by Ariel Lawhon
“You weren’t impressed?”
“It was two hundred and ten pages of unconvincing.”
“So you’re a better judge of the facts?”
“I have respect for the facts. That’s the difference.” He jabs a finger at the book. “You’re a lot of things, Stella, but weak and naive aren’t two of them. You come across as helpless in this thing. I’d even go so far as to say stupid. I know you better than that.”
Stella looks at the book for the first time since he set it on the table. Her eyes scan the title: The Empty Robe: The Story and Legend of the Disappearance of Judge Crater. “I suppose that means you don’t want me to sign it?”
“If you’re of the mind to sign something, a confession would be great. You can borrow my pen. Start with where to find the body.”
“Always so obsessed with the body. Haven’t you figured out there are more important things?” She flicks her wrist at him, irritated. “You really think I killed my husband?”
Jude plays with the end of his pen, sending a little clicking sound into the silence between them. “I’m certain you know who did.”
When Stella sighs, it sounds like gravel in a bucket, all rattle. She points a spindly finger at him. “Your problem is that you always rush things. You show up on a doorstep or slide into a booth and demand answers. But you’re no good at listening.”
A mound of ashes rests in the ashtray, and her supply of cigarettes has dwindled by half. They lay across the table like bleached railroad ties. She chooses one at random and rolls it between her fingers.
“Forgive me if I’m a little short on patience these days,” Jude says. “It’s been thirty-nine years.”
“You don’t have to remind me how long it’s been. For you, this was just a case. But it’s something I’ve lived and breathed and suffered through every day since Joe left.”
“Still playing the grieving wife? I thought you were long past that.”
“Lighter,” she demands.
Jude hands it over, and she wrestles with the striker, her fingers weak and curled in on themselves. Stella refuses when Jude offers to help. After a few moments, she succeeds in producing a spark large enough to ignite the fluid. The paper burns orange and then black as a thin trail of smoke drifts toward the ceiling. She puffs on the cigarette a few times and then hacks a wet cough into her palm.
“Suffering and grief are two different things. I don’t grieve my husband’s passing. But I do suffer the loss.”
“That’s not what you said in here. Convinced your writer well enough, by the look of things. He painted you as the ultimate victim.” Jude flips the book open and thumbs through the pages until he reaches the epilogue. He reads: “ ‘Because work is her only surcease, the single antidote to a sorrow which three decades settled upon but could not bow her slender but proudly squared shoulders.’ ” He chucks it back to the table in disgust.
“I think he fancied me,” she says. “Besides, it was his job to write me as sympathetic.”
“He failed. Did anyone actually buy that bullshit?”
“It went into several printings. The Saturday Review called it ‘absorbing’ and ‘fascinating.’ So, yes, quite a few people bought it.”
Stella pushes the ice cubes around her drink with the tip of one finger. Only two cubes remain, and they don’t have enough weight to clink against the glass when she pokes them. She fishes them out with her thumb and forefinger. Eats them. The four decades since Joe’s disappearance have not been kind to Stella, and the smoking in particular has taken its toll. Deep crevices around her thinning lips suggest a mouth too often puckered in anger or craving. Her teeth, once bright and white, are stained yellow, and they grind the ice cubes into shards.
“People wanted to know my side of things. So I told them.” Stella turns the book over and sets it facedown on the table. She slides it back toward Jude. “My publishers at Doubleday thought it would be a good touch to hire Oscar Fraley to write the book. He’d recently had all that success with The Untouchables, and they believed it would add a certain”—she waves her finger around, searching for the right word—“authenticity to the story, given the subject matter. Owney Madden and Tammany Hall and political corruption. The grieving widow gave it a human touch.”
“So the book was, what? A way to cash in?”
“We all have bills to pay. Some more than others. Do you know where I’ve been the last six years, Detective?”
“A nursing home in Mount Vernon.”
“I prefer to think of it as a retirement home, complete with medical care for the terminally ill.” She holds the cigarette up for his inspection. “My doctor found the tumors seven years ago. They took the first lung a year later. Seeing as how I don’t have another to spare, I figured I’d make my last days as comfortable as possible.”
The sound of the ice dispenser echoes through the bar, and before long Stan arrives at the booth, pitcher and tongs in hand. He drops six cubes into her glass, considers the untouched other drink, and does the same. The once-amber liquid now looks like weak tea. He retreats without a word.
“He’s attentive,” Jude says.
“He’s nervous. I’ve never had company during this—”
“Charade?”
“Ritual. Stan doesn’t know what to make of it.”
Jude has another theory, but he doesn’t share. It might infuriate her, and he needs Stella content. Chatty. So he spins the lighter in a little circle on the table with his thumb and chooses his words carefully. “I want to know about those envelopes. When you found them. And what was really inside.”
Chapter Ten
FIFTH AVENUE, FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 1930
MAINE. New Hampshire. Connecticut. The states rolled by in a dull kaleidoscope as Stella sat in the back of the Cadillac, ankles crossed and gloved hands limp in her lap. Three times Fred stopped for gas, but she did not get out to stretch her legs or use the facilities. She kept her perch in the vehicle, wintry eyes fixed on some distant point on the other side of the glass. Late in the afternoon, Fred rolled his window down and stretched his arm outside the car. Fresh air rushed over her, tossing the ends of her hair into her eyes. She shut them, rested her head on the back of seat, and was asleep within minutes. Stella woke to the sharp blast of a car horn hours later.
The Manhattan skyline was a dark silhouette against the evening sky as they turned onto Fifth Avenue.
“What time is it?” Stella asked.
Fred turned his wrist up to see his watch. “Almost seven.”
“Drop me at home, and you can take the weekend off.” She caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. “I’ll be fine.”
A short time later, Fred rested the Cadillac against the curb in front of the redbrick cooperative at 40 Fifth Avenue. Stella took her small suitcase from him as soon as he lifted it from the trunk.
“We’ll drive back to Maine on Sunday evening,” she said.
Fred tipped his hat and climbed back behind the wheel.
She went straight up to the apartment, not even bothering to gather her mail in the lobby. After eight hours in the car, her spine ached and her hair was flat beneath her netted hat. She wanted her own shower and her own bed and a sense of familiarity. She turned the key and dropped her bag by the door.
“Joe! Are you here?”
Nothing.
Stella walked through the rooms slowly. She had no idea what she was looking for. A note, maybe? Surely not a body. The very thought made her throat constrict. But she walked through the apartment and looked. In drawers and cupboards. Beneath sofa cushions. Behind the toilet. Part of her could not tolerate having nothing to hold up and say, See! This is where he went. This is what happened.
Stella saved the bedroom for last. The closet was exactly the way she’d left it, half empty and smelling of cedar. Nothing under the bed but a few errant dust balls. Nothing behind the curtains or beneath the Victrola. Her dresser was empty, as was her jewelry box—she’d taken the contents with her to M
aine, just in case. What little of Joe’s clothing that wasn’t pressed and hung in the closet was stored in a bureau against the wall. It was an odd piece of furniture. Long and low and top-heavy. Impractical, really, but Joe had taken a fancy to it at an estate sale years earlier. Made of walnut with five drawers. Two stacked on the bottom and three in a row on top. A single streak was visible in the layer of dust on top. Someone had run a finger along the dark wood but had not bothered to clean off the dust. A bureau scarf covered the middle drawer, and she raised the edge. The gold key stuck out of the lock. The drawer usually held receipts and other oddments that Joe took from his pockets. But instead of the paper and loose change she expected, Stella found four manila envelopes.
She lifted them from the drawer.
On the outside of each envelope, in Joe’s lettering, were her initials and the word Personal. The script was thin and scattered, scrawled across the paper in a hurry. But there was no mistaking the strong slant of the capital letters, as though they were determined to hold their weight. A bit like Joe, those letters were, dogged and brazen.
The first envelope was the heaviest. Stella let it rest on her lap before she undid the clasp and emptied it onto the bedspread. Thirteen stacks of cash, bound with string, and three checks, in Joe’s handwriting and made out to himself.
She knew, simply by the size of those stacks, that it was more money than she’d ever held at one time. The bedroom was still, the air thick, and she could hear herself breathe as she untied the string and methodically laid the bills out before her by denomination. On the street outside, a delivery truck rumbled by. A car honked. Someone slammed a door down the hall. Twelve thousand six hundred and nineteen dollars.
The checks were a bit curious, but she counted them as well. One for $500 even. One for $12. And one for $9. These last two made no sense. None of this did. Stella pushed the money aside and reached for the second envelope.
Joseph Crater held four life insurance policies, for a total of $30,000, and each was payable to Stella. These she found in the second envelope. Seeing her name there on the printed page for such an outlandish sum of money rattled her. Three of the policies were with the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York—two for $10,000 and one for $5,000—and one for $5,000 was with the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. She stacked them carefully and set them beside the cash.
The third envelope was the most unnerving of the lot, and she swallowed hard after reading the first line:
I, JOSEPH FORCE CRATER, residing in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County, and State of New York, do make, publish and declare this as and for my Last Will and Testament.
As sobering as it was to read those words, worse was the knowledge that Joe had made her role in their marriage clear from the very beginning. Stay pretty. Be proper. Don’t ask questions. She continued reading:
FIRST: I hereby revoke any and all Wills and codicils heretofore executed by me.
SECOND: I direct that my just debts and funeral expenses be paid as soon as practical after my decease.
THIRD: I give, devise, and bequeath all my property of whatsoever nature and wheresoever situated to my wife, STELLA M. CRATER, and appoint my said wife sole executrix under this my Will and direct that she be not required to give any bond or other security for the faithful performance of her duties as such executrix.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and seal to this my Will at the Borough of Manhattan, on the 4th day of July, 1925.
Joseph Force Crater
The five short paragraphs hit her like warm air from an oven. Stella dropped the paper to her lap and wilted on her spot at the edge of the bed. On Independence Day, five years ago, Joe sat in his office and planned out the legal ramifications following his death. Joe, still in his thirties at that time, writing his will.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
Stella laughed at the abrasive sound of her own voice. Her mother had once told her that only crazy people talked to themselves. No, Mother, she’d replied, lonely people do it all the time.
The last envelope was the most puzzling to Stella. In addition to her initials and the word Personal, he’d added a warning: Confidential. A three-page handwritten memorandum gave a startling directive. The letters were large, the pen strokes thick, and the lines straight from one side of the paper to the other, but the hand itself looked distressed. Confidential again, underscored on the first page, and then his instructions:
The following money is due me from the persons named. Get in touch with them, for they will surely pay their debts.
He’d listed twenty companies and individuals who owed him money—a roster of every person who had bribed her husband since he took office. Proof of his corruption. Some of the names were indecipherable, as though he lacked the courage to plainly state them in ink. The instructions ended with a word she could not read.
“ ‘Am very weary’?” She held the paper close to her face, willing the letters to align in a legible way. “ ‘Am very sorry’?”
Weary. Sorry. Those two words spanned a distance so great that a train could pass between them. It was the difference between abdication and apology, and Stella had no idea which he meant.
After that last word, he closed with Love, Joe. And then a reiteration of his final warning: This is all confidential. The phrase was underlined and the ink went off the page, as though with this last instruction he’d lost the will to control his own pen.
Stella put the contents back into their respective envelopes, which she stacked on the bed. Returning them to the drawer was out of the question. Instead, she went to her closet and knelt down to grab a brown leather satchel that she kept behind her hatboxes. Stella set all four envelopes in her satchel and slid it under the bed. Then she went straight to the phone.
FIFTH AVENUE, MARCH 15, 1920
“Why aren’t you dressed for dinner?” Joe asked.
Stella lifted the hem of her skirt. “I wouldn’t consider this nudity.”
He stood in the doorway, watching her set the table. They dined alone that night, a rare occurrence since Joe had turned an eye toward politics. He called the revolving door of dinner guests “mixers,” but Stella found it exhausting at times, never knowing who she’d be entertaining from one night to another. Their grocery bill doubled in the span of months. But for the first time that week, it was just the two of them, and she had taken the opportunity to revel in a casual meal like they used to share. No jewelry. No shoes. Simply a quiet dinner at home.
“That’s not what I mean. You’ve had that dress on all day.”
“It’s a nice dress.”
“It’s a day dress,” he said, eyes on the paper napkins that she folded into triangles and placed beside their plates. “And it’s old.”
Stella studied the simple blue dress. It was pretty and feminine, with a lace collar and pleated waist. “I bought it two months ago.”
“Why don’t you go put on something nice? I’ll set the table.”
She glanced at the neatly arranged dishes and was about to argue with his bizarre request when she caught the determined look on his face. No point in bickering when Joe set his mind to something. She left the dining room with a scowl and went to rummage in the closet for the violet cocktail dress she’d worn on the few occasions they’d eaten with the members of Joe’s Tammany Hall club. It was velvet, with a scoop neck and an asymmetrical hemline, and Joe commented on her figure and the color of her eyes whenever she wore it. For fear of eliciting further criticism, she added jewelry, perfume, high heels, and a fresh coat of lipstick.
“Much better,” Joe said when she returned.
He pulled a chair out for her and waved a hand across the newly set table. Linen napkins and silver candlesticks. He’d found a fresh tablecloth and their wedding china as well.
“What’s the occasion?”
“If I’m to be a judge—and I believe I will—then we must start acting the part. We have to keep the right co
mpany. Shop the right stores.”
Stella attempted a laugh, but when she saw the complete seriousness on his face, she cleared her throat instead. “I’m never sloppy with my clothes. Why does it matter where I buy them?”
Joe took the carving knife and cut into the small hen she had roasted for dinner. He sawed back and forth a little harder than necessary, and the tender meat disintegrated beneath the serrated blade. “It matters a great deal. You need to start patronizing the better women’s shops in Manhattan. You’ll be seen there—that’s why it’s important. All the Tammany men send their wives to Mae & Hattie Green on Fifty-Second. But Dobbs on Fifth also attracts an upper-level clientele. Keep your purchases to those two shops for now. It’s the only way we’ll be taken seriously.” Joe tugged at his collar. “I’ve found a tailor on Fifth. He’s the best around.”
“Is that why you’ve been wearing those shirts?” He looked like a turtle walking upright—stiff collar from shoulder to chin—but Stella couldn’t tell him that. Joe was too fond of the price tag and the Smithson label that accompanied his new wardrobe.
He dished a heaping pile of new potatoes and carrots onto his plate. “You know my neck,” he said. “Thin and gawky. The collar covers it up. Can’t have anyone commenting on the pencil-neck lawyer that wants a judgeship.”
The chicken was savory and the potatoes tender, and were it not for the serious turn the dinner had taken, Stella would have thought it one of their more enjoyable evenings.
“I know there are things you have to do,” she said—“paying contribution” was the way he’d actually termed it after returning from a meeting at Tammany Hall one night—“but I never thought I’d be going public along with you.”
“You’re not.” He stabbed a carrot with his fork. “Unless I need you on my arm for a function. Your place is right here, in the home. I’d certainly hate to see you sitting around in those smoke-filled rooms at the club debating politics. It’s just not the right thing for women.”