by Ariel Lawhon
A wicked grin spread across his face. “Take your clothes off.”
CLUB ABBEY
GREENWICH VILLAGE, AUGUST 6, 1969
Crater’s casual relationships with numerous showgirls and his visits to places such as Club Abbey and similar clubs in Atlantic City make clear that frequenting a house of prostitution would hardly have been out of character for him.
—Richard J. Tofel, Vanishing Point
Stella slides the envelope across the table with the tips of her fingers. She seems offended by its presence, despite the fact that not two seconds ago she took it from her purse. Stella Crater is written across the front in faded black ink, the letters a fine, feminine script. The corners are torn and bent—as though it’s been crammed in a drawer for years—and a water stain across the front renders the postmark illegible. There is no return address.
“What’s this?” Jude asks, staring at the red two-cent stamp of George Washington’s profile.
“Your long-awaited confession.”
He reaches for it, but Stella swats his hand, her movements alarmingly quick for one so ill. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I don’t plan on being here when you read it.”
“You can’t be leaving already?” Jude asks. “We were just starting to have fun.”
Stella is limp and tired, and a bit of truth slips through her hard veneer. “I don’t want to see you read it.”
“Then close your eyes.”
She puts a fingertip on the envelope and brings it back toward her an inch. “A few more minutes won’t kill you.”
They sit, bent over the table like two greedy children competing at slapjack: palms flat, fingers twitching, waiting for the next jack to land faceup on the table. But Jude isn’t certain he’s quick enough. And he doesn’t want to lose this particular card, so he draws his hand away and drops it to his lap. Stella doesn’t budge.
The early-August humidity has seeped down the stairwell and under the door, making Club Abbey smell like a wet ashtray. Someone wastes a perfectly good dime at the jukebox on John Lee Hooker’s “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” the clichéd last call. Not like they need the reminder. Stan shuts the joint down promptly at midnight. It’s been years since anyone protested.
Jude inspects the crumbling envelope. “How long have you had that?”
“Thirty-eight years. Give or take.”
He grunts. “Ever heard of guilt by omission?”
“No.”
“Means you can be found guilty of a crime by failing to report a felony. Withholding evidence being an obvious example.”
Stella barks out a laugh and thrusts her hands toward him. Her wrists are like knobs on a twisted tree root, bones pressed against the loose paper of her skin, fingers little more than arthritic twigs. “Go ahead. Arrest me.”
“I’m not interested in sending you to jail, Stella. Not anymore. I just want to know what happened to him.” In four decades, they have never touched, but Jude cups her hands in his and lowers them to the table. They are tiny and frail and splayed open. “You’ve kept this up for a long time. What could possibly be worth all this trouble?”
Stella spins her watch to face upward. She notes the minute hand inching closer to midnight, regards Stan behind the bar as he washes the glasses and tips them upside down on a rack to dry. It’s half past eleven, and there are only two other melancholy souls in the room—human dregs. One watches Johnny Carson on a grainy television above the bar, and the other is asleep at his table. She looks at the letter, still on the table between them, and is finally ready to tell the truth.
“This ritual is all I have left.” The corners of her mouth flicker into a smile. “You couldn’t have told me back then that things would go so wrong. We were right there on the edge of having everything. The trouble started in Tammany Hall, but it ended with the theater. Truth be told, I didn’t much care for Broadway, but I liked to be there with Joe. Liked that it was an event every time we went out: the heels and the pearls and the chauffeur and the attention—attention that only doubled once he got his appointment to the court. Joe was a magnet for the stuff, and I lapped up the excess, intoxicated.
“This”—she swirls her hand above her head, indicating the whole of Club Abbey—“is my penance.”
“For what?”
“For enabling Joe’s corruption. For ignoring his infidelity. For helping him broker our future so he could buy a seat on the New York State Supreme Court. I thought we could have it all. Wealth and social standing and respect. And all I had to do was turn a blind eye. Keep the status quo. Show up at the right events in the right dress and smile pretty like a proper political wife. But it doesn’t work like that, you know. There’s always a price to pay. And, in Joe’s case, a paper trail. Word got out the judgeships were on the block to the highest bidder. The wrong people started asking around, and one day Joe got a summons to appear before the Seabury Commission. Needless to say, there were people who had a vested interest in making sure he never testified.” Stella eases the envelope back across the table. “You’ll find the rest of what you need to know in there.”
Jude sits quietly through all of this. He doesn’t write in his notebook or interrupt or reach for the letter. For thirty-eight years, she’s treated this like a shell game, shuffling the truth with sleight of hand, and he marvels at this revelation. Stella has tipped the cups over, shown him the ball. There is only one question to be asked.
“Why now?”
“Because I won’t be here next year. This isn’t the kind of thing one relishes taking to the grave.” Stella glances upward. “Just in case.”
“I can’t absolve anything.”
“I’m not asking you to. I just wanted you to know that I chose, all those years ago, to hide the truth. That it’s eaten me from the inside out. Cancer has nothing on guilt, let me tell you that much. Shit. Forget the cigarettes. The guilt probably caused the cancer.” Stella’s hands tremble as she searches for another smoke. They’re all gone. “So go ahead. Tell the story. Take it to the papers, for all I care. Consider this your victory.” Stella’s mouth is twisted wryly, as though she suspects he won’t do it in the end.
There is a sudden emptiness within Club Abbey, and Jude and Stella realize that they are alone with Stan. He wanders through the bar with a broom, sweeping under tables and picking beer labels off the floor. They sit beneath a halo of dim light. Intense. Mournful.
“So now you know. Most of it, anyway.” Stella lifts her glass from the table. She draws on the silence, summoning the ghosts of Club Abbey for support. “Good luck, Joe, wherever you are.”
She tips back the glass of diluted whiskey and drains it in three wet gulps. A shudder runs through her body, and Stella presses the back of her hand to her mouth. Squeezes her eyes shut. There are no goodbyes for her. No formalities. She gathers her purse and slides out of the booth, setting one unsure foot to the floor and then another. Stella straightens her dress. Nothing but habit keeps it from sliding right off her wasted body. She doesn’t grace them with a parting word or a nod, simply crosses the bar and leaves Joe’s drink untouched on the table behind her. As always.
Jude wonders if she has enough strength to pull the doors open. And then he remembers that only fools underestimate the strength of Stella Crater.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
PORTLAND, MAINE, SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 1931
THE State of Maine Express idled at Portland Union Station, sending sheets of white steam into the frozen air. The few passengers milling about did so with the slow shuffle of exhaustion. Absent was the usual grumbling of commuters as they jostled for position in the coach cars. No honking horns or whistles or delivery trucks rumbling down St. John Street. Those distractions would come in an hour or two, when civilized people went about their business. Five o’clock in the morning was too early for all but the fishermen, and they were already a mile offshore in Portland Harbor, lobster pots on the line, ready to set. But the hour suit
ed Stella perfectly fine. She would slip away from her hiding place in the still of the morning and return home with no one the wiser.
Emma stood beside her on the platform; they waited as the porter gathered their luggage and placed it in an unsteady pile on the trolley. He led them toward one of the private cars and helped first Emma and then Stella aboard.
They followed an attendant through the narrow corridor, with its high windows and emerald carpet, toward a compartment at the back. The young man unlocked the frosted-glass doors and slid them open. Stella shed her outer layer and handed the wool hat, scarf, and gloves, along with a knee-length coat, to the attendant so he could put them on the luggage rack above her seat. Emma did the same.
“Don’t touch it!” Stella snapped when she saw him reach for the brown leather satchel she’d placed beside her. “That stays with me.”
“My apologies,” he said. He waited awkwardly before ducking from the compartment without a tip.
Once the door snapped shut, Emma said, “I swear to God, if the contents of that satchel bring more trouble to your life, I will never forgive you.”
Stella tapped one finger on the strap and stared at the dark circles beneath her mother’s eyes. “There is no trouble. Except what Joe left me.” She turned to the window and pressed her cheek against the headrest. She closed her eyes and listened to the rumble of the engine, aware of Emma’s piercing gaze on her. Though wide awake, Stella remained in that position when the train jerked forward and when she heard the click of Emma’s knitting needles as they worked their way through a mound of purple yarn.
Sometime later, the steward knocked with an offer of hot coffee and pastries, and Stella pulled yesterday’s newspaper from an outside pocket of her satchel. She tucked the leather bag beneath her seat while Emma skeptically perused the stale selection of breads.
Once situated in front of the window with steaming coffee—heavy on the cream and sugar—and a glazed croissant, Emma asked, “When did the grand jury dismiss?”
“January ninth.” Stella unfolded the newspaper and pointed: DISTRICT ATTORNEY THOMAS CRAIN SUSPECTS JUDGE CRATER’S WIFE COMPLICIT IN DISAPPEARANCE. “He’s quite clever, actually. He waited until the grand jury was released. There was no evidence to proceed legally, so he took his argument to the papers. I’m on trial before the court of public opinion.”
“What are you going to do?”
Stella took a gulp of her coffee. She winced as it scalded the back of her tongue. “Clear my name.”
“And what of Joe?”
“He can fend for himself.”
“Except that he can’t.”
She sniffed her croissant and set it back on the tray. “That is convenient, no doubt.”
Stella turned her attention to the view outside the window. Hills and trees lay muffled beneath a coating of week-old snow. Little fissures spread out over the ground as the upper layer hardened to a crust and split open. Stella imagined the weblike cracks connected together in intricate patterns all the way from Maine to New York.
Just after noon, the train huffed to a stop at the 125th Street station, where an unusually large group of people waited on the platform, jostling for position. Emma was the first to understand their purpose.
“Lean back, Stella.” She nodded toward the window. “Those men have cameras strung around their necks.”
Stella drew away from the glass and counted. Fifteen reporters spread out along the platform, each wound up like a jack-in-the-box, ready to spring through the doors as soon as they opened. A particularly eager reporter had positioned himself right in front, knees bent and arms spread.
Emma heaved the kind of sigh that used to make Stella cringe as a child, tossed her knitting onto the seat beside her, and crossed the compartment. She locked the doors and returned to her spot with a grim expression.
The reporters filed in, and a few minutes later the train slid away from the platform toward Grand Central Terminal. Splurging on a private compartment suddenly seemed the wisest investment Stella had made in months.
“When this train stops, collect your things and walk straight out that door with your head held high. Hail the first cab you see. I’ll get the luggage.” The look Emma gave her was so fierce that Stella had no choice but to comply.
Three times during the short ride to Grand Central, someone knocked on the compartment door. And each time Emma answered with a dry and unconvincing Midwest accent. No, she did not care to give an interview about the condition of city transit. No, she did not wish to purchase a subscription to the Herald Tribune. And no, for the love of God, she did not have an opinion on the plight of workers in the garment district, certainly not one she’d care to share publicly, and would you mind leaving her alone to finish her coffee, she did pay extra for peace and quiet, damn it.
Not once in her life had Stella heard her mother utter a gosh darn, much less a full-blown damn. Her lips parted in shock.
“What?” Emma lifted one eyebrow in amusement and stuffed her knitting into her overnight bag. “We’re here.”
They collected coats and scarves and hats and bundled themselves until their faces were mostly hidden. When they stepped from the train, neither turned to see if they were being followed. Stella ducked around a crowd of rowdy tourists and hurried up the steps to the main terminal. She resisted the urge to run or to whip her head around and search for the reporters. Instead, she kept walking until she stepped onto Forty-Second Street. She tugged her scarf over her nose and frantically hailed a cab. Her knuckles stretched white as she gripped the handle of her satchel, waiting in the backseat for her mother. Not long after, Emma exited the station with a porter pushing a trolley full of luggage, and the cabbie hopped out to help. As he slammed the trunk shut, a handful of reporters made their way onto the sidewalk. They craned their necks and peered through the crowd looking for Stella.
She turned away from the window. “Forty Fifth Avenue, please,” she said, and they slipped into traffic.
Fifteen minutes later, Stella was home. She tipped the cabbie generously after he unloaded the bags and hauled them into the elevator. It took them longer—without his help—to shuffle the bags down the fifth-floor hallway and into the apartment.
“I’ll give you some space,” Emma said once they’d deposited everything inside the apartment. “You settle in. I’ll go find dinner.”
No sooner had the apartment door clicked shut than Stella dropped her coat on the floor and went straight to the bedroom with the satchel. She pulled out the envelope with the cash. Her little retreat to Portland had cost almost a thousand dollars. But she’d need much more than that to stay afloat for the next few months. Stella chose five stacks of cash from the envelope—a thousand dollars each—and set them on the bed. The other six stacks she put back in the envelope. Then she turned the bureau key, yanked the drawer open, and stuffed the manila envelopes right back where she had found them months earlier. Stella took the cash she’d set aside to the safe in Joe’s office.
MARIA and Jude strolled through Washington Square Park and kicked at the few remaining leaves. She stuffed one hand inside his pocket and the other inside her own. Jude found her fingers in the deep fold of his woolen coat and cupped them in his hand.
“Are you warm enough?”
“I’m fine,” she lied, squinting at the dark clouds above them. “But it’s going to rain. We should go home.”
“Not yet. Walk with me for a while.”
She wore her navy peacoat and a red scarf wrapped high around her ears, but they did little to ease the sting of cold on her cheeks. After twenty minutes of aimless wandering, she finally looked up at him and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Stella Crater is back in New York.” He peered at the gray sky. “I regret taking that case.”
Maria’s dark eyes pooled with sadness. Enough. She was done with secrets and hidden meanings. She missed the marriage they used to have. And she loved him enough to speak the truth. Maria only hoped he would d
o the same. “Then you regret the wrong thing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was in the apartment that day, when you and Leo Lowenthall put those envelopes in the bureau drawer. I saw everything.” Maria stared at the new growth of stubble along his jaw, at the red patch of skin rubbed raw by the wind, at the angry set of his mouth. She was too tired to lie any longer. “I looked in them.”
“What?” The word came out strangled. “Why didn’t you tell me then? Why are you telling me now?”
She thought of Leo Lowenthall in the apartment that day. His whispered threats. The way she’d choked on her own fear at the mention of Owney’s name. “I’ve kept a lot of secrets lately. I’m sorry.”
He tugged at the brim of his fedora, forcing it lower. “Since when do we keep secrets from one another?”
“You tell me.”
Jude recoiled as though she’d slapped him. He pulled her hand out of his pocket and stepped backward to better see her, to understand this strange new development. He was unable to summon a response.
“I know they make you do things, Jude. Leo and Mulrooney. Others maybe. You told me the night of your promotion. You were so drunk.” The smile she gave him was absolution. “And scared.”
“I’m still scared.” Jude scooped her into his arms, crushing her face against his chest. He held her like she would be ripped from him then and there. “I’m going to fix this. I promise you.”
“There’s more.” Her voice was muffled by the wool of his coat. “That showgirl, Sally Lou Ritz?”
“Yes?” He tilted Maria’s face up to see her.
“I found her in Mr. Crater’s bed before he disappeared. That’s the mistress you’re looking for. She’s pregnant with his child.” Maria paused, letting him take that in before she continued. “And she said we could have the baby if I didn’t tell anyone.”