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” Judy growled.

  “You didn’t tell me they might come in from the alley,” I said, not restraining my irritation. “I couldn’t warn you. There wasn’t time.” I didn’t want Bonnie to catch wind of my anger, so I kept my voice low. Nothing would send me over the edge faster than nosy questions from my stepmother.

  Judy sighed but didn’t say anything.

  Impatient, I said, “Well, dinner’s almost ready. I should go.”

  Still nothing.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Wait!” Judy said. “Just wait, goddamn it.”

  “Okay?”

  “I found it—or at least some of it. The documentation of my adoption from Crestwood. It’s what Bart snatched from me. It was a cinch to break into his desk.”

  “So? What did you learn?”

  “I skimmed the pages. I didn’t have much time.” She paused for a beat or two. “My mother’s name is Charlene Peters. My birth name is Judith Peters. It said nothing about Christine Martins. Nothing about any foster parents.” She exhaled heavily. “Fuck.”

  I wasn’t going to be petty and tell her, “I told you so.” I thought about my own mother, about her photograph, her one eye not covered by her hat’s brim, smiling out at me, fixed forever like that in time. “At least you have a name. That’s more than you had before, right? We’ll find her.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It’s a strange endeavor to humanize your arch enemy, someone who brought about such suffering to you and the people you love. It’s even stranger to humanize that enemy posthumously. After all, the winners write history, and it usually behooves them to cast their enemies as despicable villains, right? At some point, though, if you’re ever going to gain an understanding of why things happened the way they happened—or even how they might yet happen—it’s necessary to give your nemesis some texture.

  Moira Closs died in 1954 but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I decided that I’d failed to understand her. I came across an article on her in the Washington Star. The focus, of course, was her death: Was it an act of random violence or cold-blooded murder? Well, that’s a story for another time. But in its early paragraphs, it detailed her background, of which I knew only fragments. She’d been born Moira Lutz in Bluefield, West Virginia, the daughter of a butcher. Hardly glamorous beginnings. She married a coal miner named Randal Patterson when she was eighteen. She soon became restless and wanted something more for herself, spending days at the library devouring every book she could, especially biographies and autobiographies of famous political figures, from Roman emperors to Civil War generals. She educated herself on ambition and cunning.

  When Randal died in a mining accident, smashed flat by tons of rock, she grieved, but not for long. She wanted to transform herself and get the hell out of the mountains, so she moved to DC, shook her Appalachian accent, and entered the secretarial pool, spending her evenings socializing.
One night in 1910, she met Cleveland Closs Sr. outside of the Cosmos Club, where he was a member. He was taken with her beauty.

  Originally from eastern Pennsylvania, he had moved to DC to attend Georgetown and remained, using his family money to begin what would become Capitol City Hardware. By all accounts, the couple was in love. Soon they married and had their towheaded son, Howard. Her pregnancy was difficult, and although she would try for another child, Halo would be her first and last.

  In 1928, when Halo was twenty years old, Cleveland died suddenly of an aneurysm, an inherited anomaly. Although distraught, Moira didn’t miss a beat. She seized control of Capitol City Hardware and managed it through the lean years of the Depression. To keep the company in the black, she inserted herself into Washington society and became adept at rubbing elbows with prominent politicos, like J. Edgar Hoover. She took her husband’s company and transformed it into the regional gold standard for high-end appliances.

  The gilded first part of the article was meant as a preamble to Moira’s “tragic end,” its scribe squeezing as much pathos out of the story as he could. However, it suggested something about her that I hadn’t considered before: She was self-realized. She was a modern woman, calling her own shots and succeeding. I also began to understand her as a mother, a mother who would want to protect her child no matter what he did. I understand the desire to protect someone you love, no matter the consequences. In that respect, we aren’t all that different.

  No, I’ll never forgive her for what she did. Why should I? But can one really continue to hate a vanquished enemy?

  I don’t know.

  * * *

  JUDY, NOVEMBER 13, 1948

  I have no words.

  It’s too much, too horrible.

  I’m not sure I can write this now.

  All I can think about is that famous pre-Raphaelite painting of drowned Ophelia, her glittering dress fanning out among the reeds and algae, hands open to the sky, jewel-toned flowers floating away from her hand, her face impossible to pin down: tortured, serene, lifeless, as if struck dead the moment she opened her mouth to speak.

  JUDY, NOVEMBER 13, 1948

  I can’t sleep, so here goes. Maybe writing it down will help.

  I was a fool to think Miss M was my mother, but it felt right. It still does. I have no interest in finding the Peters woman. I don’t want to discover that she’s spectacularly average or washed up or worse—the monster who fed me to the goddamn cats. Today, in need of a distraction, Philippa and I, in true Calvin McKey fashion, decided to stake out the Closs townhouse and follow whoever stepped out of the front door first. A blunt approach, but what did we have to lose?

  We bundled up in coats and wide-brimmed hats—the weather has turned cold again—grabbed a leash and Rosie and skulked in a small public garden down the block from the Closses’. Around ten o’clock, Halo left the house, dressed in a gray plaid jacket, navy tie, and dark blue hat. He bought a paper at the newsstand on Pennsylvania Avenue and entered Tune Inn, a local hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot. From across the busy street, we watched him take a seat in the front window and unfold his paper. It was boring as hell. We didn’t know what we were looking for. It wasn’t like he was going to run into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and declare his guilt. We entertained ourselves by petting Rosie and pacing the block. About an hour later, he folded his paper and stood. When he exited, he crossed the street, headed in our direction. We faced the stationery store and pretended to window shop, our reflections distorted in the old leaded glass. He passed by, oblivious. That’s when we realized that two men, both in dull gray suits and equally dull fedoras, were following him. One was tall and bony, and loomed scarecrow-like over the other one, who was squat, muscular, and strode like an angry penguin. They seemed vaguely familiar.

  Halo made several stops—the barbershop, the drug store, and the corner market—before heading toward the house on A Street, freshly shaven and holding a paper bag of groceries and prescriptions. It was early afternoon, and his invisible entourage was still patiently trailing him. However, Philippa was beginning to give out, moaning about being hungry. As Halo made a sharp left into an alley—a shortcut to A Street, she supposed—the two men sped up and surrounded him. I handed Rosie’s leash to Philippa and told her to wait at the end of the block. I inched to the corner of the row house, creeping as close as I could, but still out of earshot. The scarecrow stood behind Halo, walling him in, and the other man spoke to him with a frothing, ferret-like intensity. Halo looked distraught and said something like, “leave her” or “let her.” Then the talker laughed and slapped Halo on the shoulder, but the gesture wasn’t jolly. Suddenly, I realized where I’d seen them before: Bogdan’s arraignment, sitting at the back of the courtroom. Who the hell were they?

  Then, they were gone, having vanished around the corner.

  For a few minutes, Halo stood in the alley, grasping his bag, crinkling its paper, eyes wide and troubled. He began walking toward me, and I retreated, finding cover behind a parked car. I waved to Philippa, who was milling around with Rosie, and we followed Halo several blocks to a streetcar stop. While he waited, he removed the bottle he’d picked up at the pharmacy—Veronal, perhaps?—and dumped the full grocery bag in a waste can. He caught the next streetcar. I flagged down a cab, and Philippa scooped up Rosie.

  Halo’s destination was the Daphne Arms Women’s Hotel, an eight-story art deco building of pink granite, streamlined chrome, and silvery glass on Meridian Hill. With few trees or shrubs around it, it blazed against the cloudless afternoon sky. My gut told me that this was where Miss M was living. So, why was Halo here? Was it a result of his conversation with the scarecrow and the penguin? Who were they after all? G-men? Mobsters? I paid the cabby, and we spilled out on the sidewalk.

  After tethering Rosie to the handrail outside the entrance, I pushed through the rotating door with Philippa trailing me. Halo was nowhere to be seen. A plump woman in horn-rimmed reading glasses and a floral seafoam green smock lowered her Photoplay.

  “Hello,” Philippa said, brightly. “We’re wondering if you saw a man pass through here.”

  She frowned, the rosacea on her cheeks flaring. “Not a soul.”

  That wasn’t true. “He was just here,” I said. “We saw him come in.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  Under the edge of the woman’s Photoplay, I spotted a twenty-dollar bill. “Look, we know you’re lying. Can you tell us where he was going?”

  “Like I said, nobody was here.” She sniffed and set her jaw.

  Philippa leaned in. “We know he passed through that door”—she pointed—“four or five minutes ago.”

  “Like I said, you’re mistaken. No men allowed. I would’ve seen him. For Christ’s sake, I can smell ’em.” She stuck her nose in the air and sucked in her nostrils. “So, if you don’t mind…” She raised her magazine, creating a partition between us. Rita Hayworth, wrapped in red, beamed up from its cover. Its headline read, “Who Are Hollywood’s Dangerous Women?”

  Trying a different approach, I said, “Does a Miss Christine Martins live here?”

  “Can’t give out that information.”

  Philippa was losing her patience; her arms were crossed.

  “How much?” I said, digging in the pocket of my dress.

  A smile crept into the woman’s face. “How much you got?”

  “Five dollars.” I had twelve, but I wasn’t going to give her all my money.

  “How much does your friend got?” the woman grunted.

  Philippa glared at me. “I’m not giving her a cent.” She turned to the woman: “Look, our teacher, Miss Martins, could be in danger. Please tell us where she’s living.”

  “If you care so much, why don’t you know?”

  Philippa gripped the edge of the chest-high desk and leaned toward the woman: “Do you want to be responsible for something terrible? Do you want to lose your job?”

  The woman chuckled. “You’re a feisty lit
tle bird, aren’t you?”

  “Tell us where she is!” she yelled, batting a glass cardholder off the desk. It hit the ground behind the woman and shattered. Daphne Arms information cards scattered everywhere. It startled me, but I was thrilled: I’d never seen Philippa do something like that.

  “Okay, okay,” the woman said. “No need to get violent. Five dollars will do it.”

  I tossed the wadded-up bill at her, and the woman flipped through her directory, running her yellowed fingernail down a list of names. “Apartment 508,” she said, and we hurried to the elevators, our shoes squeaking on the buffed linoleum. As we waited for the car to descend, I noticed a sign written in swooping cursive tacked to a bulletin board: “Remember, ladies, gentlemen are only permitted in the lobby and in the ‘beau’ parlors. The halls, living quarters, and sunbathing deck are off limits! Please honor the house rules.”

  “Too many fucking rules,” I said, nodding toward it.

  The elevator dinged, and two women in pencil skirts, tailored blazers, and tams stepped out, trailing a mist of strong fragrances—lemon oil, sandalwood, gardenia, musk. One said to the other, “O’Rally’s has the best cocktails! Their scotch sours go down like lemonade.” They flitted past us, and I said to Philippa: “Sieves for brains.”

  The elevator took us swiftly to the fifth floor, and we stepped out into a long hallway with hectic red and gold deco wallpaper and a bright geometric carpet. The automatic doors closed behind us, and we stood together, motionless, staring at the dizzying vortex of color. Cigarette smoke lingered, but no one was in sight, and the hall was quiet. Most of the women were out, enjoying the day. Neither of us wanted to make the first move. If Miss M was in danger, so were we. If Halo’s visit was unplanned, maybe he didn’t mean harm. But who could tell?