Oh Danny Boy (17 page)

Without thinking I put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so terribly sorry,” I said, “but it wasn’t Daniel who tipped off the gang, I swear that. He swears it, and I believe him. I’m doing everything I can to prove his innocence.”

“You’re a relative, are you?” she asked.

“Just a friend.”

She nodded with the understanding that always exists between us women and rose to her feet. She was a big woman,
maybe five foot six or seven. Tall, angular, bony. Certainly not what you’d ever call a beauty. “Well, Miss—?”

“Murphy,” I said, giving my real name for once. “Molly Murphy.”

“Well, Miss Murphy,” she went on, “I don’t know how you think that poking around at the scene of a sordid crime can help prove Captain Sullivan’s innocence.”

“Because there has to be a reason somebody wanted him disgraced and arrested. The details of his arrest were so well plotted. Money was slipped into an envelope delivered by a gang member, and the police commissioner just happened to arrive on the scene at exactly the right moment to witness this handing over of a bribe.”

“It sounds almost too well plotted to be true to me,” she said. “Did it ever occur to you that he may just be guilty? Men aren’t always straight with us women. He may not have wanted to diminish himself in your eyes.”

“Oh, I know all about Daniel Sullivan’s failings. But he’s never out-and-out lied to me, and I believe him this time. He’d never want to send me on a wild-goose chase if he didn’t believe I could come to the truth. What would be the point in it?”

She looked at me, long and hard, then she nodded. “And you think that this series of crimes is somehow linked to Captain Sullivan?”

I shook my head. “Not really, but I’m leaving no stone unturned. Someone has a motive for wanting him off the force and out of the way. He can’t think what that motive might be, but someone must have a grudge against him, or somebody must have been worried he was coming too close to solving a case. At the time of his arrest he was lead officer in a horse-doping scandal out at Coney Island, and he had just been put in charge of this case. Hence my interest.” I paused, looked at her, then put my hand up to my mouth as I realized it might have gotten me into trouble yet again. I’ve never known when to shut up. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You’ll probably go straight back to police headquarters, report what I’ve told you, and thus make somebody aware that I’m snooping around.”

“Not me, my dear,” she said. “Contrary to popular belief, we women can hold our tongues when necessary, and one thing we can do very well is stick together. I shouldn’t like you. I shouldn’t trust what you say. But I do.” She held out her hand. “The name’s Goodwin, Sabella Goodwin.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Goodwin,” I said. “You don’t know how pleased I am to meet you. And if there’s anything I can do to help you, I’d be only too happy to assist.”

“Get away with you. I’ve been around enough Irish blarney in my life,” she said, but she was smiling.

I’d better let you get back to your work,” I said, noticing that a group of children had gathered to watch us. “If we’re not careful they’ll spoil any clues you might have picked up. May I ask what you put in a bag?”

“A cigar butt,” she said. “It may just be coincidental, but then it might have been discarded at the same time as the body. Cigar butts don’t usually last long on these streets. Those last shreds of tobacco are too precious to waste. The urchins would have pounced on it. And that’s about all I’ve got to go on.” She sighed. “Too bad they rushed her to the morgue this time. I hope the detectives managed to have photographs taken.”

“They rushed her to the hospital, not the morgue,” I said.

“The hospital?”

“Because she was still alive.”

“Saints preserve us. Still alive? But I understood she was another victim of the Ripper. I saw the last of those poor girls and there was no way…”

“She died soon afterward,” I said.

“Thank God.” She paused and looked up at me. “And how did you manage to find out this?”

“Like I told you, I’m an investigator.” I smiled.

“All right, Miss Investigator,” she said, “see what you make of the crime scene.”

I looked down. It seemed to be a normal patch of New York street. Not too clean, with rotting vegetables, scraps of
paper, and horse manure in the usual quantities. In fact, I saw nothing unusual until…

“Oh yes,” I said. “You can see she lay here. Those are blood spots on that cabbage leaf.”

Mrs. Goodwin nodded and picked up the leaf with tweezers, putting it into another paper bag. “But not much blood,” she commented. “Which confirms she was dumped here after being assaulted somewhere else and found almost immediately.”

The nosy youngsters had closed in on us.

“What’s youse doin’?” one of the braver boys asked.

“It’s where that lady copped it this morning,” a girl said.

“That weren’t no lady. That was one of the girls,” the boy retorted.

I looked up at the child. She was a skinny little thing with hollow cheeks and a much-patched dirty muslin dress. “Did you see the lady lying here?”

She nodded, suddenly worried that she might have said too much or somehow be in trouble. “Yeah. It was horrible. Her face was all bashed in.”

“I saw her too,” a small boy ventured. “There was blood all over.”

“How did she get here?” I asked. “Any of you see the body put on the street?”

Heads shook.

“My ma heard the noise going on outside, and we all went to the window and saw the police wagon and all. And my ma told us not to go down, but we came down here anyway and they were just picking her up and putting her in the back of the wagon. I didn’t really want to watch, but I did.”

I glanced at Mrs. Goodwin. “We should question the people who live in these tenements. Someone must have been awake between five and five-thirty and seen something.”

“Someone should question the local inhabitants, but not you or me,” she said. “This is a police investigation.”

“You’re with the police. You told me.”

She looked just slightly embarrassed. “Yes, but I’m not officially assigned to this case. In truth they only use me for
undercover observation where a male officer would be too obvious. They’ve yet to trust me with a real detective’s work.”

“Then this is a good chance to prove yourself,” I said. “Look, they’ve nobody out here. What harm can there be in asking a few discreet questions before the men show up? And you’ve already nabbed the cigar butt.”

She grinned. We were fellow conspirators. “I like your style,” she said. “As I said, I’ve already checked the official brothels on the street to see if any girls are missing, so you take that tenement and I’ll take this one. Then we’ll work our way down to the end of the block. The vehicle came up from Canal, because the wheel tracks are on this side of the street. The man wouldn’t want to risk causing any kind of traffic holdup.”

“Right you are,” I said. “I’ll tackle this place then.”

“And I the one directly opposite. Report back here.”

And off I went, followed, like the Pied Piper, by a string of inquisitive children. “So who lives here?” I asked, and room by room, I made my way through the house. Many of the apartments only had windows that looked out to the back of the building, or worse, to the air well in the middle of the building. That meant another window or a brick wall, literally two feet away. I heard they had just passed a new law saying that tenements had to have better ventilation and an inside toilet, but I couldn’t see City Hall making anyone tear down existing buildings or correcting these pitiful air ducts.

At last I came to the apartment where the skinny child lived, whose name I had by now found out was Kitty. Her mother was home, stirring a huge pot of laundry over a gas ring with a big wooden spoon. Her sleeves were rolled up and her forearms red and raw from the soda in the washing tub. She scowled as the children spilled into the room, sweeping me in with them.

“What in the world—” she began, but they twittered around her like sparrows.

“Mah, she’s come about the body. You know, the woman what had her face bashed about?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs…” I said, when I could get a word in edgewise, “but we’re wondering if anyone in this apartment was up and around at five this morning, which was when the poor girl was dumped on the street.”

“Up and around?” she glared at me, her lip curled up scornfully. “With a man who has to be at his shift digging the subway by six, and a couple of girls off to the sewing shops, I don’t know where we’d be if I wasn’t up and around by five.”

“So was it possible you might have seen something from your front window? You have a good view of the street.”

“Oh sure. And I’ve the time to sit behind my lace curtains, sipping my morning coffee, and peeking out at the world, haven’t I? It’s like a zoo in here, in the mornings. Crazy. The man’s yelling for his boots and his breakfast at the same time. Me father wants something else, and the girls want their lunch pails. No, I can safely say that I didn’t look out of the window. Not until we heard the commotion.”

“And what happened then?”

“The kids rushed to the window, and the police had arrived and they were in the process of carting her off to the morgue, I suppose. Several of them were lifting her into the back of a Black Maria and off they went.”

“But you didn’t hear or see any carriage come down the street before that. A carriage, not a hansom cab.”

“Carriage, you say?” She sniffed. “Can’t say you see too many carriages down this street. If a gentleman wants a visit to one of the houses here, he comes incognito, on his own two feet, or in a cab at best. It’s not likely he’d have his coachman drop him off.” She sneered again. “And if he can afford a coachman, then there are better and cleaner houses up around Forty-second Street, so I hear. And even fancier ones on Fifth Avenue itself.”

This, of course, was true. I thanked her. “And if anyone does remember anything about this morning, any of your neighbors saw a carriage stop, or a man behaving suspiciously, then here’s my card. One of the children can find me, I expect, and there will be a tip for him.”

“What are you, a lady detective?” she asked.

“Something of the kind. Helping the police to stop these horrible killings.”

“About time. I worry for my own daughters. Fifteen and seventeen they are; and if they were coming home on a dark night, who’s to say the brute might not mistake them for that kind of woman?”

“Who’s to say indeed?” We nodded at each other with understanding. “You wouldn’t catch me walking here alone and in the dark.”

“What’s all this commotion? Can’t a man have a moment’s peace anywhere?” a rasping voice demanded and an old man came into the room. He was bent over like a shepherd’s crook. “Who’s she?” he demanded. “Not the rent collector again?”

“She’s been asking questions about the streetwalker who copped it today.”

“What for?”

“Lady detective, apparently.”

I looked at him. He stared back with bloodshot, tired eyes.

“You didn’t happen to see anything yourself, did you?” I asked. “This morning, around five?”

“I was sleeping like a babe, up on the roof,” he said. “I always takes a cot up on the roof in this weather. Can’t sleep, packed in like sardines down here. They’d all sleep better too, but she won’t let the kids up on the roof, just in case something happens.”

“Up on the roof?” I asked. “And you didn’t hear any of the commotion when they found the girl?”

“Oh yes, when they found her. Shouts and whistles and horses galloping up.”

“But you weren’t woken by galloping hooves earlier? A carriage, maybe?”

He shook his head. “Galloping hooves? This ain’t the Wild West, lady.” His skinny body shook with silent mirth. “The brewer’s dray and the occasional hansom cab. Black Maria whenever they decide to raid one of the houses or one of the clients gets a little too lively. That’s about it.”

“So a carriage and pair might have woken you?”

“Might have. Didn’t.”

“To tell you the truth,” his daughter said, stepping back into the conversation, “you could have knocked me down with a feather when the kids said there was a body down there because the police have been camped out on that corner since the first body was found on the street. How your carriage got past the police, I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” I said, resolving to find out which officers had been assigned to the corner this morning and whether they might have been dozing on duty and not wanting to admit it. Mrs. Goodwin had similar thoughts when I met her to compare notes. “These young men are not all as dedicated as we’d like them to be. But I was here myself this morning. That’s what baffles me.”

“Could she possibly have been thrown from an upstairs window or a roof?” I suggested. “The tire tracks might be just coincidental.”

She looked up at the rooftops, considering. “I suppose it’s possible.”

“Then she could have been brought over rooftops from another street altogether.”

She nodded, glancing up and then down. “If she was dropped from a height, the body will show signs of considerable bruising, especially if she was, as you say, still alive. And it would be a miracle if the fall didn’t kill her outright.”

“We’ll never know unless we see the body for ourselves,” I said.

She looked at me, half excited, half doubtful. “Are you suggesting that we go to the morgue and take a look?”

“You are a police officer, after all,” I said. “Look how you found that cigar butt. What’s to say there’s not something else they’ve overlooked.”

She shook her head. “Did anyone ever tell you that you were trouble?” she demanded.

“Constantly. Since I was born.” I grinned, and she returned the smile.

“Well, come on then. No point in hanging about,” she said, and set off at a lively pace toward Canal Street.

As I hurried to keep up with Mrs. Goodwin, a thought struck me. “Wait,” I called, grabbing at her blue serge sleeve.

“You’ve lost your stomach for the morgue after all?” she asked, turning back to me.

“It’s not that. It’s just that the two detectives in charge of the case might still be there. They took an alienist with them but wouldn’t let me come along. So I don’t think they’d take it too kindly if I turned up while they were there.”

She gave me a suspicious frown. “And how, in heaven’s name, did you think they’d invite you to join their little party?”

“Because I know the doctor in question. He was willing to let me accompany him as his assistant. He understood how important this is to me. But the snooty one of the pair, Detective Quigley, absolutely said no. No women allowed.”

“I understand that this is important to you, but what did you really hope to gain by going to the morgue? What do you think the sight of a dead body can tell you?”

I sighed. “I wish I knew. Maybe I’m chasing at straws. But someone worked very hard to bring about Daniel Sullivan’s disgrace. Someone must have had a very good reason. So I’m thinking that either it was Police Commissioner Partridge himself who wanted Daniel out of the way, or somebody who didn’t want a particular case solved. He was only working on two cases, remember. It could be something to
do with the doping at the horse track, but then even if a doping scandal came to light, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. However, we’ve just seen carriage tracks and a cigar butt on Elizabeth Street. What if we’re dealing with an important man who doesn’t want to be unmasked? A man of substance who has this unnatural bent to murder prostitutes?”

She stared at me, long and hard. “Why don’t we go and have a cup of coffee first, and then you can tell me how far you’ve got. Maybe I’ve a way to help.”

We had just turned onto Canal when I espied a young man coming toward us, his derby hat set at a jaunty angle above an innocent and angelic face. At first glance he looked like a well-dressed bank clerk on his day off, but I knew better. I had met him once before, to my cost. He went by the name of Kid Twist, and he was Monk Eastman’s right-hand man and enforcer. But encountering him in broad daylight, in the middle of a busy street, was too good a chance to turn down.

I nudged Mrs. Goodwin. “Wait a moment. We have to talk to that man. Maybe he can help us.”

“Do you know who that is?” She clutched at me and held me back.

“Of course. It’s Kid Twist. I’ve had dealings with him before. But who would know better about missing prostitutes in the area? And what can happen to us here in the midst of this crowd?”

Her face was a mask of hate. “It’s not just that. The Eastmans killed my husband—they and their cronies. They beat him to death. I won’t rest until they are all behind bars or dead themselves.”

“I can understand you’d feel that way,” I said. “Believe me, I’d want justice too, if it had happened to my man, but I can’t let this chance slip through my hands. You wait over here, if you don’t want to have to face him. I’ll be quite safe, and you can keep an eye on me, in case he tries anything.”

She let me go, reluctantly. I dodged between delivery wagons and ran to catch up with him. “Kid. Mr. Twist. Wait a second,” I called.

He turned around, eyed me suspiciously. “I’ve seen your face before,” he said. “Whatta you want?”

“I need to talk to you for a moment. It’s about these prostitutes. Another one was found dead this morning.”

“Yeah. Dat was too tragic. What about it?”

“I just wondered—well, I know you work with Monk Eastman, and I know he controls most of what goes on around here.”

“He’s very active in the community, sure,” he said with heavy sarcasm.

“So those girls? Did they work for him? Do you know who they were?”

“I didn’t hear about no girls going missing,” he said.

“And if they came from one of the houses around here, you would have heard?”

“Yeah, I’d have heard.”

“And what if they weren’t from one of the brothels, if they were real streetwalkers who took men to one of the cheap hotels?”

He stared at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “Nice girls like you ain’t supposed to know about things like dat. It ain’t good for you.”

“I’m an investigator, Kid. I know about many things that aren’t good for me.”

He eyed me warily. “Investigating what? Who’s killing whores? What for—some kind of newspaper story?”

“Something like that,” I said. I didn’t think he’d be overly helpful about saving Daniel’s skin. “And I imagine you’d want this case solved as quickly as possible, too. It can’t be too healthy for Monk to have his territory crawling with police day and night.”

He looked at me in surprise, then he grinned. “You can say that again.”

“Okay. So if they were real streetwalkers, not part of a brothel, would Monk have heard when one of them disappeared?”

“There ain’t much that gets by Monk on his own turf. All
the girls have their protector, and dose guys pay their protection money to Monk. So do dose hotels you’re talking about. Yeah, he’d have heard.”

“So I’m wondering”—I took a deep breath—“and I’m not accusing you of anything, you understand. Just curious. If a girl wasn’t behaving properly, if she wanted to escape from that kind of life, might somebody make sure that she didn’t?”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re asking me whether Monk would order to have a girl killed because she didn’t do what she was told?”

“That’s exactly what I’m wondering,” I said.

He laughed. “Dat’s not how it works. Dose girls, they’re our assets. We want them alive, well, and working.”

“If they were trying to run away?”

“Where would they run to? When they land up here, it’s at the bottom of the heap. There’s nowhere left to run. And if they needed teaching a lesson, one of the boys would slap them around a bit, without damaging the assets, you understand.” He paused then said thoughtfully, “And if she don’t listen good after that, then maybe she’d wind up floating in the East River. But I don’t know nobody who would be dumb enough to dump a body in full view on the street. What’s the sense in it?”

He was right. What was the sense in it? The only answer was that the killer was getting an added thrill from knowing he was baffling the police. Maybe he had been close by and watching…. I felt my skin prickle when I remembered that we had been into those tenement buildings. Had he been watching us then? Still there was no point in asking the children if they’d seen a strange gentleman on the street. There must be a steady procession of them, night after night.

“Listen, Mr. Twist,” I said, “if the Eastmans find out anything about these girls, would you let me know? The sooner we catch this man, the better for all of us. Young Malachy knows where I live. You can send a message with him.”

His eyes narrowed. “You working with da cops?”

“Not at all. You could say I’m working in competition with the cops.”

“Then you better watch your own skin, girl. Cops around here don’t take kindly to having their toes stepped on.”

“I’ll be careful. So will you tell me like I asked?”

He nodded. “All right. Monk certainly ain’t too thrilled about having the police in his backyard.”

I gave him my most winning smile. “Thank you. I really appreciate our little talk.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.” He tipped his bowler.

I almost skipped back across the street.

“Well, that’s taken care of,” I said, trying not to look too pleased with myself. “The Eastman gang knows nothing about these girls.”

“So he tells you,” Sabella Goodwin snapped. “They’re a bunch of low-down, dirty scum, the lot of ’em. They’d swear on the body of their grandmother and look you full in the face and lie.”

I put my hand on her arm. “Look, I can understand how you feel about them. I’m no champion of them myself. I almost got kidnapped by them once. God knows where I’d be now if the police hadn’t raided at that moment. But they are the ideal ones to help us if we want to solve this.”

We started to walk toward the Bowery.

“Monk Eastman has a finger in every kind of criminal pie in the Lower East Side,” I continued. “If one of his girls had wound up dead, he’d want to know who did it, wouldn’t he? Someone would be messing with his assets, as Kid Twist so nicely put it. So I wanted to find out if they were Monk’s girls.”

“And are they?”

“That’s the odd thing. Kid says they haven’t heard of any girls going missing, which must mean they’re brought in from somewhere else.”

“Another part of the city, you mean?”

“Daniel says the first dead girl who fit this pattern of killing was found under the boardwalk at Coney Island. So
maybe our killer preys on Coney Island prostitutes but now finds it more exciting to dump them on city streets.”

“This is something we should share with the detectives in charge,” Sabella Goodwin said.

“I’m sure they must have thought of it themselves and wouldn’t take kindly to being told how to conduct their case by a couple of women.”

She grinned. “Quigley wouldn’t, that’s for sure. Conceited young fellow. He’s planning to go to the top in a hurry.”

And might have found Daniel stood in his way? The thought flashed across my mind.

“What about McIver?”

“He’d like to go all the way to the top on Quigley’s coattails, I reckon,” she said. “He’s certainly bright enough, but lazy. Quigley’s meticulous, by the book. McIver’s the opposite—any means to get to the end. It will get him into trouble one day.”

We continued along the sidewalk in silence. I was thinking about two ambitious young men, one of them prepared to take risks to get what he wanted. They had both been handed this plum assignment when Daniel was arrested. Did either of them want promotion badly enough that they were prepared to go to extreme lengths for it? And if either of those detectives had set up Daniel’s betrayal, then these dead girls were of no use to me at all. I didn’t really need to go to the morgue.

Because, to tell the truth, I was having serious second thoughts about what lay ahead. I had seen a few dead bodies in my lifetime. I hadn’t enjoyed those experiences and they had been but fleeting glances—and my stomach had been more stable in those days. To see a body laid out on a marble slab, its face badly disfigured, was something I might not be able to handle. What if I fainted or threw up in front of Sabella Goodwin and the doctor at the morgue?

As we sat at the coffee shop under the EI station I tried to come up with a plausible excuse to get me out of what lay ahead. Before I could think of anything, however, Sabella
Goodwin smiled at me. “I’m so glad you’ve agreed to come to the morgue with me, because I have to confess—I’d never have summoned the nerve to go there alone.”

As I didn’t answer she went on. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have found an ally. I’ve been trying to make those men in the police department see that we women are just as capable of carrying through an investigation as they are. We may not be strong enough to chase after crooks and arrest them, but we can do the legwork as well as any man.”

“And I’d like to see any man chase after crooks if he had to wear corsets and long skirts,” I said, and she laughed.

“We’ll show them, Molly. We’ll go to that morgue and solve their case for them.”

It looked as if I was going to the morgue, whether I wanted to or not.