City of Lies

by Victoria Thompson

  “I’ll go with you!”

  “No, I think it’s better if you stay here, at least for now. I’m not sure who will be the most help, and I might need you to see some people here in the city. While you’re waiting to hear from me, try to find out where Mrs. Belmont is.”

  “That harpy! This is all her fault. If she hadn’t given the Woman’s Party all that money—”

  “For God’s sake, don’t say that to her! She might not be married to a Vanderbilt anymore, but she still has plenty of influential friends, and you’ll crawl to her on your hands and knees if you have to.”

  David pulled a face, but he nodded. “I’ll do whatever I must to save Anna.”

  “Good. Now go home and try to keep your mother calm. You’ll hear from me soon.”

  Gideon opened the door to the conference room to find his clerk, Smith, ready to knock. “Mr. Devoss would like to see you, sir,” he reported with a great deal of apprehension.

  “Does he know I have a client waiting?”

  Smith nodded. “That’s why he wants to see you.”

  Gideon drew a calming breath and marched down the hall to the large office where the senior partner held court. The clerk in Devoss’s outer office nodded and indicated he should go right in.

  Devoss sat behind his enormous desk looking like a thundercloud about to explode.

  “You wanted to see me, sir?” Gideon said with as much confidence as he could muster.

  “Givens tells me you left a client alone in your office to take care of some personal business.”

  “David Vanderslice came to inform me that his sister has been arrested with the suffragettes in Washington City.” Devoss knew David well. All the old families knew each other well. Devoss was even some kind of cousin to the Vanderslices, Gideon recalled.

  “David allowed his sister to demonstrate with those women?” Devoss asked, outraged. “What was he thinking?”

  “I don’t—”

  “And what did he think was going to happen if she paraded herself in front of the White House with those unnatural females? He’s lucky she was only arrested. At least she’ll be safe in jail.”

  “That’s the problem, sir. Even though the women were sentenced to three months in the district jail, they’ve been taken someplace else, and no one knows where they are.”

  “What do you mean, no one knows? Someone knows. This is the American justice system we’re talking about. Prisoners don’t just disappear.”

  “These prisoners apparently have, sir.”

  “That’s preposterous, and if they have disappeared, it’s their own fault. They have no business challenging the United States Government. Why would women want the vote anyway? Men have taken perfectly good care of them for centuries. They can’t believe they could do a better job of it.”

  Gideon didn’t really agree with Devoss, but the man wasn’t completely wrong, either. “I can’t speak for the women, Mr. Devoss, but I do know someone needs to find them and get them released from jail. With your permission, I would like to take a few days to go to Washington City and do just that.”

  For a moment, Devoss simply gaped at him, and Gideon knew a moment of satisfaction at having struck his employer speechless. Only one small moment, though, before Devoss’s expression turned thunderous again.

  “Why do you need to go to Washington? Surely, they have attorneys there who can see to this matter.”

  “I know they do, sir, but”—he hated admitting this to Devoss, but he had no choice—“my mother is also among the missing prisoners.”

  “Your mother?” Devoss echoed. “Hazel is a suffragette? I can’t believe it!”

  Devoss and Gideon’s parents had been friends their entire lives. Gideon had even suspected Devoss would have courted his mother after his father died if she’d given him any encouragement at all. Gideon waited for the ramifications of his revelation to sink in.

  “And she’s missing, you say?” Devoss said, his anger dissipating a bit.

  “Yes, sir, and naturally, I feel I must go to her assistance.”

  But Devoss’s anger had only dissipated a little. “I can’t stop you, Bates, but I also can’t approve of this conduct. I’ll expect you back in three days.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if you’re not back in three days, you may consider yourself dismissed from the firm.”

  • • •

  Why was she sleeping in the outhouse? Elizabeth wondered in that last shadowy moment between sleep and wakefulness. Then she opened her eyes and the memories came rushing back. She was in the Occoquan Workhouse, which only smelled like an outhouse.

  She pushed the filthy blanket away from her face and rose up on one elbow. The straw mattress crackled beneath her. It had provided little in the way of comfort except as a scant barrier against the chill of the stone floor. At some point during the night, she had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep, but it hadn’t done her much good. All around her the rest of the women were also beginning to stir in their cages.

  Anna awoke with a yelp of terror and sat bolt upright on her cot. Mrs. Bates, who had shared Elizabeth’s mattress, automatically reached out a comforting hand even though she was only half-awake herself.

  “Oh, oh, oh, I thought it was just a nightmare,” Anna said, hugging herself and rocking back and forth.

  “I’m afraid not,” Mrs. Bates said. “And we must make the best of it. Think of the stories you’ll tell your children one day, Anna. They will be amazed to learn how brave you were.”

  “I’m not brave at all!”

  “Then pretend to be,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t let them see you’re afraid, or it’ll be that much worse for you.”

  Mrs. Bates stared at her in amazement, but Elizabeth just pushed herself to her feet and tried to shake the wrinkles out of her skirt. In the light of day, their prison looked even worse. The cells were black with years of dirt, and the guards had told them they were in the men’s punishment cells.

  Not exactly what Elizabeth had signed on for.

  “Mrs. Nolan!” a guard called.

  “I’m here!” The elderly woman who had told off the judge yesterday came to her cell door.

  He unlocked it and pulled her out.

  “Where are you taking me? Are we being released?”

  The guard simply locked the door, grabbed her arm and started pulling her along with him.

  “Where are you taking me?” she cried again, but the guard didn’t even glance at her. All the other women had rushed to the bars of their cells, and they called out encouragement in the moments before she and the guard disappeared from sight.

  “Where are they taking her?” Anna asked.

  “They’re probably going to let her go,” Mrs. Bates said. “As a mercy, because of her age, I’m sure.”

  Mrs. Bates wasn’t a good liar, but she was good enough to fool Anna. Or maybe Anna just wanted to believe her.

  But Mrs. Nolan was only the first. One by one, each woman was summoned by a guard and escorted out. None of them came back.

  About half a dozen had gone when Anna started crying. Elizabeth wanted to shake her.

  Mrs. Bates sat down on the cot beside her. “Now, now, there’s nothing to cry about.”

  “What’s happening to them?”

  “I don’t know, dear.”

  “They’re either releasing them or moving them to the women’s section,” Elizabeth said.

  Anna looked up in surprise. “How do you know?”

  Elizabeth wanted to say that even a worm like Whittaker wouldn’t dare keep a bunch of respectable females locked up in the men’s section with male guards to ogle them for more than one night, but she couldn’t appear too knowledgeable about jailhouse life. “It only stands to reason. What else could they do, sell them into slavery?”

  Mrs. B
ates said, “Miss Miles is right, dear. It only stands to reason.”

  “Elizabeth Miles,” the guard called.

  Elizabeth sighed. “Here.”

  It was one of the brutish guards from last night. He grinned, showing blackened teeth, as he unlocked the door. Elizabeth gave him her best glare and shook off his hand when he would have grabbed her. Annoyed, he gave her a little shove with his stick, but she’d been expecting it and hardly even stumbled. Head high, she strode past the other cells and through the door into the yard.

  “Ain’t you gonna ask where we’re going?” the ape taunted.

  She shot him another glare, the one she’d practiced in the mirror until the Old Man said she had it right. “No.”

  He looked like he wanted to crack her over the head with his stick, but he apparently thought better of it. Beating a woman last night during the confusion might be excused, but doing so in the light of day with possible witnesses might not be so wise. For all he knew, she was the daughter of a millionaire. She could certainly glare like one, as she well knew.

  She’d been walking toward the building where they’d waited last night. When she reached the door, she stopped expectantly, and the ape actually opened it for her. One small victory, she thought.

  Several clerks sat at the two desks in the large room, and one of them asked her name and checked her off a list. The ape left with the name of the next woman, and the clerk took her to an office down the hall a ways. Warden Whittaker sat behind a big, bare desk looking like a toad wearing a cheap suit. He didn’t get up.

  The clerk pointed at the straight-backed chair sitting square in front of Whittaker’s desk. Elizabeth sat, folding her hands primly in her lap, and waited. The clerk handed the warden a sheet of paper and left.

  Whittaker studied the paper for a long moment, while Elizabeth studied him. A small man who wasn’t aging well, he seemed shrunken inside his clothes. A big black birthmark covered his temple, like a spider that had settled there to read over his shoulder. She bit back a smile. He didn’t look like a man who would take kindly to being laughed at.

  “You’re a long way from home, Miss Miles.”

  “Women come from all over the country to support the cause.”

  “Pretty girl like you, don’t you have a husband to keep you at home?”

  If she was going to be stuck here for three months, she shouldn’t make an enemy of the warden on the first day, so she swallowed the reply she wanted to make: that she didn’t need any worthless man to run her life. “No, I don’t.”

  Whittaker sighed, obviously frustrated with the suffragettes. “Your fine is only twenty-five dollars. If you pay it, you can walk out of here right now and catch a train for”—he glanced down at the paper again—“South Dakota this afternoon.”

  “Paying the fine would be an admission of guilt, and I’ve done nothing wrong, Mr. Whittaker.” Thank goodness she’d listened to Mrs. Bates. “Did the other women pay their fines?”

  “Yes, every one of them,” he snapped. “I’m sending a wagonload out to the train station this minute, and you can be on it.”

  Mr. Whittaker blinked a lot when he lied. Most people did.

  “Thank you for the offer, but I think I’ll stay.”

  “Rogers!” he called, slapping the paper down onto the desk.

  The clerk stepped in.

  “Take her away.”

  Elizabeth rose and followed the clerk. Only then did she realize her hands were shaking. But she didn’t have anything to be afraid of now. She was going to stay in jail.

  • • •

  A long walk with a female guard brought Elizabeth to the dining hall. Any hope they might be feeding the prisoners here died a swift death. No food in sight, and the matron who had taken such delight in ignoring them last night was doing some kind of paperwork for each of them.

  Elizabeth saw the women who had been called out of their cells ahead of her sitting at a table on the far side of the room. So much for Whittaker’s claim they’d all been released.

  After Matron Herndon had verified all of Elizabeth’s information, the woman sent Elizabeth to join her “suff friends.”

  Elizabeth happily obeyed. The other women, all as miserable and weary as she, greeted her with weak smiles. “Where’s the old lady?” she asked after glancing around the group and finding it one short. “Mrs. Nolan?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “No talking!” Mrs. Herndon shouted.

  The next prisoner came in, and Mrs. Herndon started questioning her, so Elizabeth felt safe to whisper, “Maybe they let her go.”

  The other women nodded, wanting to believe but obviously as unconvinced as Elizabeth herself. One by one the other prisoners arrived. They came more quickly now. Whittaker was probably tired of lying to them and asking them to pay their fines. He wasn’t even seeing some of them at all. Eventually, Mrs. Bates appeared. The older woman scanned the faces of the other prisoners until she found Elizabeth and flashed her a radiant smile.

  Elizabeth had the oddest sensation in her chest as she felt herself smiling back. It almost felt like happiness, but why should she even care if Mrs. Bates was glad to see her? And why should she be happy about it?

  The table where Elizabeth sat was full, so Mrs. Bates took a seat at another one. Elizabeth found herself looking up anxiously every time another prisoner came in, not even sure what she was worried about. Then she saw Anna, and she knew. Relief flooded her.

  For her part, Anna was craning her neck to see the other prisoners, not even noticing where the guard was leading her. When she caught Elizabeth’s eye, her whole face lit up, and she waved. The guard jerked her around and practically threw her toward the table where Mrs. Herndon sat, but even that didn’t wipe the smile from her face. She was still smiling when Mrs. Herndon had finished with her.

  Taking no notice of the fact that Elizabeth’s table was full, Anna hurried over and inserted herself into the nonexistent space on the bench beside her. The other women made room for her.

  “I knew it!” she cried, slipping her arm beneath Elizabeth’s and snuggling against her.

  The other women instantly hushed her, but she continued to gaze adoringly at Elizabeth.

  “I knew you wouldn’t leave,” she said more softly. “He told me you did. He told me all of you did,” she added, glancing around the table. “But I remembered what Elizabeth said, and I knew she wouldn’t have. You gave me courage.”

  The other women stared at Elizabeth in a way no one ever had before, making her want to squirm. What were they thinking? What were they seeing? She had no idea, and the realization puzzled and terrified her at the same time. Why should she care what they thought?

  “No talking!” Mrs. Herndon shouted again, silencing the soft buzz of whispers coming from every table. Apparently, she’d finished with all the prisoners, and now she came striding toward them. “No talking is allowed in the dining hall. You are here to be punished, and you must be conscious of your guilt at all times. After you’ve eaten, we’ll take you to your ward.”

  At the word “eaten,” Elizabeth heard her own sigh echoed by every other woman in the room. She hadn’t swallowed a thing since breakfast yesterday, and her mouth watered at the thought.

  The female guards got them on their feet and began herding them toward a long window at the end of the room where some Negro women waited. Anna still clung to Elizabeth’s arm, and for some reason she didn’t mind.

  The women ahead of her moved surprisingly quickly. When she had her turn, she saw why. One of the servers, a girl who looked to be no more than sixteen, handed her a small glass of skim milk and a piece of dry, cold toast. Swallowing the toast and milk was the work of a moment, and then she moved on, following the line of women down a dismal corridor until they came to the women’s ward.

  Here they found a double row of cots in a lar
ge room, but when the first women in line tried to sit down on them, the guards ordered them on their feet.

  “Why won’t they let us rest?” Anna asked.

  “This is a workhouse, that’s why,” Elizabeth replied, and tried not to think about what the Old Man would say if he could see her here. Then she remembered his stories about being in prison and how after a month, he’d figured out how to run a con even there. What was it? Oh, yes, he had them paying for all the incoming supplies twice so he had a nice score when he finally got out. She almost smiled.

  “Take off your clothes,” one of the guards said.

  Elizabeth looked around. This was clearly the women’s section of the workhouse, and all the guards here were female, but Elizabeth didn’t want to undress in front of them or anyone else.

  “Take off your clothes, all of them!” Mrs. Herndon shouted. “Take them off or we’ll take them off for you!”

  Slowly and with obvious reluctance, the other women began to fiddle with buttons.

  “Do we have to?” Anna asked in alarm.

  “We’re all women,” Mrs. Bates whispered. “And it’s for the cause.”

  That’s not what it was for, Elizabeth knew, but she removed her coat and unbuttoned her dress and slipped out of it. The unheated air raised gooseflesh, and she shivered. Others around her were removing petticoats and unrolling stockings. Beside her, Anna trembled visibly, nearly falling when she snagged her foot in the waistband of her skirt. Like the others, Elizabeth paused when she was down to her chemise and drawers. Glancing around, she could feel the wave of reluctance they all felt at this final humiliation. Then Lucy Burns, the red-haired Amazon who had been manacled to her cell most of the night, raised her bruised hands and determinedly opened her chemise. As if that were a signal from which the others derived strength, everyone followed suit. Elizabeth peeled off her chemise and let her drawers fall.

  She stood there, naked and vulnerable and hating them, hating all of them, hating Whittaker and Herndon and Thornton and Jake and the Old Man and everybody who had brought her to this place.

  When everyone was naked, the guards made them stand there a long moment, just to make sure they all realized how humiliated they were. The guards—women who in the outside world would have said, “Yes, ma’am,” to those who were now their prisoners—leered and gloated. Elizabeth wanted to scratch their eyes out, but she stood like the others and refused to quail or even lower her gaze.