LIES AND DECEPTION

CH 2

United States, 1959

Seven days earlier

The solid oak doors of Merrimont Public Bank hovered in front of Patience’s eyes. She tried to block out the traffic, the noise of the crowd, and focus on them. She was waiting for a balding forty-year-old man in a brown suit—ill-fitting as well, according to the photograph his wife had provided Patience—to come out of the door.

She had been waiting nearly an hour outside of his workplace. The man often stayed late—again according to his wife, a scrawny, fox-faced woman with dyed blonde hair and makeup barely concealing the cracks at the edges of her eyes. And if the woman was right, he would come out, get into his car, and drive to see his mistress, a woman who worked at the bank he went to, a young lady with scarlet hair and an actress’s smile that would always flirt and stare at him coquettishly under long lashes whenever he came in.

Patience would bet half her salary—inasmuch as it was, barely enough to live on—that he would come out two hours later, get in his car, and drive straight home. The only reality his wife would have to confront was the one that her husband was slowly but surely becoming distant from her.

Patience rested her cheek on the steering wheel and blinked slowly. Drowsiness was starting to creep into the edges of her consciousness. For the third time that day, she cursed her decision not to have a second cup of coffee before she headed out the door. With how poorly she always slept, an extra cup was always a good idea.

The leather of the steering wheel felt good against her face. The sound of the crowd faded away into a dull buzz, and the honks and rattles of the cars seemed a thousand miles away. In a way, it was nice. Being with so many people. Surrounded by chatter and laughter, hearing the clack of high-heeled shoes on the sidewalk… so much better than sitting in her cold, empty apartment, staring at the ceiling, trying to sleep with the oppressive silence almost deafening around her.

“Hey! Hey, lady!”

The sudden voice jerked Patience out of her doze. She yanked her head up to see a man in suspenders and a dirty look on his face standing outside her car.

“You’ve been hea' nearly an hour. You’re starting to block traffic. Either get outta the car and do what you need to do, or beat it.”

She noticed that the space up ahead where the errant husband had parked his car was empty. Cursing to herself, she started her car and reversed.

***

Later, after all was said and done and a disappointed wife was left sobbing in the foyer, Patience came home exhausted and weary, but seventy dollars richer. It was night by the time she came home to her small rented apartment, and the building was dark and empty.

Patience took the elevator and leaned her head against the faded wood as, with an audible groan, it began its journey upward.

The apartment building she lived in was an ancient horror with peeling wallpaper, elevators that didn’t work half the time, and a hideous green rug the color of pea soup. She had always thought of private investigators as working out of polished offices with fancy lettering spelling out their name above the door, but five months living in this hellhole cleared that misconception up quite a bit. It was half struggling to pay her rent and half chasing cheating spouses.

She felt bitterness well up in her. This wasn’t what she was supposed to be doing. This wasn’t the reason she had fought and scrounged her way through university to get her hands on a criminal justice degree. This wasn’t the reason she sold her childhood home and moved out of the town she had known all her life, only to come to a dirty, gray, dingy city crawling with the worst of the worst with barely more than her shoes and the criminal justice degree clutched in her right hand.

The elevator reached its destination with a groan, and Patience stepped out. The hallway was empty. Her heels thumped quietly on the hideous green rug as she continued to her room, and when she opened it, she was so exhausted she practically fell inward.

The silence there settled over her head like dust. All she could hear was her breaths, coming in harsh and quiet but so loud in the empty room.

She picked herself up and slammed the door shut, then kicked off her shoes as she headed for the bedroom. She couldn’t afford much what with rent and all, but had managed to pony up enough for a cracked table and two wooden chairs in the “kitchen”. A beaten-up sofa and chipped coffee table made its home in the living room.

Patience rolled onto the bed, still in her work clothes, and thank god she was tired enough to fall right to sleep. She’d had too many sleepless nights to afford another one.

***

By the time the phone call came she was well used to suspicious spouses and worried parents, and answered it with an “Office of Patience Winslow, how can I help you?”

She was also well used to the quavering sort of voice on the other end. “You’re a pr—a private investigator?”

”Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you…can you…I would have contacted another investigator, but I thought…since you’re a woman, perhaps you would understand…”

“Ma’am, I can investigate if your husband is—“

“Not my husband. My daughter. She’s…she’s…gone. She was working for—for—“ the woman’s voice dissolved into sobs.

Her interest piqued, Patience stayed silent, waiting for her to go on.

“Could you—could you meet me at Café Bellanta on Fifth Avenue? In about half an hour? I would be wary to—to tell you this over the phone—”

“Absolutely.” When Patience hung up, her heart was thumping in frightened anticipation.

She took the time to fix herself in the mirror, straightening her clothes and brushing her unruly hair behind her prominent widow's peak—she had wavy, mousy brown hair that perpetually looked as if she had gotten out of bed. It was long enough to reach her mid-back, shining a rich chestnut in the dim light of the window coming into the bathroom.

Patience had thin, pink lips, and a smattering of freckles across her pale cheeks. She had a small, straight nose and a gentle, heart-shaped face. Her eyes were pale green, the color of light clover. She had gotten them from her father—the only beautiful thing about him, her mother had teased. But they never were like her father’s twinkling, mirthful eyes—hers had dark bags under them, her eyelids permanently drooping.

Patience was more cute than attractive—which she sorely regretted, as it made her look as if she were in her early teens. People never took her seriously.

She was a short girl, but not stout by any means—she found herself skipping meals to pay for utilities, and was underweight enough so that her ribs poked out beneath her breasts.

Patience took another deep breath and raked her eyes over herself in the mirror. Her hair was still a little messy, and she could do with some makeup to obscure the shadows under her eyes, but she was presentable, at least. Her pencil skirt was a little rumpled, but her white lace blouse was neatly ironed, with a crisp navy bow at the neckline.

On her way out the door, she paused by the photo that was standing by the door. It was of a young couple, a freckled woman with sparkling eyes and wavy hair holding a baby in her arms, and beside her, a well-dressed young man, his hair neatly combed under a constable’s cap, sitting beside her and smiling into the camera.

Patience brushed a kiss onto the pad of her thumb and pressed it onto the surface of the faded photograph.

Then she was out the door.

***

Café Bellanta was a small, run-down café in the industrial part of Garland City. It was where workers’ wives stopped on the way to meet their husbands, and where poor schoolchildren nervously met their sweethearts.

It had a balcony overgrown with ivy over a stone patio, where dented metal chairs and small, one-legged tables were scattered.

The only patrons were a fusty-looking old man in a heavy coat who was sipping coffee with a newspaper in his other hand, and what looked to be a woman in a long red button-up coat, a cloche hat perched precariously on her head.

Patience carefully made her way over to the table and took a seat opposite her. “Madam?” she ventured.

The woman lifted her head, and Patience caught sight of her face for the first time.

She was not old—not even middle-aged, with large, pretty brown eyes and red bow-lips. Her hair was red and in loose ringlets, only a few stray curls escaping from her hat.

But her face…it was ages older than the rest of her. Stress and worry lines gathered on the edges of her mouth, and there were bags under her eyes. Her brows were drawn together in a permanent frown. She looked as if she had aged fifty years in a week.

“Patience Winslow?”

“Yes. And you?”

The woman took the handle of her teacup in her trembling white glove and raised it to her lips. “My name is Flora Haywood.”

“What use do you have for my services, Madam Haywood?”

Madam Haywood fell into silence again, and Patience took the time to order herself a pastry and a cup of coffee.

When the waiter walked off, the woman leaned forward and spoke, her voice quavering. “I want you to find my daughter, Caroline.”

A missing person? This was new and exciting.

Madam Haywood handed over a faded photograph, of a young woman with smooth blonde hair, in a modest puffed-sleeve dress, sitting at a table with her chin propped up on her hand and a shy smile on her face. Patience could see the resemblance between other and daughter, the elegant sweep of her chin and her bow-shaped lips. But while the daughter looked as young and vibrant as could be, the mother was exhausted and damaged by premature worry, her eyes drooping and mouth permanently downturned.

“Could you tell me circumstances of her disappearance?” Patience questioned, trying to keep the growing interest out of her voice.

Madam Haywood turned her gaze down. “The reason why—the reason why I contacted you was because, my daughter, before she disappeared, she was involved in—indecent things. I was afraid, perhaps, a male investigator might have refused to—”

“It’s fine, Ma’am,” said Patience gently, suspecting quite well what the “indecent things” were.

It would have been hard enough for the girl’s mother to admit her daughter was involved in prostitution.

“Please, go on. How did she disappear?”

“She was involved with some…unsavory people before she vanished.” Madam Haywood met her gaze again, and her voice fell to a whisper. “I suspect they were… they were… mafioso.”

The table lapsed into silence.

Patience’s mind was whirring and rejoicing. This was it. The break she had been hoping for. The whole reason she had become a private investigator…

As her mind worked overtime, the waiter brought her a Danish and a watery cup of tea. As she bit into her stale pastry, Patience watched as Madam Haywood brought out a creased, crumpled piece of paper.

“Before she disappeared, my Caroline gave me this,” she said, unfolding it and sliding it across the table. “She said she was fearing for her life. This place isn’t on any of the official maps…”

Patience squinted at the faded piece of paper. It was roughly drawn, labeled with directions—on the city limits, near the river, a large spot that she had previously thought to have been wilderness but was filled with blocky, hastily scribbled buildings.

“Do you think she is being kept here?” Patience asked lowly.

“I don’t know. Oh god—I don’t know!” Madam Haywood’s voice erupted in a heavy sob, and she reached across to grip Patience’s arm. “Please find her, Miss Winslow! Find my little girl! She’s all I have, after her father left us—Please, please find her!”

“I’ll do everything I can, Madam Haywood,” said Patience firmly, gripping the woman’s trembling hands in her own. “I promise.”

***

The electric light flickered in the shabby inside of the apartment, illuminating the scuffed hardwood floors. Patience’s nightgown trailed over it as she paced back and forth, fist pressed against her chin.

The table in front of her was strewn with photographs and papers, outlining a complex network of relationships—shady, unofficial, suspected connections between the rough men whose mugshots were on her table. Almost like…

A spiderweb.

On the end of one finger, torn with nail-chewing, she traced from the row of photographs to the next tier, where there were much fewer, and finally the last one, where only three paragraphs remained.

One was blurry, showing two men talking on a street corner, their coat hems turned up to shield half their faces. The first one had his hair concealed by a hat, but one could faintly make out the hatefully curled mouth and downturned lips. He was standing tensely, legs spread slightly in subtle intimidation.

The other man had his back turned to the camera, and from under his hat, you could faintly make out the edge of loosely curled blonde hair. His head was bowed, and his body was relaxed, shoulders slumped in reassuring calmness. From his posture, one would think he was merely speaking to a friend he had met on the street. It was altogether an unremarkable photo, except for the fact that the other man had never been seen again.

In the next photo, the figure of the blond man was clearer, though too distant to make out many details of his face. He was behind a table in a courtroom, posture calm and attentive. He was dressed in a well-tailored black suit, his blond hair nicely styled, mouth in an impassive line and eyes staring coolly ahead.

And the last one was a mugshot of the man in both photos, back when he was a young man, fresh off the boat in Garland City. His hair was ruffled and unkempt, and a dark bruise stained his fair cheekbone. But the lines of his face were softer, more boyish, with remnants of youth softening his cheeks and chin.

He couldn’t have been older than fourteen. He had an unreadable expression, somehow similar to the adult sitting in the courtroom, placid and disarming, as if he was having a family photograph taken, instead of a mugshot. He was a truly adorable youth, with delicately curled blond hair, full lips, and big, innocent eyes framed by long eyelashes. Like a little cherub.

A devil in angel’s clothing, Patience thought bitterly. She clenched a fist, staring at the photo with trembling eyes.

And now here he was. Head of the massively dangerous and influential Borghese crime family. From what she could figure out, they had a big slice of the prostitution and gambling parts of Garland City, and were on very good terms with some renowned politicians. From tracing influential arrests to the next criminal down the line, and from that, exhaustively trawling records of arrests in newspaper articles at the Garland Public Library, Patience had zeroed in on the man she knew was behind it all. An influential and yet shadowy figure, innocuous in the public view and yet with the corners of his cobweb stretching from the end of the city to the other.

You just wait, Leonardo Borghese. You’ll spend the rest of your days rotting in prison…if I don’t get to you first.

That night she could not sleep, as was normal for her. She laid awake, her body wracked by tiredness but unable to drift off, silent in loneliness and bitterness. She imagined the face of Leonardo Borghese, as an adult, then as a young man, both very different, but similar in the veiled cruelty their blue eyes held.

She stared at the ceiling, arms spread out and eyes sunken and bleak. Her mind was anxious and whirling until the sun began to peek above the horizon. Then she drifted off into an uneasy doze, and dreamed of blood on her bare feet, and dinner on the table, and the scent of gunpowder in the air, pungent and smoky.