A Deadly Affection

by Cuyler Overholt

  The ringleader came a step closer, slapping the pipe against his palm. “Maybe you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  “I never do,” Simon answered.

  I was too frightened to move, unable to look away from the beating that was about to ensue. Whatever Simon might have done to pay me back for my past transgressions, I didn’t want to see him hurt.

  The gang leader raised his pipe and lunged forward. I cringed, knowing it would be impossible for Simon to get out of range in time, waiting in horror for the pipe to connect with his skull. Instead of moving back, however, Simon stepped forward, straight into the man’s chest. Quick as a snake, his left arm shot up and wound around the man’s raised bicep, yanking it down. In the same instant, his right elbow slammed up into the man’s chin. The elbow struck a second time, then a third, until the pipe fell with a clatter onto the street. Pushing the man back, Simon crouched to retrieve it and came up swinging. The pipe smashed against the man’s ear, dropping him like a stone.

  Simon straightened, waving the pipe aloft. “Anybody else?” he asked.

  The other men shifted on their feet, a few of them backing up a step, none of them meeting his gaze.

  “All right, then,” said Simon, throwing the pipe to the ground. “I still need to move this pile. I’ll pay any man that helps a dollar, on the spot.”

  A murmur rose up from the group. For men like these, I knew, a dollar would cover half a week’s rent. They looked from Simon to their fallen leader, loyalty clashing with hunger in their dull eyes.

  “You’d better get him out of the street,” Simon said. He gestured toward me. “Why don’t you bring him up on the sidewalk, where the good doctor here can take a look at him?”

  Two of them crossed to the downed man and dragged him over by the armpits as I slid off the pile to tend to him.

  Simon turned back to the others. “So how about it, gentlemen? I’ll even throw in an extra dollar for your injured comrade there, just so there are no hard feelings.”

  This apparently squared the deal in the men’s minds. A bat dropped to the street and rolled over the paving stones, followed in short order by the rest of the makeshift weapons.

  Raising his thumb and finger to his mouth, Simon turned and whistled to a cart parked halfway down the block. A young boy was at the reins. He must have arrived during the altercation and been waiting until it was safe to approach. “All right, Frankie, bring her in,” Simon called.

  The boy steered the cart up alongside the pile.

  “You there,” Simon said, pointing to one of the bigger men. “Grab the other end of that rug. We’ll start at the top and work our way down.”

  The man peeled off his threadbare coat and stepped forward, rolling up his sleeves. Together, they lifted the rug off the pile and heaved it into the waiting cart. Two of the others stepped in behind them to hoist up the battered bureau.

  While the men worked on moving the pile, I bent over their unconscious leader and tried to assess the extent of his injuries. The skin was broken and bleeding profusely above his ear. I palpated the area around it, feeling a large lump amid a leathery maze of old scars, but no obvious sign of fracture. I was checking inside his ear for possible hemorrhage when he opened his eyes and blinked up at me. One pupil was noticeably larger than the other.

  “You have a concussion,” I told him, pressing my handkerchief against his wound to staunch the bleeding. “Do you understand?” He stared up at me without answering. I used some whiskey from the flask in his pocket to sterilize the wound, then wrapped the handkerchief snugly around it.

  When next I looked up, the men had finished transferring the furniture onto the cart and were loading the Longobardis on top, to the delight of the shrieking children. Simon handed a fistful of dollars to the wife. “This should get you through the end of the month.” He turned to her husband. “You remember who to ask for at the Building Department?”

  “Sì,” the man said, grasping his hand. “Grazie, Signore Shaw. Mille grazie!”

  Simon signaled to the boy at the reins, and the cart rolled down the street. Turning back to the men, he gave each a dollar and shook his hand. “There’s more where that came from for anyone who’s willing to put in a fair day’s work. Come to the Isle of Plenty tomorrow morning, on Eighty-Fourth Street, and I’ll get you started.”

  Mumbling and touching their caps, the men pocketed their money and retrieved their weapons. Two of them hoisted the wounded man to his feet, and they all straggled off down the sidewalk. I watched them go, both impressed and disturbed by what I’d seen. I’d known that Simon had a violent streak, and that it had erupted at least twice before: once over an insult to his mother, another time because of an act of cruelty toward a helpless animal. But I hadn’t known he was capable of this kind of cold, calculated punishment. He could have stopped before that last, brutal blow with the pipe, but he’d wanted to make his point with the rest of the men. The gang leader would be lucky if he escaped without permanent damage.

  This hardened version of Simon not only frightened, but also saddened me, for I suspected my betrayal was a root cause. When he and his mother were thrown out of our house without a reference, the die had been cast. On the hardscrabble streets of New York, the sensitive boy I’d known in my youth couldn’t have survived for very long. But there was no use feeling sorry for him now; I had to stop thinking about the person he used to be, and protect myself from the man he had become.

  He glanced over as he was pulling on his coat and caught me looking at him. “What?”

  I turned to face him squarely. “Are you working with the district attorney?”

  “What?” he repeated, snapping his sleeves straight.

  “Are you trying to help him build a case against Eliza?”

  “Have you gone daft?”

  “I know he’s agreed to let you run a casino the state shut down.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?”

  “A casino in Saratoga. Why would he do that unless he was getting something in return?”

  “In the first place,” he said with a frown, “it’s not a casino. It’s a stable. And in the second place, Jerome didn’t give it to me. I bought it fair and square from Richard Canfield.”

  I stared at him. “But the state shut it down and confiscated the assets.”

  “Illegally, as part of Canfield’s larger operations. I’d already made the first payment when they closed it down. Jerome’s trying to claim my contract is worthless, even though the stable’s got nothing to do with the casino.”

  I moistened my lips, sensing that I was on shaky ground. “How could you afford to buy Richard Canfield’s stable?” Canfield’s racing thoroughbreds were nearly as famous as his casinos. He should have been able to command top dollar for the Saratoga property.

  He planted his fists on his hips, scowling down at me. “We worked out a deal where I would pay him in installments, not that it’s any of your business. They’d been raiding him for months, driving him slowly into bankruptcy, and he needed the money.”

  I had the uncomfortable feeling we had played out this scenario before: me accusing, Simon having an answer for everything. Last time, it had ended with me wearing the dunce’s cap. But my confidence in Simon had been repeatedly shaken in the last few days, and I couldn’t stop the questions from coming. “Why you? Why not August Belmont or some other millionaire breeder?”

  “Because we’re friends.”

  “You and Richard Canfield,” I said skeptically.

  “That’s right,” he shot back. “After your father threw me out, my first job was hiding the bank and gambling equipment in his secret vault whenever Parkhurst’s antigambling fanatics came around. We got along all right, and he asked me to help him out with other jobs over the years, before I opened my first saloon. He knew I understood horses, and when he decided to start breeding thorough
breds in Saratoga he asked me to help him pick out the stock mares.”

  He had moved within spitting distance. I barely held my ground, seeing the indignation in his eyes but still not quite ready to believe. “And just how do you intend to get Jerome to honor your contract?”

  “Not by providing incriminating evidence against Mrs. Miner, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve got my own methods, and they don’t include lying and double-crossing.” He straightened, pulling away from me. “And now, if I’ve answered all your questions to your satisfaction, I’ll be on my way.” He stalked off down the street.

  I watched him go in dismay. If I’d been so wrong about the casino, maybe I’d been wrong about what happened the morning after my lock-in as well. Maybe Donald Kearny had misunderstood Simon’s reasons for coming to the shop. I started forlornly down the street in his wake, so upset at having wrongly accused him once again that it was several minutes before I realized I hadn’t even told him the news about Eliza.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I spent Friday in an agony of suspense and regret—suspense over the forthcoming lab results, regret at having pushed my one ally away at such a critical juncture. After roaming aimlessly about the house all morning, I had a light lunch with my mother, who was fortunately too busy fretting over what to wear to the skating party to notice my skittishness, then went up to my room to put a few finishing touches on Professor Bogard’s paper. By the time I came down again at five thirty, Mother had left for the park and Father to dine at his club. Since the house staff had been given the night off, this left me with only my thoughts for company.

  Although the police were still making extra patrols around our block, I found the silence unnerving. At seven thirty, I telephoned the station house to ask for news, only to be told that the detective had been called out on a case and probably wouldn’t be back for some time. I hung up the phone, listening to the ticking of the hall clock in the silence. I didn’t think I could bear to wait idly for several more hours until the detective’s return. I decided to walk across the park to the lake instead, where the skating party would be in full swing. It would provide an hour or two of distraction, and the exercise would help settle my nerves. Maurice was already there with the motorcar, waiting for my mother, so I could ask him for a lift home when I’d had enough.

  I pulled on my coat, hat, and gloves and set out, locking the door behind me. The night was clear and mild, warmer than it had been in weeks, and carried the scent of freshly exposed earth. Peering up and down the street to be sure no one was lurking in the shadows, I walked to the end of the block, down Fifth Avenue, and into the park, striking south and west along the most heavily traveled paths. I breathed in deep lungfuls of the moist air, glad to be out and about. It seemed to me there was a festive mood in the air, as if my fellow pedestrians were anticipating the coming weekend. But perhaps it was just the lightening of my own burden I was sensing, at the prospect of Eliza’s ordeal coming to an end.

  I skirted the reservoir, pausing to watch a laughing couple sled down the knoll near the overpass, and then continued toward Hernshead on the west side of the lake using the distant gables of the Dakota apartments as my guide. The red ball was up over Vista Rock, signaling that the ice was safe for skating. As I drew closer I could make out a curling match underway on one edge of the lake inside a circle of calcium reflector lights and, beyond it, the spectral forms of figure skaters gliding under the light of a pale moon. I made my way toward the Ladies’ Cottage, guessing that the Courtlandt party had assembled there so that the women could don their skates without exposing their calves to public view. A few moments later, I spotted them: perhaps thirty guests huddled along the lake’s edge, watching another dozen or so who’d ventured out onto the ice and were sliding more or less gracefully over the surface.

  From behind a small stand of trees, I watched the Earl scissor away from the bank, clinging to the arm of a young woman who looked only slightly more secure on her own blades. I couldn’t make out the woman’s face, but she was too short to be Olivia. I searched for the latter’s tall, willowy figure and found it at the lake’s edge. She was still in her street shoes, standing with Lucille, my mother, and a woman I didn’t recognize, who was holding a little black dog on a leash. Lucille’s arm was wrapped around Olivia’s waist, but her face was turned toward the Earl.

  After a few minutes I saw Olivia point toward a footman who’d been skating around the guests, carrying cups of what I assumed was cocoa on a tray at his shoulder. Lucille glanced at the footman, shook her head, and returned her attention to the Earl. Even from my remote vantage point I could detect Olivia’s irritation. She started to pull away, but Lucille, without turning her head, pulled her back. The footman stopped by some skaters to hand out two steaming cups and then circled back toward the bank. As he passed in front of Olivia, she broke away from her mother and struck out in his direction.

  Though her determination was evident in the forward tilt of her torso, her legs didn’t appear to be cooperating. Her gait was oddly stiff and halting—more so, it seemed to me, than the slippery surface warranted. Her mother called after her but she kept on going, her chin thrust stubbornly toward the footman’s tray. She was nearly there when the little black dog pulled out of its owner’s grasp and charged after her with its gold leash trailing behind. Olivia didn’t see him until he was nearly underfoot. He circled around her, drawing the leash around her ankles as he barked and wagged in excitement. She tried to step over him, but once again her legs seemed unnaturally slow to respond. Throwing up her arm in a vain attempt to balance herself, she staggered back and fell hard onto her bottom. She sat on the ice, rubbing her wrist, as the little dog climbed up her chest and licked her face.

  Lucille was at her side in under five seconds. She pulled the dog off by the scruff of its neck and hauled Olivia to her feet. Olivia shuffled without protest toward the bank, her eyes downcast, as the dog’s owner rushed out to retrieve it. Waving aside the woman’s apologies, Lucille led Olivia back to my mother, then beckoned sharply to the circling footman. She lifted a cup from his tray and passed it to her daughter, waiting for Olivia to take it in both hands before she released it. As the footman skated away, the three women stood beside one another in silence, Lucille looking out over the ice with a stony smile on her face, my mother gazing anxiously at Olivia, and Olivia staring into her cup.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Olivia had walked with much the same stiff-legged gait at the ball, I remembered, though not with the same energy or frustrated purpose. There, it had been possible to attribute the stilted movements to nerves, or even an assumed hauteur; here, in this informal setting, they were harder to account for. If she didn’t have Huntington’s chorea, I found myself wondering once again, what on earth did she have?

  For some time, I’d been aware of a tall, slender man in street shoes moving around the edges of the party on the ice, sliding a walking stick in front of him. Now the man approached Lucille, lifting his hat in greeting. Seeing the white-haired head underneath, I realized with a start that it was Dr. Huntington.

  He held up what appeared to be a leather glove, addressing both Lucille and Olivia. Lucille said something in reply and shook her head. He turned to Olivia, gesturing with the glove as he spoke, moving it from side to side at eye level. She answered with a sentence or two, then shook her head as well. The doctor doffed his hat and continued past them up onto the bank, tucking the glove into his coat pocket as he started up the path to the West Drive.

  I hurried to catch up with him, cutting through the trees to the path. “Dr. Huntington, wait!”

  He turned. “Dr. Summerford! I was just on my way to my hotel to telephone you. I came by to observe Miss Fiske, as you suggested; I asked someone to point her out to me, and had an opportunity to speak with her.”

  “Yes, I know, I saw you talking—”

  “It’s all there!” he went on quickly, a
s if I hadn’t spoken. “The pronounced rigidity of her legs as she was trying to avoid the little dog; did you see it? And the speech and eye disturbances—you couldn’t miss them! It’s the Westphal variant; I’ve only seen it once in my practice, but I’ve read of at least six cases in the literature.”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t understand…”

  “I’m sorry, I’m rattling,” he said, visibly reining himself in. “What I’m trying to say is that Miss Fiske appears to be an example of the relatively rare, early onset case.”

  “Early onset? Of what?”

  “Why, Huntington’s chorea, of course.”

  I stared at him. “But you told me her mother isn’t affected! And if Eliza doesn’t have it, she can’t have passed it on to Olivia.”

  He shook his head. “I know, but the walk is unmistakable. And the glove; when I asked her if she’d dropped it, did you see? Her whole head moved as I passed it in front of her. Her vowels have started to shorten as well. The effect is subtle still, but detectable to the trained ear.”

  “It can’t be Huntington’s chorea,” I insisted. “Olivia is only twenty years old. You said in your monograph you’d never seen the disease manifest before the age of thirty.”

  “And I haven’t, not in its classic form. But the Westphal variant is an entirely different beast. It manifests extremely early, in the second or even the first decade of life. It differs markedly in other respects as well, which is why neither I nor anyone else even recognized until recently that it was the same affliction. In these cases, the predominant aspect is the limb rigidity, with gait abnormality being the usual presenting feature. The choreic movements are either secondary or absent altogether. Hoffman was the first to speculate on the relationship between the two, after he found limb rigidity in the young children of a father with the more typical, choreic symptoms. The Germans are ahead of us here, you know. They’ve done some very compelling research…”