The Address, page 15
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t have a child. I’ll lose everything.”
“I know someone who can help. Downtown, there’s a woman who knows what to do.”
Sara had heard of such things, of course. She also knew they were terribly dangerous and didn’t always work. But her job was on the line; she would be fired if she got too far along.
“How would it work?”
Daisy patted her hand. “I’ll ask about her and let you know.”
“I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do.”
“Of course it is. What other choice do you have?”
The door of the office flew open and Mrs. Haines’s sour face glared down at them. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“I had dropped a pen, and Daisy was helping me find it,” said Sara. They got up, and for a moment Sara thought she might swoon. She planted herself in her chair. “Can I help you?”
“I have more applications for apartments. They keep coming in, even if there is no room.” She placed the envelopes on the desk. “You look peaked. Is there anything I can do?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Haines.”
Once Mrs. Haines had left, Daisy put her fingers to her lips. “Not a soul, I promise.”
“Do you think Mrs. Haines heard what we were talking about?”
“Not unless she pressed her ear against the door, and I doubt she’d stoop that low.”
The woman was always sneaking around, appearing right when Sara least expected her. She had a stealthiness to her so that even her skirts didn’t swish when she walked.
Daisy was true to her word, but on the day Sara was scheduled to go downtown and take care of matters, a newspaper article described in great detail a recent crackdown on abortionists throughout the city. Doctors and their patients were being arrested in raids, and the punishments were severe, as a lesson to anyone who tried something similar.
She told Daisy they couldn’t risk it, not until the raids stopped.
For now, she would have to live with the consequences.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
New York City, September 1985
Bailey opened one eye. She was in her bed, in her room at the Dakota. That was the good news. The bad was that her head felt like it contained several large rocks, in addition to her skull, and her mouth was as dry as Death Valley.
Her last memory of the evening was Tristan sticking his head into the room where Melinda and Tony and a couple of other hangers-on were hiding out, and shaking his head. He didn’t say anything, just gave Bailey the look of a parent who is very, very disappointed.
She hadn’t lasted a week out of rehab before diving back into the joyride of Manhattan nightlife. Melinda was the first person she’d like to blame, but she knew from the treatment center that the fault lay only with herself. She’d dressed up, gone out with people she knew would drink and do drugs, and figured that she’d be strong enough to say no. Unbelievably stupid.
She opened both eyes and followed the dust motes as they drifted above her. The apartment was a dirty construction site, there was nowhere comfortable to sit and recover, and she was stuck here all weekend. She’d gotten a message on the answering machine saying the workers would be back on Monday, so there was solace in that. Tony had made arrangements to cover the cost for the month.
Desperation sucked. Her intentions had been grand, but she was still back in the same gutter. No rich, snobby boyfriend to bail her out. No one at all. The silence of the apartment weighed on her like a malevolent ghost, judging her for every transgression.
Bailey wedged her way into the maid’s room shower, which was more like a half bathtub wedged in a corner. Wet and bedraggled, she trudged to a local diner and had some scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. By the second cup, the rocks in her head had diminished in size, and her thoughts came clearer. As did the shame.
But now what? She’d overslept and missed the early AA meeting, but a glance at the crumpled brochure in her purse showed another one at noon. In the meantime, she needed a distraction from her self-loathing.
Instead of taking the elevator back up to the apartment, she hit the down button and descended into the storage area of the Dakota. The place was cool and quiet, and she doubted Renzo worked on weekends. He was probably off with a girlfriend or working on a project outdoors with other like-minded guys who preferred building a shed to engaging in conversation. He wasn’t her type at all. She preferred the skinny artists with a penchant for declaring love at first sight. Tortured boy-men who were only too happy at first to reassure Bailey that she was beautiful, that she was worth adoring. After a few months, every last one of them inevitably drifted away. She’d been a parasite, leeching their love and validation. No wonder she was alone.
Bailey turned on the light and looked around the storeroom, eager to heave large things about and use up some of her pissed-off energy. The three trunks in the corner would be a good place to start. The top one wasn’t too heavy and she let it thump to the floor. Curious, she opened the latch.
On the very top was an old-fashioned gown in a navy plaid. The lace around the collar had yellowed, but the strong smell of mothballs indicated that the worst of the intruders had been kept away. Bailey lifted it and held it up against her. The hem reached her ankles, but the waist of the dress was ridiculously small. She put it aside and kept digging. A pair of high-topped leather shoes in black that would be trendy today. Four corsets and a couple pairs of drawers had turned a dingy tea color from their original white, but were still intact. She dug deeper, looking for anything that showed which apartment the trunk belonged to.
She shut it and as the dust blew off the top, she spied the initials M.C.C. engraved in gold. But no other labels or identifying tags.
The second trunk was labeled T.J.C.
Now, that was something. Theodore Camden, it must be. And Theodore Camden’s wife had been named Minnie. What were the chances that some other residents had the exact same initials?
If these items, many of which were in good condition, were worth some money, Melinda might be able to sell them and perhaps pay Bailey a commission. The trunks had obviously been sitting down here, untouched, for decades. Renzo would probably be glad of the chance to clear them out.
The T.J.C. trunk was, disappointingly, locked. She’d have to find a key or figure out how to break into it. The last trunk, the one on the very bottom of the pile, wasn’t made of the same top-grain black leather. This one was brown and worn. The initials carved on the top in black, not gold, read S.J.S.
The latch was locked but she was able to snap it open with a twist of her wrist. Inside were the same period of dresses, but shabbier. All hues of brown and gray, and some of the materials were so itchy they made Bailey’s skin crawl just looking at them. Near the bottom of the trunk, she found a silk evening gown in a dusky rose, and within its folds was a mask made of peacock feathers, of all things.
She pulled out a sailor suit made for a baby. It was the old kind, more like a dress, and the little blue tie had hardly faded at all from its original navy. And a couple of silk scarves, in different shades of blue. If they hadn’t smelled so musty, Bailey would have been tempted to make off with them.
Tucked in one corner was a delicate glass bottle the color of the sea, with a label on the outside that read DR. WALKER’S VINEGAR BITTERS. She put it aside. It was far from valuable, and she would smile whenever she saw it on her windowsill.
Underneath everything was a traveling booklet for a Sara Jane Smythe, from Fishbourne, England. The date she came to New York was stamped on her booklet: September, 1884. As Bailey leafed through it—there were no other markings—a photograph came loose.
A woman with thick, dark hair and a wry smile stood in front of two girls and a boy, holding in her arms a baby wearing the exact sailor suit from the trunk. The baby’s head had moved during the photo, as had one of the girls’, so they were blurry and ghostlike. She could make out what looked like a sailboat behind them.
A typical late-nineteenth-century photo. No sense of laughter or animation. But she liked this better than the false, toothy smiles that slid out of Polaroid instant cameras, because to Bailey they offered a truer sense of the subjects, not their flashy masks.
The door to the storage room slammed shut, the sound reverberating around the cement walls like a gunshot. Bailey leaped to her feet, still holding the photo. She stood, frozen in place, wondering what had just happened.
“Hello?”
No answer. Kenneth had given her a rundown of the Dakota’s ghosts over tea as the wallpaper hanger took measurements in the bathroom. One was a creepy little girl, bouncing a red ball, who was considered a bad omen, a harbinger of death. An electrician working in the basement in the 1930s had seen a phantom wearing a frock coat, winged collar, and glasses. Rumor had it he was Edward Clark, the man who built the Dakota but died before he could see it completed.
Bailey didn’t believe in ghosts or Kenneth’s tales of ghostly wanderers. The door couldn’t have slammed shut on its own, just like that. Someone had to have walked by it and done so, not knowing she was inside.
She tucked the photo into her back pocket and walked over to reopen the door, but as she reached for the knob, she heard footsteps coming closer. Whoever had shut it was returning.
The door handle turned. She backed away, uncertain.
“What the hell?”
Renzo stood in the doorway. He stared at her for a moment before bursting out laughing. “You look like you’re ready for a fight.”
Without thinking, she’d put up her dukes, like an idiot. Kenneth’s ghost stories had gotten her worked up. She dropped her hands to her sides, standing stiffly. “You scared me. The door slammed shut.”
“Huh. That’s weird. Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Bailey shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “It was just loud.”
“What are you doing in the basement?”
“Clearing a space for the workers, seeing what you have down here.”
He didn’t seem angry at her nosing about. “Find anything interesting?”
She pointed to the trunks. “I think the two black ones belonged to Theodore Camden and his wife. The one marked S.J.S. belonged to a woman named Sara Jane Smythe, who came here in 1884. That one even has her official papers in it, an immigration booklet.”
Renzo wore faded Levi’s that fell low on his waist, and a maroon T-shirt. He ran his hand through his hair. “Right. Sara Smythe. That was the year the Dakota opened.”
“Have you heard of her?”
“Sure, I’ve heard of her. She lived here for about a year.”
“Then what happened?”
“You don’t know?”
Bailey shook her head.
“Follow me.”
Renzo led her down the hall to his office, where he rummaged around on a high bookshelf and took down an ancient photo album, the kind with black paper and tiny triangles for tucking the corners of the photos into. It was covered with a fine layer of dust, and he took a rag out of his back pocket and wiped it down before opening it up.
“This is a book of clippings about the Dakota from the time it was built, passed down from super to super.”
He started to flip through it, but Bailey stopped him. “Do you mind? I’d love to see the whole thing.”
“Suit yourself.” He moved out of the way and let her go through it, page by page.
The first page held a yellowed article from the Daily Graphic. Bailey read out loud. “‘A Description of One of the Most Perfect Apartment Houses in the World.’ You can’t do better than that, can you?”
“I guess not.”
She sat down in a chair and scanned through it. The Dakota had made quite a splash when it first opened. How strange to think that the rooms had been filled with people wearing petticoats and top hats, the sound of horses’ hooves clopping in the courtyard. Someone had actually worn that corset and pair of shoes from the trunk. They weren’t just artifacts in a museum.
Later in the book were cutouts from magazines. One showed off the bedroom of Rudolf Nureyev, decorated in a riot of textures and patterns, including an Elizabethan canopy bed.
“Not one for subtlety.” Renzo stood behind her now, his hand resting on the back of her chair.
She hurried through the rest of the scrapbook, mainly 1960s shots of apartments with minimal, contemporary furniture.
“Not to your taste?” Renzo asked.
“No. Maybe in an East Side high-rise, but not here.” She shut the book.
“But you didn’t see the part about Theodore Camden.”
He took the book from her lap and laid it back on the desk. A delicate scrap of paper had fallen behind one of the photos, and he unfolded it with care.
The newspaper headline, dated March 4, 1886, read: MURDERESS FOUND GUILTY.
Mrs. Sara J. Smythe, former lady managerette of the Dakota Apartment House, was found guilty in the November 13th stabbing death of architect Mr. Theodore Camden. Mrs. Smythe had suffered from delusions in the past, but Mr. Camden had nonetheless taken pity on her, and his act of kindness was answered with violence and mayhem. Mr. Camden is survived by his wife and three children. According to Judge Wilton, “This undoubtedly proves that rehabilitation of the insane is a pointless enterprise.”
“She was the one who killed Melinda’s great-grandfather, then.”
“That’s the legend. Which explains why her belongings were packed up and sent to the basement.”
She pulled the photo out of her back pocket. “This was in the trunk, too.”
Renzo examined it closely. He turned it over, where the words S. Smythe and the Camden children, 1885, were written in a loopy cursive.
Bailey gasped. “The murderer standing with the children. That’s ghoulish. Does the scrapbook have anything more about the crime? Like why she killed him?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Now I’m dying to know more. I’ll have to ask Melinda if her mother ever talked about it.”
“Right after you’ve fixed Kenneth’s apartment back to the way it was.”
She glared at him. “Of course I’m going to do that.”
He cocked his head. “That’s weird.”
“What.”
“Do that again.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Look at me like you just did.”
She did so, like he was an idiot.
“Don’t move.” He held up the photo next to her face. “You have the same eyebrow thing going on.”
“Are you telling me I look like a murderer?”
“No, seriously.” He tugged on her arm and brought her over to a small mirror that hung on the back of the door. “Check it out.”
Bailey repeated the gesture into the mirror, as Renzo held up the photo.
Obviously, a great percentage of people could do the same trick. Her father had worn the same expression whenever he was unimpressed or skeptical.
But it was the way the woman stood, the line of her neck, the set of her mouth. Bailey’s parents had a photo album with a photo that was an exact match, except that it was taken in this century, not the last. Her father holding a newborn Bailey in his arms, with the same half smile.
Bailey looked like her father, everyone said so. And they both looked like Sara Smythe. The murderess.
Renzo blinked. “The resemblance is uncanny. Even to me, and I don’t know you at all.”
The scrutiny unnerved her. She felt stripped bare, just as she was doing to Melinda’s apartment, all of the usual crutches and comforts peeled away. The dank basement seemed like it was closing in on her, the draftiness making her shiver.
“Well, I’m not sure I see it. I better be getting back upstairs.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset.” The words came out harsher than she’d intended; her headache threatened to come raging back. “Rough night last night. I’m exhausted. See you around.”
“Sure. Take it easy.”
She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
The day’s New York Post had been left near the elevator door, and Bailey picked it up and leafed through it while she waited. Her horoscope said something about “reconnecting with family,” and she supposed she’d done so, working for Melinda and living in her apartment. Check that off.
But then she saw the list of famous people born on that day. Sonny Rollins was fifty-five.
Her dad loved the fact that he shared the jazz great’s birthday. Today was Jack’s birthday, and she had almost missed it entirely.
Upstairs, she called home. So many nines, the rotary phone took forever to spin back to its place. Bailey hadn’t talked to him since she’d gone into rehab, and hadn’t told him about it either. No need to worry him.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Dad. It’s me.”
“Hello there.”
“I called to say ‘happy birthday.’ Do you have any fun plans?” Better to not give him time to ask her about what she was up to. Keep the focus on him.
“Haven’t heard from you in quite a while. What’s going on up there in New York?”
No luck. “Right. It’s been crazy. I’m decorating Melinda’s apartment now, in the Dakota.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“What’s on your social calendar today? Going out with Scotty?” His oldest friend and employee, who annoyed her father to no end, but she was certain he secretly enjoyed it.
“Nope. Scotty’s married now. He’s got his own thing going on.”
“I see.”
She waited, hoping he’d change the subject to the latest plumbing disaster at the house that he’d fixed without having to call a plumber, using bubble gum and tape. Or how he’d finally stopped the screen door from banging shut. The summer before she died, her mother had admitted that every so often she’d intentionally break things around the house so her father had something to do on weekends. He was never one to sit and read a book. Or chat.
