For the Love of Mike (9 page)

My annoyance boiled over at the thought of little Sarah, too frightened to ask to relieve herself.

“It’s not right,” I said. “Why doesn’t somebody do something? If you all got together, you’d have strength.”

They looked at me with pity. “You think nobody has tried?” Sadie said. “We’ve had girls here who are all fired up like you and try to do something to make things better, and what happens? They disappear. One day they are here, next they don’t come to work. And if we all joined together and demanded better treatment, Mr. Mostel would just fire us all, send Sam down to the docks and pick new girls straight from the boats. We are at the bottom of the heap, Molly. We have no one to speak for us. We work here with one thought in mind—that one day there will be something better.”

I should be doing something, I thought. I could speak up for these girls. Then I had to remind myself severely that good investigators do not allow themselves to become emotionally involved in their cases. So far I wasn’t being too successful in this area. My assignment, for which I was being paid, was to find a spy—and the sooner the better, as far as I was concerned. I wanted this assignment to be over for various reasons, not the least was the bad taste it left in my mouth.

But I was also itching to move on to my other case. How could I track down Katherine Faversham and her scallywag companion while they were still in the city when I had no time and no energy? As things stood, I only had Sundays to devote to finding Katherine and Michael. If I didn’t find them soon, they might be out of the city and far away and I would have lost them for good.

I stood in the cold, dank street as the other girls wrapped their shawls around their heads and scurried off into the night. I hesitated on the sidewalk. This is ridiculous, I thought. The Katherine Faversham case was important to me, important to my whole future as an investigator. Was I going to let it slip away because I was sewing collars all day? I’d just have to take some risks and find enough energy to hunt for them at night. I wrapped my shawl around my head and started toward the dock area.

I only got as far as the first corner tavern before my resolve faltered. A couple of drunken men staggered out and made a grab at me. I fought them off easily enough and crossed the street with their ribald comments and laughter ringing in my ears. The next street was dark and I was scared to enter it. I hated to admit I was giving up, but clearly this wasn’t going to work. Reluctantly I made my way back to Broadway and the trolley, trying to put my racing thoughts in order. Exactly why was I slaving away at a sewing machine all day? I was proficient enough now, so what could I achieve until Max’s designs were ready? By the time I reached the trolley I had come to a momentous decision. I had wasted enough time working for Max Mostel. I was going to take a few days off.

As soon as I got home I sat at the table and started to write a letter.

Dear Mr. Mostel,

I have been at your garment factory just over three weeks. This has given me ample opportunity to observe your workers and to get my sewing up to speed. I now plan to apply at Lowenstein’s, so that I am completely familiar with his workers and operation by the time your designs are complete. Please keep me apprised of the status of your designs and send me a copy of them by messenger the moment they are complete. You can always leave a message for me at my new address, 10 Patchin Place.

Bridie came to look over my shoulder. “You write pretty,” she said. “All curly.”

“You’ll learn to write like that too if you study hard at school,” I said. “Your pa should enroll you in a new school this week—one close by.”

“I ain’t going to no school,” Shamey said, standing in the doorway and scowling at me. “School is for sissies.”

“You’re going whether you like it or not,” I said. “Everybody needs to know how to read and write.”

“I know how to read and write already,” he said. “My cousins don’t go to no sissy school and they earn money.”

“Running errands for a gang, Seamus? I don’t think your father would want you doing that.”

He glared at me defiantly. “I want to earn money too so I can take care of my pa and my sister.”

I looked at his skinny young face and realized that the scowl had not been of defiance, it had been of worry. He had decided that he must take over the duties of head of the family. I went over to him and attempted to put an arm around his shoulder. “That’s a very noble thought, Seamus,” I said, “but you’ll be able to take care of them much better if you educate yourself first.”

“I don’t have time.” He shook himself free from me. “I can get a job as a newsboy right away.”

“Of course you have time. You have a place to live and enough to eat.”

He looked at me scornfully. “Nuala says it’s accepting charity.”

“Charity? Of course it’s not charity.”

“You ain’t a relative. Only relatives are supposed to help each other. That’s what Nuala says.”

“Your Nuala talks a lot of rubbish.” I smiled at him. “But I’ll tell you what—if you need to earn money now, then I’ll employ you. Promise me you’ll go to school and then you can run messages for me when school is out. I need a messenger tomorrow morning, as it happens.”

“You do—where?”

“To take this letter to an address on Canal Street.”

“I know where that is.” His face had lit up.

“Good. Then you’re hired. When you take it, make sure it goes directly to Mr. Mostel. Tell them it’s important. Oh, and Shamey—don’t tell them it’s from me.”

I finished the letter and addressed the envelope from J. P. Riley and Associates. When I handed it to Shamey the next morning, I felt a great sense of freedom and relief. No more sweatshop for a few days. I was off to find a missing heiress!

Nine

I
started the trail for Katherine and Michael at the very tip of Manhattan Island where the ferry from Ellis Island lands the new immigrants. If they were penniless and knew nobody, then their first priority would be finding themselves a place to stay. I remembered clearly my own arrival from Ellis Island. I had been with Seamus, of course, and he had led me directly to his apartment on Cherry Street, but we had run the gamut of touts, waiting to prey on the newcomers. Those same touts were already lined up, bright and early in the morning, waiting for the first ferry from the island. Some of them clutched signs, some wore sandwich boards: The messages were written in Italian and Yiddish and Russian and God knows what else. A few, however, were written in English. MRS. O’BRIEN’S BOARDINGHOUSE, CHEAP AND CLEAN. ROOM TO LET. GOOD SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD . . . as well as the more ominous, PETER’S PAWN SHOP, 38 THE BOWERY, GOOD PRICE PAID FOR YOUR VALUABLES. Some men carried no signs. They lurked in nearby saloon doorways and watched and waited. Maybe they were hoping to find unaccompanied young girls, or even young men, but you could tell just by looking at them that they were waiting to prey on the weak and the unprotected.

I walked among the signs, taking down the addresses of the various boardinghouses and rooms for let. Then I started to visit them, one by one, beginning with those closest to the ferry dock. If they had arrived late in the day and were tired, they’d have chosen the closest.

Several hours later I was tired and footsore, and none the wiser. I had visited ten boardinghouses, God knows how many rooms for let, and none of them had heard of Katherine and Michael Kelly.

From what I knew, the Irish slum areas were along the waterfront, facing the East River, stretching from Cherry Street, where I had first lived with Nuala, down to Fulton Street where she now lived. There was also an area on the other side of the island, also along the docks, where my former employer, Paddy Riley, had lived, and then further up there was Hell’s Kitchen—although I didn’t look forward to going back there. I’d just have to start on the Lower East Side and work my way around. A daunting task, but I couldn’t think of any way around it. Again I was reminded how little I knew about being an investigator. Paddy would have probably been able to locate the missing couple with a few well placed questions. He had the contacts on both sides of the fence—the police and the underworld. I had no contacts, anywhere. Everything I did was by trial and error.

I decided to start on Cherry Street and comb the area methodically. It was now midday and commerce was in full swing. The saloons were open and a parade of men drifted in and out. It was likely that Michael Kelly had slaked his thirst in one of these. He was, from his photo, an attractive young man, with the ability to charm both Major Faversham and his daughter. He’d have been noticed. But women did not go into saloons. Again I was reminded how much easier this job was for a man.

I had to be content with stopping women on the street and asking about local boardinghouses or landlords who let cheap rooms. At each of these establishments I gave the same emotional plea about my dear lost cousin Katherine and her husband Michael. I asked about other boardinghouses nearby. Usually the answer was similar, “There’s herself down at Number Eighty-nine on the corner. Calls herself a boardinghouse but it’s so dirty even the mice won’t stay there.” I worked my way down Cherry Street, up Water Street, and then I moved inland—Monroe, Madison, Henry, and their cross streets. It was hopeless. In this area of crowded tenements almost every building had rooms that were let, sublet, and sub-sublet. Half the families took in boarders. And there were enough people called Kelly to send me on several wild-goose chases.

In the end I gave up and went back to the ferry dock, realizing that I should have questioned the touts and shown them the photos. They were a striking couple. Someone might well have remembered them. I came back to find a three-ring circus in full swing—a boat was just unloading, children were screaming, touts were shouting and trying to herd hapless immigrants in the direction of their establishment, small boys were trying to earn some coppers by carrying baggage which the frightened owners were not going to release, and among the crowd I spotted enough criminal element to make the immigrants’ fears justified. Pickpockets were doing a lively trade in the crush and some more brazen crooks were simply snatching bundles and boxes and dodging off with them into back alleyways. What a welcome to the land of the free! And where were New York’s finest when you needed them? I’d have to tell Daniel—forget that right now, Molly Murphy, I told myself. I wouldn’t be telling him anything again.

I was cursing myself for coming all this way for nothing when I saw something that made me grin from ear to ear. At the far side of the crowd a tall lugubrious fellow was walking up and down with a sandwich board with the words, MA KELLY’S BOARDINGHOUSE. JUST LIKE HOME. CHEAP AND CHEERFUL. The address was on Division Street, a mere half block from where I had stopped my search.

Of course they would have gone there if they’d seen the sign. How could Michael Kelly have resisted going to someone who might even have been a distant relative? I hurried to the Third Avenue El and rode it up to Canal Street where it was a mere hop, skip, and jump to 59 Division Street. A dreary tenement like all the rest—five stories of dingy brown brick. I knocked on the front door and it was opened by an enormous woman wearing a dirty white apron over a faded black dress. “Yes?” she asked, folding her arms across the monstrous shelf of bosom.

“I’m looking for my cousin and her new husband who recently arrived from Ireland. I’m wondering if they might have stayed here, seeing that their name is also Kelly.” I gave her a hopeful smile. “Michael and his wife Katherine—a young couple, just married, they are.”

I had hoped that her granite face might have softened when she heard the Irish accent, but she continued to glare at me. “Don’t mention them to me, the no-good pair,” she said.

“Then they were here?”

“They were here all right. Treated them like me own son and daughter, didn’t I? Him with his blarney about us being related.” She hoisted up the bosoms and sniffed. “No more related to him than the man in the moon.”

“So they’re not here any longer?” I asked cautiously.

“Upped and left without a by your leave or a thank you, didn’t they?” she demanded. “Waited until I was doing me shopping then simply upped and left. When I came back there was no sign of them, and they left owing a week’s rent too.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Going on for a month, I’d say. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“I’m sorry they treated you so badly,” I said. “It’s Katherine who’s my cousin, not this Michael Kelly. I understand from the folks at home in Ireland that he’s a bit of a rogue.”

“A bad lot if you ask me.” She bent toward me. “I think your cousin married beneath her. Always behaved like a real lady, that one, and talked all highfalutin too—although she could be a proper little madam if she’d a mind to. Had the nerve to criticize my housekeeping, she did. She told me her dogs at home wouldn’t want to eat off my floor. Can you imagine? The nerve of it.”

I swallowed back the smile. From what I could see of the grimy lace curtains and pockmarked linoleum, Katherine was quite right. I nodded with sympathy. “She was brought up rather spoiled,” I said. “But she’s a sweet nature and I’d like to help her if I can. You’ve no idea where they went, have you?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t as if they said more than two words to me. Kept themselves to themselves, they did.”

“Were they around the house much when they lived here? Did they find jobs?”

“She did. She was out all day and every day, but that great lummox of a husband of hers, he lazed around doing nothing half the day. He didn’t perk up until the saloons opened and then he was out half the night.”

“So he could have been working a night shift then?”

She leaned closer to me again. “You don’t come home from the night shift on unsteady legs, smelling of beer.”

“Do you happen to know where Katherine was working?” I asked. “ “Maybe I could trace her through her job.”

Ma Kelly sniffed again. “Like I told you, we hardly exchanged more than two words. Kept herself to herself, that one, but with her fine airs and graces you’d have thought that she’d have had no trouble landing herself a refined job.”

I tried to think of more questions to ask, but couldn’t. “I’m sorry to have troubled you then, Mrs. Kelly. If any post arrives for them from home, maybe you could have it forwarded to my address. It’s Ten Patchin Place, in Greenwich Village. Molly Murphy’s the name.”

“I can do that,” she said. “I hope you find your cousin. Like I said, she was no trouble at all. He was a typical Kelly. Just like my late husband—couldn’t trust him farther than you could throw him. Went and inconvenienced everybody by dying when all he had was the influenza.” She sniffed again.

“If you do hear anything about Michael and Katherine, please let me know then,” I said. “I’ll be offering a small reward for information.”

“I’ve just given you information,” she said, a gleam coming into her eyes.

“So you have.” I reached into my purse. “Here’s fifty cents for your trouble. If the information leads to finding them, it will be more, of course.”

“I’ll keep me eyes and ears open for you, my dear,” she said, smiling at me most benignly now.

I left Ma Kelly’s unsure what to do next. Katherine and Michael had been living there until recently. Then they had left in a hurry. Had they found a better place to live—a room of their own? If Katherine was working, then it was entirely possible. But how would I ever trace them in a city this size? Paddy’s words came back to me—always start from what you know, however unimportant you think it is. What did I know? I knew that Katherine had found a job, and that Ma Kelly had suggested it might be a job suiting her refined airs and graces. A shop maybe? I knew that ladies sometimes worked in hat or dress shops, but how many of them would there be in the city? Too many for me to check out all of them.

I knew that Michael lounged around most of the day and came back at night smelling of beer. So the next step would be to find out where he did his drinking. If his step had been not too steady, then the saloon wouldn’t be far away. I’d start with the saloon on the corner and work outward.

I knew I’d be asking for trouble if I went into saloons, but I had to follow up on my only lead at this point. I’d just have to put on my most haughty expression and keep a hat pin ready. I slipped it out of my hat, held it between my fingers, and made my way to O’Leary’s Tavern on the corner of Division and Market. It was now around one thirty and the lunchtime trade was in full swing. Through the open door I could see men lined up at the bar, each with a bowl of hot food and a roll in front of him—all for the price of a beer. These free saloon lunches were most popular, especially with single workingmen. At least this looked like an honest workingman’s bar and I thought I’d be fairly safe.

I had scarcely passed in through the open door when one of the wags at the bar called out, “Careful, boys, here comes someone’s old woman, wanting to get her hands on his wage packet.”

The bartender came hastily around the bar to me. “Sorry, Miss. No women allowed.”

“I’m not intending to stay, sir,” I said. “I’m trying to locate a missing cousin of mine and I understand he might frequent this saloon. I wonder if you might have seen him.”

“Lady, I get a hundred men a day in here. Unless they get rowdy and smash up the furniture, I couldn’t tell them one from another and that’s the truth.”

“I just thought you might have noticed this young man. He lived just down the street, until a couple of weeks ago. His name was Michael Kelly—tall, dark haired, good looking, straight from Ireland, had the gift of the blarney, so they say.”

The barman shook his head, then I saw his expression change. “There was one fella used to come in here for a while. Liked to talk big. Boasted about blowing up things and escaping from under the noses of the English police.”