The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

Ritzi sends Stella a letter of confession describing Joe’s death, the man responsible, and many sordid details. Stella hides it in one of Joe’s legal books.

Back in August, on the night of Joe’s disappearance, Ritzi folded herself into the sink cabinet. She heard Owney ask Joe to make a list of everyone who owed him money. Owney asked about Joe’s safe-deposit box, and Joe said his will and life insurance policies were in there. He promised Owney he was good for the money he owed, but Owney said he couldn’t let Joe talk to Seabury. Joe promised not to, but Owney said he had to make sure.

Ritzi walks along the Iowa dirt road. She’s 22, three years older than when she left home. She feels empty, as though she has nothing left. 

She approaches her old home. Her husband, Charlie, answers the door, his eyes conveying myriad emotions. He calls her “Sarah,” and she says most people call her “Ritzi” now; Charlie laughs humorlessly and says it’s a stupid name. However, when he goes back inside the house, he leaves the front door open.

Five months later, Stella goes to Club Abbey on the anniversary of Joe’s disappearance. She asks Stan for two whiskeys on the rocks, like Joe used to order. She sits in Owney’s booth and sees Jude across the room. Many people stare, and she loudly toasts Joe. Jude joins her, and she considers telling him everything, including that “she was partly responsible for [Joe’s] death” (283), but she knows it won’t assuage her guilt. Stella realizes that this action—coming to Club Abbey, ordering the whiskey, and toasting Joe every year—will be her “penance” for what she’s done.

Back on Fifth Avenue, 16 months ago, Joe popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. He’d invited Ritzi to the party, and Maria was there, serving hors d’oeuvres. Stella was jealous of both. When the men disappeared into the office, Stella followed, but Ritzi stopped her, saying the men don’t allow the women to interfere with business. 

When Joe went to the bedroom, Stella followed, chastising him for draining their savings to buy his seat on the New York Supreme Court, pointing out the way he endangered her with his choices. He told her if she didn’t like it, she could leave. When he went back into the office, Stella said aloud, before Ritzi and Maria, that she wished Joe were dead, and they immediately agreed. 

Stella said his threats to Maria about Jude were real, and she asked how long Ritzi could continue to “fake it” as Joe’s lover. She suggested they work together to get rid of him, claiming they could get away with it precisely because no one would expect women to do such a thing.

Ritzi names her daughter Vivian, and Charlie suggests “Jane”—his mother’s name—for the baby’s middle name. Ritzi is overcome by his tacit acceptance of the child as his own. As she prepares for bed, she hears Charlie get a blanket and go downstairs to the couch, as he has done every night since her return. She longs for him and wishes he’d stay. 

Some time later, he slides in next to her. Ritzi apologizes, and Charlie says he’s glad she came home.

Jude comes home and gives Maria her rosary back, fixed. He asks if she forgives him, and she says she did a long time ago. Her infertility having been explained by the diagnosis of ovarian cancer, they are determined to soak up every minute they can of life together.

Stella gets a job as a switchboard operator at the Transportation Building. Her boss is harsh and critical, and Stella’s treatment is somewhat of a rude awakening to her new life.

In 1969 at Club Abbey, Jude sits alone after Stella leaves the booth, opening the envelope she left and unfolding the two pages. It’s the letter Ritzi wrote to Stella. Jude reads about how Ritzi tipped off Seabury after Stella let her know he’d be in Atlantic City, how Ritzi made sure the letter Maria delivered to the club had all the information Owney needed. She describes Maria’s reluctance to participate and that she did so to protect Jude. Everything went wrong, Ritzi writes, when the show was sold out and Joe took her to Coney Island instead. 

Ritzi apologizes for the cruel twist of her pregnancy and says she really did plan to give the baby to Maria, but then Vivian was killed and Ritzi had to flee. 

Jude realizes he holds the one piece of evidence he needs to solve the cold case forever, but it’s riddled with Maria’s name. So he burns it.

Jude narrates the Epilogue in 1977, describing his trip to Hart Island to locate the body of Joe Crater. First, he must find the burial manifest for the mass graves outside the abandoned asylum. He knows that a body was found, chained to a 50-pound cinder block beneath the pier at Coney Island 22 years ago. The skeleton was unidentifiable, but the man died by blunt force trauma to the head. Jude locates the records room and finds the file for John Doe, found beneath the pier and buried under marker 185. 

Jude burns the folder, dropping it as the flames lick his hand, and the entire place catches fire. He feels that, in destroying this evidence, he may finally have succeeded in protecting Maria. However, he laments that, though it’s Maria that died, it is he who has actually stopped living. Further, Crater’s name has been memorialized due to his mysterious disappearance, making Jude, not Joe, the “Missingest Man in New York” (314).