“In the way! Abe, Masako Oakley is my friend. She’s in a perilous emotional and psychological state, and you go in there without me, blustering—”
“Blustering!” He scowled, and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled once again. “It’s not like I gave her the third degree.”
She regarded him intently. “You didn’t tell her the studio paintings were gone, did you?”
“Of course not. She didn’t even ask about them.”
Whew! “Would she talk to you at all?”
“Not a word.” Abe dropped his gaze to the red-and-white check tablecloth. “She was like a wilted flower.”
“See, you should have taken me. I might could’ve perked her up.”
Abe snorted with laughter at her Southern wording. Then, “Louise Hunter, Dixie Belle.”
Stung, she shot back, “I told you I’m little tipsy—don’t you dare mock me!”
“Louise!” Abe, straight-faced now, his brown eyes soft, “I wasn’t…oh, well…maybe I was. But I’m so sorry. The way you talk sometimes—it’s just so damned…cute.”
“Cute! Is that what you think of me? I’m cute? My efforts to help Masako are cute?” Louise raised her hand to summon the waiter. “My coat please, Roberto. I’m leaving. And please call me a cab.”
Abe rose and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Nix the cab, Roberto. I’ll take the lady home.”
The lady glared across the table at him. “No, Roberto,” she said. Her tone left no room for argument. “Call me that taxi. I’ll take myself home.”
Chapter Seventy-three
Louise’s footsteps echoed off the concrete surface of the shadowy Prospect Park subway platform. She should have taken that cab—she really should have. But Abe had slid in after her, and, seething with anger, she’d jumped out the other side, hurrying down the sidewalk toward the subway station she glimpsed in the distance. Her only goal was to put as much distance between herself and Abe Pritzker as possible.
Now, having spent far too long on the screeching, jolting El train, including an interminable wait to transfer from the Myrtle to the Brighton Beach line, her rage was spent. Already second-guessing her rash words, Louise paused at the foot of the double flight of stairs that led up to Flatbush Avenue. The lights had burned out. Or been broken more likely. Their rusty sheaths tilted at a sharp angle, and telltale glass slivers gathered in the corners of each step. Kids. Louise shook her head at the dark tunnel.
She looked right, then left. A man with a hatchet profile and a black overcoat seemed to study a faded poster hawking Folger’s coffee. She’d noticed him earlier, sitting on the opposite end of the nearly empty car. He’d given her the creeps. Everytime she looked away, the back of her neck prickled as if he was staring daggers, but when she glanced back, his eyes were glued to a folded newspaper. At her stop, he’d jumped off behind her and strolled straight over to the poster. Right—coffee—never seen that before.
A scattering of other people had also exited the train. Like all New Yorkers, they were in a hurry, already up that steep flight of stairs and away. Or were they? Hesitating, Louise felt the prickling sensation of being watched deepen and spread until icy scalpels of dread pricked at each vertebra. She shivered uncontrollably.
Get a grip, Nurse Hunter, she told herself sternly. Even if the man in black was a G-man, what was he going to do? He could watch all he wanted. “No skin off my nose,” as Cabby would say. Louise took a couple of steps forward, sketching a brave, Cabbyesque swagger.
The man wasn’t moving, wasn’t paying her the least attention. But still Louise shivered. Then she thought: Could somebody else be watching me? Someone who wants me to back away from helping Masako Oakley? Someone who doesn’t mind clonking art dealers, and, presumably, nurses, on the head? One deliberate foot in front of the other, Louise started up the stairs. Her gloved hand slid along the filthy banister, only bouncing once on a wad of dried chewing gum. Inhale, step. Exhale, step. Repeat. Just keep heading for that rectangle of light at the top.
Good. The landing. Three steps across, maybe four.
She took a bracing breath. The landing’s rubber mat softened her footsteps, but still Louise heard hollow clumps echo off the close walls. Someone else was on the staircase. The icy scalpels dissected along the nerves of her arms and legs, paralyzing her.
Suddenly, a tall, bareheaded man in a gray trench coat appeared in the light at the top of the stairs. He barreled down toward her as if his train had already stopped at the platform and he thought he just might catch it. As he passed, Louise caught a glimpse of his pale face, oddly familiar.
He ran on, and the moment of terror was broken. But who else was on the stairs? Looking down Louise saw an anonymous trousered, coated, hatted figure turn and disappear toward the platform. Not the man in the trench coat. Or the man in black. It had been someone thinner, lighter, in a camel-hair coat. Oh, well—gone now!
Louise bounded up the second set of stairs, took a deep breath as the Flatbush Avenue traffic rumbled by. For no logical reason, she felt as if the man in the trench coat had rescued her from a terrible fate.
Chapter Seventy-four
Cabby’s hands were deep in hot, greasy dishwater, and her brain was in a similar stew. At the dinner table, she’d quizzed the few women present about the Kentucky town that Marion had taunted Louise with—the one where the Army enlisted underage boys. They remembered the Post article, but not the crucial name of the particular Hickville she’d been reading about. Cabby had been sure that Marion would remember, but Marion had gone out to dinner with one of her gentleman friends—probably to avoid another of Helda’s distracted meals. Jane and Irene, the quiet older women who shared the spacious front room, had also been absent from the dinner table. Even Alicia, present, but studying from a propped-up law book, had failed her. And nobody but Cabby herself seemed to have taken note of Howie’s interest in the recruiting discussion.
That’s when Cabby had really started kicking herself. Why hadn’t she gone straight downtown from Howie’s school? The Post had a morgue, and she had press credentials; she could have looked up the name of the town and sent word to McKenna right away. She could always run over to the Post building on Vesey Street in the morning, but terrible things might be happening to that silly, impulsive kid right this very minute. With her uninjured hand, she slapped the dishrag into a crusty pot, spattering the front of her dress in the process.
Before dinner, Louise had amazed her by not recalling the discussion at all. While her roommate changed into a nice dark-blue silk dress, Cabby pumped her for information. “You remember, don’t you? Marion was teasing you about Kentucky’s child brides.”
Louise had merely looked blank and shaken her head.
Cabby was beginning to worry about her roommate. Louise was so tied up with her patient and his Japanese wife she didn’t seem to be living in the same universe with the rest of the boarders. She’d been getting in late and missing meals; her eyes showed dark circles and her cheeks were hollow. Then, when Louise took up an atomizer and sprayed perfume behind each ear, it finally dawned on Cabby: she must have a date.
“Where are you going?” she burst out.
“I’m having dinner with someone,” was Louise’s response, as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her flimsy southern coat.
Cabby was ablaze with curiosity. A new boyfriend? “With who—er, whom?”
But a car horn sounded dimly from the front of the house, and Louise was out the bedroom door without responding. Cabby clattered down the stairs behind her, but by the time she got to the parlor window all she could see was receding tail lights.
Now, at the sink, Cabby turned on the faucet to replenish the hot water; the warmth actually made her sprained wrist feel better. Grabbing a pot scraper she attacked the dirty pan. A pale, silent Helda had managed to cook a suppe
r of chicken and dumplings that hadn’t turned out too bad. Mousie had helped her, so Cabby felt it was only right to volunteer for cleanup detail. She’d ordered Helda to take a rest in her room, meaning, “Go cry your eyes out, but not in the same room with me.”
By the time Marion waltzed into the kitchen in her full-length leopard-skin coat, Cabby had vanquished the heavy aluminum pot and Mousie had come in to help dry. “Darlings, I’ve just seen the most delightful film with Rosalind Russell,” the actress gushed, twirling so that her coat spun out around her silk-clad legs. “She was absolutely divine. And, Don Ameche—”
“Oh, Marion, thank god you’re home!” Dropping her dishtowel, Cabby grabbed the actress by her leather-gloved hand and pulled her toward the kitchen table. “I have to talk to you.”
“Watch it, Cabby. These are kid gloves!” She pulled her hand free and began removing them.
“Forget the damn gloves. I’ve been trying to track down Howie. You know he’s missing, right? I think he hopped a train somewhere, and I’ll bet you know exactly where he’s headed.”
Marion’s perfect brow furrowed. “Why would I know anything about that little squirt?”
Cabby realized she wasn’t making much sense. “Okay, wait a minute. Let me explain. Remember that copy of the Post you brought to the table the other morning…” She pushed away the half-empty plate of sugar cookies that had constituted dessert.
As Cabby reminded Marion about the article, Mousie sat down with them, quietly wiping her damp hands on a dishtowel. She wore a cotton print dress with a round white collar edged with home-made tatting.
“And,” the reporter continued, “I need to know the name of that town with the lax recruiting practices. Howie might have seen it as his one last chance to join up and fight the Germans. I asked Louise, but she doesn’t even remember the conversation. She’s so caught up in the drama of her patient’s wife—”
“Drama?” Marion began to look interested. The whole time Cabby was talking, her housemate was toying with her gloves, laying them on the table, palm to palm, smoothing them out, folding them in half. Now she pulled a gold filigreed compact from her bag and checked her lipstick, as if the word “drama” had reminded her to look the part of an actress. Clicking the compact shut, she said, “It was some hillbilly town—they’re all the same. I just wanted to get a rise out of Miss Scarlett, that’s all.” Turning to Mousie, she asked, “What about you, Ethel? You must have been there. You never miss breakfast.”
Mousie’s plain face was a study in concentration. She looked as if she were searching complex mental files for a scrap of information that had fallen between the cracks. “No. I do remember a conversation, but I was…” She trailed off.
Cabby thought she’d never known anyone quite so wet.
Jane Willis, still in the tailored suit she’d worn for her evening out, came through the butler’s pantry with a bone china cup and saucer in her hand. “Tea time,” she announced, taking the green enamel kettle from the stove to the sink and turning on the water. “Anybody else?”
The three women at the table shook their heads. “Could that town have been Plainsville?” Marion volunteered.
Mousie frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“Pittsville?”
“That’s not quite right.” Cabby sighed and reached for a cookie. She took one bite, and it showered crumbs all over her sweater. “Stale,” she said, but she continued to nibble. “Helda hasn’t baked in days.”
“Pittsfield?”
“What are you trying to remember?” Jane asked, pulling out a chair.
“It’s hopeless,” Cabby said. “Some hick town in Kentucky we were talking about at breakfast the other morning, where recruiters—”
“Paintsville,” Jane said. “Paintsville, Kentucky. You should have asked me—Mother always said I was blessed with the memory of an elephant.”
Chapter Seventy-five
Howie Schroeder came to his senses all at once. Where was he? Face down on some hard, gravelly surface? Huh? Pitch black and cold. His head, two sizes too big.
As he pushed up and twisted into a sitting position, a wave of nausea washed over him. It was cold and darker than dark, and he had no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered, he’d flagged down a beat-up farm truck to ask if he was on the right road to Paintsville. Two men in faded overalls and broad-brimmed felt hats had offered him a lift to the next crossroads. They’d looked all right. They’d even said something about finding a sandwich for him, and, boy, was he hungry. But…
After that, it was all a blank.
He lifted a hand to his forehead. Oww! A trail of crusted blood led to a hard, swollen knot the size of a goose egg.
Shit, what a fool he’d been.
He’d done all right on the railroad—all the way to the Huntington rail yard—by never letting his guard down. Then he’d let exhaustion get the better of him, and look what he had to show for it. His jacket was missing. Rolling onto one hip, he made a frantic search of his back pants pocket. Of course, they’d taken his wallet, too.
Shaky, fighting dizziness, Howie struggled to his feet. If they’d left the pack with his blanket and extra clothing, it’d be around here somewhere. He gave his eyes a little more time to adjust. Peered around in the darkness. Still couldn’t see his pack.
The only illumination came from a dim quarter moon riding high in the sky. No lights twinkled through the trees on the steep hill behind him or across the two-lane road where the land seemed to slip away to a creek or small stream. If he strained his ears, he could barely make out the sound of rushing water. Up and down the unfamiliar road, no headlights broke the velvety darkness.
Howie had never been in such a desolate place in his entire life. Never even imagined what it would be like. No cars. No street lights. Not even yellow lamplight streaming through windows. There were no windows. Not a house to be seen. He’d never imagined night could be so empty.
His breath caught in his throat and he took a sudden gulping sob. He could picture Ma in the parlor at home, surrounded by the boarders. They’d all be warm and comfortable, full from a good dinner. Miss Ward would be there, and that new Miss Ethel Furnish, who’d been so nice to him. They’d probably be wondering where he was and when he’d be coming back. Howie ran a hand through his hair, caught a finger on the goose egg, and winced. That’s where he belonged—home in Brooklyn—not out here in the sticks.
It had been a mistake, he realized, a big mistake to come to Kentucky. He’d wanted to make things right—to prove that, even though Papa had become a Nazi, he, Howard Gerhard Schroeder, was a loyal American. But he was just a kid! A kid who’d bitten off more than he could chew. And, even if he did manage to fool some boondocks recruiter, how did he expect to fight Germans when he’d let two simple hillbillies take nearly everything he had? Even his map.
But they hadn’t taken every last thing. Howie hitched up his jeans. He still had his feet and shoe leather to cover them.
The moon gave enough light to distinguish the blackness of the asphalt from the blackness of the brushy wood. Howie took a step, then another. He was heading home. To New York.
If he could only figure out which way was north.
Chapter Seventy-six
Saturday, December 13, mid-morning
“Not that coat, for god’s sake.” The voice came from the arched doorway of the mirrored alcove in Macy’s Better Coats. “It makes me think of rubber galoshes.”
Louise spun around, and the maroon wool chesterfield with matching velvet collar flared modestly at the hem. Abe! How had he tracked her down? Louise pushed a blond strand off her cheek. She didn’t know whether to feel angry or flattered. After a glance at the carefully composed salesgirl in the crisp white blouse, she turned to the lawyer. Swallowing hard, she said, “Where did you pop up from?”
Abe
came closer, his hair and overcoat shoulders damp with the cold rain now blasting the city. “I called the boarding house. Your roommate—Cappy, is it?—told me you were shopping for a coat at Macy’s.” He leaned on the curved handle of his large black umbrella, while water spread in a widening puddle at its tip. In the overheated store, the outspoken lawyer exuded a refreshing coolness.
Louise smiled in spite of herself. “Cabby. Her name is Cabby. And she ought to learn to keep her mouth shut.” Louise hoped she sounded more severe than she felt. Actually, she wished she felt more severe than she did.
She’d lain awake until the early hours. Abe Pritzker’s high-handedness in visiting Mrs. Oakley on his own seemed like small potatoes compared with her fright at the subway stop.
Somewhere around two, she’d realized it was Abe’s heartfelt declaration that had bothered her much more than his solo Ellis Island stunt. His words had hit her like a bolt from the blue. Abe was so different from anyone she’d ever known. Could she possibly be falling in love with this intense, overwhelming man? Could she trust him? Could she trust herself? No! It was too soon after the debacle with Pres. And she was not the type of girl who could take on a man as a diversion. For her, it had to be the real thing. Could Abe be the real thing? She understood now that she’d stormed out of Mario’s last night for one reason and one reason only—pure and utter stupefied confusion.
Oh, what was wrong with her? She needed to sort her emotions out. And she would. Just as soon as Masako Oakley was no longer under suspicion of homicide. As soon as the hearing board had released her to be back with her husband.
“I think you’re being a little hard on your friend.” Abe grinned, bringing her back to the present. “I’m good with ladies clothes. I can help you choose.” He turned to the clerk. “Bring Miss Hunter that blue wool you have hanging on the rack over there, the one that’s fitted at the waist.”
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