Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [54]
He said quietly, “What if I told you I would never kill any living creature, not even the lowliest moth.”
“But Sammy was so plausible.”
“Aye, Sammy is always that. And many’s the time I’ve regretted it. We swore when we were little lads we would never let each other down. ‘Thick and thin’ was what we said. And we’ve both kept that promise.”
He stared sadly at her and then said, “He told you how we ran from the police? I didn’t want to believe it was Sammy, my friend who had done those murders, but now I know it’s true. He came to the bar yesterday afternoon full of wild talk, he told me what he’d said to you and I was afraid for you. I followed him from bar to bar, dance hall to dance hall. I saw him with a girl, but then I lost him, he just disappeared. And now this. He’s insane,” he said, his gray eyes full of bitter disillusionment. He held out his hand and said, “Please believe me, Francie. Sammy is the killer, not me.”
“Oh, of course I believe you, Josh. I’ll always believe you,” she cried, her young face glowing with love.
He put his arms around her, kissing her hair, her eyes, her lips. “You look exhausted,” he said tenderly, “and I’ll bet you’ve not eaten. Let’s go to a café.”
As she walked down the stairs on Josh’s arm all thoughts of Sammy and the murder disappeared into the back of her mind like a bad dream. She was so relieved and happy she didn’t even notice the burly, red-faced man in the derby hat detach himself from the crowd outside the Venus Dance Hall and follow them at a discreet distance down Pacific Avenue.
And she didn’t know either that Sammy Morris heard them leave. He waited, his ear against the door of his room, until their footsteps disappeared. Then he ran quickly up the half dozen steps into Francie’s room. A look of bitterness and despair crossed his face and he put his hands to his eyes to shut out the sight of the rumpled bed where they had lain together, and at the newspaper with its terrible headline tossed carelessly on the floor as though it didn’t even matter. He fingered the bowie knife in his pocket, thinking of them lying together in the bed, his sick mind inflamed with rage and jealousy, and then he turned and stalked from the room.
Harmon Harrison and his handsome young son, Harry, walked up the steps into the Grand Opera House near Mission Street. The season had started badly, but tonight the Metropolitan was redeeming itself with a performance of Carmen featuring the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso as Don José, and everyone who was anyone in San Francisco was there. Harmon waved and nodded to their friends as he and Harry took their places in their box. The orchestra struck up the overture, the enormous crystal chandeliers dimmed, and the curtain slowly rose. With a rustle of anticipation the glittering audience settled down to hear the voice of the century in one of his most famous roles.
But even though the performance was magical, Harmon could not concentrate. He could not get his daughter out of his mind. He told himself that all women were the same, that Francie was just like his own whore of a mother, the woman from Maloney’s Cat House, Virginia City. The memory of her burned him like hot coals; his doctors had told him he had developed ulcers and that his blood pressure was too high. They said he should relax and forget all about his worries but he could not. His fingers drummed nervously on the burgundy velvet of the chair arm while his eyes darted restlessly to and fro across the shadowy audience, looking to see if people were watching him, if they were gossiping about him and his slut of a daughter.
He stared at his son. Harry was leaning forward in his chair, his chin in his hands, listening to the great tenor, and Harmon vowed that nothing would ever sully his boy’s reputation. He would not rest until he had locked Francesca behind the bars of the state asylum, where she could never ever tarnish the Harrison name again.
After the performance he took Harry to Signore Caruso’s champagne reception