The smile faded.
I inhaled sharply. “You do think it’s Ben. But my God, why would he hurt me? And then risk his own life for me?”
“He was the only member of the family in the water when you went under. You two just had a serious falling out, on top of not getting along very well for the last couple of years. What better way to ensure your loyalty – and to restore the closeness you once had?”
“No, no, no, you’re wrong,” I said. “He wouldn’t do that. Never.” My shrill denial of this possibility brought the nurse into the room to check on me. I muttered to her that I needed nothing.
“I realize you’re very upset, and that’s natural,” said Aunt Helen quietly. “I’ll give you time to think it over, to decide the best course of action. I only ask that we keep this between us for now.”
Another person who wished to swear me to silence. I nodded, and my aunt slipped out, leaving me in a torment. I knew she hated her stepson. I also knew Ben could be cunning and selfish, even cruel, but to commit this terrible act? Unthinkable. And yet he was quite close to me in the water just when I required rescue. I paced the room, realizing with each step that my strength was just about restored in full. No dizziness, no nausea, no wobbly limbs. I’d had enough of this room. I put on the robe and cracked open the door, searching for the nurses or the doctor.
My room was on a short corridor that branched off from a much longer one, like the bottom part of the letter “L.” You’d have to know the medical suite was here to find it; the rooms were discreetly situated in the hotel. I could hear people talking in the main part of the hall, doors shutting, the hum of wheels and the clatter of china. Right outside my room, a man was mopping the floor of the hallway. The business of the vast Oriental went on around me, although when I’d been inside my room, all seemed quiet.
As I stood there, impatient to find someone to help me, Dr. Deitch came around the corner, a nurse with him – and Uncle David. None looked happy.
I said, “Doctor, I’d like to return to my own room in the hotel.”
“Later,” said my uncle curtly. “Go back in, Peggy. There’s someone who has asked to interview you.”
Interview me?
Once I’d been pushed into the room, my uncle said, “There is a police lieutenant in Coney Island who has heard of your accident and is most insistent on speaking to you.”
Dr. Deitch said, “In the past, the hotel’s owner, Mr. Lancet, has been successful in preventing this particular police officer from entering the hotel. But supposedly the orders have come down from the police commissioner overseeing New York City that reported drownings and rescues from drowning must be investigated thoroughly. There has been a sharp rise because of the heat spell. Of course, your case is not like that. But this lieutenant is not an easy person to convince of anything.”
This could only be referring to one person. No, Lieutenant Pellegrino was not easy to convince. I knew that firsthand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Unsure what to make of my silence, Uncle David said, “If you cannot face this, I’m sure I can deal with it. I’ll say you’re not well enough, you’re resting, and then have one of our lawyers reach out to his superior office, go as high as we need to in order to make him disappear.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’ll speak to this police officer.” I sat on the edge of the bed, fastening the top button of my robe.
In the time it took for them to bring in Lieutenant Pellegrino, I sorted through my feelings. Why didn’t I accept my uncle’s offer to make this police officer go away? It would be risky to see him here, in front of family, in case he revealed that I had gone to him not a week earlier. But in my own way, I was trying to protect Stefan. I worried that antagonizing Lieutenant Pellegrino would have an unpleasant effect, even intensify the suspicion. But if I were honest with myself, I was also excited at the thought of discussing Stefan with the lieutenant. I longed for any scrap of news, even from his persecutor.
This was how, incongruous as it would have seemed even an hour ago, Lieutenant Pellegrino came to me in the Oriental Hotel. I’d expected him to look out of place. But he strode in with confidence, his eyes sweeping the small room before settling on me with a stony blankness. “I understand that you had a serious mishap yesterday, Miss Batternberg. I’d like to hear about it. My name is Lieutenant Pellegrino.”
Encouraged by his subterfuge, I said, “Well, Lieutenant, what happened was that I went to the hotel’s private beach yesterday after lunch for swimming, as I usually do. I didn’t feel well, but I thought the water would revive me. Unfortunately, once I was out there, I took something of a turn for the worse. I felt very sick and… I passed out.”
“It sounds like you were at serious risk.”
“My son saw Peggy was in difficulty and rescued her,” said Uncle David with pride.
“That was fortunate,” said Lieutenant Pellegrino. Yet he did not seem satisfied. “What is the nature of the illness?” he asked, turning to Dr. Deitch.
“Possibly a touch of influenza, or a bit of food gone bad,” said the doctor.
“If there is food poisoning at this hotel, we should be told about it,” Lieutenant Pellegrino said sharply.
“I ate the same lunch as others at my table: lobster salad,” I said. “I don’t think it was the food.” The minute the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t be volunteering anything.
“Oh? Then what made you so ill that you passed out in the ocean, Miss Batternberg? It was just twenty-four hours ago, but you don’t look sick now.”
Dr. Deitch went over the possibilities, from a fleeting virus to a case of sunstroke, while the lieutenant listened. I wondered what would happen if I announced, “It’s possible someone put chloral hydrate in my Coca-Cola.” Within the hour, more police could charge into the hotel, there would be interviews, and then accusations. And if my Aunt Helen were right and someone had drugged me, shouldn’t I seek the help of the police? Yet I knew I would never tell Lieutenant Pellegrino. The family bond, the instinct of the Batternbergs to defend one another against outsiders, was so strong.
“I’d like to speak to Miss Batternberg alone,” said Lieutenant Pellegrino.
That was met with strenuous objections from my uncle, but Lieutenant Pellegrino was adamant. I tried my best to hide my nervousness while they argued. I feared that he suspected something criminal about my near-drowning. I did not want to have to lie to the police.
The lieutenant had his way, and the doctor and my uncle left through the side door leading to a second room in the medical suite. Once we were alone, Lieutenant Pellegrino said, “When one of our sources in the hotel passed your name along, I had to make sure this collapse in the water had nothing to do with certain parties.”
My relief over learning his motivation to talk to me in private was swiftly replaced with incredulity.
“Do you think Stefan made his way onto the beach of the Oriental Hotel in order to drown me?” I said.
Lieutenant Pellegrino radiated disappointment. “So you’ve not had any more contact with Mr. Chalakoski, but you’re just as eager to defend him.”
“As I would any innocent man,” I said. “I’m certain that you haven’t found a shred of evidence against him.”
“I can’t discuss an ongoing police investigation,” he said coldly. I interpreted that as meaning no, he hadn’t found evidence implicating Stefan, and after all, how could he? It didn’t exist.
He continued, “But I did come across some interesting background on Mr. Chalakoski. And it’s due to something you said.”
Apprehensive, I watched him pull something from his uniform jacket. It was a magazine, its cover as colorful as the ones I’d bought during my shopping spree, but the writing was not in English. Among the words I saw: “Italia.” This must be an Italian publication.
Thumbing the pages, Lieutenant Pellegrino said, “You told me Stefan Chalakoski is an artist, and we got out of him that before he came t
o New York he lived in Italy for a few years. I made it my business to take a look at his art for sale. He calls himself ‘The Futurist.’” The police officer found what he sought and spread open the magazine on the bed before me. “They call themselves the same. It is what you types of people like to call a ‘movement’: futurism. I found this long article about it.”
I bent down to examine the pages spread open before me. Photos of the paintings revealed a style that was similar to Stefan’s: Bright colors, abstract figures, all of it caught in dazzling action, thrusts of movement. “It’s not a peaceful future they have in mind, these artists,” said Lieutenant Pellegrino. “They want to forget the past, they actually say museums and libraries should be destroyed.” His fingers jabbed at the images. “Look at this: cannons firing. And this other painting: Men crouched in a trench. Miss Batternberg, their leader wrote a manifesto, I’ll quote from parts of it here, you’ll have to accept my translation: We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness… Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry… We will glorify war – the world’s only hygiene – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.”
At the last phrase, he looked at me with special meaning.
“But these aren’t his paintings, and Stefan didn’t write any of this,” I said. “He’s lived in America for almost two years.”
Undeterred, the lieutenant said, “I’ll ask you to pay close attention to a photograph of one more painting.” He turned a page and pointed, saying, “This one is called ‘The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.’ The man being buried was part of a workers’ strike, and in all the chaos, he was stabbed to death by security guards for the factory. This painting shows the riot when the police in Milan tried to bring order to Galli’s funeral. You see how extreme violence is shown as a good thing here.”
I did study the photograph of the painting, and all I could feel was an awed excitement.
It must have been obvious to Lieutenant Pellegrino that I wasn’t reacting the way he hoped. His voice rising, he said, “You were full of scorn for the idea that Stefan Chalakoski could be involved in anarchist activities. I’ve laid out for you here how the art, his ideas for the art, lead to just that type of violence. Now, I must ask you again, is there anything else that Chalakoski said or did that would assist my investigation?”
I closed the magazine on the bed and said, “No.”
He snatched it up. “Fine, Miss Batternberg. All I can say is, I hope your close call in the Atlantic was just an accident. Because there’s a very dangerous man out here on Coney Island.”
I looked away from his angry face, toward the door. Underneath the door, in that small gap between the bottom of it and the floor, I saw a dark shadow glide, like a person who had been standing outside now moved away. My heart dropped – was Uncle David or Dr. Deitch listening? A few seconds later, Lieutenant Pellegrino strode over to the side door, yanking it open to reveal the two men seated, talking, in the middle of the next room: my uncle and doctor. So no, it couldn’t have been either of them in the hallway.
All three men left together, my Uncle David asking in his most imperious manner why Lieutenant Pellegrino felt it necessary to subject me to such prolonged questioning in my weakened state. I peered out at the hallway from my door. There was one person visible: the nurse, at the end, crouched before a cabinet. I moved to return to my room when something caught my attention on the floor, right by my right foot. It was a small, loose pile of gray ashes. I was certain I hadn’t seen it before Lieutenant Pellegrino’s disturbing visit. I’d watched a worker mop the floor clean right before he came. Sometime during my conversation with the police officer, someone had stood here long enough to tap a cigarette, not once or even twice but perhaps three times.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“I want to go again, Mother,” shouted the little boy riding the wooden horse. “Again and again!”
A woman with a face flushed red and shiny beneath the brim of her hat groaned and said, “No, Theodore. Enough.”
The boy, perhaps seven years old, slammed the side of the horse’s neck so hard it shook. “Again!” he cried. His mother assented; perhaps she hadn’t the strength, in this heat, to oppose him.
I watched their struggle at the Central Park Carousel from under the neighboring oak tree. I frequently mopped my face with a handkerchief. This was the fifteenth day of the unbroken hot spell. Even in the Oriental Hotel, not an especially God-fearing place, there were whispers of this heat being the Lord’s Will, or more specifically, the Lord’s Punishment.
But I wasn’t on Coney Island, I was standing in the center of a much larger island: Manhattan, the city of my birth. There wasn’t a sea breeze offering relief here. Drab leaden clouds blocked all sun – and yet the temperature must have been well above ninety degrees. There was a stickiness to the air, as if we staggered through taffy. But none of that mattered to me. I was waiting for Stefan. At long last, the day had come. I’d once again arranged with my sister Lydia to tell the others I’d be spending a quiet day in my room. She was happy to help, saying I deserved to have some fun, and promised to square things with Alice again. The train shot in so fast, I was in Central Park before I knew it.
Lydia had no idea that my escort for the day was not a journalist named Merton Desher, but an immigrant suspected of murder by a stubborn police lieutenant. And yet, as bad as that sounded, Stefan, in my opinion, was a better prospect than Henry Taul. I had come close to showing Lydia the Town Topics item a few times, but I just couldn’t. I wasn’t absolutely sure it referred to him, just as I wasn’t certain that I believed Aunt Helen’s theory that I’d been drugged at lunch and sent into the ocean to collapse. I lived in a fraught world of doubt and continual, grinding tension.
The carousel was located in the southern part of the park, on what would have been Sixty-Fifth Street, had it run through the flat meadows and hilly woods. I kept looking down the walkways. Each time I detected the figure of a slender young man walking in my direction, my heart thumped frantically until he came close enough for me to be sure it wasn’t Stefan. In the back of my mind lurked the sad possibility he would not come. It felt like another lifetime in which we’d planned to meet on this day at one in the afternoon.
For the tenth time, I strained to see up the walkways. A new possibility emerged: a man closing in on the carousel from the west, wearing a summer suit and hat like every other male in the park. But the way he walked, the fluid gait and perfect posture… I suddenly clapped my hands. It was Stefan. I bolted from beneath the tree, my feet flying.
“Peggy, you here,” he said, a delighted smile lighting up his angular features. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know?” I laughed.
He put out his hand for me to shake. I wanted to throw myself into his arms, feel his lips press mine, but this was Manhattan, not Coney Island, and we were in public. As I gripped his hand, I studied his face. There was a yellow bruise still visible around his eye and a mark on his chin.
“What do you like to do?” he asked. “I can take you to lunch, or picture show.”
“For now, what I’d most like is a stroll,” I said, taking his arm. I was too excited to eat, and I wanted to talk to Stefan, not sit next to him in a theatre, watching one of D.W. Griffith’s spectacles. I’d had enough epics and disasters on Coney Island.
“A stroll?” His accent darted in and out of the word. “Let’s hope sky permits.” Stefan pointed at a dark bank of clouds roiling on the horizon.
“It threatens, but the rain never comes,” I scoffed.
And so we strolled, among families looking for a picnic spot and people riding horses on trails. I told him a few stories I knew about Frederick Olmsted creating Central Park fifty years ago, and he listened appreciatively. I adored this – we could be any other courting couple – but nonetheless, I had to broach a subject more serious. “Have
the police been bothering you?”
“They follow here and there, but no one asks me questions,” he said. “Don’t worry, Peggy. No one follow me today. I think now they look in other directions.”
Just five days ago, Lieutenant Pellegrino had been looking very much in Stefan’s direction. There was no ambiguity about the lieutenant’s opinion, and Stefan deserved to know as much – and today. I was mulling over how to begin when Stefan touched his cheek, wonderingly.
“What is it?” I asked, just as a large drop of warm water splashed my shoulder. I looked up. In minutes, the sky had turned darkest gray with an ominous undertone of yellow.
The raindrops plopping, faster and bigger, made us quicken our pace. I could make out the brownstones lining Central Park West, but that was at least a five-minute walk. A light flashed, and the sky rumbled. I reached for Stefan’s hand. I feared we were seconds from being caught in a violent thunderstorm with no shelter but trees. Even I, a hopeless city girl, knew trees weren’t safe to stand beneath when lightning forked the sky. Stefan pointed not toward Central Park West but a large stone archway that served as an overpass.
“Can you run?” he asked, looking down at my shoes.
“Yes – let’s go!” I shouted, and, holding his hand tight, we sprinted for the archway.
The rain spattered harder, but now the drops were deliciously cold. It felt fantastic. We veered off the walkway and onto the dirt path that led right under the arch, about ten feet high at its center.
We let go of each other’s hands as we laughed and gasped for breath. Staggering, I took off my hat and laid my forehead against the curved stone wall for balance, but then I pushed away. I must look such a wreck from the running and the rain, I didn’t want to top it off with a dirty face. A musty, peaty smell permeated the tunnel. Although the rain began a short time ago, I could feel the temperature dropping.
“Here – Peggy, see this,” said Stefan, reaching out. The rain had transformed into white and silver sheets of water, furiously pounding the ground inches from the mouth of our tunnel. Through the sheets, puddles bubbled where moments before it had been hard, parched dirt. Lightning flashed, and thunder shattered the air some five seconds later. But this tunnel, like everything else about Central Park, was built to last. We were safe.
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