Sirens

by Janet Fox

  She narrowed her eyes at me, suspicious, mouth stiff and accusatory.

  I went on, “He wants something from me.”

  She paused, glancing from my hand that rested on her arm to my face. “What?”

  “Information. About my brother.”

  Her eyes stayed narrowed, but I could sense her softening. “Teddy.”

  “Yes. And I—I made Teddy a promise. Now I don’t know how I can keep it.”

  She put her fingers up to her cheek and touched the bruise. “Listen. He knows you have something Teddy gave you. And he thinks you know what happened when Teddy disappeared. He thinks Teddy is still alive and hiding out. Or so he’s said. In moments when he doesn’t think I’m really listening.” She glanced sideways at me. “Do you? I mean, it was mysterious, the way Teddy just…”

  I stepped back, leaning against the greenhouse frame for support, feeling weak. “How does he know?”

  “He knows. Don’t ask me how; he has his ways.” She shrugged. “It’s only a matter of time. He’ll find a way to get to you. He always does.”

  “Lou…”

  She dropped her head, the dark, curling waves of her hair falling across her eyes. Then she lifted her face again. “Come on, doll. There’s a really nice spread in the dining room. Danny’ll just chuck it out if we don’t join him.”

  It was all I could do to sit at the table and pick at the food; my stomach was in knots. Connor talked almost nonstop about a shipment of orchids due in from South America. Their color. Their rarity. How he’d made a deal to have them smuggled north, and how many people he’d had to bribe. Louie laughed at all of his jokes, oohed and aahed at each of his over-the-top comments, and fawned over him, even feeding him sardines with her fingers and licking them afterward. Disgust crawled over me.

  When Charlie appeared at the door, ready to accompany me back to Manhattan, I was so relieved I could hardly move fast enough. Connor and Louie walked me to the door, arm in arm, Connor bending over my hand in farewell.

  At his touch I felt ill.

  Just as Charlie helped me into the backseat of the limousine, Connor called out.

  “Miss Winter! Please give my warm regards to your father. Oh, and to your mother as well.”

  His words were weighted. I knew they contained a warning.

  All the way home I fretted. So much so that, when I entered the apartment and saw Pops standing in the foyer with my uncle, I leaped into his arms.

  CHAPTER 27

  Lou

  After lunch, after she left, I went up to my room. Headache, I said. Splitting, I told him.

  I took off my diamond bracelet, laid it out on the table in the square of sunlight until the reflection was ready to give me that headache I’d complained of.

  How much? I wondered. How much would it be worth? Would it buy my freedom? Maybe I could hop on a train, head west. If only I could open that safe, get the necklace, the earrings—those diamonds would be enough—and then I’d be free…. Or maybe some of that weird stuff in the museum, those big gaudy jewels…

  Ah, but then I thought about it again. Charlie. I couldn’t leave Charlie. Not in the same town with Danny, if I jilted him and stole his jewels. Especially not if I took something from his precious museum. He’d take it all out on Charlie. Believe you me, Danny would’ve given the business to everyone I cared about.

  Okay, so Charlie’d go with me. He could play his music for a bit of dough, for when the money ran out. Yeah, him and me, on the lam, that’s what I considered. I even had an okay singing voice, so maybe we could go together, him playing backup; maybe that’s how we could make it….

  That’s when that one big tear rolled down my cheek and landed on the table, reflecting the light like those diamonds.

  There was nothing I could do. I was, pure and simple, nuts about Danny. Crazy nuts. So nuts I knew I’d never disappear on him. You don’t have to believe me. But I didn’t leave him, did I?

  I turned my attention to other matters. It was okay for me to hate Jo for bending Danny’s wandering eye. That gave me something to chew on, all right, no matter what you might think of me. I didn’t care for all her weak protests, that nonsense about her brother; she couldn’t fool me. She was dying for my Danny. So what would you expect me to think?

  Get rid of her, and Danny would forget her soon enough. Put her in a box and make her disappear, like that Thurston fellow did. Then I’d be the levitating girl.

  Yeah. Put that Jo Winter in a box, and make her disappear.

  CHAPTER 28

  MAY 24, 1925

  The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows.

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1901

  Jo

  “You’re early!” I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder. “You said a couple of weeks. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Now, Josephine, no need for such a display.” Pops hugged me and then pushed me away. Then he held me farther back, at arm’s length. “What in heaven’s name have you done to yourself?” Anger mingled with his surprise. “Only a few days, and look at you. What have you done?” His gaze drifted over my hair and then settled on my knees, exposed beneath my silk slip dress.

  I tried to keep tears from forming as I touched the nape of my bare neck. I’d been so happy to see him; now my joy was squashed by his condemnation. Even though I’d known he never would have approved of my hair and clothes, I murmured, “I really hoped you’d like it.”

  Silence filled the air, thick and unpleasant. My uncle came to my rescue. “It’s all the rage, Billy. My daughter bobbed her hair, too. I guess it’s easier for the girls to deal with.” He gave a halfhearted chuckle.

  Pops remained silent. Then he shook his head. “You look like one of those floozie types. I’m disappointed in you, Josephine.”

  I sucked in air. I shouldn’t be surprised; I’d never please him. I wasn’t Teddy. “Did you bring Ma with you?”

  He glanced at my uncle, his eyes dark. “No. Your ma has left to visit her aunt.”

  “Why? Is Aunt Elizabeth sick?” My great-aunt Lizzy was as tough as a warhorse, having lived alone on the Montana plains all her life. After Teddy spent that summer working for her, he’d maintained I’d inherited her tough and stubborn nature. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not exactly.”

  My nerves tingled. Pops was hiding something. “Pops. What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is that you’ve clearly been disobeying me.” His harsh voice cut right through me.

  Between the greeting he gave me and the terrible experience I’d had at Connor’s I had no patience left. And here I’d thought to defend Pops against Connor, by giving up Teddy—by giving up myself. I folded my arms across my chest, my anger yielding to defiance.

  My uncle, still trying to lighten the mood, clapped his hands together. “Well! I guess that’s fine then. Jo, your father’s here to see me. You’ll see him before he leaves. You can run along now.”

  Distant street noise filled the silence, the honking, rumbling cacophony of New York. Yesterday those noises had gotten on my nerves, frayed as they were from my experiences of the night before. Today New York’s glamour shone like a beacon signaling my way to escape from Pops’s stifling demands.

  Pops turned away from me to stare, down the hallway toward the spare, white living room. “Sure, Uncle Bert. I’ll be in my room.” Then I paused. “Mr. Daniel Connor just had me out to his estate on the island. It was a pretty swell place. He sent his best wishes.”

  Pops turned around, sharp. “Connor!”

  My uncle’s face was fixed in a thin smile, his eyes flitting between Pops and me.

  Pops flared. “What have you been doing with Danny Connor?”

  Trying to save you and Ma, I thought. Pops had let me down hard, and I was not about to forgive him. “You said I should meet people. He’s one of the people I’ve met.”

  “Connor is not someone I want you mixed up with
, Josephine. I want you to stay away from the likes of him. Bert, I thought you understood that.”

  “Ah!” My uncle opened and closed his mouth. “Gosh, Billy, I honestly didn’t know anything about it. It must have been something Melody cooked up.” He blinked and licked his lips. “But after all, Daniel Connor knows a lot of important people in this town. It’s hard to get around New York without running into people he knows.”

  “People he knows?” Pops’s voice rose. “I didn’t have the likes of Danny Connor in mind when I sent Jo here. Just the opposite. I want to keep her away from…Here, Bert, I thought we had an understanding.”

  An understanding? “Pops…”

  Uncle Bert’s hands flapped. “Jo’s a smart girl. She sees right through stuff. I know she can take care of—”

  “I want her to find a match. A good match. Get her out of this situation. Not find herself in one of Connor’s speakeasies with the other floozies.” He waved his hand in my direction. “Already looking like one.”

  “Now, Billy, don’t talk that way. Jo’s been out with Melody.”

  “Then tell your daughter not to take my daughter out anywhere she can run into Danny Connor.”

  My impatience swelled. Pops and Uncle Bert were talking about me as if I wasn’t there. My voice shook. “Pops—”

  He held up his hand to silence me.

  Uncle Bert rocked on his heels and sucked in his cheeks. “Mary and I have been thinking about having a party. We’d host all the best people. None of the lowlifes, I promise you. I can introduce Jo to the best folks in town, cream of the crop, real high-society stuff. Even some of those types who hang out at the Algonquin—those artists and writers. Hey? How about it?” He looked at me. “What about it, Jo?”

  I folded my arms, pursing my lips, finally able to get a word in. “Gee. That would be swell.”

  My uncle beamed, not hearing my sarcasm. “And Billy, I almost forgot! She’s already met John Rushton.”

  Pops nodded, approving. “Now, that Rushton’s the kind of man I was talking about. He’d keep her safe and sound.”

  What was I, invisible? Pops seemed to think I was an object to be bartered over. And Rushton. My anger swelled. “I’m not interested in John Rushton,” I said, my tone defiant.

  Pops looked at me, his eyes flashing. “You’d be lucky to have someone like John Rushton even pay you the smallest bit of attention. He’s from one of New York’s oldest families.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “He’s smart. And he has connections. He’s got a big house and a bigger bank account. And he can keep you away from the likes of Connor.”

  I dropped my arms to my sides, rigid, my fists clenched. “I really don’t care. I do not want to be talked about like I have no choices. I told you this before, and I’ll say it again: I am not ready to get married, Pops.”

  He leaned toward me. “You will do as I tell you.”

  “No, Pops, I won’t. That’s not what this is about anyway. You didn’t send me here to find a match. You wanted me out of the house.” I watched the astonishment cover his face. “I’m betting you sent Ma out to Montana for the same reason.” I straightened my back. One obnoxious male in my day was enough, and Connor had tried my patience. “And what about Teddy? Connor wants a piece of him. That’s the real problem, isn’t it? You can take your schemes about my future and toss them in the Hudson River for all I care.”

  I turned on my heel, marched to my room, and locked the door.

  I paced the room, back and forth. As I did, and as my temper cooled, I began to think about everything, and I softened. Pops was trying to protect me—that I knew already. I knew he loved me; he might be hard-nosed and domineering, but he loved me, all right. I’d grant him that. Well, I’d fallen into the danger zone in spite of Pops’s best efforts. And it wasn’t his fault, any of it, really.

  I had to face it. This all started with Teddy.

  Whatever Teddy had gotten mixed up in with Daniel Connor was big. Too big for Teddy to handle himself, and now Connor was chasing the Winter family down one member at a time.

  But the expectations. Pops had such ideas for me, like he’d had with Teddy. Teddy had to be perfect, be the hope for the Winters. He had to go to war, return a hero. To go out into the world and lead. And he failed. Pops talked a good line, about how Teddy walked on water, but deep down I knew. Pops had never forgiven Teddy for falling apart when he came home, and he never would. He left us high and dry and sent Pops into bootlegging for Danny Connor.

  The stress had to have gotten to Teddy. I knew it did.

  And now it was up to me. Up to me to live up to Pops’s expectations, to be perfect. And Pops’s version of perfect? A nineteenth-century girl who married up and brought her family class and money. Not a twentieth-century girl who worked and lived on her own. Certainly not a flapper with bobbed hair and exposed shins who talked back to her father.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared out the window at the thin strip of blue sky that lay squeezed between the high-rises across the avenue. The westering sun reflected in the buildings’ windows, making gilded rectangles, like eyes. New York was alive, animal-like, stretching and yawning in the afternoon, and changing its mood as it readied for another evening of glitter and glamour.

  Pops was trying to be a good father, but he was still wrapped up in his own thwarted dreams of fortune and nightmares of loss.

  I didn’t understand what anyone was really up to. But I knew who did.

  I opened Teddy’s journal to the gap where pages were missing. I leaned back against my headboard to read the next section, hoping I could make sense of it, even though the gap in personal entries was over a year wide.

  March 3, 1921

  Daniel Connor, reputed king of the East Side, took me in. Said I could be trusted and he liked that. The paycheck is good, he doesn’t ask questions, and I told him I wouldn’t do anything underhanded.

  He asked me to define underhanded.

  I said I’d never kill another person, long as I lived. I’d done enough of that, and I was finished with it.

  He said okay.

  March 18

  I think this’ll work out all right. The orchids, they are something else. I wish I could spend every second in the greenhouse. It’s kind of soothing. Danny, I think he appreciates that I get it.

  I think he gets me.

  April 23

  I keep going over it all in my head. Rushton was a nice guy. And his brother…just a kid. They weren’t part of the problem.

  Sometimes I think I left pieces of myself scattered in that trench, like I was blown up and didn’t know it, pieces of my heart, my brain, my soul. I don’t know that I’ll ever get them back.

  And I sure wish I’d never been a part of…

  April 29

  Danny Connor’s all right, near as I can tell.

  Danny Connor? Teddy worked for Danny Connor.

  I felt as if the wind had just been knocked clean out of my lungs. I’d been right: this did all start with Teddy. But not in the way I’d thought.

  No question: I couldn’t read on. Something had happened in that year that was gone. I had to find those missing pages. I looked again at the hint: library lions.

  I buried the journal, wrapped in the scarf, deep in my bottom drawer.

  Pops and Uncle Bert were still in the living room. “I’m going to the library,” I said. “I won’t be long.” Uncle Bert gave me a cheery wave. Pops didn’t turn around.

  It was rush hour, and the streets were alive with traffic. I made my way west to Fifth and then downtown to the library, the tall columns whose steps were flanked by those familiar lions, and I stood on the steps and remembered.

  Teddy had lifted me up so that I could touch one great paw, and then we’d made our way inside. I poked around that same paw but knew no pages could be hidden there, in the weather after all this time and in public view.

  We’d also gone inside, and Teddy had taken me to the stack
s and—Suddenly I knew what Teddy’s note referred to.

  I moved into the main reading room and made for the stacks, looking for fiction and the author’s last name beginning with “D.”

  There it was: the collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that Teddy had introduced me to that same day, here in the library. We’d checked out The Hound of the Baskervilles, the very same volume that sat on the shelf even now. I pulled it out and opened the book.

  The smell of the old paper; the feel of the pages; the heft of the volume. Teddy was right there with me all over again; my memory of that afternoon was so strong. He had read the book to me over the next few weeks until we’d returned it to the library.

  I flipped through the book, not knowing what I’d find—a sheaf of pages tucked inside, perhaps? But if there had been pages left there for me, they were long gone. Disappointment curled through me like a cold chill.

  I checked out the book and walked back to the apartment, pushing through the crowds. By the time I got back, Pops had left.

  I retreated to my room, tired and frustrated, opening The Hound to random pages, trying to decipher the clue.

  The night sounds of the city grew louder through my open window, and I heard snatches of song and screeching laughter and howls and catcalls and honks and slams and tires and brakes and all the relentless cacophony of this island city rising up. All its inhabitants carrying on like there was no tomorrow, because, after all, we lived in the decade when skirts rose and mores dropped and, why, Prohibition was just another rule to be broken, like all the other broken things strewn about the concrete sidewalks of this magic kingdom that we called the city of New York.