A Promise of Ruin

by Cuyler Overholt

“We have some news.”

  He dropped the brush into a tin pail hooked to the ladder and climbed nimbly down the rungs. “What news?” he asked, pulling off his kerchief and using it to wipe his brow.

  The other men had paused in their work and were listening to our exchange. Their silent watchfulness gave me the willies. “Perhaps we could speak in the shade,” I suggested and started into the shrine.

  It was several degrees cooler inside. A plaster figure of the patron saint rested in a niche in the back, framed by little green, blue, and red oil lamps that I imagined would glow prettily on their shelves when alight. Narrow benches had been built into the sidewalls, presumably to hold candles and other offerings but presently unoccupied.

  I sank onto one of the benches under a painting of the Holy Family, glad to be off my feet and out of the sun. Simon sat beside me while Antonio took the bench opposite.

  “Your news?” Antonio prompted, scanning our faces.

  “After I spoke with you last time,” I began, “I met with detectives in the Italian Legion and asked them to look into Teresa’s disappearance.” I put up a hand to forestall his protest. “I know you asked me not to, but I believed it would be in Teresa’s best interests, and I just couldn’t see how it would hurt. Yesterday, Detective Cassidi of the Legion found a valise in a peddler’s cart, not far from the Thirty-Fourth Street pier, monogrammed with Teresa’s initials. It contained a wedding dress and a paint kit that was likely intended as a birthday present for her friend Rosa. The valise was included with a batch of used clothing that was sold to the peddler a week ago. The police suspect the clothes may all have been taken from abducted women.”

  Antonio raked a hand through his hair, muttering under his breath. I watched him closely, trying to gauge the sincerity of his reaction.

  “I’m sorry to bring you such disturbing news,” I went on, “but at least now the police have something to go on.”

  “I told you before, the more people who become involved, the more dangerous it is for Teresa,” he hissed, his dark eyes blazing. “You should have listened to me, signorina!”

  Simon shifted beside me. “Easy there, now, Mr. Fabroni,” he said. “She’s only trying to help.” Although his attitude was pleasant enough, something in his tone suggested that that could change in an instant.

  Antonio stared at him, clenching his fists, while Simon held his gaze.

  Finally, Antonio turned to me and tipped his head. “You must excuse me if my concern for Teresa makes me thoughtless. I meant no disrespect. I am sure you have her interests at heart.”

  “I assure you that I do, Mr. Fabroni,” I said. “And to that end, I was wondering if you might clear up a few things for me. I’ve been trying to put together a timeline of events for the morning Teresa’s boat came in. According to the officials at the Barge Office, the boat docked at approximately 10:00 a.m. Do you remember what time it was when you got to the pier?”

  “I remember very well. It was a quarter to eleven.”

  “What was it that detained you, if I may ask?”

  “I was held up.”

  I hesitated, not sure if he was being intentionally unforthcoming or simply hadn’t understood my question. “Yes, but what was it, exactly, that held you up?”

  The corner of his mouth twisted downward. “Three men, as I was leaving the bank.”

  I blinked at him in surprise. “You mean to say that you were robbed?”

  “Saturday is payday,” he answered in a clipped tone. “Since I planned to spend it with Teresa, I had to go to the bank before I met the boat, to get the money to give my foreman to pay the men. We went to the bank early, as soon as it opened, so that I could get to the pier in plenty of time. But as we were leaving, we were attacked by three men hoping to relieve me of my money. We were able to fight them off, but my foreman was hurt, and I had to bring him home. By the time I got to the pier, Teresa was gone.”

  It was either an outrageous lie, or the perfect alibi. “Did anyone at the bank come to your aid?” I asked.

  “The robbers waited until we were around the corner to strike, so nobody saw them. But fortunately, my foreman is a bull, and two men are no match for him.”

  “Did you report the incident to the police?” Simon asked.

  “I saw their faces,” he answered with a smirk. “I had no need of the police.”

  Simon glanced at me, no doubt thinking as I was that with no bank witnesses and no police report, there was no way to corroborate Antonio’s story.

  “And have you, in fact, been able to locate these men?” I asked after a moment.

  His expression darkened. “I’m working on it.”

  “What about Teresa?” I pressed, remembering how determined he was to solve her disappearance by himself. “Have you been able to learn anything new?”

  He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Nothing that I wish to share.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fabroni, but I simply don’t understand why you won’t cooperate with the police. If you know something—anything at all—you should tell them!”

  “You are wrong,” he shot back. “If someone is holding Teresa and becomes aware that the police are in pursuit, he might move her someplace we will never be able to find her.”

  I tried to read his face. Did he suspect a Black Hand gang? Might he actually have some idea where she was, and be planning his own rescue? “Are you that close to finding her, then?” I asked.

  “I pray to God that I am.” He stood. “And now, I must get back to work.” He lifted his bandana to slide it back over his forehead. As he did so, his rolled shirtsleeve moved further up his arm, revealing the untanned top of his shoulder.

  I made a hiccupping noise as I attempted to stifle a gasp.

  Eying me curiously, he followed my gaze. The tattoo of a spider stood out clearly against the pale skin of his upper arm. His eyes darted back to me, then to the men on the ladders, then up the walkway, where a group of children and their minders were just entering the park.

  He slowly lowered his arms, regarding me with new interest. “Good day, Dr. Summerford,” he said coolly, inclining his head. “I trust you have all the answers you came for.” With a curt nod to Simon, he left the shrine.

  • • •

  “You’re sure it was a spider?” Detective Cassidi asked me an hour later, rubbing his thumb over his lower lip.

  “I’m positive.”

  He looked at Simon, who was seated beside me. “Did you see it?”

  “I was on his wrong side. But if Genna says she saw it, I’m sure she did.”

  Detective Cassidi pulled a sheet of blank paper from a drawer in the desk and slid it toward me. “Could you draw it for me?” he asked, handing me a pencil.

  “It was a classic spider silhouette, like you see in picture books,” I said, setting pencil to paper. “With two round body parts, like this…” I drew two ovals, one on top of the other. “And the legs coming out of the middle.”

  “How many legs?”

  I tried to remember. “Four on each side, I think?” I drew them in, some curving up, some curving down, the right and left sides symmetrical. “Parts of the legs were covered by his shirtsleeve, but I saw more than enough to recognize the whole.”

  The detective opened a file on his desk and drew out a paper. “So it looked something like this.”

  It was a letter, handwritten in Italian. At the bottom was an ink version of the same figure I’d just drawn, except that the two oval body parts were connected by a short, thick line, and the legs were attached to the bottom of the top oval. “Exactly like that, actually. I forgot about that little piece in the middle.”

  “Well, this is interesting,” Cassidi said.

  “You think Antonio has been setting the dynamite bombs?” I asked.

  “It’s a possibil
ity I intend to explore.”

  “What about Teresa? Do you think he was in on her abduction as well?”

  “If he is behind the bombings, then the fact that his fiancée has also mysteriously disappeared is the first real evidence we have suggesting a link between a Black Hand extortion gang and the white slave trade. But of course, a suggestion is not a fact. You have spoken to this man face to face, Doctor, as I have not. What do you believe?”

  I shook my head. “I just don’t know. Part of me wants him to be the abductor, because that would mean we’re that much closer to finding Teresa. But another part refuses to believe it. Are you going to arrest him?”

  “If we arrested him on the basis of a tattoo alone, we’d be laughed out of court. We need some proof connecting him with illegal activity. Besides, if our experience with other Black Hand operators is any indication, arresting him won’t help us find Miss Casoria if he has abducted her. He won’t talk, and no one else will come forward with information.”

  “What can you do then?”

  “Have him followed, for starters. Although of course, if he saw you react to the tattoo, as you say, he will expect you to inform us of it. Which means he will likely be on his best behavior from now on and looking for a tail.”

  “Or he could be innocent,” I murmured, gazing down at the spider picture, “and we’d be following the wrong man while the right one got away.” I looked back up at the detective. “What if you contacted the Italian authorities for information? If Antonio was a member of the Camorra in Italy, as his tattoo seems to indicate, he might have a history of criminal activity there. He might even have been involved in prostitution. If so, we could be more confident that he’s the man we’re after.”

  “I can try,” Cassidi said, “but to obtain information from the department of penal records in Italy, we are required to supply the suspect’s date and place of birth, along with the name of his parents. We have people who can help us find that information in Italy, but before they can do so, we must at least provide them with the suspect’s real name. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for criminals to take an alias when they come to America. If Fabroni is an assumed name, they will be able to tell us nothing.”

  We fell silent, pondering this potential obstacle. “What if we provide them with some other identifying information?” I asked after a moment.

  “Like what?” Simon asked.

  “Like a photograph,” I said, turning toward him. “If we sent them a picture of Antonio, they could compare it to their own photographic records to see if there’s a match.”

  Cassidi grunted. “It’s a good idea, Doctor, but I doubt that Mr. Fabroni will oblige us by sitting for a photograph.”

  “He doesn’t have to,” I said, swiveling back toward him. “There’s a picture of him and his mother on the table in his parlor; I saw it while I was there. If I could smuggle that picture out of his flat, you could send it on to the Italian authorities.”

  “And just how are you going to do that?” Simon demanded.

  “Well, I don’t know yet… I have to think about it.”

  “Forget it, Genna,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I agree,” said the detective. “If Fabroni is the Spider behind the bombings, he won’t want to hurt you if he doesn’t have to, knowing that we will suspect him. But if he catches you trespassing in his flat you might never come back out. You have been most helpful, Dr. Summerford, but I must insist that you let the police handle this from now on.”

  • • •

  I resolved to do exactly as Simon and the detective had instructed: leave the rest of the investigation to the professionals and get on with my own life. As it happened, I’d been contacted the previous afternoon by a certain Dr. Heff, who’d been given my name by a colleague of my father on the Mount Pleasant Hospital board. Dr. Heff, who was currently on holiday, had received a frantic telegram over the weekend from the mother of one of his patients and was hoping I might step in during his absence. I’d readily agreed, encouraged that my diligent trolling of family and social connections was beginning to yield results.

  Dr. Heff described his patient to me as a “delicate” girl who, being an only child, was the subject of her parents’ abundant and undivided concern. Although she’d been a healthy infant and toddler, in recent years she’d begun to suffer recurring episodes of neurasthenia that often left her too weak to bathe or dress. Hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, and hypodermic injection had all proved ineffective. For the past four months, the doctor had been overseeing a modified version of the Weir Mitchell rest cure at the girl’s home, restricting her physical activity, removing all mental stimulation, and feeding her a high-protein diet of milk and eggs.

  Despite the doctor’s biweekly visits, improvement was sporadic. According to the telegram, the girl had suffered yet another attack over the weekend, leaving her so fatigued that she was now unable to get out of bed or even lift her arms. Although Dr. Heff didn’t say so, I presumed our mutual acquaintance on the Mount Pleasant Hospital board had recommended me in the belief that mental therapy might have a place in her treatment.

  I arrived, energized and alert, for my appointment. My examination of the girl revealed a strong and regular pulse, normal respiration and color, and well-developed muscle with no apparent paralysis, despite her statement that she couldn’t lift her arms. During our lengthy interview, it became clear to me that her recurring fatigue had been inspired by her well-meaning but overly fretful parents—aided unintentionally, perhaps, by the solicitous Dr. Heff—who’d managed to make her believe that she was cursed with a weak constitution. Over the years, this belief had apparently developed into a learned helplessness that made the child prone to collapse at the mere hint of a challenge.

  It was, I decided, a perfect case for persuasion therapy in its purest form. I did not think, as her governess had implied when she brought me up to the child’s room, that her fatigue was merely a ruse to avoid her lessons. I believed, rather, that it was a very real product of autosuggestion—and as such was amenable to opposing suggestions, which I was fully prepared to supply. Following the protocol I’d been taught by Dr. Cassell, I explained to her in the most gentle but insistent way that it was her false beliefs that were making her weak. I told her that fatigue such as hers, though truly experienced, had psychic origins and could be cured simply by replacing her false beliefs with more accurate ones. I asked her to describe the life she’d like to lead if she wasn’t so confined and, after she’d described it in glowing detail, told her quite forcefully that it could be hers; that it was within her reach; that it was, in fact, already in her hands. When she admired my hat, I invited her to try it on, then pointed out the ease with which she’d lifted her arms to do so. By the end of our session, she was, as the great persuasion therapist Paul Dubois had described it, “like one under a spell of kindly thought, exhibiting a hopefulness akin to euphoria,” and sufficiently improved to get out of bed and walk me to her door. Although I would need to confer with Dr. Heff regarding future sessions, I told the girl’s mother I believed a full recovery was possible with continuing mental therapy, suggesting that she allow the child to do more for herself in the meantime and reward her for carrying things through.

  Dr. Cassell would have been pleased, I thought as I started up the sidewalk toward home. Although persuasion therapy wasn’t a panacea, in the right cases it could yield dramatic results, and I was delighted to have been able to employ it successfully in this one. It was telling of how absorbing I found the work that I hadn’t thought once about Teresa during the consultation.

  As soon as I returned home, I telephoned Dr. Heff at his hotel to report on the results of my examination. He was glad to hear that the “crisis” had passed and that the patient’s mother could rest easy until his return. But when I told him I believed a complete resolution of the girl’s symptoms could be achieved with just a month or two of
persuasion therapy, he laughed rather unpleasantly and said, “Good heavens, Doctor, at that rate you’ll put us all out of business.” He rebuffed my offer to meet with her again, telling me he’d be back in the city shortly and that his “usual nurse” would be available then to assist him, saying nothing at all about compensation for my consultation or about recommending me to his colleagues. It was all I could do not to swear at him before I hung up the phone.

  My professional aspirations thus temporarily thwarted, and with little else to divert me, Teresa once again took center stage in my mind. Although I was relieved that her fate was no longer in my hands, I’d become too deeply invested in the outcome of the case to be comfortably relegated to the sidelines. I ate some lunch, sorted through the mail, and tried to finish Morton Prince’s article on hysterical amnesia in the latest Journal of Abnormal Psychology—but my thoughts kept returning unproductively to Detective Cassidi and the investigation. I was considering returning a book to the library, just to break my mind from its restless circling, when the telephone rang. I trotted to the closet and lifted the receiver to my ear, my heart skipping when I heard Simon’s voice on the line.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing important. Why?”

  “It’s haircut day.”

  I smiled into the transmitter. A month ago, Simon had instituted a new rule requiring all club members to keep their hair in decent trim. Most of the older boys, being eager to impress the neighborhood girls and adhering to an athletic aesthetic, were happy to comply, but the younger boys had proved less acquiescent. Simon had accordingly taken it upon himself to round up the miscreants every few weeks and deliver them to the owner of a local stable, who was happy to provide, in exchange for free beer at the saloon, a cut for each lad with the horse shears, followed by a quick rinse in his trough.

  “And you need help,” I guessed, more than ready to give it if it meant getting away from my thoughts for a while. “How many are in for it this time?”

  “Five. But I’ve got a treat in store for them.”