The Scribe (13 page)

“Mary Flanagan was the best stamper I had,” Greenberg said. “A bit older than the others. Very efficient.”

“I wonder that you employ white girls in this work,” Vernon said.

“Small hands are best suited to small work,” Greenberg replied, never taking his eyes off the girls as they worked. “See the clamp they use to attach the ferrule to the shaft? I designed it myself. A patent is pending in Washington.”

Greenberg resumed his walk, leading them through the cubicles, and as they passed, Canby noted that their hands and the rims of their nostrils were grimed with graphite dust. On one of the smaller girls' faces, he saw that a tear had coursed through the gray dust on her cheek.

“Do they know?” Canby asked.

“Mary was a kind of leader to them. She will be missed,” Greenberg said, his voice losing some of its Brooklyn edge, “by more than me alone.”

Greenberg threw a bolt on a door sized big enough for a barn and slid it aside on runners set into the floor. He nodded for Canby and Vernon to step through, then followed them and trundled the door shut, cutting off most of the light from the stamping room. He leaned against the door for a moment before he spoke.

“You'll find your colored officer in the back corner by the chimney. I'll go no farther.”

In the dim light Canby could make out two patches of white and as they approached he saw that one of them was a handkerchief
that Underwood held pressed against his mouth and nose. Underwood sat on a stool with his elbows on his knees, head down.

The other patch of white, Canby saw as they neared it, protruded from a metal-cased opening in the chimney. And he saw, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, that it was a pair of bloomers.

“She died like that,” Underwood said. “I pulled her partway out to be sure there weren't no life left in her, then put her back like they found her.”

Canby saw that the upper half of Mary Flanagan's body had been stuffed into the chimney grate. The bloomers, he now saw, had been pulled down in the assault. What had been done to her was unspeakable, unbelievable.

He looked away as best he could while he tugged the underwear back up to cover the damage, then gently pulled the body from the chimney. Her arms had been flung out before her, down into the dark of the chimney shaft. Around her neck, biting into the flesh, was a leather thong. Into her forehead had been carved an
H
, as neatly as the others. He laid her body out on the floor and Vernon closed her eyes.

“God Almighty,” Vernon said.

“You wonder,” Underwood said, kneading the handkerchief in his dark fist. “Did he rape her first, then strangle her? Or did he do both at once?”

Probably, Canby thought, they were the concerted parts of a single act. He figured the
H
had been carved postmortem. He hoped it had not been done until the girl had passed. And that the other carving had taken place only after Mary Flanagan was long, long gone.

“W
HY IN HELL
is he here, Vernon?”

The question was out of Canby's mouth before Henry Grady could even settle himself into his chair in a corner of the station's interrogation room. Grady smiled. The smile seemed to Canby, in this dingy room and in the greasy light dropping from the station's dirty windows, unseemly.

“Grady has an interest in seeing this thing through. Better him here than one of his cub reporters. Grady will work with us. As my daddy used to say, we'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.”

Canby turned his back squarely to Grady's corner, facing Greenberg again. The note Underwood had found in the factory lay on the battered table between them.

“Mister Greenberg, we'd like to make sure we have the sequence of events correct. You came in Saturday morning at seven, your usual time?”

“Yes.”

“And Mary Flanagan came in when?”

“On towards one in the afternoon, as I recall.”

“She was late for work?”

“No. The metal room was shut down on Thursday for the week. Our shipment of tin was delayed so she and the other girls were laid off.”

“Until this morning.”

“Correct.”

“Then why was she in on Saturday?”

“Saturday noon is pay time. She had wages due her.”

“Do you often work on your Sabbath?” Vernon asked.

Greenberg shrugged. “One works when one has to.”

“And how much was she paid?”

“A dollar twenty. Hers was the last pay envelope I handed out Saturday.”

“That was the last time you saw her?”

“Yes. She left the office with her pay; I closed up a short time after.”

“You never saw her alive again after that?”

“I said I did not.”

“And the factory is usually vacant from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning?”

“Except for the janitor, yes. His work week starts Sunday morning, to get ready for the manufactures resuming Monday.”

“So you weren't in on Sunday?”

“Not until I let your men in to search the place.”

“Would it surprise you to know that we found the pay envelope in a pocket of her dress?”

“I would have no reaction to that, Mister Canby.”

“The full amount of her pay was still in it.”

Greenberg only stared across the table at the men.

“No response to that, either?” Canby took the note from the table, uncreased it, and handed to Greenberg. “Would you read this aloud for us?”

Greenberg stared at the rough handwriting on the paper for a moment and frowned.

“I would rather not.”

“Read it,” Vernon said.

“May I have an attorney, please?”

“We'll send for one of your choice here directly,” Vernon said. “In the meantime, we talk a little longer. Read it.”

His face slack, Greenberg read, “‘Mom that negro down here did this when i went to make water he said he would love me and push me down lay down and play like the night-witch did it he said, but that long tall black boy did it hisself.'” Greenberg set the note back on the tabletop quickly.

“Is that Mary Flanagan's hand?”

“I would not know.”

“Does it sound like her to you?”

“It sounds like gibberish. I have no idea what it means.”

“Do you not find the message troubling?”

“Of course I do. I find all of this affair something beyond troubling.” Greenberg glanced down at the note and nodded. “You should talk to Campbell as well.”

“Campbell?” Vernon asked.

Greenberg's exasperation was nearly palpable. “Yes, Fortus Campbell! The janitor!”

Canby let the silence hang in the room a full minute before he spoke. “Detective Underwood is interviewing him now in the colored section downstairs.”

“There's your Negro,” Greenberg said. “There's your tall black boy, like the note says.”

“Yes,” Canby said, tapping the table with his finger. “But so much of this does not add up. Campbell did not find the body until this morning. Where was the body before? And Underwood found this note downstairs, by the furnace.”

“I tell you, Campbell is shiftless. I've written him up several times.”

“And Mary Flanagan was not seen at home after Saturday morning,” Vernon said. “Which makes you the last person to have seen her alive.”

“So much of this does not add up,” Canby said.

Greenberg was shaking his head. “These mauthers often come from troubled backgrounds. Their families don't know their whereabouts much of the time. Perhaps she was somewhere, and seen, on Sunday.”

“Wait a minute,” Grady said from the corner. He was flipping the pages of his notebook.

“Mauthers?” Vernon said.

Canby felt his pulse quicken. He tried to catch Greenberg's eyes.

“Spell that out?” Grady asked.

“Greenberg . . .” Canby said.

“Pardon me. British slang. I suppose I picked it up while I was in Leeds. A mauther is a factory girl.”

“M-A-U?” Grady asked.

“T-H-E-R,” Greenberg finished. “Why?”

Canby was rising, hooking Vernon's elbow as he stood. “No more,” he said. “No more for now.”

He hustled Vernon out the door and into the hallway. He was grateful for the general din of the station outside the questioning room, for the bustle of cops coming and going and the muttering of the most recently apprehended where they sat shackled to the bench by the booking counter.

“This man needs a lawyer, Vernon,” Canby said as they leaned against the wall.

“For whatever good it'll do him. Hot damn, Thomas, that's as good as a confession.” Vernon was grinning. “We've got this thing wrapped up.”

“I think Greenberg is not our man.”

“You heard him in there, Thomas. What more do you need?”

“Greenberg is a company man, Vernon. A factotum, an office man. Can you really conceive of him being capable of what's been done?”

“I've been around long enough to know I don't know it all. Stranger things have happened, Thomas. And that man just handed himself over to justice.”

“Vernon—” Canby began, but Vernon cut him off with a wave of his hand. He leaned close to Canby's face.

“Must I remind you that I'm under a great deal of pressure to wrap this thing up?”

The door to the interrogation room swung open. For a moment Grady's small stature seemed to fill the doorframe, then the door was shutting behind him as he pushed past them in the hallway, his face aglow. He was halfway to the station's exit before Canby spoke.

“Grady!” he called, but Grady did not turn and they watched him move down the front steps at a clip. Within an hour his presses had begun to roll.

October 20

O
N HIS COUCH IN THE NEW AND LESS OPULENT
rooms he'd been given on the fifth floor of Kimball House, Canby stirred. His dreams were a wash of swirling figures, faces in mist. And behind the images, sounds: door hinges and footsteps, the clinking of glass. He strained toward waking, reached beneath his pillow for the pocket revolver he'd put there. A hand settled firmly on his forearm.

“Now, now, Thomas, it wouldn't do to draw down on a friend, would it?”

Canby cracked open an eye. It felt swollen nearly to a slit. “Vernon.”

“In the flesh,” Vernon said. He cleared a space on the coffee table and sat, selecting from the detritus scattered there Canby's nearly empty bottle of Jameson and an Atlanta
Constitution
.

“This paper is three days old,” he said.

“I couldn't stand to read any more.”

“I don't understand you, Thomas. How often have we had a case so neatly wrapped up as this one? You should be pleased.”

“You saw Greenberg at the preliminary hearing. Was that the demeanor of a guilty man?”

“They all plead not guilty, Thomas. And they all act like they never dreamed of finding themselves there.”

“I need to tell you something.”

Vernon raised a hand and turned his head to the side. “Not me. Tell it to the judge. You're due in court at nine.”

Vernon studied the label on the Jameson bottle for a moment. “Rest your mind, Thomas. The case is closed.” He turned the bottle up and drank, then held the bottle out to Canby. “Here. A dram to get you going.”

Canby drank, his throat clenching. His parched mouth, which had a minute before been cottony and coppery at once, burned and then was numbed. He settled back on the couch.

“I can't do it.”

“Of course you can.”

“I know Greenberg is an innocent man, Vernon.”

“That is for the court to decide. Your job is to get on that stand and tell them what you have seen. The rest is the court's bailiwick.”

Vernon tapped the
Constitution
against his knee. “You've missed some fine testimony, laying up in here. One of the factory girls came forward and said Greenberg made advances toward her. His landlady says he's been asking about another set of rooms, to bring in one or two of ‘his girls.' That's sworn testimony.”

Canby looked at him blankly.

“You could have been reading about it,” Vernon said, and tossed the newspaper onto the table. He rose and walked across
the room. Canby heard him drop the plug into the bathtub and turn the water on full-bore. After a moment he reappeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. He studied Canby for a long moment until the younger man rose from the couch and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“And I don't need to tell you a good showing today will ensure you a place on the force again.”

Canby nodded. Behind Vernon, wisps of steam had begun to issue from the tub and to cloud the doorway. The carpet beneath Canby's bare feet was sumptuous—rich, dark, and new like all of Kimball House, save for the wrecked room upstairs.

Vernon stood aside for Canby to enter the bathroom. Canby shrugged out of his nightshirt and eased into the steaming tub.