“He set his own trap. When he knew I would not again yield on the matter of the fares, he began his attempt to force us out.”
Tilden turned his back and walked a few steps away from Gould, his hands pressed over his ears whether to keep out further evil or to comprehend the enormity of what he was hearing. “And you are still not finished with him.” Tilden closed his eyes. “He is a bad example to others, you said. I am not to help him. He is to be ground down further.”
“On the contrary,” Gould said softly, ”I wish to raise him up. But it must be me who does it. He must come to me.”
It was too much.
“To be humiliated.”
“To apologize.”
“Apologize.”
”I will not make him grovel, Mr. Beckwith, if that is what you fear. The act of coming to me will be sufficient. I will offer him my hand and I will raise him up.”
“He won't come. I pray that he won't. I will give all that I have to prevent it”
“Then you will lose all that you have. All that you value. Your house in Greenwich is made of glass no less than this one.”
Tilden's mind, as he recalled it later, seemed to shut down when this was said. He'd been pacing Gould's greenhouse like an animal, he thought, but he felt as if he were floating. He remembered his hand coming down upon a large metal watering can and he remembered the can spinning once around him before sailing through the air and smashing a four-foot hole in the glass greenhouse wall. The shock of it caused other panes to crack and fall. The place seemed to be raining glass. He remembered seeing Jay Gould choking and coughing at the end of an arm that held him by his shirtfront, and he thought that it was only Margaret's hand upon his other arm that kept him from smashing a fist into that red and frothing face. Then he remembered that his mind had cleared at the sound of Charley Murtree's voice saying, “Ah, now you done it,” and seeing Murtree and the other man, Calicoon, the silent one, advancing toward him between rows of flats, each man with a rifle in his hand, and he let Jay Gould fall to one side and then raised both hands to show that they were empty before he made them into fists and smiled an invitation to Charley Murtree who smiled back nodding and laid his rifle down and so did Calicoon.
If rounds had been counted, Tilden won the first, he thought. Both men went down, one to his knee and the other into a trough of seedlings. Tilden was sorry about the flowers. And more glass fell. So much glass. The second round might have been a draw. There must have been a third, but Tilden could not remember it.
Laura Hemmings took a long sip from her cup, peering over its rim at the faces of the women in the room. Everyone was there. The entire membership. It was the first chapter meeting she could recall at which there were no absentees. Even Belle Walker, who had not attended in weeks, and who'd seemed to want nothing more of her membership than her name upon the roster, had dared not miss this meeting. Belle looked ill. Old Spanky. Take care it's not you who goes bottoms up this time.
Of the other faces Laura saw, some seemed to be enjoying this. Some were titillated by the very idea that they might once have had bodies and skills for which men would pay hard cash. Others were fascinated by Anthony Comstock's tales of vice avenged. Many thought the whole affair tedious, yet they had taken the trouble to primp very prettily, thank you, for their moment in front of Comstock's camera. A few, only two or three, were enthusiastic. And, oh, so righteous. They testified loudly of their feelings toward women who had betrayed their sex and brought shame to the noble temple that is the female body. Laura made a mental note to cross them off her list. After she'd cut them dead, of course. She also made a mental note to see more of Peggy Gannon, on whom fell the duty of introducing today's guest speaker and who, when asked by him why she did not join in the restrained applause that followed his message, replied, “Because you are an ass, sir.” Peggy was the first to be photographed.
Poor Margaret. Now third in line, the regular members being taken alphabetically. Smile, Margaret. Look at ease. And for heaven's sake, put down that cup and saucer before it starts shaking like a roundsman's rattle.
Laura crossed quickly, her own cup in hand, to the place where Margaret stood trembling, babbling something about Margaret's lovely dress while being careless of the hem of her own. “Oh!” the two women cried at once. Laura's cup skidded from its saucer well and dashed its contents over the fine ecru linen of Margaret's skirts.
“Oh, I've ruined it, dear Charlotte.” Laura seemed close to tears. “Oh, come, let us soak it quickly. You there.” She stepped past the first two women and waggled a finger at the fat man who was sorting through a valise full of Kodak cameras. “You there. Comstock. Make your photograph of this girl at once or not at all. I will not be bound to replace her dress because you took overlong in your foolish business.” She sat Margaret down in the chair that Comstock had placed facing a sunlit window, first turning it slightly so that the light would be less favorable.
The vice crusader made a dithering effort to restore the orderly system he'd intended, but a half dozen more women now surged forward, some attempting to blot the stain and others calling advice for its removal. It was a bad job, he realized, best to give it up. Comstock took two exposures of Margaret. The first was of her face looking down upon the stain and half hidden by the brim of her hat. With all that, Laura also brushed the big man's elbow as he pressed the shutter release. For the second, he demanded that Margaret look up. She did, but the camera captured a face writhing in discomfort from the hot staining liquid, a face that imitated the expression pantomimed by Laura from her position behind the photographer. Laura then took the next place in line, alphabet or no, and gazed sternly into the lens with an expression never seen on Little Annie. She next took Margaret quickly to a Post Road cab and had the linen dress soaking in milk and soda ten minutes later. Laura poured a sherry down Margaret's throat even before the stays were loosened and another down her own. By their second glass she had Margaret smiling at her imitations of Anthony Comstock and of the several women who joined him in ringing testimony.
Back at the meeting room, meanwhile, left behind in a terror that was at least the equal of Margaret's and with far more cause, was Mrs. Belle Walker. Belle didn't even try to blink. She stared transfixed, not at the camera lens but at Anthony Comstock himself. He saw the fear and a curious pleading in her eyes. The picture taken, he watched her as her knees went soft, and she sought the support of a wall as she made her way back to the tea service. As soon as she could decently leave, Belle rushed to the Oyster Pier, where she told her husband of her fear that the life from which he'd rescued her might today have been discovered. Frank Walker, who was normally not allowed within a yard of her unless he first bathed in lye soap and hot water, took her in his arms without protest from Belle. He knew of her background, of course, having been a most enthusiastic patron during his oat-sowing visits to New York. Although the Spanky of later years was a bit more sharp tongued than he would have liked, and a good deal more righteous, Frank had no great cause to regret making her his wife. The whippings and paddlings she could be induced to give him at least once a week, and the soaring sexual arousal that came out of them, to say nothing of two children, seemed well worth the price.
Frank Walker told his wife not to worry her head about all this and proceeded to make the first of two cardinal errors. He found Comstock at the post office, where the crusader was preparing to mail his cameras back to the Kodak company for developing and refilling. It was his honor, he said, to be the husband of Mrs. Belle Walker, a woman whose character has been an adornment to Greenwich since the day of her arrival. Comstock asked if she could possibly have adorned New York in a different manner before attaining the happy state of being his wife. Whatever her past, Frank answered, admitting nothing, you understand, Belle Walker had more than proved herself to be a foe of all that is iniquitous. It was she, he announced proudly, who wrote the letter advising Comstock of the lurid past of the unfortunate Carrie Todd. Comstock lifted his no
se. He pointed out to Frank Walker that informers, however salubrious their result, do not stand high before the Almighty and went on to cite several examples, notably Judas Iscariot and the accusers of Mary Magdalene.
Then Frank Walker made his second error. He attempted to bribe Anthony Comstock. Comstock replied that if anyone should pay it should be he, and if Frank would wait while the postmaster made change, the Society for the Suppression of Vice would gladly pay thirty silver dimes for the information Belle Walker provided and then call their accounts even before God and man. That insult, and the realization that he'd made a catastrophic mistake, moved Frank Walker to violence. He threw a looping right hand at Comstock's jaw but managed only to fracture his hand against the top of Comstock’ s ducking head.
Belle Walker was exposed in the next week's issue of the Graphic. The story cited highlights of her arrest record together with a woodcut of a photograph from the files of the New York City Police. It also gave the date of her birth, which preceded by eight years the one she'd claimed to those who knew her. Belle, by that time, was in seclusion, having spent one night in the Stamford town jail awaiting the bondsman. She had been charged, not with any unexpiated vice offense, but by Comstock himself with sending lewd, lascivious, and obscene matter through the mails. The evidence Comstock offered was the very letter in which Belle used illegally vivid detail to describe the past activities of Carrie Todd.
By the time that issue appeared, Margaret was nearing the end of her tether. The continuing presence of Anthony Comstock, the leering stares of other boorish townsmen who took to wondering which pretty bird might next be flushed, the thought of some oily New York policeman even now putting a glass to her likeness, all paled before the greatest worry of all. Tilden had disappeared. Nine days had passed since he'd said he had an errand to run. Nine days since the day of the tea-stained dress. Nine days since Tilden told her he'd been a fool and a blockhead, though he would not say how, promising only that he'd tell her when the moment was right and wine poured and they sat before a fire with their son on Tilden’ s lap.
“If you were to ask me”—Laura Hemmings took her hand—“I'd say he intends to marry you.”
“No.” Her eyes filled, with tears as she shook her head. “He will not do that. He never speaks of it, but Tilden could never forget where he found me. What would he say to his family, his friends?”
“Ask me again,” Laura insisted, “and I'd say it is on that score he knows he has been a blockhead. Two of his
closest friends already know and they, both John and Nat, would be the first to give their blessing.”
Margaret would not be consoled. She would not be encouraged with a hope that could be dashed so soon and cruelly. What if her worst fears about Tilden lying broken and delirious in a hospital somewhere, even dead in a roadside ditch or lying unknown and unclaimed in some mortician's ice house, what if these were not the worst fears at all? What if the state she'd been in these past weeks had driven him to seek a respite of laughter and gaity? What if he had noticed the tiny lines that were beginning at her mouth and eyes, or was repulsed by the shiny ribbons that the birthing of Jonathan left on her belly? What if he had found another woman, just as he found one more amiable than Ella, and was even now lying with her?
I know that look.” Laura Hemmings frowned. ”I should slap your face for it.”
”I don't know what you—”
“Every woman thinks in terms of rivals the minute a man's behavior becomes in any way odd. Tilden would never betray you.”
Margaret wanted to believe Laura.
“Is there any word from John Flood?”
“He has his friends looking for Tilden. Even Teddy Roosevelt, he says, is coming down from Albany to join the search. John tells me to buck up, but I know that he too fears the worst.”
“All will be well, my friend. I promise.”
”I cannot bear this, Laura.”
“It will pass.”
“And if it does, then what?” Margaret slipped her hand out of Laura's and turned away. “Shall we live as before? The people in this town are not blind or stupid, Laura. They have only to look at Jonathan to know that he is Tilden's son. And that I am his mistress. And am therefore a liar. And possibly one of Comstock's whores. Even now, everywhere I go, men stare at me, wondering.”
“They stare at me as well,” Laura answered. ”I flatter myself that it is because I'm pretty, though not nearly so pretty as you.”
“They don't look at you the same way,” Margaret said stubbornly.
Laura stuck a finger in her ear as if to clear it. ”I beg your pardon?”
‘They admire you. They don't wonder about you.”
Laura Hemmings considered pointing out to Margaret that she'd had more men in more different ways than Margaret had logs in her winter woodpile, and that was counting bark chips. If anyone should be sensitive to stares, look-agains, and don't-I-know-you questions, it was she and not some doe-eyed apprentice who to this day would scarcely know a dildo if she tripped over it. But she chose not to say it. Margaret's fears, she realized, had far more shadow than substance, and a reasoned approach to them would accomplish nothing at all. What Margaret needed was Tilden's gold band upon her finger and his arms around her body, preferably in a place a thousand miles from New York. That is if there is indeed a Tilden anymore. No one simply falls into a hole for nine days. Certainly not a Tilden Beckwith. A thousand miles. My God, that's it. Evanston. Margaret, and little Jonathan with her. Evanston. But how to manage it?
“Margaret.’,’ Laura Hemmings tugged at her. “You need a holiday and I need a favor. I am going to insist that you do it for me.”
Seventeen
H arry Sturdevant chopped at the last shovelful of hard-packed snow that had threatened to block Corbin's driveway entrance and tossed it into a dormant azalea bush. He rested for a minute, his arms folded across the shovel handle, deciding whether to attack the driveway itself as long as he was there. When he was a boy he'd have gotten as much as fifty cents for the whole job. But he doubted whether he'd get anything from Jonathan except a lecture about heart attacks. That did it. Let the ingrate clear his own blasted driveway.
As he turned back toward the house, his eye caught a movement fifty feet up Maple Avenue and on the other side. Sturdevant peered through the slanting gray veil. He saw a man there. Not a young one, judging from his posture. Not the one he'd seen in the library, either. This one was dressed in dark clothing, to the extent that Sturdevant could see fabric under the film of clinging snow. He could easily have passed for a shadow, or a small juniper, if he hadn't shifted his position. He wore a homburg, which looked rather silly on him because a snow cone had formed on its crown. Against one leg he held what Sturdevant assumed to be a uselessly furled umbrella. Sturdevant wondered how long he'd been standing there. It surprised him that he felt no particular alarm. On the contrary, he had a sense that it was the man in black who seemed scared half to death. Sturdevant lifted his chin and gave a questioning shrug. The man stiffened, then snatched up the thing he was holding and held it across his chest. Now Sturdevant was alarmed. Unless his eyes had tricked him, he'd caught a glimpse of the outline of a rifle stock.
There didn't seem to be much to do but wait. If the man was content to stand there with the snow in his face and a rifle in his hands, Sturdevant decided he'd rather hope for a car to come along than to make a sudden dash for cover. That spry he was not. But the man suddenly lurched forward as if he'd read his mind. He moved almost drunkenly. A part of Sturdevant knew who the man was as soon as he saw him move. By the time half the distance between them had been covered, Sturdevant was sure.
“Hello, Tillie,” he greeted the man who was now peering stupidly into his face. “You want to be careful with that thing.”
There were times when Raymond Lesko was sure he was dead, and others when he thought he was probably home asleep. The sickening pain in his head and the woolly dryness of his mouth were not altogether unf
amiliar to him. Too much garlic in the clam sauce and too many beers topped off with a bottle of dago red had done it in the past. Too drunk to wake up and too thirsty to fall asleep, so you lie there in the dark with crazy thoughts going through your head. It's the time when everyone finds out what it's like to be insane.
The part where he thought he was dead came when he saw this batty old lady put a big long spike against his temple and then pound it with a mallet until the spike went through and nailed him to the rug. That's what it felt like, too. His body could still move—he could feel it being jerked and tugged—but not his head. Hands were going through his coat pockets and patting down his belt and his legs all the way to his ankles. Then someone kicked him. Lesko wasn't sure who because there were so many people floating around all of a sudden.
Is he dead? He heard a woman's voice.
I don't think so. Not yet, anyway.
Asshole. That's the guy Burke. Shows how much you know. The old dame had a good question because one of faces floating around looked like Corbin until·Leskò noticed he was dressed like the guy in the hotel picture. He was drifting in real close and looking worried, then he looks up at the old lady and he shows his teeth—he got good teeth too—then he looks back down and reaches for Lesko's head like he's trying to fix it. But right there behind him is Lesko's ex-partner, Dave Katz, speaking of holes in the head, and he was saying to the Tilden guy how he shouldn't worry because Polacks got heads like truck tires and they're just as empty inside. Yeah. Right. But that's better than being full of dog shit like yours is, you stupid Hebe. You could have talked to me. You should have trusted your partner. I would have helped you fix it then instead of later. I did fix it, you know. Did you know that? Two less fucking Bolivians. You run into them there where you are, give 'em another kick in the balls for good measure.
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