For the Love of Mike Read online

  Terrific, I thought as we sloshed our way down Sixth Avenue toward the Jefferson Market police station. I had spent an entire evening risking pneumonia, getting myself arrested, and all to watch Mr. John Baker Tomlinson III visit his mother! As a detective it appeared I still had a long way to go.

  Two

  The Jefferson Market police station was in the triangular-shaped complex that also held a fire station, a jail, and the market itself. It was a mere stone’s throw from my house on Patchin Place and I looked longingly as we crossed Tenth Street.

  “Look, Officers, I live just across the street,” I said. “If you’d just take me home, my friends will vouch for me.”

  “You’re not going anywhere till morning,” the brusque constable said, giving my arm a warning squeeze. “We’ve been instructed to bring in any individuals behaving suspiciously and a young woman, out alone late at night, counts as suspicious in my book.”

  “But I’ve explained what I was doing.”

  “You can explain it to my sergeant.” I was shoved into the police station. “When he gets here in the morning,” he added.

  “You mean I have to stay here all night?” For the first time I began to feel alarmed. I had been in jail once before and I had no wish to repeat the experience. “You can’t keep an innocent person in jail with no cause.”

  “You watch your mouth or I’ll have you for resisting arrest,” the constable said. “Go on. Down to the lockup with you.”

  Oh, but I was so tempted to call upon the name of Captain Sullivan. Watching their faces when they realized their mistake would have been worth any lecture that Daniel might give me. But as my mother always told me, I was born with too much pride. I pressed my lips together and said nothing.

  I was manhandled down a dank, echoing hallway that smelled of urine and stale beer. I passed a cell full of dark shapes. The shapes stirred themselves as we passed and ribald comments from crude male voices were hurled after me.

  “Shut your mouths in there.” The constable rattled his nightstick along the bars. We paused in front of the next cell. It too was fronted with bars instead of a wall and full of more shadowy figures. My heart leaped in fear that I might be locked up with men like those we had just passed. Before I had time to voice these fears, a key was produced, a door within the bars swung open, and I was shoved inside. I half stumbled and was grateful to see myself staring at a delicate foot and a skirt.

  “Over here, dearie,” a rasping voice said from the darkness. “Move yer bum over, Flossie. The poor thing looks like she’s about to faint.”

  I wasn’t really the type who fainted, but this was not the moment to protest my apparent frailty. I gave a grateful smile and sat on the few inches of bare wooden cot that had been offered to me. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, I saw that my cellmates were indeed of the profession I had been accused of pursuing. There were five of them and they were rouged and powdered with bright red lips and hair piled in ridiculous pompadours. One was wearing a black French corset that lifted her bosoms like overripe melons. No dress over the corset, mind you—just the corset and a shiny black skirt beneath it. The skirt was hitched up as she sat on the floor to reveal black fishnet stockings and high-heeled boots. Flossie on the bench was in a low-cut red satin dress. The other occupant of the bench had her shawl pulled around her and was trying to sleep. In contrast to the others she looked young and innocent, apart from the circles of rouge on her cheeks and the bright lips. I tried not to stare too obviously.

  “So what you in for, honey?” the coarse voice asked again. It belonged to the large woman sitting on the floor in the corner, legs spread apart in a most unfeminine pose. She had an ostrich feather sticking from her hair and a feather boa around her neck.

  I thought it wise not to say that I was a detective. That might cast me with the enemy and I had a whole night to spend in their presence. In the months since I had fled from Ireland and come to New York I had become adept at lying without so much as batting an eyelid. When the police officers had grabbed me, I had tried telling the truth for once and look where it got me.

  “I’m afraid the officers have made a terrible mistake,” I said, trying to sound sweet and demure. “Just because they found me sheltering from the rain on my way home from a tryst with a young man, they thought that I was—one of you.”

  This caused great merriment. “Thought you was one of us—that’s a good one.” The large blowsy woman’s breasts heaved as she laughed. “You wouldn’t get many clients dressed like that, dearie.”

  “They must have wanted their eyes testing,” the one in the corset agreed. “Look at you. Anyone can see you’re a proper young lady and not riffraff from the streets.”

  “Getting too big for their boots, that’s the trouble with coppers around here,” Flossie in the red dress chimed in. “A girl’s not safe even when she’s paid her protection money. Just because there’s a Tammany mayor in city hall, the police think they can do what they damned-well like and nobody’s gonna stop them.”

  “Language, Bessy, there’s a young lady present,” the blowsy one reminded her. She leaned across and patted my knee. “Don’t you worry yourself, dearie. You’ll be out of here in the morning and this will all seem like a bad dream.”

  I looked around the cell and found the young girl awake and staring at me. She had big dark eyes and was looking at me with such a wistful expression that it almost broke my heart. It will seem like a bad dream for you, the expression said. For me there will be no waking up in the morning.

  I shut my eyes, leaned against the cold brick, and tried to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. Now that I was over my initial fear, I was so angry I felt I could explode at the unfairness of it all. This would never have happened if I’d been a man. Men were free to walk when and where they chose in this city. But a lone female, out unchaperoned at night, was immediately suspected of being up to no good. I had already realized that there were many things that Paddy Riley had been able to do that were just not open to me. He had contacts with gangs, and with the police. He frequented various taverns. He could move freely and unobtrusively through the worst areas, and could change his appearance easily by means of a beard or a moustache. I had tried disguising myself as a young boy once and was amazed at the freedom it gave me. Of course, Paddy had seen through it right away, but maybe I should consider using such a disguise again, if I wanted to avoid more embarrassing encounters with the police.

  And then again, maybe I should give up the whole idea of trying to carry on Paddy’s business. Divorce cases may have been Paddy’s bread and butter, but this short acquaintance with them had made me decide that they were not for me. I found them small, mean-spirited, and sordid. If I was going to stay in this business at all, then I should take up my original plan—finding immigrants who had lost touch with their families back in Europe. At least I’d be doing something positive then.

  I should never have started along this train of thought. My mind moved from immigrants, to Ellis Island, to my own unpleasant experience there, and then to the little family I had brought with me when their mother couldn’t travel with them. I wished I hadn’t rehashed that particular worry. When I delivered them to their father, I had thought that my job was complete. It wasn’t. The father, Seamus, had not been able to work since he almost lost his life in a collapse of the new subway tunnel. They had been evicted from the flat I found for them and the latest I had heard, they were back rooming with relatives on the Lower East Side. The fact that I wouldn’t wish those relatives on my very worst enemy and that I had grown remarkably fond of the two little ones nagged at my conscience. I knew I should be doing something to rescue them, but I also knew it would mean leaving the most delightful circumstances in which I now found myself. My big room on the top floor of my friends’ house on Patchin Place was little short of heaven. Living in a house full of artists and writers and thinkers had made it one step better than heaven itself.

  I had been putting off ma
king any decision, hoping that Seamus would be fit enough to return to work and that he’d find a good place for his family. Now it seemed that he might never be fit enough to return to hard manual labor. Which meant it was now up to me to rescue them from a Lower East Side hellhole and a dragon of a cousin. I gave a big sigh. Life seemed to be one perpetual roller-coaster—up on top of the hill one minute, then rushing downward to the depths the next.

  I should never have started thinking about roller-coasters either. Instantly my mind whisked me back to happier times, when Captain Daniel Sullivan had taken me to Coney Island. I smiled now at the memory of it. Daniel had expected me to scream, faint, or cling onto him as we rushed down into the depths. Instead I had laughed, loudly. The next time we began a descent, he had kissed me and we had hardly noticed when the car reached the bottom. I turned off that memory hastily. No good would come of dwelling on that part of my past. Besides, it all seemed blurred and dreamlike, as if it was something I had read about in a book.

  I glanced around the cell. Quiet had fallen. The young girl beside me slept like an angelic child. Heavy snores were coming from the bosomy lady on the floor. I closed my eyes and drifted into uneasy sleep.

  The rattle of a billy club along bars woke me. First gray light was coming in through a high window. It was cold and drafty in the cell. The door was opened briefly and a tray of tin mugs full of a hot dark liquid was shoved inside. I took the mug handed to me. It was coffee, at least I think it was. I longed for a warming drink, but my gaze fell on the bucket in the corner, which one of the women was now using noisily. There was no way on God’s earth that I was going to follow suit. I put the mug down untouched and wondered how long it might be before the sergeant arrived and I would be released. I opened my purse, which I had clutched in my arms all night, and took out my comb. At least I would try to look respectable when they came for me.

  A little later I heard deep voices and the tread of heavy boots echoing as they came down the hall.

  “The house behind Tom Sharkey’s saloon, you say. They work for the Dusters then, Harry?” I heard a voice saying.

  “Couldn’t say, sir. Nobody’s questioned them yet. You can take a look for yourself and see if you recognize any of them. Down here on the left.”

  The footsteps came closer. A balding uniformed sergeant stood in front of our bars and behind him stood a taller, slimmer man with unruly dark curls that escaped from under the derby he was wearing. If I’d have had time, I would have pulled my cape over my head. His gaze fell on me as I shrank into the corner and wished myself elsewhere. “Holy Mother—what about this one, Harry? What’s she in for?”

  “Not sure, sir. Found loitering on the street, late at night, as I understand it. Couldn’t give a proper explanation of herself. My boys thought she might be a lookout for the Dusters, seeing as where she was stationed.”

  “Did they now? Well, isn’t that interesting?” The man’s dark eyes flashed with amusement. “Bring her out, Harry. I’ll question this one myself.”

  “Out you come then.” The sergeant motioned me to the door. “Not you girls. Stay well back or you’ll get my nightstick on your knuckles.”

  “Good-bye, dearie. Good luck. Don’t let that scum scare you.” The wishes echoed after me as I walked beside the sergeant down the hall. Another door was opened. I was shoved inside.

  “Now behave yourself and answer the captain’s questions and you’ll come to no harm.”

  The door shut behind us and I looked up into the captain’s face.

  “You hear that,” he said, his eyes holding mine. “You’ll come to no harm if you just obey me.”

  “Very funny, Daniel,” I said. “I suppose you think it’s most amusing that I had to spend the night in a room full of loose women.”

  I watched him suppress a chuckle. “No, I’m sure it wasn’t funny at all for you. You do get yourself into the most impossible circumstances, Molly. What was it this time?”

  “I was minding my own business, observing a house on East Twelfth Street, when two of your great clodhopping constables grabbed me and hinted that I was an escaped prostitute.”

  This time Daniel Sullivan did smile.

  “As if I look like a floozie!” I snapped. “I told them I was an investigator, observing a house, but they wouldn’t believe me. They laughed in my face. They thought I was working for some gang, scouting out a place to rob, if you please. I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”

  Daniel put his hands on my shoulders. “Hold your horses, Molly. They were quite within their rights, you know. They have orders to bring in any suspicious persons and I’m sure you seemed suspicious to them.”

  “If I’d been Paddy, they’d have turned a blind eye and walked on past.”

  “Of course they would. Everyone knew Paddy.”

  “And he was a man.”

  “That too.” Those big, reassuring hands squeezed my shoulders. “Molly, when will you give up this stupid idea? Women just can’t be investigators. You’ve seen for yourself now that it doesn’t work. Last night was just an embarrassment for you. Next time it could be worse—the rumors about the white slave trade are not all exaggerations, you know. Prostitutes don’t have very long lives and replacements don’t exactly line up to volunteer for the job. A young woman alone on the streets at night is just what they are looking for.” A picture flashed into my mind of that young girl, looking at me with sadness and longing. I shuddered. “And then there are the gangs,” Daniel went on. He paused, still holding my shoulders, still looking down at me gravely. “Right now there is a war going on between two of the worst gangs in the city. The Hudson Dusters and Eastmans are fighting over territory and control of the cocaine trade. And the third gang, the Five Pointers, are hoping to expand their activities while their rivals are at each others’ throats. A nasty business. There were two men lying dead in the alley behind Tom Sharkey’s saloon last night. Neither gang admits knowing either of them. They’ve no identification on them. If some family member doesn’t report them missing, they’ll be buried in the potter’s field and we’ll never know their names. They might have been gang members, or they might have been innocent men, caught in the crossfire in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  “You’re saying I shouldn’t be out on the streets alone at night.”

  “Precisely. And why in heaven’s name didn’t you have me called when they brought you in last night? I could have had you out in seconds, rather than spend the night in jail.”

  “Because I have my pride,” I said. “Because I knew you’d behave exactly as you are behaving right now.” I took a deep breath, “And because I can mean nothing to you.”

  “Nothing to me—how can you say that?”

  I had been so strong all night. Now I was weary, relieved, and Daniel’s hands on my shoulders were unnerving me. I had a horrible feeling that I might break down and cry at any minute. I fought to master myself. “I haven’t read in the Times that Miss Norton has broken off her engagement,” I said stiffly.

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Then I can be nothing to you, Daniel. We’ve been through this before. Now if you’d just let go of me, I want to go home.”

  “I don’t want to let go of you, Molly,” he said, with a look that made me feel even more unsteady. “You know that. I want you to have patience until I can get things squared away.”

  “You won’t ever break off your engagement,” I said coldly. “Not while your career is at stake.”

  “Give me time, Molly, I beg you. I do love you, you know.”

  I held his gaze. “Not enough, Daniel.”

  His hands slid from my shoulders. “You’re free to go,” he said.

  I left the room without looking back.

  Three

  As I closed the front door at 9 Patchin Place, a voice yelled out, “She’s here, Gus, she’s here!” and Sid came flying down the stairs toward me, wearing kingfisher blue silk pajamas, followe
d by Gus wrapped in a large scarlet Chinese robe. Their faces were a picture of relief and joy.

  “Molly, where have you been? We’ve been worried sick,” Gus exclaimed over Sid’s shoulder. “We’ve been out half the night, tramping the streets, looking for you.”

  “I’m so sorry to have caused you such worry,” I said. “I’d have let you know if I could. I got myself arrested and spent the night a mere stone’s throw away at the Jefferson Market police station.”

  “Got yourself arrested?” Sid asked, looking amused now and not horrified as a more respectable woman would have done. “Molly, my sweet, what had you been doing?”

  “Nothing. That was the annoying part of it. I was minding my own business, standing on a residential street and observing a house. I was picked up by the police because no decent young lady should be out alone at night.”

  “The nerve of it,” Sid said. She helped me off with my cloak which was still damp and still smelled of wet sheep. “Your clothes are completely soaked,” she added as she hung it up. “You’d better let Gus run you a bath and I’ll go along to the kitchen to make us all some strong coffee. We were so worried we didn’t even think of going to the bakery for rolls yet, but I’ll remedy that as soon as I’ve put the coffee on.”

  “Come on, Molly, up the stairs with you.” Gus shepherded me up the stairs and by the time I was out of my wet clothes and into my robe, the steam was rising from the mammoth claw-footed tub that was the pride of our bathroom. “I’ll even let you use my Parisian soap to make you feel lovely and decadent,” Gus said with a wicked grin as she closed the door.

  I eased myself into the water and lay back, thinking how lucky I was to have such wonderful friends. Their names, of course, were not really Sid and Gus. They had been named by their parents, rather more conventionally, Elena Miriam Goldfarb and Augusta Mary Walcott, but around Greenwich Village, where we lived, they were always Sid and Gus. They were also, for all intents and purposes, a couple—something I had not come across in my sheltered Irish existence before. At home this would have made them social outcasts, to be whispered about behind closed lace curtains. In the society in which Sid and Gus moved, there were no rules. I found this delightfully refreshing and had become very fond of them both. They, in their turn, treated me as an adored child who could do no wrong.