by Michael Mayo
The stiffness left her body. She leaned back, looked up at the ceiling, and said to no one in particular, “Damn, you think that just one time, the pieces are fitting together nice and neat, and you think you can see how it’s going to end, and then it goes all screwy.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Listen, no matter what Jacob said, nothing has changed. We can still handle this, you and I, we can do it.”
“Tell me what happened. I want to know.”
She got up and added another shot to her drink.
“First, you need to understand that the story I told you about Pauley Domo, that was true. Well, part of it was true. We did kidnap that drunken son of a bitch Livingston from his party, only Hildy and I had to be a bit more persuasive to get him out to the garden. And, like I told you, we made arrangements for the payoff, but he got himself loose before we got the money. Hildy, Pauley, and I waited for the money for hours and hours before we realized it had gone bad. We went back to the farm empty-handed that night and saw the lights from the cars. We could tell they were beating on Vaughn and Hildy’s family, and we heard shots, so I guess they killed them. I hope to hell they got the idiot brother.
“And the three of us ran, without the money, to Wapakoneta.”
“And Pauley wasn’t wounded?” I said.
“Not then. Two weeks later I caught him and Hildy having a little fun in the sack one afternoon. He was wounded then all right. Hildy yelled and ran into the bathroom, and I went after Pauley. And you know what’s funny? It wasn’t the first time. Back when we first got together, before I knew you, I caught him. Like a sap, I believed him when he said it would never happen again. The second time with Hildy, he tried to tell me that it wasn’t what I thought it was. Can you believe that? And him talking to me like that made me as mad as catching them. I went nuts and grabbed the first thing I could find. It was just a cheap little cheese knife. Who’d’ve thought you could cut off a couple of fingers with it?”
So, Three Fingers was Pauley Three Fingers. Figured.
“Anyway, I stormed away and took the car. Hildy was still crying and yelling and Pauley was bleeding all over the place, saying, ‘When you calm down we’ll talk this over and you’ll see that I’m right.’ Hah!”
She said that she understood then that she had no life and no future with Pauley, so she headed west, back to her hometown, Grindstone, Illinois. Now, I know she made that part up. I checked and there is no Grindstone in Illinois, or in Ohio or Indiana, but I guess that’s not important. She said she went back there because that’s where her grandmother was. Anna had no use for the rest of her family, but she could trust her grandmother.
The two of them sat down together and came up with a plan. Thus the widow Signora Sophia was born. Anna sold the car and combined that money with the old woman’s savings. In Chicago, they bought fashionable, flattering clothes, dyed Anna’s hair black, and headed for Saratoga Springs. Grandma stayed close in a rooming house while Anna made herself visible at the resort but kept apart from the floozies and debutantes who were there for the same reason she was—to catch a rich guy. She’d been looking for someone in legitimate business, but she knew who Jacob was, and hell, maybe it was just some kind of fate that she always wound up with guys who were on the wrong side of the law.
She knew Jacob wasn’t the perfect answer to her problems. He’d never leave his wife for her, but for a while at least, he’d provide for them. She could have done a hell of a lot worse.
Anna didn’t mention the child then, the little girl I’d seen in the car with her that afternoon, but it was easy enough to fill in that gap. It seemed likely to me that Anna might have been in the family way while Pauley was dipping his wick in Hildy, and she went to “Grindstone” to have the baby. She wouldn’t have wanted to advertise the fact that there was a kid in the picture while she was at Saratoga, and as I’d figured, it explained the secretive angle she played when she and Jacob moved back to New York.
She’d got to about that point when the room service guy knocked on the door and brought in a tray. It had sliced apples and cheeses and strange little sandwiches without crusts. I found out later they were cucumber and watercress. There wasn’t much to them, but I ate about a dozen while she talked. They took the edge off.
“So after you met Jacob at Saratoga Springs, he moved you into that place up on Fifth Avenue.”
She nodded her head. “Everything was just dandy until Jacob decided we all had to take a goddamn vacation and see the West.”
I finished a tiny sandwich. “You know that a lot of people have been saying that you and Benny ran off together. You seduced him and hatched this scheme to get Jacob’s money.”
“Sure,” she sneered, “me and Benny, right.”
“And some people said you cooked up the scheme to have somebody else snatch Benny and then demand that you deliver the dough. But from what Jacob and Weeks said about what happened out there, they didn’t think you were in on it, and they should know.”
She slugged back her drink and got up to make another. Her voice was angry.
“I didn’t want anything to do with it from the beginning. I was packed up and ready to get on the next train back to New York the morning we found out he was gone, but no, Jacob said we had to stick together. What a goddamn sap.”
“OK,” I said. “What really happened?”
She sat back down beside me. “What really happened was …” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Did you ever see that movie ‘Phantom of the Opera’? Yeah? I guess that’s what happened to me.”
Now, I wasn’t there in that room in the mountains that she talked about, so I can’t swear that everything Anna said was absolutely true. Knowing Anna, it wasn’t, but it was close. And maybe I’ve added a few details that she hinted at but didn’t come right out and say. You can be the judge of that. I’ll explain by and by.
Chapter Fifteen
It was about midnight when Anna left the Hotel Colorado, and it took her fifteen to twenty minutes to drive to the crossroads they called Miner’s Camp No. 3. Not long after she stopped, a car came up on her right. The driver slowed and an arm appeared from the window and waved for her to follow.
They drove for what seemed like an hour on rutted gravel roads. At the end, they went down a series of hairpins on a steep slope, crossed a one-lane wooden bridge over a loud creek, passed a small shed, went halfway up a hill, and stopped in front of a dark structure.
The driver of the other car got out and lit a lantern and beckoned for her to come along. So scared her knees felt weak, she got out of the car, keeping one hand in her bag so she could grab her pistol, and followed him. She heard a door open, and the lantern revealed a doorframe and a shadowed room. She climbed uneven stone steps to the door and stopped outside, afraid to go in, thinking she should go back to the car, toss the money out, and drive away. She waited too long.
The guy, or somebody else, came up behind her and got an arm around her neck, elbow forward, and a hand locked behind her head in a chokehold. She grabbed at the arm and kicked at his shins but knew it was useless. Within seconds, she blacked out. Her last thought was anger at her own stupidity, letting somebody get her like that. She hated being helpless more than anything else.
She had a sense of being moved, and when she woke up, she was in a cold dark room, still wearing her coat and dress. She had her hat and her bag, but the gun was gone. She could tell that he—whoever he was—had handled her and her clothes. Some buttons were undone and her slip and bra weren’t right, but nothing south of that. At first, she was more scared than angry, but by the time the first faint dawn light revealed the place, she was just angry.
She saw the building was a cabin with well-worn floorboards and rough log walls patched with some kind of stucco. There was a crudely build stone fireplace on one wall, open rafters overhead, and one small wavy glass window that w
ouldn’t open. She was on a low pallet made of straw and ticking. Near the pallet, a four-by-four vertical post was bolted to the floor and a rafter. Like the floor, it was worn smooth. At the bottom was a round eyebolt. A chain about fifteen to twenty feet long was attached to the eyebolt. The other end of the chain was a metal band that was locked around her right ankle. As soon as she saw it, she knew she wouldn’t be leaving with Benny Numbers.
In the middle of the room was a lever-action water pump over a metal sink in a waist-high counter. On the other side of the room beyond the reach of the chain, were a table and chair and a door with heavy iron hinges and a simple latch. Beside the pallet was a mound of stuff that appeared to have been thrown into the corner. She went through it with a growing feeling of dread as she saw that most of the things were women’s clothes. It chilled her to the core to realize that she wasn’t the first woman to be chained up there. Her knees buckled, and she sat on the floor. She saw a chamber pot under the pallet and immediately had to pee.
That, she said, was the most terrifying moment she spent there, because she didn’t know anything. She’d been in tough situations before, lots of them, but she could always see what she had to do to get out. But that morning, all she knew for sure then was that she was alone in what appeared to be a one-room cabin high in the mountains. She had to assume that the guys who kidnapped Benny Numbers decided that they wanted her, too, or they were afraid she’d lead Jacob’s guys back to them. More likely, they wanted to screw her, like the other women they’d chained up there.
She checked the chain at her ankle and saw that there was a leather cuff inside the metal bracelet or anklet or whatever the hell you called it. The lock that held it shut was heavy and solid. The other end of the chain had been welded directly to the eyebolt in the post. There was no give when she tugged on it. The heads of the screws that held the eyebolt had been filed down. When she walked, it rattled and scraped across the wooden floor.
She got up and tried the pump. She had to lean in and put both hands and her shoulders to work to get it started. The pump squealed but produced a stream of mostly clear well water that smelled and tasted of minerals. There was a gallon-sized leather bucket in the sink. She filled it, scrubbed her face, neck, and hands and felt better. She also felt hungry.
Kindling and firewood were stacked next to the fireplace. Two hinged irons that could support heavy pots were bolted to the stone chimney, and there was a box of wooden matches on the narrow mantle. She used a piece of the kindling to push the ashes back and broke up the smallest pieces of kindling to start a fire. It took four matches. When she snapped one stick over her leg, it broke in half and both pieces had sharp ends. She tucked one behind the pallet and kept the other up her right coat sleeve. Looking out the window, she could see cloudy morning sky, trees, and a bit of ground that sloped down.
She got as close as she could to the table and saw a metal plate and an empty Mason jar. Dragging the chain, she walked back to the other side of the room and went through the clothes.
They were mostly dresses. One was a long, old-fashioned, high-necked heavy piece made of green velvet. There were also two dresses that looked more modern, shorter and lighter, and a blouse and skirt. There was a blue silk robe with wear at the elbows, a pullover sweater, and a long coat. Two simple long skirts and blouses were made of homespun wool. They looked like the clothes she’d seen Indians wearing, and they were made for smaller women. Some of the clothes were clean, some dirty. No blood stains. There were also some towels, rags, and washcloths, a wire coat hanger, and her small bag with some hairpins, perfume, lipstick, rouge, and powder.
It was after noon, she thought, when she heard scuffing noises outside, and then the door opened. She waited, crouched on the pallet with the sharp kindling still hidden in her sleeve.
Sunlight through the open door silhouetted a man. Her first impression was of his height, but when he stepped inside, she saw that was wrong. He was a medium-sized guy, maybe thirty years old. It was hard to say with all the scars. His hair was black and straight. His face was dark. The first thing she thought was “half-breed,” and that’s the only name she ever had for him.
He walked over to the pump, set something down on the counter, then went back to the table and sat where he could watch her. He gestured toward the thing by the pump and said, “Eat.” His voice sounded hoarse and painful.
The thing was a frying pan. She forced herself to stand and walk to it. It held clumps of cold fry bread that smelled of bacon grease. She took a piece and chewed. Her stomach lurched at the smell, but she was still hungry and ate it all.
When she finished, she said, “What do you want?”
“A squaw,” he answered, and left.
That evening, he brought in a stew pot, a ladle, and a kerosene lantern. He left the lantern out of reach on the table and hung the pot on one of the fireplace irons.
He turned and she got her first good look at his face. His cheeks and half his forehead were a shiny welt, like he’d been burned with fire or acid, or scalded by steam. It was the same with the skin she could see on his hands and wrists. One eye teared and blinked almost constantly. The other was set so deep in the smooth flesh she couldn’t see it at all. A sharply pointed nose and receding chin made him look like an evil turtle. He wore plain black pants and a red shirt that looked to be made of the same homespun she saw on the short women’s clothes, and a heavy lamb’s wool vest that was tied at the waist and the neck with two lengths of rawhide. It had been a long time since he’d been close to bathwater, and he reeked of wood smoke, old sweat, grime, and something long dead and rotten.
“You can’t kill me,” he said. “Nobody can. I am immortal. This is the stew pot. You tend it. I bring meat in the morning.” He said all that in a level tone, not sounding at all crazy. He picked up the lantern and turned to leave.
She yelled, “Wait a goddamn minute! What’s going on here? Where’s Benny? I brought the money! Let me go.”
He threw back his head and laughed and did a little spinning, hopping dance that took him out the door.
Wonderful, she thought, I’m going to have to fuck a lunatic to get out of here.
The next day, he came back with more wood, the poorly skinned, hacked-up carcasses of several small animals, a couple of potatoes, and some other things she took to be vegetables. He took out the chamber pot and brought it back empty, along with some small rags.
Later that morning, she thought she heard some kind of distant activity, the sounds of automobile engines, men coming and going, buying and selling. At least that’s what she guessed or hoped since the sounds were so faint. She pulled out a piece of the stucco that chinked the log wall by the chimney and found that she could see a worn footpath and part of another building up the hill.
Since she still didn’t know what was going on, she spent the rest of the day examining the clothes and straightening them up. The Indian clothes looked to be the same color and style as his outfit. The other dresses, skirts, and blouses had probably belonged to three women, judging by the sizes and styles. That evening, he brought more fry bread, tasted the stew, and scooped out a big bowl for himself. He pulled a spoon out of a pocket and sat down at the table to eat and stare at her.
Again, she asked where Benny was and why he was keeping her locked up. He ignored the first question and said, between bites, “Squaws don’t talk.”
When he finished eating, he dropped the plate and spoon in the sink, took the lantern, and left.
What the hell did he want from her? Did he want her to cry, to beg, to seduce him? She decided to hide her fear as much as she could, keep herself looking presentable, and eat the nasty stew to stay strong so that when the moment came, she could kill him. Even if it turned out that she couldn’t escape, she would try to kill him. I am immortal, my ass.
During that first week, she mulled over what she knew and what she could assume, and she fi
gured out one arrangement of facts and assumptions that made sense. It also made her sick to her stomach.
First, she knew that it took more than one guy to snatch Benny Numbers. He was no tough guy, but there had to be more than one man involved to knock him out or to keep him quiet while they moved him out of the hotel. The half-breed clearly wasn’t the brains of any outfit. It was more likely that he owned this place way out in the high mountains where they could keep Benny. She and Pauley Domo did the same thing, using Hildy’s family farm to stash their bootlegger.
So, since she had not heard any sounds of human activity, she assumed that the rest of the gang was gone. They got the money she brought and either released Benny Numbers or they killed him. Then they left. The half-breed stayed. He got his cut, and he got her.
She remembered the second note where someone had scrawled at the bottom Send the Woman. Maybe the half-breed had been their lookout or the eyes of the gang in Glenwood Springs. He spotted her when she was out walking and decided that’s what he wanted.
All right then, she thought, there was a chance they had returned Benny Numbers. If he was still alive, Jacob the Wise would do anything he could to get her back. She knew that, and the thought gave her a scrap of hope to hold onto.
Then it started to snow.
The half-breed wore snowshoes. She heard the noise of his taking them off outside the door. There were fewer small animals for the stew, and the vegetables were softer and moldier. When he came to eat in the evenings, he didn’t speak. She didn’t either. Squaws didn’t talk.
Once when he gestured for a second helping, she got as close to the table as the chain would allow, and he stretched to hand her the tin plate. She went to the stew pot, and when her back was turned, he banged his fists on the table and let out a loud roar to scare her. It worked. She dropped the plate, and when she turned back around, he was giggling and rocking in the chair. Part of her wanted to fling the hot stew in his face. A stronger, smarter part told her not to react. Sure, he startled you. Leave it at that. Cold anger settled.