The Girl in the Glass

HERE'S A CLUE

Living with Schell often made me forget that the country was suffering the stupidity of Prohibition, for he had an endless supply of alcohol and not the bathtub swill that Grace served at the Paradise. Once every few months, he and Antony would drive over to the docks in Hoboken, New Jersey, and visit a particular longshoreman named Gallagher. It never failed that they would return with a stash of European champagne, wine, and liquor. To celebrate our successful bamboozlement of the Barneses and their guests, Schell had pulled, from some secret compartment in his room, two bottles of French cognac. We all crowded into the Bugatorium, and the party took wing.

That night my glass was refilled with each round, and I was not held to my usual one-drink limit. My role had somehow changed. I no longer felt like an apprentice but as a full partner in the sйance operation, on equal footing with Schell and Antony. I could only think this was due to the presence of Isabel, looking beautiful in Morgan's paisley wrap. As simpleminded as it sounds, I had my arm around a woman and a drink in my hand, and I mistakenly thought as I'm sure many have, What, if not this, is evidence of being a man in the great United States?

My participation in the conversation was no longer merely to ask questions, to sit back and listen, to act the student, so I held forth on my own personal ideas as to the ultimate moral nature of the confidence scheme. Everyone was in a good mood, though, and when I went on too long, the others simply turned away and smaller conversations broke out around my own monologue. Eventually Antony said, "Kid, give it a rest," and I laughed. Isabel did too, and kissed me on the cheek. I felt as though I had made some definitive move toward adulthood.

Schell recounted the goings-on at the Barnes mansion for Morgan and Isabel; the whole affair and how it played out-our entrance, the trunk, the guests, etc. Although Isabel nodded with interest, I knew that privately she disapproved of our con every step of the way. Morgan had a beatific smile on her face and appeared to hang on Schell's every word. When Schell got to the part where Doctor Greaves leaped out of his seat to rescue Mrs. Barnes and I tripped him, Antony said, "That guy had a doodlebug in his ass."

Vonda broke in then and said, "Oh, yeah, you mean the guy in the photo."

Schell stopped speaking and turned to her. "What guy in the photo?" he asked.

"The joker sitting across from where I appeared, the one with the beard and the little round glasses?" she said. She made circles with her forefingers and thumbs and brought them up to her eyes.

"The photo, though…," I said.

"Right back there," said Vonda, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. "On that table in the corner. I looked at it when I came in."

I went to the table in question and lifted the photo we'd retrieved from Parks's house the night he was murdered. As I walked back toward where the others were gathered around the coffee table, I studied it but saw no sign of Dr. Greaves. "I don't see him here," I said.

Vonda reached out for it. "Here," she said, "I'll show you." She took the picture from me and held it up to the light. She looked at it for a moment and then began scraping away the stains on its glass with her long, red thumbnail. "What is this crap?" she asked.

"You see that guy right there?" said Antony. He leaned over from where he sat next to her on the couch and pointed.

"Yeah?" she said.

"That crap is his blood."

"Christ, why didn't you tell me?" She rubbed the residue off her nail onto a napkin on the table. "That's disgusting."

"But where's the good doctor?" asked Schell.

"There's the little pissant, right there," said Vonda, pointing now with her nail but not touching the glass. "Give that guy a beard and a pair of those goofy librarian specs, think of him as a few years older, and I'll bet you a sawbuck that's him."

Schell reached across the table, keeping an eye on the figure Vonda pointed to, and took the framed photo from her. He brought it up close to his eyes, a moment passed, and then he nodded. "You know, I think you're right," he said.

"I know I'm right," said Vonda.

"A sawbuck it is then," said Schell. He passed the photo to me, and I looked closely at the man they had singled out. Vonda was right, but had she said nothing I'd not have noticed it. There was Greaves, dressed in a suit as were the other subjects of the picture, standing a few feet behind Parks in the group of a dozen or so men.

"Let me have your knife," I said to Schell. He took it out, opened it, and handed it to me. I turned the picture frame over and, using the blade, lifted the thin nails that held the photo and mat in place behind the glass. I flipped the frame over and let the photo fall out onto my lap. After handing the knife to Isabel, I placed the blood-splattered frame and the mat on the table, picked up the photo, and studied it more closely.

"Look there," said Morgan, pointing, "on the back."

I turned the picture over, and there on the lower left-hand side, written in pencil was the date, December 23, 1925. Beneath that were the words Cold Spring Harbor followed by the letters ERO.

"Cold Spring Harbor's a town, we know that," I said, "but E-RO, what's that?"

"How do you know they're initials and not a name, Ero?" asked Morgan.

"You might be right, but they're capitalized, which leads me to believe they're initials, each standing for its own word, perhaps the name of the group or club to which all of these men gathered in the photo belong."

"Did you ever hear of anybody called Ero?" asked Antony.

"No," said Vonda, "but I never heard of anybody called Antony Cleopatra either."

"Maybe it's a picture from a Christmas party," said Isabel.

"That'd make sense, considering the date," said Schell. "If I'm not mistaken, a number of the men have drinks in their hands."

"And they're not lined up as if for an official shot," I added, "but seem to have been milling around informally when someone interrupted and said, 'Say cheese!'"

"I think this is a job for The Worm," said Schell. "I'll call the library first thing in the morning."

"The Worm?" asked Morgan, and the conversation moved off in another direction with Schell and Antony telling tales about the incredible memory and equally incredible power to annoy of Emmet Brogan.

The cognac as well as the conversation continued to flow, and before long, the sudden discovery of my own inebriation made me content to again simply sit back, listen, and revel in the sense of the event as a kind of family gathering. Isabel, who was well lit herself, told the ghost story about the silver mine. I translated when it was necessary and was amazed at Schell's reaction to it. Whereas I'd have expected him to adopt a kind of sneering skepticism in the face of a true tale of spirits, he seemed genuinely interested. When she was done recounting the details, he even went so far as to say, "from my experience with the ghost of Charlotte Barnes, I know how you must have felt." Antony and I looked at each other in reaction to Schell's statement, both of us wondering if some change had begun in the boss as a result of our investigation.

There came a time later when, even though the conversation droned on, I was more interested in the butterflies, their flight patterns, and the thought of the fleeting nature of their lives. I must have dozed off for a little while then, because when I awoke, it was to the strains of a duet of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," being sung by Antony and Morgan. Schell, cigarette clamped at the corner of his lips, was keeping the rhythm by patting his hands on the table, Isabel was humming the background harmony, and Vonda was passed out, her mouth open and an orange theope perched on her nose.

I didn't even remember going to bed but found myself there when I woke, close to noon. Isabel had already gotten up. Feeling a little shaky, I crawled out of bed and threw on my robe. Upon entering the kitchen, I found them all gathered again, save for Schell. The only verbal welcome I got was an "Hola," from Isabel. The others smiled and nodded but looked altogether bedraggled.

"Coffee?" I asked.

"Forget the coffee, kid. It's hair-of-the dog-time," said Antony.

Then I noticed the two open champagne bottles on the table. I took a seat, Morgan passed me an empty flute, and Vonda poured. "Takes the edge off," she said as the bubbles rose in the glass.

I was just going to ask where Schell was when he came into the kitchen. He took his seat and reached for the bottle. Filling his glass with one hand, he held up the other, waving a slip of paper. "That was Emmet just getting back to me," he said. "He does fast work. I called him at eight this morning. He said that the initials ERO, and he thinks they're most definitely initials, in conjunction with the town of Cold Spring Harbor, refer to the"-here Schell consulted the slip of paper again-"Eugenics Record Office."

"What's that?" asked Antony.

"Never heard of it," said Schell. "But Emmet said the study of eugenics has to do with inherited traits, like in Darwin or, more precisely, Mendel. He's going to look into it more deeply and call back later."

That afternoon, Schell, Antony, Vonda, and Morgan took off in the Cord to drop Vonda at the train station and then to take Morgan shopping for a few things that were not in the boxes we had been able to retrieve from the cabin. Isabel couldn't go, as it was still uncertain to the police if she'd been kidnapped or was a suspect in connection with Parks's murder. Even though there were no photographs of her, it was too chancy for her to leave the house yet.

She and I stayed home and lolled on the couch in the living room, talking, kissing, napping. At about two o'clock, the phone in the office rang, and I went to answer it.

"Is Tommy there?" asked the voice of The Worm.

"He's not here, Mr. Brogan."

"How about tall, smart, and handsome?" he asked.

"Antony?" I said. "He's out too."

"Who's this, the swami kid?"

"Yes," I said.

"Okay, kid, it's going to have to be you, because I don't know when I'm going to have a chance to call back. Listen good. Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?"

I sat down at Schell's desk and lifted a pen. "I'm ready," I said.

"First, take down this name. The guy's in Huntington and has written a recent article, not too complimentary, about the ERO. He used to work there…a doctor, Manfred Stintson." He gave me less than two seconds and asked, "Got it?"

I was still writing when I said, "Yeah."

"Well, Schell asked me about the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor. Your old man has a knack for sniffing out the shit, 'cause this one stinks like there's no tomorrow."

He paused for a moment, and when he began speaking again, he sounded agitated, almost angry. "Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, founded in 1910 by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin. The main purpose was to study heredity in relation to the scientific work of Mendel. It's all about breeding, and it's all about breeding the perfect race. They started by tracing the heredity of anomalies like your buddies on the midway down in Coney-giants, dwarfs, six-finger guys, you know. Then they got into twins and albinos, imbeciles, any trait that could be traced back generations. Hey, I'll give you a hundred guesses what the model was for perfection."

"I've no idea," I said.

"Here's a clue. All of the people who support this have a heritage from northern Europe. We're talking Anglo-Saxon, white, blue eyes, get it? And there were and are some very powerful people behind this. The initial money came from the fortune of E. H. Harriman, to the tune of eleven million dollars. You also have donations from Carnegie and Rockefeller. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, moneymen like Prescott Bush. All were or are solid supporters of this crackpottery. And what is it they support? A beating back of the rising tide of, as they put it, 'feeblemindedness'; compulsory sterilization for those of less marked intelligence; distinct separation of the races; and stricter immigration and naturalization laws to keep the likes of you and also those of southern European extraction from sullying the lineage of the founders of the great USA. As far as these guys are concerned, the very Depression itself was caused by hereditary malcontents, imbeciles, and the shiftless masses draining the life from our culture. And kid, please tell me you realize that perfection is in the eye of the beholder."

I didn't understand that he actually wanted an answer, but when he didn't continue, I snapped to and said, "Certainly."

"Shiftlessness, by the way, is something these doctors at the ERO can apparently score for. Also things like 'musical intelligence.' That's not too subjective a determination is it? Christ, to normal society, I'm as shiftless as they come. I could see these guys wanting to make me a castrati. Can you imagine how annoying I'd be if my voice was even higher? This shit's everywhere, in school textbooks, in church sermons that say only the best should marry the best, in Congress, where the real idiots are passing laws to put this plan in place. Through the efforts of these arbiters of humanity, twenty-some-odd states have mandatory laws concerning the sterilization of anyone they consider to be of subpar intelligence. There's even talk of euthanasia. You know what that means? Who needs the fucking Ku Klux Klan when you've got these guys? This very year, the International Congress of Eugenics met, and, baby, they've got plans for you. Are you with me, kid, are you with me?"

"I'm here," I said.

"I'm going to give you a little prophecy from the illuminated mind of The Worm. Follow me on this. You think you've got it bad, well you do. Mexicans are seen as a poison in the bloodstream of true America. You're a shiftless and thieving lot. That goes without saying, and that's the main reason they want to round you all up and send you back. It's political, it's social, but they pretend it's a medical condition. But consider the Jews, they have none other than Henry Ford on their keisters. Henry's a major race baiter. In the newspaper he owns out in Deerborn, Michigan, he published a piece called 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' The bottom line: Jews need to be eradicated. He's spreading this stuff all over Europe as well. The Germans, who he does scads of business with, are loving the hell out of him. Take the fact that in his autobiography he claims to have gotten the concept for the assembly line from slaughterhouses and put that together with the money and influence these fools have, their desire to sweep humanity clean of anyone who doesn't look or think like them, and that equals dark days ahead, my young swami. The Worm has spoken."

The receiver went dead. My head was swimming, not only from the cyclone of Emmet's diatribe but also from its implications. A strange emotion filled me, but I was too stunned to place it. I went back into the living room and took my seat on the couch next to Isabel. I put my arms around her and held her tightly, closing my eyes. It came to me then that what I felt, like a snowball lodged in my chest slowly melting into my system, was fear. I felt as fragile as a butterfly, and no matter how tightly I held on to Isabel, I couldn't help but see, in my mind's eye, the image of a giant shoe, above me, descending.