Murder on St. Mark's Place (6 page)

Frank couldn’t argue with that, no matter how much he thought it might help him get information. He sighed. “This friend of mine, she wants to know if you’ve got any idea who killed this girl.”

“She?”
Broughan asked, his bloodshot eyes brightening with interest.

“She who?” Frank asked, feigning innocence.

“You said your friend who wants to know is a
she.”
His face squinched up in the effort of thought. “This
friend
wouldn’t be that blonde who come to the station for you that time, would it? The one the sergeant locked in an interrogation room?”

Frank was never going to live that down, but maybe he could get it to work in his favor this time. Even if this might be even harder to live down. “Yeah, well, you know how women can be when they get started on something.”

“Frank, you devil, you.” Broughan rubbed his hands in glee. “You never said a word. How long has this been going on?”

Frank gave him a disdainful glare. “I’d tell you if I thought it was any of your business.”

Bill frowned. “This must be serious. You thinking about getting hitched again? She know about your kid?”

“Look,” Frank said, growing impatient and more than a little annoyed, “right now I just want to make her happy by telling her you’re going to arrest somebody for killing this girl.” That much was true. If he could make her happy by solving this case, he wouldn’t have to see Sarah Brandt again.

Bill rubbed his temples with both hands, closing his eyes against the pounding that must be going on inside his head. “Wish I could help you, son, but nobody’ll ever find out who killed that girl.”

“Why not?” Frank figured he already knew, but if there was the slightest hope, he wanted to grasp it.

“I told you. She was a whore. Or the next thing to it,” he added when Frank was going to protest. “Out every night dancing with her friends. You know what goes on at them dance halls. Lots of strange men, some stranger than others. She went out to Coney Island, too, from what I hear. Always taking up with a new fellow. Somebody give her a hat, right before she died. And them shoes, too. Maybe not the same fellow. Nobody’s real sure about that. But at least two men give her presents in the last week or so. Which means maybe one of them found out about the other and beat her for cheating on him, or maybe some other fellow found out about one or both of them and beat her for the same reason. Or maybe she just met somebody new and asked him for a present, and he got insulted. Who knows? And more important, who cares?”

“Her family cares.”

Broughan didn’t look impressed. “These people got any money? They offering a reward or anything?”

Frank considered lying. Maybe Mrs. Brandt would offer a reward. Did she care that much? He couldn’t be sure, and if she didn’t, he certainly had no intention of paying a reward himself to find the killer of a girl he’d never even set eyes on just to please Sarah Brandt. “I don’t think so.”

“Then they might as well forget about her. Put her in the ground and wash their hands. Ain’t nobody ever gonna know who killed her, and that’s a fact.”

Broughan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cheap metal flask. The hand that pulled the cork from the top trembled slightly, and he needed both hands to guide it to his lips. He took a long pull, emptying it.

Frank managed not to wince. His father had been a drinker, and it had killed him young. To this day, he couldn’t abide hard liquor.

“Was she raped?” Frank asked without knowing why. It just seemed important to have all the facts, and that one might be relevant.

Broughan shrugged one shoulder as he dropped the empty flask back into his pocket. “The doc said she’d been doing it with somebody recent, but he couldn’t say that she was raped. Her clothes was all in place when they found her, and she wasn’t...” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Damaged” was what he settled for. “No cuts or bruises down there. Had enough of ‘em everyplace else, though. Whoever killed her made a good job of it. I’d guess he wanted a piece, and she said no, though it might’ve been the first time she did. Poor bastard was the only one she wouldn’t spread ’em for, I guess, and look what it got her.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, discouraged. This wasn’t going to help. Sarah Brandt wouldn’t be satisfied, not by a long shot. She’d want to dig, although where else she would dig, he had no idea.

Well, if she was that interested, maybe she could find out something Bill hadn’t. In fact, she could most certainly find out a whole lot of things Bill hadn‘t, since Bill wasn’t particularly interested in solving this case. In fact, unless her family or someone came up with a reward of some kind, Bill was completely finished with it already. Girls turned up dead every day in the city. Some starved, some killed themselves, and some were killed by others. The world didn’t seem to care or even to notice, so why should the police exert themselves? Frank certainly wouldn’t, not under normal circumstances.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. Because he’d gone home from Mrs. Brandt’s house last night and stood beside his sleeping son’s bed and shouted until the neighbors complained. And just like she’d predicted, the boy hadn’t even flinched. Sleeping like an angel, he’d lain there peaceful and quiet and undisturbed while his mother ranted at him, demanding to know had he lost his mind.

“The boy is deaf,” he’d told her, silencing her instantly.

She’d looked at him in stunned surprise that turned quickly to terror as she realized the meaning of his words. Or tried to. In truth, neither of them knew what this really meant. It changed everything. The only question now was how.

S
ARAH COULDN’T BELIEVE SHE WAS DOING THIS. She’d gone shopping with Lisle Lasher after Gerda’s funeral, and Lisle had convinced her to buy a hat that could only be called ridiculous. She’d done her hair in a fancy pouf, then pinned the outrageous hat with its huge silk roses and oversized brim onto the top of it. She’d even painted her lips, which was as far as she would go, even though Lisle advised some rouge, too.

She wouldn’t look too out of place in a shirtwaist and skirt. Lots of working girls wore them to the dances, Lisle had told her, but she should have some beads to dress it up. Sarah was now the proud owner of a strand of gaudy glass ones. She would make Lisle a gift of them when the evening was over.

Harmony Hall was a large empty room over a saloon on Fourteenth Street. The sound from the band—it couldn’t be called music—was audible down the street. Sarah decided it must be unbearable inside the hall. The girls had met her a few blocks away, and as they strolled down the street toward it, Sarah began to sense their nervousness.

“If you’d rather not do this, I’ll understand,” Sarah said guiltily. How could she have been so insensitive? They must be terrified of going to the last place Gerda had been before she was murdered.

“Oh, don’t worry, missus,” Hetty said, patting her hair to make sure it was securely in place. “We want to help.”

“Sure we do,” Bertha said, glancing at Lisle.

Lisle looked like a China doll whose paint had been inexpertly applied. Her blue eyes shone in the fading sunlight, and her hair looked like spun gold beneath the brim of her elaborate hat. The paint on her lips and cheeks, probably applied to make her look older and more sophisticated, actually made her look more fragile and vulnerable. Only when one looked deep into her eyes did one see the inner hardness.

That hardness flashed like steel when she looked at Sarah. “We want to find out who killed Gerda, Mrs. Brandt. If you think this’ll help, we’ll do it.”

Plainly, she didn’t think it would, but Sarah knew better. She knew she would find the killer if she just put herself in the right place.

The entrance to the hall was an outside stairway on the side of the saloon. Half a dozen men in loud, checked suits hovered near its entrance, inspecting everyone who passed, as if their approval were necessary for admittance. They were a little the worse for time spent inside the saloon.

“Hetty!” one of them called, a smarmy-looking fellow with slicked-down hair beneath his straw boater. “Who’s that with you? Did you bring your ma to chaperone?”

The others found this hilariously funny and laughed uproariously. Sarah felt her cheeks heating, but she was certain it was from anger.

“At least I know who my ma is!” Hetty replied without missing a beat, tipping up her chin haughtily.

The other men found this even more hilarious, as drunks will. Sarah quickened her step to keep up with the other girls who were scurrying up the stairs to escape the drunks below. At the top of the steps, a burly young man sat at a rickety table collecting the fifteen-cent admission fee. Sarah treated the girls, knowing they had to count their pennies and skip lunches to afford such outings.

The hall was much hotter than the street outside, and the stench of human sweat was strong. Mixed with the smell of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and the other unpleasant odors of the city, it was nearly overwhelming, but Sarah fought off a wave of dizziness and reminded herself that she could get used to anything. She’d delivered babies in enough hovels to know that after a few minutes she wouldn’t even notice the smell anymore. The heat was another matter. She’d just have to ignore it.

The band had been playing a rousing rendition of “After the Ball,” but as soon as they arrived, the music stopped with unnatural abruptness, leaving Sarah’s ears ringing in the sudden stillness. The silence lasted only a moment, however, since the hundred or so people in the room instantly took advantage of the opportunity to converse without screaming over the din of the musicians.

“Let’s find a table,” Bertha said, taking Sarah’s arm and propelling her across the dance floor to where a few empty tables stood. They claimed one crammed in between two groups of drunken young men who might have been related to the men they’d encountered downstairs, so closely did they resemble each other. Or maybe it was just that all their suits were uniformly ugly and garish and their manner equally obnoxious. They hooted at the girls, making suggestive remarks which the girls studiously ignored.

“Don’t pay no attention, Mrs. Brandt,” Lisle advised her. “They like you better if you ignore them.”

Sarah didn’t want them to like her at all, so she wondered if she should openly flirt with them to discourage their attention. That strategy seemed foolish, even if Sarah had the courage to carry it out, so she just sat down with the rest of the girls and concentrated on looking for a killer.

In no more than a few seconds, Sarah realized that Lisle had been only too right in predicting this trip was a waste of time. Easily half the people in the room were men, and all of them seemed to be dressed in tasteless plaid or checked suits. Most of them appeared to be already drunk, and the rest were on their way to it. They were all leering or jeering or both, vying for the attention of a female,
any
female, it seemed. To Sarah, they
all
looked exactly like the kind of man who would beat a woman to death. How could she possibly differentiate between them?

Sarah was shocked to see so many of the young women lighting up cigarettes as soon as the dance was over. Or rather, their male companions were lighting the cigarettes for them. Sarah had never seen a respectable woman smoking. She’d never seen a respectable woman drink more than a sip of anything alcoholic, either, but now the couples who had been dancing were making their way over to the bar on the far wall where several harried bartenders were serving drinks. The girls were doing much more than sipping.

“We’ll have to wait till the next time,” Hetty explained to her, nodding toward the bar.

“The next time for what?” Sarah asked.

Bertha rolled her eyes, but Hetty gave her a dirty look that put Bertha in her place. “The band plays for a few minutes, then everybody goes to buy a drink. Or the fellows buy drinks, that is. For the girls they dance with.”

The dancers must need a drink to keep from expiring in this heat, which would provide some excuse for the girls to imbibe, Sarah thought, and realized she was thirsty herself from the walk over. “I’ll treat you to drinks,” she offered, but the girls gaped at her in horror.

“A girl don’t buy her own drinks, missus,” Bertha said, as if explaining one of the more profound truths of life.

“You do, and what’ll the fellows think? They’ll think you don’t need them, that’s what, and you’ll be sitting on the bench all night!”

Sarah managed not to smile. Sitting on the bench all night was exactly what she intended to do, but she wouldn’t spoil their chance to have a good time. By the time the band began to play again, men had begun to buzz around, like flies attracted by the sweet scent of honey. To Sarah, the men looked like people she would cross the street to avoid, but Bertha, Hetty, and Lisle seemed more than pleased with their attention. When the band struck up the first discordant notes to “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” all three of them got up to dance, leaving Sarah to observe.

Hours later Sarah was still observing. She’d bought herself some beer, ignoring the pitying looks she received from the bartender and the other women standing around, and she’d rebuffed the few men who were too drunk to notice her advanced age. Indeed, she was too old by a generation for this event. She was probably the only woman in the place older than twenty, and most were nearer fifteen.

The men tended to be older, probably because a man needed ready cash to impress the girls, and a young boy wouldn’t be able to afford it. In fact, some of the men seemed
much
older. And when Sarah looked more closely, she realized the older ones were very well dressed, too. Even though their suits were just as tasteless as the others, the quality was much better and the fit one only a tailor could accomplish. Once the sun went down and the shadows grew deep in the hall, Sarah began to understand what men of means might be doing in a working-class dance hall, too. When she had, she was ashamed of her naïveté.