Fifty-to-One

much would three million dollars even weigh?”

“Couple of tons, if it’s pennies,” Borden said. “Couple of ounces if it’s diamonds. If we’re talking about hundred dollar bills?” He thought for a second. “Maybe fifty, sixty pounds. I know men who couldn’t carry that much and girls that could. Besides, who’s to say our girl didn’t have help? Any of them could’ve gotten a boyfriend involved in it.” He knocked again, on the glass this time and louder. “Or a girlfriend.”

An image of Joyce sprang into Tricia’s mind—and Tricia knew Erin was thinking the same thing. Strapping, six-foot-tall Joyce, who from the first day had seemed so resentful of Tricia. She certainly could’ve carried fifty pounds if she had to.

Borden turned the knob, swung the door open. Rita was buttoning a blouse she’d obviously thrown on hastily—the buttons were one hole off all the way down. Annabelle was lying on her cot in a transparent nightie and slippers, blissfully unconcerned about being seen that way. The other cots were empty; from the bathroom came the sound of a shower running.

“Jeez,” Rita said. “Can’t a girl have a little privacy here?”

“No,” Borden said. He strode over to the writing desk, where Tricia’s typewriter was still set up. A small stack of pages next to it held her latest attempt at a short story. It hadn’t been going very well, and she’d been on the verge of giving up on it and starting another book instead, maybe something about a rugged, two-fisted detective this time, or maybe an assassin, cruel but principled. She had no shortage of ideas, and the prospect of another five hundred dollars was a powerful incentive. But now that opportunity seemed to have shattered along with the glass across the hall.

“Which one’s yours?” Borden asked.

Tricia pointed out her cot and he bent to look under it. He pulled out a box of manuscript pages labeled “I Robbed the Mob!” in his own handwriting. Her original title, which he’d crossed out, had been Dark Temptation.

Borden turned to Annabelle and Rita. “Girls, do either of you remember ever seeing anyone going through Trixie’s things when she wasn’t around?”

“Why?” Annabelle said. “Is something missing?”

“No,” Erin said, “we’re just trying to figure out who might have been reading Trixie’s book.”

“Her book?” Annabelle said, in a tone of voice that sounded roughly as puzzled as if she’d been asked which of her roommates had been riding Trixie’s unicorn.

“Yes, her book,” Borden said. “This thing.” He opened the box, took out a batch of pages, waved them in the air.

“Did you ever see anyone other than Trixie reading it?”

Rita and Annabelle exchanged a glance.

“What is it, girls?” Borden said. “Spill.”

“Couple of times, while you were out working, Trix, Joyce would pull it out, read from it out loud,” Rita said. “She’d read a line or two and laugh, and some of the other girls would laugh along. I never did.” After a second she added, “Annabelle, neither.”

“You ever notice anyone paying particular attention when she did this?” Borden said.

“Sure, Stella,” Rita said. “Back when she was here, she was always egging Joyce on to read more.”

“Any particular part she seemed interested in?” Borden said.

“The part where the guy steals all the money? She got a real kick out of that.”

Borden turned to Erin. “So, what happened to Stella? Why isn’t she here anymore?”

“Nothing happened, Charley. She just moved out,” Erin said. “Girls come, girls go—” She kissed her fingertips and blew it off in whatever direction girls go. “I didn’t think anything of it.”

“And when was this?” he said. “That she moved out?”

Erin shut her eyes, as if she didn’t want to see Borden’s reaction. “About a month ago,” she said.

9.

361

Tricia and Erin waited till they were down on the sidewalk before discussing what they were going to do. No point in letting the elevator operator in on their plans, not when he was the first person O’Malley would grill upon regaining consciousness.

Before calling the elevator, Borden had run back into his office, stepped over O’Malley’s prone form, and pulled two copies of a book called Death Stalks a Bride from one of the room’s packed shelves. He’d torn the covers off both, handed one to each of Tricia and Erin, and tossed the remains of the two books on the floor. The cover showed a virginal brunette hiking up her wedding gown with both hands while running from a wild-eyed shirtless brute in overalls. The brute’s face looked a little like Billy Hoffman’s; the bride’s was unmistakably Stella’s.

“Call me immediately if you find her,” Borden had said before opening the door to the fire stairs. “Erin knows the number. If it’s busy, it just means I’m on the phone with Moe. I want to find out if there’s anyone other than him who might have seen the manuscript over there.”

“You sure it’s safe for you to stay in the building?” Erin said.

“I’m not sure it’s safe for me anywhere,” he said and pounded upstairs.

Now Erin was pulling Tricia along toward the subway entrance.

“Where are we going?”

“Brooklyn.”

“What’s in Brooklyn?”

“Cheap rent,” Erin said. “And plenty of bars. And what do you find where there’s cheap rent and plentiful booze?”

“What?”

“Artists,” Erin said.

“Stella’s not an artist.”

“No, Stella’s a model. And who knows better where to find a model than artists?”

“I don’t know,” Tricia said. “If she’s got three million dollars now, I’m not sure she’d be modeling anymore.”

“Neither am I,” Erin said. “But if she is, the boys at 361 will know how to find her.”

Between Knickerbocker Avenue and Irving, between Decatur Street to the northwest and the long, lonely stretches of cemetery grounds to the east, there’s a desolate block where Cooper Avenue curves and quietly turns into Cooper Street—this, Erin said, was where they were going. They rode out on the BMT until it wouldn’t take them any closer, decamping finally at an elevated station in the shadow of a stained and leaking water tower; and then they walked the rest of the way, the better part of a mile, sweating under the smothering blanket of late summer heat. By the time they arrived, the sun had hit its apex in the sky and begun its slow descent toward the distant skyscrapers of Manhattan. Tricia watched its progress with no little anxiety: When night fell, she was due back at the club, and she didn’t know which would be more dangerous, showing up or not.

As they neared the end of the street they approached a building the likes of which Tricia had never seen outside of classroom filmstrips intended to teach the children of Aberdeen about the dangers of narcotics. The windows were dark with filth, the rain gutters dangled, the paint on the walls was peeling. Patches of scrubby grass grew from cracks in the paving stones out front. There were less leprous buildings on either side, but Tricia knew, somehow, that this was the one they were headed for even before the tarnished brass numerals “361” became visible on the front door.

“You’re saying artists live here?” Tricia said, and Erin nodded. “Wouldn’t you think they’d keep it looking a little nicer? Being artists, and all?”

“Have you got a lot to learn,” Erin said.

The doorbell, when they pressed it, surprised Tricia not at all by being broken. Knocking didn’t yield any better result until finally Erin began hammering the side of her fist against the door and shouted: “Rise and shine, boys! Rise and shine!”

“Easy, sister,” a man with a mellow voice said, drawing the door away from her descending hand. “We can hear you. We’re not deaf.” He wore a tunic that covered him from neck to knees over faded dungarees and a pair of wooden sandals. His hair, longer than any Tricia had ever seen on a man, was tied back with a leather strap. Between two of his knuckles, a hand-rolled cigarette slowly burned while between the next two extended the