by Pam Lewis
“We wait,” Cassian said. “We stay here and wait.”
Fifth Avenue was lined with park benches, plenty of room for them to sit and let Elly move about while they kept their eyes on the front door of 810 Fifth Avenue. People came and went, ushered in and out by a man in a black uniform with gold braid on the shoulders. Minke was in heaven and hell at once. Cassian said they must not under any circumstances go to the door, for fear of being turned away and the news of their arrival given to the Dietzes.
They waited for an eternity, it seemed. The lights dimmed along the avenue, and then, not from the door but from down the street, Cassian spotted a woman pushing a carriage. “Look. There,” he said. “She’s going toward the building.”
Minke strained to see through the gloaming. The woman was slight, not Tessa. “It’s not her,” she said.
“Let’s get closer,” Cassian said. “But do as I tell you!” She hoisted Elly onto her hip and crossed Fifth Avenue behind him. “We’re only going to look,” he said. “Don’t do anything rash.”
The woman was perhaps thirty feet away—governesses, they were called in New York, according to what Minke had read in the paper. She was pushing the carriage, unrushed. Minke’s heart raced so fast that she thought she might faint. Cassian took her hand and held it much too tightly, a reminder that she must behave. Her sights were set only on the child in the carriage. It was a large expensive thing, shiny black with a hood, and it allowed the child to sit upright, facing forward. His face was a white moon against the dark blanket that bound him tightly in place. Not even his arms were free.
She let out a strangled cry and lunged, unable to stop herself. “Just a minute,” Minke said to the startled woman. “I just want to see him.”
The governess hesitated before swerving out of the way and hastening past them. But Minke had seen enough to know.
Cassian spun her away, clapped a hand over her mouth, and pulled her back across the street while she tried to escape his grip. He held her tightly as the woman practically ran through the glass doors into the lobby of 810 Fifth Avenue, pushing Zef in his carriage.
Minke was out of breath. Elly whimpered from fright. “Why did you do that? Why? I was this close!” Minke said, gasping.
“You almost gave us away.”
“It was Zef!”
“We’ll get him,” Cassian said. “But we have to use our brains. You almost ruined everything.”
She rocked against the bench, staring up at the top floor of the building, where lights were on in the windows. “I could have had him!” She shook Cassian’s hands off her. “Them! Those dreadful people have my Zef.”
“If it’s Zef, Minke.”
She groaned. “What do you mean, if? It was Zef. You saw him.”
“No, I didn’t. I might have seen better if I hadn’t had to pull you away.”
She felt sick. Her baby boy had been snatched away all over again.
“They’re very powerful people now,” Cassian said.
“It’s my child! What has power to do with anything?”
Cassian held her back with force and didn’t let go until she gave in to his grasp. “Look, Minke, maybe we could get Zef by barging into the building, but the risk is enormous. You know how those buildings work. You live in one. The doorman will stop us. He’ll call the Dietzes, and they’ll refuse to allow you upstairs. They might well call the police after that ruckus outside. We don’t stand a chance against them. We’ll be the ones taken for wrongdoers.”
“But he’s mine.”
“He’s safe for now, Minke. He’s warm and fed. It won’t be long before we have him, if it is indeed he. Come on now. We need to leave before we’re arrested for loitering.”
She took a last look up to the penthouse apartment. There. Right there. “We could go to the police.”
Cassian sighed. “We must do nothing. We must think this through to the end before we act, and for now Zef—if it is Zef—is safe.”
“He’s with Tessa Dietz! That’s hardly safe.”
“In the critical ways, he’s safe. We have to assume the worst, that the governess will have told them about a woman on the street.”
“All the more reason to act now.”
“No,” Cassian said. “All the more reason to allow time to pass before we do anything else.”
ONCE BACK AT Riverside Drive, Minke left Cassian in the sewing room while she rushed upstairs. She’d been gone a very long time. Mrs. Bowen was leaving, having done the supper dishes. “And where might you have been?” she asked.
“I might have been outside with Elly.”
“Don’t be fresh with me, miss.”
“Did something happen?”
“You tell me next time you decide to go out. What if one of them wanted you?”
“Did they?”
“You just ask before you go gallivanting.”
Minke waited until she was sure Mrs. Bowen was out of the building before returning to the sewing room. She sat carefully on the divan and began to nurse Elly.
“We sort it all out before we make a move,” Cassian said. “Understood?”
“Tessa was pregnant. What happened to that child?”
“Understood?”
“Understood.”
“It must have died or Tessa had a miscarriage. She was not in good health for a pregnancy.” Cassian shrugged. “Or she was never pregnant at all.”
Minke drew in a quick breath. “You think they planned it from the beginning? If there never was a pregnancy, it explains why she refused to see you.”
“A possibility.”
“All that time they were planning to take Zef?” She had to let go of one set of beliefs and make room for another, like a fog lifting, a world come newly into focus. “If Dietz was behind the taking of Zef, then it wasn’t Pieps who took him.”
“Unless Pieps was acting for Dietz. It’s a possibility. Dietz hired him to take the child. He confessed, after all.”
“He confessed to Sander, Cassian. To no one else.” Her next thought blew through like a cold wind—that Pieps might never have confessed, that Sander had shot him because of his hatred and suspicion, that there might have been no confession. “Pieps never would have colluded with him.”
“We must keep our expectations in check. I hope desperately that it’s Zef, but I dare not believe.”
“You’re too cautious, Cassian.”
“Let’s address some possibilities. For example, could the Dietzes have somehow found Zef and brought him to America with the intent of returning him to you?”
“They told that reporter and all of New York the child was theirs. They even named him Hendrik. Everybody said it was gauchos. They ignored me when I said no, those were not gaucho horses. The horses that night weren’t fine at all but common. The type of horse used to pull the oil rigs. Dietz had arranged for Zef to be taken and given to his wife. It’s the only explanation. Their baby died, and they took mine.”
“If it’s Zef.”
She put her fingers into her ears.
SHE LAY IN her narrow bed, getting no sleep whatsoever, hope searing her dreams, waking her with its silken pleasure and then darkening her mood with guilt and loss. Hatred for Pieps had filled every corner of the house after Zef was taken. And as if their lives hadn’t been ugly enough, Sander wouldn’t stop spewing his rage, saying he wished he’d castrated the boy before he shot him. He had railed against Minke for befriending someone of the lower classes. Such alliances always ended up the same, he shouted. He accused her of sleeping with the boy. Dietz had told him as much and more than once. Tessa had seen them together during that trip to the estancia, and don’t think he didn’t know! She wasn’t to be trusted, just a trollop from a poor Dutch village. She had pleaded, denied, sobbed that she had been faithful to him every day and would be for the rest of her life, but through it all, she’d been racked not only by the unbearable loss of Zef but also by her own guilt and shame for having befriended Pieps. Now her mind was o
n fire with a new possibility. Pieps had had nothing to do with Zef’s disappearance. He’d died for nothing.
21
EACH DAY CASSIAN came to her small sewing room, and they talked as she worked. In the evenings she did laundry or helped with dinner parties, and all the while she felt a new peace settle over her, knowing exactly where Zef was.
“We need help,” she said to Cassian during one of his visits. “We can’t do this ourselves. Look at us. I an immigrant seamstress with a baby and no husband, no family to claim, you a physician who works with people this city regards with distaste, hatred, even.”
“Exactly,” Cassian said. “If we try to take him, Dietz can easily pay the police to take care of us, and we’ll never find Zef again.”
“We need the help of someone with influence.” She met his eyes. “We need Mr. Wiley.”
“I’ve had the same thought. We must approach him without asking for anything,” Cassian said. “We will tell him what has occurred, under the guise of your commitment to letting him know everything about you. You are, after all, an employee in his household, and it behooves you to inform him. He will either have it in his mind to help us or not. It’s all we can do for now.”
“We’ll go to his office on my next day off. It won’t do to approach him when I am supposed to be at work. And it won’t do to approach him here. He’s a businessman.”
Two days later, they stood before the most remarkable structure she had ever seen. The New York Times Building was dozens of stories high and thin as a rail, as if it could be blown down in a high wind. “How does it stay up?” Minke asked.
“Magic,” Cassian said.
No one else seemed the slightest bit worried. They hustled along the street or slowed to read the latest news reports posted behind a plate-glass window. Inside, in a large marble-lined space, a man sat at a desk watching them. “We’re here to see Mr. Louis Wiley,” Minke said.
“You and everybody else.” The man looked them over. Even having made their best efforts to look respectable, they must have looked like the immigrants they were, even down to the baby draped in her gay sling across Minke’s front.
“Please tell him Minke DeVries is here. I work for Mr. Wiley at his home. It’s not an emergency, but it is very important.”
The man wasn’t sure, but she guessed he wouldn’t dare to deny her access. He called for one of the boys sitting on a bench nearby and said something. The boy disappeared through a hallway, reappeared several minutes later, and whispered something to the man. “Just follow him,” the man said.
It was a warren of narrow halls, loud machinery, voices, and rooms and staircases, not unlike the Frisia, she thought, that time she’d become lost and Pieps had come to her rescue. She had to tell the boy to slow down twice because Cassian, even though vastly improved, still could not keep up. Finally, they arrived in a hall with floors so shiny she could see herself in them. The smell was of fresh shellac. And much quieter than the places they’d been. At the end of the hall a door with a glass panel stood ajar. On the door was written MR. WILEY. Minke poked her head inside.
He sat at a desk in the center of his office, his feet on a hassock, just as he did at home. Five or six men sat erect in chairs against the wall, apparently awaiting their turn to speak to him. He nodded to Minke and Cassian, indicated that they should sit down, and went back to his papers. A few moments later, he raised his large head and looked about the room as if startled to see so many people. With a swish of his hand, he asked the waiting men to leave. Once they’d left, a cautious smile spread across his face. “So, Minke, what brings you here? Has something happened at home?”
They had rehearsed, of course. The point was to give him the necessary information without taking up too much of his time. Minke began. “Everything at home is fine, Mr. Wiley. But something has happened.”
He tipped back in his chair. “Tell me.”
“I believe I told you that I lost a child whose name was Jozef when I lived in Comodoro?”
“I believe you did.” He was looking at her like a grandfather indulging a child.
“In truth, my baby was kidnapped from me.”
Mr. Wiley leaned forward, frowning. “I understood you to mean the child had died, my dear.”
“At the time I preferred not to explain.” She drew in a breath. “In Argentina it was my custom to take Zef to the beach. One day a group of men on horseback surrounded us and stole him from me. There was a search. People were questioned, of course. My husband suspected a particular young man. He went to see him. The young man confessed to the kidnapping, and my husband shot him dead.”
Mr. Wiley was a man accustomed to appearing unsurprised.
“There was talk of retaliation against my husband. It was why we had to leave.”
Cassian smiled his encouragement, and she drew out the newspaper clipping. “I found this item in the newspaper.” She handed the clipping to Mr. Wiley and studied his face as he read. His face showed nothing.
“Frederik and Tessa Dietz, the people in that picture, were acquaintances of ours in Comodoro. In fact, we all arrived together on the Frisia three years ago. Dr. Tredegar also knew them in Amsterdam.” She had to choke back her tears. “Mr. Wiley, the baby is my baby Zef.” Her voice broke. She had done very well so far, but this was too much. Elly was waking, beginning to squirm in her sling.
Cassian stepped in. “This couple was childless in Comodoro less than a year ago. The child in this picture is approximately two years old. I’m aware that that information alone does not prove anything.”
“It’s my Zef, I know it is,” Minke said.
“You think these people were behind the kidnapping?” Mr. Wiley flicked the clipping.
“Yes,” Minke said.
Mr. Wiley produced a soft whistle.
“We went to the address given in the paper and waited, and I saw Zef. He was in a carriage being wheeled by a nursemaid. Cassian said it wouldn’t work to simply snatch him. The Dietzes could do us harm. They’re ruthless people.”
“I know nothing of children, Minke,” Mr. Wiley said. “But a year has passed since you saw your child. How can you be sure this is he?”
“A mother knows, Mr. Wiley.”
“Dr. Tredegar, are you of the same opinion? Do you also believe this child to be Zef?”
“I err on the side of caution as a rule, but I’m inclined to think it’s possible.”
She wanted to hug him. It was the closest he’d come.
“This Frederik Dietz.” Mr. Wiley rubbed his temple. He seemed to debate with himself for a moment. “It’s a very serious accusation you’re making.”
Cassian said, “It has not yet come to an accusation, sir. At this point we merely seek to affirm the child’s identity. If it’s Zef, the other questions will follow. The Dietzes must be given an opportunity to explain.”
Mr. Wiley squeezed the bridge of his nose. He checked his pocket watch and got to his feet. Minke laced Elly back into her sling and rose as well. Their meeting was over.
“But will you help me?” Minke blurted.
Mr. Wiley stiffened and checked his watch again.
“Thank you for your time,” Cassian said, taking Minke by the arm. Once outside, he hustled her along the corridor and back down to the lobby, where she wrenched free of him.
“He offered nothing. He doesn’t believe us!” she said.
“You don’t know that.”
“He offered no assistance at all.”
“Think of the risk to him,” Cassian said.
“He’s not like that.”
“Everybody is like that.”
“I’m going back to the Dietzes’ building and watch. They’ll take him to the park. If Mr. Wiley won’t do anything, I’ll just have to do it myself.”
“Who said he won’t do anything?”
“He was so abrupt with us!”
“He’s a busy man.”
“I want my Zef.” She bolted through the door to the st
reet. “I’m going to get him. I’ll wait all day and all night if I have to.”
Cassian struggled to keep up with her. It was cruel of her to outrun him, but today she didn’t care. “If the Dietzes see you, Minke, I don’t need to tell you,” he called to her. “You’ll never see Zef again. And if you’re arrested, you’ll lose Elly as well!”
She stopped and he caught up to her. She hadn’t even considered this. He was out of breath. “How about this. If nothing happens by the end of the week, you go ahead and do it your way. But we can’t do it your way and then do it mine, because once it’s done your way, the cat is out of the bag. We have no more leverage. It has to be my way and then yours.”
“What’s your way? No way?”
“We’ve told Mr. Wiley the facts. Give him the time he needs to consider them.”
“Sometimes I want to kill you, Cassian Tredegar.”
He laughed. “I know,” he said, “but then I’d be dead.”
22
THE NEXT DAYS were harrowing. Mr. Wiley said nothing about her visit. He gave not the slightest indication they had even spoken but treated her as before, with polite respect. If she came upon him in the kitchen with Mrs. Bowen, he gave her his usual smiling nod and said good morning. He brought a shirt to her sewing room to have the collar turned, and even then he said nothing of their meeting, and neither did she. She had promised Cassian not to pester him.
Cassian arrived to see her on a Friday. Had Mr. Wiley said anything? he wanted to know.
Nothing, she said, feeling surly about having to wait, sure nothing would happen. By now she was looking forward to carrying out her own plan. She had three more days to go before the week was up and she could walk into the lobby of 810 Fifth Avenue and demand to be taken to the Dietzes’ apartment. Zef would see her, throw his head back, and laugh. They would have a tearful reunion. She would bring him to the apartment and show Mr. Wiley she had been correct. So there, she would say. He might not keep her on with two children, and with egg on his face, but no matter. She would figure it out.