At forty-four inches tall, she was the largest doll he’d been able to find. The dresses she wore were still much too big, the fabric frayed where he’d cut off sleeves and hems in an attempt to make them look as though one day the doll might grow into them.
The doll had started as a prop, a means of deflecting attention from the fact that he had a collection of girls’ worn clothing in his suitcase. At first he’d invented imaginary daughters, but this provoked too many questions—their ages, names, where they lived, why he traveled with their clothes, their mother’s name, on and on and on.
The doll, oddly, inspired less curiosity. Of course he kept her out of sight. It was possible to forget where he’d stuffed a dress or pinafore, but not the doll. The doll demanded attention. She demanded to be hidden. Only twice had someone glimpsed her. The first time, he’d been careless in his hotel room and left her on his bed after unpacking. A bellman noticed her when he dropped off an item he’d left in the lobby. The bellman assumed she was a mannequin of the sort one saw in the more expensive department stores, and that he was a salesman.
The other time it had been the landlady at a short-term boardinghouse in Passaic, a nosy bitch always sniffing around for available single men. She’d found the doll in the armoire where his suits hung. Not content with that discovery, she’d pawed through his bureau and come across a stack of folded dresses and pinnies. He’d given her a cock-and-bull story about the doll being a gift for his daughter, which resulted in an argument over why he’d told her he was unmarried. He left that night, despite having paid for an entire week’s lodging.
Over time, the doll took on her own life. Or, not her own, but the lives of the girls whose clothes she wore. He couldn’t recall the faces of the girls, but he knew the name of each one, now associated with a red-gingham frock or faded, much-worn pinny, a middy blouse or blue serge coat with white crystal-ball buttons.
He tucked one of the doll’s ringlets behind a delicate ear. She had been manufactured by the German doll makers Simon & Halbig. He had purchased her three years ago at John Wanamaker. A lady-body doll, not a baby doll, she had smooth swellings to represent breasts. The subtle curves had been unnoticeable beneath her original clothes—indigo taffeta, Belgian lace, satin ribbons, real kid-leather shoes. She was intended as a rich girl’s doll, and he’d acted the part of a rich girl’s father. Her wardrobe had changed numerous times in the last three years, though her original clothing remained folded inside a pillowcase at the bottom of an oversize straw-and-leather suitcase.
The suitcase had belonged to a man named Richard, who impersonated women at burlesque houses and places of men’s entertainment. Richard had befriended him when they shared a weeklong bill at the opera house in Manchester, New Hampshire. “My wife ran off with a preacher in Detroit,” he confided one boozy evening. “It’s a tough life if you’re not in it.”
He’d killed Richard after a long bout of drinking in a saloon frequented by the city’s mill workers, the night before they were scheduled to leave for Bangor, Maine. He had no particular animus against the man, just curiosity.
And he coveted his suitcase. He’d always had a vague, unarticulated belief that it might be possible to commit a crime with no fear of reprisal, if only one didn’t plan it in advance. The other man had consumed nearly a quart of whiskey. The weather was frigid. They’d walked along the river, where he’d taken Richard by the arm, to keep him from stumbling. He knew Richard kept his keys and wallet in the inside pocket of his worsted overcoat. It was easy to slide them out, under pretense of pulling the coat more tightly about his companion, to keep him warm. Even easier, as they approached an unlit stretch behind the mill, to push him into the river.
He left a note to the company manager in the hotel, imitating Richard’s handwriting: an unexpected letter from his former wife gave him hope of a rapprochement, therefore Richard was leaving directly to meet her in Saugaus, Michigan. He’d left on the next train for Boston with Richard’s belongings, traveling from there to Manhattan.
Now he gently stroked the doll’s dark hair. Her sleep-glass eyes gleamed in the gas light. He didn’t think of her as a toy, but as a girl composed of his memories of all those other girls.
Those other girls talked too much. All girls did. That was why the moving pictures were perfect for them. Kathlyn Williams or Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish—no matter how many times they were threatened on the screen, they always escaped. Their innocence couldn’t be assailed.
He knew that innocence was a fraud. Diminutive and doll-like, Pickford and Gish looked much younger than their years, which was why they continued to be cast as near children. Every performer he’d ever known lied. Chaplin at least was honest. He liked flirting with young girls, and they liked him back.
He embraced the doll. For just a few more minutes, her name would be Iolanda. Her white pinny had been starched and clean when he’d found her, her dark hair covered by a pert maroon bow, now limp. He carried her to the table and laid her on it, facedown; unbuttoned the back of her pinafore and removed it, then the plaid dress beneath. He folded the clothes carefully, went to the corner, and opened the suitcase. A breath of rot exuded from it, despite the balls of camphor sprinkled inside.
Beneath his clothes and other items of his trade was a pile of neatly folded dresses, skirts, chemises. He pressed Iolanda’s dress and pinafore to his face, inhaling the scent that barely clung there now. The camphor would quickly overpower what remained. He placed her clothing with the rest, closed the suitcase, and locked it.
He retrieved his scissors and, setting the yellow dress on top of the doll, began to carefully snip away the excess fabric. As always, the dress was too big, but he had grown more adept over the years. He stopped often, holding a sleeve alongside an arm, measuring with his thumb joint, clipping loose threads. A long time passed before he was content with his handiwork. When he was finished, he slipped the dress over the doll’s head and stood her on the chair.
The dress ended a few inches above her ankles. Not a perfectly even hem, but a few pins fixed that. The sleeves were just about right; when he folded back the cuffs, you couldn’t tell they hadn’t been made to order. He ran his fingers across the soft folds that fell to her knees, smoothing them out. He regretted not having kept her yellow hair ribbon. He untied Iolanda’s wilted maroon bow and tied it around the doll’s waist; straightened and took a step back to gaze at her.
“Perfect,” he murmured.
He gathered the doll into his arms. Her body felt stiff and unyielding after the girl’s, but that was what he loved about dolls, their quiescence. Even standing upright, glass eyes wide open, they dreamed: lying alongside them, he could impose his own longings upon them, just as children did to their own dolls.
But most of all he treasured the way the phantom presence of flesh-and-blood girls would, fleetingly, animate the face, the limbs. It was like a theatrical performance or moving picture, one that you could enter and leave at will. He buried his face in the buttercup-yellow fabric, breathing in the scents of ice cream and lemon drops and, more faintly, Sydenham’s syrup.
“Maria.” He murmured the new name, waking her, and carried her into the other room.
Chapter 29
PIN SHOVED THROUGH the crowd on the midway. Gone were the families and picnickers. The park belonged to serious revelers now, workers escaping jobs in stockyards and slaughterhouses, hospitals and whorehouses, small shops and the monolithic department store Marshall Field’s. Ballmann’s musicians had moved to the Palace Ballroom, where some nights more than a thousand couples came to dance. On the bandstand, Ballmann’s men were replaced by a ragtime band whose members came from the Sunny South show, eager to cut loose. “Searchlight Rag” echoed from a dance-hall piano, polkas from the beer gardens. At the Ten-in-One, Red Friend belted the same bally he’d been shouting all day beneath his faded-green canvas umbrella.
“Happened right where you’re standing, friend—that very spot!”
She
found an empty bench and sat, exhausted; squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to see the dead girl’s face, pale and swollen as a sponge. Pin wondered if her mother would be working the dance hall tonight. She imagined her pulling a man in a seersucker suit onto the dance floor, grabbing his arms as they swung around in the grizzly bear. A third person joined them, a girl. No, a doll, flopping around their feet. The man stepped on her face, and her mother screamed as the doll pushed itself up and began to turn, its face no longer a doll’s.
Pin woke, her heart racing. She lurched to her feet and hugged herself, fighting tears, and continued walking.
She considered returning to the shack, yet tired as she was, she knew she wouldn’t fall asleep there. The Kansas Cyclone next door ran the same one-reeler until closing time, accompanied by noisy flourishes from the pianist.
Still, Ikie and the others sometimes hung around the Cyclone. Pin was cautious of spending too much time with them, or anyone, but sometimes her loneliness felt like cold fingers pinching her throat. Ikie and Mugsy and the rest were her age or older, and bigger than she was. At first they’d treated her like a kid brother.
But as the season got under way, the others worked the rides and games for fifteen hours at a stretch, stealing a few free minutes when they could. They were constantly brawling—real fights, sometimes the cops had to break them up. Mugsy stole bottles of beer to share. Ikie flirted with colored girls and, because he looked older, sometimes took them dancing. And they all talked about girls incessantly.
She felt neither girl nor boy but trapped in between. Like an out-of-focus bit of film, one of those fragments where the sprockets didn’t line up. She knew what happened to those damaged frames: they got burned up by the projector or edited out and thrown away.
The trick was to stay out of focus, but on purpose. To always keep moving, hands in her pockets and cap pulled down low to make her look tough. After her sister disappeared, Pin’s mother gave her a shiv that Pin kept in her pocket. Some nights, waiting for her mother to return from the dance hall, she’d fall asleep on the pallet they shared with the knife in her hand.
“Watch it, you fucking punk!”
A drunk bumped into her, nearly knocking her to the ground. A big guy, suspenders loose over his slack belly. Pin slipped a hand into her pocket to touch the blade, its steel cool and reassuring. She gazed at the drunk, and her eyes went funny: she saw two figures stepping into the boat at Hell Gate, the girl in yellow hopping onto the man’s lap. She sucked in her breath. Was this the same man?
But of course it wasn’t him. He’d already joined the crowd of stewed monkeys at the High Striker, waiting to try their luck with the mallet. The game was rigged; all the games were rigged. Pin knuckled her eyes, tasted something sour at the back of her mouth. Kept moving.
Chapter 30
IT WAS LATE when Max finally sat down in his apartment and counted out his day’s earnings. Seven dollars and thirty-five cents. A pathetic haul for a Saturday. He stared at the piles of coins, trying to recall where the spare dime had gone; then remembered he’d given that punk Pin a dime in addition to his streetcar fare. The kid’s mother must be a whore—fortune-tellers often were, especially if there was no husband in tow. But she could still feed her kid.
Slut, he thought, and poured himself another tumbler of whiskey. It scorched his throat, burning away the memory of Pin’s half-starved face, the postcard image of a childlike woman with a waist no bigger than a doll’s. Tomorrow was Sunday: the park would be crowded, and by late afternoon men would be lined up three-deep in front of his tent. He’d be able to make up for today’s shortfall if he kept his head clear. He finished the whiskey and stumbled off to bed.
Chapter 31
SHE FOUND IKIE and Mugsy in the alley behind the Kansas Cyclone building, sitting on upturned barrels. Ikie waved her over.
“Want one?” He jabbed a thumb at a paper cone of fried potatoes in his lap. “Clyde told me you got a case of the crazies. All hopped up about kidnappers.”
Pin wolfed down a potato, staring at the beer bottle in Mugsy’s hand. “Gimme some of that and I’ll tell you what I saw.”
Mugsy hesitated, then gave it to her. “Tastes like piss anyway,” he said.
“You would know,” retorted Pin, and took a swallow of warm beer. “So I’m over by Hell Gate, and I see this guy. He goes into the tunnel with a girl, she’s twelve maybe. He comes out. She doesn’t.”
Ikie made a face. “You sure?”
“Yeah. This other fella I talked to, he saw them, too—kind of a dingbat, he hangs around all day watching kids on the rides.”
“A chester,” sneered Mugsy.
“Maybe. Seems more like he has snakes in his boots. But that’s not the point. I asked Clyde did he see them, but he couldn’t remember. So I go back inside a little while ago and…”
Saying anything more would make it real. She stared down the dark alley. At last she said, “I took one of the boats and hopped out onto the ledge and walked to where Clyde or whoever’s doing Satan is.”
“You did not,” said Ikie.
“I did. That’s where I found her. The girl. Dead.”
Mugsy leaned closer. “How’d she die?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t have her clothes on—I mean, the dress, when I saw her go in, she wore a yellow dress. But inside, she only had on her shimmy. And this…”
She slid her hand into her pocket and withdrew the dirty yellow ribbon. “It fell into the canal. Her body. I saw it float away. That’s when I ran out.”
She waited for them to mock her or laugh. But they just continued to stare.
“Who’d you tell?” Ikie asked.
“No one. Johnny Iacono was working the exit, I told him.”
Ikie shook his head. “Why didn’t you—”
The clamor of the police station’s alarm bell abruptly silenced him. Pin jumped as a man shouted her name.
“Pin!”
Ikie and Mugsy fled. Pin made it only halfway down the alley before someone grabbed her collar and yanked her off her feet.
“I didn’t do nothing!” she protested.
“Who said you did?”
Fatty Bacon peered past her, but the boys had scattered. He lowered her to the ground and clamped a hand around her wrist. He looked grim.
“You know what I need to talk to you about. Johnny Iacono said you told him about the body in the Hell Gate. Were they with you?” He gestured at the overturned barrels.
“No. I just got here. I—”
“Wait till we get to the station.”
“I didn’t do nothing!” she yelped as he dragged her down the alley. “I was the one trying to find her! Ow, leggo, that hurts.”
“Why didn’t you report what you saw?”
Because you’re a fucking copper, she thought, and stared at him with hatred. Fatty’s mouth tightened.
“Well, you can make your report now,” he said. “Stop squirming, no one’s hurting you.”
“Says you,” spat Pin as he hauled her to the station.
Chapter 32
RIVERVIEW’S POLICE FORCE was housed in a trim brick building near the park’s entrance. A dozen sergeants were on staff, most of them part-time constables. Pin had never been inside before. She recited a silent Hail Mary, praying they wouldn’t pat her down and find her shiv—or discover she wasn’t a boy.
Men mobbed the main room, shouting or talking excitedly. Riverview cops and also Dr. Overcash, who had an office on the premises of the Infant Incubators and often stayed there overnight.
“Francis!” Captain Hickey pushed his way through the room, barely glancing at Pin. “Bring the boy in here.”
Fatty poked her in the back, indicating an office. Hickey looked over his shoulder and yelled, “Get O’Connell in here, I need someone to write this down.”
The room had a desk, a table in the back, several chairs, and a framed photograph of the Riverview force saluting President Taft, whose bulk was superior to Hick
ey’s, but not by much. The captain leaned against the desk, his face red, and nervously stroked his mustache. He was a stout white man, red haired like Fatty. His hazel eyes glinted behind wire-rimmed spectacles, and instead of a high-domed helmet he favored a fedora, now sitting on the desk.
“Have a seat, young man,” he said, pointing to a chair.
Fatty let go of her wrist, and Pin turned to the police captain. “I told him, I was just—”
Hickey held up a meaty hand. “Not till the recorder gets here. You need to wait until you’re asked a question before speaking.”
Pin sat and stared at the floor, her heart racing. She gnawed her lip, hands shoved in her pockets, while Fatty and Hickey spoke together in low voices. A few minutes later O’Connell rushed in, a young sergeant carrying a small typewriter.
“Sorry.” He hurried around the desk and set down the typewriter. “Steiner at Robey Street didn’t want to loan it to us. I waited till he got called out, and Wilkes let me take it. Just be sure it’s out of sight when Cabell arrives.”
Fatty’s lip curled at Cabell’s name. “Did you tell them what we needed it for?”
“Absolutely not. But they’ll be here soon enough. And I keep telling you, if we had our own typewriter, we wouldn’t have to—”
For the first time O’Connell noticed Pin. He turned to Hickey in surprise. “Surely this wee lad didn’t do it?”
Hickey shot O’Connell a warning look. “We’re just questioning this young man. Could you please close the door, Mr. O’Connell?”
The captain turned to Pin and began to speak, not unkindly. “Sergeant Bacon or I will ask you questions, and Sergeant O’Connell will record them on the stenotype machine. That way we’ll know exactly what you said. Are you ready?”
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