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The Scepter is a noir retelling of the Biblical story of Esther, with a hint of supernatural mystery. You can find the Table of Contents here:
← Previously, in The Scepter: Part X: Etta took her life into her hands and approached Ricky with an invitation.
“If I have found favor with you, O king, and if it pleases your majesty, I ask that my life be spared, and I beg that you spare the lives of my people.”
- Esther 7:3
Sear and then roast, that was how the mothers in the cramped tenements had taught Etta to cook brisket each week for Shabbat. Low and slow until the tightly laced threads of meat loosened and fell apart, rich and tender and begging to be eaten. Etta knew how to cook brisket.
The meat rested on the counter, soaking in its juices and permeating the apartment with the aroma of beef, garlic, and onions. On the dining table, Etta had replaced Verna Dooley’s gleaming china dinnerware with glass settings she’d found in a pawn shop on the Lower East Side - translucent as water and glinting with the cobalt blue of sunshine on sea.
Small flames flickered on long white candlesticks. Everything was ready, lying in wait for Ricky and Gardini.
Etta ran her fingertips along the ridges of the small star beneath her dress. Standing in the doorway between the kitchen and parlor, she gripped the doorframe until her knuckles glowed white.
She ached in the pit of her stomach, longing for the evening to be over and yet hoping Ricky would be late, or never come. But Ricky was never late. He liked to come early, to pounce at the least expected time and catch traitors in the act. He was always on the lookout for a trap.
In the quiet, she heard the elevator ding and the grate slide open. Ricky’s heavy footsteps thudded closer, his voice thundering mid-conversation, though she couldn’t make out his words.
Filling her lungs, Etta let her breath inflate her body and lift the corners of her mouth in a smile, her shoulders straight and regal in midnight purple. She wasn’t a showgirl playing dress-up. If Ricky was the King of the East Side, then tonight she must be a queen.
The door flew open without a knock, and Ricky filled the doorway, his white suit an approaching blizzard. He stopped just inside the door, assessing Etta swathed in close-fitting velvet, and gave his seal of approval with a self-satisfied smile.
Gardini stepped in behind him, a smirk beneath his thin mustache. A third man, his suit duller and his face rougher than Ricky and Gardini, took up his post along the wall of the hallway outside.
As Ricky pulled Etta closer with a greeting that made her face burn and her skin crawl, she caught Billy’s eyes through the open door. Immediately she looked away. She couldn’t let her eyes or her thoughts pause on Billy McManus, tonight of all nights.
Yet something in Ricky seemed to shift. Still pinning Etta to his side, Ricky said over his shoulder, “McManus. Keep an eye on the lobby. Downstairs.”
Etta caught the barest glimpse of Billy’s taut face as he wordlessly made his way not to the elevator but the lone stairwell at the end of the hall.
It was just her, alone. With her velvet dress and her glassware and her slow-roasted brisket and her careful ambush. There was no going back now.
Ricky drank several fingerwidths of whiskey and chewed loudly, making satisfied grunting noises as he devoured the meat. Gardini kept up a simpering conversation with himself, to which Etta smiled and nodded at appropriate times.
She made a show of eating, though her stomach was clenched into a knot. As she watched Gardini talking and eating in dainty little self-conscious bites, the knot twisted tighter. She was taking a gamble, she knew. She had no hard proof of what Gardini had done, nothing but what she had seen with her own eyes and worked out in her own feverish thoughts. But Ricky wouldn’t care about proof. He would hear an accusation and execute his judgment against whoever he deemed a traitor, whether Gardini or herself.
It would be horrible. Even if it worked and she made it out alive, it would be the worst night of her life.
When they moved to the parlor, Ricky was happy and sated, red-cheeked with whiskey and reclining in a chair that creaked beneath his weight. Gardini lounged and smoked with a smugness that made Etta want to squirm. But she couldn’t delay any longer.
Etta smiled, resting her elbow on her knee as she leaned forward. “I was surprised to see you the other night, Mr. Gardini.”
Gardini chortled at her. The silly showgirl, Ricky’s vapid replacement for Verna – that was what she was to him. “At the Ibis Club, Miss Cohen? I’m there nearly every day.”
“No, it was in the street.” Etta kept her face cold and stately, not a showgirl but a queen. “You were saying goodbye to that blue-eyed man. Oh, I always forget his name. Mr. Siegel, isn’t it?”
The smirk in Gardini’s face iced over, morphing into a sudden, desperate terror. Ricky’s shoulders tensed beneath his suit, his body still and tight as a startled lion.
Swallowing the panic that threatened to rise from the knot in her stomach, Etta pushed onward, her voice light and heart like a freight train. “I was so busy with my errand that at first I didn’t recognize you. Once I realized it was you, then, of course, I felt awful for not saying hello.”
“I didn’t – I’ve never talked to Siegel,” Gardini sputtered. Quickly composing himself, he smoothed his oily voice. “You must be mistaken.”
Ricky’s eyes shuttered.
Etta squeezed her glass until she thought it might shatter in her hand, but she kept her face calm, chilly. Not a showgirl but a queen. “Am I?”
Turning to Ricky, she slipped the six-pointed pendant out from beneath the collar of her dress. “You’ve been misled about the synagogue.”
“She’s lying.” Gardini’s dagger-sharp voice sliced through Etta’s words and crackled in the air. His forehead shone with sweat that beaded along his thin hairline. “She’s working with Cohen. They’re conspiring against you.”
The light was gone from Ricky’s eyes, his body primed to spring. Yet somehow Etta sat calm and still, the frantic pounding of her heart invisible inside her.
“Thornton and DiGiuli weren’t clever enough to act alone,” she said. It was a gamble, a terrible gamble. She had no way of knowing toward whom Ricky’s ire would swing. “They weren’t the masterminds.”
“There was no mastermind. They were idiots, murderous idiots, nothing more.” His voice rushed, Gardini spoke to Ricky, but he squared himself against Etta like a frightened rattlesnake whose hiding place had been suddenly uncovered.
“You’re being manipulated,” Etta said. “The synagogue is only a distraction. Thornton and DiGiuli were under the orders of someone who knew where you’d be, who knew you love the bar by the docks –”
“She’s one of them!” The ice was gone from Gardini’s voice, replaced by clawing terror. “She’s part of the operation at – at the synagogue –”
“How many people knew that bar?” Etta said, her voice calmer than her racing heart. “How many people knew you went there? I certainly didn’t.”
Ricky’s dead eyes swiveled toward Gardini, whose face turned ashen.
With a quick breath, Etta looked directly at Ricky. “He’s conspiring with Siegel. He’s been lying to you. About the synagogue, about the assassination plot, everything. It was him. He’s setting you up to be killed or arrested, to have your business parceled up by Siegel. All along, he’s been the puppet master.”
“She’s –” Gardini’s voice dropped to a whimper. “She’s lying.”
Suddenly, so quickly it made Etta jump and flooded her skin with ice, Ricky shot up from his chair. A lightning strike with thunder on its heels, he stormed across the room, threw open the door, and disappeared with a slam that shook the floor.
Stunned silence dropped like cotton over the flat.
Etta gripped the arms of her chair. She had expected him to throw one of them against the wall, to pull out his gun. She had thought someone’s blood would spatter the carpet in moments. Did he believe her? Or was he rushing out into the hallway to load his gun or to gather himself for killing her in a bare-fisted frenzy?
“Help me,” said a ragged, desperate voice.
Etta started, a shiver shooting down to her fingertips. Gardini’s face was gray, and his eyes were wide. He seemed to have no doubt which of them was about to die by Ricky’s hand.
Suddenly Gardini launched himself forward. With a gasp, Etta jerked to her feet, but Gardini fell on his knees in front of her chair and clutched her velvet gown in his white-knuckled fists.
“He’ll kill me.” Gardini’s voice was thick with a sob, and a cold wave of nausea struck Etta like a slap in the face. “Please.”
She had expected venom, had expected him to try to undermine her, as he had. But she had never expected that they would be waiting together in limbo for the knife to fall on one of them, that she would have to witness him blubber for his life.
He was evil, had plotted the deaths of innocent people to assuage his vanity. But now he was weeping in her parlor, clinging to her and begging.
“Fire escape,” Etta choked out. “In the bedroom.”
She pointed, tried to move so that she could lead him to the room, but at the same moment Gardini, wide-eyed with panic, leapt to his feet and threw himself toward the bedroom door. Their bodies collided, and Gardini toppled onto her, knocking her back against her chair as they landed hard on the floor.
Then, like a thunderclap, the door flew open.
The room froze. Etta was pinned beneath Gardini, his body paralyzed by terror under Ricky’s gaze.
Rage crackled like a web of lightning across Ricky’s face.
“No,” Gardini whimpered, “you don’t –”
Ricky was across the room in a moment. He yanked Gardini off Etta by his suit jacket. Hurling Gardini against the wall like a rag doll, Ricky descended on him with his fists raised, and within seconds his cream-white suit was splattered red.
“No, stop –” The words squeaked out of Etta, horror welling up in her as splotches of scarlet splashed and began to dribble down the walls.
Footsteps ran toward her, but Etta heard them in the periphery of her mind, as though far away.
Suddenly hands grabbed her arms and pulled her to her feet. The charcoal gray of Billy’s suit filled her vision – but Billy wasn’t supposed to be here, where had he come from? – and then he was pushing her ahead of him, hurrying her out the door.
The rough-faced man Ricky had brought darted past them into the room, his hand reaching for the lump in his jacket pocket.
Running, Billy steered her down the hall, past the elevator, and into the echoing stairwell. He started down the stairs, but Etta broke away and grabbed the railing with both hands, sucking air into her lungs and trying not to vomit. Billy stopped, breathing hard. He watched her, but she couldn’t look at his face.
Instead she looked over the railing, where the dim light faded into shadows. The air in the stairwell was stale from disuse, plain and hard and brutal as the rotten underbelly of the gleaming city, and the concrete steps wound down story after story as if to the pit of Hell.
← Part X
As The Scepter is rounding the corner to the finale, please feel free to comment with any questions you have about the writing, the characters, or the historical and Biblical background of the story! In late December or early January, I’m planning to do my first ever live debrief of a serial, and I would love if you’re able to come and bring your questions along! I’ve recruited my sister to “interview” me because I’m too chicken to do a livestream all by myself, so you’ll also get to meet my lovely sister!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read The Scepter. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to like, comment, and restack to help other readers find this story too!
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This is amazing; I know the way the story goes in the Scripture, but you make it come alive and real and right in the noir setting; I almost don't know that I know what happens, you know? if that makes sense.
Another perfect chapter!