The Devil’s Daughter, page 11
I’m trying to imagine her younger. The Roost closed seven or eight years ago, so it had to be before then. And there’s something a little off about her, like the light behind her eyes has gone dim.
“I do remember how handsome you looked in your uniform though.”
It must have been right after I enlisted. After basic, they gave us a week’s furlough before we shipped out. I hit every club in town that week. It was a long time ago, so I’m a little hazy on the details. Could I have spent the night with her? No, that’s not possible. I would have remembered. I wasn’t much for one-night stands, even back then.
“I was sleeping with Coleman, you know,” she says suddenly, “which horrified everybody, especially my parents.”
She must mean Coleman Hawkins. Coleman is Black, and she couldn’t be more lily white. That alone was enough to cause a scandal back during the war. It still is.
“To get me away from him, they sent me to finishing school in Switzerland. That’s where I met him. I don’t know what he was doing there. Something not very nice, I’m sure.”
Who is she talking about?
“I knew he could be mean. I liked to think he was a spy. At least that would explain all the time we spent with those terrible men. Do you think he really was a spy?”
I’m not sure how far down this rabbit hole I want to go. The woman doesn’t strike me as completely off her rocker, but we are in a mental institution and the story she’s telling me doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“I don’t know how he got us back to New York. There was a war on and we shouldn’t have been able to go anywhere, but he managed it somehow. And then I got pregnant. He didn’t like that one bit.”
I don’t know who “he” is, and she might be making all of this up, so I’m watching her closely for some sort of tell, but there isn’t one. Hayden must have her on drugs—sedatives and antipsychotics probably. That would explain her flat affect. Or maybe she’s just delusional. Maybe when I knocked on her door, she let me into a private world where she goes places she’s never been and meets people who don’t exist.
“Of course, he wanted me to get rid of it, but I wouldn’t. That wasn’t the first time he hit me, but it was the first time he meant something by it. He never forgave me, you know? Not even after she was born. I was afraid he might take it out on her too, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He doted on her.”
In my job you meet a lot of troubled people, people whose husbands or wives are betraying them, whose business partners are cheating them, people who are in danger of losing their livelihoods or even their lives. As sad as some of those cases are, and some of them are downright tragic, I try not to get emotionally involved. There isn’t any point. I do what I can for them, admittedly for a price, but when the job is done, I walk away. I’m not sure what makes Lucy Garrett different. I don’t know why I keep chasing after whatever the truth of her is, especially considering I’m not getting paid for it anymore. And I don’t know why I keep listening to this woman spin castles in the sky when she’s probably out of her mind.
“He arranged for everything, wet nurses and nannies. He filled her bedroom with stuffed animals and had luminous stars painted on the ceiling so they glowed at night. I wanted to nurse her myself, but he wouldn’t allow it. The only thing he would let me do was kiss her goodnight. But after he went to bed, I’d creep into her room just to watch her sleep. I wanted to hold her, but I was afraid if she woke up and started to cry he’d come running and find me there.”
She isn’t making this up. Her pain is too real. “Would you like to see her picture?”
When I say that I would, she disappears into her bedroom, comes out a moment later clutching a snapshot, and hands it to me. In it, a pretty little blond girl smiles for the camera, and the woman holding her on her lap is Lucy Garrett’s mother.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Her name is Lucy. After my grandmother.”
“When was the last time you saw Lucy?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Days here crawl by so monotonously that it’s hard to keep track of time. But I don’t think it could have been more than a week ago. She didn’t recognize me, but I recognized her the moment I saw her.”
What could that moment have been like? How long had it been since Susan last saw her daughter? Her child was forcibly taken from her and then Garrett put her away to make sure she would never see the kid again. I wonder if Lucy knew her mother was being held here. Or did Garrett tell her the same thing he told me—that she was dead?
“Louis wanted to lock her up and throw away the key just like he did with me. I told her that too, but she didn’t believe me. And when I went to hug her, to hug my own little girl, she was so stiff. It was like she didn’t want me to touch her.”
This is the way it must have gone. Like Lucy, her mother was a wild child. Lying about her age, she hit the jazz joints. She drank too much, smoked reefer with the boys, and probably slept with more than one of them. When Susan’s parents found out she was with Coleman, they wanted her to break it off, but she refused. So they shipped her off to one of those fancy finishing schools in Switzerland, and that’s where she met Garrett. She was young then, and he likes them that way. But when he knocked her up, she wasn’t young anymore. After Lucy was born, Garrett was through with her, but he had to do something to get rid of her, and the Hayden Institute was the perfect place to stash her.
“She’s expecting, you know?”
“Who is?”
“Lucy. You can hardly tell. She hasn’t really begun to show.”
Is Garrett the father? Maybe that’s why he had Lucy taken here. Warehousing somebody as inconvenient as his wife and later his pregnant daughter probably isn’t the only service the Hayden Institute provides. I’ll bet that if you’re willing to pay the freight, they’ll arrange for an abortion. Dr. Hayden might even do it himself.
“I really need to speak to Lucy,” I tell her mother. “Do you know where she is?”
“Oh, she’s not here anymore.”
“Did your husband come and get her?”
“No, she left with another man. Wait, I remember who you are now. Your name is Jack, isn’t it? That’s right. You’re Jack Coffey.”
CHAPTER 22
It was far from the first beating I’ve ever taken, but it might have been the most professional. It feels like they cracked a couple of my ribs, and my nose is broken. I didn’t hear Hayden’s goons come into Susan’s room, but one of them must have hit me with a sap because all of a sudden, I was seeing stars. It’s a good thing they threw me into the cab of Carpenzano’s delivery truck after they were done working me over. I’m not sure I could have made it there on my own. It was all kind of unnecessary though. All they had to do to get me to leave was ask.
I pull into a gas station on my way home and get the key to the restroom. The guy looking back at me from the smudged restroom mirror is a mess. His right eye is swollen and a sort of nauseating purple, and both his nostrils are caked with blood. They split my lip too, and it’s still oozing. I’d hate to have V see me like this not only because it’s liable to scare her but because I’m afraid that one day she’s going to say that she’s had enough of the mayhem and that I’d better find another line of work or she’s leaving. Given the way I look now, I could hardly blame her.
The restroom sink is thick with soap scum, but I run the tap anyway and clean myself up as best as I can. When I crack my nose bone back into place, the pain is so intense that it shoots right up through the top of my skull, but it had to be done. I’m not going home to V with my face on crooked. I stagger back to the Rambler and get in behind the wheel as gingerly as I can. I’m probably going to be laid up for a couple of days. I make a mental note to get hold of Carmine and have him send one of his boys over with a bucketful of Dilaudid.
Driving back down to the city, I manage to get WNEW on the car radio again, and Monk’s “I Mean You” helps clear my head. Ordinarily, I’m pretty good at judging the angles my cases take, but just when I’m beginning to make sense of Garrett and his daughter, I stumble across something that makes their story even more complicated and bizarre. Garrett’s wife was a disturbing surprise. I ought to try to do something about getting Susan Garrett away from Hayden and off the stew of psychotropic drugs he must have her on, but that will have to wait. Right now I’m trying to figure out who sprung Lucy, but nothing is coming to me. There aren’t a lot of possibilities. It wasn’t her father, that’s for sure. It might have been Bob Carson, but I don’t think he’d cross Garrett. They’re in business together in some opaque way, so I don’t think he’d break Lucy out no matter how “fond” of her he is.
Maybe Lucy has another boyfriend that I don’t know about, some poor schmuck she can manipulate into doing whatever she wants. That seems likely, but the only guy I’ve ever known her to be with is Rex Halsey, and what’s left of Rex is lying in an unmarked grave in Potter’s Field. There must be other men, older men probably. Like the saying goes, there’s no fool like an old fool, something I’m sure Lucy learned at her father’s knee, or more likely on it.
I go with the idea of an older man, a man not only Garrett’s age but one as connected as he is. And if I’m right, she’s probably convinced him to order up the slab of cement and the guy from Philly to try and hit me. Lucy knows that her father hired me to find her, but she didn’t want to be found, and she probably knows that I’m still looking for her. What better way to put an end to all of that than putting an end to me?
I try this theory out on V while we’re driving up to the cottage in the Berkshires. V’s at the wheel. She’s wrapped my ribs with an Ace bandage, and she’s having me hold an ice pack against my swollen nose.
“You might be right, but I don’t want to talk about that right now,” she says. “I’m pretty furious with you, Jack, in case you haven’t noticed, and the last thing I want to discuss is Lucy Garrett or whoever it is that’s trying to kill you.”
V was horrified when I came home with my face rearranged, so I say, “Sorry, V. What can I tell you? It comes with the job,” which I know won’t mollify her, but I’ve got to say something.
“That’s just it, Jack. It doesn’t come with the job, not the part of the job you get paid to do. And why do you care what happens to these people? Why don’t you just leave them to their own sick devices so we can get on with our lives? Anyway, what do you think you’re going to find out that you don’t already know? I mean, I feel sorry for Lucy. She’s a deeply disturbed girl with a psychotic father, but nothing you do is going to change that. I know you like to play the white knight, which I love you for most of the time, but just who do you think you’re rescuing here? And don’t say Lucy Garrett because I’m not sure she wants to be rescued.”
V’s right. Sometimes I do see myself riding to the rescue, saving poor souls who need saving, sometimes even saving them from themselves.
“What if I promise you not to talk about the two of them while we’re up at the cottage?” I say. “What if we spend the week in bed listening to music and doing whatever else comes into our heads? What do you say to that?”
V sits on this idea for a couple of seconds, scowls like she isn’t about to let me off the hook that easy, then says, “Okay, here’s the deal. You cook and do all the grocery shopping. When I say I want to take a long walk in the country, you don’t make up some phony-baloney excuse about being a city boy and how the fresh air makes you nauseous. You just come with me. And you’re going to take me out to the movies, Jack. I know you hate to get dressed and leave the house when we’re up there, but you’re going to put on your pants and take me over to the Pickwick because Bud’s in something new, and I really want to see it.” I tell her that I’ll happily do all of that, and V snorts like she doesn’t believe me. “I just wish I didn’t love you so much,” she says, “but for some completely insane reason, I do.” I can’t stop grinning.
I acted like one of the Bowery Boys when we first started going up to the cottage. My New York accent got thicker, and I began to talk out of the side of my mouth. It was the quiet. I’m used to hearing the city making a racket, the subway rumbling, cab drivers leaning on their horns, drunks shouting and cursing as they stumble home in the dark. But lying in bed next to V those first few nights in the country, I was so spooked by the silence that I couldn’t sleep a wink. And when I heard something—the house creak, the wind in the trees, mice skittering under the floorboards—I wanted to make a run for it: grab my bag, jump in the car, and drive back to the city as fast as I possibly could.
When I confessed this to V, she thought it was hilarious. Growing up in East Texas, she loved the country, thrived in it, and had bought the cottage in West Stockbridge the minute she saw it. And when I groused that I couldn’t see how anybody wanted to live in a place that didn’t stink of car exhaust and garbage, V gave me a kiss and said that I’d get used to it eventually, which I didn’t buy for a second.
But I did get used to it, more than used to it. Now, I stumble after V when she takes me for hikes in the woods, swim naked in the pond out behind the house, and barbecue on a potbelly grill. And in the winter, I chop wood. I don’t want to particularly, but the cottage is heated by a wood-burning stove, and V says we’ll freeze to death if I don’t. This seems unnecessarily primitive to me, doesn’t come naturally, and I nearly buried the axe blade in my shins a couple of times before I got the hang of it.
I do take V over to the Pickwick to see Bud’s latest just as I promised her. It’s after ten by the time the movie gets out, and it’s starting to snow. They pretty much roll up the sidewalks here after dark, but neither of us feels like going home. There’s a bar that’s open until eleven, but it’s a depressing dive. Amelia’s Café is a sort of twee coffeehouse that stays open late catering to the movie crowd, and after taking a stroll around town, we stop in.
We sit at a table by the window, and Amelia’s daughter Trudy takes our order: a hot cider for V and a cup of coffee for me. V starts telling me about a yard sale over in Lenox that she wants to go to. She says that she needs to find a new quilt for the bed, and pretty soon she’s deep into a recitation of the relative merits of block quilts versus scrap and crazy quilts. I’m only saved when Trudy comes back with our order. After she sets the cups down, V tells her to take a seat, and the two of them fall into a conversation about the movie. I glance out the window.
That’s when I see him standing across the street, smoking a cigarette. He’s wearing the same greatcoat, scarf, and woolen cap that he wore lurking in the shadows on Perry Street, and that’s how I recognize him. V and Trudy are both startled when I push my chair away from the table and get to my feet, but I don’t have time to explain.
Outside, the guy sees me coming, tosses his cigarette, and is walking away like I’m supposed to think he’s a local.
I grab him before he gets very far and spin him around, but instead of trying to fight me off, the guy pleads, “Don’t hurt me, okay? Just don’t hurt me.”
“Who are you?”
“Nobody,” he says, and I’m inclined to believe him. The guy’s fifty if he’s a day, and there’s something soft about him, like if I slap him, he might start to cry.
“Who sent you up here? And don’t tell me nobody again or I’m liable to get annoyed.”
“I don’t know who he is, I swear it. This guy gives me five hundred in cash and says I should tail you no matter where you go and call him twice a day to tell him where you are. He says he’ll give me another five hundred when I’m done, but he doesn’t tell me his name and I wasn’t about to ask.”
“Why you?”
“We both know people, you know what I’m saying?”
This guy is strictly small-time, a bookie maybe or a numbers runner. I crowd him like I still might smack him and say, “What did this guy look like?”
“Slick. Thirty-five maybe. Snappy dresser. Like I said, I don’t know his name, but don’t rat me out, okay? He’ll get steamed if you do, and I think he likes to hurt people.”
CHAPTER 23
V is irritated with me. I’ve only been gone for five or ten minutes, but she shoots me a nasty look as soon as I walk back into Amelia’s. She’s too polite to let me have it in front of Trudy, but V is holding on to that look when she asks, “Who was that supposed to be?”
“Nobody,” I say, “at least that’s what he told me,” which I think is clever, but V doesn’t. “I thought I recognized him from the city, but he turned out to be somebody else.” This seems a serviceable lie, one that Trudy believes, but not one that I can get past V.
“Trudy,” V says, “what do you do when your boyfriend makes up a story that you know is a complete lie, but tries to sell you on it anyway?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Trudy says.
“Lucky you.”
“Honestly, V. He really wasn’t anybody. I’m just a little jumpy these days, you know, for the obvious reasons.”
Now Trudy’s interested. “I don’t understand. For what obvious reasons?”
“Jack’s in the damsel-in-distress business,” V tells her. “It doesn’t pay very well, but somebody’s got to do it. Right, Jack?”
V and I have been together long enough for me to know when to let a dig like that pass, but Trudy doesn’t.
“I still don’t get it,” she says.
V pats her on the arm and tells her that I’m a private investigator, which seems to thrill Trudy no end. She starts pumping me for details, probably expecting sordid stories of gun molls and psychopathic gangsters, but I disappoint her. I tell her that I do divorce work mostly or occasionally find a lost puppy or a demented geezer who has wandered away from home.
V doesn’t like it when I hide my light under a bushel, so she tells Trudy about Ernie Norwood.
Nine-year-old Ernie Norwood lives with his mother, Florence, and his father, Ralph, in Pelham Bay. Ralph sells cars at a Chevy dealership in Yonkers—that is, he sells them when he isn’t too busy gambling away his paycheck on the ponies. He rarely goes out to the track though. Instead, he makes his bets through a bookie named Petey O’Brien. Petey’s from the old neighborhood, but he’s at least a decade older than me, so I don’t know him all that well. His reputation is good though: he gives track odds, pays off on time, and usually doesn’t go in for the rough stuff when somebody can’t come across right away. But Ralph is in deep with Petey, so deep that Petey can’t let it slide, so to encourage him to pay what he owes, he grabs little Ernie and lets Ralph know that if he doesn’t come up with the money, he won’t get the kid back. He doesn’t mean it, but Ralph doesn’t know that and panics.
