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Page 5.

Kate found temporary employment with a well-to-do family who simply adored her because she was efficient, quiet, and so very pleasant. She had done this before, when she and Tom were short of money and his gambling was driving up debts. It was a sweet system, really, and she saw great potential to milk it. Once you got in—meaning, one family used you for a week or two as a temporary domestic, usually because a prized regular girl was sick or visiting her dying mother out of town, once you had that foot in the door, there was a grapevine among other wealthy ladies in town. If you were good—and Kate, when she put her mind to it, was among the best, because she knew it would only be for a week or two, and there was money to be made—if you were good, you had no end of work. You bounced from one home to the next, always changing scenery, never bored. Kate started looking for opportunities, and she discovered a new sideline for which she had a remarkable talent. It was called blackmail, and it was a lot more lucrative and less risky than robbing strangers on trains.

Tom was in a funk. When he got like this, she usually had him cool off a while, just hang around and maybe stew over some long, slow beers in the city’s many taverns while she made a little honest money as a nanny or a domestic and took whatever she could quietly steal out the back door. A silver tea service might not be missed for months until the next scheduled session when all the maids in a wealthy house gathered in that room to open the cupboards and have a polishing party—only to discover, with a shriek, that someone had made off with the ornate centerpieces. Then they might rack their brains over who had worked there the past few months, and when this might have happened, and eventually would give up, thinking maybe the pieces had never existed in the first place and it was all in their imagination. A thorough scouring of all the pawn shops and dealers for a hundred miles around might turn up some of the pieces, which had fetched twenty or fifty or a hundred dollars or more. But nobody in the pawn shop would remember who had sold them. Some young man with a slightly bulbous head and dark hair. Or was it a rather plain young woman with burning eyes?

Kate thought a lot about her newly discovered talent for blackmail, but didn’t tell Tom about it. Not yet. Not only was she withholding money from him, afraid he’d gamble it away, but now she withheld her thoughts. Tom was changing on her, and not for the good. The distance between them grew more out of him than from her.

The discovery came to her one day when she was dusting in a wealthy home in Chicago, and she spied a curious thing. Down the hall, in an alcove framed by bay windows, another young maid stood, also dusting. Thea was a modestly attractive girl of twenty. Kate knew of her, but had never exchanged more than a hello or goodbye with her. Thea did not appear to know Kate was watching from afar as the master of the house appeared behind her. He was a man of 50, a lawyer and partner in a big firm, with lots of money. His wife was an adorable blonde angel with beautiful blue eyes and a girlish mouth, and Kate could not imagine what her husband saw in other women. The master was not a handsome man at all, but a chubby toad with little short arms and no neck, who wore collars that rose to his ears. He had a wide, round head and was balding, and had fleshy lips that fairly reeked of his cheap appetites. His eyes fairly craned out on stalks in his hunger for forbidden fruits. His cultured wife, meanwhile, kept up a brave smile, and ushered their children through piano lessons, horseback riding, ballet, and other cultured skills, while her husband pursued depravities right under her roof.

As Kate watched, Thea kept dusting, but her pace changed. It was obvious she knew who was behind her, and what was coming next. The master came directly up behind her. He looked left and right but, in his impatience, he didn’t see Kate watching from afar. He stood very close behind the girl for a few moments. She stopped dusting, and they seemed almost like one person. Kate watched him hand her a paper dollar, which she hid in her skirt. Then he stood behind her, feeling her body up and down. He handed her another bill, which she tucked away in an economy of motions. She leaned forward over a table. He lifted her skirts just enough, and pressed against her. He took her from behind in quick, rough, jerky motions. When he was done, he flung her hems down. He turned abruptly, without a smile or an endearment, buttoning his fly, and walked away as if he had just taken out the trash. Thea turned away to dab under her skirt with a cleaning cloth, and gradually resumed her work as if nothing had happened. Her expression, though unreadable even with Kate’s sharp eyes, was not a pleased one. Kate loathed him, and formed a plan.

She crossed paths with him the very next day, in this household of a dozen or more women servants. Kate gave him her dazzling look, and the toad lit up. She waited for him in that very alcove, and he came up behind her. She took the dollar bill he offered, and let him feel under her dress. His hands trembled as his cold fingertips touched her warm skin. She almost choked with loathing as those chilly fingertips probed into ever more private places. He pressed another dollar on her for a minute’s feeling.

This happened two or three times over the next few days. She kept the extra money from Tom. The toad became more and more enamored of her, so much so that she noticed the other maid shot her jealous looks. Finally, the toad showed her a twenty dollar bill and made sinuous motions and ravenous eyes—more mean-looking than seductive—as he blocked her into an alcove and pulled on her skirt. “Twenty I go all the way,” he said. He licked his lips. She took the twenty and put it in her pocket. She took him by the lapel and swung him around. He grinned and looked happy as she pulled him around so she had him trapped in the corner with her hand still on his lapel. His leering smile vanished, replaced by a look of shock, as she spoke. “Now, buster, I have news for you. First of all, you’re not getting any closer to me. Second, if I tell my husband, he’ll come burn your house down and shoot you in the middle of the street like a dog. Third, I’m quitting this job right this minute, and you’re going to hand me three hundred dollars cash or I go straight to your wife.”

His expression went through a spectrum from shock to anger to contempt. He pushed her roughly away, though she was a half a head taller than he. “See here, bitch, how dare you talk to me like that?”

She shoved him back. “Don’t try me, pal. You can either…”

He shoved her again and scoffed. “It’s your word against mine. Who would believe a temporary domestic?”

“Try this on, you fool. Thea is willing to talk. Together, we can take you for twice as much.” Thea knew nothing, but he wouldn’t know that.

“You crooked scum.” He showed snarling teeth and hateful eyes.

“You stupid, ugly old lecher. I have nothing to lose, but I can ruin you. Let’s march straight to your office and get the cash, and I’m out the door.”

“What if I tell the police?”

“Fine. Let’s each tell our story. Your wife leaves you, and you’re ruined. Come on, Frog Face, you’ve had your fun. Now pay up or else!”

She walked out of that house a quarter hour later with her three hundred dollars plus the twenty he’d given her initially. He would not tell his wife a thing, of that Kate was certain. He’d do as she told him, and tell his wife the temporary woman had quit, with many apologies, to care for her dying mother in—oh, make up a city, something new—Atlanta. She put the money aside where Tom wouldn’t find it.