A Promise of Ruin

by Cuyler Overholt

  A man swung open the gate that was blocking the avenue, and the traffic began to move again. I reached for the door.

  “Let’s wait until the carriage is across the intersection,” Patrick said.

  I watched the carriage start up again and jockey for position among the surrounding vehicles, shifting toward the midline of the street. Instead of continuing up the avenue, however, it turned left at the intersection onto Thirty-Ninth Street and drove out of view.

  I pushed the door open and hurried after it, followed closely by Patrick. At the corner, I stopped and peered down the side street. The abattoir of the New York Butchers Dressed Meat Company and its adjacent powerhouse occupied the right side of the street. On the left side, end-to-end wagons holding crates of live chickens were parked in front of what I deduced was a poultry processing plant. The wagons were double-parked in places, clogging the travel lane. The carriage was threading its way down the narrow strip that remained.

  “We’ll have cover,” I said, turning back to Patrick. “There are wagons parked all along the curb, and stacks of empty crates on the sidewalk.”

  I eased around the corner and started down the street. There were no tarpaulins shading the wagons, and as I walked past I could see that the crowded birds inside the crates were in considerable distress. Some had already succumbed to the heat and lay in an exhausted layer on the bottom of their crates, while others stood on top of them, sticking their heads through the slats and gasping for air.

  I dragged my gaze away from the pitiful creatures—just in time to see the carriage turning into an alley some twenty feet up ahead, on the near side of the processing plant. I lunged sideways, taking cover behind a head-high stack of empty crates as the horses clattered across the sidewalk. Through the slats of the crate, I could clearly see the carriage as it crossed in front of me. Only a solitary, male head was now visible through the window.

  I leaned back against the wall, my breath catching in my throat. We would have seen the woman if she’d gotten out earlier. The most likely explanation was that she’d been drugged or otherwise subdued and was lying unconscious inside the carriage. It was really happening, right here in front of me.

  “You all right?” Patrick asked again, moving quietly up behind me.

  “I couldn’t see her through the window,” I said, my voice sounding high and strained to my ears. “I think they may have chloroformed her so she wouldn’t make a fuss when she saw where they were taking her.”

  Patrick continued cautiously to the alley and looked around the corner. Returning a moment later, he informed me, “They carried her through a side door into the building. I’m going to see if I can get inside and scout things out.”

  I swallowed down a lump of fear. “But you’ll be outnumbered. Shouldn’t you call for help?”

  He glanced back toward the alleyway with a frown. “I don’t think I should leave her alone in there with them.”

  “No, you’re right,” I said, remembering how quickly and brutally Caterina Bressi’s ruin had been accomplished.

  “If it looks like more than I can handle, I’ll come back and call for help. You sit tight and stay out of sight. If the carriage comes back out while I’m gone, don’t follow it by yourself. Just see which way it turns onto the avenue so you can tell me. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  He unhooked a key from a chain on his belt and handed it to me. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, or if anyone so much as looks at you twice, go to the nearest call box and send for the reserves.” Drawing his revolver from his hip, he took off down the sidewalk.

  I watched him disappear down the alley, already feeling his absence acutely. My hands were trembling as I reached for my pendant watch. I noted the time and settled in to wait.

  Each second that ticked past seemed an eternity. The stench of chicken manure from the empty crates assaulted my nostrils, while the pitiful gasping of the birds in the wagons played havoc with my nerves. I held my breath, freezing in place as two men in aprons emerged from an open door in the front of the plant. They grabbed some more crates from the wagons and returned inside without noticing me.

  Two minutes crawled past, then three. Through the open plant door, I could hear the low hum of machinery and the relentless squawking of birds inside. This must be where they killed and plucked the chickens before sending them off to butcher stores throughout the city. I supposed that if girls were being held on an upper floor, the constant noise from below would obscure their calls for help, making it possible to conceal their presence. Or did the workers downstairs know what was going on above them? Perhaps even participate in the girls’ undoing? After what I’d learned of human nature in the past few days, I feared anything was possible.

  Four minutes had passed when I suddenly heard voices and looked up to see the two men from the carriage coming out of the alleyway. They stopped and looked both ways as if searching for something. My heart stopped as they turned up the sidewalk in my direction. I shrank back against the wall, unsure whether to stay or bolt. Deciding that they were going to see me in either case, I turned on my heel and started briskly back toward Eleventh Avenue, trying to act as though my sudden emergence from behind a crate was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Hey!” one of them shouted.

  I picked up my pace.

  The next instant, a hand grabbed my arm from behind and swung me around. It was the young man who’d met the woman at the pier. “What you doin’ there, heh?”

  “Let go of me!” I said, trying to pull my arm away.

  “You lookin’ for something?”

  “I was waiting for a friend.”

  He leered at me. “That copper, he your friend?” He looked at the older man, the one I’d seen at Antonio’s, and said something in rapid Italian that I couldn’t understand.

  The older man grunted and stepped forward, grabbing me by both arms.

  I tried to pull away, but he was too strong for me. “You’d better let me go,” I rasped, terror strangling my voice. “The police know who you are. I already told them I saw you at—”

  His fist crashed into my face. I staggered backward and fell, blinded by shock and pain. Together, they hauled me to my feet and started pulling me backward toward the alley. I tried to scream, but to my dismay, nothing came out. I tried again, with only slightly more success. They paused, and I thought for a moment that I’d made enough noise to frighten them into releasing me. But they’d only stopped so that the younger man could shove a handkerchief into my mouth before continuing toward the alley. I bucked and writhed, gagging on the handkerchief, fearing that if I let them drag me into the building, I was done for. Their hands were like iron bands on my wrists, however, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t break free.

  The light suddenly dimmed as we entered the alleyway. I released a muffled, heartsick wail as they dragged me in a dozen yards, away from the street and anyone who might come to my aid. I heard a door open behind me and felt a gush of fetid air. I was yanked over the threshold and into the building, my shoes scraping over the concrete floor. The door slammed shut and they dropped me onto my back.

  I scrabbled away from them on my heels and elbows. As the younger man reached for me again, I kicked at his midriff, catching him in his solar plexus. He grunted and took half a step back. Before I could get to my feet, however, he dropped on top of me with a snarl, straddling my chest with his knees and crushing my throat with his forearm.

  “Gallo!” The older man put a restraining hand on the younger man’s shoulder, muttering something in Italian.

  The man on top of me sat back, lifting his arm from my throat with obvious reluctance. Pulling the handkerchief from my mouth, he doused it with liquid from a vial he withdrew from his trouser pocket. My blood ran cold as I caught a whiff of the sickly sweet scent. “Help!” I tried to scream through my aching throat, hoping against
hope that Patrick or one of the workers on the other side of the wall might yet come to my aid. “Somebody, help me!”

  The man Gallo flattened the handkerchief over my mouth and nose, grinding my lips against my teeth. I held my breath but could still feel the icy vapor seeping up my nostrils and down my throat.

  Gallo shouted in Italian to someone behind me. “Nucci! Bring down the other one, then get the van.” He looked back down at me, holding the cloth with an iron hand, waiting until my lungs were screaming for air and I had no choice but to breathe. I began to weep as I took in the undiluted chloroform, knowing it would only be a minute or so before I passed into the stage of active intoxication and another minute or two after that before I became insensible. I coughed and struggled against the harsh vapor, but it was no use. I couldn’t keep myself from breathing it in. Soon, with my captor’s cold eyes bearing down on me, I started feeling the disorienting symptoms. My jaw grew heavy, and my head began to swim as the sounds of voices and machinery undulated weirdly in my ears. I felt my arms and legs begin to tingle and gradually go numb. Eventually, I stopped struggling and relaxed against the floor, my fear receding along with everything else in my awareness. The face above me grew hazier and my senses duller, until finally, darkness overtook me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I came to, the floor was moving underneath me. I opened my eyes to find that I was lying on my stomach in the back of a delivery van, with my mouth gagged, my feet bound, and my hands tied behind me. Turning my head, I saw the girl from the boat sitting against the opposite side of the van, similarly bound and gagged, watching me with huge eyes. The memory of my capture returned, along with a wave of nausea from the chloroform. I turned over and struggled into a sitting position, breathing deeply through my nose until the nausea had passed.

  My arrival with Patrick must have upset the abductors’ normal operations, forcing them to move me and the girl immediately in case more policemen were on their trail. Although there were no windows in the horse-drawn van, I could feel it moving in fits and starts, suggesting we were driving through areas of congestion. I strained to make out the chatter up front, wondering where they were taking us and how long we’d been traveling. Although chloroform as normally applied was not a long-acting agent, if it wasn’t properly diluted, it could have a far more stupefying effect, which meant I might have been unconscious for as long as twenty or thirty minutes. If Italian Harlem was our destination, we could be arriving at any moment.

  I felt a fresh explosion of panic, realizing that no one knew where I was. Even if Patrick was still alive, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone where the men had taken me. Maybe, I told myself, they didn’t intend to keep me, but only to hold me until they could decide how to return me. I wasn’t a friendless immigrant who could vanish without consequences. Abducting a well-to-do young woman from the city’s native population would presumably create more headaches for them than it was worth. I clung to this idea, for doing so was the only way I could keep the breath moving through my lungs and my mind from seizing in fear.

  The other girl made a whimpering sound. I nodded and mumbled through my gag, wishing I could explain to her what was happening. She was fully dressed and showed no outward signs of injury. I mentally surveyed my own condition. A sore jaw and some irritation of the skin around my mouth from the chloroform seemed to be the only record of my captors’ brutality. But of course, that could change very soon…

  Five minutes later, the van turned hard left and rattled over some wooden planking before coming to a stop. I stiffened as I heard hands working the rear latch, deciding on the spot that despite my bonds, I would make a break for it when the door opened and try to get the attention of some passerby. When the back of the van swung open, however, I saw that we were already inside a three-bay carriage house and that the doors to the street were closed tight. A full-breasted woman well past her prime, with a powdered face and rouged lips, stood at the foot of the van between me and the doors, wearing a green dress with a soiled hem. Two men stood behind her: the false bridegroom, Gallo, who had chloroformed me, and a second man I’d never seen before, but who I guessed was the “Nucci” who’d been behind me in the poultry plant, and who had presumably been sitting up front with Gallo in the van.

  The woman eyed me with a frown. “Who is this?”

  Gallo answered her in Italian too rapid for me to understand.

  Her frown deepened. “Get them out.” She turned to the man I’d recognized from Antonio’s flat, who was just climbing down from the carriage they’d used to collect the girl from the pier. “Donato, take care of the horses.”

  The two younger men climbed into the van, yanking off our gags and cutting our ankle bonds before pulling us out and dropping us onto our feet in front of her. I quickly scanned the room. Two other vans were crowded into the adjoining bays beyond the carriage, along with a severed dashboard and a stack of brightly painted wheels. “Elmwood Butchers” was emblazoned across one of the vans, while “Ludwig Bauman & Co.” had been partially sanded off the side of the other, leaving only a shadow of the name behind. Scrapers, brushes, and paint cans were scattered on the floor around the vans.

  The woman brought her face within inches of mine. The lines around her eyes and over her red lips were caked with powder, and she smelled faintly of gin. “My name is Claudia,” she told me in English. “You do what I tell you to, and we’ll get along fine. You make any trouble, you’ll have to deal with Gallo and Nucci here.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the two young men. The one called Nucci snickered, saying something I was glad I didn’t understand.

  I searched the woman’s eyes, hoping but failing to detect the slightest trace of feminine sympathy. “If you’re smart, you’ll let me go,” I said, my voice scratchy from fear and chloroform. “People are going to be looking for me. If you keep me here, they’re going to find me, and when they do, they’ll find you too.”

  She stepped back. “Take them up,” she ordered the men, as if I hadn’t spoken.

  Nucci grabbed my shoulder as Gallo reached for the girl from the boat. The girl backed away from her erstwhile bridegroom, shaking her head. “Non capisco, Alessandro! Perché stai facendo questo?” I don’t understand! Why are you doing this?

  “Cara Francesca,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand. “You will still be my girl! And you are in America, yes? Now be happy, and give me a smile!”

  The older man, Donato, had unhitched the horses from the van and was leading them up a ramp on the left side of the room. Nucci pushed me up the ramp after him while Gallo followed, dragging Francesca. The next floor contained a long corridor lit by hanging electric lights, with horse stalls on either side. As Donato started leading the horses into empty stalls, Nucci pushed me past him down the hallway.

  Collars and harnesses and other tack were piled onto large hooks on the stall doors, narrowing the corridor and making passage difficult. My mind registered, without comprehending, the distinct smell of shoe polish wafting from the horses inside. At the far end of the hall, where the tack room should have been, was a closed door.

  Nucci propelled me roughly toward it. I knew it was pointless to resist, with my arms still tied behind my back and the two men right behind me. But when I saw the locked bolt on the door, my feet took root of their own accord. As Nucci put his hand on my back to give me another push, I arched backward, trying to hit his nose with my head. He mustn’t have been directly behind me, however, because I could feel the blow glance off his cheekbone. The next minute, he had me in a headlock, crushing my Adam’s apple with his elbow as he pulled me, cursing, toward the door. He slid the bolt, opened the door, and threw me in.

  I staggered inside with Francesca close on my heels, and the door slammed shut behind us. The room was in deep shadow, the only light entering through cracks between some boards that were nailed across a window in the back wall. I stood in the silence, gasping for b
reath, and waited while my eyes adjusted.

  Eight straw pallets lay on the floor, four on each side of the room, with their narrow ends to the wall. Five of these were occupied by dark-haired, barefoot girls wearing nothing but thin chemises. The girls sat with their backs against the walls, staring up at me and Francesca, their faces ghostly ovals in the gloom. A tin candle holder on the floor beside each cot and two slop basins under the window were the only other furnishings.

  Francesca swayed on her feet and sank to the floor. The girl nearest to her stood and helped her onto an empty cot, while another moved behind me and began to untie the rags around my wrists. The knots in the rags had been tightened by my struggles, and it took my helper some time to work them free. My legs were shaking with delayed shock by the time she threw the rag to the ground. “Sit,” she said in Italian, lowering me onto an empty cot.

  I turned to say thank you, and had my first good look at her face. I felt a jolt of recognition. “Teresa! You’re Teresa Casoria, aren’t you?”

  She took a step back. “How do you know my name?” she asked in English.

  “Rosa showed me your picture; she asked me to look for you.”

  She stared at me. “You know Rosa?”

  “She was sure something bad had happened to you when you didn’t come visit as you’d promised.”

  She dropped to her knees beside me on the cot, pressing her hands against her cheeks. “Rosa,” she said again, whispering the name as if it came from another world.

  She listened, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, as I explained how I’d come to be there. Fortunately, she had a good grasp of English, so I didn’t have to rely on my rusty Italian.

  “But if the police know you were taken, they will be looking for us, yes?” she asked when I was done. “They will come find us?”

  I hesitated, ashamed that I’d made such a mess of things. “They’ll know I’m missing, yes. But no one saw the men bring me here. I don’t know if they’ll be able to find this place.”