He was standing beside a large turbulent seascape painted in oils in the last century. Below it, on a massive credenza, stood two filled champagne flutes and a bottle diapered in linen in a silver bucket. An excellent vintage. Avize, 1911. He handed her a glass, its crystal etched with his elaborate monogram, an interlaced M and W. Brushing back the hair that curled about her hatless face, he said, “Did Mr. Crockett clear things up for you or only confuse you further?”
“Where is she?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is she safe?”
“As long as no one knows where she is.”
“Is she here?”
He smiled. “She is safe. Location secret.”
He nudged Julia’s hand, encouraging her to taste the champagne. “If Eva is to have any chance, she needs to disappear. No one, not even a well-meaning friend, can know where she is. Everything is on the line for her, Julia. For me as well.”
He met her gaze. His eyes were nearly the color of hers, dark blue without a hint of gray. She saw no shadow, no hitch in their steady overture. Yet he had lied, deliberately deceived her. Deceit was a slippery slope. Unless he could convince her otherwise, it now shadowed everything she knew and felt about him.
“Why did she go to you that morning?”
“That troubles Crockett, does it?” Wallace led her to a plush burgundy sofa. “I did promise you some answers. Which you shall have. I’m a man of my word.”
She sat warily, waiting.
“There are two answers to your question. Neither is short.” He removed his jacket, loosened his tie, and unfastened his top collar stud. “We may as well get comfortable.” He sat and stretched an arm behind her.
Julia sat forward. Wallace gave a soft laugh.
“The first answer is that she trusts me.” He tapped faintly along the ridge of her collarbone. “Unlike you.”
She brushed his hand from her shoulder. “You lied to me. Repeatedly.”
“No one is entirely honest, my dear. No one. You and I both have many secrets. You’re clearly interested in mine, and I hope to discover a few of yours.”
“Why does Eva trust you?”
“She and I have known each other for a very long time. She worked in a little club I owned with some other people. It was a pretty rough and common place, mainly for coloreds. It was managed by a terrible boozer named Rudy who scraped along just under the law, but he kept the place profitable, and we didn’t ask many questions. Eva was tall and skinny but light skinned enough for what passed for a chorus line—tans, they call them.”
He paused for a few swallows of champagne. “Well, Eva was sweating away for her twenty bucks a week in the Calico Club. Then one night I noticed how the other girls looked like whores in that cheap getup, but not Eva. Even then, hoofing away on the end of the line, she had that something. So I asked Rudy to let her try a solo number, and right away, she’s a hit. People started coming round to that dump just to see her.”
Julia remembered Eva’s mesmerizing performance. She was graceful and lithe but not a natural dancer, and her singing voice was passable but nothing remarkable. Yet she held the spotlight, captured a roomful of eyes, better than most stage performers. Her something was powerful and seductive. It was, Julia realized, the subterranean flow of interest that had so captivated her that first evening they’d met, at Duveen’s party. She felt a stab of gratitude that Wallace had noticed it too, despite that club’s drab squalor. How much more grateful Eva must have been. It had opened up a new life for her.
“That started her career?”
“It seemed so. Until one night when I stopped by and some West Indian girl was doing her number. I found Eva backstage with bandages wrapped around her head.” He circled his own, drawing an imaginary swath across his hairline and over both ears. “There’d been a blowup. Rudy was a worse stinker than I thought.”
Julia wondered if this was the source of the scene in Eva’s manuscript that had sent Timson into a fury. If it had actually happened, Eva must have been desperate to escape. “Did he rape her? That terrible scene in her book, was it him?”
Rising with an exaggerated creak of his knees, Wallace carried his glass to the credenza and refilled it. “I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times these past few weeks. I don’t know. She said nothing then and won’t talk about it now. But I saw that gash on her head, clean through to her skull. If he had raped her, and I’d known about it, well.” He stifled the rest of the sentence with a hand across his mouth. “As it was, I knew he’d continue to hurt her if she stayed.”
“How did she get away?”
“I struck a deal with Leonard Timson. He was a rat too, but a bigger, smarter rat. He’d just bought the old Shalliwag Club and renamed it Carlotta’s. He was putting in a lot of money to make it the best. Best music, best clientele, best entertainment. I told Leonard if he gave her top billing and treated her well, she’d fill that place for him.”
So Wallace had brokered Eva’s escape. Not only
