Read Online Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer by Harold Schechter - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Harold Schechter
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couple of bills. “Here’s two dollars. You and Willie and some of the boys go take in the moving pictures. Later on this evening, after the party, I will pick you up on my way home.”
Eddie and Willie took the preferred singles with thanks.
“Before you two run off,” Mrs. Budd said, “why don’t you have a bite of lunch?”
Eddie and his friend seated themselves at the big kitchen table, heaped their dishes with food, and began to shovel it in. Their plates were clean in minutes. Shoving their chairs away from the table, they thanked Mr. Howard again, told him that they would see him that evening, and headed back onto the street to round up some friends.
By that time, Grace and her little sister had returned with their treats. Mrs. Budd had just stood up to pour the coffee when the old man consulted his pocket watch. “It’s almost time for me to be on my way,” he said, then paused as if considering a possibility.
Something had just occurred to him, he said. He wondered if Gracie would like to come with him to his niece’s birthday party. It was going to be quite a bash. Lots of children and games. He would take good care of her, he assured the Budds, and bring her home no later than nine.
Mr. and Mrs. Budd found themselves in a delicate position. They were reluctant to offend their guest by suggesting that they couldn’t trust him with their daughter. And with Howard sitting right there, they didn’t feel free to discuss their doubts with each other. But after all, what doubts could they have about their son’s kindly new employer, the well-to-do, grandfatherly man who had treated them all with such generosity?
Mrs. Budd hesitated for a moment, but her husband cleared his throat and said, “Let the poor kid go. She’s always cooped up here in this dungeon. She don’t see much good times.”
There was one important fact the Budds had neglected to ascertain. Where, Grace’s mother wondered, did Mr. Howard’s sister live?
The old man answered without hesitation. In a nice building on 137th Street and Columbus Avenue, he said.
New Yorkers like to think of themselves as streetwise and worldly. But many New Yorkers are as provincial as any small-towners. Both Delia Budd and her husbandhad lived their whole lives in Manhattan. But like many working-class housewives of her time, Mrs. Budd rarely ventured out of her neighborhood, and her husband’s world was only slightly less circumscribed, its boundaries denned by the Midtown office building he worked in and his Fifteenth Street home. For that reason, no alarm bells rang in their heads when the little man told them where the party was taking place. The Budds simply didn’t know that Columbus Avenue ends at 110th Street—that the old man had given them a nonexistent address.
By the time they found out, it was already too late.
Mrs. Budd helped Gracie into her dress-up spring coat with fur-trimmed collar and cuffs. A fake pink rose was pinned to the lapel. On her head, the girl wore a gray hat with blue streamers. With her little brown leather bag clutched in her hand, she was the picture of a proper young lady, dressed for a Sunday stroll.
The old man bid goodbye to Gracie’s parents and little Beatrice, who was still munching candy from a small paper sack.
Mrs. Budd followed the pair outside and stood on the front stoop of her apartment building, watching them walk up the street, the bowlegged old man in his dusty, dark suit with her pretty ten-year-old daughter beside him. A few of Gracie’s friends, playing on the street and spotting the girl in her holiday finery, began to shout at her in razzing tones: “Gracie’s a swell! Gracie’s a swell!” The little girl ignored them for a moment before turning her head quickly and sticking out her tongue.
Then, with Mrs. Budd still watching, the couple turned the corner and disappeared.
Before they proceeded on their journey, the old man had a stop to make. At the corner of Fourteenth Street
Eddie and Willie took the preferred singles with thanks.
“Before you two run off,” Mrs. Budd said, “why don’t you have a bite of lunch?”
Eddie and his friend seated themselves at the big kitchen table, heaped their dishes with food, and began to shovel it in. Their plates were clean in minutes. Shoving their chairs away from the table, they thanked Mr. Howard again, told him that they would see him that evening, and headed back onto the street to round up some friends.
By that time, Grace and her little sister had returned with their treats. Mrs. Budd had just stood up to pour the coffee when the old man consulted his pocket watch. “It’s almost time for me to be on my way,” he said, then paused as if considering a possibility.
Something had just occurred to him, he said. He wondered if Gracie would like to come with him to his niece’s birthday party. It was going to be quite a bash. Lots of children and games. He would take good care of her, he assured the Budds, and bring her home no later than nine.
Mr. and Mrs. Budd found themselves in a delicate position. They were reluctant to offend their guest by suggesting that they couldn’t trust him with their daughter. And with Howard sitting right there, they didn’t feel free to discuss their doubts with each other. But after all, what doubts could they have about their son’s kindly new employer, the well-to-do, grandfatherly man who had treated them all with such generosity?
Mrs. Budd hesitated for a moment, but her husband cleared his throat and said, “Let the poor kid go. She’s always cooped up here in this dungeon. She don’t see much good times.”
There was one important fact the Budds had neglected to ascertain. Where, Grace’s mother wondered, did Mr. Howard’s sister live?
The old man answered without hesitation. In a nice building on 137th Street and Columbus Avenue, he said.
New Yorkers like to think of themselves as streetwise and worldly. But many New Yorkers are as provincial as any small-towners. Both Delia Budd and her husbandhad lived their whole lives in Manhattan. But like many working-class housewives of her time, Mrs. Budd rarely ventured out of her neighborhood, and her husband’s world was only slightly less circumscribed, its boundaries denned by the Midtown office building he worked in and his Fifteenth Street home. For that reason, no alarm bells rang in their heads when the little man told them where the party was taking place. The Budds simply didn’t know that Columbus Avenue ends at 110th Street—that the old man had given them a nonexistent address.
By the time they found out, it was already too late.
Mrs. Budd helped Gracie into her dress-up spring coat with fur-trimmed collar and cuffs. A fake pink rose was pinned to the lapel. On her head, the girl wore a gray hat with blue streamers. With her little brown leather bag clutched in her hand, she was the picture of a proper young lady, dressed for a Sunday stroll.
The old man bid goodbye to Gracie’s parents and little Beatrice, who was still munching candy from a small paper sack.
Mrs. Budd followed the pair outside and stood on the front stoop of her apartment building, watching them walk up the street, the bowlegged old man in his dusty, dark suit with her pretty ten-year-old daughter beside him. A few of Gracie’s friends, playing on the street and spotting the girl in her holiday finery, began to shout at her in razzing tones: “Gracie’s a swell! Gracie’s a swell!” The little girl ignored them for a moment before turning her head quickly and sticking out her tongue.
Then, with Mrs. Budd still watching, the couple turned the corner and disappeared.
Before they proceeded on their journey, the old man had a stop to make. At the corner of Fourteenth Street
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