The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

Chapter Twenty-Three





NEW YORK COUNTY COURTHOUSE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1930



RITZI fumbled with her cigarette. She dropped it. Struggled to get it inside the silver holder. And dropped it again. “Shit.”

“Need a light?” William Klein leaned against the wall a few yards away, watching her.

“No.” Ritzi struck her lighter. It didn’t catch, so she struck it again.

He sauntered toward her, hands in his pockets. “Give that to me. You’ll burn yourself.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“That’s not what you said last time we talked.” Klein took the lighter from her. A bright yellow flame hopped up, and he cupped it in his palm until it rose higher, and then he lit her cigarette.

“What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, I’d guess.” He drew a registered envelope from inside his coat pocket and waved it at her. “Summons.”

Ritzi tried to inhale deeply, but her ribs strained against the new corset. She coughed until her eyes stung.

“You gotta pull yourself together, Ritz. You go in there like that, and they’ll see you for what you are.”

“Which is?”

“Scared.”

Ritzi moved away from him and sat on the bench. She crossed her legs and rocked her foot with a nervous twitch. “I am scared.”

“They can’t know that.” Klein sat next to her and stretched an arm behind her on the bench.

“Don’t touch me.”

She gave him such a withering look that he shrank back. But after a moment, he lowered his voice and moved toward her ear. “Our agreement still stands?”

“Yes.”

“As far as they’re concerned, we’re together?”

Ritzi nodded.

“Then you need to trust me.”

She was about to tell him exactly what she thought of that suggestion when the double mahogany doors across from them swung open with a clang, revealing a large conference room filled with middle-aged men wearing expensive suits and dour expressions.


A clerk stepped into the hall. “Sally Lou Ritz?”

She straightened on the bench. “Yes?”

“We’re ready for your testimony.”

William Klein gave Ritzi a broad and deceptively kind smile. He cupped her face in his hands before she could protest and kissed her sensually in full view of the deposition room. “I’ll be right here, sweetheart,” he said, loud enough for all to hear.

Ritzi slid away with a blush and followed the clerk through the double doors. He pulled them shut and motioned toward a leather armchair at the end of a long conference table. “Have a seat, please.”

Half of the men held cigarettes or cigars, and the room stank of smoke and musty aftershave. Ritzi settled into the chair, searching for a position where the corset didn’t dig into her skin or make her lightheaded. Effective as the contraption was, it wasn’t made for sitting. She felt hot. And sick to her stomach.

“I’m District Attorney Thomas Crain,” said a man at the other end of the table. At one time, he’d been tall and broad shouldered and most likely very attractive. But Crain now had the tired look of a man well past his prime. His eyes were glassy and his hair gray, and purple veins stretched across the end of his nose. His left hand trembled whenever he lifted it from the table. “I will be taking your testimony today.”

A King James Bible lay on the table before her, and Crain instructed her to lay her right hand over it.

“Do you understand why you’ve been called before the court today, Miss Ritz?”

“Yes.”

“And do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

Ritzi felt the embossed letters of the Bible beneath the pads of her fingers. She pressed her hand against the leather and silently repented. Her father had a Bible just like this. So did her husband. She’d broken many promises made over those Bibles—why not this one as well? “I do.”

“Very good. Will you please state your name for the court?”

“Sally Lou Ritz.” She’d expected to give testimony in a large courtroom under theatrical circumstances. Instead, the jurors sat along the wall in plush leather chairs and the magistrate and a handful of lawyers were spread along each side of the table beside her.

“Is that your true and given name?”

Like hell. “It is.”

“What is your occupation, Miss Ritz?”

“I’m an actress.”

Someone in the room snorted.

Crain consulted the file before him. “This says you’re a showgirl in the production Ladies All.”

“I sing. I dance. I act.”

Ritzi glanced around the room. She was the only woman present. The judge, the four attorneys, and all twenty members of the grand jury were male. All white. All in suits. All staring at her. She was suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin. Every curve. Her lipstick. Her perfume. She wished she’d worn a high-necked dress. She wished she hadn’t come.

Crain sat with his hands folded together on the table. The skeptical slant of his eyebrows suggested that he was less than convinced about the legitimacy of her career. “Can you state for the court the last time that you saw Justice Crater?”

“August sixth.”

“And what were the circumstances of your visit?”

“I had dinner with the judge and William Klein.”

Thomas Crain inspected his notes. “How did you know Justice Crater?”

Instead of addressing Crain, she turned to the row of jurors. She gave them an innocent shrug and a few carefully chosen words. “Judge Crater was a regular on the theater scene. He often attended shows with his wife and with friends.”

“Will you please walk us through the events of August sixth?”

Ritzi cleared her throat. “There isn’t much to tell. William and I were having dinner at Billy Haas’s Chophouse—”

Thomas Crain flipped through a stack of papers on the table. “William Klein, the attorney for the Schubert Theater Association? The two of you are romancially involved?”

“Yes. We’re dating.” The word felt wrong in her mouth, and she struggled not to curl her lip in distaste.

“Continue.”

She told the story. Again. The same version she had recounted to Detective Simon. The same version she had silently rehearsed in the days after Crater disappeared. After that, the questions continued for some time. Thomas Crain grilled her on the minutest details of that evening. What Crater wore. What he had for dinner. Their conversation. When they parted ways that evening. She did her best to look relaxed. To smile. Ritzi shifted her gaze from Crain to the judge to the jurors. She did not swing her foot or play with her hair or pick at her fingernails. The questions were answered plainly and quickly, but she didn’t offer additional information.

“Do you recall which direction Judge Crater’s cab went?” Crain asked.

“No.” Ritzi smiled. She wasn’t so easily fooled. “As I told Detective Simon when he came to interview me—I’m sure you have a transcript of that conversation in your notes—I didn’t actually watch Joseph Crater get into a cab. I assume he did, but I can’t be certain.”

“I see. And have you had any contact with him since?”

Not the sort I can discuss amongst men. “None whatsoever.”

Crain consulted his notes. “Is there anything else you would like to add, Miss Ritz?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you are free to go.”

Ritzi pushed her chair back, picked her purse off the floor, and smoothed the front of her dress. She could feel the gaze of twenty-five men on her as she left the room. When she stepped into the long marble hallway, her hands began to tremble, and she clenched them to her side to steady them.

Klein stepped in front of the still-open door and gave her a quick hug, his face nuzzled against her cheek. “That was quick,” he whispered.

“For you perhaps.”

The clerk stepped into the hall and called, “William Klein.”

“Looks like I’m up.” He made a show of kissing her forehead and then followed the clerk inside.

Ritzi waited until the doors were closed and then rushed down the hall, away from the prying questions of Thomas Crain.