The wicked redhead, p.18
The Wicked Redhead, page 18
At the steps leading upward to the door, I pause and turn my head. He’s still standing there, staring after me, not a flicker of a single muscle. If there’s an emotion behind that face of his, he’s not inclined to share it.
I tell him, “If you hear anything about Agent Marshall, you’ll let me know.”
He nods and turns away, taking the ashtray and my empty glass with him, so there’s not the slightest sign I was ever there.
11
NOW, HERE is the thing about a swank uptown apartment building like the Marshalls inhabit: just about anybody can march down that green awning and through the pair of polished wooden doors to the marble-plated foyer beyond, provided she passes muster with the uniformed doorman, but you must have a key to use the service entrance. Not possessing such key, I exit the taxi on Fifth Avenue and proceed like I own the joint, nodding hello to the doorman, speaking briefly to the porter, and nobody challenges me, nobody suggests for a second that I’m not Miss Geneva Kelly, legitimate houseguest of the Marshalls, every right in the world to step into that elegant elevator and proceed to the fourteenth floor. Isn’t it funny where a certain kind of coat and hat can take you in this world?
Anyway, I don’t count the victory, because I know what lies in wait for me on the other side of the Marshalls’ door, smoking a cigarette and drinking something unconstitutional, tapping its expensive toe against the parquet floor. For an instant, as the elevator jumps to a stop, as the attendant opens the door and pulls back the grille, I consider turning back. Then I remember Patsy. I thank the attendant and step forward into the small, paneled vestibule.
There is only one apartment on this floor. Only one entrance. Just turn the knob, Gin. Turn the knob and face the music, which—now that the door is open—floats softly, tinnily on the air, the sound of an orchestra compressed into a tabletop Victrola. It’s coming from the direction of what Mrs. Marshall calls the drawing room, which I must pass on my way to either staircase or bedroom. Opposite the front door, an enormous, full-length portrait of Mrs. Marshall stares archly at me, plump of bosom and wasp of waist, dressed in some kind of dreamlike pale gown like they used to wear, back in the days of horse-drawn broughams and Mrs. Astor’s ballroom. She seems to follow my guilty figure as I steal across the checkerboard marble and out the other side, where a short gallery opens out into a room about as big as the entire meetinghouse back in River Junction, grand fireplace anchoring one end and grand piano at the other, light, neat furniture strewn artfully in between.
But it’s not the furniture that arrests me as I tear off my gloves and hat and chuck them atop the narrow Oriental table, as I pass the gilt-framed artwork and step into Mrs. Marshall’s drawing room. It’s the thick chest of Oliver Anson Marshall, storming right back out.
12
I PUT OUT my hand and grasp his shoulder. “Anson!”
He looks down at me with shocked eyes. Takes a half step back, away from my touch, and his expression transforms into something else, I don’t know what. Dislike, almost. Distaste.
“Why, what’s the matter?” I exclaim. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing.” He looks at his wristwatch. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to leave.”
“Leave? Are you kidding me?”
“I only had an hour. Tide’s going to turn. They’re expecting me back at the dock.”
He speaks so coldly, standing there like a slab of mountain rock, so clearly impatient to be away from my person, that I can’t seem to find many words. Just: “You’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad. I have to leave, that’s all. Only stopped for a moment.” He looks back over his shoulder, where his mother’s just appeared, cool and elegant in a dress of royal blue silk, so rich it’s almost purple. “Good night, Mama.”
“Good night, darling. Come back as soon as you can.”
He looks back at me. “Good night, Ginger.”
“Good night?”
He leans down to kiss my cheek—my cheek!—and walks right past me like I’m part of the furniture, some kind of new statuary his mother’s installed in the gallery. I spin around and watch him disappear into the foyer, listen to the sound of the opening door, and I’m too stunned to go after him, too electrified to think of something to say. I fumble with a sound or two, and as the door shuts I lunge forward at last, but Mrs. Marshall’s hand shoots out to snare my elbow. I try to shake it off, but she’s awfully strong for a lady of a certain age. I whip around and take her wrist with my other hand and yank it away.
“Don’t bother!” she calls out, as I shoot off down the gallery, and sure enough, when I open the door the elevator’s already closed and making its dignified way down the dial toward the lobby.
But while the sight of that departed elevator might deter some horse-faced, Manhattan-raised debutante, it ain’t near enough to stop a redheaded hillbilly reared up inside the holler betwixt two Maryland mountains. I study the view from the tiny window. Then I remember the staircase. There must be a staircase, right? In case of fire or electrical disturbance. I cast about until I spot it, plain white door in the corner, and I throw that door open and near enough throw myself down those steps, feet flying eyes blurring, whipping around each landing, trying to count floors until I give up around three or four, until the progression of identical stairs and landings transforms into some kind of rhythm, some kind of slow beat, synchronized with the movement of the arrow on the elevator dial in my mind’s eye. Somewhere in the middle of it all I miss a step. Tumble down half a flight of stairs to land on my right side, hip and shoulder, squeezing out an almighty grunt of pain and surprise. Stagger right back up and swing around the post, down the next flight, while my bones ache and my head swims and my lungs saw for breath, and then a white wall appears before me, and a door to my right side, and I open that door and realize I’ve run all the way down to the damn basement.
Up I go. One flight, landing, second flight. Door that opens into the beautiful lobby, haven of peace, scent of stargazer lilies. The porter starts at the sight of me. I look for the elevator, which stands open, red-suited attendant at the ready.
“Mr. Marshall?” I gasp.
Both porter and attendant point thumbs at the front door.
“Already left, Miss Kelly. About a minute ago,” says the porter.
I let out a small, fierce Damn! under my breath and dash for the door, which the alert doorman swings open just in time. “Mr. Marshall! Which way did he go?” I ask.
“Straight down Fifth, Miss Kelly. Shall I catch him for you?”
But I’m already bolting down that smooth Fifth Avenue sidewalk. At this hour of night it’s mercifully sparse, just a few dark-suited businessmen heading north, a few taxis pausing at the curb to release their human cargo. I dart between these obstacles, searching for a burly fellow wearing a sharp fedora. The sidewalk clears before me, and he ought to be there, but the next two blocks are empty, empty. I pause in my run and cast about, panting, and my God, there he is, he’s crossed the street to walk along the edge of the park instead of the hurly-burly on the eastern slab of sidewalk. Making as if for the Plaza Hotel, which rises up there on the other side of Fifty-Ninth Street. I cry out his name and plunge across the avenue, causing some outraged taxi or another to honk its horn, and Anson turns at the sound, spies me, starts forward and stops. Begins to open his arms, drops them, opens them again when it’s clear I mean to hurl myself upon him.
But the embrace only lasts an instant. He puts his hands on my shoulders and sets me back a step or two. “Gin, I can’t stop.”
“They aren’t going to leave without you, are they? Anyway, if you were really in a hurry, you’d have hailed a taxi. So what gives?”
“Nothing gives.”
“Your eyes say different.”
He brushes his hand across them. “You were supposed to stay in Florida.”
“Your mama made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“You should have refused anyway.”
“Well, I couldn’t. You’re not the only one around here with unfinished business.”
He makes this angry little breath, like he’s about to give me hell, and I straighten my back and my neck and think, Ha! Now we’re getting somewhere. But the seconds tick and nothing comes out. He lifts his wrist and holds it upward, trying to catch a bit of light on the face of his watch, and says, in that voice of godawful calm, “Look, I don’t have time to argue. Just try not to get into any more trouble, all right?”
“What’s wrong with you?” I take him by the shoulders. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, haven’t heard from you, didn’t know was you dead or was you alive—”
He stiffens. “But I sent you a letter. A telegram.”
“Two weeks ago.”
“My God. Don’t you realize they’re watching me, Ginger? Every word I say, every telegram, every letter. I had to pass that note to you through Luella, so they wouldn’t find out where you were, and now you’ve gone and popped up right where—”
“They. They. Who’s they? What’s going on with you? Have you got something? Something I should maybe know about?”
Anson takes my fingers and removes them from his shoulders. “Just get back to that apartment, all right? Get back to your fiancé—”
“Oh, is that what you’re mad about? Billy?”
“Look, you were supposed to stay in Florida. You were supposed to keep out of trouble. And the next thing I know, you’ve moved right back to New York, moved in with my own mother and brother, gotten engaged—”
“For God’s sake, we’re not engaged. It’s just pretend, it’s just until he’s better.”
“And then what?”
I pause. “Your mama’s going to take care of it.”
“Sure she will.”
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Please don’t. You surely can’t think I wanted this mess.”
“Then why?” he asks, and though I can’t see him so well, the streetlight’s too far off, I can hear his voice is full of pain, shorn of calm at last, like somebody tore a strip off the skin of it.
“I didn’t know what else to do. I was all alone down there. So full of guilt and worry, and nothing I could do about it. I didn’t know where to turn.”
“Turn to me.”
“You weren’t there. You left.”
He leans his lips to my forehead. Doesn’t kiss me, exactly. Just rests himself there. Pulse strumming between us, a little fast. Heat rising from our skin. Somewhere behind me, the horns blow and the engines roar and the people shout, but I can’t seem to hear them so well. We’re up against the park wall now, hidden in the shadows. Feels furtive and dirty somehow, like we’re meeting here as lovers, snatching a quick one in the midst of the fallen night.
“Listen,” he says urgently, lifting his head, lifting his hand, and for an instant my heart makes this wild leap. But he doesn’t touch me. Just sets that hand on the wall behind him and says, “Do you still have that list of names?”
“What list?”
“The men you delivered those bribes to, back in February, when you were pretending to work for Duke.”
I tap my forehead. “Right here.”
“But not written down?”
“I don’t need to write them down.”
He lifts his other hand to rub the corner of his mouth. Seems to be looking up the avenue, and then down. “Good. Because I have the feeling . . .”
“What? What feeling?”
“Nothing. Just remember those names, all right? Just in case.”
“In case something happens to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. But I want that list of men to exist in somebody else’s head, too.”
“What about Luella’s head? You trust her, don’t you?” Anson stands there silently, absorbing the weight of this question. Seems to have forgotten all about the big hurry and the importance of tides. I wonder if he can see me better than I can see him. Whether some trick of the streetlamps illuminates my face, while his face remains hidden in the shadow of the trees. That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You never can see yourself from the perspective of someone else. You never do know how you really look.
“Well?” I say.
He sticks his hands in his pockets. “There’s only one person in the world I trust that far, Ginger, one person I trust like I trust myself, and that’s you. Now go. Go back to the apartment and stay there, for God’s sake.”
I stand there breathless for a beat or two, because how am I supposed to breathe when he says a thing like that? Then I catch the anguish inside his eyes and I do like he says, I turn and hurry back the way I came, before I do something stupid, like kiss him. Hurry right back up Fifth Avenue and cross it carefully this time, because I know he’s standing there watching me, making sure I travel those three blocks unmolested, until I slip safe into the golden light of the lobby and the scent of stargazer lilies.
13
BACK ON the fourteenth floor, the door stands open for me. I slam it shut with enough strength to rattle the portrait behind me. Turn to face Mrs. Marshall, who waits at the gallery’s entrance in her silk dress, a sleek, modern counterpoint to that glorious image of herself a quarter century earlier.
“Everything sorted out?” she asks.
“Wouldn’t you like to know. Just what did you say to him?”
“Nothing to your detriment, I assure you. The opposite. Won’t you come in? You must be famished, missing dinner like that.” She turns around and walks back down the gallery, knowing I’ll follow. Haven’t any choice, have I? She’s got everything I want inside this apartment of hers, one way or another. Inside the palm of her hand.
14
SHE LEADS me past the drawing room, past the staircase, past the dining room and library on opposite sides of a grand hallway, past a couple of closed doors and around the corner to the kitchen, where a maid looks up in surprise from a sink full of soap bubbles.
“I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, Mary,” Mrs. Marshall says, “but I had a plate set aside for Miss Kelly when she returned from her appointment. Would you please bring it into the dining room?”
“Of course, madam.” Mary extracts her arms from the bubbles and wipes her hands on a dishcloth, taking care not to cast any reproachful looks in my direction. She opens up a door on the massive range and brings out a plate piled high with food.
Mrs. Marshall touches my arm. “Miss Kelly. If you don’t mind.”
In the dining room, a place is already laid for me: not at the head of the table, naturally, but exactly in the middle of one side. The electric chandelier’s been switched off, but a pair of wall sconces still shine from either side of a white marble mantel. I turn to face Mrs. Marshall, all ablaze. “I don’t want to eat. I want to know what the devil’s going on with you. Why didn’t you tell me Anson was coming for dinner?”
“Nothing’s going on. I didn’t know about it myself. Ollie’s ship docked unexpectedly in New York this evening—he wouldn’t say why—and he came up to see how Billy’s doing, right there in the middle of dinner. I told him you were living here. He looked in on your sister and had a bite to eat. He was just leaving when you arrived. I’m afraid he hadn’t any more time, you see, before the ship set off again.”
“What did you tell him?”
A door opens on the other side of the room, a door you wouldn’t even know existed. Just opens right out from the wallpaper and the wainscoting, like somebody cut it there with a saw one day. Mary appears, carrying my plate, and Mrs. Marshall maintains a discreet silence while the maid sets it down amid the cutlery and asks if there will be anything else.
“A glass of water?” I suggest.
“A glass of water for Miss Kelly, Mary,” says Mrs. Marshall, and Mary nods and exits. When the door’s fully closed again, Mrs. Marshall continues. “I told him why you were here, of course. There was no other way to explain your presence.”
“I should have been the one to tell him. You should have given me a chance.”
“But you had chosen to leave, Ginger. To sneak out the back way and miss dinner altogether—Billy was awfully worried, let me tell you—and so you weren’t here when Ollie arrived. The duty fell to me.” She spreads out her innocent hands, palms out.
“He wasn’t happy.”
“Of course he wasn’t happy. His nose was firmly out of joint, but I expect you found a way to put it right, didn’t you? And he’ll be grateful in the end, when Billy’s all better. Here’s Mary with your water.”
Lord Almighty, the pantomimes that take place in the houses of rich people. Mary sets down the water while the two of us stand, lips compressed, watching her arrange the cutlery and adjust the water until it’s the exact right distance from the plate, atop a white linen tablecloth that must take hours to press. Mary straightens and looks at Mrs. Marshall—thank God she doesn’t bob a curtsy or anything like that, or I reckon I might scream—and Mrs. Marshall says that will be all, and Mary returns to her soapy sink.
“Eat,” Mrs. Marshall says. “I’m going to bed.”
“Bed!”
“We keep strict hours around here, Ginger. I’m sure you and your sister will soon come to appreciate the healthful effects of a regular schedule for meals and sleep. Before I retire, however . . .” She walks to the mantel and picks up a small packet, which merged so well with all that whiteness that I didn’t notice it until now. She sets the packet next to my plate. “Your letters.”
“My letters.”
“I am a woman of my word, Ginger. Remember that. Now good night. I suggest you retire soon. We leave for Southampton at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Southampton!”
“Don’t you remember? I’ve got a party to plan.”
