Louise's Gamble

by Sarah R. Shaber

  ‘Darling,’ Alessa said, before Sebastian had a chance to immerse himself in The Italian Tribune, ‘would you mind if I went to New York for a few days next week? My friend from school, Anna Bruno, you met her the last time we were in the city, has asked me to visit. Her husband is overseas, you know.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ her husband answered. ‘Go. Have fun.’

  Alessa thought her husband was the sweetest man in the world, really.

  ‘How will you travel, my dear?’ Lucia asked. ‘Not on the train!’

  ‘Of course on the train,’ Alessa said.

  ‘But it is so crowded! With soldiers, and there are no more first-class cabins!’

  ‘So one must travel with the lower classes, such a hardship,’ Orazio said.

  Lucia shot him an irritated glance, unsure if he was criticizing her.

  ‘Darling,’ Sebastian said. ‘I didn’t consider the train. Are you sure it’s safe?’

  ‘Of course! It will be full of American soldiers! How much safer could it be? Besides, I like practicing my English, talking to regular Americans. They’re so, sort of, simple and genuine.’

  ‘Unlike us jaded Europeans, who’ve seen many more wars fought by the people who didn’t start them,’ Orazio said.

  ‘You haven’t given up your socialist leanings then, Orazio,’ Sebastian said, not uncritically.

  ‘Those terrible people!’ Lucia said.

  ‘The world will be different after the war is over, Mamma, we might as well be prepared.’

  ‘But not for socialism! Mussolini would be better than that!’

  ‘Mussolini will be hung by the Italian people as soon as they can get at him,’ Orazio said.

  Lucia was aghast. ‘But then what will happen?’

  ‘Calm yourself, Mamma,’ Sebastian said. ‘Whatever government rules Italy, we will return to our home in Sicily, and I expect life there will go on much as before.’

  Orazio said nothing more.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Betty’s not still out sick?’ I asked. ‘How long has it been now?’

  ‘Since the day you left last week,’ Brenda answered, while bandaging her scissoring hand. ‘One of her room-mates called this morning. Ruth talked to her.’

  Ruth stretched at her desk. Files that needed to be alphabetized piled around her. ‘I didn’t get her name, but she said Betty was a little better. I wanted to talk to Betty myself, but the room-mate said she was asleep.’

  This wasn’t good news. This was the fifth workday Betty missed. I wondered if she was terribly ill or if something more serious was going on.

  Then Don appeared at the office door, summoning me to my meeting with Colonel Melinsky. He escorted me to his office, then left the two of us together.

  Melinsky wasn’t prepared for what I told him.

  ‘I don’t want to insult you by asking you if you’re sure,’ he said. ‘But are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. It was Alessa. In a mink coat and expensive jewelry. The salesgirl told me she’s a countess, Alessa Oneto. Her mother-in-law’s name is Lucia.’

  ‘My God,’ Melinsky said, ‘this puts a new twist on things. You didn’t follow her, I hope.’

  I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I was afraid they’d spot me.’

  ‘Good work. Merde! Let me think for a minute.’ He lit a cigarette and smoked it down to his fingers before he squashed it into an ashtray.

  ‘This is surprising, but it really changes little,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I thought also.’

  ‘Alessa disguised herself to avoid the attention you, and we, might have given her if we knew she was a countess. Almost like adding an additional cut-out between her asset and us. Quite clever, really.’

  ‘Colonel, isn’t it possible she assumed the disguise for our knitting group in the beginning? So we’d treat her as an equal? And it was only later that her asset approached her? She’d guessed I was a government girl.’

  ‘Good point. That’s very likely. So she had a disguise ready made and a contact – you – already.’

  ‘Perhaps her family doesn’t know about any of this?’

  ‘Also possible. I will check the Onetos out, very subtly. I don’t want them to get wind of this. When do you see Alessa again?’

  ‘So far as I know, Friday night.’

  ‘Does she have your telephone number?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never given it to her. And the listing is in my landlady’s name.’

  ‘Let’s plan to meet again here, on Thursday, unless she’s contacted you or I find out something pertinent about her background. Until then we go on as before.’

  I went back to my office and found the Oneto family file I’d already retrieved and read. I’d return it immediately to its slot in the ‘ON’ file cabinet on the third floor, where Melinsky’s secretary could find it when he requested it. Melinsky might be smart, educated, and accomplished, but he still thought like a man. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that I’d take advantage of my job to find out whatever I could about Alessa and the Onetos on my own.

  If Count Sebastian Oneto hadn’t tried to enlist in the United States Army there wouldn’t be much information on him at all. He was rejected because of poor vision and a heart murmur, but the FBI had performed a background check on him, as they did on all foreign nationals who tried to enlist in the American military.

  The Oneto family had fled Sicily when the Nazis arrived to build air bases. They’d lived in a hotel in London briefly while Sebastian attempted to enlist in the British Army. When he was rejected, the family came to the United States. Their entry papers listed Sebastian; his wife, Alessa; his mother, Lucia; a maid, Lina; and the Count’s personal secretary, Orazio Rossi. The Onetos had money, most of it socked away in Switzerland and New York City by Sebastian’s late father. The family owned the usual olive groves and such in Sicily, but their real wealth stemmed from a profitable complex of sulfur mines. The family’s address at a New York hotel was described as temporary. At some point they’d moved to Washington.

  Orazio Rossi rated a brief paragraph. He and Sebastian had attended the University of Salerno together and become friends. Sebastian had studied Italian literature, Rossi law and history. Sebastian had hired him as his personal secretary after Sebastian’s father’s death. Louise found it irritating that the author of Rossi’s FBI profile dwelled on Orazio’s political activities while he was at the university. He made much of Orazio’s membership in a student organization affiliated with the PSI, the outlawed Italian Socialist Party. So what, Louise thought. What intelligent university student worth his salt wouldn’t be flirting with socialism while living in a country ruled by a vicious fascist dictator? Really, the FBI often seemed to forget that the United States was fighting the Axis, not the leftists among their allies.

  FIFTEEN

  Orazio and Sebastian bent over the papers that littered the table in the breakfast room.

  ‘Please tell me this is the last one,’ Sebastian said, scribbling his name at the bottom of an impressive document with a silk tassel dangling from it.

  ‘It is,’ Orazio said.

  ‘At last.’

  ‘And here is the copy of your new will, sent over by the attorney’s office.’

  ‘What a relief,’ Sebastian said. ‘I am so glad it’s finished. What if I should die before Alessa and we have no children yet? What if we don’t have any children at all? I want to make sure she inherits what money I am able to leave her. I can’t prevent my cousin from inheriting the title or the entailed property, but I can make sure that Alessa receives the remainder.’

  ‘Your mother won’t like the idea of breaking up the estate,’ Orazio said.

  ‘That’s why I’m not telling her,’ Sebastian said. Both men laughed. ‘Besides, it’s only a precaution. Alessa and I plan to have many children as soon as possible. Mamma will immediately adore them, and all will be well between her and my wife.’

  Sebastian slid
the will into a plain brown envelope and sealed it. ‘I know the attorney has a copy of the new will, but this one ought to go into my safety deposit box in the bank in New York. I don’t want it in the apartment. It would be so unpleasant if my mother should find it.’

  ‘These papers should go to the bank, too,’ Orazio said, patting the impressive stack, thick with seals and more tassels, on the table between them. ‘All the deeds and such that the lawyer needed to draw up your will.’

  ‘It’s absurd to travel all the way to New York to store these documents,’ Sebastian said. ‘But there’s not an available safety deposit box in all of Washington, DC! And did you know the hotel safe is full, too? Not to mention that it’s opened dozens of time a day so women can access their jewelry.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Orazio said.

  The two men paused while Lina came into the breakfast room and removed their teacups.

  ‘I could ride up to New York on the train with Alessa,’ Orazio said. ‘I’ll stay with my cousin on Staten Island. In the meantime I’ll deposit these papers in the bank, and your mother will never know I went on business. Then I’ll return on the train with Alessa.’

  Sebastian clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Brilliante,’ he said. ‘You deserve a holiday. This way Mamma will have no idea you’re on a business trip, and Alessa will have a chaperone on the train.’

  I waited in one of the longest lines I think I’d ever seen for a bus, and that was saying something. It was raining, a heavy pounding rain that obscured windshields and made changing lanes treacherous, so cars weren’t stopping to pick up people from the slug lines as usual. I shared my umbrella with a shivering young woman from Codes and Cables. At the rate the buses came by, I figured it would be two hours before I got home.

  A green Lincoln Continental cabriolet pulled up next to me, and Joan leaned over to roll down the window. ‘Climb in,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to my place.’

  ‘That depends,’ I answered. ‘Are you going to shine a bright spotlight on my face and interrogate me?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Your examination is over, and you passed with flying colors. I’m going to make you a Martini, and we’re going to order room service!’

  ‘If you think you can bribe me to forgive you, you’re so right!’ I lent my umbrella to the Codes and Cables girl and climbed into the passenger seat of Joan’s grand car. We pulled away from the curb and headed east.

  Joan was a wealthy young woman. She owned a car and received a hundred dollar a month allowance from her parents in addition to her OSS salary. She’d graduated from Smith College and was one of Director Donovan’s two trusted secretaries. Joan had countless friends but no beau, which was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. Maybe it was her height or her booming voice or her large personality that prevented her from attracting men.

  Joan was one of the few single people I knew who had her own place, a fancy hotel studio apartment that I coveted with all my heart and soul. She dropped me off at the residents’ entrance on De Sales Street while she parked her car. I passed the time chatting with Hays, the concierge, until she joined me and we went upstairs.

  Once inside Joan’s apartment I transformed her rumpled Pullman davenport bed back into a sofa while she went into her kitchenette to fix our drinks.

  ‘There’s a room service menu on the table near the door,’ she called out. ‘It’s a new one. What looks good? We should order now; sometimes dinner takes an hour to arrive.’

  I intended to pay for my own meal, so the beef entrée, Swiss steak, was out of the question.

  ‘Fried chicken?’ I called out. ‘Chicken à la King? Chicken Marengo?’

  ‘Order me the fried chicken,’ she answered from the kitchenette. Dellaphine fixed her scrumptious fried chicken once a week, so I settled on chicken à la king. I made sure that room service knew I needed a chit to pay for my order.

  After I hung up I called ‘Two Trees’ and told Phoebe I wouldn’t be home for dinner that night.

  Joan brought out a silver cocktail tray holding a shaker, two Martini glasses and a bowl of nuts. ‘No olive, correct?’ she asked.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I haven’t developed a taste for olives. Or caviar.’

  We sipped from our glasses.

  ‘That’s so good,’ I said. ‘Do you know I never had a cocktail until I moved to Washington?’

  ‘What do your people in North Carolina think of you now?’

  ‘I haven’t been back home. And I haven’t written them much about what’s happened to me. I’m afraid it would shock them terribly. Both sets of my grandparents are spinning wildly in their graves as we speak.’

  ‘So,’ Joan said, crossing her legs, ‘what have you developed a taste for, if not olives and caviar?’

  ‘Let’s see. Cocktails, definitely. A paycheck, no question. Shopping with my own money. Having lots of friends, all kinds. Feeling useful and good at my job.’ Not living with my parents. Not working for my parents. Not going to church. Not having the neighbors comment on whether I’m going to church. Not being forced to consider every breathing single man I met as a potential second husband in order to escape my parents’ house. The list was very, very long.

  ‘Another Martini?’ she asked.

  ‘Better not,’ I answered. ‘Work tomorrow.’

  We played gin rummy and listened to the radio until dinner came. The food was good, but eating it off dishes stamped with the famous ship in full sail would have been fun even if the food was terrible.

  SIXTEEN

  If Lucia Oneto hadn’t had her back to the window of the Presidential Restaurant, and if Louise hadn’t been hurrying down De Sales Street under an umbrella borrowed from Joan to find a taxi, Louise might have recognized the Dowager Countess. But she’d never met Sebastian, who faced the window, and she was too intent on getting out of the cold rain to care who was dining at the premier restaurant of the Mayflower Hotel.

  ‘This is lovely,’ Lucia said, daintily using her oyster fork to scoop up her scalloped oysters, ‘to be able to dine with you alone. Not that I’m not fond of Alessa, you understand, but once a son is married, a mother doesn’t have him to herself much. And Orazio absent at the same time! I realize he is a great help to you, but to live in such close quarters!’

  ‘I understand, Mamma,’ Sebastian said, determined to humor his mother tonight. She could be unbearably irritating at times, but she was miles away from her home, friends, and her usual pleasures, and he tried to take that into account. He’d ordered a bottle of expensive wine for them to split, and by God, it did taste wonderful. And steaks, an extravagance, but he wanted this meal to be a treat for his mother. What did she have to do here? She couldn’t go to the market, have her parties, meet her friends for cards and tea, or give out prizes at the village school.

  Sebastian usually avoided the hotel restaurants, preferring room service. Most of the men who dined in the hotel restaurants wore uniforms, and it grated on him that he couldn’t serve in the military. And he possessed no skills that were useful in any of the wartime bureaucracies. In times like these, who needed a student of nineteenth century Italian literature and citrus horticulture? He knew most Americans resented wealthy Europeans living in their midst while American boys risked their lives to save the foreigners’ homelands. All he could do was squeeze as much money out of his income as possible to give to wartime charities.

  Sebastian poured them each another glass of wine from the bottle that sat in a silver bucket next to his right hand.

  ‘I didn’t know Orazio had a cousin in New York,’ Lucia said, after sipping her wine.

  ‘Most Italians have relatives in the United States now, Mamma, thanks to Mussolini forcing so many into exile.’

  Lucia toyed with her wine glass and watched the rich red liquid swirl around its sides while Sebastian finished his prawns. ‘Does Alessa have a relative in New York City, dear?’ she asked.

  Sebastian wiped his mouth and signaled for the waiter to
take away their appetizer plates. The pause failed to help him keep his temper. ‘For God’s sake, Mamma!’

  ‘Well, does she? And is she visiting him?’

  ‘Yes, Turi lives in New York City. I understand he works on the docks. I hope Alessa does visit him.’

  Lucia drained her glass. ‘How can you say such a thing! His origins! How did he get here?’

  ‘So Alessa’s father had an affair with a pretty peasant girl as a teenager. It happens. He did the right thing and took care of the boy.’

  ‘She wasn’t just a peasant girl,’ Lucia said. She lowered her voice. ‘Her family was Mafioso! So degrading!’

  ‘I’m going to say this once, Mamma, and you will never mention it again. Alessa’s father helped Turi escape to America years ago, when Mussolini destroyed the Mafioso and most of them fled Sicily. He is an honest workingman now and Alessa’s only blood relative. She is welcome to see him.’

  ‘Your father would be ashamed.’

  ‘Father is dead, along with his time. Now enjoy your steak and we will talk of something else, like our tickets to the USO benefit ball next week. What gown do you plan to wear?’

  SEVENTEEN

  It was late when my taxi dropped me off at the door of ‘Two Trees’. The rain had stopped, but icy, fat raindrops fell from the trees with every cold breeze. I’d expected the house to be dark, but the downstairs lights were still on, and once inside I heard both radios – one in the lounge, and one in the kitchen – blaring, with the voices of my fellow residents chattering over the sound of the news. When I entered the lounge I found Phoebe, Joe, and Henry. Ada was at work. The news ended as I came in, followed by the theme music for the Red Skelton Show. Joe turned the volume down.

  Phoebe gathered her skirts and slid over to make room for me on the davenport.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘President Roosevelt just finished speaking,’ Phoebe said.