“But they’re going to kill her,” Ruth choked. Her voice cracked down the telephone line.
“I won’t let that happen, dear,” said Betty, soothingly. "You have to trust me. Tell no one what has happened, I know just the person to fix this problem. Anna will be fine, you’ll see. I have to go now.”
Betty hung up.
Twenty blocks away, on the second floor of an old brownstone apartment building, Ruth listened to the disconnection tone with puffy eyes. Her face was a mess of bleeding mascara and her rag curls were pulled long and messy around her face. She held out the telephone receiver with a trembling hand.
“There,” she said, dissolving into tears. “I did it.”
“And a good job you did too,” Felix said, chuckling darkly as he replaced the receiver on the cradle in his hands. “Time to get yourself another Avon lady, doll. This one’s about to go out of business.”
Ruth shuddered and pulled her knees up closer to her chest. She was curled on the sitting room floor against the wall. A spilt cup of tea was dripping from the coffee table onto the carpet and magazines that were scattered across the floor.
“Please, you said you’d let Anna go if I called Mrs. Jones,” Ruth begged the man. “You promised -”
“Well aren’t you the pretty-patsy,” Felix sniggered. “I never had her to begin with. You broads’ll believe anything.”
He stood up, stretching his legs and yanked the telephone connection plug out of the wall then strode to the kitchen window. He pushed it open and tossed the entire telephone outside. A second later, Ruth heard it smash on the sidewalk below. Shouts of surprise rose from the children playing in the street and a woman yelled.
Ruth shoved her knuckles into her mouth to stifle a sob. A moment later, the man was leering over her again, his torn ear only inches from her own.
“I will kill you though, if you call the brass. That wasn’t a lie,” he said. “And I’ll be leaving a trigger-man out on the street to keep watch. If you set foot out of this house, he’ll throw lead at ya pretty little curls.” Felix tousled Ruth’s hair roughly and then stood up again, towering over her. “You keep your kisser shut.”
He stepped over the ruined magazines and let himself out the front door, leaving Ruth trembling on the floor.
It was a trap. There was no question about it.
And I have no choice but to fall in, Betty decided. I can’t let Anna die. I was careless. I should have guessed Felix would follow me on my rounds. I should have taken him out last night, after the Gala Ball. But last night, she’d had George by her side at almost every moment and more witnesses than she could manage. Now Donny had the upper hand and Betty’s meticulous planning was wasted.
With a quick glance to check that George was still reading on the porch, Betty ducked into the laundry. She pulled the inner door closed behind her and walked through to the open back door leading out to the garden path that stretched the side of the house. Using her garden trowel, Betty levered a large, false paving stone out of the dirt and retrieved a bundled towel from the hole underneath. She set the paving stone back to rights, then carried the towel into the laundry. A collection of gleaming silver knives glinted as Betty unraveled the towel across the top of the washing machine.
Fileting knives. Boning knives. Cimeters. Paring knives. And a meat cleaver for good measure.
Betty lifted her dress and strapped them efficiently into the garters around the top of her thighs.
A half dozen each leg.
Cold and heavy.
Familiar and reassuring.
Yearning for blood.
Betty smoothed her petticoat and red polka-dot tea dress back down over the top, hiding the knives from view. Slowly, as if in a trance, she untied her apron strings and folded the apron neatly onto the laundry bench.
She stepped quietly up the stairs to Nancy’s bedroom, avoiding the stair that creaked. She wasn’t ready to face George. Not yet.
Her daughter was lying on her belly on the bed, reading. Figaro, the little black and white kitten Betty had plucked from a storm-water drain only a few weeks before, was purring in the crook of Nancy’s waist. The girl’s hair gleamed like spun gold under the haze of afternoon sun streaming in the window.
“Nancy, darling,” Betty said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel. “I have to pop out for the afternoon. Will you be a good girl and keep an eye on little Georgie for me? Daddy’s downstairs but he’s in rather a grump, so I don’t want to bother him too much.”
Nancy looked up with a frown.
“Where are you going?”
“Just to see a customer about some cosmetics, nothing exciting, dear. There’s some leftover pot-roast in the refrigerator for dinner in case I get held up. Just put it in the oven like I showed you.” Anticipating the objection that was forming on Nancy’s lips at the thought of doing extra chores, Betty quickly added, “I know I can trust you with this, because you’re so much older and cleverer than little Georgie. And you’re far better at cooking than your father is, so I trust you to look after him kindly for me, just this once.”
Nancy sighed, melodramatically. “Alright.” She shut her book and rolled off the bed.
“Thank you, darling.” She pulled her daughter in for a tight hug at the doorway. “Never forget how much I love you.” With a tight chest, Betty turned away from her daughter.
She walked along the hallway to the top of the staircase, her black oxford lace-ups tapping each step as she descended. Betty pinned on a hat with a black net veil from the stand near the front door. She shrugged a black coat over her dress. It felt appropriate that she be cloaked in black today. After all, someone was about to die. She went back into the laundry and out through the side gate, collecting her bicycle on the way past.
“I’m sorry, George, I must run,” Betty called out, avoiding her husband’s eyes as she pushed her bike across the front lawn past the porch. “I have an appointment with Mrs. – um, Mrs. Findley.” Don’t look at him. Don’t look back, you mustn’t falter. Betty’s heart leapt into her throat. For the first time ever, she wondered if she’d make it home tonight. She could hear little Georgie, still chasing his ball and singing merrily at the top of the driveway. Despite the warning in her heart, she couldn’t help but allow her eyes to find him. Her joy. Her perfection. The personification of everything worth fighting for in a bundle of five-year-old-boy.
No more looking back. Betty tore her eyes away, her breaking heart hardening into immutable resolve. I can’t let Donny ruin any more lives. I need to protect my own. I need Donny dead. She’d reached the end of the driveway.
“What do you mean you have an appointment?” George yelled from the porch, throwing his newspaper onto the tabletop and jumping to his feet. “It’s Sunday!”
“I’m dreadfully sorry, darling! I forgot entirely, but I really have to go.” Betty paused for a moment, breathing hard, staring resolutely at the road in front of her. Don’t look back. “I might be late tonight, please don’t wait up,” Betty called, her voice wavering. “Look after the children for me.”
Throwing one leg over her bicycle, Betty took off down the street. “I love you, George,” she called over her shoulder.
“What the blazes –?” George shouted after her. “Since when –?”
But it was too late, Betty had rounded the corner and was gone. George’s eyes narrowed as he stared down the empty street. His heart sank, and his eyes burned.
Lies. Secrets. Intimate conversations with men she claimed barely to have known. Mixed-up appointments. Rendezvous with parked strangers at midnight. Dark nights out alone, doing goodness knows what, with goodness knows who.
No. George thought, resentfully. I do know who.
Sergeant. Jacob. Lawrence. Even in his own mind, the words were dripping with vitriol.
His suspicion had been growing for weeks, and there was no denying it now. Betty was having a love affair with another man. George hadn’t known who, but after the events of last
night it was obvious.
His shackles raised.
His jaw set.
His pulse began to race.
And a lion awoke within his chest and roared.
Well, I’ll be darned if I’m not going to fight for her!
George dashed inside the house, scrambling for his car keys.
“Blast!” Unable to find them, he raced upstairs to their bedroom. The keys were still sitting on the bedside table, where he’d left them the night before. As he grabbed them, he noticed Betty’s crocodile-skin cosmetic case sitting neatly in the wardrobe, door open wide. Betty would never go to an appointment without her bag.
“Mrs. Findley, my eye!” George growled, dashing past Nancy who was now sitting back on her bed patting Figaro.
George burst through the front door and jumped inside his black Chevrolet.
“Mrs. Porter!” he called through the open window over the roar of the engine as it sprung to life. “I say, Mrs. Porter! Watch the children for me for a while. I have to dash off – it’s very important!” His elderly neighbor straightened up with her rake and turned to the sound of the revving engine as George backed out of the driveway. She waved as he sped off, up the street after Betty.
With a vacant smile, the old lady gave a deep sigh and tottered back to her front door, sidestepping the pile of fallen leaves she’d gathered on her lawn. She leant her rake against the stoop, in favor of a hot cup of tea and a biscuit. Twiddling one finger in her ear to try to clear it, she stepped inside and shut the door.
She hadn’t heard a thing.
Betty sped through the streets toward the old train shed, barely aware of the buildings that grew more industrial and neglected as she got closer. She was near the metal factory, where so many young ladies had taken up the mantel of industry in the absence of men, and now spent their days working on the great hydraulic press under the approving eye of Rosie the Riveter posters. Today though, being a Sunday, saw the streets still and silent.
Soon enough, Betty came to that desolate place beyond the bricks where she’d first encountered Vince Carelli Junior and his goons heisting a convoy of Army supply trucks. That time, she’d been disarmed by the shocking discovery that they’d brought young boys from the orphanage into their violence. A dozen soldiers had died defending their cargo that night. This time, a young woman’s life was at stake instead. But this time, Betty was prepared.
Betty leaned her bicycle against the concrete wall of an empty building on the hill that overlooked the shed from above. Down below, two cars were parked on the dirt road that ran parallel to the train tracks. The cars were in full view, they hadn’t even tried to hide. She assumed that Anna was held in one of them. That meant ten men at the most, unless there were more cars behind the long, decommissioned railway shed, but she doubted it. Why hide some cars, but not others? Ten men. Easy.
Betty looked around, assessing the situation for advantages. There really weren’t many. The sun was still making its way down the afternoon sky, so it was too bright to hide. A surprise ambush was out of the question as Felix had forced her hand to come here in the first place. There was no place for pretense or shadows.
So, it’s straight up feminine charm then, she decided. Betty took a steeling breath, then walked boldly down the hill toward the cars. She tapped on the window of the first in line. Slowly it wound down to reveal a face she knew only too well.
“You got my invitation, then?” Felix smirked. He opened the door and got out of the car as Betty stepped back to give him room. As he did so, the passenger doors of both cars opened, and another nine men stepped out to join him. Donny’s gorillas.
“I’m flattered you feel you need such an impressive entourage, Felix. I’m just one lady, after all.”
“I wouldn’t call you a lady,” he growled.
“Well, that’s rather rude of you. In any case, I’m here for the girl you took. Where is she?”
Felix grinned maliciously and looked around at his men in mock confusion. “I ain’t seen a girl around here,” he said, loudly. “Any of you seen a girl?” The goons laughed. Felix turned back to Betty. “Looks like you’ve come fishing in the wrong pond, sweetheart. Nothing here, but a group of eager gentlemen.”
Betty felt the blood drain from her face. She needn’t have asked. There was no sign of Anna in either of the cars. Inside his own mind, she could read that Felix’s intentions were clear. Get her alone. Take her to Donny.
Time for a change of plan.
“I wouldn’t call you gentlemen,” Betty said, without missing a beat. “But I’m not one for semantics. Let’s get to it, shall we?” With a gleam in her eye, she stepped backward, lifting her petticoat and preparing to unsheathe her first knife. The ten men around her stepped forward, closing in. Betty felt her senses heighten, critically aware of every breath and shift of muscle within them. She’d fought more men and bigger and come off unscathed before.
“Don’t be frightened boys,” Betty teased, grinning as they cracked their knuckles, “it only hurts for a minute.”
She heard a gun cock beside her head.
“Why fight,” Felix snarled. “When I can just pull a trigger?”
Betty turned her head slowly to look him in the eye.
“Because it’s nowhere near as fun,” she said. A familiar tingle spread throughout her body, the rush of adrenaline surged through her, and she tensed, like a coil ready to spring as the men inched closer.
“Betty!” a voice yelled. “Betty! I say, get away from her!” Betty spun around. George was racing down the hill toward the cars, his eyes wide and face pale. “He’s got a gun, Betty,” he was pointing at Felix, while his other hand clutched his hat to his head. “You there, step away from her!”
Betty’s stomach turned to lead. Oh, lord, no. Of all the nightmarish situations she had ever found herself in, nothing compared to this. Her darling George. Here. In more danger than he could ever comprehend.
“George, no!” she cried out. “Go home! Go home right now!”
Slam.
Felix’s fist found her gut and Betty doubled over in searing pain, gasping for breath. What do I do? Her mind raced through the options. If she fought back, he would know. Her perfect life shattered.
“Betty!” George shouted, frantic. He reached the dirt road, pushing his way through the smirking men to get to her as Betty fought to push him back out. She had no air in her lungs to warn him. Run.
“Well, isn’t this a nice little surprise,” Felix jeered. “A knight in shining armor. I don’t think this little princess needs your help though, chump.”
George spun around, throwing a misaligned punch at Felix but hit only air. The men around him stepped back, laughing cruelly at his humiliation.
“Now that you’re here though, how about you stay for a while. Sticks,” he called to a lanky man closest to the car. “Get the knock-out juice.” The man called Sticks grinned and ran to the trunk of the car.
“No!” Betty yelled, sucking the air back into her bruised lungs. “Let him go, he’s nothing to you!” She pulled herself up tall, pushing George behind her. “Donny can have me, just let him go.”
“Oh, he’ll have you alright,” Felix scorned. “With a bullet between your eyes at the bottom of the Hudson.”
“How dare you threaten my wife!” George yelled. “What is this? Some kind of mugging? Attacking ladies in the street are you boys? I’ll have you all thrown in jail for this!” The men around him laughed harder.
Betty could smell the sickly-sweet scent of chloroform the moment Sticks had opened the bottle.
“No!” she yelled, twisting viciously toward Felix’s gun. Beside her, two of his goons had already moved, kicking the back of her knees in.
“One more for the road,” Felix said and punched her gut, as she fell.
A hand came from behind, smothering her face with the rag until Betty’s vision swam before her eyes. From somewhere far away, she could hear George yelling. And then it all went black.<
br />
When Betty came to, it was to the sound of scraping chairs and the smell of acrid cigar smoke filling her lungs. The skin around her mouth and nose stung like it had been burned. Her mouth tasted like copper pennies – the chloroform had left its mark. So, apparently, had Donny’s goons.
Bruises were blooming on her cheek and collarbone, the telltale tightness of her skin suggested they were already swollen and darkening. Before she opened her eyes, she listened.
Shuffles found her ears from every direction. Heavy breathing close by, on her right. A whimper from her left. The crackling broadcast from a wood tube radio playing somewhere behind her. The hollow notes of a jazz clarinet piped from the speakers, echoing off a surface not far in front of it and bouncing around, distorting her sense of space.
A big room then, full of obstacles. Betty knew before opening her eyes where Felix had brought her. She had murdered here before.
Betty opened her eyes. She was in the basement of St. Augustine’s Home for Unwanted Boys, Donny’s most recent cover story. As of the night before, when Betty forced his hand to pass its ownership to the nuns that ran the orphanage, he was no longer the benefactor he once was, but it seemed they had yet to force him out. They wouldn’t dare. Betty knew the only way to get him out would be to drag his cold, dead body from the building. Something she was perfectly willing to do. But now, George’s appearance had all but ruined her plans and it was her own body, not Donny’s, that could end up cold.
Betty didn’t struggle against the chains that bound her hands behind her back. Just a gentle tug was enough to know that her wrists were securely attached to the chair. There was no need to move. Yet. Now was the time for cold strategy, not reaction. She’d let her emotion get the better of her when Ruth had called, and it had landed her here. But as much as she tried to clear her head, to be the dispassionate killer she had trained herself to be, it was almost impossible. Her beloved George, sweet, simple, naïve George was bound as she was, but in ropes, rather than chains. His head was lolling onto his chest, unconscious. The heavy-breather to her right. Seeing him like that, and knowing she was to blame, was agony.
Avon Calling! Season One Page 30
