For the Love of Mike (3 page)

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

A
s 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, followed 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.

By the time the water had begun to cool I was feeling relaxed, energized, and ready for anything again. I came downstairs to find fresh rolls from the French bakery around the corner on the kitchen table and the wonderful aroma of Sid’s Turkish coffee. I can’t say I had ever learned to love Turkish coffee as much as they did, but at this moment it was clearly a symbol of home and everything being all right after all.

“So do tell all, Molly. We’re quite agog,” Sid said, pulling up a chair beside me and breaking open a roll. She had changed out of the silk pajamas into dark gray trousers and an emerald green gentlemen’s smoking jacket which offset her black, cropped hair wonderfully.

“Not until she’s had something to eat, Sid. The poor lamb has been through an ordeal,” Gus said, taking the basket of rolls from Sid and handing it to me. “They’re still warm. Heavenly.” She was still in the red robe, her light brown curls still wild and untamed around an elfin face.

I sipped the black syrupy liquid and then took a big bite of warm roll, with melting butter and apricot jam. It felt good to be alive again.

“You’ll never guess why they apprehended me to begin with,” I said, looking up from my roll with a grin. “They thought I was a woman of the streets.”

“You? Were they particularly nearsighted policemen?” Sid asked.

“It was dark and apparently they had just made a raid on a nearby bawdy house.”

“Then why didn’t they release you the moment it became obvious that you were not that type of woman?” Gus asked.

“They decided I had to be up to no good, loitering alone in the middle of the night. They thought I might be a lookout for a gang.”

“Molly as a gangster’s moll! This gets better and better,” Sid spluttered through a mouthful of crumbs.

“I’m sure it wasn’t very amusing for poor Molly.” Gus patted my hand. “A night in a dreadful jail cell. How horrid for you, my sweet.”

“It wasn’t too bad. The cell was full of prostitutes, but they couldn’t have been kinder to me. They knew as well as I did that I’d been wrongly arrested.”

“So presumably someone with sense came on duty this morning, took one look at you, and realized a terrible mistake had been made.” Sid reached over to refill my coffee without being asked.

I made a face. “The person who came on duty was none other than Daniel Sullivan—the last person in the world I wanted to see in such circumstances.”

“Daniel the Deceiver, you mean?” Gus asked. They were well aware of my story and thought very poorly of him for his actions. “Why didn’t you use his name to get yourself released last night? It’s the least he could do for you, after trifling with your affections like that.”

“I refuse to ask Daniel Sullivan for help. My pride won’t let me. And besides, I knew he’d only say I told you so—which is exactly what he did.”

“I take it he still hasn’t broken his engagement then?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” I said. I helped myself to another roll. “And do you want to hear the ultimate annoyance of the evening? I found out when the police were leading me away that I had tailed my erring husband to his mother’s house, not his floozie’s.”

They both burst out laughing.

“You spent the evening spying on him visiting his mother? Oh, but that is rich.”

I had to laugh with them. “How was I to know? All I knew was that he was visiting a woman. It never occurred to me that the woman could be his mother.”

“Poor, sweet Molly,” Gus said, still smiling. “I wish you’d stop this highly dangerous life and become something sensible like a writer or a painter.”

“I made up my mind to stop last night,” I said. “Stop doing divorce cases anyway. I find they leave a bad taste in my mouth. I know they were Paddy’s bread and butter, but . . .”

“But they’re not your cup of tea!” Sid finished for me, delighted with her own wit.

“Precisely. I’m going to go back to my original intention of helping to reunite families. I’ve decided to place an advertisement in the Irish newspapers, and see if that brings any customers. If not, then I’ll start thinking about a change of profession.”

Sid jumped up at the sound of the morning post landing on our doormat. She came back with a big smile on her face. “Look at this. Postcard from Ryan.”

This was, of course, our friend, the delightful, flamboyant, annoying Irish playwright, Ryan O’Hare.

“Where is he?” Gus leaped up, peering over Sid’s shoulder to see the postcard. “The postmark is Pittsburgh.”

“That’s what he says. Listen. ‘Greetings from the land of smoke and fume. We open in Pittsburgh tonight, although what these Vulcans will think of a wickedly urbane satire, I shudder to think. After Cleveland I have come to realize that I was right. Civilization does cease outside of New York. The air here is quite unbreathable. My coughing at night rivals that of La Dame aux Camelias, indeed I may well return consumptive . . . Yours in great suffering and tribulation, Ryan O’Hare, playwright extraordinaire.’ ”

Sid and Gus looked at each other and laughed. “Typical Ryan. Everything has to be dramatic,” Gus said. “Now he’s dying of consumption.”

“Of course I do feel for him,” Sid said. “It was most unfortunate that President McKinley died just before his play was due to open. It wasn’t his fault that the theaters were all closed for a month of national mourning. So it makes sense to take the play on the road before tackling New York, even if that road includes Pittsburgh.”

“Let’s hope he returns to triumph at Daly’s Theater, just like he planned,” Gus said. “Is there a tad more coffee in that pot do you think, dearest?”

I listened to them chatting merrily but my thoughts had moved elsewhere. Something about Ryan’s postcard had left me feeling uneasy. We had, of course, been together when the president was shot. That would leave anyone feeling uneasy, but it was over now. The poor president was dead and buried and life had gone back to normal again. Then I realized what it was—Ryan’s mention of consumption. My nagging conscience came back to me. Poor Kathleen O’Connor was dying of consumption, back home in Ireland while I had been neglecting her children more than I should. I resolved to pay them a visit this very morning. If their conditions were not satisfactory, then I’d do something about it, however much I hated to leave this wonderful life of bohemian ease.

I got to my feet. “I should go out,” I said.

They were instantly at my side, the postcard from Ryan forgotten. “You’ll do no such thing,” Gus said. She could be quite forceful in spite of her delicate appearance. “You’ve just spent a night in damp clothing in jail. You need a good long rest.”

I tried to protest, but Sid took my arm. “No arguing. Now up you go and we’ll wake you for lunch.”

I thought it best not to protest further. I went up the two flights to my room, opened the windows, and lay down on the bed. Delightful autumn sunshine streamed in through my window, along with the chirping of busy sparrows in the bushes outside. I could have been miles from the city. How could I possibly give this up? I tried to sleep but my mind was coiled tighter than a watch spring. In the end I gave up, put on my business suit—since my dark skirt was still sodden around the hem—then crept down the stairs like a naughty child. Out of Patchin Place, diagonally across Washington Square until I met the Bowery. Then I headed south to the Lower East Side where Seamus and his family were now again living.

I stopped at a butcher to buy a chicken, and at the greengrocer to buy grapes, remembering how Seamus had enjoyed them before. Then I added two lollipops from a street stall. If you’re wondering where the money came from, seeing that I wasn’t making any yet, I was paying myself a modest salary from the money Paddy had left in the business—or more accurately, the money I had found hidden in the bottom of a filing cabinet drawer. I had not been naïve enough to hand it over to the police but had opened a bank account with it until a next of kin claimed it. So far no next of kin had come forward.

As I went on my way, the streets became noisier, dirtier, and smellier, the buildings taller, crammed together, shutting out the sunlight, giving me the feeling of being hemmed in. Memories of my own arrival in New York and my first unpleasant days on these streets came flooding back to me. How long ago it seemed. Was it really less than a year ago that I was walking these streets, penniless, afraid, with nowhere to go? I took stock of how far I had come and felt more cheerful right away.

As I passed through the Jewish quarter, crossing Hester Street then Rivington and Delancey, the streets became clogged with humanity—pushcarts everywhere, laden with every kind of merchandise. Vendors shouted their wares in tongues I couldn’t understand. Chickens and geese hung by their necks in rows. Strange foods sizzled on makeshift stoves giving off exotic, spicy smells. I looked with interest at a pickle vendor, producing fat green pickled cucumbers from a barrel like a conjurer bringing rabbits from a hat. I wondered what they tasted like and was tempted to stop and buy one. There were so many things in the world that were still new to me. One day I should take the time to try them all. But the suspicious looks I was getting from bearded men in tall black hats, from women who passed me with baskets on their arms, dragging serious, dark-eyed children let me know clearly that I was an outsider with no business in their territory. My bright red hair and Irish complexion were definitely a disadvantage for a budding detective. Paddy could blend in anywhere. I’d find it hard to look anything but Irish.

It was the same as I moved into the Italian section to the south. Streets echoed with men in animated conversation, laundry flapped above our heads, old women in black sat on stoops in the morning sunshine, babies cried, children played, more pushcarts with different wares—jars of olives, jars of olive oil, jars with what looked like thin sticks in them which I guessed might be uncooked spaghetti—and me with the definite feeling of being the outsider.