The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

by Ariel Lawhon

“I’m not saying shit about being at Club Abbey last night. That’s just asking for trouble.”

  “Then don’t. Say we had dinner at Billy Haas’s Chophouse. Crater goes there all the time.”

  Klein jerked at the knot in his tie, and his face was flushed. Angry. “I still don’t see how this is my problem.”

  She didn’t want to be close to him, didn’t want his sweaty hands anywhere near her, but she leaned over the desk anyway, her best act of intimidation. Ritzi was scared enough to be convincing. “I will make it your problem the second the cops come looking for me. I went home with you last night. That’s the story.”

  “I could take it to Owney, tell him you’re blackmailing me.”

  The threat landed like a fist in her rib cage.

  “Joe is your friend.” She choked out the words.

  “So?”

  “So your friend—a damned supreme court justice, I might add—was dragged out of a hotel room in Coney Island last night. You don’t think that’s going to be a problem?”

  Klein turned to study one of the many black-and-white prints on the wall. Showgirls, every one. Feathered and sequined and leggy. His favorite leading ladies. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? That this isn’t some racket?”

  “I can tell you how they stomped on him. The way he screamed.” Ritzi held on to the lip of the desk as she moved closer. “Is that what you want?”

  “Enough.”

  “They can’t know I was there.”

  “It’s your mess, Ritz. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “What if Crater doesn’t come back? We’re the last people to see him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “But if I’m right, there will be questions. The only thing left to decide is how to answer them.”

  His eyes, usually greedy, had a calculating look in them now. Ritzi felt them on her like an itch. Last night’s dress was disheveled, the satin crushed and one shoulder strap torn. She had swapped her pearls for a cab ride early this morning, and her shoes smelled of vomit. The odor drifted upward, stinging her nose.

  “You look like shit,” he said.

  The anger seeped out of her, and there was a broken-down sort of tired in her bones. Ritzi counted the hours since she last slept and lost track at thirty. “You make it clear that you and I were together last night—lots of nights, for that matter—and I’ll keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I tell anyone who comes asking that you know what happened to Crater.”

  Klein shifted in his chair and twisted his mouth at the unpleasant prospect of her threat. “So, Billy Haas’s Chophouse?”

  Ritzi nodded.

  There was nothing left to say, so she turned toward the door. The carpet was thick and she didn’t hear him approach from behind. His hand on the back of her neck was a small death, and she choked on the strangled sound that tried to erupt. The backless gown felt daring last night, sexy. But now she was exposed. His hand left a trail of shame against her skin.

  “I’ll keep my end of the deal.” He pulled her toward him. His breath, damp on her cheek, smelled of cigarettes and stale coffee. Clammy fingers snaked into her dress and curled around her right breast. “Seeing as how you’re with me now.”

  The muscles in her body went rigid. Klein felt the barrier and grabbed her shoulder with his other hand. “That’s my condition,” he said, and bent her over the desk.

  MARIA would be late to Smithson’s if she didn’t hurry. Since she’d last been at the Craters’ apartment, the judge had reverted to his single ways. Dishes in the sink. Toilet seats up and towels mildewing in the hamper. Books and papers and clothing strewn about. The apartment practically looked ransacked. The bed hadn’t been made. Pants on the floor. Jacket tossed at the foot of the bed. Vest nowhere to be seen. The suit probably cost more than she made in a month, and yet he flung it about like so many dishrags. She’d stripped the bed, ironed the sheets, and taken his suit to the cleaners. It took her an hour to clean the kitchen and another to clean the bathrooms. Now, with the clock inching toward twelve-thirty, she tried to finish dusting the bedroom. She would certainly miss lunch, but if she was lucky, she could avoid getting yelled at by Smithson. Maria was mentally calculating her route when someone rattled the handle to the front door. She stood up straight, listening. A key shifted in the lock. Then the door swung open with a heavy, wooden thud.

  Maria winced at the thought of facing Mr. Crater again so soon. Two sets of footsteps shuffled through the entry.

  “Where is she?” The voice was sharp and cunning and unfamiliar. She froze.

  “Gone for the day.”

  Maria gasped and spun around. She stood holding the dusting rag, arms stretched out in front of her like a marionette, as her mind adjusted to what she heard. She knew that second voice. Knew it and loved it.

  Jude.

  Maria looked back and forth between the closet and the open bedroom door. She bolted across the room and parted the garments with one smooth movement. Then she slipped inside, drawing them together again with a snap. Maria had the feeling of being a child, caught somewhere she didn’t belong. She pushed her back against the cedar-lined wall and scooted over so her shoes weren’t visible. Tucked into the shadowed corner of the closet, she peeked out between two pinstriped suits and saw Jude stick his head in the bedroom, followed by a broad-shouldered man in a Panama hat. Leo Lowenthall. Jude’s partner in the detective unit.

  In one hand Jude held four manila envelopes and in the other Mr. Crater’s house keys—the ones with the key ring made from a silver dollar, the ones he hung by the front door every day. He shoved the keys in his pocket. Maria could barely see him through the louvered slats as he scanned the room.

  Jude walked over to the antique bureau on the far wall. A key stuck out from one of the small drawers. He turned it, pulled the drawer open, and placed the envelopes inside. Maria saw him hesitate, his hand hovering above the drawer, as though to lift them out again.

  Leo stood in the doorway, staring at the closet. Suspicious. “So that’s why you were stalling?”

  Jude spun around. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you didn’t have the stomach for the job. But really you just wanted to give Maria time to finish work. She was supposed to be here, you know. Owney wanted her to see this.”

  Jude took three wild steps toward Leo and grabbed him by the lapels. “You leave my wife out of this.”

  Leo rose up to his full height and knocked Jude’s arms away. “How else can we make sure you cooperate?”

  “And you think threatening my wife will keep me in line? Is that it?” Jude shoved him backward a step.

  “I think you’re not trustworthy. That you need a little motivation to do as you’re told. To stop asking so many questions.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m not stupid.” Maria knew her husband well enough to detect the fear in his voice, given away by the high note at the end of each sentence. “And don’t go near my wife.”

  “It’s not me you have to worry about.” Leo laughed at the look of strangled panic on Jude’s face. “What? You think Owney didn’t know she worked for the Craters? That this was all some coincidence? Grow up. Nothing in this town happens on accident.” He snorted. “Just do your job.”

  The rest happened quickly, and Maria struggled to remain silent. The rustle of paper. The bureau drawer sliding shut. The small, almost inaudible click of a lock.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Leo continued. “Now you know the rules. You cross Owney and he goes after your wife.” He left the bedroom.

  Jude shifted into her line of sight, and Maria pulled into her spine, willing herself to shrink farther into the darkness. She could not blink, could not turn away or breathe, as her husband walked out of Joseph Crater’s apartment.

  “GET UP. You’ve got an audition.”

  Ritzi heard the words, but they did not register at first. A cool hand grabbed her bare shoulder and shook. Somewhere at the base of her skull, a deep thr
ob muffled the words into nonsense. She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the light.

  “I will drag your bare-naked ass into that shower if I have to.”

  “Viv?” The word climbed its way out of her raw throat.

  “Expecting someone else?” A pause, and then the voice softened. “Owney, perhaps?”

  Ritzi jerked at the name and tried to sit up, but the hand forced her gently back to the pillow. “Is he here?”

  “Came by this morning. Wanted to know what time you got in. And to make sure you don’t miss this audition.”

  Ritzi’s stomach lurched, and she drew a long breath through her nose to quell the nausea. Her voice came, weak and pleading. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to go home.”

  “Home isn’t an option anymore, Ritz. You know that.”

  She cracked open her swollen eyes and found herself sideways in the sheet, a worn gray sock clenched in her hands. Vivian Gordon sat on the edge of the bed, primped and pressed as usual. Ritzi blinked at her a few times before she noticed the competing expressions of concern and anger on her friend’s face. “What did you tell him?”

  Vivian flashed a wicked grin. “The truth, of course. That you stumbled in drunk just after midnight.”

  Thank God.

  Ritzi let go of the sock and eased her eyes shut with the heels of her hands, counting backward—minutes, hours, days—rewinding time first to William Klein, then to the moment she crawled out of that bathroom cabinet, and further to Club Abbey and Crater and details that turned her stomach. The sex. The sound of fists raining down on Crater. She shuddered. “What time is it?”

  “Almost noon.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Thursday.”

  A few hours. Was that all? Sleep had fallen so hard that she felt as though a month could have passed. It took several seconds before Ritzi could remember her middle name, and it was all she could do to form a sentence. “I’m thirsty.”

  Vivian left the room and returned a few seconds later with a glass of water.

  “Thank you,” Ritzi said.

  “He’s a bastard.”

  “For the water. But thanks for that too.”

  Vivian leveled her unnerving jade eyes on Ritzi. “What happened last night?”

  Ritzi guzzled half the glass of water. Her throat was sore from the relentless vomiting she’d endured early that morning. It had taken twenty minutes for her muscles to stop cramping once she unfolded herself from the tight confines of the cabinet. And all that time, doubled over in agony, she’d retched, first onto the floor and then into the toilet. On and on it went until there was nothing left but bile. It was a long time before she could look at Vivian and say the words out loud. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me.”

  “And I can’t protect you if I do.”

  They stared at each other in stalemate.

  Vivian pursed her lips. Looked away. “You’ll lose your spot if you don’t get moving. You know what they do with no-shows.”

  Ritzi sat up and drew the sheets around her. So many details about the last twenty-four hours were vivid in her mind, but she could not, for the life of her, figure out how she got into bed without her clothes.

  “I burned your dress,” Vivian said. “Damn thing smelled of vomit and looked like evidence.”

  “I don’t remember taking it off.”

  “You didn’t. I came in this morning and found you passed out. Didn’t think you’d want to ruin the sheets.” Vivian stuck her chest out in an exaggerated motion. “Besides, you ain’t got nothin’ I ain’t got.” She laughed. “Okay, maybe a little more.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Did Crater get you drunk again?”

  Ritzi groaned at the sound of his name. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t even roll over. I pulled it off you like a sausage casing.” Vivian nodded toward the sock lying next to Ritzi. “You wouldn’t let go of that thing, though. What you got hidden in there?”

  The sock was knotted in the middle, and she picked it up and clutched it to her chest. It had come with her on the train to New York City and held the one thing she couldn’t bear to part with from her old life, the one thing she had no intention of sharing. In recent months, she’d taken to sleeping with it, like a child who wouldn’t part with a filthy security blanket. “Nothing.”

  Vivian shifted closer and tucked a limp piece of hair behind Ritzi’s ear. “Fine. Keep your secrets. We’ve all got them.” She walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. Vivian blinked into the sunlight. “I’m sorry, you know, that I ever introduced you to Owney. Should have told you to go back home when I had the chance.”

  “I wouldn’t have listened.”

  “It doesn’t go well for most of the girls who come asking for me. By the look of things, I only made it worse for you.”

  Ritzi didn’t often see Vivian during the day, and the fine lines around her eyes seemed deeper, the corners of her mouth limp. It occurred to her for the first time that the notorious madam Vivian Gordon was starting to look her age. Ritzi set her feet on the floor and tested her balance.

  “I did this to myself, Viv. It’s not your fault.”

  She grabbed the gray sock, wrapped the sheet around herself like a corn husk, and shuffled to the bathroom in search of a shower—a rare modern amenity that she took advantage of whenever possible. As she tossed the sheet aside Ritzi realized that she didn’t know where her underclothes were. Had she left them in Klein’s office? The hotel room?

  And that was the tipping point. Ritzi began to wail. Great gasping breaths of air that choked her as the water—first needles of ice and then fire—pelted from above. Her tender body ached from the strain. Stomach sore. Thighs bruised. And a pain in her joints, as though they were all being stretched apart. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the water, letting it soothe the weariness until she was wrung dry of tears. Ritzi soaped and rinsed over and over, digging at her body with a washcloth, desperate to scrub away the shame.

  The air was thick with steam and her skin pink by the time the water finally ran cold. She stepped, dripping, onto the floor. The girl in the mirror with the frightened eyes was sadly recognizable. It was the same girl who got off a train from Iowa three years earlier looking for fame and fortune. For the first time in ages, Ritzi didn’t see a stranger in her own reflection.

  “Feel better?” Vivian asked when she came back to the bedroom.

  She’d gone through Ritzi’s closet and laid a blue dress on the bed.

  “Much.”

  “You have less than an hour to get to the theater. Clean up good.”

  “Thanks. For everything.”

  “I didn’t want a roommate, you know,” she said, digging around in the bottom of Ritzi’s closet for a pair of black heels. She plucked a strand of hair off one shoe and set them next to the dress. “I prefer to live alone. Was none too pleased with Owney when he insisted on this arrangement. But I’m glad you’re here, Ritz. I really am.”

  RITZI swung herself into the backseat of the black Cadillac. “Where’s the audition?”

  Shorty Petak leaned over the front seat and pushed up the rim of his bowler hat. “The new Broadway Theatre. This’ll be the first show.”

  A Polish thug employed by Owney, Shorty served many purposes: chauffeur, bodyguard, bouncer. He often stood watch outside the dressing room during shows that Owney backed to keep stagehands and riffraff from the performers. Sometimes Ritzi liked him; sometimes he got on her last nerve.

  She lifted a compact from her purse and inspected her reflection. Eyes a bit swollen. Nose chapped. Ritzi patted powder onto her cheeks and applied another coat of lipstick. “So this show is a big deal?”

  “Jimmy Durante is the lead.” Shorty swerved into traffic, and she had to grasp the door handle so she wouldn’t tip over.

  “The chorus line will be big, then? Twenty or thirty?”

  He flash
ed a look in the rearview mirror. “This ain’t for the chorus line. Owney set you up for a solo. You knew that, right?”

  If Owney had bothered to relay that information, it had gotten lost in the chaos of the last twenty-four hours. She would have missed the audition altogether if not for Vivian dragging her out of bed. “Of course,” she lied.

  All her other auditions had been for kickers in the chorus line. She made for a pretty face in the crowd, a good set of legs in the background. But this was something else entirely. She’d begged Owney for three years to give her a shot like this. Had worked hard for it. Done things she would never admit to in the light of day. But after last night, she wanted nothing to do with him ever again. Three years of ambition erased by one night listening to the agonized shrieks of Joseph Crater.

  The Broadway Theater was a short drive from her apartment, and Shorty reached it in record time—he loved gunning the engine when Owney wasn’t around. He parked illegally and walked her right into the lobby. A crowd of large-busted girls stood with glossy lips, each waiting her turn.

  Shorty took her elbow and pushed through the crowd toward a man with a clipboard.

  “Name,” he asked, not bothering to look up.

  “She’s on the reserved list,” Shorty said.

  A murmur of dissent rose around them. Angry whispers. Protests. Someone shouted, “This is an open audition. No reserves. That’s what my agent said!”

  “Name,” the man with the clipboard repeated.

  “Sally Lou Ritz,” she said.

  He flipped a few pages and scanned his list. “Right through there.”

  Shorty walked her down a side passage. Once they were out of earshot, he said, “You’re auditioning for the part of May, a prostitute.”

  “Fitting.”

  He pinched her arm. “You’ve got a solo. It’s perfect for your range, but tricky. There’s only a piano accompaniment. That’s what’s messing up the other girls. No orchestra to hide the sour notes. Sing it clear and you’ll be fine. The rest has been arranged.”

  The hallway merged left and emptied them into the area backstage. Shorty took her purse and gave her a little shove.