The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (36 page)

“Whatcha need, dollface?”

She nodded at the door. Nervously rubbed her lips together. The extra coat of ruby lipstick she’d applied in the cab felt like grease on her lips.

He looked her over, assessing the hand-me-down designer dress, her full lips, her bare calves. Rolled the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Gotta password?”

Maria kept her eyes averted. She repeated the password she’d learned earlier that day. “Gold digger.”

He grinned. Pushed the door open with one hand. Tipped his hat as she walked through.

Ten o’clock. She’d timed it carefully. Late enough for all the right people to be here but not so late that it was rowdy. She’d been warned. It got rowdy at midnight. Besides, Jude might be home from work by then. His hours had gotten erratic since the promotion. Sometimes home by dinner. Sometimes home in the middle of the night. Maria went out of her way not to make a fuss, to welcome him home regardless of the hour. She’d taken Mr. Crater’s warning to heart.

Maria didn’t have a purse to match the dress. No fancy beaded clutch or velvet shoulder bag. Only her old canvas purse, tucked against her side.
She pulled the sealed envelope out as she approached the bar.
Owney Madden
was carefully printed on the front.

The bartender was redheaded and freckled and seemed far too young for the job. He lined up three glasses, dumped a handful of ice into each, and ran a bottle of liquor over the tops without so much as a slosh. With an experienced flick of the wrist, he sent them sliding down the bar to a group of men huddled at the end.

Maria laid the envelope flat on the bar. She didn’t sit.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“Take this to your boss.” She pushed the envelope toward him.

He squinted at her face, trying to make out details.

Maria lowered her eyes.

“Take it yourself. He’s over there.”

She was careful not to look, showed nothing but her back. “I’d rather not.”

“You sure? He’s watching you anyway.”

“My only business with your employer is in that envelope. I’d be grateful if you would deliver it for me.”

“I’d be grateful to know your name. Seeing as how he’s gonna ask.”

“My name,” Maria said, taking a step backward, “is not important.”

Stan lifted the envelope from the varnished mahogany bar. Tapped it a couple of times. “Suit yourself. Just know Owney don’t like secrets. Has a way of figuring things out.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

SURROGATE’S COURT, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1931

STELLA
followed Simon Rifkind into the Surrogate’s Court. Their meeting was on the first floor, down a long hallway off the main atrium. Rifkind led her not into a courtroom, as she’d expected, but into a small conference room off the main corridor.

“Thank you for doing this,” she whispered as he pulled out a dark wooden chair. She settled into the green velvet seat and scooted closer to the table.

“It’s the least I could do,” he said.

“I wish I could pay you.”

“There’s no need. Joe was a friend. I’m just sorry it’s come to this.”

The room was formal but not intimidating. A long table and no windows. Wood paneling. Burgundy carpet. Two bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes of archaic legal texts. An oversize portrait of John Adams, attorney and founding father. The air tasted stale, and she shifted away from the heavy musk of Rifkind’s cologne. She looked at her watch. “How long will this take?”

“Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. The letters of administration will only give you access to the money in your bank accounts. Joe’s life insurance policies will have to wait.” His voice settled into a legal monotone, but he did give her one apologetic glance. “To cash those in, his body would need to be found. Otherwise, he will have to remain missing for seven years before he can be declared legally dead.”

She hadn’t accounted for that. “So long? Isn’t that what a life insurance policy is for?”

“It’s the law, I’m afraid. In theory, the wait stops insurance fraud and other criminal activity. But it’s hell on widows, if you ask me.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to hell.”

Rifkind set his briefcase on the oblong table and began sorting his notes. As they waited, an attorney entered and heaved a stenograph machine onto the table across from Stella.

“Ralph Gutchen,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m the law assistant to Surrogate James A. Foley. I will conduct the proceedings.”

Ralph looked weary and restless, as though he were used to phone calls in the middle of the night and depositions that lasted days. He would have been a handsome man apart from the dark, puffy eyes and the limp set of his mouth.

Stella watched as he slid paper into the stenograph machine and tested the ink ribbon with a few random strokes.

“Are you ready to begin?” Ralph formally asked.

“We are,” Simon Rifkind answered.

Ralph took a deep breath, his hands hovering above the keys. “What is your purpose here today, Mrs. Crater?”

“To obtain temporary letters of administration,” she said, “so I can execute my husband’s estate.”

“Anything else?”

Stella looked at her hands. Cleared her throat. She tried to speak but could not. After a strained silence, she reached into her purse and chose a cigarette from the pack of Camels. She lit it with a trembling hand.

“Please excuse my client. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult this is for her.” Simon Rifkind shot her an uncertain glance and reached across the table for an ashtray. He slid it in front of Stella. “In addition to the letters of administration, Mrs. Crater would like to file a death certificate for her husband.”

Ralph lifted his head from the notes beside him. “You realize the complications with that request?”

“We do. But it is my client’s wish that legal proceedings toward that end begin immediately.”

“Very well, then,” Ralph said. “We will attend to the letters first. Can you list, in detail, the assets Mrs. Crater is requesting?”

Simon Rifkind slid two pieces of paper across the table. He read from one of them: “ ‘Twelve thousand dollars on deposit in the Empire Trust Company; a balance of fifteen hundred dollars in Judge Crater’s brokerage firm; the lease on their cooperative apartment; six thousand dollars
in cash recently found in their apartment; and assorted fees and commissions owed to Mr. Crater, a list of which he left in his own handwriting, along with the will. And, of course, the life insurance policies, which have premiums due.’ ”

Ralph took the papers, glanced them over, and handed the second to Stella. “Mrs. Crater, are you agreeable to the verbiage in this affidavit?”

She took it from him and read:

Petitioner knows of no reason why her husband should have left her or abandoned his career. Petitioner does not believe he would have done so if he were of normal mind, nor believe that he would remain away, if still alive, save by reason of mental infirmity or constraint. Petitioner concludes that he may be dead, or has become a lunatic or has been secreted, confined, or otherwise unlawfully made away with.

Stella wrapped her lips around the cigarette and inhaled until her body went cool. She closed her eyes, relishing the control it gave her. Joe was dead. That was true enough. The details in that affidavit were wrong, but irrelevant. “I am,” she said.

“The court grants Mrs. Crater the letters of administration. You are free to deal with your husband’s affairs as you see fit. However, before attending to the request for a death certificate, I must ask you a few questions. Is that agreeable?”

“Of course.”

Ralph looked at his notes and then at Stella. He typed without a glance at the stenograph machine. “Since the third of August last year, have you had any contact—physical, verbal, or written—with your husband?”

“No. I have not.”

“Have any monies from his accounts or debtors been delivered to you, either directly or indirectly?”

Stella felt Simon stiffen beside her. The checks he’d deposited on her behalf had long since stopped coming. She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray and brought it to her mouth. Breathed in. Her answer was firm and convincing. “No.”

“As a matter of procedure, I am required to ask if there is any reason you would not want your husband found? Fiduciary? Relational? Legal?”

The question caught her off guard, and Stella felt short of breath. There were plenty of reasons. “That’s a rather absurd question, don’t you think, Mr. Gutchen?”

He ducked his head.

“My life was
ruined
when Joe disappeared. I can think of no reason why I would have ever brought that on myself. And I am appalled at the suggestion that I might.”

“No one is suggesting anything, Mrs. Crater. This is simply a legal matter that we must get through.”

“Then, by all means, let’s get through it.”

Ralph paused. He flexed his hands. “Have you exhausted every effort to try and find Mr. Crater?”

“Yes.”

He struck the keys a few more times. They waited for him to continue, but he yanked the paper from the stenograph machine and blew on the wet ink. “That will be all, Mrs. Crater. I will file your request for a death certificate this afternoon. I wish you luck but do not expect you to have any.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

QUEENS, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1931

MARIA
read the letter first. She found it on the bed in her parents’ spare room, along with a copy of the
Daily News
from the day before. Vivian Gordon’s picture was on the front page next to the headline
NOTORIOUS MADAM FOUND STRANGLED IN VAN CORTLANDT PARK!
She’d been murdered two days earlier, on the eve of what would have been her testimony before the Seabury Commission. Her frozen, garroted body was found by a truck driver walking along Mosholu Avenue and was identified later at the city morgue. The article was clear in its implications, and Maria couldn’t have missed it even if Ritzi hadn’t gone to the trouble of underlining it for her: “Miss Gordon was the center of the seething fires of graft, bribery, shakedowns, and judicial corruption.”

But none of that mattered to Maria. She lay, curled up on the bed in a fetal position, grappling with the reality that Ritzi was gone, and the baby with her. She had felt it moving in Ritzi’s belly on her last visit. It was the first time she’d had the courage to ask, and she’d sat there for ten minutes, marveling at the tiny elbows and knees so active beneath her hands. Maria had considered names on the train ride back to the apartment—some charming combination of American and Castilian. She still did not know how to tell Jude that Ritzi was alive and that the child would be theirs. There was time, or so she thought. But now the fantasy came crashing down.

Ritzi hadn’t signed her name, had simply explained that with Vivian dead, she had to leave. That she was afraid. That she couldn’t risk endangering Maria or anyone else. And that if she remained, it was only a matter of time before Owney found her. Then Ritzi had scratched two words into the paper that ended Maria’s only hope of ever becoming a mother.
I’m sorry
.

Chapter Thirty-Four

FIFTH AVENUE, SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 1931

THE
letter sat in the basket on the entry table. It was buried in a pile of bills and catalogs and looked as though it had been wadded in someone’s pocket for days. This wasn’t the first letter Stella had received since Joe disappeared. There had been a handful of opportunistic ransom notes. Condolences. Accusations. Requests for money. Sales pitches. A bit of voyeurism here and there as people offered their theories on his disappearance or wondered what it was like to be her—god-awful, if they really wanted to know.

But never a confession.

Dear Stella
, it began, and her hands trembled as she read the letter. She dropped into a chair next to the fireplace and laid the pages on her lap so they wouldn’t rattle. She read the sender’s name—Sally Lou Ritz—and then started over.

Two pages. Nary a crossed-out word and only one ink blot, as though her pen had hovered over the page as she sought the right words. Clean and simple and direct. And so very final. Her husband dead. His killer named. And details about Joe’s murder that no one could ever learn.

“Oh. God.” Stella clutched the letter in her fist and crumpled it into a ball.

She stood up.

Then sat down.

Stella repeated this a few times, once even stepping away from her chair. After a moment of uncertainty, she sat again and smoothed the letter on her lap. Then she folded it and slid it carefully back inside the envelope. Distasteful as it was, the letter provided a certain amount of insurance. She took it to the safe in Joe’s office and tucked it inside
one of his beloved legal tomes—a first edition of
Commentaries on the Laws of England
by Sir William Blackstone—a place she was certain no one would ever think to look. A place she could easily forget.

CONEY ISLAND, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1930, 2:00 A.M.

Ritzi pulled herself tight inside the bathroom cabinet. Her only goal was not vomiting or coming so unglued that the men less than ten feet away became aware of her presence. By force of will, she stopped her teeth from chattering and her muscles from spasming. Even as the sweat dripped down her spine and the smell of fear overwhelmed her nostrils, she did not move.

Owney Madden’s voice shifted to a calm, measured tone, almost all trace of Scouse gone. This frightened Ritzi more than his previous rage.

“From what I hear, people owe you money, right?”

Crater’s voice broke. “Yeah, sure. Lots.”

The rustle of paper. “Names, see. That’s what I need. Who owes you and how much. Start writing.”

There was a long silence as the desperate judge scratched a pen against the paper. Five, ten minutes. Even in the bathroom, she could hear the pained wheezing of his breath.