City of Lies

by Victoria Thompson

  “You were quite brave, Miss Miles.” This was the first woman who had spoken to her, the one she’d thought was familiar. For some reason, she seemed even more familiar in the dark.

  “I only wish I could have been here weeks ago.” Another lie. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself, so could you tell me what to expect when we reach the jail?”

  “I suppose we’ll go before the judge again,” Anna said.

  “They’ll probably lock us up this time,” another woman said.

  “I would consider it an honor to be jailed,” a voice near the door said.

  “Are you frightened?” Anna asked.

  Terrified, in point of fact, but not of doing a bit of time. “I would also consider it an honor to be jailed.” But mostly a relief.

  “You really are brave, Miss Miles,” Anna said. “I only hope I can follow Miss Paul’s example.”

  “Miss Paul?”

  “Alice Paul. She’s on a hunger strike.”

  “At the district jail,” another woman said. “She went on a hunger strike when they jailed her in London, too. She nearly died that time.”

  “Why did she go on a hunger strike?” Elizabeth asked. “She won’t be of use to anyone if she’s dead.”

  “That’s just it,” the older woman said. What was her name? Mrs. Bates. “The government can’t let her die. They would be humiliated. A hunger strike is the perfect way for the powerless to force the powerful to capitulate.”

  Elizabeth sincerely doubted that, but she wasn’t going to argue with this bunch.

  “They force-feed her, of course,” Anna said.

  “How do they do that?”

  “They put a tube down her throat and pour milk and raw eggs into her,” Mrs. Bates said.

  Elizabeth felt Anna’s slender body shudder beside her.

  “Miss Paul is a true heroine of the movement,” someone else said, and other voices agreed.

  The women continued to chat about what an honor it was to go to jail, their excitement almost palpable. They were fools, of course. Elizabeth usually spent a good portion of her energies staying out of jail. Why get yourself arrested over the right to vote? Men voted all the time, and she’d never noticed it making their lives any better.

  “Will they really keep us in jail this time?” Anna asked.

  God, I hope so, Elizabeth thought. She didn’t know where she’d go if they didn’t.

  “You brought your toothbrush, didn’t you?” Mrs. Bates asked.

  “Yes, and a few other things, just in case.”

  “I’m sure the judge will be angry to see us again so soon,” someone else said.

  In Elizabeth’s experience, judges were always angry about something or other, but would he really lock up so many ladies? She might have to cause a disturbance in court to ensure that she was safely locked away, at least.

  At police headquarters, the cops booked them, and those who hadn’t had their photos taken before were mugged, too. Elizabeth scowled for the camera, hoping for a bad likeness. Another trip in the filthy, stinking police vans took them to the courthouse. As predicted, the judge wasn’t happy to see them. One woman got up and made a speech about their cause, but Elizabeth just kept watching the door. Lots of people came in wanting to see the show, and she wondered if Thornton’s thugs had dared follow her here.

  After a lot of arguing, which was mostly the women pointing out how unfairly they’d been treated, the judge finally banged down his gavel to shut them up. Elizabeth wasn’t surprised: judges rarely paid any attention to fairness. He pronounced them guilty of obstructing traffic.

  Obstructing traffic? Was that all he could come up with? Nobody laughed, so apparently it was. Then he started pronouncing sentences. The red-haired woman who had given the speech got six months, and most of the rest of them got three months, except for one little old lady who looked to be about a hundred.

  “Mrs. Nolan,” the judge said in a voice he must have thought sounded kind, “I am only sentencing you to six days in deference to your advanced age, but you may avoid even that by paying your fine of twenty-five dollars. I urge you to do so, since a stay in jail might be too severe and bring on your death.”

  She looked like twenty-five dollars might not be too hard for her to scrape together, and Elizabeth would have advised her to take the deal, but the tiny old woman pulled herself up as tall as she could go. “Your honor, I have a nephew fighting for democracy in France. He is offering his life for his country. I should be ashamed if I did not join these brave women in their fight for democracy in America. I should be proud of the honor to die in prison for the liberty of American women.”

  Most of the women nodded their approval, although Elizabeth wondered how many of them would be willing to die for the old woman’s liberty. Even the judge looked ashamed of himself, but he didn’t back down. They never did.

  He sent them off to the district jail to start their sentences.

  Three months. The district jail was a roach-infested dump, but she’d be safe from Thornton there, and she’d have time to figure out what to do next. Maybe she’d be able to get a message to the Old Man. The guards started herding the women out and putting them back in the vans.

  Anna slipped her arm through Elizabeth’s. “I wish I were as brave as you.”

  Elizabeth looked at her in surprise. “I’m not brave.”

  “Oh, but you are. The way you took my banner and marched right toward the police. And now, you aren’t a bit afraid to go to jail.”

  “Of course I am. The trick is not to let it show.”

  Now Anna was surprised. “How do you do that?”

  One of the first lessons the Old Man had ever taught her. “Just smile.” She forced her face to obey, and she felt her own fear slipping away.

  “But how can you . . . ?”

  “Just do it.”

  Tentatively, Anna stretched her mouth, but it didn’t look anything like a smile.

  “Pretend I’m a fellow you want to notice you.”

  Anna blinked uncertainly, and her gaze locked with Elizabeth’s for a moment. Then she smiled. She really smiled.

  Elizabeth smiled back.

  “It works!” Anna said.

  “Of course it does. Don’t let them see how you really feel inside. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  They were among the last to be loaded into the waiting vans. The other trucks had already left. Elizabeth scanned the busybodies on the sidewalk who had gathered to watch the suffragettes getting their just punishment, but she didn’t see any potential danger in the moments before they slammed the van doors shut. Three months from now, she’d walk out of the district jail and disappear. She’d never have to worry about Thornton again.

  But when the van doors opened a short time later, they weren’t at the jail. They were at Union Station. The guards dragged them out, prodding the laggards with billy clubs. Elizabeth knew better than to resist a cop with a club, and she moved along with the others toward a waiting train.

  “Where are they taking us?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  One of the other women said, “They’re sending us to Virginia, to the Occoquan Workhouse.”

  Elizabeth shuddered and swallowed down hard against the bile in her throat. She knew all about the Occoquan Workhouse.

  • • •

  Oscar Thornton looked up from his newspaper when the boys finally came back to his hotel suite. “Well?”

  They exchanged a glance that told Thornton all he needed to know.

  Rage boiled up in him, but he knew better than to let his anger show unless he could use it to his own advantage. He’d lost control once today and look where that had gotten him. “You lost her.”

  “She went to the White House,” Fletcher said.

  Fletcher was the short,
dumb one, a sniveling whiner, always making excuses. “Are you telling me she got a presidential pardon?”

  “She might,” Lester said. He was taller and not so dumb, at least. “She got herself arrested with the suffragettes.”

  “What?”

  “She got there just as the cops were throwing them all in paddy wagons.”

  Fletcher nodded vigorously, as if his opinion mattered. “Jumped right in with ’em, like she belonged or something.”

  Thornton managed not to sigh. “Why didn’t you follow her and pick her up when they let her go?” He held up the newspaper he’d been reading and stabbed at the headline: “Suffragettes Released.”

  Lester looked offended. “We did, but the judge didn’t let them go this time. He sentenced them to three months.”

  “Three months? Are you sure?” Those damn women usually didn’t get sentenced at all, and if they did, it was only for a few days.

  “That’s what the clerk told us. I had to slip him a fin. They wouldn’t let us in to see, but afterward they put the women back in the paddy wagons and took ’em off to the jail.”

  Thornton swore eloquently. “What about that bastard Jake? What’d you do with him?”

  They exchanged another glance, and Thornton bit back another curse.

  “Don’t tell me he got away, too.”

  “He was done for, Mr. Thornton,” Fletcher said. “We had to leave him when you told us to go after the girl, but there’s no way he could’ve . . .” He looked to Lester for help.

  “He wasn’t in the alley when we went back for him, but he couldn’t’ve walked away by himself. I’d swear to that.”

  “So you think some Good Samaritan took him to a hospital?”

  “The morgue more likely,” Lester said with more confidence than he had any right to feel. “You won’t see him again.”

  “You’re right I won’t, because you’re going to find him and make sure of it this time. And then you’re going to find Mr. Coleman.”

  Fletcher winced and Lester started studying his shoes.

  Thornton thought he might explode from fury. “Well?”

  Lester didn’t look up. “Coleman already checked out.”

  Of course he had. Thornton had frightened him off when he got rough with that Jake character. The thought of never finding the man made him ill. Coleman was the only one who could help him get his money back. Next time he wouldn’t be stupid enough to use a worthless check, and then there’d be no trouble collecting his profits. In one or two plays he’d make it all back and more, and he wouldn’t have to worry about Jake and Betty Perkins ruining the deal.

  Meanwhile, all he had left was revenge. “Go bail her out.”

  Lester blinked. “What?”

  “They must’ve given her a fine. She can pay it or go to jail, so if it’s paid, they’ll let her go. Get her out of jail and bring her back here. That should be easy enough, even for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They practically tripped over each other in their rush to escape. When the door slammed behind them, Thornton crushed the newspaper into a ball and threw it across the room. Not as satisfying as throwing it into the fire would have been, but the fireplace had been converted into a gas grate. He looked around the luxuriously furnished room for something to smash, and snatched an oriental vase off the mantel.

  Testing its weight, he considered the satisfactory way it would shatter against the marble hearth, and then he thought of poor dead Marjorie and how horrified she would be at its destruction. His wife had been gone for almost six months, but he could still savor the pleasure he’d taken in terrifying her when she was alive.

  And now he was looking forward to seeing that same fear in the eyes of that little chippie Betty Perkins. This time he savored the rage boiling up inside him. No female was going to get the best of him, no matter how pretty she might be. Not Marjorie and all her stuck-up friends, and not Betty Perkins with her idiot brother. Once he got finished with her, she’d be thinking about him for the rest of her short, miserable life. In one fluid motion he lifted the vase over his head and smashed it against the hearth.

  • • •

  By the time the train reached Virginia, the women had lapsed into weary silence. Anna had actually fallen asleep leaning on Elizabeth’s shoulder, and she woke with a start when the train rumbled to a stop. Elizabeth’s stomach growled, making her think how unappealing hunger strikes were. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and she didn’t expect dinner at the Occoquan Workhouse would be very satisfying.

  “Where are we?” Anna asked.

  “End of the line,” Elizabeth said. The women started gathering their things.

  Someone said it was half past seven when they started herding the women off the train and into the winter darkness. A line of wagons waited to transport them to the workhouse, and Elizabeth obediently climbed aboard one of them like the rest of the women. Once away from the station, Elizabeth could see little except the bit of road ahead illuminated by the lanterns on the wagons.

  Ordinarily, Elizabeth didn’t like having somebody hanging on her, but tonight she tolerated Anna’s clinging for the warmth of her body. Winter-stripped trees loomed over them in the empty country darkness, reminding her of how alone she was. After a while, she caught sight of an American flag, of all things, visible in the light coming from the workhouse windows. The massive structure took shape as they neared it, sprawling away in every direction, its massive wings disappearing into the night.

  The wagons stopped, and Elizabeth climbed out with the rest of the women and allowed herself to be herded with them into a large room that looked like some kind of office. A couple of battered desks sat at one end, the only furniture. A hatchet-faced woman in a gray dress introduced herself as Mrs. Herndon, the matron. Elizabeth knew the type. She would enjoy making their lives miserable.

  “Line up and give me your names.”

  “We demand to see Superintendent Whittaker,” one of the women said.

  “You can see him tomorrow. Now line up and—”

  “We are political prisoners, and we demand to see Mr. Whittaker.”

  “You’ll wait here all night, then,” Mrs. Herndon said with a smirk and turned her back on them. About a half dozen bruisers in guard uniforms stood around the room, ready to do her bidding, but she just sat down behind one of the desks and proceeded to ignore them.

  Nobody was going to give an inch, so Elizabeth staked out a spot near the wall and sat down.

  “That floor is filthy,” Anna said.

  “The cells will be worse. Better get some rest while you can.”

  “She’s right,” Mrs. Bates said, taking a seat on the floor beside her. “Very practical. You’re a sensible girl, Miss Miles.”

  Anna lowered herself carefully on Elizabeth’s other side. “Why don’t they lock us up?”

  “Mrs. Lewis asked to see the warden,” Mrs. Bates said. “I suppose we’re waiting for him to arrive. Where are you from, Miss Miles?”

  “South Dakota,” Elizabeth said, choosing a location least likely to be familiar to anyone here.

  “You’ve come a long way,” Anna said. “Do your parents approve of your work for women’s suffrage?”

  “My parents are dead. I live with my aunt, but I’m afraid I lied to her about where I was going. She wouldn’t have approved.”

  Mrs. Bates shook her head. “So many of the older ladies just can’t imagine a world different from the one in which they’ve always lived. They actually consider themselves fortunate not to have to think about politics and government.”

  Elizabeth would consider herself fortunate never to have to think about it. That was all Thornton talked about, politics and government contracts and how he was going to make a fortune selling rifles to the army. Near as she could figure, government was just the biggest of the big cons,
with everybody trying to get the best of it for themselves and sting the other guys. Thornton seemed to think he was the smartest of the bunch, too. “I’ve noticed that most older people don’t like things to change.”

  Mrs. Bates smiled, probably because she was pretty old herself. “Change is coming whether anyone likes it or not.”

  “Where are you from, Mrs. Bates?”

  “New York City. I’m afraid I convinced Anna to join me on this trip. I’m sorry to have gotten her into this.”

  “Nonsense. I’m glad I came,” Anna said, although she looked completely terrified.

  “Do your parents approve of your work for the cause?” Elizabeth asked the girl.

  “My father is dead, but my mother knew I was going to march with Mrs. Bates outside the White House. I think she was rather proud of me for that. It’s my brother, David, who doesn’t approve. He thinks he needs to protect me now that Father is gone. Do you have a brother, Miss Miles?”

  “No.” Was that a lie? She couldn’t be sure, and she couldn’t allow herself to think about it now.

  “Then you have no idea how overbearing they can be. David would keep me in a glass case if he could.”

  “He only wants you to be safe,” Mrs. Bates said. “He loves you very much.”

  “Being loved can be a form of bondage in itself, don’t you think, Miss Miles?”

  Elizabeth had no idea. “If it is, I’ll bet it’s more pleasant than this kind of bondage. Do you live with a disapproving relative, too, Mrs. Bates?” she asked to change the subject.

  “No, just my son.”

  “What does your son think about you marching?”

  “Gideon believes in our cause.”

  Which didn’t exactly answer the question, but Elizabeth didn’t really care. She was only making conversation to pass the time.

  “Will they really keep us here for three months?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t think President Wilson has the stomach for that,” Mrs. Bates said. “He’ll probably pardon us after a day or two, as he’s done before.”

  A day or two wouldn’t help her at all. “Can you refuse a pardon?”