Etta: A Novel

by Gerald Kolpan

  “Buon giorno, Signorina Jameson!” Don Vittorio said. “You will have, perhaps, a cup of coffee … an anisette?”

  Lorinda had spent much time among the Italians of the Lower East Side and knew that to refuse such hospitality would be considered an insult. She accepted both offerings with a whispered grazie that made Don Vittorio smile through his black and gray beard.

  “To what do I owe the priviledge of such a visit?” he asked. “It is not every afternoon that a humble immigrant like me gets to meet such a celebrity. I truly wish we could have met under different circumstances and without all this unpleasant history. Then you would have been a member of my organization! Someone who can shoot, ride, and rob a train like a man while possessing a face to tempt Satan? Oh, my dear young lady! Considering the kind of helpless gavones I am surrounded with, I am truly sorry this did not happen. Tell me, did you really kill that newspaper shit heel? I heard it was self-defense. Not that this is of course, any of my business.”

  “You seem to know all about me, Don Vittorio,” Lorinda said. “I am surprised that you never gave this information to the Pinkertons. It would have provided some money while you were attempting to collect on my father's debt.”

  Don Vittorio's face darkened. “Despite what you may have read, money is not everything to us. Yes, I know the press says we are greedy savages, not fit to breathe the same air as you native-born. But I would sooner take a stiletto to my eye than give the Pinkertons so much as the manure from my horses. When they aren't breaking some starving workingman's strike, they try to take the bread from my mouth. This year alone they have jailed ten of my people, including a boy no older than fourteen who only fetched tobacco and the daily papers. He was … how do they say? … simple. The Pinkertons returned him to me like a shell, so frightened he has not spoken a word since. Such schifósi will never receive information from me or any member of my famiglia. Not for a million dollars, not for ten million dollars! Adante tutti a fanculo”

  Don Vittorio paused for a moment, catching himself in the unpardonable sin of revealing his anger to a stranger.

  “But enough. You have not come to hear me deliver grand speeches, especially in a language you do not speak. I understand you have a proposition for me.”

  Lorinda straightened in the enormous leather chair and looked at Ferro directly. “I am not even sure that you are aware of this situation, Don Vittorio. It is largely a Philadelphia matter, and I am certain you only intervene in business ninety miles south when it becomes a crisis. Still, I know all things related to my hometown fall under your purview and that you have the power to give orders or have them rescinded. I am here today to ask you to rescind an order—the one that calls for my imminent death or disfigurement.”

  As the don listened calmly, Lorinda related the story of her father's outstanding debt, his inability to pay, his suicide, and the subsequent instructions to destroy her. She told how, only three weeks before, an attempt had been made to throw sulfuric acid upon her in a restaurant and that only the quick action of a friend had averted disaster.

  “In the long period of time since I was deemed worthy of death, I have become a woman of some means. I would not insult Don Vittorio by expecting him to commute my sentence without remuneration. At the time of his death, my father owed your associates approximately twenty thousand dollars. The large valise at my feet contains this exact sum. I will gladly leave this money with you if you will lift the weight of your organization from my shoulders. And I hope that you will accept my sincerest apologies for any trouble or embarrassment I may have caused you during my pursuit.”

  Don Vittorio was a hard man to amaze. Over three decades in business he had heard every manner of entreaty: the half-jovial appeals of gamblers pleading for more time, the protests of storekeepers beseeching him for extensions on their protection payments, the sobbing and begging of those well aware that, by his hand, they were doomed. But never had a beautiful young woman come into his office and blithely suggested that they horse-trade for her life.

  The don lighted a black twisted cigar with a gold-headed match. “There is the small matter of interest, Miss Jameson,” he said. “I have been told that my men have been after you for more than a decade. You can imagine how humiliating it is for a man in my position to have his people outwitted and outrun by a mere girl. And then there are the two young men who lost their lives on that Christmas years ago. True, they probably would have been killed anyway. The younger one had informed on us to the Pinkertons, and the older one was so stupid he could look in a mirror and shoot himself. But even forgiving the deaths of such cretini, the amount you owe us has grown much larger than the original principal. If I were a bank, you would not use me so.”

  Lorinda smiled sweetly. “I concede all these points, Signore. But I am limited in the amount I may offer you. I have come before you in good faith and without lieutenants to protect me. Still, there is more than profit in this for you. With the payment of this debt, it will become known that you and you alone have done what both an army of lawmen and the Pinks were unable to do: bring Etta Place to heel. And should anyone inquire, I will tell them how ten years' interest has brought me to financial ruin while speaking not only of your firmness but your mercy.”

  “And if I should not prove merciful?”

  Lorinda's reply was businesslike. Kid Curry had taught her the price as well as the value of terror.

  “Then I shall soon be dead by your hand. Your death, of course, will soon follow mine, as no amount of pleading on my part will stay the highwaymen and outlaws with whom I once associated. I believe it is what the Sicilians call a vendetta. And please, make no mistake, Don Vittorio. Their determination is as granite as your own. You may surround yourself with the Army of the Potomac, but they will trap you as they do the mountain lions in the wild. Like your own code, theirs does not change. So the final result will be waste on both sides. The death of a young woman yet to bear children; the killing of a still-vital man whose five grandchildren will mourn him.”

  Don Vittorio's face betrayed nothing, but he could feel the truth of her words in his stomach. He had learned over the years to trust that organ more than the brain or, God forbid, the heart. He weighed his response for a moment. A colossal show of anger might perhaps break the resolve of this young woman, but his gut told him no. Perhaps a reasoned negotiation would bring about better terms, but this would be far more mortifying to him than merely granting or denying her request. And he believed her when she vowed that her friends would see him dead. She seemed like an honest girl, and to him the definition of honesty was the keeping of promises.

  “The money you have brought me will be sufficient,” Don Vittorio said. “I won't live or die by the rest, and there are enough deeds keeping me out of heaven. After all, you were not the one who incurred the debt. I ask only that you tell no one of my generosity. Mercy is like a lollipop. If I give it to one child, soon all the children will want one.”

  Don Vittorio rose to indicate that the interview was over. He strode from behind his desk and bowed, his lips an inch from Lorinda's hand. She thanked him and made for the door. Then she turned back toward the gilded desk.

  “Don Vittorio,” she said, “I wonder if you know of the wonderful work that the young Mrs. Roosevelt and her committee are doing at the Rivington Street Settlement House.”

  “Settlement house?”

  “Yes. The work there is so very important. Many of the young women and children they help are, like yourself, of Sicilian origin. Others are Slavs or Poles or Hebrews. They teach these needy immigrants to dance and to speak English, take them on trips to the country, and tell them about our Constitution. They steep them in all that it means to be an American. Oh, if you could only see the wonderful things that go on there, Signore!”

  The don stared at Etta, perplexed. “And what has this to do with me?”

  She smiled again. “I only wonder if you might deem it possible to make some contribution to this special place
. Even a small amount of money would be of great aid to these unfortunates. If only you could extend your mercy past me toward those so in need of it, I imagine that the heaven you now feel closed to you might open its door a few inches.”

  Five minutes later, Lorinda stood in the narrow lane below the rooms of Don Vittorio Cascio Ferro. From his office window she could still hear his peals of laughter descending to the street. So helpless with mirth had he been, she feared he would be unable to write a check. As it turned out, there had been no need.

  Trembling slightly, Etta held tight to the valise that still contained the very money that had bought her life, the bag he had handed back to her as his laughter began. As she set the case's lock, her glove brushed against the side pocket containing the large-bore derringer she had brought in the event Don Vittorio's answer had been no.

  Lorinda tucked the bag up under her arm and started for Rivington Street. Less than twenty feet along, she ducked into an alley and vomited, releasing all the congested fear of that day's meeting and somehow, she thought, all fear to come.

  s befits a demon, it had been hell to coax Bellerophon into the livestock car.

  Lorinda had made it clear that she would pay for as many men as were necessary to complete the task; in the event, the job required eight brave and hardy souls. Even at sixteen years old, the stallion remained intent on defending a territory that seemed to encompass all the land for a mile around. And he would still kill to be king.

  She had often wondered how she could miss such a devil, but the years in South America had only increased her longing to admire him, to feel the danger radiating up through his strong back, to hear his defiant whistle. But then, Lorinda had always been a magnet for the world's demons: demons truly evil, like Kid Curry, and gallant devils like Father and Ben and Butch.

  And Etta.

  But Etta had died along with Harry Longbaugh, disappeared in a hail of Bolivian bullets as surely as if she had been there. With Etta had gone her wildness, replaced now by the civilized calculation needed to separate the rich from their gold for purposes higher than greed or adventure.

  Bellerophon was now the single reminder of that outlaw world, an aged but still untamed spirit, rearing and kicking in the morning sun.

  In Argentina, she had hoped the stallion would be well cared for and not neglected or destroyed for his fury. After she had stolen the animal from the Radnor police, she and the horse had made their way to upstate New York and the little farm of Kicking Bird, a Mohawk she had met while traveling with Buffalo Bill. Unlike most of his fellow performers, Bird was never inclined toward drink or dice and was known about the fairgrounds as one who kept both his money and his thoughts close to his vest. The exception to this reserve had been Etta Place; he would spend hours describing to her the small and beautiful farm he was about to buy near Oneonta, New York, the village of his birth.

  When Lorinda had returned for him she found Bellerophon still safe in Kicking Bird's keeping. The old brave was only too happy to release the black devil to his mistress. He told her that during his eight years on the farm the stallion had tried to kill one of his two geldings and had kicked a hired man senseless. His wife, an Irishwoman, had many times asked Bird to shoot the animal. In light of his refusal, she had taken to praying the rosary twice a day.

  Now, inside the train, the horse's paddock was a sea of signs that warned the daring or the stupid that any attempt to feed or admire the occupant could end with a bite to the eye or a kick to the head. BEWARE, the placards declared, DANGEROUS HORSE! APPROACH AT RISK OF

  LIFE AND LIMB, and stop! dangerous horse! to be fed and watered by owner only. The protection of the illiterate was considered as well, via a series of dramatic skulls underscored with crossed bones, drawn white on a field of black.

  As she watched the cities and fledgling suburbs of the East melt into the empty tableaux of the West, Lorinda realized that this was the first long trip she ever taken under her given name. She had been Etta Place for twelve years, ever since an old lawyer with a sense of humor had bestowed the name upon her. Lorinda had become so accustomed to her alias that for weeks after her birth name was restored she hesitated to respond to it. For all the trouble Etta had caused her, it was not easy to give up the name under which she had lived the most significant days of her life.

  After all, as Lorinda Reese Jameson she had felt only ambivalence and loyalty to her father and in return received only his reticence and self-pity. Etta Place had been the name under which she had been well and truly loved. It had been Etta, not Lorinda, who had felt the sweet kiss of Harry Longbaugh, Etta who had taken on the banks and filthy jails and steam locomotives and triumphed.

  In the end, it was Eleanor who restored her to the name with which she had been christened. Just as she had in the Pinkerton jail, Nell had exercised the Roosevelt power that allowed Lorinda to bury Etta forever. Lorinda watched the process with amazement, getting a rare look at how well the rich cover their tracks, even from the most astute of bloodhounds.

  Using the advice of longtime family advisors, Eleanor quickly turned Etta into a work of fiction, a non-person with no papers, no loved ones, and no date of birth; a living alias whispered of in outlaw camps and rumored to have robbed trains; a creature of dime novels and penny dreadfuls. Even her Pinkerton file had been mislaid, along with all its copies.

  The questions had been carefully planted at the polo matches and charity balls, a whispering campaign in reverse. Truly, what could such a low caricature have in common with Miss Lorinda Reese Jameson of Philadelphia, she of the Agnes Irwin School and cotillions at the Union League? Only a woman of the finest sort could be considered worthy of pursuit by the wealthy and eligible Mr. Ralph Worthington Carr. And only such a one could afford to repeatedly refuse his offers of marriage.

  Of course there had been that unpleasantness with her father, but did he really kill himself or was it merely an accident? That business in the scandal sheets? The usual sensationalism. Now, respectable newspapers up and down the eastern seaboard began to print “the truth.” All the right people knew the facts: that after her father's passing, kindly cousins in Colorado had taken her in. There were letters to her from both of them, and photographs of the three of them together. Upon their sad and sudden deaths she had returned east, a unique representative of two worlds, able to display the genteel charm that was the hallmark of Chestnut Hill and the rough-and-ready independence of the western horsewoman.

  In her small and elegant Village apartment, the best of society mingled with the finest artists, writers, and thinkers. For the rich, the words Let us to Lorinda's came to be synonymous with an evening of the exciting and unexpected. For the creative, that same phrase could mean, at the most, lucrative patronage; at the least, a fine and much-needed buffet. And wasn't it common knowledge that Miss Jameson had used these occasions not to further herself socially but to benefit the poorest of a city awash with both robber-baron money and privation's sweat and blood?

  When the train reached Fort Morgan, Lorinda carefully instructed the railway workers to keep clear of the sliding door of the livestock car. She saddled Bellerophon inside the paddock and rode him out and down the ramp. The eight men scattered as he pawed the earth and reared, snorting and whistling. Lorinda shouted to the nearest man and asked him the name and address of the most convenient livery. He nervously replied, and she shouted for her bags to be sent there. Bellerophon made a full circle of the railyard and then bolted headlong for the town, two thousand miles of unused energy boiling in his veins.

  When she arrived at the stable, Lorinda arranged to rent a horse and bridle from the astonished proprietor, first making sure that the animal was a mare and therefore less likely to become a sparring partner for her old friend. As they passed by the few buildings that comprised the town, Lorinda fought to restrain Bellerophon from breaking into another dash at the sight of the wide plain and the scent of earth and brush. When the mountains came into focus, he seemed to calm, but sti
ll she held tight to his traces and a clump of his mane. It would not do at this juncture for him to frighten the mare or, worse, run her off, leaving Lorinda without transportation that knew its way home.

  Once the trio had cleared all signs of man's creation, Lorinda dismounted. With a leather strap, she tied Bellerophon to a sickly birch and left the mare to graze on the few blades of grass sturdy enough to grow among the rocks. Speaking to the black gently, she removed the silver bridle from his head and uncinched the English saddle from his back. Then she paused, knowing that this would be the final time she would ride an animal this magnificent beneath a sky this cloudless; this blue and big.

  Lorinda released the leather strap and gave the stallion a light tap on the flank. Again he reared. For the shortest time their eyes met; and though his gaze seemed filled with murder, she saw no death in them today. With a final full cry his forelegs hit the ground, the contact of his hooves sharp as pistol shots. He pawed the earth once, twice, and then made for the horizon, fading through the dust like a change of scene at a nickelodeon.

  Lorinda looked after Bellerophon until he vanished and then turned to saddle the mare. Beneath her, the horse felt narrow and light. In his flight, Bellerophon had not looked back. She resolved to do no less.