A Promise of Ruin

by Cuyler Overholt

  They smiled at each other across the table, causing me a fresh pang of envy. Love seemed to be such a simple thing for other people. Why did it have to be so complicated for Simon and me?

  Deciding I had intruded on their budding romance long enough, I headed back up to my bedroom to get changed for the evening’s big event. Simon had taken the boys to see a magic show a few weeks before, followed by a visit to the Martinka Brothers workshop, and they’d been working up their own acts ever since. They were putting on a performance at the Wieran clubhouse tonight, and I’d promised Frankie I would be there to act as his “volunteer.”

  I picked up the scattered textbooks, and was returning them to the trunk, when the Krafft-Ebing fell out of my grasp and splayed open on the floor. As I picked it up, some lines at the bottom of the open page caught my eye:

  Among animals, it is always the male who pursues the female with proffers of love. Playful or actual flight of the female is not infrequently observed; and then the relation is like that between the beast of prey and the victim.

  I allowed myself an unladylike snort. I could say without reservation that Simon had been woefully underperforming in his duties as beast of prey. I thought again of Katie and Maurice, reenacting the ancient rites of courtship. Wasn’t intimacy a natural part of the wooing process? Why was Simon being so obstinate? It wasn’t as if I was asking him to drag me into the bushes and consummate our relationship on the spot. Why should he deprive himself—and me—of the thrill and implicit promise of smaller, intimate exchanges?

  I read a few more lines, hoping to find an answer.

  It affords a man great pleasure to win a woman, to conquer her; and in the arts of love, the modesty of a woman who keeps herself on the defensive until the moment of surrender is an element of great psychological significance and importance.

  I felt my cheeks growing warm, as I remembered how I’d practically served myself to Simon on a platter. Perhaps that was where I’d gone wrong. But if a man wasn’t looking for an honest and equal partner, what was he looking for? I read on.

  As a result of a powerful natural instinct, at a certain age, a man is drawn toward a woman. He loves sensually, and is influenced in his choice by physical beauty.

  I frowned down at the words.

  Like Kitty, Krafft-Ebing seemed to be saying it was a woman’s physical, “sensual” attributes that counted most in attracting a man. I tried to consider this with an open mind. Instead of fighting it, perhaps I should try to take advantage of this apparent weakness in male psychology. Simon was, I knew, a master of self-control. But apparently, I had instinct on my side. If there was a beast of prey lurking within Simon’s breast, it might be possible for me to draw it out, if only I used the proper lure.

  I crossed to the wardrobe and eyed the contents. Far to the right, among my seldom-worn apparel, was a blouse Aunt Margaret had bought me on one of our trips to Europe. Although she was a conscientious chaperone, my aunt tended to fret over my lack of suitable marriage prospects and had bought me the blouse to help me “develop my flirtatious side.” I pulled it out of the wardrobe. Similar to the gypsy bodice Kitty had worn, it had a very low, gathered neckline, with a sheer lace inset that covered but didn’t conceal. I had only worn it once, in France. At my aunt’s insistence, I had paired it with my highest corset to enhance my bust line and then felt uncomfortable the entire evening because of all the attention I received. Although I’d never been one to flaunt it, I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of in the bosom department, something I presumed Simon remembered from our brief mutual exploration in the hay. If I wanted to rouse his inner beast, perhaps a visual reminder would be just the thing.

  But no, I thought, hanging it up again. For one thing, the boys’ club was hardly a suitable venue for such a display. More importantly, I just didn’t have it in me to play the come-hither seductress. I was what I was, and if that wasn’t good enough to make me irresistible to Simon, then so be it. I pulled out a fresh shirtwaist and buttoned it on.

  • • •

  An hour later, I was seated beside the object of my frustration in the second row of seats the boys had set up in the Wieran Club’s meeting room—or what tonight was being billed as the “Wieran Palace of Mystery,” according to the hand-painted banner hanging between the windows. The rest of the seats were occupied by club members not taking part in the show, plus assorted friends and saloon regulars.

  It was the first time I’d seen Simon since his astonishing revelation two days prior, and I was glad the event gave us little opportunity to interact, for I found myself feeling uncharacteristically ill at ease in his presence. I didn’t know how I was supposed to behave or what I was supposed to say, now that our cards had been laid on the table. Simon, on the other hand, had not appeared the slightest bit uncomfortable to see me, crossing his arms over his chest when I sat beside him and giving me a self-satisfied smile. Indeed, he was acting far too smug for my liking. I had the feeling he rather enjoyed having me in his thrall, with the power to give or withhold his affections.

  The magic had been moving forward in fits and starts for the past ten minutes, some of the acts more successfully than others, many accompanied by jeers and catcalls from the audience. “Can I have a nickel from the audience?” asked the boy currently onstage. Simon dug into his pockets but came up empty.

  I tried my own pocket, pulling out a handful of loose change along with a button, a ticket stub, and other bric-a-brac. “Here you are, Tommy,” I called out, holding up a nickel with my other hand. From the corner of my eye, I saw Simon stiffen. He was staring at my open palm. Following his gaze, I saw that it was locked onto one of Pauline’s condom tins, nestled among the detritus.

  “Thanks, Doc,” said Tommy, wresting the coin from my suddenly frozen fingers.

  Simon’s stunned gaze rose to mine. I was about to explain, horrified by what he must be thinking—when I suddenly thought better of it. Simon had called me a “red-blooded woman.” Why not let him wonder what a red-blooded woman might do if the man she wanted denied her all satisfaction of her natural desires? “Oh! I forgot that was in there,” I said. I slid the tin back into my pocket and returned my attention to the stage.

  I could feel unspoken questions radiating off Simon as Tommy proceeded to make the coin disappear. Without turning my gaze from the performance, I leaned toward him and whispered, “It belongs to a friend.”

  “What friend?” he sputtered loudly.

  Two boys in the row ahead of us turned and, doing their best imitation of the Webster branch librarian, gleefully shushed him.

  Simon scowled at them, circling his finger in the air, and they turned back around with a snicker.

  Tommy bowed to tepid applause and gave up the stage to Frankie Dolan.

  “I have here an empty hat,” Frankie squeaked, removing the junkshop find from his head and turning it over to reveal the interior. “See? It’s empty. Can I have a volunteer?”

  That was my cue. I got up and made my way to the stage, taking up position beside him.

  “Lady, would you be so kind as to look this hat over and make sure I ain’t trying to pull a fast one?”

  I peered inside the hat and patted the sides, feeling for hidden compartments. “The hat is empty.”

  “OK.” Frankie laid the hat brim-side down on the cloth-covered table in front of him and fluttered his left hand over the top. From where I stood, I could see his other hand reach into a small black bag that was nailed to the inside edge of the table and rummage around inside. As he flipped the hat over with his left hand, he pulled something gray and squirming out of the bag with his right, shoving it into the hat as he turned it over. He held the hat up at chest level. “It ain’t empty now!” he squeaked, pulling a rat out of the hat by its tail.

  There was a moment’s stunned silence from the audience before the rat, clearly unhappy with this state of affairs, curled up
and bit the thumb that held it. “Ow!” Frankie howled, releasing the tail. The rat dropped to the table, ran down the side, and scampered across my foot toward the wall.

  The room exploded into applause. Frankie beamed and took a bow while I turned and stared after the rat, watching anxiously for its return.

  A few moments later, I was in the kitchen with Frankie, applying a point of caustic to the bite. Simon had followed us out of the meeting room and was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, observing us in stony silence. I ignored him, heartily enjoying his reaction. He might not want to make love to me, but he obviously didn’t want anyone else to either. “All right, Frankie, that should do it,” I said.

  He scampered out to see the rest of the show.

  “What friend?” Simon asked again the minute he was gone.

  “A new one,” I said over my shoulder, returning the stick of caustic to the kit I kept in the cupboard.

  A strangled sound escaped him. “Does he have a name?”

  I turned to face him. The tips of his ears, I noticed, had turned an interesting shade of pink. “Her name is Pauline Goldstein,” I told him, deciding he’d stewed long enough.

  His jaw sagged open.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “You didn’t think…”

  He shut his mouth, frowning in chagrin.

  “She operates a refuge for former prostitutes that I visited today. I was helping her distribute condoms as part of a campaign against venereal disease.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t handing out condoms a jailable offense?”

  “Only if you’re caught.”

  His frown deepened. “So now you’re not only visiting with ex-prostitutes, you’re thumbing your nose at the law? How far are you planning to take this, Genna?”

  I propped my hands on my hips. “You know, you sounded exactly like my father just then.”

  He bristled. “I suppose every once in a blue moon, even your father gets things right.”

  I dropped my hands to my sides with a sigh. “I was just trying to find out more information for the police.” I told him everything I’d discovered at the Goldstein home, including the fact that Caterina bore the same burn marks as Lucia. “First thing tomorrow, I intend to call Detective Petrosino and pass along what I learned. I’m hopeful that once he hears that other Italian women have been abducted in New York City, quite possibly by the same man, he’ll launch a real investigation, and that Teresa, if she has fallen into their hands, will be rescued before she ends up like the others.”

  “I just don’t get why you care so much,” Simon said, shaking his head. “You’ve never even met the woman.”

  “I know, but I still feel a responsibility for her welfare.”

  He studied me for a moment, looking genuinely puzzled. “Why is that, do you suppose? You don’t think it could have something to do with your brother, do you?”

  A reflexive denial rose to my lips but made it no further, as his question set off ripples of recognition inside me. After my brother died while under my care, I’d been beset by new imperatives: to try to make my parents happy again; to take up the space, somehow, that Conrad had been meant to occupy; and perhaps most importantly, to never, ever fail again in my responsibilities toward another. Over the years, I’d come to recognize the psychic forces at play within me and had worked to consciously override them. I thought I’d managed to put my guilt and remorse behind me, and that my past no longer dictated my present. But could it be that this last imperative was driving me still? Was that why I couldn’t get Teresa out of my mind?

  Perhaps, I conceded. Or perhaps it was a combination of motives. All I knew for certain was that once the awful sense of responsibility had been triggered, the only relief I could find was in taking action. “You may be right,” I answered at last. “I hadn’t even realized. But that doesn’t mean that trying to help Teresa isn’t the right thing to do.”

  He sighed. “There’s no way I can make you let this go then.”

  “I hope I’m wrong about her, Simon. Really, I do. I hope she just got cold feet or met someone more interesting on the boat. But until we find out more, I can’t forget about her.” I shrugged. “I just can’t.”

  We left it at that, although I sensed he would have liked to say more, and went back in to watch the show.

  Chapter Twelve

  Detective Petrosino wasn’t available when I telephoned the Legion the next morning, but I was able to catch Detective Cassidi on his way out of the office and related what I’d learned about Caterina’s abduction. “And she wasn’t the only one,” I finished. “There were at least two other Italian girls in that same resort who were captured in New York and sent on to Chicago.”

  “Suggesting that there’s a regular distribution channel,” Cassidi mused.

  “And in all three cases, the men who met the women when they got off the boat were of Italian extraction. Unfortunately, the Chicago authorities weren’t able to learn anything more about them.”

  “I may have come up with something on my end,” he surprised me by saying. “I heard about an Italian clothes peddler a while back, over on West Thirty-Fourth street, who specializes in used women’s clothing. Plain clothes, you understand, nothing fancy. The kind the owners would normally keep until they were threadbare and past repairing. Thing is, these clothes are always relatively new, which made my informant think the peddler might be fencing stolen goods. You follow?”

  “I follow, Detective. Please go on.”

  “After you told me Teresa Casoria got off the boat at the Thirty-Fourth Street pier, I got to thinking: if somebody was kidnapping women off the boat, maybe they were selling the women’s street clothes and other belongings for extra cash somewhere nearby. Yesterday, I tracked the peddler down, and we had a little chat. He told me a man drops off a load of clothes every few weeks, and the peddler pays him on consignment. He swears he doesn’t know the man’s name or where the clothes come from. The last time he saw him was a week ago.

  “I had a look through the peddler’s cart and found a valise with the initials TMCF monogrammed across the top. It was in very good condition—practically brand-new. The peddler said it originally contained what looked like a wedding dress, along with a small paint and brush set, a shirtwaist, and some undergarments, all of which had already been sold. I’m wondering if the valise might have belonged to Miss Casoria.”

  “It must have!” I cried. “The T, C, and F all match, if she included her married name, which she would have done if she’d purchased the valise for her trousseau. And the wedding dress! What more proof could we ask for?”

  “Just to be sure, is there any way of finding out what her middle initial is?”

  “Her friend Rosa might know. I can ask her.”

  “I’d appreciate that. In the meantime, we’ve got a man shadowing the peddler in case his supplier comes back with more merchandise. Assuming Miss Casoria is still being held somewhere near the pier, he may lead us to her.”

  At last, we had something tangible to go on. “Thank you, Detective. I know how busy you are. I deeply appreciate your taking this on.”

  “There’s no need to thank me. If someone is preying on innocent women, they deserve to burn in hell, and I’d be pleased to be the one to send them there.”

  I let out my breath, feeling a great weight lift from my shoulders. Now that the police were on the abductors’ trail, I could rest a little easier.

  “I also contacted Detective Norton,” Cassidi went on, “to see if he’d learned anything more about the girl in the river. He told me he’d located an uncle of hers on Elizabeth Street. The uncle told him that when the girl didn’t come to visit as expected, he went to look for her at the address the fiancé had given to her and her family. Nobody there had ever heard of him. The uncle tried the fiancé’s supposed place of employment too, with the same res
ult.”

  “Are you suggesting the fiancé was in on her abduction?”

  “Could have been.”

  I didn’t want to believe it, for it struck me as the ultimate betrayal. But from what Pauline had told me, the vultures were everywhere, and false proposals were a frequently used tool of their trade.

  “Detective Norton had some other news to report. Apparently, the night watchman at the ferry pier on 116th Street saw a young woman run to the end of the dock and jump into the water the night before they found Lucia Siavo’s body. He says he shouted to her, but she didn’t answer. He couldn’t see much with his lantern, and by the time he grabbed his searchlight and returned to the river, she was gone. He called the harbor police, but they couldn’t find anything in the water.”

  “Was the watchman able to give a description?”

  “He could see that she was wearing a coat, which is of course unusual for July, and that she was barefoot. Taking the timing of the tides that night into account, Detective Norton believes there’s a high likelihood it was Lucia Siavo.”

  I chewed the inside of my lip, considering. “But the watchman didn’t see anyone in pursuit?”

  “No, and the streets are well lit around the pier. He said she came running down 116th Street alone and continued headlong across the dock. She didn’t even stop at the end, just went right over.”

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to imagine the desperation that could prompt such a flight. “Does Detective Norton still believe she jumped out of a carriage while being transported?” I asked, opening them again.

  “If that were true,” Cassidi observed, “someone would probably have been chasing her. My guess is she was being kept somewhere nearby and managed to escape undetected.”

  “Which suggests that whoever is abducting these girls has a den in the uptown colony, possibly in addition to a place near the pier.”