City of Lies

by Victoria Thompson

  “Excuse me,” Coleman said and went to answer.

  “Say, Thornton, did you ever hear of a scheme like this?” Jake whispered while Coleman was busy with the bellhop.

  “Sure,” Thornton said, although he was most certainly lying. “Those Wall Street types are always manipulating the market somehow.” Which was probably true, at least.

  Coleman tipped the bellhop and sent him on his way. Then he hurried over to the desk and consulted his cipher to translate the telegram he’d just received. When he’d finished, he said, “I’ve just gotten instructions to buy some stocks, so I’m going to have to go to the brokerage right away. Before I do, though, I want to give you fellows your reward.”

  “We couldn’t take a reward,” Jake said, completely ignoring the black look Thornton was giving him. “Anybody would’ve done the same thing.”

  Thornton wouldn’t have, Elizabeth was certain, but Coleman said, “Don’t be too sure of that, young fellow. I know you’re both honorable men, but I still think I owe you something. Tell you what—why don’t I take the two hundred I was going to give you and buy stock with it for each of you? This order I just got is going to pay off big, and I’m going to sell by the end of the day, so you can keep the original investment and whatever your share earns. It should at least double.”

  Even Thornton smiled at that prospect. “I think I could live with that, Coleman.”

  “I don’t know much about stock, but it sounds good to me,” Jake said. “If it’s going to double, I have a notion to give you fifty of my own, too, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Oh, Jake, do you really think you should?” Elizabeth said with a worried frown.

  “You’re right to be careful, Miss Perkins, but in this case, you can’t go wrong,” Coleman said. “I can guarantee your brother will double his money.”

  Before Elizabeth could protest again, Jake pulled out his wallet and passed Coleman a fifty.

  “How about it, Thornton?” Jake said. “Don’t you want to get in on this deal?”

  “Mr. Thornton is as careful as your sister,” Coleman said with a smile when Thornton made no move for his own wallet. “I don’t blame him for hesitating. But I think I’ll have your confidence by the end of the day. Can I meet you gentlemen in the hotel bar at around six o’clock to give you your earnings?”

  They agreed that would be satisfactory, and Coleman tucked the money into an envelope. Then he thanked them again and sent them on their way.

  “I can’t believe you gave him your own money,” Elizabeth scolded her brother when they were in the elevator.

  “Do you think I made a mistake?” Jake asked Thornton.

  “I guess you’ll find out,” Thornton said, apparently gratified that Jake was finally asking his advice.

  “And maybe you’ll be sorry you didn’t give him anything yourself,” Jake said with a grin.

  • • •

  “Oh, Jake, how could you have been so foolish?” Elizabeth cried, blinking back tears. Two days had passed since they’d found Mr. Coleman’s wallet, and Coleman’s stock deals had turned the original two hundred reward dollars and Jake’s fifty into over a thousand. Thornton had even given Coleman some of his own money to invest the last time. This success had led Jake to sign a check for a hundred thousand dollars he didn’t have in order to purchase stock that Mr. Coleman had recommended.

  And now he was in trouble.

  “It’s not foolish, Betty,” Jake said. They were sitting with Thornton in the empty hotel dining room in the middle of the afternoon, discussing the situation. “This Coleman knows what he’s doing, and the stock he told us to buy with that check did exactly what he said it would. We made a fortune! Just think what the Old Man will say when he finds out,” he added, his eyes literally sparkling with glee at the prospect. She only wished she thought the Old Man would really be pleased by any of this.

  “Then why can’t you just collect your money? Wouldn’t that cover the check, too?” she asked.

  “Miss Perkins,” Thornton said gently, “it’s really nothing to concern yourself about. The brokerage is just being careful, and we did give them a worthless check when we bought the stock.”

  “We just didn’t realize they’d contact the bank and find out we didn’t even have an account there,” Jake said, as if this were some unimportant detail.

  “I told you not to put your name on a check so large,” Elizabeth said, sniffling again. “You heard me say it, Mr. Thornton, but you let him do it anyway.”

  “All we have to do is come up with the cash to cover the check, and we can collect our profits,” Jake said. “Betty, we made over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “But only if you have a hundred thousand in cash to cover the check. How on earth will you manage that?”

  Jake nodded at Thornton. “Our friend here is going to help.”

  Elizabeth let him see her admiration. “Oh, Mr. Thornton, we hardly know you. We couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “Jake and I are partners.”

  “And Oscar and I are going to split the profits,” Jake said.

  “Oh,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Which is why I’m putting up half of the money to cover the check,” Thornton said.

  “But where will the other half come from?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’ve got those bonds Grandmother gave me that I can sell for about thirty,” Jake said.

  “But what will Father say?”

  Jake waved away her concerns. “He’ll never know, because I’ll buy them back when I get my money. And I thought we could use your inheritance, too.”

  “You want me to help you?” she cried, suddenly furious. “But that’s the money Aunt Mabel left me for my dowry.”

  “It’s only for a few days,” Jake said.

  “And you’ll get back more than double what you had,” Thornton said. “The stock had a return of a hundred and fifty percent.”

  “But I only have about ten thousand,” Elizabeth argued. “That still isn’t enough to cover the check.”

  “Mr. Coleman offered to lend us the rest of it,” Jake said. “He’s a good fellow.”

  “He must be,” Elizabeth said, still not quite convinced. “Oh, Mr. Thornton, I don’t know what to think. Tell me what I should do.”

  Thornton smiled and patted her hand where it lay on the table. It took all her willpower not to jerk away. “Miss Perkins, you should lend your brother the money. In a day or two, you’ll be a very wealthy woman, and I’ll be an even wealthier man.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Of course I’m sure, and then we can celebrate by taking a ship down south to where it’s warm. Didn’t you say that’s what you’d like to do if you could?”

  Elizabeth blinked the tears from her eyes. “Oh my, yes, that sounds wonderful.” She turned to Jake. “All right, then, I’ll help you. But, Jake, you must promise never to get into another fix like this again.”

  Jake gave her an unrepentant smile. “She says that every time, but this time you won’t be sorry, my girl. Now, we’ll need to go down to the bank and open an account. Mr. Coleman will help us. They know him down there.”

  “It’ll be just a matter of days before we have our money transferred into the account,” Thornton said. “Then we’ll take it down to the brokerage and pick up our profits.”

  “Take it down to the brokerage? You mean you’ll be carrying all that money around with you in cash?” Elizabeth asked, horrified anew. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “You worry too much, Miss Perkins,” Thornton said. “I’ll have my boys watching us.”

  A frisson of alarm shivered over her. “Your boys?”

  “Yes,” he said with that superior grin he always gave her when he was explaining something he thought she
was too simple to understand. “I always travel with bodyguards. They’ve been bored these past few days, so they’ll be glad to have something to do.”

  • • •

  Elizabeth had her bag packed, and she’d been pacing her hotel room, looking out the window each time she reached it. Not that she expected to see anything. All she had was a view of the rear of the hotel, where the deliveries came in. They hadn’t wasted money on a better room, since Thornton wasn’t going to be coming to see her here, much as he might want to.

  Finally, someone knocked on her door, but it couldn’t be Jake. She’d given him a key. Her apprehension hardened into fear.

  “Lizzie, it’s me. Open up!”

  She hurried over and opened the door to Coleman. “What’s wrong? Where’s Jake?” she asked as he closed the door behind him.

  “You need to get out of here, Lizzie. It came hot and Thornton went wild when Jake told him it blew up.”

  “You were supposed to cool him off,” she cried.

  “I warned you—when you play it against the wall, there’s no way to cool off the mark. You just get out the best way you can. Thornton slugged Jake, so he ran.”

  “You were supposed to hit Jake!”

  “I told you, Thornton went wild. He sucker punched the boy before I could do a thing. And when Jake ran, Thornton sent his goons after him. He’s probably going to come looking for you next, so you need to get out of town.”

  “But he let you go?”

  “Of course. Jake might be a fool, but he knows how to do a switch. Thornton still believes I was conned, too.” Switching a mark’s allegiance from the roper to the inside man was crucial to a successful con, and Elizabeth had to admit that Jake was particularly good at it.

  “What about Jake?” she asked, picking up her suitcase.

  “Just leave that. I’ll bring it to you in New York with your share of the score. What the . . . ?” he said, looking out the window. Elizabeth hurried over to see. They were on the second floor, so they had a clear view of Thornton’s two bodyguards finally catching Jake near the loading dock of the hotel.

  “They’re going to kill him!” she cried as the two men began to beat him.

  “I’ll take care of it, Lizzie,” Coleman said, his voice high with terror. “But I can’t save you both. You need to get out of here and go straight to the station. Get yourself on the first train out. It doesn’t matter where. You can get back to New York from any place. Do you need money?”

  “No, I—” She cried out as one of the men landed a particularly vicious blow and Jake doubled over.

  “Hurry,” Coleman said, pushing her toward the door. “Thornton is probably already trying to get the desk clerk to tell him where your room is. He’ll be here any second.” He grabbed her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. “You’re a woman, and you know they won’t be satisfied with just beating you. Now go.”

  He checked the hallway and then sent her out. She didn’t wait for the elevator, instead racing down the stairwell, nearly tripping over her skirts in her frantic haste. She took a deep breath before pushing open the door and entering the busy lobby. She didn’t want to call attention to herself, but she couldn’t resist the urge to at least hurry. She was nearly running when she reached the front door. The doorman had already opened it for her when she heard Thornton call, “Betty!”

  She didn’t turn. She didn’t slow. She ran for her life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They were coming. She could feel them. She didn’t dare run on the street, but she quickened her pace as she moved down Pennsylvania Avenue. People didn’t hurry here. Washington was a Southern town, not like New York or Chicago. But she needed to hurry. She needed to get away before they caught her.

  Damn you, Jake. Damn you to hell.

  Which was probably where he was now, unless God was much more forgiving than she had been led to believe.

  She’d told him the whole thing was going to curdle, but would he listen? Oh no. What did she know? She was just a twist, and women didn’t know anything about the con. At least Coleman had gotten away. She hoped, anyway. And maybe he could still save Jake.

  Maybe.

  “There!”

  The shout from down the street hit her like a blow between her shoulder blades. They’d seen her. They were coming. As she rounded the corner, she strained to see up ahead. Only another block and she’d be there. She could already see the tall iron fence and the white mansion beyond it, and the women were still there, thank heaven, marching with their purple, white and gold banners. And the police.

  She hated the coppers, every last stinking one of them, but she’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life. They were just standing around, though. They couldn’t just stand around. She needed them to act.

  The women stood in clusters, a good three dozen of them at least, clutching their gaily colored banners demanding the right to vote and looking nothing like the harridans the newspapers had described. Just a bunch of upstanding ladies in their fashionable coats and ridiculous hats and skirts so rebelliously short you could see the tops of their high-button shoes. The newspapers had described the suffragette riots and the wild women who had to be taken kicking and screaming to jail, but these women merely looked determined. And calm. Much too calm to get themselves arrested.

  Elizabeth slowed her pace, acutely aware of the men on her trail, but she had to appear calm, too, so she’d fit in. She joined the closest group of women and tried not to sound breathless or desperate. “What’s happening?”

  They looked at her in surprise, three respectable women who saw what they thought was another respectable woman.

  “They sent us home,” one of them said.

  “Home?”

  “The judge told us to go home,” another woman said in disgust. Younger than the others, pale and blonde and not quite pretty, she had blue eyes that burned like the heart of a flame, making up in passion what she lacked in beauty. “But we didn’t go home. We came right back here.”

  Elizabeth frowned in confusion. “You were already in court today?”

  “Yes, just an hour ago,” the blonde girl said. “They arrested us yesterday. All of us.” She waved to include the rest of the women on the sidewalk in front of the White House. “Someone said this is the largest picket line of our campaign. But they didn’t have room in the jail, so they told us to go home.”

  “Can you imagine?” the first woman asked. She was older, well into middle age, but the same passion burned in her eyes. She seemed familiar somehow, although Elizabeth knew she’d never seen her before. “Of course we came back. President Wilson must take notice.”

  Elizabeth saw them then, Thornton’s two thugs. He hadn’t come after her himself. He was too good for that. They’d just come around the corner, their black overcoats flapping because they hadn’t taken the time to button them. But they’d stopped dead at the sight of so many women and the cops milling around the edges of their demonstration.

  “Yes, President Wilson must take notice,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t have a banner.”

  The blonde girl smiled and offered hers. Elizabeth glanced at the words, something about President Wilson sending men to fight for freedom in Europe when American women still weren’t free. She didn’t care what it said. She turned her back on her pursuers, silently daring them to accost her now, with so many witnesses.

  She held up the banner, struggling to keep the raw November wind from snatching it. “We demand to see President Wilson!”

  She strode toward the nearest copper, defiant and angry because she was just a woman and didn’t dare let those two men catch her because she could never defend herself against them.

  The blonde girl followed her. “Yes, we demand to see President Wilson!”

  Others took up the cry and moved to join her, their bodies a living barrier between her and the
two men. They closed around her as one creature, united in purpose, many voices with a single message, crying for recognition.

  For one horrible moment, Elizabeth was afraid the coppers would ignore them, but then a shrill whistle rent the air, cutting through the women’s chants. They’d just been waiting for an excuse. The coppers moved as one, too, their shouts and their shoves breaking the women’s momentum, forcing them back. Rude hands ripped the banner from Elizabeth’s grasp and threw it to the ground. The blonde girl cried out as she stumbled, and Elizabeth instinctively grabbed her arm, holding her upright as the cops herded them backward.

  No, you idiots, not toward the two men! But when Elizabeth managed a glance in their direction, she couldn’t see them anymore. The roar of engines drowned out the women’s screams as the police vans pulled up. The cops yanked open the rear doors of the Black Marias and shoved, pushed and, when the women stumbled or faltered, literally threw them inside.

  Elizabeth didn’t resist, but a fat copper with onions on his breath still sent her sprawling onto the dark, filthy floor of the van. The stench of old urine and vomit and fear nearly choked her, but female hands lifted her onto one of the rough benches that ran along the sides.

  “Are you hurt?” the blonde girl asked.

  “No, no.” Elizabeth managed a quick glance at the other women’s faces before the doors slammed shut, plunging them into darkness. The tiny windows up near the roof in the front of the van allowed only a few rays of light to penetrate.

  “Thank you for helping me back there,” the girl said. “I might’ve been trampled if I fell.”

  “What happens now?”

  “Haven’t you been arrested before?”

  “No, I’m new. I just arrived in the city yesterday.” A lie, but then, she hardly ever told the truth about anything anymore. Would she even remember how?

  “I didn’t think I’d ever seen you before. My name is Anna Vanderslice. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “Elizabeth Miles.” A half truth. “I’m pleased to meet you, too.”

  Other women murmured their names, but Elizabeth couldn’t make out their faces in the gloom.