For the Love of Mike (6 page)

“I can operate a machine, but I’m a little out of practice. Mr. Mostel said I could start out on something simple until I get up to speed.”

“Collars then. Go and sit next to Golda. She’s in charge of our learners. She’ll show you what to do.”

A large middle-aged woman in a high-collared black dress beckoned and patted a stool beside her. “Sit your heiny down there and we’ll get started,” she said, giving me a friendly smile. “Did you bring your needle?”

“Needle?”

“Oh yes, girls have to supply their own sewing needles in this shop. And your own thread too. You can start off with one of mine, but during your lunch break you pop across to the dry-goods store and get yourself a medium-point needle and a spool of white thread.”

“They make us buy our own needles and thread?” I burst out before I remembered that I was supposed to be shy, withdrawn, and not attract any attention to myself.

Golda looked shocked. “But they do at all the shops. Where were you working last?”

“At a little place in Ireland,” I said. “It was different there. Just a few girls. Friendly atmosphere.”

“How nice,” she said wistfully. “You won’t find the atmosphere too friendly here, thanks to Seedy Sam over there. He makes sure we’re always miserable. We’re not supposed to talk at all. If a girl is found talking, he docks five cents off her wages. We get away with it now, because I’m showing you what to do. Now watch carefully.” She took two pieces of collar, put them together, and the machine clattered as it flew around the edges of three sides. “Smooth sides facing out. Get it?”

I nodded and demonstrated for her, rather more slowly.

“
Ach ya
, you’ll do just fine,” she said, a short while later. “She’s a quick learner, Sam. She’s ready to start out on her own.”

Sam motioned me to an empty place beside Sadie, who gave me an encouraging grin as I sat down. A large pile of pre-cut collars was put on my right side. I started sewing. As I finished each piece a small girl darted up with a large pair of scissors to cut the ends. As fast as the pile went down, Sam was there with another huge pile. It was never ending. I thought I was doing well until he said, “If you go at that speed, you’ll be here all night. Step it up, will ya?”

I glanced at my fellow workers. Their needles were positively flying up and down. How was I going to be able to observe who might be sneaking around when I obviously wouldn’t have a moment to breathe? The morning dragged on. Nobody spoke, unless Sam left the room and then there were whispers. One girl got up and walked down the room toward the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sam demanded.

“Washroom,” the girl said. “I need to go.”

“You were up and down all day yesterday,” Sam complained. “Think you’ve found a way to slack off, do ya? Well, I’m docking ten cents from your pay packet. That’ll teach you.”

“Give her a break, Sam,” Sadie said. “She’s expecting. Everyone knows you have more calls of nature when you’re in that condition.”

“You girls should think more about your duty to your boss and less about populating the world with more stinking kids,” Sam growled. “Go on then. Go to the washroom, but you’re staying late if you don’t meet your quota. I don’t care how many brats you got squalling for you.”

Sadie looked at me and shook her head.

At last a bell rang and everyone jumped up.

“Half an hour, remember,” Sam yelled. “Not no stinking thirty-five minutes. We don’t pay you good money to waste the boss’s time.”

“They don’t pay us good money, and that’s a fact.” Sadie fell into step beside me as she reached for her shawl.

“You talking again, Sadie Blum?” Sam’s voice echoed down the room. “Better watch that mouth or you’ll owe me more than you earn by the end of the week. Okay, line up for inspection if you want to go out.”

“What is this, the army?” I whispered to Sadie.

“He has to inspect our bags and pockets to make sure we’re not stealing any of the trimmings,” she whispered back. “Sometimes they even lock the doors when we’re using expensive stuff.”

Sam came charging up to us. “Some people never learn, do they, and now you’re teaching the new girl bad habits. I’m docking you each ten cents from your pay packet. And next time you talk, it will be a quarter. Your fancy airs and graces don’t work around here.”

He searched my purse then he put his hands on my waist and ran them down my sides. “Hey, watch it!” I said, slapping his hands away from me. “You can search my purse if you like, but you’re not touching my person.”

“I’m only checking your pockets, sweetheart. Nothing to get your dander up about.” He grinned at me with that insulting leer. “If I was really feeling you up, I’d do a much better job of it.”

At last he opened the door and we filed down the stairs. “That man is awful,” I muttered to Sadie as we passed through the door and started in a procession down the stairs. “Why doesn’t somebody do something about him?”

“Do what? If we complain, we’re fired. The boss doesn’t care how we’re treated as long as the work gets done. And there are plenty of girls stepping off the boat every day waiting to take our places.”

“And it’s better than some of the shops,” another girl commented, coming up to join us as we stepped out into the fresh air of the street. “My sister only gets five dollars a week if she’s lucky, and they dock her pay for the use of the firm’s power supply, and an extra five cents for the use of the mirror and towel in the washroom. She says the mirror is so small you can hardly see to powder your nose. She tried bringing her own towel from home too, but they still docked her the five cents a week.”

“None of these bosses care about their workers, Sarah. It’s all about money,” Sadie said. She turned back to me. “Girls are always getting sick because there’s not enough air to breathe and too many of us crammed into one room, but they won’t let us have the window open, even in summer.”

“So why do you stay?” I asked.

“What else can newnik girls like us do?” Sarah, the second girl said with a shrug of her shoulders. In contrast to Sadie, who was tall and carried herself with a certain air of grace, Sarah was frail and hollow looking, as if she hadn’t had a good meal or been out in the fresh air recently. “Nobody’s going to hire immigrant newniks outside of the sweatshops.”

“I’m educated, but it don’t matter,” Sadie said. “Back at home I had a good life. I was taking piano lessons and French. Too bad it wasn’t English. Now I just pick up gutter English.” She slipped her arm through mine. “You speak nice. You help me to speak more educated, okay?”

“So why are you here, if you had such a good life?” I asked.

Sadie and Sarah looked at each other as if I was rather stupid. “When there’s a pogrom, they don’t care which Jews are rich and which are poor. They destroyed and burned our house. They threw my piano out of the upstairs window.” She turned away, biting her lip. “And what they did to my big sister was unmentionable. My mother was thanking God that she died. I was hiding under the straw in the henhouse, but we could hear her cries for help.” She pressed her lips together and turned her face away from us.

“They killed my father,” Sarah added. “They ran a bayonet through him while we watched. My mama brought us to America with money she had sewn into the hem of her skirt.”

I had had no idea that such things went on in the world. I looked at tall, elegant Sadie and frail little Sarah and was amazed how calmly they were telling me this. No wonder these girls put up with such bad conditions in America. At least they didn’t have to fear for their lives every day.

I should do something to help, I thought. I speak English. I could make the bosses listen. Then I reminded myself that this was not my struggle. I was only here as a spy. In a few short weeks, I’d be gone again.

Six

B
y the time I had been at the garment factory a week, I had almost come to believe that I really did work there and that this terrible life of drudgery was all I had to look forward to. My feet ached from working the treadle. My fingers were raw from handling the cloth. I prayed to get the assignment over quickly, but my sewing still wasn’t good enough to guarantee that another firm would hire me. In addition to this, the designs for the new spring collection wouldn’t be ready until the middle of November, at least three weeks away. The plan I had hatched with Max Mostel was as follows: I should work for him until I was up to speed, which would give me time to observe his workers. I would then apply at Lowenstein’s and start work there at least a week before Max Mostel finished his designs and passed them to the sample hands, so that I was familiar enough with the routine at the new factory to be able to know who was who and what was what. That meant about two more weeks at this hellhole.

I think it was the lack of air that got to me most. That and the lack of light. As the autumn light faded and one gray day followed another it became harder to see what we were sewing. The row of girls closest to the window had a slight advantage, but not much because the windows were small and badly needed washing. Those of us three rows back had to rely on anemic gas lamps. No wonder the girls bent low over their work and several of them were wearing glasses.

And of course for me the hardest thing of all was holding my tongue and not getting myself fired. Those girls were so submissive and browbeaten that it riled my fighting spirit. Every time one of them was docked money for going to the washroom too often, or coming in one minute late from lunch I was itching to jump up and tell that leering monster Sam what I thought of him. On the last day of my assignment I’d let him have it all right! I spent those long hours at the machine thinking up choice phrases to hurl at him when I made my grand exit.

By the end of a week I had received a pay packet containing four dollars and ninety cents. The other dollar and five cents had been docked for various sins—twice back late from lunch, once whispering, once dropping a collar on the floor and once getting up to stretch out my back. On the way home I thought gloomily that I hadn’t foreseen how hard this assignment would be. I couldn’t imagine any of those downtrodden females having the nerve to slip upstairs to the boss’s office and steal his designs from under his very nose, even if they could ever get past the fearsome foreman.

A whole week had gone by and I hadn’t even started my investigation. At this rate the new designs would come and go and I’d still be trying to get up to speed on collars! I should be sounding out the other girls with cleverly phrased questions. If only Paddy had still been around, he would have known what to ask. Why did he have to die before I had had a chance to learn from him? There was so much I still didn’t know. In fact every time I set out on a case, I felt like a lone traveler, floundering through a blizzard.

My only chance to talk to the other girls was at lunch, when some of them went to the little café across the street and got a bowl of stew or at least a coffee to go with their sandwich.

“So what are we actually making here?” I asked, like the bright new learner that I was. “I only get to see collars.”

“Right now it’s ladies dresses—latest fashion for the big stores,” someone said.

“Latest fashion, eh? That sounds very exciting,” I said. “So I’ll get some tips on what to wear if I see what comes out of this shop?”

“You won’t ever see the finished garment,” Sadie said. “They have finishers who put the pieces together.”

“So who designs these latest fashions? Do they come from Paris or something?”

“Listen to her! Paris? Such ideas.”

I laughed. “Well, I don’t know anything about it. I’m new. I always thought that fashions came from Paris.”

“I think old Mostel designs his own, doesn’t he?” The girls looked at each other.

“Yes, and he thinks he’s the cat’s whiskers too.”

“I can’t imagine him designing ladies dresses.” I grinned at them. “He doesn’t look like a fashionable kind of man.”

“You should see his family,” Golda said, leaning confidentially close. “Oy vay, but do they live like kings. He’s here working away at the business every day, making sure nobody steals a yard of his precious ribbon and his wife and children are out spending his money as fast as he can make it. And when you see them, they go around with their noses in the air, like they were born aristocrats and not just arrived from a stadtl, like the rest of us.”

“They’re immigrants too?”

Golda nodded. “Only they came here twenty years ago. He arrived with nothing but the sewing machine from his father’s tailor shop—and look what he’s made of himself. You have to hand that to him.”

“On whose backs, though, Golda?” Sadie asked. “With our sweat and our labor.”

“Hush, Sadie, you shouldn’t talk like that. You never know who might be listening,” Golda said.

“You mean there might be spies?” I asked innocently, looking around me for any face that might have betrayed shock or embarrassment. “Tattletales who report back to the boss?”

Golda touched the side of her nose. “You never can tell.”

What did that mean, I asked myself as we went back to work. Did she know that one of the girls present was a spy for the boss—in which case did she have any idea if any of the girls might be a spy for someone quite different? I’d have to make friends with Golda and see if she’d divulge any of her secrets.

At home in my room that night I made a list: Befriend Golda. Get to know the sample makers. They have the means—see designs first. But motive? Old women. Rheumatism. One is Max’s cousin.

The trouble was that stealing designs from under Max’s nose required courage and bravado. I couldn’t picture any of those downtrodden girls taking such an appalling risk. Of course, the most likely suspect was our foreman Seedy Sam. He looked to be the type who wasn’t above shady behavior and he had access to Max’s office. Maybe I’d eat my sandwiches at my machine in the future, so that I could keep an eye on him.

The sweatshop had become my life so completely that I had almost forgotten the advertisement I had placed in the Irish newspaper. I was therefore stunned when, in the middle of my second week, I received a letter from Ireland.

Collingwood Hall

Castlebridge

County Wexford, Ireland

Dear Sir,

I saw your advertisement in the
Dublin Times.
I am trying to locate my only daughter Katherine. The foolish child has run off with one of our estate workers, an undesirable young man called Michael Kelly, and it appears that they took a ship to New York. Naturally I want her found and brought home as soon as possible, although I fear it is already too late where her reputation is concerned. As you can imagine, this is breaking her mother’s heart. My wife is bedridden and of very delicate constitution. I cannot leave her or I would have undertaken this assignment myself. Please advise by return of post whether you will take on this commission and the fee you would require.

Yours faithfully,

T. W. Faversham, Major, Retired

Now this was just the kind of job I had imagined when I made the absurd decision to become an investigator. I wrote back immediately to Major Faversham, telling him that I would be delighted to find his daughter for him, that I needed as many details and photos as he could send me, the amount of money she might have taken with her, plus the names of any friends or relatives she might contact in the United States, and that my fee would be one hundred dollars plus expenses. My conscience got the better of me and I had to add, “In matters of extreme delicacy such as this, our junior partner, Miss Murphy, usually handles these cases with the required finesse and discretion.”

It was only when I posted the letter that I stopped to wonder how I would manage to juggle these two assignments. If I was in a sweatshop from seven until seven every day except Sundays, I wasn’t left with any time for finding missing heiresses. I didn’t actually know whether she was a heiress, but the English who had settled in Ireland had mostly done very well for themselves—unlike the Irish who had either starved or been driven from their homes during the potato famine.

I decided to start making inquiries right away. It should be possible to find out when a Mr. and Mrs. Michael Kelly had arrived in New York. I presumed they would claim to be married. I’d have to find out if the records were kept over on Ellis Island, and if they’d let me go over there to check them. But in the meantime a splendid notion had come to me. If Miss Faversham had any connections among New York society, then my acquaintance Miss Van Woekem would hear about her. I resolved to visit her this coming Sunday and sent her a note to that effect. Miss Van Woekem liked things to be done correctly.

On Sunday morning, at an hour when all good Christians would have returned from Sunday services and less good Christians like myself had finished taking coffee and pastries at Fleischman’s Vienna Bakery, I took the trolley car up Broadway, alighted at Twentieth Street, and walked to the charming brownstone on South Gramercy Park. In case you are wondering how an Irish immigrant girl like myself should have friends who live in such exalted parts of the city—I had briefly held the post of companion to Miss Van Woekem. For once I was not fired, but resigned from the position myself, for personal reasons. We had sparred considerably, the old lady and I, but had forged a mutual respect. She admired my decision to strike out on my own and had invited me to drop in from time to time.

The maid showed me into the first-floor drawing room, overlooking the park. Miss Van Woekem was sitting in the tall-backed armchair by the fire.

“Ah, Miss Molly Murphy, what a delightful surprise.” She held out her hand to me. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit? Not coming to reapply for the position, I fear. My current companion is a feeble little creature who cringes when I shout at her. No fun at all.” Her beaky, birdlike face broke into a wicked smile. “Come, seat yourself. Ada will bring coffee, or would you prefer tea?”

I took the armchair indicated on the other side of the fireplace. “Coffee would suit me very well, thank you.”

She was looking at me, head cocked to one side in another remarkably birdlike posture. “You’re looking well,” she said, “and more . . . established. You’re more sure of yourself since the last time we met. So tell me, is your detective business flourishing?”

“Hardly flourishing yet, but I am currently engaged in two interesting cases.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “Do tell me—all the details.”

She listened attentively while I told her about the garment factory, making annoyed tut-tutting noises as I described the conditions there. “If anyone can sort them out, then you can,” she said, “Now, about this missing girl.”

“Her name is Katherine Faversham. English landed gentry, living in Ireland. I thought that if she was staying with society friends anywhere in the city, you might hear of it.”

Coffee arrived and was poured. Miss Van Woekem took a sip, then looked up. “Faversham,” she said thoughtfully. “Faversham. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Of course, if she has married a penniless scoundrel, she might not wish to make her presence known to friends of the family. Although if she is married, her family presumably has lost authority over her and can do nothing.”

“My job is to locate her,” I said. “How they persuade her to come home is not my concern. When I find out under what financial circumstances she left Ireland, I’ll know where to start looking, but in the meantime I decided it couldn’t hurt to put my spies to work.”

Miss Van Woekem cackled. “Your spies. I like that. I have always wished to be a spy. In fact, if I had not been born a woman, I might well have volunteered my services to the government. I will keep my ear to the ground, my dear, and report back to you.”