The Paragon Hotel Read online

  “They don’t need the altogether pitiable invalid whose fault this entire situation is in the first place.”

  “No, that’s—”

  “Entirely, globally, universally true,” she snaps. She turns to her vanity and begins laying cosmetics out like weapons in an arsenal, and I suppose in a sense they are. “Besides, I have a show tonight.”

  I blink. “You’re performing?”

  “Oh, with gusto, honey, there’s Dr. Pendleton’s bills to consider. He’s top dollar, don’t you know, pride allows for nothing else.”

  “Piove sul bagnato.” I sigh.

  “Translation—instantly, please.”

  “Um, ‘Bad situations grow worse.’”

  “Alice, it’s in Italian, it cannot possibly be that dull.”

  Smiling, I amend, “‘It rains on the wet.’”

  She grins. It’s a heroic effort. I watch as she applies cream, a very dark tincture, a lighter one, a shimmer.

  “Your uncle charges you full rates for medical care? Quelque churl.”

  “You said it.” Blossom makes a popping sound as she smacks her lipstick into place. “But he has his reasons.”

  “That’s—”

  “Don’t get steamed up, honey, I can afford him as long as I’m working.”

  Medea emerges from the dressing area with the satisfied expression of a creature who has performed mischief. Blossom plays a brief rat-a-tat on her vanity with a brow pencil and I glance up at her reflection.

  “Do you know what I like about you, Alice?” she asks quietly.

  “Actually, I’d be much obliged to take the tour,” I admit.

  “Oh, ever so modest, yes, because you know modesty suits you. Don’t take offense, it comes naturally. No, I like you because I have an inkling, just the tiniest phantom of a suspicion, that if you truly knew me—the entire instruction manual of my life and my flaws—you still wouldn’t hate me.”

  Astonished, I answer, “I couldn’t ever hate you. I’ve no good reason for knowing that, but it’s true all the same.”

  “And the oddest part is that I’ve no good reason to believe you, but I do.” Something sad twinkles in her eyes, like a jewel box cast to the bottom of the sea. “We go through our lives, so many of us, as fractions of ourselves, with all the other puzzle pieces buried where no one can see them. But there’s the paradox, and do forgive me for flights metaphorical—we’re all of us fractured jigsaws, but we’re also the entire picture no matter how far away we walk from what’s hidden. I’ve seen you do it, you understand. You’re whatever Alice suits, but you’re still Alice always—you can’t help it, and neither can I—and deep down you know that to be true. That’s why I think you wouldn’t hate me.”

  She looks at me in the mirror, entirely unguarded, and I can’t say a word. Chuckling, she shakes her head.

  “Don’t you mind a cabaret singer getting tragically soppy—it’s like trying to escape Portland without mud on your shoes. But . . . in any case, please forgive me, honey, if I confess that I’m just the tiniest bit overjoyed that you took a bullet.”

  Laughing, I go to her and wrap my arms around her neck the way I used to do with my friend Sadie. Blossom’s head lands in my bosom and instead of regarding intertwined us in the vanity mirror, she cranes her neck to gaze at me upside down.

  “Max has a volunteer crew of some twenty, and you’re far too pasty to be in the woods, forgive the aspersion. If you fall in with my plans, you can pull the background statue stuff and maybe learn something helpful for the Paragon. Come and watch me perform at the Rose’s Thorn tonight?”

  “Oh, with resounding cheers!” I exclaim.

  “You cannot wear that,” she adds with a mock glare, which is awfully droll on someone whose face is upside down.

  “May death come first. I’ll be a more suitable Alice, cross my heart.”

  “You want Maximilian, don’t you?” she whispers.

  Instead of cringing, I draw my thumbs along her prow-like collarbones. “Dreadfully. Is it obvious?”

  “Only to people who love dreams, or who dream about love.”

  “So, everyone on earth save Officer Overton.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “What’s the old girl to do?” I sigh.

  “What we all do, honey.” She reaches a long arm for a brush without breaking the embrace and finishes dusting her cheekbones. “Smash yourself to smithereens over him.”

  ◆ Twelve ◆

  THEN

  Between the law and the Mafia, the law is not the most to be feared.

  —SICILIAN PROVERB

  I can’t remember going to bed the night Mr. Benenati was slaughtered—the night that would eventually send me to Portland. But I must have wept myself to slumberland, for my lids were sticky when I parted them and my throat was sore.

  You fled to Mr. Salvatici last night.

  Looking down, I discovered I was still in my street clothes.

  You passed the test on the roof. You’re at the Hotel Arcadia.

  This bedchamber was about as far from a Raines law doss-house as I was from Mr. Mangiapane. The walls were striped in cream and pink, and the table with its brass reading lamp boasted a vase filled with hothouse flowers. Nothing slackerly in the way of comforts, then. Coals still smoldered, and the scuttle was nicely topped up. Curiosity trumped mourning, as it’s wont to do in the young, and I padded over to the sky-blue robe folded over the chairback. Perfect fit.

  It’s a housecoat, I told myself as the eerie trickle down my back intensified. They all fit perfectly.

  A wardrobe with a painted trellis-rose pattern loomed tantalizingly. I took a deep breath before baring its secrets.

  The rod was positively gasping with clothes. Plain white blouses, high-waisted skirts with sashes, day dresses with the increasingly popular deep V arrowing to the waistline and a panel of lace underneath. Special-occasion gowns in aqua and lavender with perfect three-quarter sleeves. I know now that they weren’t decadent. But my fifteen-year-old self figured that since I’d been aiming for a knight’s career, landing the princess gig instead wasn’t too shabby.

  As a matter of fact, I was so jazzed that I wasn’t knocked for even half a loop to learn that these likewise fit like they were tailored for me.

  The marble bathroom proved another wonderland, the bathtub perched on dainty iron orbs. Lo, verily, hot water gushed out if you turned the handle, and I squeaked like a startled gutter rat.

  When two knocks sounded followed by a click-swish, I dove for a weapon: a hefty bath brush. But it was only the maid standing in the parlor, a high yellow girl with hair braided into a thick brown coronet. She had a sweet snub nose between deep-set hazel eyes, and seeing her guest en garde with hygienic equipment, she paused. At a loss.

  “Should I put this on the table, miss?” she asked, regarding the coffee tray.

  “Oh,” I said. No one had ever served Nobody before except Crispy Ezio bringing me his last-call specialty, a fried pile of all the edible vegetable ends he’d trimmed. Fritto misto di verdure for the insolvent. “Is that for me?”

  She blinked. “Actually, I just figured your room would be a swell place for my coffee break.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, believe it or not, this is much nicer than the maids’ dorms.”

  Now I knew my leg was being tugged. “What’s your name?”

  “Sadie.”

  “Do most of the maids tease the hotel guests?”

  “No, but most of the hotel guests are better at it.” Sadie surprised a laugh out of me as she set the tray before the lemon-colored settee. “After you’ve dressed, Mr. Salvatici wants you to have breakfast with him.”

  “All right. Where?”

  “Right through this door.” She produced a key from her white apron and gave it to me. “Knock first. That�
��s the Spider’s sitting room. You’ll keep your side locked, and he will as well, when he’s here. Don’t worry about noise, the walls here are thick as anything.”

  “The Spider?”

  “It’s just a nickname the hotel employees gave him. Well . . . other folks call him that too, down in Hell’s Kitchen, from what I gather. I’m meant to ask if the clothes seem like they’ll do.”

  “Do for what?”

  “For not being naked.”

  Sadie’s way of expressing herself, I thought with a swell of admiration, is awfully fine. Now I’d say that it could have dried up the Hudson and left nary a drop for the fish.

  “I think so. I’m Alice James, but you can call me Nobody.”

  “I know.” She smiled as an afterthought, and it felt like a present with a bow. “I hope you’re happy here, Miss James. If you ever admire to trade rooms with me, just ask.”

  Sadie departed. The coffee was as hot and dark as a cast-iron stove, and it did the trick. Though once I was fully awake, I thought of Nicolo and my heart gave a painful squirm.

  Mr. Salvatici, I reminded myself. You’re going to help Mr. Salvatici purge the Corleonesi from Harlem. The pretty clothes are just . . . that’s just how he takes care of his charges.

  Like one of his birds.

  I found divine soap and thereby set a lifetime record for cleanliness, and when I put on a celery-green dress with a white cotton sash, I looked into the mirror and beheld another creature entirely.

  Someone with something to do.

  Standing before the portal where my domain ended and Mr. Salvatici’s began shouldn’t have felt like placing my new boots on the plummeting edge of the world. But it did.

  With trembling hand, I freed my side and knocked.

  Maybe ten seconds later, I heard a second key in the higher bolt and voilà, Mr. Salvatici himself, with black hair slicked and a fountain pen in hand, smiling absently.

  “You look much haler, Miss James. I’m glad you’re up for a brief tête-à-tête along with your eggs.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Head to head—a conversation.”

  “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll soon be speaking like a sophisticate yourself. Come in, if you please.”

  The room was as elegant as I remembered—but now I myself suited its richness, my freshly clad ass matched the sofa as it were, so I felt more at ease. Mr. Salvatici pulled a chair out for me in a breakfast nook and lifted a cover to reveal porridge, eggs, bacon, cheese, and sliced autumn apples.

  “Do you prefer Alice, Nobody, or Miss James?” he asked cordially.

  “I guess whatever you like?”

  “Nicknames are familiar and you’re going to grow quite familiar with me mounting this great effort of ours, so Nobody it is. If you don’t object?”

  He took his seat and gestured at mine. Mr. Salvatici was the only man of his age who’d ever looked at me without ogling since I’d approached womanhood, other than Crispy Ezio and Mr. Benenati, of course. So his saying we were going to grow familiar didn’t carry the weight it could have done.

  “What happened last night?” I asked, sitting. “It’s embarrassing, but . . .”

  He flapped a napkin into his lap. “Help yourself. You grew faint after watching the street brawl break out.”

  “Shit.” I glanced up in dismay. “I mean—”

  “I’m an entrepreneur, not a clergyman, my dear young lady.”

  “But what happened to Nicolo? He was at the front of it all! He—”

  “The police broke up the altercation before it grew into a riot, so I imagine he’s fine save the profound grief caused by yesterday evening. But that sort of reconnaissance is going to lie with you.”

  “You mean watching the folk I grew up with?” I spooned scrambled eggs as fluffy and yellow as chicks onto my plate.

  “I mean watching anyone. Everyone. When I’m through with you, you’ll be as much Anybody as you’re Nobody, and thus see through most people’s prevarications instantly. You’ll need some better schooling—account keeping, dancing and music, basic arts and sciences, the classics. But you already like reading, so that’s not a problem.”

  “How do you know I like to read?”

  “I told you.” The line of his lips quirked. “When I’ve visited your mother over these past years, I’ve mainly done so to watch you. You’ll want to change back into your old duds before visiting her and the Benenatis today, but of course you know how to stay inconspicuous.”

  “Why would you want to teach me something like dancing? I thought what you liked about me was that I sort of . . . fade into the background.”

  “Well, there’s no point in repeating lessons already learned, is there? I’m not going to teach you how to be invisible, Nobody. I’m going to teach you how to be unmistakable.”

  “Is that . . . is that smart?”

  “No. But it’s wise.” Mr. Salvatici tapped his skull for emphasis. “The most obvious thing in the room is often overlooked.”

  I wondered as more coffee slid sweetly down my gullet, and snow slipped down my spine, in just what sorts of new places Mr. Salvatici meant for me to be on display? And supposing he was known as the Spider—which seemed an awfully disquieting moniker—how far did this web of his extend?

  * * *

  —

  Well, and I only hope yer happy, nigh giving me fits last night.” Mum tried to glare. But as usual, the fire went fizzle-spit. She gathered up her blond hair and let it fall as if tossing hay. “On t’other hand, after Mr. Mangiapane lost his shite and poor Nicolo followed suit, I can’t hardly blame you.”

  We sat on a rock on the edge of the Hudson, one reached by stepping across the boulders scattered like a carnage of dominoes. One summer when I was twelve, after Mum was in the dumps thanks to a spectacularly fat lip, I’d brought her to watch the merchant craft floating beneath garlands of freewheeling seagulls. She’d loved it, and we returned every year. One of the only outings that ever reminded me I had a mother—not just a slovenly older-sister type who hogged the quilt starting mid-November.

  “About Nicolo.” There are fragments of starlight embedded in every hunk of granite along the Hudson River, and my eyes drifted over tiny shards. “What happened last night?”

  Mum shrugged. “Bunch of idjits got their faces mashed, is what happened. Poor old Giorgio Benenati, always thumbing his nose at the notion of tribute. Neapolitans. There are some what pay more’n they can afford monthly in protection, and still wouldn’t use a Corleonesi handkerchief to polish their boots. Yer da was Neapolitan.”

  Greed flooded me, and I passed my hand down her arm. “From what part of Naples?”

  “Oh, somewhereabouts right on the water. Don’t ask fer specifics, my lovely, all the man could gibber in was Italian. Once I sent him out fer more candles and he came back with a bouquet o’ daisies and a bottle o’ grappa. Well, it served fine.”

  “Then he would have stood up to the cagnolazzi,” I told the secretive river, not supposing Mum was paying attention any longer. “If the dog hadn’t got him. He’d have given them hell.”

  “Is that what yer after doing, Alice? Giving the cagnolazzi hell?”

  I swung my dark eyes to her blue ones, shocked. My mother never asked me direct questions. Statements were her form of suggestive parenting. Oh, sure enough, Alice polished the liquor bottles to Mr. Mangiapane, or Alice ain’t a one fer jail cells, so keep yer nose clean to Nicolo. Telling my story for me served twin purposes: she needn’t suffer disappointment, and I’d know what was expected.

  “You packed yer things.” The breeze put a jig in her hair, and she pulled a wavy tendril away from her lips. “But that were before Mr. Mangiapane said as he were selling you. That means you had a plan already.”

  “I . . . fine, yes
!” I stammered, caught wrong-footed. “But you know what’s going to happen if I stay! Not that you care, of course.”

  “I do,” she answered gravely. “I also care whether yer stomach’s full. Surely that counts fer something?”

  “Yes. But it’s not much, is it?” Anger gushed into my throat. “Not that school even counts for girls, but I only ever went because I liked it, and the rest of the time I just tried not to draw attention. Waiting for something to happen. Anything to happen.”

  “And it did, didn’t it?” Catrin James countered. “I were born with nothing save the cunny ’tween my legs and no imaginings about any other life. My first husband happened, and he up and vanished. Then yer da happened. He was a ray o’ sun, but the sun goes down, lovely, and what then? Nights are cold. And there you were, tiny and hungry, and you happened, Alice. Didn’t take me long to figure out you were sharper than yer old mum. Didn’t take me long to figure out you wanted more. Or different. I let you run after it, whatever it was, because fuck if I know any more or different.”

  The stone scraped under my tensing fingers. I was lucky enough to have a mother—there she was beside me.

  So why couldn’t I have been born to a mother who acted like one?

  Mum rested her chin atop her knee. “You took up with Mr. Salvatici, didn’t you?”

  “He . . . yes.” So many direct and, still more shocking, perceptive questions in a row sent me reeling. “They call him the Spider. He says we should work together. Do you—how well do you know him?”

  “Well enough to say I’m not surprised,” she admitted. “Little enough to say I never really thought ’twould happen.”

  “He says he wants me for his ward.”

  “Aye, legacy’s a part of it. He’s a lonely feller. But he really wants yer ears, Nobody. And yer sweet little face that folk don’t pay mind to until it bites ’em.” She smiled sadly at the waves. “What did he tell you about himself?”

  This proved surprisingly hard to answer. “Well. He’s the boss of a powerful gang, but it’s in Hell’s Kitchen and he needs eyes in Harlem. He keeps pigeons. It’s strange but sort of . . . gentle. He hates the Clutch Hand. Something about building instead of destroying, but like enough he just wants what they all do. More power. More . . .”