Yes, they all deserve it, and worse. All the members of the Club. We’ve finally got one of them here, and he is going to tell us what we want to know in the twelve hours we have before his ship sails. Several of our waiters have already gone to his hotel room with the key we filched out of his pocket, packed his bags, checked him out, and are in the process of bringing us his belongings to riffle through. Perhaps there is another name in an address book, a hint a clue. Something. Anything to help us.
Sir Patty doesn’t answer.
“Said nothing about what?” Jack repeats. His voice is calm, not overtly menacing, but if I were in Sir Patty’s shoes I’d certainly want him to shut up and go away.
“Who are you?” Sir Patty asks feebly. “You sound like Norris. Is that you, Norris? How dare you, you miserable coward. Untie me at once.”
Norris? Who is Norris?
“It’s not Norris,” Jack says. “Guess again.”
“Who are you?” he cries. “Why am I here? What do you want?”
Who are you? Why are you here?
“Who do you think we are?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why you’ve singled me out, or why you’re in New York. Have you followed me here? You’ve no right to follow me. We aren’t scheduled to meet till next year. I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing at all. The books are in perfect order. I’ve not said a word. Upon my honor, I’ve not said a word, not now, not ever.”
Yes, she knows that they meet every three years.
“A man such as yourself may not use the word honor in my presence,” Jack replies. “You are not honorable, and you are no gentleman. Besides,” he adds, “if you’ve not done anything wrong, why have we singled you out? Could there be a discrepancy you might have missed?”
“Discrepancy? Never! I don’t know what you’re going on about!” he cries. “I demand that you let me go. There’ll be hell to pay when I find out who you are. This is an utmost transgression of the rules, and you know it.”
Matteo and I exchange glances and we nearly smile. Utmost transgression, I like that. That’s rich, coming from him.
“Someone has been talking,” Jack goes on. He’s the smoothest bluffer I’ve ever heard. “One of us has been talking. Who do you think it could be?”
Sir Patty visibly relaxes, thinking he’s out of danger. I find it absolutely amazing that he’s not more panic-stricken, tied up in a strange dark room with strange dark men. They must be used to the dark, all of the members. It must be what spawned them.
“I can’t imagine,” he says. “Such a thing has never happened before, certainly not since I’ve been a member. Or my father. We haven’t had a problem since that Duffield in 1887. And the king, of course. Bloody fool, Edward, and that dreadful Simpson person. You know that. But never a discrepancy, not since my family has been keeping the books. Never.”
Duffield? Who is Duffield?
“Yes,” Jack says, “but it must be someone. If it’s not you. I personally happen to believe it is you. Cavorting in a public space, flaunting your ring to all and sundry. To the woman who runs a nightclub. Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?”
“She’s just a silly woman who likes rings,” he says, pouting and defensive. “It doesn’t mean anything. I concede that I should not have worn it, yet drawing attention to the ring should I be asked about it is the best method of deflecting interest. You know that. We all know that. It’s what we’ve always been told. I did nothing wrong.”
“Then you must tell me who it can be,” Jack says, pulling out a notepad. He ignores the crack about Belladonna being silly. The time to pay for that one will come later. “Either you tell me now or we shall leave you here to rot. No one knows you’re here. No one will ever find you if we bury you alive. I’d think about it, if I were you, and tell me quickly. We have no time to waste.”
Sir Patty frowns, but says nothing. We stand there for what seems like an eternity. I am willing myself not to turn around and look at Belladonna.
“Very well,” Jack says, and turns off the lights. “Stay here until you change your mind.”
We walk away and leave him there. I walk over to Belladonna, and she shakes her head in the gloom. She’s not leaving. She’s going to sit there, in the dark, until he talks. I try to sit down beside her, but she waves me away impatiently.
I can’t help her. No one can. Matteo tugs me away and I leave her to sit with her demons.
We sit down in the next room and wait, listening to Sir Patty hollering and blustering. Jack’s spies return from the hotel with the suitcases, and we quickly pore through them, photographing every page of his slim leather address book before copying down as much as we can. Names are what we need. Names, addresses, phone numbers, even if they’re in code. The Pritch and his team will be working their magic on every name we give them.
We’re going to find them, every last one.
Eventually, after what feels like a lifetime but is only about an hour, Sir Patty stops hollering and starts blubbering. What a baby. How time flies when you’re a captive in the dark. How every second counts, and every noise is magnified into something terrifyingly unbearable, and every footstep means only panic and pain.
“Are you ready?” Jack says, seeming to appear out of thin air in front of him.
Sir Patty shakes his head no in a vain attempt at bravado. Does he betray the membership vows of his club and become a traitor? Or does he give them away to save his own precious skin? Such a dilemma. Upon his honor indeed.
“It is forbidden to divulge any information whatsoever about the members to an outsider,” Sir Patty says. “You know that.”
“You don’t know I’m an outsider.”
“You are, you are,” he mutters. “You’re not Norris. I’ve said enough, mentioning his name. I don’t know who you are. Only that you’re a nameless bastard. Unmask yourself, sir. I demand that you unmask yourself.”
Jack’s laugh is harsh. “Why should I? Have you unmasked yourself? Have you?”
Sir Patty says nothing. There is nothing for him to say.
“The punishment for unmasking is excommunication forever,” Jack bluffs. “A fate worse than death.”
“Yes,” he whispers. “How did you know that? Who are you?”
“Are you prepared to die?”
Silence.
“Are you?” Jack asks again, and motions to Matteo. We huddle around Sir Patty so Belladonna can’t see what we’re about to do, and he screams in sudden, excruciating pain. I’m not going to tell you what made him scream so. It doesn’t matter; it didn’t leave a permanent scar on his flabby white flesh. Not like our torture did to us.
I tell myself he is payback for what happened to Belladonna, to us, he and all the men in the world like him, arrogant and selfish and power-mad bastards, one and all.
I didn’t say we were nice, did I?
“The list,” Jack says.
“No,” he repeats, and then screams again, and again.
We walk away and sit in the other room for about forty minutes. I need a drink; we all do. Belladonna is huddled in the corner, lost in her cloak and mask. Small and lost. I don’t think she’s moved a muscle since this started.
We go back in to do it again.
“The list,” Jack says. “The list, or you die. Don’t be a martyr, and don’t be silly.”
Sir Patty is about to pass out, so we throw a bucket of water on his head.
“The list,” Jack says again, relentless and implacable. “What do a few names matter? They’ll never know. No one need ever know; it’ll be our little secret, and I can promise you that I’ll never tell. You’re going to have to trust me if you want to live. And you don’t want to die, do you, Patterson Cresswell? Do you?” He tilts Sir Patty’s head up toward the feeble light. “You don’t want to die, do you?” he asks again, almost crooning. “No… no, you don’t want to die, not here, not now, not like this, cold and forgotten. Not like the women you use. Not like this.”
“
We never killed anyone,” he says, his voice a croaking whisper. Defensive to the end, even with his hair dankly plastered to his head and pain searing the very tips of his nerves. This is not a time to get sanctimonious. “Not anyone, ever.”
“You killed their spirit,” Jack says fiercely. “So tell me. My patience is wearing thin indeed. The list or you die.”
“Why me?” he asks, moaning. “Why me?”
Belladonna watch you die.
“Because it’s your lucky day,” Jack says. “Because it had to be someone. And it’s not just you. It’s all the members of the Club, all of you. Do you hear me? All of you. And if we don’t kill you now, believe me, it’s going to get worse. We’re very good at what we do, and we’ll be following you every day for the rest of your unnatural life. You won’t be able to escape us. Turn around and we’ll be there, following you, your wife, your children, your friends. Put a cigarette in your mouth and we’ll light it. Order a meal and we’ll serve it. You’ll never know when we’ll strike, and you’ll never feel safe again. Not now, not ever. And trust me when I tell you that the threat is always worse than the deed itself.”
Jack steps back and risks a glance at Belladonna. Only his love for her could propel him forward now.
She is no more tangible than a shadow.
“The list,” he says, his voice wearier than death. “Give me the list, and we’ll disappear. Only a few names. We know they’re in code.”
We don’t, actually. He’s bluffing again. I remind myself never to get Jack angry. He is beginning to scare even me.
“Norris. Duffield,” Jack says, almost crooning. “Norris and Duffield. Norris and Duffield. These we know already. So what do a few more matter? You’ve already given them away. Don’t worry. Trust me.” His voice is so soothing, so calm, so entreating. “Be a good boy, yes, I know you can do it. Norris and Duffield. Who else? That’s a good boy, you can do it. Only you are brave enough to do it. Only you, that’s right. You’re the chosen one. We chose you because you’re the bravest. No one else could have survived this, only you. Tell me"you’re a good boy.”
Sir Patty looks at him, his eyes pleading. His mouth works. He can see only Jack’s eyes burning back at him. The pitiful act will get him nowhere, and he knows it.
“I’ll never tell,” Jack says. “You have my word. They’ll never know. No one will know but you and me. Tell me, and you can go.”
Sir Patty’s mouth works again. “Bates,” he says, so low Jack has to kneel down beside him to hear him clearly. “Dashwood, Duffield, Francis, Henley, Lloyd, Morton, Norris, Stapleton, Thompson, Tucker, Whitehead, Wilkes.”
“Which one are you?” Jack asks. “Tell me that, and you can go. Go free forever.”
“Wilkes,” he says. “I’m Wilkes.”
The light goes out. Sir Patty feels a sharp pinch in his arm, then oblivion.
No no no, we didn’t kill him. How could you think such a thing?
We clean him up and change his clothes, and when he first stirs a few hours later, he is slumped in the backseat of a car driven by Matteo, waiting outside the pier where the Royal Splendour is embarking. We tell the first-class stewards that poor Sir Patterson had, well, just a tiny bit too much to drink the night before, and ask if they could help us load him into his cabin, along with all his luggage. We tip them magnanimously and speed away. When Sir Patty finally awakens from his stupor, he is already far out to sea. Adrift, you might say.
It’s not our fault he has a stroke not long after arriving home, rendering him speechless and partially paralyzed. In fact, it is quite annoying, because now he can say nothing to any of them that might be of use to us. The Pritch quickly rallies, though, and sends trained nurses he just happens to know from the poshest agency in London to watch over Sir Patty’s drooling.
Not the kind of drooling he did as a member of the Club.
Or, perhaps, just a tiny bit of poison found its mark.
Just perhaps. Think about it. How easy it would have been to slip a wee dram of a very toxic substance into his nightly scotch.
Pretty poison is her cry.
Poison is the weapon of a woman. The venom of her rage is often the only thing she has left.
No one knows it yet, but that was the last night of the Club Belladonna.
At first, they think it is as it has always been, the club shutting down for no reason at the capricious request of its owner who, had they known it, retreats to her bedroom just around the corner and refuses to come out for over a week. Surely it will just as suddenly open up again. It is so irritating to find the club locked and silent just before Christmas and all the seasonal celebrations. It is even more annoying to be deprived of the Club Belladonna on New Year’s Eve. Oh well, the revelers tell themselves with a sigh, Belladonna is one smart cookie to be able to get out of town for the holidays.
But as the weeks turn into months and the crimson door remains shut, the rumors multiply and panic sets in. Gansevoort Street is deserted and cold, a marrow-freezing wind howling in from the river like a wailing, wandering spirit. It taunts the desperate social climbers milling about aimlessly, even in such bitter weather, hoping against hope that if they stay out there long enough somehow they can will the door to open and allow them into paradise.
“Wait. I hear a dog barking,” one of them shouts. “It must be Andromeda.”
Dream on. It’s not Andromeda. It’s a stray dog barking because it’s hungry and bored. Andromeda has disappeared, and no one knows why.
Around the corner, Jack moves quietly into the house"our combined houses, that is. Richard and Vivienne are staying down at the other end for the time being, working for Jack, following up on whatever leads he needs them to. The band is busy playing gigs, because everyone wants the musicians from the infamous Club Belladonna to enliven their parties, hoping against hope that one of them might divulge something, anything. No chance, of course; the band members are as astonished as everyone else at the club’s sudden closure. The six months’ salary they’ve been paid is more than enough, of course, to keep their lips sealed. None of them dares risk the wrath of Belladonna. Not if she might be coming back someday.
She must come back.
Jack is keeping his keenly practiced eye on the abandoned club and his keenly practiced mind on detecting; we need him more than ever. He does whatever the Pritch asks, and he is overseeing the team helping the women who continue to write dozens of letters to the club’s address every day. Many of the waiters and other staff who worked in the Club Belladonna will now be spying on philandering husbands and self-absorbed businessmen. It’s easier work for them, with better hours. Plus it’s much less stressful on the feet. Belladonna insists that Jack contact Alison Jenkins and lure her away from the import-export business so that she can help him run the foundation from an office we set up on Park Avenue.
I won’t give up hope that Alison and Jack will fall head over heels. They’d be good for each other. Besides, it would take Jack’s mind off Belladonna, and it would be a relief for her to know that a man who so willingly helped her might find the love he deserves.
Furthermore, love is in the air: Matteo and Annabeth marry one afternoon in a quickie ceremony at City Hall, attended by her delighted children. For now, they’ll live in Annabeth’s apartment, while they decide if they want to move down to Virginia, as we hope they will. Belladonna is struggling to keep her need for my brother in check, but she tells herself she doesn’t want to deal with the complication of divulging anything to Annabeth. I’ll just have to do for the both of us, not that I’m not up to the task, of course. Annabeth told Matteo that she already has the children she wants, and frankly never was that enthralled by sex anyway. My heart turned over when a disbelieving Matteo told me that, and it took weeks for me to convince him that she really might love him so much that she meant it.
Or rather, I should say that love is in the air for some of us. For others, hearts are swollen not with tenderness but with a passionate need for vengea
nce.
The rumors are still flying like a bomber on endless secret missions. Loose Lips is at a loss. He’s reported every single statement he’s heard, no matter how ridiculous. Belladonna killed someone, and had to disappear. Someone wants to kill her. She’s gone back to Europe. She bought a château in France. No, England. She’s on a retreat in Tibet. She lost all her money. She fell in love and ran away with the lucky bastard, whoever he is.
No, that’s not true"she drank a bottle of her own perfume, and it killed her.
Who are we to dissuade him from printing such lovely gossip?
All they know is that she’s gone. Will she ever come back? Why did she go away? Where has she gone? How could she do this to them?
Everyone who is anyone boasts that they’ve been in the club, of course, invited by the crook of a gloved finger to sit at Belladonna’s exclusive table. That, of course, they’ve seen a hint of her smile curving under her mask as she toyed with a cerise-colored ringlet, her dangling pearl rings swaying hypnotically.
Belladonna leaves them with nothing. Her club closes as mysteriously as it opened. She is depriving everyone of the gift of her presence, and, in doing so, is spared the cruelty of dwindling interest.
This way the Club Belladonna will be alive forever.
“And you know what?” Loose Lips asked in his column one day, months after giving up hope of seeing the mysterious Belladonna once again. “No one managed to take a photograph of her. No one recorded her voice, or sketched her face.”
No one ever found out who she was.
After a while, the Club Belladonna becomes a living legend, there and yet not, an empty shell of a building that once was the Kiss-Kiss Kandy factory, silent and deserted. It was all a dream; it wasn’t real.
She wasn’t real.
No one would believe the truth.
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