Sirens (29 page)

Even me, Josephine Anne Winter. My life was not planned clear and simple; it was not written down. There were no magic formulas to follow. Adding “a” and “b” would not necessarily lead to “c”. If I was to get anywhere in this life, I would have to take risks; I’d have to face the fires. I’d have to be willing to be wrong.

I had to ask Charlie for his help, but I wasn’t going to be ashamed of it. Maybe a flapper wasn’t just a “floozie,” as Pops would say.

And maybe I was turning into a flapper, and that was just fine. Maybe a flapper was a girl who could stand up for herself and admit she didn’t know it all.

When the waiter came back with my soda water, I stopped him. “I need to get a message to my cousin,” I said, nodding my head in Charlie’s direction. “I have to meet him when his shift is over.”

The waiter relaxed into a smile. “You’re Charlie’s cousin? Why didn’t you say so? Sure. What’s the message?”

I told him and watched as he crossed the dining room, watched as he whispered in Charlie’s ear, watched as he pointed in my direction. Charlie’s face lifted toward me, and my heart did a little fluttery dance as I met his dark but unsmiling eyes.

Then I sipped my soda water slowly, feeling both relief and a new kind of anxiety at what Charlie would say.

He wasn’t done until after five, and I’d depleted much of my meager stash of money ordering a second soda water. I hadn’t dared take out the journal and read it in public, now that I knew what it might contain. Charlie came and sat down at my table.

“Your cousin, eh? Well, I guess that’s better than being your enemy.” He was tense but not unkind. “Let’s go. We can sit in the lobby—there’s a nice quiet corner.”

The corner was occupied by two great soft chairs pulled close. Our conversation was muffled by the thick carpeting and drooping potted plants. Charlie and I sat facing each other, knees just touching. He leaned toward me. “Okay, Jo.”

“First of all, I’m sorry. I thought you had something to do with it. With the break-in.”

He smiled almost at once, relief flooding his features. “Oh. Okay.”

“I thought you were in Danny Connor’s pocket.”

He tensed again. “I’m not. But…”

“What?” I felt my mouth go dry.

“I thought you were gone for good.”

I swallowed. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

“Sure.” He looked at his hands, flexed his fingers. “I tried to put you out of my mind. I asked Connor for help.”

I couldn’t speak.

“So he did. He got me a job. A big one. Full-time musician at a place that pays big. I’ll be a headliner.”

“Oh! That’s great, Charlie. Really. That’s what you want.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the floor. “Trouble is, it’s in Chicago.”

“Oh,” I said again. And again, “Oh.”

Charlie looked at me. “But now you’re here.”

I swallowed hard.

“You came back. I thought you were done with me. You know, because I’m just a waiter…trying to be a musician…just some guy. Some guy you thought had double-crossed you.”

“Charlie,” I started.

He interrupted. “Look, I leave at the end of the week.”

The end of the week. “You’re not just some guy to me, Charlie. I like you.”

He lifted his face, and his dark eyes bored into me. “You do?”

I nodded.

“Really?”

I nodded again.

“Because you, you’re better than me, you know.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not, Charlie. I’ve been all wrong about things.” My cheeks felt like they were on fire. “So wrong I need your help.”

Something flicked across his face, but then he said, “What do you need?”

“I need help finding a place to stay.”

His eyebrows shot skyward. “Why? What’s going on?”

“I had to leave. I was afraid for my aunt and uncle and cousins. My being there, it put them in danger.” I hadn’t told Charlie about the fire; now I related the whole story.

“Jo—why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” He looked angry.

“It wasn’t until the break-in that I really began to believe it all wasn’t an accident. That I might be the target.”

“Why?” His eyes searched my face, and his hand reached for mine.

I hesitated. I had to trust him, but I still told him only part of it. “I have something of my brother’s that everyone seems to want.”

“I see.” He searched my face. “Can I ask what it is?”

“His journal. Charlie, it may have some information that Danny Connor won’t like.”

Charlie leaned back, pulling his hands away. “Won’t like because…”

“I’m not certain yet. But John Rushton thinks Teddy might have implicated Danny Connor in the 1920 Wall Street bombing.”

Charlie let out a low whistle. He leaned his head back and studied the ceiling. Then he shook his head. “You said ‘might have.’ Do you know for sure? Have you read the whole thing?”

“Not yet.”

He leaned forward again. “I can’t believe it. Connor’s no angel, that’s for sure, but that bombing? Nah. No way.”

“But Teddy did work for him. And Teddy was a believer, at least for a while.”

Charlie nodded. “I remember when I met Teddy. It was when Louie took up with Danny.” He pursed his lips. “I was fifteen, and kind of not connected with the real world. One day Louie and I lived in a pretty bad place downtown. The next we lived in this hotel, and then in the mansion, the one you’ve seen, out on the Island.” He looked down at his hands, working his fingers together. “It wasn’t real clear to me what Lou had to give up for me, you know. I didn’t get it back then. She made sure I kept going to school. She had to grow up way before—”

“I know, Charlie. She’s told me. She’s all right with it.”

“That’s because she loves Danny. She believes in him.”

“But that doesn’t mean he’s a good guy. That doesn’t mean he isn’t involved in the bombings.”

“I don’t buy it. You know, I think he’s too worried about his reputation to get mixed up in that. He wants to be seen as the Irish savior.”

“All I know is he and several other people want to get their hands on this journal, and that makes me a target. So I need to find a place to stay.” I looked at my hands, knotting them together in my lap, with my knees pressed tight. “My own home is gone, and I don’t know this city as well as you do.”

Charlie leaned forward again. “I’ve got a great idea. Trust me.”

I looked up into his dark eyes.

He smiled. “Trust me, Jo. I’ll treat you with respect like I would my own sister. Even if I’m glad you aren’t.”

Charlie walked me straight to one of the ladies-only hotels in Midtown, saying he could vouch for it. He pressed a twenty into my palm and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Then he waited outside while I went in.

The matron looked me up and down, and I could hear the word “flapper” hanging in the air, but I paid for a week up front, gave her my best schoolgirl smile and polite speech, and she let me take a room. It was spotless and right next to the bath.

I settled in for a few minutes, then found Charlie outside. He was leaning against a lamppost. At the sight of his wolfish body my heart gave a quick leap, and when he saw me and smiled it did a little dance right in my chest.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now I’ve got to read some more of Teddy’s journal. Find out what he was trying to hide. See if there’s something in there about Connor.”

“Would you consider having dinner at my place first?”

My face burned a hot pink. “At your place? At your apartment?”

“I swear, Jo.” He raised his hands. “I’ll bring you right back here. Eating there is a lot cheaper than going out. And I like to cook. And it might be one of the last times, you know, before I take off for Chicago.”

My heart slowed down, way down, as I thought about Charlie leaving.

Charlie and I took the bus downtown. From a vendor on his block we bought roast chicken and vegetables and cheese and bread and apples—and a cheap bottle of bootleg wine the guy slipped
out in a brown wrapper from behind the bottom door of his cart. Charlie’s apartment was a couple of rooms in a tenement on Christopher Street, with a kitchen tucked in one corner of the larger room.

Charlie was tidier than I’d imagined, especially since I was an unexpected guest. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, and he ran into the back room to yank some laundry from his makeshift line and throw the coverlet up over the bed. But the floor was swept and the icebox was clean.

I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room as Charlie bustled around me, tucking things in place and talking a mile a minute about how the apartment was nice and quiet and the landlady pleasant and the rent so cheap he could squirrel money away for the day when he could move to a bigger place uptown. Assuming he stayed in New York. He started in on the vegetables, scrubbing and chopping and setting them to roast in the oven.

“Shoot,” he said. “Forgot something. Can you watch the vegetables for a few minutes? I’ll be right back.”

He left, and I was alone. I took off my gloves and hat and placed them on a small table close to the door. I moved to the window. Charlie’s apartment was on the third story, and it was in the front, so I had a decent view up and down the street. I shifted the sash up high enough so that I could lean out on my forearms into the warm June evening. It seemed as if all of New York congregated below. Organ grinders; movable vending stalls piled with fruits and meats and dry goods; kids running into the street after hoops and balls; couples strolling; mothers dragging children; cars, wagons, honking, shouting; the stench of humanity, of horse sweat, of dung, of rot, of fragrant cooking…

New York was alive. Or maybe I should say, this part of New York was truly alive. Lights flicked on in the windows of an apartment down the street. Someone shouted from a fire escape to my left at a person hanging laundry from a fire escape across the street. The tenements here stretched five stories up, and for several blocks all I could see was life going on and on and on.

Above the street hung a sky of evening blue, that thick, deepening blue that pressed like a soft weight, that spoke of the promise and threat of night. I sucked in the air, dirty and rich.

I’d never known this side of New York. Teddy had never shown me anything like this. My aunt and uncle and cousins lived a rarified, sheltered, and sterile life. I’d been shielded by a comfortable home. Now here I was, in the grit and grime of lower Manhattan and I felt, I felt…I felt I’d come home. I closed my eyes and listened, just listened.

Children and music, shouts and whistles, the clatter of pots, the sound of water running through the pipes, the
flap, flap
of the hanging laundry.

Then a
click
behind me, and I turned as Charlie stepped in. I made to close the window, but he stopped me.

“No,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I like the air.”

I smiled and then saw that Charlie had bought fresh flowers. Yellow coreopsis, white daisies, blue larkspur.

He held them up, a bit sheepish. “Some lady who’d driven a truck in from the Island grew them in her yard. They looked, I mean, it seemed to me that it’s kind of a special occasion. You know.” He turned such a deep red I thought he might faint.

I took them from him. “Do you have something we can put them in? Like a glass?”

He went to the cabinet and produced a drinking glass. “Will this do?”

“Perfect.” I smiled, and we set to having dinner, and for the moment I forgot about Teddy and the growing mystery and my worries. Instead, I concentrated on how much Charlie was growing on me, first as a friend, and now, I hoped, something more.