Today's Reading

THE NEW YORK TELEGRAPH

July 4, 1906—It's a long way from Millionaire's Row to Murderer's Row, but the Playboy Killer has booked himself passage, surrendering his freedom on the same day that the rest of the country celebrates independence. Will Hal Thorne's final "suite" be the barred cell he now occupies in the Tombs prison? Or even more chilling a thought to ponder: Is the dreaded Tombs just a stop on the millionaire's way to the electric chair?

What—or Who—is the Cause of It All?

Love. That's right, there's a beautiful face at the center of this deadly dance, belonging to none other than America's Cinderella, the doll who now bears the name "The Girl Houdini" after last night's fatal shooting that rocked Manhattan high society.

In addition to the Playboy Killer and the It Girl, the Telegraph has now learned the identity of the third character in this dark drama, and it's the Boss of Fifth Avenue himself, the famous—and sometimes infamous—Stanley Pierce, who also loved the Girl Beauty.

Everyone loved Evelyn Talbot, the so-called Mistress of Millions, who soared to stardom with an allure that made her Broadway's most feted Beauty, the nation's Prettiest Peach, our modern-day Helen of Troy, the enchanting Eve of our very own Big Apple.

But what would Miss T. of the famous face think of this fatal face-off between the two men who loved her?

Given how events have turned out, it's unlikely that anybody will ever know....

*  *  *

That's what they wrote. That's what they read. That's what they talked about—talked so much that President Teddy Roosevelt himself had to step in, asking his pals at the papers to give it a break and let my poor beautiful body rest in peace.

Oh, I got my peace all right. I even got a laugh as I read the ink they spilled recounting the shocking details of my death, the tragedy of my too-short life, the dangerous perfection of each one of my curves and curls.

But it's not a new story, is it? They call me Eve, but I'm not the first of that name. Wasn't it Eve's fault that Adam ate the apple way back in that first garden? Or Helen's for having the face that launched all those ships? Salome's sins that cost men their heads and Cleopatra's cunning that brought down the Roman rulers?

I didn't make it as far in school as I'd have liked, but even I know that it's a story as old as storytelling itself: men blaming women for the wars they wage on one another, for the wars they wage on themselves. "The Crime of the Century," they're calling it—just put in a new beautiful face, a new batch of hapless men, oftentimes a snake or a sword for flair. This time it's a pistol and a fatal performance.

She drove him mad.

She drove him to do it.

He loved her, wanted to honor her, protect her, save her.

She's the cause of it all.

Stories written by the men, all of them.

And the problem here is that it's not the truth. At least, it's not the truth as I lived it. And it's my story, so what about my ending?

They always talked about my eyes. How they were too big and too deep and too dark and too haunting—they'd drive a man mad. Well, how about I tell you what it felt like, to see it all with these eyes? Because the truth? I remember it rather as something more like this...

PART ONE

Five Years Earlier...

CHAPTER ONE

New York City
1901

I feel how the air changes when I step into the room. Crowded as Mrs. Vanderbilt's ballroom is, it all goes charged, crackling like this new electricity that Mr. Edison has begun to brighten our world with. I sense it in their eyes, their voices, the tilts and leans of their silk-clad bodies. I glide in, and the Four Hundred go silent.

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