The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (12 page)

“Two missing on the inseam. Seven extra on the hem.”

“You shouldn’t have quit, you know. No one does this better than you.”

“I didn’t quit. I went blind. Besides, you do this better than me.”

“No.”

“Yes. You’re faster. More accurate.” He raised an eyebrow and turned toward the sound of her voice, one pale eye searching the space where he knew she must be. “Unless you miss on purpose.”

“Smithson should have kept you.”

“That man hated me.”

“He respected you.”

“Respect and profit are two different things,
hija
.” He patted her head. “And you? Does he like you?”

“He likes my work. But he pays me less than half what he paid you.”

Her father sat in silence for a moment.
“El Smithson de los cojones.”

“Papa!”

“It’s true.”

“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t speak it out loud.”

“You think God doesn’t hear it if you don’t say it out loud?” He tapped her forehead with one long finger. “He hears
everything
.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“Depends on what you’re thinking.”

That was how it went with them, the banter, whenever they were together. Her marriage to Jude had strained their relationship to the point of breaking at first, but she learned quickly not to bring him on her weekly visits. Once or twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, was plenty. They all got along better if they pretended that Maria had not cast custom aside and married an agnostic.

“Maria.” She startled from the memory at the sound of Smithson’s voice. “To the fitting room, if you don’t mind. Mr. Madden is waiting for you.”

She blinked at him. “Oh. His appointment.”

“You forgot?”

“No. Just gathering my thoughts.”

“Why don’t you gather his
suits
and meet us back there?”

“Right away.”

Maria had just begun the stitching on one of the five suits. Three others were cut, and the last was only outlined in chalk on a bolt of gray English wool. She grabbed her sewing bag and went into the supply room. She lifted the five long cardboard boxes from a shelf. Each was marked with Mr. Madden’s name, measurements, order specifics, and estimated date of completion. Maria balanced the boxes precariously in her arms as she pushed the fitting room door open with her foot.

“Mrs. Simon,” Owney said with a nod, his accent blurring the words into one indistinguishable moniker:
Missessimon
.

“Sir.” Maria set the boxes on the platform. Her heart raced beneath the thin fabric of her dress, but miraculously her voice was steady. “Thank you for coming in again. I know it can be inconvenient. But we’re ensured the best fit if we can put you inside the garment before completion.”

His small, dark eyes darted across her face and body as though he were taking measurements of his own. “I don’t mind.”

Maria looked away. “If you would kindly remove your jacket and trousers, Mr. Smithson will assist you into your suit. I’ll step from the room.”

“There’s no need. I’m not shy.”

Maria shut the door behind her softly and leaned against it, struggling to regain her composure. She heard them speaking inside but could not understand the words. Maria took two gulps of warm air to steady herself. After counting to one hundred, she returned to the room.

Owney stood on the riser in his socks as Smithson draped the jacket over his shoulders. Little more than a blueprint, the basted suit still had clear chalk lines and was lightly stitched together so that adjustments could be made if necessary. They rarely were. Where other tailors often had to disassemble a suit to account for additional alterations, Maria did not. Only once had she been forced to recut a suit, and that was after a client gained ten pounds between fittings.

“It looks good,” she said. “We will probably be able to finish this in two fittings instead of three.”

“You do good work.” Owney looked in the mirror and assessed his reflection.

The length, neck points, and cuffs of his jacket were all precisely measured, but Maria thought the trousers gapped a little too much at his waist. She pulled her pincushion from the sewing bag and knelt on the riser.

“Do you ever freelance?” Owney asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you ever accept work on your own time?”

Maria glanced at the scowl on Smithson’s face. “No.”

“So if I wanted to employ you for another project, I would need to go directly through Smithson here?”

“Yes.” She pinched the section of excess fabric at his waist and speared it with a pin. “Hold still.”

Owney watched her, a curious expression on his face. “Why are you wearing a maid’s uniform?”

Maria reached up and touched the cap on her head. She cursed herself. In her haste to get out of the Craters’ apartment, she had forgotten to change. A foolish oversight, as Smithson was not fond of her dual employment being known. It made him look stingy.

“Against my advice and better judgment, Mrs. Simon works as a
domestic
when she is not here,” Smithson said, as though the admission would discredit her tailoring skills.

“For who?”

What to say? That he had seen her twice before? Once with a tray of champagne at the Craters’ apartment. “If you’re not comfortable with my services, I’m sure Mr. Smithson would be only too happy to provide a more traditional arrangement.”

“Your
services
, Maria,” he said, “are a pleasure.”

She stepped away from the platform and stuffed the pincushion back in her bag. “The suit fits perfectly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have one left to cut, and I need to begin if all five will be done by the beginning of November. Have a good day.”

“Can I watch?”

“What?”

“I’d like to watch you cut my suit. It’s not every day a man has a chance to see that.” Owney turned to Smithson and lifted one eyebrow, challenging him to object.

“Of course.” He glared at Maria. “I’ll help you get dressed, and we’ll join Mrs. Simon in the cutting room.”

Unlike the fitting room, the cutting room was all function and no form. A square room at the back of the shop with a long table and bright lighting, it boasted a collection of scissors rivaled only by Savile Row’s. None were allowed out of the room, and any employee caught cutting paper with them would be fired. Nothing dulled a pair of scissors like paper. To use them for that purpose was an act of sacrilege.

Maria collected the garment boxes and put all but one back on the supply room shelf. The last box she took to the cutting room. Inside was a bolt of fabric with irregular shapes marked out in pale chalk lines along one side. She rolled the fabric onto the table and smoothed it with her hand.

A few minutes later, Smithson and Owney joined her. “A demonstration, Mrs. Simon? Our client is very eager to witness this part of the process.”

“There’s nothing magical about it, I’m afraid,” Maria said. “It just takes a steady hand.”

The jovial Owney seemed to have vanished during the short trip to the cutting room, and for the first time, she saw the dark gangster whom Jude had warned her about. He stood beside her, arms crossed over his chest, brooding.

“Go on,” he said.

Maria lifted a pair of scissors from the shelf and folded the length of cloth in half. The chalk lines faced up, and she pressed the fabric flat with her palm. She made sure there were no ripples or folds in either layer. A deep breath. And then she cut the first sleeve. Normally, this was the simplest part of constructing a suit. But with Owney Madden standing at her shoulder, she struggled to keep her hand from trembling.

At one point, Smithson tried to offer commentary on the process, but Owney raised a hand to silence him.

After the second sleeve, she could no longer tolerate the silence. “You’ll see that I have allowed three-inch adjustments to the inlays for the main body seams,” she said, not looking at Owney for permission to speak. “They will be felled by hand, and the vent and front edge will be prick-stitched. You’ll notice special features on the finished product—namely, the slanted breast pocket, the left lapel buttonhole with a sewn flower loop, an inlay under the collar, cuffs with slit openings, cross-stitched buttons, and the reinforced pockets and gorge.”

Maria turned to explain that he would be hard-pressed to find a suit of this quality anywhere else in New York. But Owney wasn’t looking at the suit. He was staring at her.

“You work for Joseph Crater,
Mrs. Simon
,” he said.

CLUB ABBEY

GREENWICH VILLAGE, AUGUST 6, 1969

Club Abbey was owned by Owen “Owney” Madden. Madden, a Liverpool native, had been a gang leader in his youth, later a leading bootlegger, an occasional backer of Broadway shows (including Mae West’s Sex), and a fellow with a violent past
.

—Richard J. Tofel
, Vanishing Point

“I read your memoir,” Jude says. He leans across the table to where his coat hangs limp on a peg and pulls a slim book from an inside pocket. The coat has seen better days. So has the book. He lays it, scratched and dog-eared, faceup on the table and slides it toward Stella. The cover is plain: title in red, a byline—Stella and her cowriter—and a poor rendition of a jurist’s black robe.

“You weren’t impressed?”

“It was two hundred and ten pages of unconvincing.”

“So you’re a better judge of the facts?”

“I have respect for the facts. That’s the difference.” He jabs a finger at the book. “You’re a lot of things, Stella, but weak and naive aren’t two of them. You come across as helpless in this thing. I’d even go so far as to say stupid. I know you better than that.”

Stella looks at the book for the first time since he set it on the table. Her eyes scan the title:
The Empty Robe: The Story and Legend of the Disappearance of Judge Crater
. “I suppose that means you don’t want me to sign it?”

“If you’re of the mind to sign something, a confession would be great. You can borrow my pen. Start with where to find the body.”

“Always so obsessed with the body. Haven’t you figured out there are more important things?” She flicks her wrist at him, irritated. “You really think I killed my husband?”

Jude plays with the end of his pen, sending a little clicking sound into the silence between them. “I’m certain you know who did.”

When Stella sighs, it sounds like gravel in a bucket, all rattle. She points a spindly finger at him. “Your problem is that you always rush
things. You show up on a doorstep or slide into a booth and demand answers. But you’re no good at listening.”

A mound of ashes rests in the ashtray, and her supply of cigarettes has dwindled by half. They lay across the table like bleached railroad ties. She chooses one at random and rolls it between her fingers.

“Forgive me if I’m a little short on patience these days,” Jude says. “It’s been thirty-nine years.”

“You don’t have to remind me how long it’s been. For you, this was just a case. But it’s something I’ve lived and breathed and suffered through every day since Joe left.”

“Still playing the grieving wife? I thought you were long past that.”

“Lighter,” she demands.

Jude hands it over, and she wrestles with the striker, her fingers weak and curled in on themselves. Stella refuses when Jude offers to help. After a few moments, she succeeds in producing a spark large enough to ignite the fluid. The paper burns orange and then black as a thin trail of smoke drifts toward the ceiling. She puffs on the cigarette a few times and then hacks a wet cough into her palm.

“Suffering and grief are two different things. I don’t grieve my husband’s passing. But I do suffer the loss.”

“That’s not what you said in here. Convinced your writer well enough, by the look of things. He painted you as the ultimate victim.” Jude flips the book open and thumbs through the pages until he reaches the epilogue. He reads: “ ‘Because work is her only surcease, the single antidote to a sorrow which three decades settled upon but could not bow her slender but proudly squared shoulders.’ ” He chucks it back to the table in disgust.