• 29 •

BEULAH RIPPED OFF that bonnet and ran blindly out of the tent, which put her right in the path of Constance, come to tell the girls that curfew was imminent. Because Beulah’s eyes were squeezed shut to stop the tears, she hurled herself bodily into Constance. This had no effect on Constance’s gait: she probably could’ve kept walking with Beulah hanging around her neck.

But she didn’t. She just swept Beulah up into her arms unhesitatingly. It wasn’t an embrace, exactly, but it was not quite as forceful as those holds she’d been teaching her late-night army.

“What’s come over you?” Constance asked, pressing her lips right into the top of Beulah’s head. “Something’s not right.”

When Beulah didn’t answer, Constance took a step back and held her at arm’s length. “I’ve seen a girl in trouble, you know.”

Constance had eyes of a color that Meemaw would’ve called hazel. She looked at Beulah with a mixture of compassion and scrutiny. Beulah knew that look. It meant that Constance was sympathetic to a point, but reserving judgment.

In that moment, she could’ve broken down and told Constance everything. She had a feeling that Constance wouldn’t kick her out of camp just for being Beulah Binford. But what good would it do for her to confess? All she wanted was to suffer through the rest of that infernal camp and to trudge back to New York, hat in hand, and hope she could put some semblance of her old life back together. She’d have left already if she had so much as a dollar in her pocket. Having already paid her room and board, she had no choice but to see it through.

She couldn’t bear to have anyone look at her too closely. She jerked away from Constance. “I’m not in trouble, and I’m not your little sister. I’m just getting myself to bed by curfew is all.”

She walked away at what she hoped looked like a normal pace. If she ran, Constance would snatch her right back up again.

THAT PICTURE IN the papers had made it so much worse for her. She didn’t understand it at the time — how could she have? — but without a picture, she never would’ve made the headlines. And without the headlines, she would’ve been nothing more than a footnote in the Beattie murder trial. Instead, she became the scandal at the very center of the whole mess.

When the newspapers get hold of a good picture, they take a little story and turn it into a big story. Once it becomes a big story, it runs all over the country.

It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t understand that. What did she know of newspapers, and of how stories spread?

She should’ve had a lawyer representing her, not a Broadway show manager. That seemed so obvious in hindsight, when she recounted the whole mess to Mabel and saw it through her eyes.

“What you did,” Mabel told her, once she had heard it all, “was no different from what a thousand other girls have done. You went around with a man who wasn’t your husband. You had a baby and you gave it away. There’s nothing so unusual about that.”

“Well, there might’ve been a few dollars that changed hands,” Beulah pointed out.

“And some girls have their rent paid, or their dinner bought for them,” Mabel said. “There’s no difference, not to my thinking. But the way they splashed you across the front page — that’s what was different. That’s why the whole country knows your name and not the names of every other girl who did the same thing. And I blame that vaudeville man for that.”

Mabel was right, of course. Beulah never should’ve agreed to see him, but she was lonely in jail, and eager for news. The police kept telling her she was only being held as a witness. Once the trial got under way, they assured her, the judge would decide whether Beulah would be called to testify. She might even be released before the trial was over.

Beulah didn’t know whether to believe that or not. She didn’t know what to think. She wanted to write a letter to Meemaw, but what could Meemaw do for her now? There was nothing to do but wait.

She’d been in jail a week before he turned up. From her cell, she could hear the guards arguing about whether he should be allowed to see her.

“I thought you said no visitors,” one guard said.

“She’s allowed to see a lawyer,” said the other guard.

“The girl says she don’t have a lawyer,” the first guard said.

“Well, somebody must’ve hired him. He’s come all the way down from New Jersey. Might as well let her see him.”

With that, Beulah was led into a little windowless room furnished with two chairs and a table bolted to the ground. She wore the same dress she’d been arrested in seven days earlier, the jail lacking any sort of inmate uniform for women. She must’ve looked a shambles. She hadn’t seen a comb, and had been given only one shallow basin of water per day with which to make herself presentable.

The man waiting for her, on the other hand, was immaculately dressed in a black suit with lapels that must’ve been silk, the way they shone a little in the light, and a red vest with a tie to match. He wore an enormous gold ring on one hand. A good heavy gold watch hung from his vest pocket.

Beulah had an eye for precious metals. She didn’t look him over so much as she appraised him.

“You’re no lawyer,” she said when they were alone.

The man found that entertaining and leaned back in his chair, his fingers laced together behind his head. “No? What am I?”

She cocked her head and took in his hair pomade, his striped vest, his spotted tie, and his black patent shoes, shined to perfection. They reminded her of a tap dancer’s shoes.

“You’re a show-man.” She pronounced it like that, coming up first with the word show and then the word man.

He leaned forward and put his hands down on the table, looking over at her from under heavy eyebrows. “You’re not too terribly wrong, Miss Binford. I’m a manager. I manage people, and I help them with their image.”

“Image?” Beulah patted her hair, which she knew looked terrible.

“Not how they look, although that does come into it. But how they appear. In public, I mean. In the papers. I help people manage how the rest of the world sees them.”

“Well, I’m in jail,” Beulah said. “Nobody sees me now.”

“They don’t?” He reached into his pocket and unfolded a page from the Richmond Times. “You’re on the front page, girlie.”

There she was, a full quarter page of her, in a ridiculous ruffled bonnet and a blouse with a sailor collar. She remembered the picture: she’d had it taken at a makeshift studio at a carnival a few years ago and gave it to Meemaw on her birthday. How did the papers get hold of it?

Even worse was the headline: “The Other Woman in the Richmond Murder Case.”

She slapped it down on the table, shocked. “I’m not in the Richmond murder case! I’m not in it at all. I knew the man, but that doesn’t put me in the case. Half the girls in Richmond knew him. I don’t see them here in jail with me.”

“Well, that’s your side of the story,” he said.

Beulah was infuriated. “Yes, it’s my side of the story! Why isn’t my side of the story printed in this paper? Nobody talked to me. Whatever they said, they must’ve made it up.”

“And that’s just why I’m here, miss. To make sure that your side of the story gets in the paper, too. You need someone to speak on your behalf, don’t you see that?”

“What I need is to get out of this jail. What are you going to do about that?”

“Don’t you have a lawyer?”

Beulah patted herself down, as if to check her pockets. “Do you see a lawyer?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Well. Then you’ll need one, and you’ll need some way to pay his bills. Has your daddy offered to help?”

“I don’t hardly know my daddy.”

“Anyone else? Your mother? A grandfather? A kindly uncle? A sister or a brother?”

She shook her head. “Even if a single one of my relations had any money, I don’t think they’d spend it on me. Not after this.”

“Well, then. Here’s what I propose, Miss Binford. I’ll handle the reporters. I know how these people work. I speak to the press every day, all the New York papers, the Washington papers, everybody. I’ve helped many a vaudeville actress through a scandal. Names you’d remember. Good girls who didn’t deserve the bad press they’d been given.”

“But why? Why would you do that for me? I can’t pay you.”

“You won’t have to. I’ll even find a lawyer down here and pay him out of my own pocket. You won’t owe me a thing. After this is all over, it can just come right out of my fees.”

“Your fees? Fees for what?”

The guard came back just then. Their fifteen minutes had ended. The man stood to go. “Your career on the stage, Miss Binford. Don’t you see? You’re famous now. You’re going to go for your stage tour as soon as this trial ends, and you’ll be a very rich girl.”

The guard heard that last part and snorted. “Visitin’s over,” he said.

The man handed Beulah his calling card. “At your service. If you need anything, you can reach me at my office.”

The guard led him away and left Beulah locked in the interviewing room. She turned the card over and ran her finger over the engraved letters.

FREEMAN BERNSTEIN, it read. ENTERTAINMENT AND MANAGEMENT.