Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  I felt a sickening tug of fear, but that faint smile was still visible. He was having a bit of fun, mocking me.

  “No, I am not,” I said frostily, before returning to the table. Lieutenant Pellegrino set the glass of water in front of me. I longed to have the courage to knock it off the table with the back of my hand. Instead, I drank the water in a long, greedy gulp. I’d grown incredibly thirsty. While I drank, he righted the fallen chair of Stefan’s and then sat in it, next to me. Silently, he pulled a white handkerchief from his police uniform front pocket and handed it to me. What a mess I must be. I used it to mop the perspiration that pooled on my forehead, upper lip, and the back of my neck, saying, “I didn’t know policemen carried linen handkerchiefs.”

  “Only if they’re married to my wife,” he said.

  I folded the handkerchief and handed it to him. “I’m sorry to return it in such condition,” I said with stiff politeness.

  “Plenty more where it came from. So, Miss Batternberg, you are here today to give a statement. What is it exactly that you wanted us to know?”

  “I already told that detective everything!” I protested.

  “Now you’ll tell me,” he said in the tone of someone accustomed to obedience.

  Seeing no choice, I repeated all that Stefan and I said earlier, including his suspicion that the man – young, neither fat nor thin, and not very tall – had followed us on the boardwalk earlier that evening. I finished with saying I read in the newspaper that people were urged to come forward with information, and so I sought out Stefan in Coney Island the next day, and he agreed to come.

  Lieutenant Pellegrino studied me for an uncomfortably long time. As he was staring at me, I stared back at him. He was a good fifteen years older than Detective Devlin, and while he still exuded severity, I noted the skin softening into jowls below his chin, and the broad chest and shoulders that beneath his uniform might not be completely muscle. The man ate well – presumably the wife who washed and ironed handkerchiefs to tuck in his pocket made sure huge hot meals were on the table the instant he made it home.

  “Miss Batternberg, what are you playing at?” he finally asked.

  “I’m not playing at anything,” I retorted. “I’m telling you the truth. Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Because you’re not being truthful. You and Chalakoski, sitting on the beach, on wood pilings, just talking? But by your own explanation, you have your back to someone who is watching the two of you while Chalakoski looks forward, straight at the man. What the hell kind of conversation is that?”

  I felt the color rise in my cheeks, but I refused to answer.

  “How did you meet this man? You’ve been at the Oriental Hotel less than a week.”

  After a minute I said, “Stefan is an artist. I saw his paintings displayed in a building in Dreamland. I bought several. I was quite impressed, and we began a conversation.”

  I hoped that once the lieutenant understood the truth about Stefan and why he impressed me, his impression of the situation would change. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “Has he asked you for money aside from the cost of the paintings?”

  I closed my eyes, desperate for patience. How could I best make myself understood?

  “Lieutenant Pellegrino,” I began, using his full name and title, which I gathered from the detective was important with the police. “You do not have the correct impression of Stefan Chalakoski. He is a gifted artist and a sensitive human being with a great deal of pride. He would never try to wheedle money out of me, any more than he would have hurt that girl.”

  Now the lieutenant heaved a sigh, as if he were trying to find patience to deal with me.

  “Are you aware that he’s Serbian?” he asked.

  “Yes. From Belgrade.”

  Lieutenant Pellegrino pursed his lips. “At least he’s not hiding that from you,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Why on earth should he hide it?”

  He answered my question with a question. “How old are you, Miss Batternberg?”

  “I’ll be twenty-one in several months’ time.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “I have to assume that you’re aware of the damage done all over the world by anarchists?”

  I opened my mouth to point out once again how wrong he was about Stefan, but the lieutenant held up a hand to say stop.

  “Let me put this to you in a personal manner. I was born in Italy, I came here when I was seven years old. There are Russian anarchists, Spanish anarchists, French anarchists, Polish anarchists. But the Italians, they’re something special. The assassinations, the bombs, oh and the conspiracies. An Italian stabbed the Austrian Empress Elisabeth in the heart as she walked across a street. An Italian shot the prime minister of Spain. And the anarchists are over here – more and more of them, all the time. Do you know where the Italian plot to kill King Umberto was hatched? In Paterson, New Jersey. Gaetano Bresci sailed back to Italy to shoot the king. You have no way of knowing this, but I am one of the very few Italian police officers on the New York City police force. I accept that I’m under a shadow of doubt every minute, to those who believe all Italians are born anarchists, bomb throwers, and murderers, even though the truth is that I’m in complete and utter agreement with President Roosevelt, that they commit crimes against the whole human race. When anarchists come to America to attack the ruling class, as they describe it, we hunt them down.”

  Two things struck me as I listened to Lieutenant Pellegrino. One was that while his words were passionate and his breadth of knowledge impressive, it resembled a presentation – and a practiced one at that – more than any message from the heart. And the second thing was that I hadn’t the slightest idea why he was telling me this. He nodded slightly, as if he could read my thoughts.

  “Miss Batternberg, I’m not trying to win your sympathy but to make it clear to you that I’m not a man of base prejudices, like many other cops, unfortunately.” He grimaced. “I am informed. I know what the hell I’m talking about. As bad as Italy is, the Balkans are worse – and Serbia is the center, the beating heart of the Balkans. Centuries of hatred. I doubt you know the full story about the coup against the king and queen of Serbia several years ago, if you’ve heard it at all. The newspapers here didn’t print details. A group of Serbian army officers decided to overthrow their country’s king and queen – they stormed the palace, they found this young couple hiding in a cupboard, and they shot them. Then the officers mutilated the bodies and threw them out the window into a pile of manure.”

  I recoiled from the details of this horrifying act, but I still managed to say, “Stefan is here to get away from the sort of hatred and horror you’re talking about.”

  “Or does he bring it with him? There aren’t many Serbs who come to America, but if they should choose to do so in numbers…” Suddenly he slammed his thick uniformed thigh, his temper close to boiling over. “Do you have any idea how much money you’d be worth to one of these groups, how much they could demand in a kidnap? Half the police on the East Coast would be mobilized. My God, I can’t believe your family let you wander off like that!”

  “I’m not a child,” I said. “And … what are you suggesting? That Stefan is on the verge of kidnapping me? Then why murder Katherine O’Malley on the beach? You’ve never offered any reason for him to do such a terrible thing, except that he’s a foreigner. You yourself, Lieutenant, are proof that someone born outside the United States is not destined to act like a criminal.”

  It could have been the personal nature of my comment, but Lieutenant Pellegrino tensed in his chair. Now he was definitely having a hard time with his temper. “Motive, eh? You want a motive? We got one. It’s not too pretty, but you asked for it. It’s my hunch that Chalakoski was planning to spirit you away from the rest of your family, and to do that he tried to seduce you that first night. You resisted on the beach and you argued with him. He was left pretty damn frustrated. So frustrated that I believe he stuck around.
He was able to get this girl from a poor family and rape and kill her on the very same spot you turned him down. But he knew you’d both been seen and heard on the boardwalk, and you gave the Pinkertons your name, so that when you found him today, waving that newspaper article, he had to agree to your idea to come here. If he got through it, he’d have your trust forever.”

  To hear such a depraved scenario assigned to Stefan was nothing less than nauseating. More than ever, the walls of the room were closing in; it was an effort to draw breath. But I could not indulge in vapors now. As mistaken as the police’s ideas were, this scenario had a horrible logic to it. The danger to Stefan was real.

  “I had no idea that the girl was… violated,” I said.

  “There are always things we hold back from the newspapers,” he said. “We can’t tell them everything, to keep the integrity of our inquiry.”

  Clearing my throat I said, “You are mistaken on several points. We didn’t argue because I was unwilling to be seduced, Lieutenant. I had rather misled Stefan that first day. I allowed him to think that I was nothing but a shop girl at Moonrise Bookstore. Once we reached the Oriental Hotel, since I was a guest there, it was obvious that I was more than that. Although I did work at the store for several months. In any case, Stefan heard the name Batternberg, and it didn’t mean anything to him. It wasn’t until I spelled it out for him, that we own mines all over the Americas, that he had any inkling of who I am. He felt as if I’d been slumming with him, which I’m sorry to say I was in the beginning. And yes, we did more than talk on the beach first. He kissed me, and I kissed him. We kissed each other. That’s all. You asked for the truth, I’ve given you the complete truth.”

  I couldn’t read the expression on Lieutenant Pellegrino’s face as he absorbed all I had to say. But, temper under control, he changed the direction of our conversation.

  “Has Stefan Chalakoski suggested future meetings with you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he mention the name of any friend or associate?”

  “No.”

  Now I had met Marta and Wiktor, and in a manner of speaking I had met Louise, but I felt no compunction about failing to turn over their names to the police. They scarcely fitted anyone’s definition of anarchists.

  “Where exactly did he take you the first day?”

  I told Lieutenant Pellegrino about having dinner on the iron pier, of dancing, of watching the lights shimmer at Dreamland.

  “Did he ever mention an establishment named Mabel Morgan’s?”

  Puzzled, I shook my head.

  “The Bowery? Anything on the Bowery?”

  “No.”

  “How about ‘The Rot’?”

  “No, Lieutenant Pellegrino. We talked about art, music, the lights of Dreamland. Certainly not… Rot.”

  The lieutenant took a deep breath. I had the feeling that I’d failed him in some specific way; this was not an open-ended conversation. He had an objective in mind, and I’d thwarted it. “You are confident, aren’t you, Miss Batternberg?” he asked. “You stand on the edge of a cliff. I am trying to help you, but you think you know better. At each scene where a girl’s body was found, I also found you. Very curious, aren’t you, and ready to do whatever you want, go wherever you want.”

  “So you believe that the woman found dead in the water was murdered too?” I asked.

  Regret flashed in his eyes over letting that slip. And his next question proved he had no intention of answering me. “Do your parents know about you becoming acquainted with Stefan Chalakoski?”

  “My father is dead, Lieutenant.”

  Before he could persist in this distinctly unwelcome line of questioning, three sharp raps at the door brought the lieutenant to his feet.

  When he opened it, I spotted the same wiry blond police officer who took the name of Stefan’s landlady. The lieutenant once more closed the door behind him. But this time I was at the door, my ear pressed to it.

  I could hear a man speaking – I assumed it was the blond officer – but, to my frustration, he was pretty soft-spoken. It was otherwise with Lieutenant Pellegrino. “She’s absolutely certain she saw him before midnight?” he said, loud enough that every word came through. The other man droned on a bit. “Damn it,” responded the lieutenant.

  My thoughts raced while I tried to comprehend what these possible developments meant. Someone in the police must have already spoken to Stefan’s landlady, and she confirmed that she saw him come in that night, and, most importantly, she saw him before midnight. This must rule him out as the murderer of Katherine O’Malley. I only had a vague idea of what an “alibi” was. Perhaps it was being able to prove one’s whereabouts for a certain time and day. Stefan had done that.

  This ordeal was at an end.

  I turned the doorknob – it was unlocked this time – and stepped out into the hall, coming face to face with Lieutenant Pellegrino, who broke off his conversation with the blond police officer to bark, “Get back in there. We’re not finished with our conversation.”

  “But we are, Lieutenant. We are finished, and I will be going now.”

  “I decide when you will go, Miss Batternberg.”

  “Even if I’m not under suspicion? Which you said I wasn’t.” I heard the voice of my cousin Ben: No one should ever agree to an interview with the police. And if one does, remember that the police cannot detain without arrest, and to arrest they need proof.

  I swallowed; now was the time to take the plunge. I said, “You cannot detain me without arrest. And if there is anything about that which is unclear, I can have a lawyer here within the hour.”

  The truth was, there was no way for me to contact one of the Batternberg attorneys without going through my uncle or mother. I prayed that the police wouldn’t perceive its impossibility.

  The blond officer standing next to Lieutenant Pellegrino stared at me, his eyes round as saucers. I realized that other policemen in the corridor or in nearby offices with open doorways must have heard what I just said too, because the place had gone dead quiet. As for the man whose authority I defied, he looked as if he were holding back his temper once more. And then… he shrugged.

  “No need to call in the cavalry,” said Lieutenant Pellegrino with sarcasm. “You can go.”

  “I intend to. With Mr. Chalakoski.”

  “That’s not possible,” he said flatly. “We have outstanding questions for him.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, no. No. No. We came together, and we leave together.”

  At the opposite end of the corridor, a door opened. It is possible that no one would have heard the strange sounds coming from that room if everyone weren’t listening to my defiance of Lieutenant Pellegrino. But in that pregnant silence there was a loud, pained grunt; an “oomph,” followed by a snatch of high-pitched laughter. Then the door slammed shut.

  There was something about that grunt of pain. Something familiar. At first my mind refused to accept it. No, they wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t do that. I’d have abandoned all thought of its being a possibility, had not the two policemen I stood before behaved the way they did.

  “Damn,” whispered the blond officer, growing even paler, as his worried gaze flitted in my direction. Lieutenant Pellegrino shook his head at him, forbiddingly, as he refused to meet my eyes.

  The next strange sound to be heard during that afternoon at the police precinct of Coney Island was that of my own voice, harsh and strangled, as I demanded, “What are they doing to Stefan?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lieutenant Pellegrino shook his head but said not a word. I had felt nothing for him up to now but wary dislike. In his refusal to lie to me, though, he redeemed himself. There must be a kernel of integrity within him to do that.

  “Stop it, Lieutenant, you must stop it,” I said. “My God, they’re hurting him. Stefan hasn’t done anything wrong. You know that he was home before midnight – yes, I heard it with my own ears. I did! He has an alibi. So there can’t be any basis in law
for thinking he’s mixed up with this, except that he’s a foreigner. Don’t do this to him.”

  Lieutenant Pellegrino looked acutely uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell if he was disturbed by the other officers mistreating Stefan or by my forceful plea.

  “Stefan must leave with me, Lieutenant Pellegrino,” I said. “Take me to him.”

  My appeal made within earshot of God knows how many others put him in a tough spot. But I was past being tricked into small rooms and there manipulated. This had to happen in the open.

  “Take me to Stefan now,” I cried.

  “No,” he said finally. “Go outside. He’ll be brought out shortly.”

  “How short?” I pressed. If I’d learned anything, it was that taking a police officer’s word for anything was a mistake.

  “Within the next fifteen minutes.” He pointed at me. “Miss Batternberg, I don’t want to see you in this man’s company after today, or else I’ll have no choice but to talk to your family – to your mother – to advise her of the situation in full.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and walked in the direction of the door behind which I knew they kept Stefan. A hand slipped around my elbow, guiding me the other way. It was the blond police officer, taking me past the front desk, through the crowded, clamoring waiting area, and the door leading to the street.

  If the officer said anything to me, I didn’t hear it. All I know is that suddenly I found myself standing outside the police precinct alone, reeling. I felt as if my time inside that building surely stretched over many hours, days even, but the reality was, it was just long enough for the front sidewalk to be bathed in shade instead of direct sunlight. Perhaps five o’clock. Three middle-aged men wearing somber suits shuffled down the steps of the courthouse next door. One of them stopped, cupped his face in one hand, and said, “They bested me. I can’t believe it turned against me.” Another clapped him on the back. “The Coney crowd are the meanest sharks in the water. I tried to warn you.” The third said, “Drinks on me on the Bowery, mates.”

  The trio walked past the precinct door, glancing my way with mild interest before quickening their pace as they neared the end of the block. Soon enough they’d be sitting in a dark tavern, the sting of their lost court case easing. But it would take me a very long time to recover from what just happened. And what about Stefan? My wounds were of the spirit, his of the body.