The Wicked City

  1

  ABOUT TEN minutes after we cross the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, I realize I’ve left behind my mama’s letters on the wicker table of Mrs. Marshall’s pool house in Southampton, New York.

  Luella notices my distress. (Luella Kingston—that’s our Millicent Merriwether Macduff’s real name, don’t you know. At least she says it is. Frankly, I prefer Macduff.) “Something wrong?” she asks, casting me a sideways glance as she points the automobile down the darkened Lincoln Highway at a steady fifty-one miles per hour.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Just something I left behind, that’s all.”

  “Your virtue, maybe?”

  I open my mouth to snap back that it’s not my virtue lying among the tangled sheets a couple hundred miles behind us, by God, but I stop myself just in time. “Whatever you say, Macduff.”

  She reaches for her pocketbook with one hand. “If I’ve seen one woman throw herself at that bastard, I’ve seen a hundred. And he chooses you.”

  “I wonder why you care. You don’t happen to count yourself among the unlucky hundred, do you?”

  “God, no.” She fumbles with a pack of cigarettes, steadying the wheel with her knee. She’s wearing a pair of men’s trousers in checked brown wool and a Norfolk jacket, like she’s off to the countryside to shoot pheasants or something. Her pale hair’s caught up under a wool cap. Not glamorous but tremendously capable. The kind of woman who can drive a six-stroke automobile with one knee while extracting a thick, masculine cigarette from a cardboard box. “I’m just puzzled, that’s all. Like they say, there’s no accounting for taste, is there?”

  “Do you want a hand with that? Before you wreck us inside a tree somewhere?”

  “Nah, I got it.” She holds matchbook and wheel in the left hand, strikes the match with the right. Lights the stick, which is stuck between her faded pink lips. “So how was it?”

  “How was what?”

  “You know. Shacking up with Mr. Marshall.”

  The word Marshall jars me. I turn my head to the window, though I can’t see much. Just the shadows of trees, flipping past in a dark blur. The reek of tobacco burning fills the air.

  “That bad, was it?” Luella says. “Or that good?”

  “Just watch the road, will you?”

  “My God. You’re dead gone, aren’t you? You are just plain cuckoo for that block of damned wood. I’d laugh if it weren’t such a tragedy.”

  “He’s not dead yet, for God’s sake.”

  She sucks hard on her cigarette and hauls down the window a few inches. A gust of wet air pours through the crack. “I guess we’ll find out soon, won’t we? Try to get a little sleep, carrots. You’re going to need it.”

  I wad up my jacket and stick it between head and window. “Call me carrots again, Macduff, and you’ll be picking your teeth from the steering wheel.”

  2

  THE AUTOMOBILE is a Franklin two-seater, racing green, six muscular cylinders. Belongs not to Luella, I hasten to add, but to Mr. Marshall himself, lord and master, who wasn’t exactly around to sanction its requisition by the New York City Prohibition enforcement agency, though Mrs. Marshall assured me he won’t mind. We didn’t tell her the whole truth, of course. How could you tell a woman who’s already lost one son that her remaining two boys are now the property of one Duke Kelly, hillbilly bootlegger? I couldn’t do it. Not least because the fault lies with me.

  Even the sanguine Luella is rattled, though she hides it all behind a bravado of wool trousers and cigarettes. She can’t fool me. I can see the tremor in her fingers holding the smoke; the small, nervous pulse of her lacquered thumb against the steering wheel. I have a thousand questions I need to ask her, but it seems they’re all stuck in my throat. Maybe I don’t desire to know the answers.

  The miles pass. The towns pass, bleeding into the northern reaches of Philadelphia, the western suburbs. Bryn Mawr, against which sight I shut my eyes. Wayne.

  Well. The good Lord hates a coward, Gin.

  I unstick my forehead from the window and say, “How in the name of God did they take Billy? That’s what I want to know. Last I saw him was a parlor in Glen Cove, Long Island.”

  “Didn’t I tell you to get some sleep?”

  “Not the way you’re driving.”

  She tips her cigarette out the window. “Just what was he doing in a parlor in Glen Cove?”

  “Proposing to me.” (I can’t resist.)

  Luella whistles. “How you get around. Engaged to one brother and going to bed with the other, all in the same night. I guess you can take the girl out of the hills—”

  “I told him no. Not that my private affairs are any of your beeswax. That’s how I ended up back in the city. Where Anson found me.”

  “Anson. You mean Marshall?”

  “Not to me, he’s not.”

  “No,” she says thoughtfully, hunting for another cigarette, “I guess he’s not, at that. Anyway, young Billy seems to have gone back into town in search of you, because that’s where they snatched him. In that boardinghouse of yours. A big to-do. Christopher telephoned me with the news.”

  “Did they hurt him?”

  She pauses. “I expect he put up a struggle, poor fool. They always do.”

  “So you went to find Anson.”

  “He wasn’t home.”

  “Home? Where’s home?”

  “He’s got a little place near the river. Away from his family. They’ve got a position, you know, a life on the society page—”

  “I know who they are.”

  “Anyway, it’s a shabby little apartment on the West Side, not much to speak of. One of those beds that folds out from the wall.” She speaks with conscious familiarity, flicking a bit of ash out the window. “He wasn’t there. No sign of him. But when I went back to my own place, the landlady had a telephone message from him. Where to find him, if something came up. So I telephoned back, first thing in the morning, and made Mrs. Marshall fetch him for me. Poor dear.”

  “And what time was that?”

  “I don’t know. Six or seven o’clock, I guess.”

  Six or seven o’clock. When I was fallen back asleep, no doubt, bone-weary after our second bout at dawn. Side by side, faces and bodies illuminated by the sunrise. Hands soft in idolatry. My leg thrown over his hip. His eyes, now thoroughly sober, in which my reflection lay clear and torrid. How strange and how electrifying, to look into someone’s eyes and see yourself. I don’t recollect the pulling apart afterward, nor falling into slumber. But somehow Anson heard his mother’s knock on the door and found the strength to rise. I clutch my fist under the shelter of my overcoat. “Say, how did he get word to you in the first place, anyway? I was right there with him the whole night, except when the doctor was stitching him together.”

  “Mrs. Marshall, of course. She rang me up about half past ten o’clock last night.”

  I consider the urgent conversation between mother and son, while I was in the kitchen getting the water hot. “I see. You’ve done this before, then?”

  “We’ve got a history, if that’s what you mean. I was the one who stood by him when the Bureau kicked him out. Trying to win back his good name. We started out partners, you know. Spent all day together, sometimes all night. We got so close, we could tell what the other was thinking, without saying a word. We would lay down our lives for each other.”

  “I see. No wonder you warned me off like that.”

  “Don’t be jealous.”

  “Don’t need to be.”

  “Whatever you like, doll. Any beans, I told him the news, and he went straight out in that motorboat. They caught him in New York Harbor.”

  “They?”

  “Your stepfather’s men. They sent us word, I jumped on the next train out to Southampton to fetch you—”

  “Because of course poor Billy’s just the bait, isn’t he? Both of them, Billy and Anson. I’m the one he really wants.”

  “Exac
tly. Don’t feel bad, honey. It’s only business.”

  “It’s not business to him. I’m not business. It is personal, between Duke and me. About as personal as it could be.”

  “Oh, don’t flatter yourself. He wouldn’t go to this much trouble for a little family affair.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Don’t I? What kind of bunny do you think I am? What do you think I’ve been doing these past three years, while you’ve been dancing and drinking and posing for photographs? I’ve been flirting with these fellows, fighting them, sleeping with them when I had to. I know them inside and out. And no boss risks good men for the sake of a private argument. No, ma’am, no matter how much he hates a girl, no matter how sore he is. Duke Kelly wants you for the same reason Marshall wanted you. Because you’re the only person alive who can take him down.”

  “That’s not true. Passel-a men know enough about Duke’s business to put him in jail.”

  “But not one of them cares to turn against him, doll. Only you.”

  We are nearing some kind of town. A pair of yellow headlights grows and grows, bursting on our windshield like a double sun, and Luella slows the car. Worries the top of her cigarette with her thumb where it clutches the wheel, causing a small crumb of ash to fall from the end. A signpost flashes by, almost too fast to read. Some town named Coatesville. A few meager buildings rise up along the side of the road. Though the interior of the Franklin is chilly, a raw draft streaming in through the crack of Luella’s window, still she perspires from her temples and probably her armpits. I can see the gleam on her skin in the light from the other car as it roars past. I can smell her feral scent, overlaid by traces of a familiar, expensive perfume I can’t quite recollect the name of. Something she must have put on before she left New York City to fetch me. Something left over from the night before.

  I wait until we pass through the town—rows of worn, paint-chipped storefronts, waiting for a boom—before I speak again. “So the idea is, you give me up to Duke and get your man back.”

  “That’s about the sum of it, as far as I’m concerned. Of course, Marshall’s going to have other ideas.”

  “Oh?”

  Luella shifts gears smoothly, sending the Franklin to a high, even speed, flying westward along the Lincoln Highway. The cigarette’s gone, lost out the window, and she doesn’t light another.

  “The bastard never could resist trying to be a hero.”

  3

  I GUESS I do fall asleep, because at some point, leaning back against the window, jacket crammed between ear and glass, I leave off thinking and commence to dream I am back in bed with Anson. Except in this dream he looms above me, gargantuan, uninjured, hips rocking against mine, and though we can’t see each other I am absolutely overpowered by the brawn in his limbs, by his mass, near enough suffocated, while a most powerful climax builds up a head of steam in my parts like an express locomotive. Faster and faster we go. Thrusting like a piston. Nearly there. Too much to bear. I lift up my hands to what I suppose is Anson’s face, because I am plain afeared of the strength of this mounting explosion, scairt to death, need something dear to hold on to, but what I find is wet, hot and soaking wet, his head is split open and the blood pours over me, my neck and breasts and belly, while his body moves furiously on mine like a snake still moves after it be cut in twain. And I open my mouth to scream and I can’t say nothing, can’t see nothing, my throat is frozen and my eyes are blind, and I startle so hard I bang my head on the roof of the car.

  “Jesus!” says Luella, swerving a little. “What’s eating you?”

  “Nothing.” I open my hands and stare at the bare palms. Dawn’s starting to break, just enough light that I can see there’s no blood soaking me, only pale, cold skin. The shameful veins still throb between my legs, kind of painful, seeking the promised release. Feel as if I’m going to vomit.

  “Some nothing,” she says. “Let me know when you see a service station. Almost out of gas.”

  4

  WE DRIVE all morning and into the afternoon, under a sky made of cold Pennsylvania steel. I ask Luella why we couldn’t take the train. We’d have arrived by now, aboard the good old B&O.

  “There’s no hurry,” she says. “The party doesn’t start until you arrive, does it? Anyway, surprise is the only chance we’ve got. Only card in our hand.”

  “You’ve got a plan, I hope?”

  “Sure I got a plan. The plan is, you do just as I say.”

  “Yeah? I don’t like your plan. This is my country. I know how to deal with these fellows. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. I know who my step-daddy is, how he thinks and where to find him—”

  “Oh, shut your gums. You know nothing. Worse than nothing, because you think you’re so damn clever, so damn irresistible. You can’t just waltz into a gang of bootleggers like you waltz into a juice joint, carrots. All your sex appeal doesn’t count for beans when men are bent on business.”

  I grab the wheel, elbow her in the side, and steer us into the grass by the side of the road. Car bumps and rolls and stops while Luella tears at my skin. I wait until the tires stop rolling and the engine cuts before I let go the wheel, settle back in my seat, and say quietly, “What did I tell you about calling me carrots, Macduff?”

  “You’ve got some kind of complex, sister. You want to get us killed?”

  “I said don’t do it. So don’t.” I wrap my hand around the bit of her hair falling below the cap and bring her ear next to my mouth. “I’ll do what you tell me. I allow you’ve got more experience than me. But as soon as there’s trouble, as soon as your nice plan falls apart, it’s my rules, all right? My country, my rules. My life at stake.”

  “And Marshall’s.” She yanks her hair away.

  “That’s what I meant.”

  She starts the engine back up and sends the car back to the pavement, swearing as she goes. But she doesn’t say another word, not when we stop for gas and sandwiches in Gettysburg, not when we turn off the Lincoln Highway and head south into Maryland. The clouds dim and turn to rain. At some point past sunset, she pulls off the road and switches off the engine again. Tells me it’s time to get a few hours’ sleep, before we roll into River Junction at dawn.

  5

  SO LONG as I inhabited the town of my rearing, I can’t ever recollect driving there in an automobile. There is but one road, finding passage betwixt a pair of low-sloped mountains, mostly following the line of the creek bed. In summer, said creek runs scarce more than a trickle, cold and mountain-fed, wandering past the grazing kine and the fields of billowing rye, gathering tranquilly in the fishing hole where I once liketa murdered my step-daddy for his crimes against me.

  Now, though the world is still dark and sightless, I hear the voice of that creek as a raging god, swollen high by melting snow and late downpours. How it roars over the rocks. A fall of new rain smacks the windshield so hard, the automatic wipers can scarce keep up, and still the water bellows downstream, so loud and fearsome as I have ever heard it.

  I turn to Luella. “Creek’s high.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Creek’s high! Might could flood!”

  “Over the road?”

  “No, not here. Other side of town, maybe. Where it crosses the bridge.”

  She makes a single nod. Grips the wheel with her two long-fingered hands (no more steering by insouciant knee, no more lighting of cigarettes) and peers hard through the windshield, past the frantic swish-swish of the wiper blades, to follow the streaming patch of road illuminated by the headlights. Around us, the mountains press close, coal-black and unseen; the sky bears no trace of the coming sun. Just rain and more rain, the Lord Jesus weeping down pity for our sins, like my mama used to explain when I was but small.

  6

  BUT THE rain does lift when the road bends into the holler and the first houses creep past like solitary ghosts. Recedes to a mere drizzle, as a brash spring downpour is wont to do. Luella switches off the headlig
hts and I guide her off the road toward what used to be an old barn but is now something else: a still, I dare swan, by the smell of rye mash and smoke. We make for the orchard instead. Leave the Franklin there between the dripping trees, poised to run.

  Unlike Luella, I possess no hat and no mackintosh, just the overcoat bequeathed me by the Coast Guard captain. I turn up the collar and huddle inside as we trudge through the dark in the direction of Duke’s splendid new mansion. Drizzle splintering through my hair. Tip of my nose numb with cold. Belly wet with fear. Some kind of fragile childhood map guiding my steps, together with the noise of the rushing creek.

  Now, according to Luella, the message from Duke came to her through our mutual friend Christopher, whose role in these affairs seems like that of Switzerland, so far as I can tell. And said message was about as brief and straight as the firing of a pistol: the Marshall boys now under protection of one Duke Kelly, whose stepdaughter better make her way home to River Junction should she wish to see either man alive. But so small as River Junction always seemed to me, from the vantage of the great metropolis, there are yet many places to hide a pair of men from those who seek them. Luella and I, we have already discussed this point. How we must therefore discover some kind of ally from within, somebody who might know where this particular pair of men has been stashed away. Which nook or cranny or outbuilding of River Junction conceals these men, my men, my two lovers, past and present, brother and brother, Billy and Anson.

  If they’re still alive.

  But I’m going to ignore that possibility. Cut off its bad head right now, before it takes root. Of course Anson’s alive. You can’t unite with someone so fiercely as that without exchanging some kind of sympathy in the marrow of your bones, whether you welcome this barter or no. Wouldn’t I know the stopping of Anson’s heart as the stopping of mine? Wouldn’t the hurt of his body recall itself in my body? The shock of his pain cause me similar shock? And I feel only queasy now, queasy with anxiety, that’s all. So I stride forth—guided, as I said, by noise and intuition—a half step ahead of Luella’s gamine pace, making for the back of Duke’s house. The kitchen entrance, which might yet stand unlocked at this hour, for the convenience of Duke’s help.