Beautiful Days (21 page)

Because she didn't want to show how much this gift affected her, Cordelia gave a curt nod, turned around, and began walking out into the crowd, moving between the tables, checking to make sure that glasses weren't piling up and that drinks were full. Her eyes flickered over the sea of faces, wondering which one of them had wanted to pay her special attention. She was just coming to the conclusion that it must be a random admirer when she saw Charlie talking to the guards at the door. A number of men were stationed in that vicinity, vetting any would-be revelers, and watching out for any retribution on the Hales' part, too. The big fellow with the hat pulled down over his face nodded, and then Charlie stepped away from him and began to walk toward the back of the club.
Of course
, she thought,
Charlie sent it to congratulate me.

She turned around and began to walk in his direction, but he was moving faster, almost pushing people aside. His big slab features were frozen in concentration, and his eyes were dark and fixed straight ahead. She had to almost run to catch up to him and was nearly at his side when he careened into a petite girl decked out in yellow sequins.

“Ooooooo!” she wailed, when she realized that her cocktail had been knocked out of her hand.

“Hey, you!” the man next to her yelled after Charlie, standing up fast so that his chair fell away behind him. Cordelia saw the attention of the surrounding tables follow Charlie, and she hurried to apologize to the sequined girl and her fellow.

“Here,” she said, pulling a few red tickets from her sleeve and handing them to the girl. “Enjoy yourselves, please.”

Whether or not the girl appreciated this gesture, Cordelia had no idea. There was a stone in her belly. Something had gone terribly wrong. She had seen it in Charlie's face, and now she was pushing through the crowd to find out what. The band was playing loud and everyone was shouting, but as soon as she went through the big copper doors that led to offices and dressing areas, she heard Charlie's voice over the rest of the din.

“How the hell did this happen?” he yelled. He went on yelling as she lingered, frightened, in the doorway.

Chapter 20

THE NIGHT AIR WAS FULL OF MIST WHEN LETTY ARRIVED on Fifty-third Street, and she felt momentarily shy about going to Cordelia's club when she saw the activity outside the old bank. Girls dressed exquisitely, in jewelry and satins fit for a ball, huddled waiting to get in, and across the street men with big cameras mounted with flashbulbs leaned against the sides of their cars, as though hunting some elusive prey. She wished that she had heeded Cordelia and worn the red dress that the Greys had bought for her the day that the three of them went into the city for matching bathing costumes. But there was nothing to be done about the dusty pink sleeveless dress she'd put on that morning before taking the train. It was another of Astrid's old things, and had to be belted because it was slightly large for her, as was the fawn-colored cardigan she wore to cover her shoulders.

With small, timid steps, she went forward to the entrance. She could hear the noise from within, and yet the doors themselves were closed and gave no indication that they would be welcoming. Letty swallowed, raised her fist, and knocked on the metal door. The noise this made was louder than she had anticipated, and she stepped back, embarrassed at having called attention to herself.

A curly-haired girl wearing a tiara glanced at Letty over her shoulder, scowling. “They're full up right now,” she said through her nose.

“Oh.” Letty turned back around to face the door and hoped that Cordelia would be the one to open it, so that this girl would feel a fool when Letty was whisked in. “Thank you.”

A few seconds of agony followed, during which it seemed she would be standing outside forever. But then the door did swing out, and though Cordelia was not the one to do it, the girl standing there was almost as welcome a sight.

“Paulette!”

The taller girl's hair had a new marcel and her dark red lips opened wide when she saw Letty. She bent to kiss both of Letty's cheeks, and then drew her inside, toward the noise. The door slammed behind them, and Letty smiled in satisfaction to think that the girl in the tiara was still out there in the sticky night, and had been taken down a peg or two.

Inside was a riot of color and laughter. Across the vast floor, people were crammed into tables, leaning over the backs of their chairs to flirt and gossip, turning their faces up toward the stage, buying cigarettes from girls dressed all in gold as though they were the bank's currency itself. The big man with the hat who'd been at the door the day before was there, along with a few other men of his type, and they seemed to be scanning the crowd for trouble. On the right side of the building, the band was set up on the stage, which had been built out in front of the old teller windows with some of the same mahogany wood. On the left, Letty could see what Cordelia had been describing the day before. A girl checked hats in the first teller window, and in the next one another girl sold tickets. After that the bar began. Men wearing bow ties took orders from the customers who lined up there, then turned to the teller windows behind them, where some invisible person would produce the requested beverage.

“That's so if there's a raid, the liquor won't be out in the open,” Paulette whispered, as she drew her onto the floor. “There's an old system back there for dropping deposits down to the basement, and we figure if federals ever come in, we can drop the hooch down to the basement and cover it up quick.”

Letty nodded and bent her neck back to look at the ceiling with its tarnished, celestial murals. She couldn't believe how packed and frenetic and gigantic the place was—perhaps not so much more wild than Seventh Heaven used to be, but far more incredible, because it was the work of a girl she'd known forever.

“Thanks for telling me about this place. Your friend Cordelia is a real solid broad—soon as I told her I knew you, she said I could have a job overseeing the cigarette girls.”

“I guess she is,” Letty replied with a shrug. The mention of Cordelia reminded her that she hadn't really come to marvel at the scenery or drink cocktails, but to show her old friend that she wasn't sore about not being the nightclub's singer. “Where is Cordelia, anyway?”

Paulette pushed up on the balls of her feet and looked out across the room. “I just saw her—hold on, I'll find her. I'm sure she'll want to show you everything herself.”

With that, Paulette forged forward into the crowd. Unsure whether she was supposed to follow, Letty hung back, smiling shyly at the doormen and occasionally trying to catch the view between the shoulders of the various men, all taller than she, who loitered at the edges of the room. It was through this partial view that she recognized a young man and woman who had just come in. Grady wore a tuxedo, just as he had the night he'd wanted to take her to dinner with his parents, and his sweet and attentive eyes focused on the girl around whose waist his arm draped. The girl wore a marigold-colored Grecian-style gown with one shoulder, and her strawberry-blond hair was cropped short, and tucked behind the ears, the simplicity of which only highlighted the aristocratic features of her face. On her wrist, she wore a cuff of diamonds that looked like fire in the low light.

Letty's feet were heavy and her chest felt like one big days-old bruise that keeps getting kicked. She wished for two things in that moment: that she had gone home to get some rest, and that Grady had any girl but Peachy at his side. For the sight of her long legs had always made Letty seem short, as her rich dress made Letty feel poor, and the length of her neck and the way she carried her head perched on top of it could reduce Letty to nothing. The bruised sensation spread outward from her heart to the pit of her stomach and up to her temples, and she began to take in the full scope of her loss.

Because seeing Grady escort Peachy—the lovely girl that his parents had always wanted him to marry, according to Astrid—across the floor, did not make Letty yearn for limousine rides or dinner at the Colony or diamond bracelets. It was the way his hand rested like a feather at the small of her back. Even at a distance, she could practically feel that touch, gentle and without lasciviousness, but with a decided pressure that said over and over again
I am at your side.
She stared at his hand, which was so close and yet would never reach out to reassure her again, and thought how recently it was that he had seemed willing to do anything for her. That was the third thing she wished for—that she'd been born smarter, so that she could've held on to Grady when she had him.

Letty knew she ought to look away from the couple by the door, but she couldn't help but go on watching as Peachy whispered something, and Grady inclined his head to better hear her over the raucous sounds of young people at play. He nodded and his eyes went across the room and landed on Letty.

Instinctively, she brought her arms up over her chest and stepped away. He stared at her, his face only slightly changed by the recognition, and she retreated further, faster this time, as though she could walk straight backward out of his line of sight. Before she began to worry about the fact that there wasn't really anywhere to go, her foot caught on something, and she fell, landing hard in the lap of a man she'd earlier noticed brushing noses with the girl beside him. The table hit her elbow, which smarted, though not as badly as her pride.

“What in hell . . . ?”

“Terribly sorry!” Letty gasped as she leapt up. Keeping her head down, and refusing to look back in the direction of Grady, she began to make her way through the tables, deeper into the club. The tables were tight together, and everyone was crowded around them, so this involved a great deal of stepping over legs and leaning against tables laden with cocktails in Ball jars, but she was determined to move as fast as she could and not to get stuck. As she passed the band, the guitar player looked down on her and grinned, and then she knew what a spectacle of herself she was making. But she didn't care. All she wanted was to emerge at the other side of the club, safe out of Grady and Peachy's view, and find Cordelia. For Cordelia, despite her indifference as of late, was the only person in the world who knew how low down Letty could get, and also how to build her back up.

When she managed to get past the last table and emerge on the far side of The Vault, she saw the two great copper doors that she'd gone through to see Cordelia the day before. Now she was finally granted a wish, because the man standing in front of them was Anthony, one of the guards she knew from Dogwood, and he opened a door for her without a question, ushering her into the inner sanctum.

The sound of the telephone receiver being put down into its cradle was as loud and shocking as a gunshot. Charlie stood with his broad back to Cordelia, saying nothing. Her scalp was cold and her throat was hot, and she watched him with unblinking eyes and waited for him to speak.

“They have her.”

“Who?”

“Astrid. The Hales.” He glanced at her wrist, at the tiny white flowers that adorned it. “What are those?” he asked reproachfully.

“You didn't send them?” She looked down at the corsage as though she'd never seen it before.

“Those are from Landry's. Expensive. I've ordered flowers from there plenty times. But those ones aren't from me.”

“Oh.” Cordelia's face burned as she examined the corsage in a new light. Slowly it began to dawn on her that the only man she knew who was capable of sending rare and expensive flowers was Thom. The hatred that had been simmering in her for weeks, and which she had acted on that morning, shifted slightly. His face when she conjured it in her thoughts was still repugnant to her; but then another picture of him eclipsed it, the way he had been at the place with the mattresses on the floor, how jittery he had seemed that night, and how strangely sincere. With the swift certitude of a premonition, she knew that he had been trying to warn her of what was to come tonight.

Cordelia stepped toward Charlie and put a hand on his back. “How did it happen?”

He shook his shoulder, knocking her hand off, and leaned forward, putting his fists against the big desk and resting his full weight on his arms. “They got her in some West Side dive. God knows what she was doing there.” He spit out the words, and for a moment, Cordelia couldn't tell if he was angry at Astrid or at the Hales.

“What do they want?” Cordelia's mind raced. She was afraid for Astrid, but she felt certain that if they acted quickly, no harm would come to her. In all the many newspaper columns she had read about Darius Grey and his kind, she'd never seen a mention of a special lady friend or a child harmed, and it seemed likely that if they kept their heads they could have her back soon.

“Damn that girl!” he yelled again.

“Charlie,” Cordelia said in a firm voice. She put her hand against his shoulder again, and though she could tell that he bristled at the touch, he did not this time immediately shake her off. “What do they want?”

“They want us to say we're sorry,” he sneered.

“That's all?” Cordelia replied in the same even tone. She could hear the caustic quality in his voice, but refused to be scared off by it.

“They want us to say we're sorry with dollars, lots of dollars. They want us to back off their territories in Manhattan. They want all the business we took from 'em. They want us to lay low for a while, and crawl around on our hands and knees, and act like monkeys.”

“All right.” Cordelia took a deep breath. “All right, we'll tell them we'll do that, then.”

“Damn her!” Charlie yelled, his voice raw with fury. “Why'd she have to go and get herself in trouble? Why'd I have to fall in love with such a little fool?”

“Charlie, you're going to have to calm down. Now, where's Jones? Let's get Jones on the line. He'll know how to talk to them, and he'll have everything arranged, and once she's back and safe with us, then we can decide what to do from there.”

Charlie didn't reply, he only bristled, and she knew that if he'd had hair on his back, it would have stood on end.

“Charlie, where's Jones?” she repeated, stepping forward and picking up the phone.

But he snatched the phone roughly from her hand and put it back in the receiver. The desk shook again, as did the silver tray where a half-drunk bottle of champagne sat beside four champagne glasses. Earlier, a long time ago it seemed, before any customers had come, they had toasted to their family.

“We're not doing it Jones's way tonight.” Charlie stared at the tray with enlarged, bloodshot eyes before picking it up and hurling the whole thing against the wall. Glass shattered to the floor and a spray of champagne alighted on Cordelia's face. Cordelia had seen Charlie like this only once before, the day their father died, when he had followed her up to the third floor of Dogwood with a stare that seemed to intend her harm. He was like that now, except even less in control of himself, and it sent a shudder down her spine. “I'm in charge, and I don't want to play Jones's little chess games tonight.”

Just then there was a light knock on the door, and both Grey siblings turned slowly. When Cordelia saw Letty, her face as pale as the moon, she raised her finger to her lips so that she would know not to say anything that might inflame Charlie. A moment of still quiet followed, and Cordelia's heart rate began to slow, and she thought maybe now that Charlie had broken something he would calm down enough that she could talk some sense into him. But the phone rang, cutting into the silence, and he ripped the receiver from its cradle.

“Who is it?” he snarled.

Cordelia waited, her eyes wide and dark, to see what Charlie would say. But she knew pretty quickly from the way his face distorted in anger that it wasn't going to be pretty. “I won't negotiate with you,” he screamed. “I won't negotiate with you!” He repeated himself three times, his voice louder and faster with each iteration, and then he ripped the phone from the wall and threw that across the desk, too.