New York Nocturne (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Opium,” said Miss Lizzie, her voice flat.

“It's not that big a thing,” said Miss Dale. “Honestly. Tons of people use it. You'd be surprised.”

“Possibly so.”

“You know that before the war, it wasn't even illegal here in the United States.”

“Yes. The Harrison Narcotic Act. 1914.”

“That's exactly right.”

“And you and John used it.”

“Once in a while.” She briefly glanced at me then looked back to Miss Lizzie. “When we were together? You understand?”

“Yes, yes. You smoked it?”

“We ate it. You can eat it. A lot of people don't know that.”

“How interesting.”

“Johnny would roll it up into these cute little black pellets, and we'd swallow them with champagne—we liked Veuve Clicquot. After a while, about twenty minutes, you start to feel it. It's this deep, warm, wonderful . . . softness? It just slows everything down, makes everything all languid and mellow.”

“Lovely. But you hadn't been involved with John for some time. Why should you ask him for opium now?”

“The thing of it is, once in a while—you know?—I still like to take it. Not every day or anything—I mean, I'm not an
addict
. I take it maybe once, twice a month at the
most
. It helps me wonderfully with my work. Relaxes me. And I had this little man who'd get it for me? But he left town a few weeks ago, and I didn't know anyone else who had it. I was high and dry, so to speak. So when I saw Johnny last Friday, I asked him if he had any.”

“And he told you no.”

“Yes, but I didn't believe him. Johnny
always
had it. The whole time we were together he had it. And so I got . . . upset with him. I admit it, I overreacted. It was utterly foolish of me. And I regretted it right away. I told you that.”

“Where did John obtain the opium?”

“Europe. You knew that he was always going off to Europe?”

“To buy opium?”

“No, no, no. He went there on, uh, business. It's just that opium is terribly easy to find over there. They've got different laws? So whenever he went, he always brought some back. Not a lot—maybe half a pound or so? But he always brought some back.”

“What sort of business was he conducting in Europe?”

Miss Dale looked to her left then back at Miss Lizzie. “I'm not exactly sure.”

“You clearly have some idea.”

She frowned. “I can't swear to it.”

“You needn't. Just tell us what you believe.”

“I think,” she said, “I think he was helping Arnold Rothstein bring in liquor shipments. From Europe to here.”

“Liquor shipments?”

“Scotch, gin—”

“Yes, yes, but what makes you think so?”

“That little man you mentioned? Walters. Joe Walters. He works for Rothstein. And every time Johnny came back from Europe, Walters would come around to the apartment.”

“How do you know that Mr. Walters works for Mr. Rothstein?”

“I met Rothstein once. Walters was with him.”

“Where was this?”

“You know Lindy's? That delicatessen thing on Broadway? In the theater district?”

“I've heard of it.”

“That's where Rothstein works. I mean, he uses it as a kind of office. There's this booth, over in the corner, in the back, and he's there every night. Seven nights a week. That's what Johnny told me.”

“And how did the meeting come about?”

“It just sort of happened. We were walking along Broadway once, Johnny and I, after dinner, a lovely dinner, and we came to Lindy's, and he said, ‘Come on in. I want you to meet someone.' This was around ten o'clock, and the place was absolutely packed. A lot of show-business types, actors and actresses—famous people, some of them. But also a lot of these very shady characters, little men in checkered suits and big oafish-looking men who look like prizefighters. Bent noses and swollen ears and things? And prostitutes—you could tell they were prostitutes because they wore these horrible flashy clothes, black mesh stockings,
frightful
stuff.”

“Yes, yes,” said Miss Lizzie. “Getting back to Mr. Rothstein.”

“He was sitting in the back, like I said. In his booth. There were a bunch of people standing around, waiting to talk to him, and there was a tall man, very thin but not bad-looking in a darkish way, with a kind of hatchet face? He was acting like a guard, keeping everyone back. Johnny knew him—the guard, I mean. He called him Jack and shook his hand, and he introduced him to me, and then Jack let us walk right through to Rothstein's booth.”

“And you spoke with Mr. Rothstein.”

“That's right, yes. He was sitting in the booth, him and that Joe Walters person. Walters was sitting right beside him. I'd seen him once or twice before, like I say, when Johnny came back from Europe. And there was another man sitting across the booth, someone asking for a favor, I suppose, some
supplicant
. Anyway, Johnny shook hands with both of them, Rothstein and Walters, and then he introduced me to Rothstein. I'd heard of Rothstein, naturally—you know he's the man who fixed the World Series?”

“I'd heard that, yes.”

“I didn't like him at all. Not at all. He's got these terrible obviously false teeth—they look like dice or something?—and these beady little brown eyes that bore
through
you. Like they're undressing you? He was all smiley and everything, very polite, but he gave me the heebie-jeebies. I said so to John, when we left. But he only laughed at me. I said, ‘John, he's just a common
criminal
.' And he laughed again, and he said, ‘Arnold Rothstein is anything but common. He's the man who created the speakeasy.'”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I asked him that exact thing. He said, ‘After Prohibition started, he's the one who arranged the first shipment of Scotch whiskey to the United States.' John seemed almost proud of it.”

“Yes,” said Miss Lizzie. “But that hardly involves John in any of Mr. Rothstein's ventures.”

Miss Dale looked down again, examined the floor, then looked back up. “All right. Look. Here's what happened. A couple of weeks later, we were in the apartment, Johnny and I, in the library, and he was putting something in the safe. We were going to go out to dinner. And then the telephone rang. It's out in the living room, the telephone, so he went out there to answer it. I probably shouldn't have done this, but I mean, I'm a writer, and a writer has to find things out. That's what we
do
. You understand?”

Miss Lizzie nodded. “John had left the safe open. You looked inside.”

“Just for a teeny, tiny moment. There are these drawers inside the safe—metal drawers?—and the top one was still open a bit, so I eased it out, quiet as a mouse. There was a piece of paper inside there, all folded up, and I unfolded it. It was some kind of invoice or something, some kind of record, and it listed five thousand bottles of King's Ransom Scotch, and four thousand bottles of Gordon's Gin, delivered to St. Pierre Island. That's off the coast of Canada. I looked it up.”

King's Ransom Scotch, I remembered, was the Scotch that John always drank.

“Was there anything else on this record? Any names or dates?”

“No names. A date. The week before.”

“And that was when, exactly?”

Miss Dale frowned then shook her head impatiently. “I don't know. Two years ago? June, it must've been. Yes, two years ago this month.”

“How is it you remember the numbers so clearly?”

“How could I forget? It was proof that John was up to something illegal.”

“Did you ever mention it to John?”

“You think I'm crazy? I folded the thing back up again, lickety-split, and I shut the drawer and ran back to my chair. We went out to dinner, and I never said a thing. But it worried me. It truly did. It preyed on my mind?”

Miss Lizzie nodded. “Tell us about your argument with John.”

Miss Dale took another deep breath. She glanced at me again, quickly. To Miss Lizzie she said, “Look, you promise you won't be going to the police?”

“I will not go to the police.”

“You swear it?”

“Yes, Miss Dale. I swear it.”

Miss Dale nodded. “Okay. What happened was like this: Johnny had just come back from England the day before. This is maybe two months later, after I found that invoice thing. Anyway, it was wonderful to see him. He'd been gone for
weeks
, and I was all excited. We were in the library again, and we were talking about where we'd be going that night, and then the doorbell rang. I started to go to the hallway, but Johnny said don't bother, Mrs. Norman would get it. It was
her
, wasn't it? The one who told you?”

“Forget that, Miss Dale. Please continue.”

Miss Dale blew out a small puff of air. “Yes. Yes. All right, so a few seconds later, Mrs. Norman came to the door and said it was Walters. Johnny told her it was all right. And Walters came in. I think he was surprised to see me there. Anyway, he apologized to Johnny for bothering him and said he'd meet him the next day. At some place downtown. Some bar. Near the fish market on Fulton Street? I forget the name.”

“The Spyglass?”

She frowned. “How'd you know?”

“It doesn't matter. Please continue.”

“Well, after Walters left, I tried to talk to Johnny. I didn't tell him about the paper I'd found in the safe—how could I? But I said I thought it was terribly dangerous, him being involved with people like Walters and Rothstein. They were criminals,
gangsters
. And John just smiled and said not to worry about it. And I said, ‘What happens when the police find out?' And he laughed and said, ‘Arnold Rothstein
owns
the police.'”

Miss Dale frowned. “And then things just went totally downhill from there. I said some things I shouldn't have said, probably. Johnny said some things. I told him I would
not
go out with gangsters. He said, fine. He said no one was going to tell him who he could see and who he couldn't.”

“And shortly after this,” said Miss Lizzie, “you and John ended your relationship.”

Another frown. “That nigger bitch again.”

“Miss Dale?”

“Yes. All right—
yes
, damn it. But the thing is, I honestly wasn't trying to . . . control Johnny. I wasn't trying to run his life. I was worried. I was truly worried that he'd get hurt. Or get himself killed. And look. Look what happened. I was right.”

Miss Lizzie nodded.

“If he'd listened to me . . .” She lowered her head once again, and for several moments she said nothing. Her shoulders shook once. When she looked back up, her face was streaked with mascara. “I really did care about him, you know. I loved him. I truly did love him.”

She sniffled. “He was the most beautiful man I ever met. Oh,
shit
,” she said. She gasped and then lowered her head once more. She raised her knees to her face and wrapped her arms over her head, as though trying to disappear, and then she began to sob—deep, heavy, coughing sobs that wracked her entire body.

Miss Lizzie and I sat there as the sound filled the room. I did not know what to say or do. I had not liked Miss Dale. She had said things about John today that would forever change the way I thought about him. She was shallow, she was petty, and she was a bigot. She dramatized herself so often and so easily that it was difficult to know what, if anything, she was actually feeling. Perhaps she sometimes did not know herself. But at the moment, she seemed to be genuinely suffering.

Miss Lizzie said, “Miss Dale?”

Without looking up, her voice small and muffled, she said, “What?”

“Is there some place you can go? Out of the city?”

Miss Dale lifted her head and used the back of her hand to wipe at the black blotches beneath her eyes. “What?” She coughed.

“I believe that you should leave the city. The other day I mentioned a friend of John's. Sybil Cartwright. You remember? She was murdered yesterday. Very likely she died because she knew something about John. Perhaps the same things that you know.”

“Murdered?”

“By the same person, I believe, who murdered John.”

“Rothstein?”

“I don't know.”

“But I . . . You think I'm in
danger
?”

“I believe that you could be. Is there some place you can go?”

She sniffled again. “I don't know. Maybe. Long Island. I know some people on Long Island. For how long?”

“I shouldn't think for very long. A few days, perhaps.”

“But what about my work?”

“Bring it with you, of course.”

“But it's so hard to
concentrate
when I'm with someone else.”

Miss Lizzie nodded. “I'm sure. But it will be harder still when you're dead.”

Miss Dale blinked at her. She sniffled once more and then wiped at her nose with the knuckle of her index finger. “Do you really think I should go away?”

“I do. As soon as possible. And now we must take our own leave. Thank you for your help.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Where to?” said Mr. Cutter, after we had all climbed back into the Packard.

“A bar called the Spyglass,” said Miss Lizzie. “Do you know it?”

“Over on the east side,” he said. “Near Fulton Street.”

“Yes.”

He reached back, plucked his pistol from behind him, and leaned forward to slip it under the seat. “Who're we looking for?”

“A man named Joe Walters.”

He turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine gently, and glanced in the rearview mirror. “Probably won't be there,” he said and eased the car away from the curb.

“You know him?” asked Miss Lizzie.

“Used to work for Rothstein.”

“He used to?”

“Rothstein dumped him.”

“Why?”

“Turned into a doper. An addict. Rothstein didn't want him around.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last year sometime.”

“Do you know where we might find him?”

He shook his head. “Keeping low these days.”

“Perhaps someone at the Spyglass can tell us.”

“Maybe,” he said. He did not sound convinced.

Miss Lizzie said to me, “Amanda?”

I was looking out the passenger window, watching the houses slip by. “Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“You're very quiet.”

For a moment I said nothing. “Mr. Liebowitz was right, wasn't he?”

“About what, dear?”

“When he said that we don't always know who people really are. Even if we know them for a long time.”

“Well, yes,” she said. “I'm afraid he was.”

I felt at the moment rather as I had felt on Saturday, when I rode in the car with Lieutenant Becker. Back then—had it been only two days before?—it was New York that had changed. John's death had all at once transformed it from a wild, extravagant, welcoming metropolis, a city of infinite excitement and infinite possibility, to a gray, cramped, lonely, and frightening place.

Even though I had met him only days ago, he had become someone I admired and trusted. He had made me feel like an adult. Now, suddenly, he was a complete stranger. A bootlegger. A gangster. An opium eater. And God knows what else. I remembered him in the kitchen that Friday night, his tie loosened, his cuffs rolled back.

“I've got something for you,” he said.

“For me?”

He smiled, stood up, put his glass on the table, and walked over to the icebox. He opened it, reached in, and pulled out a small square box of shiny golden cardboard, about six by six inches, tied with glossy black ribbon. He crossed the floor and handed it to me.

“What is it?” I asked him, taking it.

“Open it.”

Inside, lying amid whispering white tissue paper, was an extravagant velvety orchid, creamy yellow and brilliant scarlet against a feathery spray of green.

I looked up at him.

He said, “Is it all right?”

I looked out the window at the houses flashing by. Blank, nondescript. But how many secrets, black and tawdry, crouched behind the clapboard and brick?

Miss Lizzie read my mind—which could not, I suppose, have been difficult. She said, “No matter what John did, Amanda, it doesn't change how he felt about you.”

I continued to stare out the window.

“Do you remember what Mrs. Norman told you?” she said. “How excited he was about your coming? And what Mr. Cooper said? How fond he was of you?”

I swung around to face her. “Miss Lizzie, he was
lying
to me. He wasn't who he
pretended
to be.”

Mr. Cutter glanced over in my direction, then looked back at the road.

“He never lied to you, dear,” said Miss Lizzie. “He never said anything, one way or the other, about drugs, did he? He never said anything about Arnold Rothstein. And as for him pretending to be other than he was—we all do that, Amanda. I doubt that any of us could remain in this world if we didn't.”

“He was breaking the law.”

“So it seems. It might, however, be wisest to withhold judgment until you know the complete truth.”

“But that's the whole point, isn't it? That's what Mr. Liebowitz said. We can't ever
know
the complete truth.”

“Yes,” she said and smiled. “That is indeed the whole point.”

It was chaos. The odor of fish and ammonia filled the air. The streets were packed with large rumbling trucks, all of them, it seemed, frantically honking their horns. On the narrow sidewalks, seamen sauntered, businessmen bustled, drifters drifted. I saw no women.

I heard the sound of a ship's horn, from far off on the river, distant and removed.

But at that point, a kind of numbness had settled over me, and everything seemed distant and removed.

Mr. Cutter turned the car to the right, down a narrow street not much wider than an alleyway. We passed a series of small, constricted, forlorn-looking shops, all their windows fogged with dust: a chandlery, a laundry, and a produce market. Then, on our right, we saw the bar we wanted. It was advertised by a swinging wooden sign, the paint chipped and faded, hanging slightly askew over the narrow entranceway. On it, below the name, was the silhouette of a black spyglass.

There were fewer people here. Mr. Cutter drove the Packard some thirty or forty feet beyond the bar and then gently eased the car up onto the sidewalk, the right wheels coming to a stop only two feet from a sooty brick wall.

He turned off the ignition. “Okay,” he said. “Be best if you two stay in the car.”

He leaned forward, tugged the pistol from beneath the seat, and slipped it behind his back. He turned to face Miss Lizzie. “You have any cash, Miss Borden?”

“How much do you need?”

“Couple of twenties.”

“Of course.” She opened her purse, took out her wallet, opened it, peeled out two twenty-dollar bills, and handed them to him.

He tucked them into the breast pocket of his coat. “You have a watch?”

“Yes. Do you need that as well?”

“You do. Can you drive a car?”

“Yes.”

“The key's in the ignition. If I'm not back in ten minutes, you get behind the wheel and you take off.”

“You are alarming me, Mr. Cutter.”

“Go to the Plaza, then call Morrie Lipkind. He'll send Robert over.”

“Yes. Very well.”

“Lock your door.” He turned back to me, his curl of black hair swaying. “Yours, too. And mine. And roll up your window.”

I nodded.

He opened the door and stepped out. Mechanically, I locked my door, slid over, locked his, slid back, and rolled my window up. In the rear seat, Miss Lizzie locked her door then shifted over to her left and locked the other.

I looked at her. “Is this a good idea?”

She was peering down at her watch. She looked up at me. “Mr. Cutter must know what he's doing.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiled. “I am, let us say, hopeful.”

We sat there. Waiting. Waiting some more.

“How much time?” I asked her.

“He's been gone for five minutes.”

We sat.

I said, “Do you think that John really gave her an emerald necklace?”

“Miss Dale, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know. I could've asked her, I suppose. But I was happy to leave when we did. I didn't find her an altogether—”

From behind us came an abrupt, muffled
pop
, like a car backfiring.

“—admirable person,” she finished. She turned around to look through the rear window.

I was looking through it too. “Was that a gun?” I said.

“I hope not.”

I saw a figure coming toward us, from behind, moving swiftly. “Is that . . .”

“Yes,” she said. “Quickly, Amanda. Unlock his door.”

I pushed myself over, unlocked the door, and pushed myself back.

Mr. Cutter swung the door open, flung himself in, turned the ignition, revved the engine, and jerked the wheel to the left. The car jounced off the sidewalk, shuddered, and then went shooting forward. Coming off him, I could smell the same acrid odor of gunpowder that I noticed in the park.

With his right hand, he pulled the pistol from behind him and shoved it under the seat.

“Okay,” he said and ran his hand back through his hair.

“A problem?” said Miss Lizzie.

He shook his head. “I got his address.”

“Was that a gunshot?” she asked him.

“Mine.”

“It was necessary, I presume.”

“Seemed to be.”