Chapter Fifty
Outside, an officer patrols nearby Mail Street, fingering his billy club. My breath catches. Spirit offers me the sound of screeching trolley brakes.
He definitely sees me. I offer a timid wave. He scowls, then raises two fingers to the rim of his hat.
He turns and patrols the other way.
The general chaos outside the Potter Building remains: paparazzi and zealots and police officers trying to contain it all.
I can’t resist peeking out from under my sheet of hair—and I lock eyes with one of the most zealous zealots.
Her eyebrows raise, and she points at me across Park Row. “Her! She’s one of them!”
I’m so rattled, I drop the black satchel. The tangled draw string allows for a spill of shiny, golden baubles on the sidewalk. I scramble to scoop them back inside the sack.
“Ahem!”
I jump, and the police officer is suddenly behind me. I scoop up the last of the items, fold the satchel closed, and cram it in the crook of my arm.
“Everything okay, miss?”
Nirav has disappeared. Smart kid. “Yes. I uh—just new to New York is all.” Where did that come from? “A bit uneasy, I suppose.” I chuckle nervously—it’s not a stretch to do so.
“Ah, where you from?”
Say Newark.
“Newark.”
The officer lights up. “My old stomping grounds. You know the world’s best bratwurst is there. Oh, what’s the name of that place?” He snaps his fingers, and this seems like a small test.
“Gelman’s,” I hear myself say. Spirit decided to take the lead on this one.
“Yeah, Gelman’s,” the police officer says. “The world’s best brat.”
“Outside of Germany, I s’pose!” my voice says. Whew, is Spirit laying it on thick.
He laughs, then suddenly falls serious.
“Can I help you with your bag, miss? Where’re you headed?”
I’m shaking my head before he finishes asking the question. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the woman who spotted me; she’s pointing at me and talking to another in her group. I bounce on my toes. “No, thank you! I’m headed to the Hotel Knickerbocker.”
The woman who ratted me out and the man she’s recruited are trying to cross Park. A clanging trolley stops them.
The policeman scowls. “Be careful, miss,” he shouts over the trolley bells. “I shouldn’t say nothin’, but, well, we’re on the lookout for some dangerous criminals. Don’t let any of them delinquents steal your stuff, you hear?”
I cringe. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
The officer stands there, obviously waiting for me to gather my senses and move along, so he can protect my departure.
I shift the heavy satchel on my hip. I lift up a small plea that he doesn’t hear all those jewels jangling inside, that none of them topple out. As I adjust myself, a slip of paper drifts to the sidewalk. I pray it isn’t a hundred-dollar bill.
The officer stoops to pick it up. My throat catches.
The couple has started crossing the street, half a block down.
“Stella,” he says, reading the name inscribed on the outside of a folded piece of tissue paper. “That you?”
“Yes,” I say. Everyone at the party knew me as Lady Rose. I’m hoping that they haven’t drawn the connection between the two names yet.
The officer smiles. “Lovely name, that. ’Twas my grandmother’s.” He laughs. “Mean old biddy.”
And you were always a spoiled, whiny brat who wasn’t toilet trained until the age of four.
I gulp. I really wish other people could hear this stuff sometimes. “Oh, but look!” I say, batting my eyelashes and motioning to the badge on his chest. “Her firm hand led you to become an officer of the law. Her sternness obviously worked.”
Both the officer and Spirit smile.
The two zealots have made it to City Hall Park and they storm up the sidewalk. The officer hands me the tissue paper with my name written on it. “Carry on, then.”
I duck into the City Hall subway station and lose the zealots in the crowd by hopping on a train.
This was unplanned, but I’ll make it work.
Once I’m on a train headed north, I open the scrap of tissue.
It’s a letter, written on toilet paper in splotchy ink, likely from one of the fancy gold pens in this loot bag.
My eyes glass when I see the neat handwriting.
Dear Stella,
I’m not gone forever—I’d miss you too much!
I’d like to think I’ll be missed, too. I’m simply taking some time away until things calm.
I wasn’t prepared for how that plan went awry, and I’m not used to all those eyes on me.
I’m sorry if you thought I was gone. You were my first consideration when I realized that’s what my escape might look like. I hope it caused you no distress.
I love you and Nirav like siblings, Stella. I want you both to know that. Take care of him for me. I’ll find you when I return.
And Stella? Forgive Pax.
—K
When I exit the same subway station hours later, after switching rails and taking the return train south again, the bright afternoon sunlight blinds me.
My merry band of bandits, my friends, are waiting across the sidewalk.
I had hoped they would be there, and not scared off by the crowds, by my long detour.
They light up like sunbeams when they see me, and the feeling warms me to my core. Friends!
My stupid heart, of course, searches for Pax.
Snick! Our connection is still there, which angers me.
He used me for my gifts. He lied to me. He has a murderous edge, and I cannot be close to rage that intense.
I felt that level of murderous desire before, and I swore I would never give myself over to it again.
And last night—last night I almost did, when Blanck was strangling me.
I should grab my portion of this haul and get as far away from him as possible.
I cannot stand being this confused and hurt.
But Pax is here, and as angry at myself as I am about it, I’m happy he’s here.
I lift up the satchel, and Pax beams more at me than at it.
It is a beautiful May day in New York City, and Spirit shares the giddy sensation of floating—in the clouds, as high as the top of the Woolworth Building—and briefly, the whole wide world feels within reach.
I cross the sidewalk and reach my friends.
Pax runs to me, wraps me in his long, lean arms, picks me off the sidewalk, and spins me in joy.
I allow myself to feel happiness right now, in this moment.
I tilt my head back and take it all in—the whirling glorious buildings, the spinning glorious sky.
He places my two feet gently back on the ground and squeezes me an extra second before tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear.
“Hi, partner,” he says, grinning. That coffee voice.
“Hello, partner.” And then I smack him, square across the jaw. My palm immediately stings with pain. He stumbles backward but rights himself quickly.
“You used me.”
I expected the denial. I did not expect the tears. “No.”
“You did. You used me for my gift. You saw how lonely I was, and you took advantage. And you lied to me, and—”
“Stella, no.” Pax’s voice is so strained I barely hear what he says next: “Look at this.”
He hands me a slip of paper from his pocket.
Newsprint. It’s an article, ripped from The New York Herald.
It’s dated May 22—four days ago. I’ll never forget that day—it’s when Pax and I kissed.
Four long, hard, fantastic days. The article is creased from folding and unfolding. It’s soft with wear. It’s tearstained.
I read it, and numbness fills me. I blink through the tears, but the words of the story stay the same.
“That asshole profited off their deaths, Stella,” Pax whispers.
Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Blanck’s literal blood money to pay for his “Scot-Free Soiree”?
… And finally! Oh, darlings! There’s enough newsy nonsense in the rest of this rag, no?
—but this I must address. Surely you didn’t miss the bit where Max Blanck and his partner, Isaac Harris, aka The Shirtwaist Kings, aka the persons found not guilty in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, actually profited from the deaths of their workers?
It’s true. After the two owners were acquitted, a civil suit found them liable in the amount of $75 per worker.
These two were required to pay this to families who had lost loved ones.
(And I don’t know about you, but I have some relatives I’d trade in for $75 in the wink of an eye, darlings.) BUT!
Their insurance company covered their damages to the tune of $400 per dead worker.
If you’re doing the math, that means Harris and Blanck each walked away from that fire with over $20,000 in the bank.
They profited off the perished, those perverse pals.
Darlings, I’m itching to get more information for us all when I attend Blanck’s party this Saturday.
We now know where he got the funds for such a lavish affair, don’t we? Kiss kiss!