Girl Waits with Gun (7 page)

“It's a crash,” I said. “What use would they have for an actress?”

“I have experience with crashes,” she said.

“I don't think they'd want you for a safety campaign.”

“Please,”
she said. “Norma said you would. She said you had nothing else to do but keep me entertained.”

“Norma!” I tried to snatch the paper away from her, but she wouldn't let it go.

“And after that terrible fright I had yesterday,” Fleurette said, working her eyebrows into a sorrowful little knot. “Wouldn't an afternoon out do me good?”

She leaned over and pursed her lips at me in that droll, beguiling way she had. The girl was unbearably pretty and knew it. Sometimes I wanted to pick her up and squeeze her until she could hardly breathe. Whether that impulse grew out of love or rage I could not say.

THE ACCIDENT
was to be staged at the corner of Main Street and Market. Norma helped us hitch Dolley to the runabout we had on loan from the dairy. Its seat was only just wide enough for the two of us.

“You see, I couldn't have gone anyway,” Norma said with evident relief.

The questions began as soon as we rolled onto Sicomac Road.

“What sort of part do you think they'd have for a young girl?” Fleurette asked.

“We're only going to watch.”

“I could play the part of the victim with her leg crushed under the wheel.”

“You are not going to be in the pictures.”

“You don't know that.”

I kept pointedly quiet, but it didn't matter since she hadn't been listening to me anyway.

“At least let me drive.”

“After what happened last time?”

We continued in this fashion until we reached Paterson and rode over the river and past the great hulking Lambert Castle, one of those foolish medieval follies built by American industrialists after their first trip abroad. This particular industrialist, a silk man named Catholina Lambert, was still occupying his folly, after having seen his wife and all but one of their eight children off to the graveyard, most of them lost to consumption or childhood fevers or a kick to the head by a horse. I heard that he married his wife's sister, herself a widow, and that they spent their days in the marble atrium gazing up at the enormous dark oil portraits of other, more distant castles, and of moldy forests, and of the Lambert ancestors. The terrace offered an expansive view of New York City, but apparently the occupants of the castle didn't care to look at the view, for no one ever saw them outdoors.

Fleurette fell silent as we rode under the shadow of the castle. When she was a child and misbehaved, we used to threaten to send her there to work in the kitchen. She believed us. She believed everything we told her until she turned fourteen. The castle held enormous power over Fleurette—and over everyone in town, really. No one could stand to go near the place.

“Who lives over here?” Fleurette said, once we had put the castle behind us.

“All the silk men do,” I said.

From our vantage point on the hill, we could see the mills and factories clustered together at the edge of Paterson's downtown, casting their shadows into the Passaic River. Narrow brick stacks discharged coal smoke into the air, where it formed a permanent gray cloud. The river dwindled to a trickle this time of year, leaving nothing but mud and boulders and puddles visited by mosquitoes. The mill owners preferred to live a comfortable distance away from their red-bricked empire, so they retreated to this cool, quiet neighborhood with its canopy of elms and wide, sloping streets.

“You're taking a very roundabout way into town,” Fleurette said, fidgeting with her hat.

“We're early,” I said. “I thought we could ride around the park.”

“Well, I wanted to get there early!” Fleurette protested. “I wanted to have a chance to meet the director!”

“I know you did,” I said, slowing Dolley to a leisurely walk under the elms.

PATERSON
was a city of industry. Every schoolchild read the story about Alexander Hamilton and his Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, conceived for the purpose of harnessing the powers of the Great Falls of the Passaic River and building along its banks a national manufactory. Although things did not go as Hamilton had planned at first, Paterson did eventually grow into a city of steel mills and, later, silk mills. The factories produced locomotives, Colt revolvers, and, most recently, hair ribbons and yardage. But all industry ceased when a motion picture concern came to town.

As Fleurette rushed to the intersection of Market and Main, dragging me behind her, we passed banks that had closed for the afternoon, grocers who had locked their fruit stands, and jewelry stores with shutters over their windows. Businessmen in pinstriped suits stood on the sidewalk as if they had no business to attend to. Schoolteachers crowded into the street with their young charges. Police officers pushed the crowd aside, only to get a better look for themselves.

Fleurette couldn't see above anyone's head, so I let her climb the stairs of the library (closed until further notice) and perch atop a lamppost pedestal. She wrapped her arm around the post and craned her neck to see. In a peach-colored afternoon dress that flowed and swirled around her and her hair in dark glossy waves around her shoulders, she looked like Liberty with her torch. I stood below and watched with alarm as young men took their eyes off the proceedings down the street and grinned up at her instead. She kept her chin high, but I saw her glancing down at her admirers and wished I'd taken the post with her to discourage their interest.

The intersection had been cleared as if for a duel. One of Paterson's older trolley cars sat on the tracks, awaiting its fate. An enormous black motor car lurked on the other side of the intersection, half a block away, its engine growling. A wooden platform had been built for the camera, which stood all alone on its three-legged stand.

Finally the motor car's engine roared and a conductor jumped into the trolley and waved to the crowd. Everyone yelled back and fluttered their handkerchiefs at him. The driver of the motor car stood and waved to even more applause. Then they both settled down and a hush fell over the crowd.

The cameraman gave a nod. Someone raised a megaphone and counted down.

“Three. Two. One. Go!”

Over gasps and screams from the audience, the trolley rolled along its tracks and the motor car came at it broadside, picking up speed, just as Henry Kaufman had. The conductor looked out with an exaggerated expression of fear, which drew a laugh from the audience just as the car plowed into the trolley. It rocked back and forth. The conductor's expression grew more alarmed, and finally, with one last push from the motor car, it collapsed on its side, its wheels spinning.

Cheers erupted from the crowd. Fleurette was jumping up and down and clapping madly. Policemen, firemen, and a doctor with his medical bag all ran to the trolley, but the conductor emerged, victorious, shaking his fists in the air. All around me, people were congratulating one another as if they'd had some role in the outcome.

I turned to look for Fleurette, but at that moment I felt a hand on my sleeve. It was the red-haired girl from the factory.

“You don't remember me,” she shouted, straining to be heard over the crowd. She was younger than I'd first realized—not much older than Fleurette—and would have been pretty if she hadn't spent her life in a dye shop. Her hair was thin and dull, her mouth pinched, and there was a burn mark on her neck and another one like it on the back of her hand, both of them quite brown, suggesting an accident that occurred years ago. Her fingers bore the gray stains that accumulated from the dye.

“I do,” I said. “I made you spill all that dye. I'm sorry.” I stepped back and took my arm away from her. There was nothing on the library's pedestal but a lamppost. Fleurette had left her spot.

“It's nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “We can't help but spill dye. Every day my apron's a different color.”

The people in the crowd were pushing past me like a school of fish.

“Please excuse me,” I said. “I'm looking for my sister.”

I broke away from the crowd and backed into the street so I could get a better look at the library steps. It was nothing but a sea of hats, and all of a sudden I couldn't remember which hat Fleurette had worn. Now I was thinking about Henry Kaufman, too, and watching the side streets to make sure I didn't see a black motor car roll away with a young girl in the passenger's seat.

By the time I saw Fleurette, she was almost upon me, still smiling, still glowing, still bouncing on her toes. I grabbed her and pulled her roughly to me, looking over the top of her head as I did. She tried to push away from me but I wouldn't let her.

A voice behind me whispered, “Is she the one?”

I spun around but kept one arm wrapped around Fleurette's neck. It was the girl from the factory again.

“Is this her?” she asked. “I knew it couldn't have been you.”

Fleurette wriggled away from me to get a better look at her. “Who are you?”

She took a deep breath and settled her shoulders. “I'm Lucy Blake. I work in Henry Kaufman's factory. Is there another child? You can tell me.”

“Another child?” Fleurette screwed up her face and looked back and forth between the two of us. The girl's meaning was starting to dawn on me.

“I had a boy,” Lucy said. “Bobby. But he's gone.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Blake,” I said, pulling Fleurette away from her. “There's been a misunderstanding. I went to see Mr. Kaufman about the payment of an invoice.”

Lucy gave Fleurette another quick glance. “Do you mean that she isn't—”

I shook my head, horrified by the idea of Fleurette having anyone's child, much less Henry Kaufman's.

“What boy?” Fleurette asked breathlessly. “Where has he gone?”

Lucy looked at Fleurette with teary eyes. The story tumbled out before I could think to stop it. “I don't know,” she said, her voice wavering. “I never asked Henry for anything until we went out on strike. I just wanted enough money to feed Bobby. Nothing for me! I only needed milk and bread. But Henry was furious. He thought I was trying to trick him into giving me a share of the family business.”

“That sounds like him,” I said in spite of myself. I didn't want Fleurette to hear any of this, but I was growing outraged on the girl's behalf.

She sniffed and nodded. “He knew there was a baby. I mean, I hid it as long as I could, but he saw me every day. He knew. I told him all I wanted was to keep my job—nothing from him! He's not fit to be a father.”

“Of course not,” I said quickly.

“But when I asked him for help through the strike, he acted as if I were threatening extortion! He wouldn't give me a dime. So I had to send Bobby away in the children's evacuation.”

“You sent your baby away?” Fleurette said. “How could you?”

“Fleurette! What choice did she have?” The strikers' children left Paterson by the wagonload last year, bound for New York City, where families sympathetic to the strike had agreed to take care of them until their parents were back at work and could afford to feed them again. We had all seen the pictures in the paper of them leaving, those doleful children with notes pinned to their collars.

“All the other children came back, except mine,” Lucy said, grabbing at my hands. “I think Henry had something to do with it, don't you?”

I shook her hands off, tripping over my skirt as I fell away from her. I felt as though I'd been pushed out of a window. Henry Kaufman was a sluggard and a scoundrel, but a kidnapper?

“I couldn't possibly know,” I said. “Haven't you been to the police?”

A man carrying a stack of hatboxes jostled me as he walked by. I jumped and pulled Fleurette back to the library steps. Lucy Blake looked nervously around and followed.

“I can't,” she whispered, grabbing my wrist and leaning up to my ear. “If I go to the police, he'll make sure I disappear, too. That's what he told me.”

Why was she was telling me this? I could hardly look at her, but I couldn't move, either. Fleurette, crushed against me, watched her with wide, dark eyes.

“He's getting so much worse,” she continued. “When he first took over the factory, he wasn't so terrible. He could be nice when he wanted to, especially with the girls.”

I put a hand over Fleurette's ear. “Lots of men can be nice to girls.”

Fleurette pulled away. “I can hear you!”

“But he's horrible now,” Lucy said. “He'd rather run with that gang of his than run the factory. They do nothing but drink whiskey and plot their little schemes. They're always going out to get revenge or to teach someone a lesson. You wouldn't believe the fights they get into, even with each other.”

“What about his sister?” I said. “She seems sensible enough.”

Lucy shook her head. “She's disgusted with the whole mess. Her family has all sorts of mills, and this is the only one that's in trouble. She and Mr. Garfinkel have been sent in to get Henry straightened out, but she can't do anything with him either.”

“But surely she could help you?”

“I tried. Mrs. Garfinkel wants nothing to do with my situation. And it isn't that she doesn't believe me. I had a few things of Henry's—some notes he left me and . . .” She glanced at Fleurette, who had never listened so carefully to anyone in her life. “Well, some personal things of his. She knows Bobby is her nephew. But I'm just one more problem as far as she's concerned—” Her voice broke again, and she brought a handkerchief up to her eyes. “She told me not to mention it again and not to involve the police in her family's affairs.”

“Why would you work for those people?” Fleurette said.