The Wicked City

  “Miss Geneva!” she exclaims.

  I put my finger to my lips, and I guess the poor girl hasn’t heard the news, doesn’t know that Geneva Rose Kelly has betrayed her step-daddy, has betrayed the town’s great savior and sunk River Junction directly back into the misery and squalor of harder times. She just stares as I carry my sister to the pantry and out the kitchen door, covering her body with my body against the rain that does rattle down upon us.

  Just so far as the orchard. I can carry my sister that last half mile of sodden ground before I give way. Just so far as the orchard, and the automobile that will carry us away.

  13

  IN THE orchard, the Franklin is gone. Patsy has fallen back asleep inside her cocoon of blanket and Ginger, and my arms are so exhausted, I am near to dropping her. I collapse against a trunk and look around me, while the rain tumbles from the leaves upon my head.

  “There you are.”

  I turn my head sharp, just to see Anson step from the trees behind me, wearing nothing but his undershirt and trousers and a tired face covered in bruises. He reaches for Patsy.

  “Where’s Luella? Where’s your brother?”

  “Gone for the hospital. Wasn’t enough room for all of us. Didn’t dare wait.”

  “But you did.”

  He lifts Patsy gently from my arms, blanket and all. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Out of town. There’s a path through those woods, the other side of the orchard.”

  “But it’s miles to the next town! All the way over the ridge. They’ll find us for sure. Hound dogs’ll track us down in a minute.”

  He starts off anyway. “Are you coming?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? It’s hopeless! We’re goners without that car!”

  “Don’t you dare give up!” (Over his shoulder, not even breaking stride.)

  I stand there a moment, drenched in despair, while Anson walks away, bearing my sister in his strong arms, just as if he did not spend the night chained to a stone wall inside a springhouse while the creek did flood its banks around him. My own strength is plumb gone. Every last ounce drained away into the soggy earth, to which I now fall on my knees, so cold and wet and exhausted I can’t even feel the striking of my bones against the turf.

  “I can’t. I can’t.”

  He stops at last. Turns and stares at me. Walks back slowly, until he reaches the ground before me. Settles Patsy on his shoulder and drops to one knee. “You can, Gin.”

  “Where do you get your strength?”

  “The same place as you.”

  “I’m out. I’m done.”

  “You can do this. You have to do this. I can’t leave you behind.”

  “Yes, you can. You have to, because of Patsy. I’d slow you down. So cold and weak as I am. Five or six mile at least, over the mountain ridge. And you can’t carry us both. Not even you be so strong as that.”

  He reaches out one hand to my shoulder, like he means to try, by God. And I pull away. Can’t have his touch on my skin, not anymore. Break me in twain.

  “Ginger—”

  “Go on. Take my sweet baby sister away from this place. I’ll find a way. Always do.”

  His eyes are dark and narrow in the shadows. Flesh around them all swollen and blackened, just as ugly as sin, as beautiful as sunrise. And the look inside those poor dark slits says he knows I’m lying. No way I’m fit to elude those men and their canny hound dogs, my people I have betrayed. Not the state I’m in.

  “Leastways,” I continue, “I can distract them, can’t I? Distract them so the two-a you can get away.”

  “The Ginger I know wouldn’t lie down and give up.”

  “I ain’t giving up for my sake.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Well, maybe that girl is dead and gone, and this time you can’t save her, everhow you try. Only waste time you can’t spare.”

  His face is too beat up to show any kind of expression, not that he was ever so expressive as that. But I have the idea he is hung with mourning.

  “Go on,” I say. “Keep my sweet baby sister safe from harm, will you?”

  I guess any other man would rant and storm. Tell me he can’t live without me, tell me he’s bound to protect me; impossible to leave me behind for the mob and the hound dogs, he’ll die fighting by my side. Not Anson. I do reckon he knows me better than that. Well enough to understand what I’m asking of him. Well enough to grant me that boon, though the cost do break him in twain.

  “Ginger,” he says again. Just my name. But I reckon I know what he means to say. All the words crammed into that one little sound.

  Water’s puddling around my knees. Smell of wet spring grass fills my nose. I crumple down on my sore calves. Reach up and lift the blanket from Patsy’s face. “Reckon your mama will know what to do with her.”

  And he starts leaning forward, like he’s about to kiss me good-bye, when a noise reaches my ears. Noise like the engine of an automobile.

  “Go!” I shout, and I push him off. Away to the cover of the woods.

  14

  FROM WHERE I’m crouching, tucked behind a tree, I can’t see a thing. Engine grows louder and angrier. Peek out and discover some movement on the nearby road, a black shape slipping in and out of the rows of trees, coming to a sudden, squealing stop.

  I turn my head into the rough bark of the tree. Apple tree, what will soon burst in blossom, soaking up all this cold rain and then stretching its long, thin branches to the inevitable sun. My right hand falls to the waistband of my skirt and draws out the revolver. Flicks back the safety latch.

  “Geneva Rose!”

  The voice carries among the trees, high and female. “Geneva Rose! I know you’s in there! You come out-a cover right now!”

  Peek around the edge of the tree again. Try to find movement. Some flash of color.

  “Geneva Rose! Be Ruth Mary Leary! You come out-a them trees right now!”

  Squeeze my eyes shut and press my forehead into the tree.

  Ruth Mary Leary. Of all people. Ruth Mary, whose beloved brother Carl got his head split open for my sake, just like my own brother did. Ruth Mary, whose precious babies have been fed and clothed by the generosity of my step-daddy, whose new house and new hearth have all been bought and paid for by Duke Kelly.

  Voice coming closer now. “You better come! You better show yourself!”

  I think, I will give myself up to her. Why not? I’m a goner already. Give myself up so that Anson and Patsy gain some kind of chance.

  I take a step away from the tree.

  “Stop!” calls out Anson, farther back. “Stop there! I’ve got a gun!”

  “Who’s that there?” Ruth Mary calls back.

  “Just go!” I shout. “Anson, take Patsy and go!”

  “Not going anywhere!”

  I bring the gun up to my temple. “Swear to God, Anson, I will blow my brains directly out if you do not take my baby sister and make for those woods right now!”

  “They Lord, Geneva Rose! You tetched? Put that gun down!”

  Ruth Mary’s voice is weary and exasperated. I see a bit of movement between the trees, maybe twenty yards away, and then Ruth Mary herself, wrapped in a coat, marching toward me as if we was joining each other for a Sunday picnic.

  “Put that gun down and attend to me, before you get yourself killed!”

  I lower the gun.

  She keeps on marching, marching, hands in pockets. Right hand gripping something there. I can see the bulge of her fist.

  “You stop right there!” shouts Anson. Strides up fast, Patsy in one arm and gun poised ready in the opposite hand.

  “Shut that fellow up and attend to me!” She draws her right hand from her pocket and opens up her fist. “Take this. Go on, git!”

  “What is it?”

  “The keys, Geneva Rose. Ain’t you got eyes in that fancy head-a yours? Keys to Carl’s flivver. You get yourself inside and make tracks. Go on!” She thrusts her
hand forward.

  I stare at the keys. At her face. White and haggard, eyes all hollow. Fine, fair hair straggling away from her cloche hat. To my left, Anson stands still, bearing my sister in her blanket. Patsy begins to whimper.

  I guess Ruth Mary recognizes my amazement. She shakes her head a little, sending drips flying. “Had my brother killed, didn’t he? Cut off his damn ear and left it on my doorstep to warn me against speaking.”

  “Who did?”

  “Your step-daddy,” she spits. “All for Carl’s bearing your mama’s letters to you, like he was charged to do. Now git. Git yourself gone before they make out what I done here this morning.”

  And my childhood friend Ruth Mary Leary does then toss the keys to her brother’s Model T Ford on the wet grass before me and stride away betwixt the trees, back into town, to her four wee babes with no father and no uncle to keep them.

  New York City, 1998

  ANOTHER HOUR in Aunt Julie’s parlor, as she called it, and then another hour making a circuit around the barren grounds when the drizzle let up at last. Bundle accompanied them on a lackluster leash. At three o’clock, Aunt Julie consulted her watch and said they’d have to leave, because she had a mah-jongg engagement in half an hour.

  “Mah-jongg.” Aunt Viv rolled her eyes.

  “You laugh, but I’ve won four thousand dollars off that fool Soamy.”

  “I sometimes wonder if you’re not having the time of your life,” said Mumma, kissing her cheek.

  “My God. Why do you think I strolled across Lily’s living room in my negligee? I was at my wit’s end. She’s a dear thing, but that apartment bored me out of my mind. All those books.” Aunt Julie turned to Ella. “Remember what I said, now.”

  Ella kissed her cheek. “Which part?”

  “All of it. And keep hold of that photograph, will you? I expect it’s worth a fortune. It’s an antique. Like me.”

  KEEP HOLD OF THAT PHOTOGRAPH. As if Ella needed to be told.

  She’d kept her composure throughout the torturous two hours of socializing at Maidstone Meadows, as Julie’s friends popped in and out of view in knit suits (female) and navy jackets (male). She’d kept her hands from shaking as she tugged Bundle along the asphalt path, as she walked back to the car and belted herself in and watched the frail trees and the changing blue-and-white sky swallow up all those cedar shingles and the white trim, until the station wagon turned a curve and everything was gone.

  She feigned sleep all the way back to Manhattan, though her heart rattled and her mind spun, keeping one hand immersed in Bundle’s fur to anchor herself to something living. When they arrived back at Christopher Street, she made as if to wake, starting and stretching, eyes racing all over the old bricks and the railing and the stairs and the windows and the doors. “Guess I’d better head upstairs and finish the cleanup,” she said. She gave Bundle a last pat. Kissed Mumma and Aunt Viv.

  “Don’t forget about dinner,” Mumma said. “Balthazar. Eight o’clock.”

  “You’ve got no idea who we had to sleep with to get that reservation,” said Aunt Viv, “so you’d better be there pronto.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Ella said, and at the time, she actually meant it.

  Then she hurried up the stoop and through the door. Hurled herself along the stairway, one floor two floors three floors four. One more flight. Around the stair railing.

  Hector’s door.

  She lifted her fist and knocked three times, like the release of firecrackers.

  “Hector?” she called. “It’s Ella!”

  The building was quiet. There was the distant groan of pipes, the bang of a radiator. Ella lifted her hand again, and the door opened almost under her fist. But it wasn’t Hector; it was Sadie. Sarah. Whatever her name was. Her eyes were red, her face pale, her brown hair pulled back in an untidy ponytail. Ella must have looked at her in amazement, because she managed a small, tight smile.

  “Don’t worry, I was just leaving,” she said.

  Hector appeared behind her and laid a hand on her thin shoulder. “You’ll be all right, Sade?”

  “Sure I will. Thanks for the pick-me-up. Travel safe, okay?”

  “Always. Let me know if it comes back, all right?”

  She lifted his hand and held it to her cheek for a second. Ella stepped back, and she rushed out suddenly, in a whir of wiry limbs, smelling of dainty floral perfume.

  Hector looked at Ella. “Is this about the flowers?”

  “What flowers?”

  “Um, the ones inside your apartment, maybe?”

  “I haven’t been inside my apartment since nine this morning.”

  “Oh. Jeez. Well, you’re in for a surprise. Everything okay?”

  “Everything okay? I don’t know, Hector. I think everything is probably not okay, but then I don’t seem to know much about anything these days. Like, for example, the speakeasy next door? The one that shut down in the 1920s—”

  Hector’s arm came out of nowhere, scooping her up around the shoulders and practically flinging her inside the apartment. The act was so sudden and almost violent, so completely uncharacteristic of him, that she staggered forward and covered her head with her arms.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “What the hell, Hector?”

  “Shh. I’m sorry. It’s just—you never know who’s listening, right? Ella. Jeez, you’re shaking. Don’t shake.”

  Ella stepped away from his hands and turned around. He’d shut the door and now stood before it, wearing clothes that were equally uncharacteristic: a navy blazer and striped button-down shirt, tan slacks, calfskin loafers, as if he were going out to dinner with his parents. A scrabbling of small claws came from the direction of the bedroom, and an instant later Nellie hurtled into her legs. Ella crouched down mechanically and smoothed her ears.

  Hector said quietly, “I’d never hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  “But?”

  “But you have to tell me what’s going on,” she whispered.

  He’d gotten a haircut, she thought, or else he’d taken a lot of care with a brush, taming that forelock and all the rest of it into dark, curving order. His arms hung by his sides, as if he didn’t really know what to do with them. Pull her up into some kind of embrace, or cross them across his chest. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll tell you. What I can, anyway. Let’s just sit down, all right? Can I pour you a drink?”

  “No. And I’d rather stand.” She straightened away from Nellie.

  “Then let’s at least get out of the doorway, all right?”

  He stepped forward and took her hand and led her to the kitchen. There was a suitcase next to the counter, a dark green carry-on wheelie bag. He went to the open shelves, took down two tall glasses. Turned to the refrigerator. Nellie followed him, a little subdued.

  “Where are you going?” Ella asked.

  “LA. Meeting with the director.”

  “When’s your flight?”

  “Eight o’clock. Are you sure you won’t have something? Water? Juice? Tea?” He was pouring something into one of the glasses, some kind of liquid the color of cantaloupe. “Or stronger? I don’t drink before flying, but I can get you something.”

  “No, thank you. I just want the truth.”

  Hector picked up the juice or whatever it was and drank rapidly. His Adam’s apple rose and fell, rose and fell, mesmerizing. He set the glass down slowly, like he wasn’t ready to part with it, and stared at the rim. “What have you heard? I mean, how did you find out?”

  “I was out in the Hamptons today, visiting my aunt. She used to hang out here, back in the day.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “Great-great-aunt. She’s ninety-six. She was some kind of flapper, I think.”

  Hector nodded. “She would’ve had to have been a flapper. It was a pretty hip spot. You couldn’t just walk in wearing a work suit. You had to be dressed up, you had to b
e part of the scene. You had to know people.”

  Ella’s heart was moving in long, slow crashes. Her blood coursed with adrenaline. She laid her hands on the counter to steady them, the reclaimed-wood counter that Hector had made himself.

  Hector.

  The astonishing Hector, man of all talents. Musician. Carpenter. Consoler of weeping women. He looked back at her the same way he’d looked at her in the laundry room, that first day, with his old brown eyes and his face that said, We know each other from somewhere, don’t we?

  I know who you are.

  Ella curled her fingers and stared back. “And just how do you know all that, Hector?”

  “Because my grandfather played music here. He was the orchestra leader. It’s where he got his start. You might have heard of him. Jazz guy. Bruno.”

  “Bruno? Wait, the Bruno? He was your grandfather?”

  He shrugged and finished the juice. “So they tell me. I never met him. He died before I was born.”

  “But your father owns the building.”

  Hector came around the edge of the counter and sat down on the stool next to her. Pried one of her hands free and tugged her gently to the other stool. “True. My dad owns the building. Both buildings. The owner passed them on to my grandfather, who promised to keep them in the family. Not to sell. Not to allow anyone in to snoop around. For a hundred years. That was the deal.”

  “You’re, like, the watchmen? The guardians?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “Guarding what?”

  “Whatever’s behind that wall in the basement.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “At first I did. And then I figured, whatever’s in there, it’s best kept where it is, right? Not hurting anybody. Just playing music. Like an echo, you know. Echo from wherever. Or whenever.” He leaned his elbow on the counter and rested his cheekbone against his knuckles. His other hand still held hers, very gently. “Sometimes, I get the feeling they’re watching over us, instead of the other way around.”