New York Nocturne (16 page)

“Never saw her again. One time—this a few months later—I ask him, I say, ‘What happen to that nice Miss Dale?'” She leaned a fraction of an inch toward Miss Lizzie. “I say
nice
because that the polite thing to say.” She sat back. “Mr. Burton, he just smile and he say, ‘We agree to disagree.'”

Miss Lizzie nodded. “Did Mr. Walters ever come to the apartment again?”

“Not when I be there.”

“What about Mr. Rothstein?”

“Never saw him. Read about him. He famous. He fix that World Series back in 1919.”

“Do you know Owney Madden?”

“He own the Cotton Club over on Lenox. Big gangster.”

“Did he ever come to the apartment?”

“Only person I ever saw in the apartment was that Miss Dale. And that Joe Walters. And Mr. Cooper a few times. Mr. Albert. Mr. Albert, though, usually he not there. Mr. Burton, he tell me he got him a girlfriend over in Queens.” She turned to me. “Mr. Albert, he the one call me on Saturday, tell me about Mr. Burton. I ask him about you. I worried, you know. Young girl all on her own. He say you with the police, he tryin' to find you.” She nodded. “Glad you okay.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Mrs. Norman,” said Mr. Liebowitz, “did Mr. Burton ever mention Arnold Rothstein to you?”

“No.”

“Owney Madden?”

“No.”

“Larry Fay?”

“No.”

He turned to Miss Lizzie. “Is there anything else?”

“I don't believe so.” She looked at Mrs. Norman. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, could you telephone me? I am at the Algonquin Hotel. Shall I write that down?”

Again, Mrs. Norman faintly smiled. “I reckon I kin remember.”

Miss Lizzie nodded. “I thank you very much for your time.”

“You welcome. I think of somethin', I give you a call.”

Chapter Twenty

“So we come across Mr. Rothstein again,” said Miss Lizzie.

We were in the Cadillac, south of 135th Street, heading toward Central Park on Lenox Avenue.

“Perhaps Mrs. Norman misheard the name,” said Mr. Liebowitz.

“I think it very unlikely that Mrs. Norman ever misheard anything in her life. Did you notice the books in her bookshelf?”

“Yes. Spengler. DuBois. Freud. Translations of Baudelaire and Chekhov. She's obviously well-read.”

“She was also most entertained when you doubted her memory,” said Miss Lizzie, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

“Yes,” he said. “She's smart. I'm surprised, really, that she doesn't speak better English.”

“I suspect that she can speak it as well as any of us. Or better. I think she was doing us a kindness.”

“What kindness?”

“Providing us with what we were expecting to hear.”

“You think she lied?”

“No, no. I think she told us the truth. But she was presenting it, and herself, in a way that she believed we could understand.”

“Simple old woman, fresh from the country.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“You'd make a good lawyer, Miss Borden.”

“Miss Cabot.”

“What will we do now?” I asked her.

“Now?” she said. “I think that now we should all get some sleep. But tomorrow morning, I think that we should talk to Daphne Dale again.”

“Miss Dale never mentioned Arnold Rothstein,” Mr. Liebowitz pointed out.

“But neither did we. The next time, we shall.”

“Mr. Liebowitz,” Robert said from behind the steering wheel. His deep bass voice was soft.

“Yes?”

“I think we're being followed.”

Beside Robert, Mrs. Parker's head swiveled around to face the rear of the car. I turned around and looked out the window.

“Are you sure?” said Mr. Liebowitz.

“Behind us. Two cars back. The Ford. It pulled out the same we did, on One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street, and it's been staying back there.”

Mr. Liebowitz was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Go left on One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth.”

When we reached 125th Street, the traffic light was red, so we stopped and waited. No one spoke. The light went green. Some cars passed us, heading north. Robert made the turn.

A moment passed. Mrs. Parker, still looking back through the rear window, said, “It's still there.”

Mr. Liebowitz told Robert, “Make a right at Fifth.”

We drove silently for a few moments. Then Robert turned onto Fifth Avenue. We waited.

“The bastard is still there,” said Mrs. Parker.

Mr. Liebowitz turned to Miss Lizzie. “We have three choices: We can stop right now and see what they do, we can try to outrun them, or we can ignore them and see if they follow us all the way back.”

“No,” said Miss Lizzie. “I see no reason to let them know where Amanda and I are staying. And I don't like the idea of stopping. I think we ought to outrun them. Robert, can we do that?”

“Out in the country, ma'am, it'd be easy,” he said. “No Model T can keep up with this car. But here in the city, it's a different story.”

Mr. Liebowitz said, “Then let's go to the country.”

“Pardon me?”

“Central Park. Take One Hundred and Tenth west, and head into the park opposite Lenox Avenue.”

“Yes, sir,” said Robert.

At 110th, with the traffic light green, Robert swerved the big car to the right. All of us in the car swung toward the left. I looked at Miss Lizzie. Silhouetted against the light from the streetlamps, she sat slightly forward, her walking stick upright between her knees, her hands wrapped around its crook. She turned to me, and I think she smiled.

“Maybe the bastard won't follow us,” said Mrs. Parker, still swiveled around in her seat and peering out the rear windshield. “Maybe it's just a coincidence that—”

I turned to look and saw the Ford making the same turn onto 110th, about a hundred yards behind.

“Shit,” said Mrs. Parker.

“The park entrance is coming up,” said Mr. Liebowitz.

“Yes,” said Robert.

“Don't signal the turn.”

“No.”

We were lucky. When we arrived at the entrance to the park, no cars were approaching from the other direction. Robert whipped the wheel to the left, and the Cadillac's tires chirped as the car shot across the road. We went racing into the darkness of the park.

“Now stay left up here,” said Mr. Liebowitz.

“No offense, Mr. Liebowitz,” said Robert, “but it'd be best now if you just let me drive.”

“Right. You drive, Robert.”

And drive Robert did. The big car roared south, picking up speed, its tires drumming along the pavement. To our left was the Harlem Meer, a flat black expanse of water, glossy in the moonlight.

“They've done something to that car,” Robert said. “That's not a standard Ford.”

The headlights of the Ford were now only seventy-five yards behind us and getting closer.

We made a long sweeping turn to our left, toward the east, tires squealing. I swayed against Miss Lizzie. Then came another squealing turn, this one to the right, and we went shooting south.

“Damn,” said Robert.

I looked back. The Ford had moved closer.

It occurred to me that we had perhaps made a serious mistake by entering the park.

Possibly the same thought had occurred to Mr. Liebowitz, for he reached into his jacket and slipped out his pistol. “Robert,” he said, “turn right up here.” He yanked back the pistol's slide and let it snap forward.

The car shot off to the right, tires squealing once more. Again, we all swayed to the left.

“That Colt of yours, Robert,” said Mr. Liebowitz, “is it cocked and locked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay.”

Miss Lizzie said, “Are we absolutely certain that this is the right response?”

“If we're going to confront them,” said Mr. Liebowitz, “I'd rather that we be the ones who pick the place and time.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

I felt her hand squeeze my knee. I took the hand in mine.

Mr. Liebowitz said, “Robert, take the next right—”

“West Drive,” said Robert.

“Right. As soon as you make the turn, pull over and stop the car. I'll get out on this side. You get out on that side and come around behind the car with me. The rest of you, all of you, get down on the floor and stay there. Miss Borden, can you do that?”

“With great dispatch,” she said.

“Amanda?”

Miss Lizzie's hand tightened briefly around mine.

“Yes,” I said.

“Mrs. Parker? Can you get onto the floor?”

“I can dig through the damn thing if I need to.”

“Turn's coming up, sir,” Robert said.

“Everyone hang on,” said Mr. Liebowitz.

We swerved to the right and kept swerving, and then we roared down the road for a moment. The tires hissed and sputtered. For a moment, the Cadillac lumbered forward, its wheels bumping along the grass now, and then it jerked to a skidding stop. All of us lurched forward, and Miss Lizzie's hand was wrenched from mine.

Mr. Liebowitz threw open his door and darted out, slamming it shut behind him. From behind the steering wheel, Robert did the same, his big body moving with astonishing speed.

“Get down, Amanda,” said Miss Lizzie and moved to her right, taking up Mr. Liebowitz's space. Awkwardly, she began to lower herself to the floor. I leaned forward to help her, and then the gunshots began—quick, loud
pops
, a rapid scattering of them, behind me.

I spun around and looked out the window.

In the moonlight, across the roadway, the Ford had stopped, and men were tumbling from open doors on the car's far side. In their fists, fire flashed. The blasts of their pistols blended into one long, ragged clatter—the sound of paper tearing but magnified a thousand times.

More
pops
behind me, Mr. Liebowitz and his .25, and then two loud
booms
from Robert's big pistol. One of the men went down, clutching at his side.

“Amanda,”
said Miss Lizzie.

I shifted over and lowered my body, but I kept peering over the bottom of the window.

The men were gathered behind the Ford now, four or five of them. More flashes, more
pops
from behind the Ford. More gunfire from behind me.

Suddenly, the side window on the Cadillac's front seat exploded inward, scattering ragged chunks of glass into the car. I flinched.

“Shit,”
said Mrs. Parker.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

“Amanda!”
said Miss Lizzie, and her hand wrapped around my calf.

I let myself be forced back a bit, and I lowered my head slightly, but still I kept watching, mesmerized.

We will never know, of course, why they decided to attack just then, why they did not remain in the relative safety of the Ford's far side. Perhaps they simply wanted to end this before the police arrived. Whatever their reason, suddenly they were swarming around the Ford on both sides, their guns flashing and crashing. One of them crumpled to the street almost at once.

And then, for only an instant, they were all brilliantly lit up, as though by a spotlight. They froze into a tableau, faces white, mouths open, stiff arms extended, and then they were hurled aside as a huge gray Lincoln swept in from the left and smashed into them with a loud and sickening
whump
. I saw bodies go spinning crazily off to the right and others go flying over the car's long hood, arms and legs outstretched, empty hands grasping at nothing. Something slammed against the front end of the Cadillac, and the car wobbled once.

I heard the squeal of brakes, off to my right, farther up the road, and then the heavy slam of a car door. A gun was fired closeup by the Ford and then another farther off. Then silence.

And then footsteps.

Mr. Liebowitz came into view from the left side of the car, Robert from the right. They stood there for a moment in the hazy moonlit darkness, their pistols held down at their sides.

From beyond Robert, a third man came down the road. He was tall, dressed entirely in black, only his hands and head visible, his face a ghostly white blur.

The three of them spoke softly among themselves. Behind me, I could hear Miss Lizzie trying to get up from the floor. I turned and helped her back onto the seat. In the front, Mrs. Parker was arranging herself, wiping at her dress.
“Shit,”
she said.

“Amanda,” said Miss Lizzie, adjusting her pince-nez, “I am
very
disappointed in you.”

“I wanted to
see
,” I said. I was panting, and I realized that my heart was pounding like a fist against my chest.

“But you could have been
hurt
. You could have been—”

“I'm okay. Really I am.”

“Yes, but—”

Someone tapped at the window behind me. I wheeled around.

Mr. Liebowitz, bending down toward us, said, “Stay in there.”

He walked away. Robert and the third man were moving across the road toward the Ford.

“Who
is
that?” said Mrs. Parker.

“That, I expect,” said Miss Lizzie, “is Mr. Cutter.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Miss Lizzie opened her door. “I shall be back,” she said and began to step from the car.

Up front, Mrs. Parker said, “Me, too.” She opened her door and swung her legs out.

I opened my own door, stepped out, closed the door, and looked around me.

In the moonlight, I could see bodies everywhere, lying like bags of trash in the wide ribbon of road and along the black velvet expanse of grass. One man was slumped against the front fender of the Cadillac, his neck twisted at an impossible, sickening angle.

Mr. Liebowitz, Robert, and the third man were examining the bodies by the Ford.

The third man said something in a voice that was almost a whisper. I could not make out the words.

The air was threaded with the bitter stink of gun smoke. All at once, Miss Lizzie was beside me. She put her arm around me, and I slumped toward her, breathing in her scent of citrus, cinnamon, and cloves.

A retching noise came from my right, and then a whiff of sickness. I turned. Mrs. Parker had come around the car, and now she was bent forward, her hands on her thighs, very sick.

Mr. Liebowitz and Robert walked toward us. Both of them had returned their pistols to their holsters. The third man followed behind.

“You need to get out of here,” Mr. Liebowitz said. “All of you.”

“What about you?” Miss Lizzie asked.

“I'll help Cutter clean up.” He turned to the third man. “This is Cutter.”

An inch or two over six feet tall, he wore a pair of black slacks and a black shirt, opened at the collar, buttoned at the cuffs. A large semiautomatic pistol, like Robert's, had been jammed under his black belt, to the left of the buckle. Now that he was closer, I could see his features: a lock of black hair falling in a curl over his forehead, deeply set eyes, a sharp nose, a strong jaw, and a precisely defined and almost feminine mouth.

Dressed all in black with his eyes masked by a shadow, he seemed a part of the night himself, an elemental creature, an angel of death.

In a matter of seconds, with no hesitation, he had smashed out the lives of four or five men. But, by so doing, he had probably saved ours.

“Ma'am,” he said to Miss Lizzie in a sandy, whispery voice. He nodded once, almost a bow. In the circumstances, it seemed an extravagantly courtly gesture.

“How do you do?” said Miss Lizzie. “Lizbeth Borden. This is—”

Mr. Cutter had turned to me, his eyes still in shadow. I could see, within the darkness, just the faintest faraway glimmer of light, like that from a distant star.

“No time,” said Mr. Liebowitz. “Robert, get them back to the hotel.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned to Miss Lizzie. “I'll call you in the morning.”

I glanced at Mr. Cutter. I still could not clearly see his eyes. He nodded toward me, once.

“Well, Lizbeth,” said Mrs. Parker, “I'll say this for you: you certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”

We were back in Miss Lizzie's suite at the Algonquin. Mrs. Parker was sitting opposite the sofa where Miss Lizzie and I sat, and she was holding her silver flask in her hand, resting it upright on the arm of her chair.

“You were very brave,” Miss Lizzie told her.

“Brave?” Mrs. Parker laughed, sounding somewhat frayed. “My sphincter was plucking buttons off the car seat.” She raised the flask to her lips and sipped from it.

“You were very brave,” Miss Lizzie repeated. “Are you sure, dear, that I can't get you a glass?”

Mrs. Parker shook her head. “No time,” she said. “I need to replace all that classy Scotch I lost in the park.” She sipped again, took the flask's cap, and screwed it on. “Anyway, I've gotta go. Poor Woodrow's been alone for hours. The apartment will look like an explosion in a shit factory.” She stood up.

“Will you be all right?” Miss Lizzie asked.

“I'll survive. But I may just sit tomorrow out, if you don't mind.”

“Of course. I'll speak with you in the morning.”

“Assuming I'm capable of speech. Which is unlikely.” She offered a tired smile. “But the change will probably improve my social life. G'night, Amanda.”

“Good night, Mrs. Parker.”

“Dorothy,” she said automatically, and then she smiled at Miss Lizzie. “That's a bitch, isn't it? About Robert? About his being . . .” For the first time since I had met her, she appeared to be searching for a word.

“Not entirely heterosexual?” offered Miss Lizzie.

Mrs. Parker exhaled another frayed laugh. “Yeah. That.”

“He was very careful not to state the gender of his friend.”

Mrs. Parker frowned. “You noticed that?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't I?”

“Perhaps you didn't wish to.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Perhaps.” She sighed once again. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

After she left, I said to Miss Lizzie, “She's not a very happy person, is she?”

“No. Not very.”

“Is there a Mr. Parker?”

“I asked her once. She said she'd misplaced him somewhere.”

I smiled. “She's funny.”

“Yes. But she's lived a lonely life. Her mother died when she was quite young, and she hated her stepmother.”

Both statements were true of me as well. And, I realized, they were also true of Miss Lizzie, whose relationship with her stepmother had been famously unhappy.

“She's very smart, though,” I said.

“She is, indeed.”

“She's really not coming with us tomorrow?”

“Not where we'll be going, I'm afraid.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We must leave, Amanda.”

“Leave?”

“Leave the hotel. Leave New York.”

“Miss Lizzie—”

“We've no choice.”

“You're still angry at me,” I said. “For not getting down on the floor of the car. Back in the park.”

“I wasn't angry,” she said. “I was frightened.”

“I'm sorry. I—”

“It doesn't matter now, dear. It's over. And in any event, that isn't the reason we're leaving.”

“Then why?”

“Amanda, it's no longer a question of
potential
danger. Those men wanted to kill us. They followed us from Mrs. Norman's apartment building with that purpose in mind.”

“But how'd they know we were there? How
could
they know?”

“I suspect that Mr. Fay or Mr. Madden sent them. Perhaps the two of them conspired. They are evil men, Amanda. Mr. Fay may seem comical, and Mr. Madden may seem suave and civilized, but the two of them are steeped in violence. It is their milieu. They couldn't have survived within it unless they were prepared to use it themselves—immediately and ruthlessly—against anyone who threatened them. Either of them would blot us out in an instant, with no more compunction than someone swatting a horsefly.”

“But why? Why would they
want
to?”

“There is clearly something about your uncle, about his death, that they wish to keep hidden.”

“But if we leave now,” I said, “we'll never find out what it is.”

“Perhaps not. But if ignorance is the alternative to death, then I have no difficulty in opting for ignorance.”

I could not have explained back then why I was so determined to stay and finish the investigation.

I felt that I owed something to John, yes. It was not right for someone to take his life so callously, so brutally, so senselessly and then be permitted to walk the world unpunished.

But today I know that there was more to it than that.

I was terrified during that battle in the park. My hands were clammy, and my heart was racing. But, along with the physical symptoms of fear, and perhaps because of them, there had been a kind of horrible fascination, a breathless excitement; there had been, God help me, almost an exultation.

Some people revel in a life lived along the borderline. They seek out what others prudently avoid: the extremes, the ends and the beginnings of things, the heights and the depths. I did not know it then, but I was becoming such a person. It would take many more years for me to become that version of myself and for me to understand who and what it was I had become. By then, of course, I could not have been anyone else.

But in Miss Lizzie's living room that early morning, I was merely petulant and willful.

“Miss Lizzie—” I said.

“Amanda, I cannot in good conscience let you remain here.”

“You're not
really
my guardian, you know.”

There was a sour twist of scorn in my voice. I heard it, and immediately I regretted it.

Miss Lizzie had the grace to ignore it. “No,” she said. She peered at me, unblinking, through the lenses of her pince-nez
.
“But I like to think that I am your friend. And friendship, it seems to me, carries with it concern and responsibility. I would be an inadequate friend if I did not take you to safety.”

Once again a blatant and undeserved generosity did me in. I felt the familiar pressure gathering behind my eyes.

“Okay,” I said. I swallowed. “We'll go. We'll leave in the morning.”

“It may be that Mr. Liebowitz and Mr. Lipkind can learn something after we leave.”

“Maybe, yes. But you're right. We should get out of here.”

I could not sleep.

As I lay there, the events and the characters of the night kept replaying themselves, gaudy, inescapable, along the screen at the back of my mind. The thuggish Mr. Fay warning us off. The smooth Mr. Madden promising his help. The cheerful black man in the green suit, gallantly handing a paper cup to Miss Lizzie. The stately Mrs. Norman sitting poised and upright on the bed. The race through the park, the gunfire, the moonlit grass, the bodies hurled about, the pale enigmatic face of Mr. Cutter emerging from the murk . . .

At last, I picked up the book I had set upon the nightstand. Miss Daphne Dale's
The Flesh Seekers
. I opened it and began to read.

In any other circumstances, I should have tossed the book aside or possibly hurled it out the window. It was dreadful.

The narrator, Sophie Hill, admits at the outset that she comes from the upper levels of Alabama aristocracy. She also admits, fetchingly, to an inborn brilliance and a bubbly native congeniality. That she is beautiful we know from the countless courtly swains who seek her delicate hand. All of these she spurns, driven by a fierce desire to “make it” on her own. Within a few pages, she has hied herself off to the wicked social whirlwind of New York City, where she hopes to achieve great success as a novelist. Her father, the old colonel, is furious, but her mother, with the wisdom of mothers throughout the South, secretly sends her ribboned packets of cash.

At a party in Greenwich Village, surrounded by hirsute Bolsheviks, both male and female, Miss Hill meets Jerry Brandon, “a scion of the city.” Mr. Brandon is tall, dark, and, of course, handsome; a stockbroker “with mysterious ties, rumor had it, to the powerful, clandestine people who, behind the scenes, manipulated the political and economic strings of Manhattan.”

Miss Hill is, understandably, smitten. After only one more page she is in the library of Mr. Brandon's luxurious apartment—in a building called the Nebraska—girding herself for her upcoming ravishment.

I felt his hot breath upon my neck. With one simple, powerful movement, his strong, masculine hands ripped open the back of my dress. It fell to the floor, a puddle of mauve silk, and he stepped back. I stood there immobile as his burning eyes roamed over my white nakedness. “I must have you,” he declared. “I WILL have you.”

An erotic shock jolted down my spine. “Take me,” I challenged.

After a demure set of ellipses and then a shared cigarette on the carpet, the naked Mr. Brandon rolls over, gets up, and pads to the bookcase. He removes some books and pulls out a section of the case to reveal a large black safe. . . .

“She
lied
about it,” I said. “She
knew
there was a safe in the library.”

“I am not altogether astonished,” said Miss Lizzie. “Miss Dale was not exactly forthcoming. What was it that Mr. Brandon removed from the safe?”

“An emerald necklace. A gift for Miss Dale. For Sophie Hill, I mean.”

It was ten o'clock, and we were eating our breakfast in her living room. When she ordered it, Miss Lizzie had told the clerk at the front desk that we would be leaving this morning.

“But why lie about the safe?” I asked her.

“For the same reason, no doubt, that Mr. Fay and Mr. Madden lied: to distance herself from John and from his death. Is there any mention of Arnold Rothstein in the book?”

“I flipped through the rest of it, but I couldn't find anything. Just that line about the clandestine people and the strings.”

She smiled. “And a lovely line it is.” She raised her cup and sipped her tea. “Well, we'll let Mr. Liebowitz know about the safe. Perhaps he can pry something loose from Miss Dale.”

“I suppose we can't go down and see her,” I said. “On our way out of town, I mean.”

She smiled again. “Amanda.”

“Okay, okay. We'll tell Mr. Liebowitz. I—”

Someone knocked at the door. Miss Lizzie and I looked at each other. She had not yet called room service to request that the breakfast things be removed.

“I'll see,” I said. Wiping my mouth with my napkin, I stood.

“Ask who it is first, dear,” she said.

I nodded, and, at the door, I called out, “Who is it?”

A raspy, whispery voice came back: “Cutter.”

I turned to Miss Lizzie. She nodded. I opened the door.

Mr. Cutter stood there. He was wearing clothes nearly identical to those he had worn in the park—another black shirt, another pair of black slacks. (Those clothes had been somewhat rumpled when last seen; these were not.) The lock of shiny black hair still curled loosely down over his pale, square forehead. But in the light of the hallway, without a pistol thrust into his belt, he no longer looked like an angel of death. He looked like a sleek, improbably handsome young man in his midtwenties. His eyes, I saw now, were blue, nearly as blue as the eyes of my uncle.