Sirens (25 page)

Louie leaned toward me, grabbing my arm, as we walked into the Algonquin lobby and stood gawking. People swirled about us, dressed in the latest and most expensive fashion. A woman with a feathered hat pulled her small dog on a leash through the lobby, the dog in a fast trot. A couple snugged against the concierge desk, and I watched his hand slip along her waist as she pulled closer to him. A man in a hat pushed back off his forehead slouched inside one of the telephone booths, his cigarette bouncing on his lips as he talked into the receiver.

Louie whispered, “Danny got Charlie this job. Danny knows the manager. Okay, so he knows everyone. He’s even got a suite upstairs. Anyhow, when Charlie needed something besides his music, you know, something that might really pay the bills, I asked, and Danny answered.” I looked at her; she shrugged. “Like I said, he’s been really good to me. To Charlie and me. Which is what counts.”

We walked toward the dining room. The parquet made a
tap-tap
sound under my feet; the carpets muffled all noise.

“Hello, Miss Louise.” The maître d’ gave a small half bow.

“How’s everything today, Jacques?” she asked. She pronounced it “Jack.”

He nodded toward the corner. “Charles is working out just fine. Would you like a table?”

Louie leaned closer to him. “We’d like a table somewhere hidden. You know, where we can spy on him.” She looked at me and winked.

“Certainly.” He led us to a table behind a square oak column from which we could peek over at the group in the corner of the Rose Room. As we walked by Lou leaned toward me and whispered in my ear that the writers of the Round Table had nicknamed themselves the “Vicious Circle.” She giggled, clapping her hand over her mouth and staggering. “Vicious,” she repeated. “Don’t they look it?”

The Round Table group consisted of all men today, none of whom I recognized from the last time, and they were having a fine time, laughing, smoking, drinking, and looking anything but vicious and all seeming to talk at once. Though it was late afternoon yet, and a public place, I assumed from the gaiety and loose behavior that alcohol was involved in those tall glasses, although it might have been tea. These were my idols. But I had eyes for only one person in the room, which brought my brain to a standstill while my heart galloped on.

Charlie O’Keefe.

He wore his waiter’s uniform—white shirt, black pants, a half apron—and leaned back against the wall, his large dark eyes tracking everything that happened at his table, waiting to respond. He reminded me of a cat, coiled and ready. He was strong and capable. I sucked in air.

Lou touched my arm. “Jo?” She began to giggle. “You’re not looking at those Round Table types, are you.”

I pursed my lips, suppressing a giggle of my own. “No, I’m not.”

“Well, I’ll be.” Louie sat back, a grin crossing her face. One soft auburn curl peeked out from her cloche and met the corner of her lip. “Josephine Winter likes my little brother.”

The rush of heat from my throat ran right up into my cheeks. “I guess so.”

“You guess so? Honey, I’d say you were smitten.”

I shrugged and stared down at my hands, trembling but folded neatly on the white tablecloth.

Louie leaned over to me. “I’m thrilled. Now we can be like sisters.” Her eyes shone; I thought about how she feared that I might go after Danny, and I was glad.

I grinned and then looked again at Charlie, who was filling water glasses, moving carefully between chairs. But he sensed my eyes on him; he raised his head and stared back at me and kept pouring, watching Lou and me, until one of the patrons shouted “Hey!” as water topped the glass and drenched the table. Charlie went to work at once, apologizing, mopping, removing offending linens, while Louie and I dissolved into helpless laughter and the Round Table patrons decided it was time to abandon their refuge.

Poor Charlie.

Or, at least, I thought it was “poor Charlie,” until I saw that his guests weren’t truly upset; one of the men slipped him a folded bill and another clapped him on the back, while a third, passing our table, said, sotto voce, “I’d have dumped the pitcher, too,” and tipped his hat to us with a grin, saying, “Ladies.”

Once the Round Table crowd left, Charlie’s stint was finished for the day, and he changed out of his apron and arrived at our table just as we finished our order of tea and petits fours.

He was flush with good cheer. I looked away as he sat down, pulling over a chair so he could join us. I tried not to let him see my eyes; they’d reveal everything I felt, including how wrong I felt for mistrusting him.

“Hi, Jo!” he said. “What a nifty coincidence.”

Louie dissolved into another fit of giggles. I rested my forehead on my palm.

“Have you two been drinking?” Charlie asked, appalled.

“No,” Louie answered.

“Of course not!” I replied at the same time. At which point I had to pinch myself to keep from laughing out loud.

Charlie looked bemused and shook his head.

Louie collected herself. “Charlie, Jo hasn’t been around town since she’s come to live in the city. I’m betting she hasn’t seen the real New York with the eyes of a grown-up. I was thinking: let’s give her a tour of Broadway. Maybe we could take in a show.”

“Excellent!” Charlie said, and he reached over and covered my hand with his own.

My eyes met Charlie’s then, and my smile met his, and my heart—well, it’s impossible for me to say what his heart did, but mine was thumping like a drum. His warm hand rested on mine for what seemed like forever. I didn’t want to believe, at that moment, that he’d choose loyalty to Danny over me.

There were tons of shows to choose from, but in the end we went to a magic act by that magician, Howard Thurston, at Louie’s urging.

Right off the bat, I was kind of shaken. The posters showed Thurston holding a skull, surrounded by ghosts and nasty-looking
devils, and the question: DO THE SPIRITS RETURN? I thought of Teddy right away.

Which was most peculiar seeing as Teddy was not a ghost. Not dead, really. Only pretending.

Thurston did something astonishing: he made a girl float up into the air, and he invited people from the audience to check her out, to see that she was really floating. Charlie jumped out of his seat and ran to the stage, where he and all the other volunteers were paraded around and around; and he came back, his eyes all on fire, claiming she was really floating there, all by herself.

After which Thurston put her beneath a sheet, from which she vanished, just like that.

Like Teddy had vanished. Though I was the one holding the sheet and making believe he was gone.

Afterward, Louie, Charlie, and I walked down Broadway and stopped in to pick up a snack at the all-night diner. The bright lights above us winked and glimmered red, white, yellow; the crowds leaving shows filled the air with laughter, cabs and autos honked, rumbled, brakes squealed.

Charlie looked over his Coke at me. “You could be on Broadway, Jo,” he said out of the blue.

Louie slapped his arm. “Charlie!”

He turned to her. “She could! Look at her. They’d hire her on Broadway to star in a show, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “She’s a peach!”

I felt more like a tomato. My face must’ve looked that red, at least.

“Really, Charlie,” Lou said.

“Anyways, Jo looks to me like she could be a star,” Charlie mumbled.

“‘Anyway,’ Charlie. Not ‘anyways.’ Sheesh,” Louie said. “Even if you’re right about Jo. Which you are.”

I met Lou’s eyes. She was smiling, but something about her read sad. Why? It was just Charlie being silly. I shifted. “Listen, I need to get back. My aunt and uncle will be having a fit, not knowing where I am.”

We took a cab back to the apartment. Sam was waiting for Louie, the limo double-parked on the avenue. But there were also a couple of police cars pulled up to the curb, their red lights flashing. My stomach clenched.

When Ed saw us, he practically jumped out of his gray double-breasted coat.

“Oh, Miss Josephine. I didn’t see a thing. It was just the usual traffic. Nobody out of place. I’m so careful, you know? There was one delivery—flowers—for Mrs. Jacoby. That must’ve been it. How was I to know? The guy looked legit, and Mrs. J said it was all right. ‘Send him up,’ she said. So I did. Sent him up the servants’ stairs.” Ed was sweating; he mopped his brow with his hanky. “I’m gonna lose my job. That’s the long and short of it. As I should, for letting that happen. I’m so sorry, miss. I really like your family.”

That’s when I began to feel sick, but I tried not to show it. I put my hand on Ed’s arm. “For letting what happen, Ed? What about my family? Are they all right?”

“They’re okay, thank heavens. But the apartment—it was ransacked.”

CHAPTER 33

Lou

Okay, so I might have been misdirected.

First off, how could I know that Jo had a thing for Charlie until I saw them together? And then, how was I to know that Charlie felt the same?

I gotta tell you, that warmed my sisterly heart, thinking about Charlie so happy. And then realizing that Jo was not going to come between Danny and me because her attention was elsewhere.

When she heard that news about her aunt and uncle’s apartment, though, my sisterly heart turned to lead. I could tell she thought Charlie and me had a hand in it, that robbery. That we had taken her out to keep her away while someone went into the apartment for whatever.

And for all I knew, Danny, my sweet Danny, his long fingers had stretched clean across Manhattan and done the deed. Not him, no, never, but one of those goons of his. Sometimes they did things without him asking. Most times he had a plan.

And then I wondered why he might have a plan, and how that plan involved Jo, and my green-eyed monster self showed its ugly little head once more.

Now, you might be thinking, so it’s Danny, not Jo, who’s at fault. Danny I should blame. Danny I should be mad at. You would be wrong.

Bottom line: Who was I gonna stand with, I ask you? Sweet Jo, or my one and only? Who do you think?

CHAPTER 34

JUNE 1–6, 1925

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.

—Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
, 1813

Jo

I was a statue on the sidewalk, at least until my legs began to feel numb and I thought they’d go out from under me. Charlie caught my arm as I began to sink.

I looked at him, and then at Louie. They looked upset—Charlie looked positively horrified—but I pulled back, easing my arm from his. I had only one thought: betrayal.

Louie had enticed me out on the town. She’d wandered into my bedroom while I was showering. I’d left her alone, and though I hadn’t thought she’d found the journal in the drawer, she may have, and then tipped off Connor. Or she hadn’t even needed to tip him off: maybe the plan was always to take me out, and give them a chance to search for something—anything—of Teddy’s.

If so, she was a darn good actor. And she would have broken my heart. And Charlie, well…I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
He did work for Connor. All my ugly suspicions of Charlie came roaring back, all those doubts, and they hurt, oh, golly. My eyes and throat stung with the hurt.

I couldn’t trust Louie. And if I couldn’t trust Lou, I couldn’t trust Charlie, either. They both belonged to Connor: they owed him their lives; they owed him everything. That’s what Lou’d said. Why wouldn’t they do what he asked? How far would they go for him?

Because it was Connor—or his men—who’d ransacked the apartment.

“I’m going in. Thanks for the evening,” I said, turning away from them.

“Jo!” Lou touched my arm. “Honey—”

I yanked away. “Leave me alone.”

She took a step back. “Oh, Jo.”

I lifted my eyes to hers. “You knew. You’re so jealous, you don’t care a thing about what happens to my family or me. You knew what would happen, and you lied to me.”

She shook her head, her eyes round; Charlie reached for my hand.

I backed away from him, snapping at him, my insides coiling like snakes. “Don’t touch me. Don’t. I know what this is about, for you, too. You want Danny to give you a great job at one of those joints of his. Make you famous. You can play your music all you want. Well, good luck, that’s all I have to say. Thanks for a swell evening. Thanks for nothing. Don’t bother me again.”

I left them on the sidewalk, Charlie looking stricken, Lou looking galled. My head whirled, and the snakes in my stomach twisted into giant knots.

As soon as I stepped into the apartment, I knew for sure it was Connor. The only rooms in disarray were my room and the library, too. Which made me feel sick.

Chester sat on a chair in the foyer with an ice pack on his head. My aunt and uncle and Melody stood in a tight cluster. Police in uniform were traipsing in and out of my room and the library, carrying things in gloved hands.

“Hey!” My books, in a disheveled stack, were cradled in the arms of an officer. I grew angry now. “Those are mine!” I spied the Sherlock Holmes; what if there were other clues from Teddy hidden in my favorite books?

“Sorry, miss, but we’ve gotta check everything. Somebody went through these books, the way they were tossed around the place. We need to find out why. Maybe find fingerprints.”

“Uncle Bert, those are my books. Please don’t let them.”

Uncle Bert came over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Officer, really. Must you? Works of fiction?”

The man looked over at a plainclothes officer who must have been in charge, and who made a face but shrugged. The policeman handed me the books.

“Thank you,” I said, as stiff as all get-out. Several officers were standing in the door to the library; I couldn’t wait to get in there but didn’t want my actions to seem odd. I marched instead to my room, which was in a true shambles.