by Ariel Lawhon
He looked at them as though she’d laid an egg in his palm. Or a sunflower. Or some other random object. “Do you need me to run an errand?”
“I’d like you to take the Cadillac as payment for what I owe you.”
He sighed, a desperate sort of thing, and said, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I owe you over two months’ wages. And I don’t have a prayer of finding the money. The court stopped cutting Joe’s checks. It’s this or nothing, Fred. I don’t have anything else.”
“What about Joe? You’re just gonna let him stay out there? Missing?”
She turned back to the fireplace and stoked the embers. “It’s better that way.”
Fred looked at her, dark eyes narrowed. “Better for who?”
“Me. Everyone. Even Joe, at this point. Can you imagine the questions he’d face if he were to show up? The accusations? We’d be ruined.”
Fred passed the keys from one hand to the other. They jingled in the silence.
“The title is in an envelope by the door. But there’s one thing I need before you leave. Consider it your last act of employment.” Stella wiped her soot-covered palms against her skirt. “I need you to drive Mother and me to Portland in the morning. It’s my turn to disappear.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
PORTLAND, MAINE, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1930
THE Hotel Eastland sat on the edge of Portland Harbor. It towered eight stories above the small fishing port and boasted an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean. After checking in, Stella and her mother went to explore the famous heated observatory. Floor-to-ceiling windows and plentiful skylights made the dark clouds and choppy water feel less threatening. The women settled into wicker chairs in a corner and watched the fishing boats and private yachts slip in and out of the harbor far below.
“How long will we stay here?” Emma asked.
“As long as it takes.”
She put down her knitting and looked at her daughter. “As long as what takes?”
“The grand jury to dismiss.”
Emma looked around the observatory. “That could be months.”
“Perhaps.”
“This is a nice hotel, Stella.”
She lifted a cup of steaming mint tea from the glass-topped table between them. “We wouldn’t want to stay in a dump.”
Emma shifted a bit closer. “You just let Fred go because you couldn’t pay his wages. How will you afford this?”
“Fred was a nonessential luxury. And I more than compensated him for his work. I can find money when I need it. I just didn’t need it for him.”
Both women turned when they heard the steady tread of footsteps climbing the wrought-iron spiral staircase that led to the observatory. The concierge strode across the room, hands behind his back. “You requested me, Mrs. Wheeler?”
Stella laughed and nodded toward her mother. “She is Mrs. Wheeler. But I do need something of a favor from your staff.”
“We are here to serve.”
“My mother and I will spend the majority of our stay either in our room or right here. Is that acceptable?”
“It is.”
“I do not anticipate receiving many phone calls over the next few weeks, but I would ask that only close friends and family be connected through to our room. May I provide a list of names to the front desk?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Of course.”
“And anyone not on that list can be … diverted?”
“That will not be a problem. How long do you expect to stay with us?”
Stella lifted the porcelain cup to her lips and blew on the hot tea. “Let’s just say we’re all going to become very well acquainted.”
If Joe had been found dead in an alley somewhere, it would have made headlines. But the fact that he had disappeared made news—national news, at that. Thankfully, it was his face splashed across newspapers from coast to coast. Had it been Stella’s, she would have had nowhere to hide. As it was, the concierge acquiesced to her request, completely unaware of her identity. He gave a half bow and retreated down the staircase. Emma took up her knitting again in silence, and Stella tried to read a magazine. She tossed it on the table next to her after a few paragraphs and then spent the next two hours staring at the harbor below.
Chapter Twenty-Three
NEW YORK COUNTY COURTHOUSE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1930
RITZI fumbled with her cigarette. She dropped it. Struggled to get it inside the silver holder. And dropped it again. “Shit.”
“Need a light?” William Klein leaned against the wall a few yards away, watching her.
“No.” Ritzi struck her lighter. It didn’t catch, so she struck it again.
He sauntered toward her, hands in his pockets. “Give that to me. You’ll burn yourself.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“That’s not what you said last time we talked.” Klein took the lighter from her. A bright yellow flame hopped up, and he cupped it in his palm until it rose higher, and then he lit her cigarette.
“What are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I’d guess.” He drew a registered envelope from inside his coat pocket and waved it at her. “Summons.”
Ritzi tried to inhale deeply, but her ribs strained against the new corset. She coughed until her eyes stung.
“You gotta pull yourself together, Ritz. You go in there like that, and they’ll see you for what you are.”
“Which is?”
“Scared.”
Ritzi moved away from him and sat on the bench. She crossed her legs and rocked her foot with a nervous twitch. “I am scared.”
“They can’t know that.” Klein sat next to her and stretched an arm behind her on the bench.
“Don’t touch me.”
She gave him such a withering look that he shrank back. But after a moment, he lowered his voice and moved toward her ear. “Our agreement still stands?”
“Yes.”
“As far as they’re concerned, we’re together?”
Ritzi nodded.
“Then you need to trust me.”
She was about to tell him exactly what she thought of that suggestion when the double mahogany doors across from them swung open with a clang, revealing a large conference room filled with middle-aged men wearing expensive suits and dour expressions.
A clerk stepped into the hall. “Sally Lou Ritz?”
She straightened on the bench. “Yes?”
“We’re ready for your testimony.”
William Klein gave Ritzi a broad and deceptively kind smile. He cupped her face in his hands before she could protest and kissed her sensually in full view of the deposition room. “I’ll be right here, sweetheart,” he said, loud enough for all to hear.
Ritzi slid away with a blush and followed the clerk through the double doors. He pulled them shut and motioned toward a leather armchair at the end of a long conference table. “Have a seat, please.”
Half of the men held cigarettes or cigars, and the room stank of smoke and musty aftershave. Ritzi settled into the chair, searching for a position where the corset didn’t dig into her skin or make her lightheaded. Effective as the contraption was, it wasn’t made for sitting. She felt hot. And sick to her stomach.
“I’m District Attorney Thomas Crain,” said a man at the other end of the table. At one time, he’d been tall and broad shouldered and most likely very attractive. But Crain now had the tired look of a man well past his prime. His eyes were glassy and his hair gray, and purple veins stretched across the end of his nose. His left hand trembled whenever he lifted it from the table. “I will be taking your testimony today.”
A King James Bible lay on the table before her, and Crain instructed her to lay her right hand over it.
“Do you understand why you’ve been called before the court today, Miss Ritz?”
“Yes.”
“And do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“Very good. Will you please state your name for the court?”
“Sally Lou Ritz.” She’d expected to give testimony in a large courtroom under theatrical circumstances. Instead, the jurors sat along the wall in plush leather chairs and the magistrate and a handful of lawyers were spread along each side of the table beside her.
“Is that your true and given name?”
Like hell. “It is.”
“What is your occupation, Miss Ritz?”
“I’m an actress.”
Someone in the room snorted.
Crain consulted the file before him. “This says you’re a showgirl in the production Ladies All.”
“I sing. I dance. I act.”
Ritzi glanced around the room. She was the only woman present. The judge, the four attorneys, and all twenty members of the grand jury were male. All white. All in suits. All staring at her. She was suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin. Every curve. Her lipstick. Her perfume. She wished she’d worn a high-necked dress. She wished she hadn’t come.
Crain sat with his hands folded together on the table. The skeptical slant of his eyebrows suggested that he was less than convinced about the legitimacy of her career. “Can you state for the court the last time that you saw Justice Crater?”
“August sixth.”
“And what were the circumstances of your visit?”
“I had dinner with the judge and William Klein.”
Thomas Crain inspected his notes. “How did you know Justice Crater?”
Instead of addressing Crain, she turned to the row of jurors. She gave them an innocent shrug and a few carefully chosen words. “Judge Crater was a regular on the theater scene. He often attended shows with his wife and with friends.”
“Will you please walk us through the events of August sixth?”
Ritzi cleared her throat. “There isn’t much to tell. William and I were having dinner at Billy Haas’s Chophouse—”
Thomas Crain flipped through a stack of papers on the table. “William Klein, the attorney for the Schubert Theater Association? The two of you are romancially involved?”
“Yes. We’re dating.” The word felt wrong in her mouth, and she struggled not to curl her lip in distaste.
“Continue.”
She told the story. Again. The same version she had recounted to Detective Simon. The same version she had silently rehearsed in the days after Crater disappeared. After that, the questions continued for some time. Thomas Crain grilled her on the minutest details of that evening. What Crater wore. What he had for dinner. Their conversation. When they parted ways that evening. She did her best to look relaxed. To smile. Ritzi shifted her gaze from Crain to the judge to the jurors. She did not swing her foot or play with her hair or pick at her fingernails. The questions were answered plainly and quickly, but she didn’t offer additional information.
“Do you recall which direction Judge Crater’s cab went?” Crain asked.
“No.” Ritzi smiled. She wasn’t so easily fooled. “As I told Detective Simon when he came to interview me—I’m sure you have a transcript of that conversation in your notes—I didn’t actually watch Joseph Crater get into a cab. I assume he did, but I can’t be certain.”
“I see. And have you had any contact with him since?”
Not the sort I can discuss amongst men. “None whatsoever.”
Crain consulted his notes. “Is there anything else you would like to add, Miss Ritz?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you are free to go.”
Ritzi pushed her chair back, picked her purse off the floor, and smoothed the front of her dress. She could feel the gaze of twenty-five men on her as she left the room. When she stepped into the long marble hallway, her hands began to tremble, and she clenched them to her side to steady them.
Klein stepped in front of the still-open door and gave her a quick hug, his face nuzzled against her cheek. “That was quick,” he whispered.
“For you perhaps.”
The clerk stepped into the hall and called, “William Klein.”
“Looks like I’m up.” He made a show of kissing her forehead and then followed the clerk inside.
Ritzi waited until the doors were closed and then rushed down the hall, away from the prying questions of Thomas Crain.
Chapter Twenty-Four
WEST FORTY-FIFTH STREET, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1930
VARIATIONS of the Crater story were spread across the headlines of the Sun, the Herald Tribune, the Daily News, and the Times. It seemed as though every reporter in all five boroughs was scrambling for details about the judge’s disappearance. While George Hall and a few other journalists maintained a sense of decorum, most dished out any article they thought would sell papers. Many of the stories were outlandish—sightings of Joseph Crater riding a donkey in Ecuador or giving safari tours in Africa. According to multiple unnamed witnesses, he’d been seen in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Maria scanned the papers at the newsstand, then turned away, shaking her head. The truth was far simpler than people would believe. She pushed through the crowded sidewalk, leaned into the street, and waved her arm vigorously for a few minutes before a cab drove up.
“Where to?”
“The Morosco Theatre,” she said. “Hurry.”
Having lived her entire life in New York City, Maria could navigate public transportation without giving it a second thought. But she could count on one hand the number of times she’d ever ridden in a cab. She felt high class, sitting in the backseat of that car, watching pedestrians scamper across the sidewalk. For a few brief minutes, she was removed from the vastness of her city. And then the cab rolled to a stop in the theater district, at 217 West Forty-Fifth Street.
Maria pulled a dollar from her purse and tucked it in the driver’s meaty palm. She turned to look at the massive stone building. Somewhat blockish and plain, it stood three stories tall, with a scalloped green awning that stretched across the front of the building, MOROSCO glowing in red lights on the façade above. Maria tugged at the sleeves of her coat and ran her fingers through her hair to tame a few unruly curls.
Three double glass doors graced the front of the building, but Maria did not go through them. Only a few stragglers wandered the sidewalk. Mostly couples, an occasional drunkard. Lights from the marquee above her reflected onto the concrete in bright yellows and reds, and she stood in their glow for a few seconds, summoning her courage. According to the playbills plastered across the front of the building, there were only ten minutes left in the show.
Maria walked to the side of the theater and looked down the narrow, dark alley between it and the Hotel Piccadilly. If not for the trash bins, a car could have passed through. Halfway down the alley, Maria saw what she was looking for. A red exit sign above a metal door. The stage door where Shorty Petak had taken her two months earlier.
She picked her way around the garbage, careful not to step in the puddles of squalid liquid or paper bags filled with rotting food. The alley smelled of damp brick, stale cigarettes, and urine. The solid walls of the theater could not entirely muffle the raucous applause that came from within, and she guessed that the final number was drawing to a close. Maria sat on the edge of the wide stoop outside the door and waited. The voices and shouts and laughter grew louder on the other side of the door.
Several minutes later, the audience began to trickle from the theater and flood the street. Some walked away hand in hand, while others hailed one of the waiting cabs. A few gathered in groups to critique the performance.
The door behind Maria opened with a rusty groan. She jumped to her feet as three showgirls skipped down the steps, whispering to one another and laugh
ing. They were at the bottom before any of them saw Maria.
“No autographs, lady. Sorry.”
“I’m waiting for a friend.”
They shrugged, looped their arms together, and sauntered away. Seconds later they were lost in the crowd.
Another stream of girls in eveningwear rushed down the steps. They sounded like a flock of geese flying down the alley, their voices bouncing off the tall buildings and echoing across the brick. That’s how it went for the next fifteen minutes, showgirls and stagehands slipping from the building, off to the next part of their evening. She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders and shifted on the stoop as her legs and face began to chill.
Just when Maria was starting to think that Ritzi had forgotten their meeting, she pushed open the door, gripping the handle to a small wardrobe trunk. Her dress was every bit as red as her lips, and her fur coat almost reached to her knees. She looked like an heiress stepping from an ocean liner, and as she compared her own plain dress, low heels, and navy peacoat, Maria wanted to shrink into the shadows, to disappear.
“Thanks for coming. And sorry it took me so long. I had to wait until everyone left the dressing room.” Ritzi set the trunk down. “Would you help me with this?”
Together they lugged the trunk down the steps. Maria grabbed the handle and tipped it toward her, testing the weight. It wouldn’t be any problem to get home on her own. “How many costumes?”
“Five. And you’re sure you can alter them by tomorrow?”
“Yes. It’s just a matter of letting out the bodice seams.” Maria looked at Ritzi’s stomach. “You don’t look pregnant.”
Ritzi closed the gap between them in one quick movement. She set a hand over Maria’s mouth. The stage door was shut tight behind them, but she looked over her shoulder to check anyway. “Shh.”
Faces only inches apart, they stared at each other beneath the red glow of the exit sign.
“I have an idea. An arrangement of sorts,” Maria said, easing away from Ritzi’s hand.