Sirens (22 page)

I turned on my heel, marched to my room, and locked the door.

I paced the room, back and forth. As I did, and as my temper cooled, I began to think about everything, and I softened. Pops was trying to protect me—that I knew already. I knew he loved me; he might be hard-nosed and domineering, but he loved me, all right. I’d grant him that. Well, I’d fallen into the danger zone in spite of Pops’s best efforts. And it wasn’t his fault, any of it, really.

I had to face it. This all started with Teddy.

Whatever Teddy had gotten mixed up in with Daniel Connor
was big. Too big for Teddy to handle himself, and now Connor was chasing the Winter family down one member at a time.

But the expectations. Pops had such ideas for me, like he’d had with Teddy. Teddy had to be perfect, be the hope for the Winters. He had to go to war, return a hero. To go out into the world and lead. And he failed. Pops talked a good line, about how Teddy walked on water, but deep down I knew. Pops had never forgiven Teddy for falling apart when he came home, and he never would. He left us high and dry and sent Pops into bootlegging for Danny Connor.

The stress had to have gotten to Teddy. I knew it did.

And now it was up to me. Up to me to live up to Pops’s expectations, to be perfect. And Pops’s version of perfect? A nineteenth-century girl who married up and brought her family class and money. Not a twentieth-century girl who worked and lived on her own. Certainly not a flapper with bobbed hair and exposed shins who talked back to her father.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared out the window at the thin strip of blue sky that lay squeezed between the high-rises across the avenue. The westering sun reflected in the buildings’ windows, making gilded rectangles, like eyes. New York was alive, animal-like, stretching and yawning in the afternoon, and changing its mood as it readied for another evening of glitter and glamour.

Pops was trying to be a good father, but he was still wrapped up in his own thwarted dreams of fortune and nightmares of loss.

I didn’t understand what anyone was really up to. But I knew who did.

I opened Teddy’s journal to the gap where pages were missing. I leaned back against my headboard to read the next section, hoping
I could make sense of it, even though the gap in personal entries was over a year wide.

March 3, 1921

Daniel Connor, reputed king of the East Side, took me in. Said I could be trusted and he liked that. The paycheck is good, he doesn’t ask questions, and I told him I wouldn’t do anything underhanded.

He asked me to define underhanded.

I said I’d never kill another person, long as I lived. I’d done enough of that, and I was finished with it.

He said okay.

March 18

I think this’ll work out all right. The orchids, they are something else. I wish I could spend every second in the greenhouse. It’s kind of soothing. Danny, I think he appreciates that I get it.

I think he gets me.

April 23

I keep going over it all in my head. Rushton was a nice guy. And his brother…just a kid. They weren’t part of the problem.

Sometimes I think I left pieces of myself scattered in that trench, like I was blown up and didn’t know it, pieces of my heart, my brain, my soul. I don’t know that I’ll ever get them back.

And I sure wish I’d never been a part of…

April 29

Danny Connor’s all right, near as I can tell.

Danny Connor? Teddy worked for Danny Connor.

I felt as if the wind had just been knocked clean out of my lungs. I’d been right: this did all start with Teddy. But not in the way I’d thought.

No question: I couldn’t read on. Something had happened in that year that was gone. I had to find those missing pages. I looked again at the hint:
library lions
.

I buried the journal, wrapped in the scarf, deep in my bottom drawer.

Pops and Uncle Bert were still in the living room. “I’m going to the library,” I said. “I won’t be long.” Uncle Bert gave me a cheery wave. Pops didn’t turn around.

It was rush hour, and the streets were alive with traffic. I made my way west to Fifth and then downtown to the library, the tall columns whose steps were flanked by those familiar lions, and I stood on the steps and remembered.

Teddy had lifted me up so that I could touch one great paw, and then we’d made our way inside. I poked around that same paw but knew no pages could be hidden there, in the weather after all this time and in public view.

We’d also gone inside, and Teddy had taken me to the stacks and—Suddenly I knew what Teddy’s note referred to.

I moved into the main reading room and made for the stacks, looking for fiction and the author’s last name beginning with “D.”

There it was: the collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that Teddy had introduced me to that same day, here in the library. We’d checked out
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, the very same volume that sat on the shelf even now. I pulled it out and opened the book.

The smell of the old paper; the feel of the pages; the heft of the volume. Teddy was right there with me all over again; my memory of that afternoon was so strong. He had read the book to me over the next few weeks until we’d returned it to the library.

I flipped through the book, not knowing what I’d find—a sheaf of pages tucked inside, perhaps? But if there had been pages left there for me, they were long gone. Disappointment curled through me like a cold chill.

I checked out the book and walked back to the apartment, pushing through the crowds. By the time I got back, Pops had left.

I retreated to my room, tired and frustrated, opening
The Hound
to random pages, trying to decipher the clue.

The night sounds of the city grew louder through my open window, and I heard snatches of song and screeching laughter and howls and catcalls and honks and slams and tires and brakes and all the relentless cacophony of this island city rising up. All its inhabitants carrying on like there was no tomorrow, because, after all, we lived in the decade when skirts rose and mores dropped and, why, Prohibition was just another rule to be broken, like all the other broken things strewn about the concrete sidewalks of this magic kingdom that we called the city of New York.

The knocking was soft at first, a quick
thump, thump, thump
.

Then louder. Then, “Jo? Jo?”

I sat up, heard someone fumble with my door, and then a key in the lock; in my stupor, I didn’t know where I was. For an instant I thought it was my dream—the fire, haunting me—and I was awake in a snap.

My uncle opened my door, the keys dangling from his fingers. “Jo?” And my aunt swept in, my uncle framed in the doorway behind her.

My aunt’s hair was tied in a wad of rags; I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening. It wasn’t a fire. I took a breath. My aunt sat on my bed, the light from the door silhouetting her face, which I couldn’t see.

“What?” My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. “Aunt Mary?” I flipped on the bedside lamp.

“Jo. Your father’s all right. He’s fine. He’s gone to join your mother.” My aunt rocked back, her mouth working like she was searching for words. “They’re both fine and far away, now.”

“What?” The cotton was gone; now it felt like a thousand icy needles were stabbing me behind my eyes.

“Your house, Jo. I’m sorry. It’s gone. Lost in a fire.”

“A fire…?”

“Burned, honey. I’m so sorry.” My aunt hugged me hard, then pulled back again. “Today. While your father was out of the house, thank heavens. He might’ve been inside, but he wasn’t, he was here. But everything else is lost. Your house was burned to the ground.”

Fire.

The scar on my back ached and tingled with remembered pain.

CHAPTER 29

Lou

Did Danny do anything bad with his own two hands? Not to my knowledge.

He might have asked for things to be done. He might’ve said, “Take care of it.” I don’t even know that for sure. I am pretty sure he wasn’t a killer, at least not from the time we met. He swore that to me, up and down, when I asked, especially after what Cook said that time. ’Cause how could I have stayed with—loved—a guy who pulled the trigger and then came home and gave me a kiss?

Oh sure, Danny was a tough guy, no question. But he didn’t need to be the one to take care of things, you know? He had people for that.

Ryan and Neil, I didn’t like those two goons. I watched out the window when they came up that day, and they stood around the fountain talking to Danny. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, thumbs out, that Italian jacket smooth on his body, not a wrinkle. Golly,
he looked swell. Those other two guys, they might’ve dressed natty, but they couldn’t wear it like Danny could. They always looked like they were about to eat something. Or someone.

So that day they came up, and everyone had this long talk in the driveway. Danny was all control, which was one of the things I loved about him. Those boys were all smiles and winks and nudges. Goons. Then Danny made his way out to the greenhouse while they drove the car around to the side. Show over.

Later on I heard the gardener complaining that he couldn’t find the petrol he used for that new machine Danny had gotten for cutting the grass. I figured those boys were up to something, and if they needed petrol, it was something hot.

Speaking of hot, if Danny knew how much I spied on him, my goose would be cooked. But a house like that, with all those rooms and all those windows? And me with nothing to do all day but paint my nails and keep myself looking nice for him, for those times when he wanted me to look nice? What else was I supposed to do?

All I wanted was to keep my Danny. I’d have done whatever it took. So sure, I spied. I had plans for Jo Winter. My hands with those pretty painted nails, I could keep them clean, too, and maybe find people of my own.

But did I? Keep listening, Detective. This is where the story gets interesting.

CHAPTER 30

MAY 25–JUNE 1, 1925

Sure, his hair is red, his eyes are blue,

And he’s Irish through and through!

Has anybody here seen Kelly?

Kelly from the Emerald Isle!

—Lew Fields, “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly,” from
The Jolly Bachelors
, 1910

Jo

The next few days were a blur. Aunt Mary insisted on dosing me periodically with Wampole’s Preparation, as if my drinking an elixir of cod liver oil would bring back my family home and keep them safe.

Uncle Bert made the trip up to White Plains to investigate the ruin; Aunt Mary forbade me to go.

“Your mother is trusting me with your care. She doesn’t want you upset by what you’d see there.” Aunt Mary’s face was gray, and dark circles had formed beneath her eyes. “Besides, it’s danger—” She stopped.

“It’s what?” My own stomach was in knots. It wasn’t only the things that we’d lost that bothered me. Yes, I felt a keen loss for my simple, sweet home, my room with its peeling flowered wallpaper.
Rather, it was like a part of my soul had been stolen while I slept. “What, Aunt Mary?”

She finished the word. “It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous.” My voice rose. Of course it was. I knew just how dangerous Daniel Connor was. I’d hesitated giving Connor what I knew about Teddy, and Connor had exacted his punishment. At least Ma and Pops had a refuge that was far, far away. At least they would know nothing about my future dealings with Connor.

Because, clear as day now, the only way to stop any further madness of this sort was to give Danny something: Teddy, or myself.

My aunt went on. “A smoldering ruin is no place for you. Your uncle will save anything that can be saved, and he’ll make sure that it’s all taken care of.”