Oh Danny Boy (16 page)

I left the stable yard with no clear idea what I should be doing next. If a disgruntled jockey had already fled to California, he wouldn’t be interested in trying to stop an investigation. Those influential businessmen in the syndicate might have more interest, but as Jerry Jameson pointed out, their horse only won by luck. There was no clear second favorite. So what now? Back to New York, I supposed.

As I passed along the fence beside the racetrack, I glanced inside and saw movement. It wasn’t a horse trotting around the track, but a person—a big, gangling man, dressed in a singlet and what looked like white long johns, lurching along with large, ungainly strides. Then the surprise turned to astonishment as he came closer, and I realized that I recognized him. It was Gentleman Jack Brady. I ran up to the fence and yelled his name as he trotted past me. He started, looked up, and his battered face broke into a smile as he recognized me. He came up to the fence.

“I know you. It’s Daniel’s friend, isn’t it? I met you at his place.”

“Yes, you did, right before I sent you on a mission and you disappeared,” I said severely, anger now replacing the worry I had felt for him. “I’ve been worried sick about you. Why didn’t you contact me again? Why didn’t you come back?”

“Monk said I wasn’t to tell no one where I was.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “I went to see him, and I thought the po
lice were following me. Monk said I should get out of town, for my own safety, so he had me brought out here. He’s set me up in a nice hotel room, and he’s got a trainer for me to work with and everything.”

“So the fight is going ahead?”

“All arranged,” he said, looking around, although we were the only two within hearing. “Some Casino, next week. Tell Daniel. He’ll be pleased.”

“Daniel isn’t pleased about very much at the moment,” I said. “He’s still in jail and things don’t look good for him.”

“Oh, jeez. That’s right. I forgot he was in trouble, poor guy. Is there anything I can do?”

Since he had clearly forgotten that he had been sent to question Monk the last time, I saw little point in assigning him another mission. But it was worth a long shot, I supposed. “If you come across a man called Bugsy, one of Monk’s men,” I said, “ask him about the envelope. Ask him who gave it to him and who might have had a chance to slip money inside.”

“What envelope?” His gorilla face was wrinkled into a frown.

“The one that got Daniel arrested,” I said. “Better still, if you see Bugsy, tell him to contact me—it’s Molly Murphy, Ten Patchin Place. Can you remember that? Here, let me write it down for you. Tell him it’s very important. Daniel’s life may depend on it.” I printed the words carefully onto a page in the notebook I always carried and handed it to him. “Bugsy. Can you remember that?”

“I’ll try, miss. I’ll really try.”

I wasn’t too optimistic but I smiled at him. “I’m glad to see you’re safe and well, Jack. And if you win this fight, for heaven’s sake, get out of the boxing business or your brain will be more addled than a plate of scrambled eggs.”

“You’re right, miss. I should get out. It’s just a question of making the money last. I never was good with money.”

“Then buy yourself a little property. Settle down. Raise chickens.”

He laughed. “Chickens? Can you see me with chickens?
If I picked up a chicken with this hand, I’d squash the life out of it in one second.” The smile faded. “I wouldn’t mean to, of course, but when you’ve got big hands like mine, and all this strength…”

He left the end of the sentence hanging in the air.

“So where can I find you if I need you?” I asked.

“Right here. Brighton Beach Hotel. See those turrets down by the beach? Real swank place where all the snobs stay. Monk’s taking care of it for me.”

“Monk must have a lot of money invested in this fight.”

“Oh yeah. He stands to do real good out of it, if I win.”

“Then I’d better let you get back to your training. I don’t think he’d be too happy with you if you didn’t win.”

“That’s right. I’ve got three times more around the track if I’m to get down to my fighting weight,” he said. “Nice seeing you again, Miss—”

“Murphy,” I said. “Nice seeing you too, Jack. Take care of yourself.”

“Come out and see the fight,” he said. “I’ll get you a free ticket, if you like.”

“That’s kind of you,” I said, although I didn’t think I’d want to watch two men beating each other to a bloody pulp.

Jack waved a big hand and loped off again around the track. I went on my way. I decided that since I was here on Coney Island I should take a look at the site where the prizefight would take place. Some casino, Jack had said. And a stroll in the sea air might do me good.

I headed toward the beach, passing the grand turrets of the Brighton Beach Hotel, sitting right beside the boardwalk. Fashionable ladies with parasols strolled the grounds beside men in straw boaters and striped blazers. It was the height of elegance and I wondered what they made of Jack Brady, lurching among them in his fighter’s training outfit. Sudden screams behind me made me turn in the other direction, just in time to see a carful of people come hurtling down from a high trestle on the roller coaster. I had once ridden that contraption with Daniel in the happy days before I knew about Arabella. The thrill of the speed, the sense of his
closeness, his arm around mine, came rushing back to haunt me. I shut my eyes and marched toward the boardwalk.

It was hard to walk at any pace along the boardwalk, even though it was a wide thoroughfare. Today it was chock-a-block with people—families, mothers pushing prams, fathers with toddlers on their shoulders, old couples, sweethearts, all out for a day’s fun. I felt like a salmon, swimming upstream. And beyond the boardwalk the beach was a seething mass of humanity. The crowd spilled from the beach and into the ocean, where a sea of heads bobbed at the edge of the waves. If people did this to escape the crush of the city, I couldn’t see much point in it myself. My mind went back to the ocean at home in Ireland—deserted beaches, strands of seaweed, waves crashing, gulls circling overhead, and that salty tang that made you feel good to be alive.

I continued along the boardwalk, past one amusement after another—the giant Ferris wheel, the Flip Flap coaster that hurtled its riders in a complete loop, the waterslide with its boats rushing down a steep ramp to hit the water with a mighty splash.

Cooking smells wafted up to me.

“Get your red hots here,” a man was yelling and holding up something that looked like a sausage in a bun. The pungent smell of onions reminded me that I hadn’t eaten for a while and that disaster could strike at any moment. I stepped into one of the little shacks that were dotted along the boardwalk and downed a glass of lemonade and a cheese sandwich. Suitably fortified, I came out and resumed my quest for a casino, until suddenly I realized that I could go no farther today. I just wasn’t up to tackling the heat, the smells, and the crowds any longer. I’d come back on a working day, when I could have the place to myself.

I looked around and realized that I was near the ornate iron pier extending into the ocean. Beside it was a bathing pavilion, and squeals came from inside its walls as the bathers negotiated the waves. As I observed the structure of the pier and the pavilion, built out over the waves, I remem
bered that the first of the prostitutes had been found murdered at this very site. This was something else I should investigate, only not now. I’d have little luck finding prostitutes and their pimps working at this time of day. I’d have to come back at night sometime, and I was uneasy about coming out here at night and alone.

I made my way down the steps from the boardwalk, through the crowded amusement park, until I came to a busy street, stretching away to my right. It was boarded with planks and crammed full of amusement arcades, food booths, dance halls, beer halls, and God knows what kinds of vice. A sign on a post proclaimed it to be
THE BOWERY
, but it was not as savory as the real street with that name. My ears were assailed by the competing sounds of all kinds of music and shouting touts, luring people to their particular attraction. “Roll up, roll up. Three balls for a nickel. Have a go at Aunt Sally. Hit a coconut, win a prize. All the wonders of the Orient. Belly dancers straight from the harem of the sheik.”

I felt repelled but yet attracted at the same time. So did half the population of Manhattan by the look of it. The crowd surged down this Bowery, and I allowed myself to be swept along with them. We passed the entrance to the Streets of Cairo Pavilion, where the mysteries of the Orient would be revealed. Outside an Oriental archway, a man in a turban stood holding a real camel while a young girl, wearing precious little, gyrated to the tune of a wailing flute. A little farther and there was a fire-eater, standing outside a bunting-draped passageway. The sign proclaimed it as
AMERICA’S PREMIER FREAK SHOW
. The tout was a midget, dressed as a king, standing on a barrel. “Come inside, ladies and gentlemen, and see the freaks too amazing, too grotesque, even for P. T. Barnum. See the amazing snake woman. Yes, she’s half woman, half python. See the world’s smallest horse, only twenty inches high. See the horrendous human tree. Instead of limbs, he has branches; instead of skin, he has bark. And the world-famous mule boy. He was born with the face of a mule and the body of a human!”

I wonder how people can be taken in by that, I thought, shuddering with revulsion, but a portion of the crowd was already lining up and paying good money to go inside. I allowed myself to be swept onward past the India Pavilion, where a live elephant stood at an arched gateway. I’d never actually seen a real elephant before and just stood and stared until the crowd swept me along once more. Then more dancing girls, this time straight from the Moulin Rouge in Paris. The picture outside showed a girl dressed in corsets, fishnet stockings, and not much else, kicking up legs in a most unnatural fashion.

I felt safe walking along the real Bowery, but I didn’t feel entirely safe here, even though I was among so many people. I felt myself being watched from dark alleyways between booths where unsavory types loitered. I clutched my purse to me and decided I’d come far enough. Those seething, sweaty crowds, squealing children, and blaring music were all too much for me. I knew I had to get out of there or faint. The search for the casino would have to wait for another day. I pushed through the crowd and made my way back to the relative civilization of Surf Avenue and an elevated train station. I had a carriage to myself on the train back to the city.

Monday morning’s post brought no message from Daniel or from his attorney. I dressed in my business suit, even though the day promised to be too hot for it. If I were to pose as Dr. Birnbaum’s assistant, I wanted to look the part of a bluestocking. So my hair was wrestled into a bun and tucked beneath my hat again. I wished I owned a pair of a bluestocking’s round wire spectacles to complete the picture. I wasn’t sure what I hoped to learn or accomplish by going with Dr. Birnbaum to visit the police officers, but at least it would give me the opportunity to see who had taken over Daniel’s case and hopefully find out what they had learned so far. Maybe I would get a feeling for whether these men might be sensitive to Daniel’s cause—or the opposite.

Dr. Birnbaum was waiting for me at the corner of Canal and Mulberry. He was dressed today in a dark suit and homburg hat and looked every inch the somber physician.

“Miss Murphy.” He clicked his heels in that European way and gave me a polite bow. “I have serious reservations about what we are about to do. For one thing it goes against the ethics of my profession, and for another I am concerned that you will hear things never intended for a woman’s ears.”

“Are there no women medical students at your hospitals, Doctor?” I asked.

“One or two, yes. But I have always considered it a strange choice of profession for a woman.”

“I consider it a very natural profession for a woman,” I
said. “Do women not spend their entire lives taking care of others? Is it not part of our very nature to want to heal and help?”

“Put that way, yes.” He nodded agreement. “But our profession has its seamy side—the blood, the infections, the operations, gangrene—one would not want one’s sister to experience sights that I have seen. And today’s discussion—a man who has repeatedly molested and mutilated young women…”

“I’ll handle it,” I said. “I have to handle it. If my friend dies in jail, it would be my fault.”

“Then he’s lucky to have such a noble and devoted friend as yourself,” Birnbaum said.

Damned right he’s lucky. The phrase went through my head even though I didn’t utter it out loud. Ladies, after all, never swear. We walked side by side up Mulberry Street. Tenement windows were open because of the heat. Bed linens were airing, babies crying, neighbors shouting to each other across the street, while below pushcart vendors called out their wares. It was the usual cacophony of noise. I hardly noticed it anymore, but I saw Dr. Birnbaum wince.

“The conditions here in the slums are deplorable,” he said in a low voice. “Such crowding can only lead to disease and violence. When you put too many rats together in the same cage, they start to eat each other.”

I looked up at him. “So are you suggesting that our mass murderer might be from these streets himself? Not necessarily an outsider who hired the streetwalkers and then lured them to their deaths?”

He looked surprised at my suggestion. “All things are possible,” he said, “although the murderer would need some privacy and time to kill and disfigure his victims. That would make an attack on these streets almost impossible. You see for yourself that there is much activity here. And in such crowded quarters it is necessary to sleep in shifts. I suspect that someone is awake and alert for most hours of the night.” He paused as we had reached the square brick building that
housed police headquarters. “We shall know more when we meet the officers. Until then, idle speculation is pointless.”

As we entered through the main doors and stood in the foyer, I was assaulted by my memories, some pleasant, some not so—Daniel questioning me here when I was still a suspect in the murder on Ellis Island, my first meeting with Arabella in Daniel’s office, Daniel giving me a good ticking off after my first encounter with Monk Eastman—Daniel’s presence was so much a part of the very walls of this place, I half expected to see him come running down the stairs as I looked up.

Instead a very different young man was coming to meet us. He was tall, immaculately dressed in a summer suit, light brown hair parted in the middle, a pleasant, well-bred face. You’d never have taken him for a policeman in a month of Sundays. He was hurrying down the stairs with an expression of worried concentration on his face. A few paces behind him was a second man, more like Daniel in his appearance. He was good-looking in a dark, brooding sort of way, rather like drawings I had seen of the romantic poets. He was dressed in an official dark blue police uniform, which made him look rather dashing.

“Dr. Birnbaum?” The first of the officers held out his hand, even before he reached us. “How good of you to come. I am Detective Quigley. This is my fellow detective Jock McIver. We have been assigned together to this wretched case, in the hope that we can put a stop to it before there is flat-out panic on the Lower East Side. So any help or insight that you can give us will be much appreciated. However, I’m afraid that something rather pressing has come up. A fifth body was discovered on Elizabeth Street early this morning. McIver and I are actually on our way to the morgue. Will you accompany us? Your opinion on what you see will be most valuable.”

Dr. Birnbaum gave an embarrassed cough and half turned to me. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have brought my assistant with me, to help me by taking notes. Miss—”

“Fraulein Rottmeier,” I said, having given some thought to a name this time, then imitating the doctor in the curt little bow. “I study in Vienna with Dr. Birnbaum.”

Detective McIver was looking at me with half-amused interest. “A lady doctor,” he commented, as if I was a strange specimen.

Quigley shook his head sadly. “I regret, fraulein, that I couldn’t possibly allow a young lady to accompany us to the morgue, however qualified she is. What she would see there would be too disturbing.”

“I assure you I am not of delicate disposition,” I said, in an accent as close to Birnbaum’s as I could muster. I had practiced before the mirror the previous night.

“No matter. Even bringing in an outside doctor is likely to cause raised eyebrows,” Quigley continued. “I apologize, fraulein, but I’m sure Dr. Birnbaum will give you a detailed account later. Now, if you will excuse us, we have a carriage waiting.”

He nodded in his refined, serious manner. McIver was still eyeing me with not entirely wholesome interest. So these were the two men that Daniel had mentioned. Both of them good cops who were also ambitious and might not want to jeopardize their careers by sticking their necks out on his behalf. I was furious that I wouldn’t be present to observe and ask the occasional question, although in a way I was relieved that I was not going with them to the morgue. I wasn’t at all sure my insides would hold up to what I might see there.

“This latest victim follows the pattern of the others?” Birnbaum fell into step beside Quigley as they made for the front door.

“So we are to understand. We were both off duty last night and unfortunately the body had been removed to the morgue by the time we were called in.”

“The only difference is that this one was still alive,” McIver added, lowering his voice as if he didn’t want me to hear.

“Still alive? But she was mutilated like the others?”

“So we understand,” McIver went on. “The constable
who found her noticed she was still breathing and had her rushed to the nearest hospital.”

“And was she able to speak—to name her killer?”

“Unfortunately no,” McIver muttered. “She muttered some word and then died. Mercifully, of course.”

They emerged onto the street and Quigley snapped his fingers at a waiting black police carriage.

“I will report back to you later, fraulein,” Dr. Birnbaum said, turning back to me.

“Very well, Doctor.”

He clicked his heels, bowed, and climbed into the waiting vehicle. I watched them go, seething with frustration. Yet another occasion on which my sex had barred me from participating. The two detectives had not even bothered to ask if I was a fully qualified doctor, and I don’t think it would have made any difference if I had been. I was not to be allowed to join in their men’s world.

I left police headquarters and began to wander aimlessly up Mulberry Street. I didn’t even know where Dr. Birnbaum was staying. I would just have to wait until he reported back to me—and patience wasn’t one of my stronger virtues, if indeed I possessed any virtues at all. Then it occurred to me that I could, at least, take a look for myself at the scene of the crime. If the body had been whisked away to a local hospital, then evidence might have been left behind where she had lain.

I changed course and set off down Broome Street for Elizabeth. It was only when I actually reached Elizabeth Street and wondered whether to turn left or right that I stopped to ask myself what I was doing. I wasn’t a police officer, investigating a crime. I was grasping at the thinnest of straws, hoping somehow, somewhere to find the link between Daniel Sullivan and the man who had plotted his downfall.

Elizabeth Street was relatively quiet, compared to the hustle and bustle of Mulberry and Canal. I knew that this street was known as a den of vice, and I supposed that most members of that profession slept in late. Even so, there were
the usual housewives, shaking out linens from upper windows, and children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, giving the scene an air of respectability and even tranquility. Nothing seemed to be happening to the north, toward Houston. So I turned to the south, back to Canal. I couldn’t see any unusual police presence, only an ordinary constable standing on the corner, swinging his baton and looking around with disinterest.

I was going to approach him, then thought better of it. He wasn’t likely to direct a thrill seeker to the scene of the crime, was he? So I made a careful inspection of the street, looking for goodness knows what, and came upon a woman down on her hands and knees among the filth, clearly looking for something.

“Can I help you?” I asked. “Have you lost something?”

She looked up at me. She wasn’t young anymore, even though she still had a trim figure, with sharp features made even sharper by wire-rimmed spectacles. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a bun, and she was wearing a severe, high-necked, dark blue costume.

“Thank you. I don’t need any help,” she said, and her voice was more pleasant than her appearance.

I pretended to move on, then stood watching her from the shadows as she went back to work. After a while she lifted something with tweezers and dropped it into a small paper bag. Then, to my delight, she took out a tape measure and laid it across the street. That was enough for me. I went back to her.

“Forgive me for asking, but this is where the young woman was found this morning, isn’t it?”

“It’s no concern of yours,” she said. “Just run along and let me get on with my work.”

“Are you a relative of the poor girl?” I asked. “Such a terrible, tragic thing to have happened.”

She eyed me appraisingly. “What are you, a reporter?”

“No, an investigator,” I said.

“Looking into a criminal case? That’s the business of the police.”

“You appear to be doing some investigating yourself,” I suggested.

“That’s because I’m a member of the police force myself.”

You could have knocked me down with a feather. I stared at her in surprise and delight. “A woman? In the New York police?”

“Officially I’m a matron,” she said.

“Oh, I see.” I had come across such matrons when I spent a night in a police shelter once.

“But now they use me in undercover work,” she continued. “It just happened that I was assigned to patrol this area last night. We’ve had people constantly on the alert since the second girl was killed.”

“Then you saw—” I began excitedly.

She shook her head. “That’s just it. I didn’t see a thing. I was on this very street several times. I’m so angry with myself. How could I have missed seeing the body dumped here?”

“When do you think it was put here?”

She frowned. “I heard a church clock chiming five as I turned onto Elizabeth Street. I walked down to Canal and turned right. By five-thirty the woman had been found and I was two streets away. I might even have seen the carriage as it passed with her in it. I could just kick myself. So near—what a chance that would have been for us women.”

I squatted beside her, since she remained on her knees. “You say a carriage. What makes you think the girl was not brought down from a room in a nearby brothel and merely left outside the door?”

“Because I have asked at nearby brothels and none of them reports missing one of their girls.” She looked a trifle smugly at me. “And because of this”—she drew an outline with her finger above the surface of the street—“the poor young woman lay approximately here; and if you’ll look about a foot away, there’s the clear imprint of a wheel in that patch of manure, and over there, a matching wheel imprint. Now that wheelbase is too wide to be a hansom cab; the wheel too delicate to be a draught wagon. Hence we’re deal
ing with some kind of carriage. He drove here, opened the door, pushed her out, then drove on.”

I stared at her in admiration. I had stumbled blindly through most of the cases I had investigated, coming to the right conclusion more through luck than skill. Here I was watching a trained, skilled detective at work. It reminded me how much of an amateur I was. But of course I wasn’t going to let her know that.

“I’ve done some undercover work for the police myself,” I said.

“Really?” She sounded skeptical.

“I was the one who went to the Flynn mansion and found out the truth about Senator Flynn’s kidnapped son.”

“Is that so? Who sent you?”

“Captain Sullivan.”

Her face became stony again. “Ah yes, Captain Sullivan. You’ll probably have heard. He’s no longer with the police. He left in disgrace.”

“Because somebody plotted his disgrace,” I said, angrily. “He’s innocent of the charges against him. He has never accepted a bribe, nor worked in the pay of a gang. Never.”

“I wish I could believe that,” she said.

“It’s all lies! Someone has been spreading false rumors. Circumstantial evidence.”

“Not all circumstantial,” she said, and her voice was now ice cold. “My husband was one of the officers sent to raid a meeting between two rival gangs that was going to get ugly. But someone had tipped the gangs off. They were waiting for our men. My husband was beaten up and later died of his wounds.”