Hell's Gate (19 page)

Ginny counted the floors as they slid by the gate, trying to remember if she'd ever been so high and deciding by the fourth that she hadn't.

“Nine,” the operator intoned as the car bounced to a stop. The tradesman pushed out first and disappeared through a door to what appeared to be an office, leaving her standing beside an open barrel of machine oil, the hard, maple floor around it black with drippings.

Like a mechanical hive, the place hummed to the beat of hundreds of machines. Rows of them receeded into the unnatural gloom of the factory floor, clattering and whirring in staccato bursts. The whole place vibrated; the floor beneath her feet and the oil in the barrel. A curtain of lint danced in the air to their incessant beat. Women were hunched over them, heads held low, feet pumping pedals, hands feeding fabric under blurring needles. Walls of windows let in light and air, but the billows of lint were not to be overcome. The machines farthest from the windows were in perpetual gloom. Gas jets burned halos in the clouds and Ginny could feel their heat even though the nearest was several feet away.

“C'mon,” a man's voice said beside her, startling her. He turned and walked to an empty machine near the end of a row. A pile of material sat stacked next to it.

“I am seeking employment,” Ginny said to his back as she followed. The man turned and looked at her as if she might be insane. Ginny smiled, trying to appear firm yet affable, professional and pretty all at once. She wasn't sure if she pulled it off.

“Yeah,” the man said.

“You have work, I take it,” Ginny said. She was doing her best to sound like a woman of some education might, a woman of experience and worth. The man looked her over and turned back to the pile of fabric with a slight shake of his head. “We got woik, an' ya don' gotta put on airs ta get it. Youse wanna woik; ya shows me what ya can do,” he said over his shoulder. “Sew dese up,” he told her, separating some fabric and tossing it on the chair in front of the empty machine. “Lemme see what ya can do, den we'll talk about it.”

Ginny got herself settled in. She got the feel of the machine, working the pedal to get some sense of its speed, the way the thread fed from the bobbin and checking if the needle was true. The man watched her for a moment, then stalked off down the row of machines, hands behind his back, bending now and again to examine a shirtwaist with a critical eye. Ginny set to work, trying her best to sew like the others, head down, feet and hands moving with practiced economy. She felt slow and awkward and was sure the women around her noticed, their sideway glances giving them away. Toward the bottom of her little pile though, she started to develop a rhythm and for a few rows of stitches felt she actually deserved to be there.

The shop foreman returned before she was done and hovered for a minute or so, watching silently. He picked through the shirtwaists she had finished, pulling at the seams and turning them inside-out to examine the work. “Six a week. Not a penny maw,” he said before she'd finished the last piece. “Dis heya's yaw machine. Youse get heya at seven, woik ta seven.” He looked at his watch. “Half a day's gone awready. Fawty cents fer t'day.”

Ginny said nothing. Six a week was what she'd hoped to make even though it was laughably less than she'd been accustomed to at Miss Gertie's, where she'd easily make double that in an evening.

“Youse make a mistake, ya get docked,” he went on. “Youse ruin a piece, youse pay fer it.”

Ginny nodded. It was no worse than she would have expected. She thought of the crying girl who'd run into her on the street and wondered as she settled in to her work if the girl she'd run into had come from here, from this factory floor and this very machine. She couldn't imagine what might have driven her off. To Ginny this was a great and exciting opportunity, the start of her new life, the beginning of her new self. The noise and dust and bent backs of the factory were just part of the path that would take her away from her old life and, with a little luck, into Mike's.

He'd set her on this course. She'd been primed like an anarchist's bomb and Suds had set her off. She shuddered in disgust at the thought, but had to admit a certain debt to the man. Though Ginny had wished it would be Mike who would take her away, she was now at least free, at the beginning of a new life. All that remained would be to work hard and find Mike. As Ginny guided shirtwaists through her machine, those things seemed virtually accomplished.

22

“LISTEN, WHADYA SAY after we stop at the Thirteenth, we try to find Ginny?” Mike said to Primo as they walked out of police headquarters. Mike had been reluctant to press Primo into helping find Ginny, even though he'd seemed willing enough. It was a personal thing to him and nothing Primo should get involved in.

“You don' have to ask, Mike. The Bottler, he will be there later,” Primo said. “Where we start?”

“Back at the house,” Mike said. “Maybe some of the other girls know something. She might have gone home, or sent a message back to one of the girls. Who knows.”

“Where is home?”

“From the way she talked I think she might be from New Jersey or Long Island, maybe up in Westchester. Ginny never talked about that, at least not to me. She'd always change the subject if I asked. Guess there were some hard times she'd just as soon forget.”

*   *   *

It didn't take long to get to the Thirteenth Precinct station house and even less time to get the bad news about Kid Dahl.

“Fined 'im five dollars,” the desk sergeant told them when they asked what cell the Kid was in. “Let 'im go last night.”

“Shit! I wanted him held, goddamn it. Who the fuck let him go?”

The sergeant gave Mike a look that spoke volumes about his opinion of detectives in general and demanding ones in particular. He closed the log book with a snap and shrugged. “Wasn't on duty last night,” he said.

“Listen, I gave that patrolman explicit instructions. I told him I wanted him fucking booked, not fined for chrissake.”

“Explicit,” the sergeant said. “How you spell that? I wanna write that one down. Got a fine sound to it.”

“You fucking—”

“Mike! What're you doing here?” Tom's voice called behind them as he descended the stairs from the second floor.

“Hey, Tom,” Mike said, turning. They'd agreed when Mike had entered the force that he shouldn't refer to Tom as Dad in front of other cops. “What the hell are you doing here? I didn't see your car out front.”

“'Cause it's in the back,” Tom said, shaking hands with him and Primo. “So how's it going?” he asked in a way that told them he already knew the answer.

“Not so good at the moment,” Mike said with an evil look at the desk sergeant, who had started scribbling dutifully in some report or other.

Mike explained the problem, but Tom hardly seemed to listen. “Come on outside,” he said. Once they were on the sidewalk he told them, “Listen, I was just upstairs with the captain. We go way back. We had some, ah, you know, business to talk about. You know how the damn phones are; fine for official stuff, but there's always another pair of ears or two might be listening in.”

Mike nodded. He'd used operators himself to help get information, a tactic the force was only beginning to develop, let alone perfect.

“We've got some mutual business; stuff that cuts across a couple of precincts,” Tom went on. “Anyway, he told me they let Kid Dahl go.”

“But—”

“Listen, Mike, he's in up to his fucking neck with the Eastmans, okay?” Tom said in a low voice. “He lets certain things go by so long as they don't get outa line, start poppin' civilians, that sort of thing. You know how it works.”

“Yeah, sure but I—”

“But nothing. You should've taken Dahl somewhere and gotten what you needed from him right then, broke his fucking fingers or something. Bringing him here was a mistake.”

“It was late,” Primo said in a way that indicated he knew it was no excuse. “We were tired.”

Tom gave Primo an admonitory smirk, which slowly turned into a grin. “Fourteen-hour day? I guess I know how that can be. He was making a fuss outside the Bottler's, huh?”

“The captain told you? He knew?”

“Yeah, he knew. That was one of the reasons I drove over to see him. Once we knew what precinct the Bottler was in, I figured he'd know about it.”

“I could've asked,” Mike said.

“You could have, but he wouldn't have told you shit,” Tom said. “I wasn't even sure he'd tell me. That's why I didn't mention it to you before.”

Mike took a deep breath. “So what did you find out?”

“Where you two headed now?”

*   *   *

A couple of minutes later, Tom was at the tiller of the Olds, goggles down and duster flying as Mike and Primo held on to the seat as best they could. He was driving noticeably faster than just a couple of days before, surer with the controls, his shifts smoother and his use of the speeder and spark advance now much more confident.

“It's pretty much the way we'd heard it,” Tom said over the noise of the engine and the whine of the gears and drive chain. “The Bottler pays Kelly. He's not exactly a Five Pointer, but he's aligned with them and Kelly gets a percentage. Dahl was waving his fucking gun because Twist's been trying to put the squeeze on the Bottler. Word is he told the Bottler he's paying Dahl now. Twist owed Dahl some favor or other, so he gave him the Bottler's game as a reward.”

“But it isn't his to give,” Mike said. “Not if the Bottler's paying Kelly.”

“Right, but that don't mean shit to him. Twist wants something, he takes it.”

“Kelly's not gonna like that,” Mike said. “Shit like that's started wars.”

“Hell, I've seen gang wars start over who's moll danced with who. This could get out of hand in a big way unless one of the Tammany fixers gets involved.”

“What about the Hookers?” Mike said. Gang shenanigans and turf battles were not his primary focus. “The captain know about anything to do with … whoa! Watch it!”

Tom swerved around a carriage that had pulled out from the curb into their path. He seemed unperturbed, giving a couple of blasts on the horn and barreling by without slowing. Mike figured he had to be doing at least fifteen miles an hour, a breakneck pace for city traffic.

“He didn't know anything about them. The Hookers usually operate outside his precinct, so his men rarely cross paths with them,” Tom said.

“You believe him?”

“Don't have any reason not to. Hold on!” He flew through the intersection of Houston and Broadway, forcing a man to jump out of the way and a delivery wagon to stop short, horses snorting in fright. “Damn, I love this car!”

“Gotta be a connection,” Mike said, as they turned north on University Place. “Whether they know about it or not.”

“You believe Smilin' Jack? He wasn't exactly known for his honesty.”

“Smilin' Jack was about as close to death as a man can come. No need for him to lie.” He looked at Primo, who was hanging on at the edge of the seat. “Guess maybe we'll watch and see what we can see for another week or so. Don't think my captain will let it go much beyond that anyway, not unless we turn something up.”

Tom nodded. “Sounds about right. But no arresting the Bottler without a damn good reason, not just because he's running a stuss game, got it?”

“That coming from the captain of the Thirteenth?” Mike said.

“That's coming from everybody, me included. There's a lot involved here and … how should I put this … some outside interests that have to be considered, deals that have to be honored.”

“Yeah, I guess Paul Kelly's not the only one the Bottler's paying. Devery, too?”

Tom didn't answer directly. “Listen, I'm not saying that if you can prove he's somehow running a river piracy operation you shouldn't nail him. He ain't paying protection for that. But you have to be able to prove it, understand?”

They didn't respond right away, so he went on. “You act too soon you'll just fuck it up, maybe fuck yourselves up too, end up walking a beat in the Bronx. Maybe worse. Your best bet is you find something, you clear it with me or your captain. Got it?”

Mike nodded. Primo grinned. “Got it.”

Tom just rolled his eyes behind his goggles. He shook his head and hunkered down as they neared the intersection of Fourteenth.

The southwest corner of Union Square Park, where University Place and Fourteenth met, was as busy a corner as the city had, with horsecars, stages, pedestrians, hacks, carriages, and wagons making the crossing tricky at best and downright dangerous the rest of the time. Tom passed a horsecar, bumping over the rails, but not slowing much as a delivery wagon and a pair of carriages scissored in front of him on Fourteenth. Seeing an opening, he steered for the gap that he anticipated would open between them and powered through with no more than a foot to spare on either side.

They all heard the whistle, but at first didn't pay any attention, figuring it was just a cop they hadn't noticed. But oddly the whistle seemed to follow them and if anything grow closer. Tom didn't bother to look about until they were nearly past Tiffany's at the corner of Fifteenth. But Mike saw him; a bicycle cop, pedaling furiously to overtake them, tooting his whistle like a little steam engine. He'd never have believed a bike could go that fast if he hadn't seen it himself.

“Pull over!” the cop yelled once he spit his whistle out to flop on its lanyard. “Pull over!”

Tom applied the hand brake, pulling hard, retarded the spark and let up on the speeder. He put the tiller over and bumped to a halt at the curb, stopping so quickly that the bike cop had to swerve to avoid him. The cop hit the curb too hard, dumping the bike and sending him hopping and flailing in a most undignified manner.