CHAPTER 15
The next morning I was supposed to begin with the dog’s watch, so I set my alarm early. My sleep patterns were so confused now, I lay awake half the night and spent my first full day shift feeling like a sleepwalker.
My aunt’s party had marked an end to my half-baked investigation, I knew. I had proven nothing. Perhaps, as Muldoon had said, I had to accept that justice couldn’t always be served. But why was it always the Ruthies of the world that justice bypassed?
Justice or no justice, at the end of my shift I was happy to shrug on my coat and go home. For the first time in a long time, I was determined to relax over a leisurely supper, read a little, go to bed at a decent hour, and return to work the next day refreshed. A little peaceful domesticity—that was what I needed. For the first night since Thanksgiving, I was not going to think about Ruthie Jones.
On my way home, I passed a butcher who advertised smoked hams in the window. It was as if Bernice were calling out to me. All I had to do was slice it up and boil some kind of vegetable to go with it. It was time to focus on living my life, not obsessing over murders.
I ducked into the butcher shop and bought an ambitiously large ham, which the man behind the counter wrapped up for me. I put it in the string shopping bag I carried in my satchel. After a block, I realized I might have gone overboard and bought too much; my arm started to get tired carrying the thing. When I couldn’t get a seat on the streetcar downtown, I ended up balancing it on my hip as if it were an infant. In the close confines, the ham seemed to smell even stronger. Everyone in the car was probably salivating by the time I got off at Eighth Street.
I made my way home, crossing Sixth Avenue and then turning down my street, which was practically deserted. And dark. The days were now so short, it was fully dark by six. The puddles of light let out by the streetlamps were inadequate.
A block from my building, on a quiet residential street, I heard footsteps behind me, almost as if someone was following me. You’re just imagining things. When I sped up, however, so did the footsteps. I strained to hear better, placing my feet on the sidewalk as quietly as possible.
A horrible thought entered my mind. What had Muldoon said last night? “He might still try to do away with you.” And to be done away with so ignominiously—me on the way home with my ham, bludgeoned to death in the street by a one-legged textile salesman.
Then an even more chilling thought occurred to me. What if this wasn’t actually Gerald, but one of Leonard Cain’s goons coming to exact Cain’s final revenge? December twentieth, the anniversary of his sentencing, wasn’t far away.
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to slow down. As the steps grew louder and more rapid behind me, my grip around the string bag tensed. Much like Bernice, my Aunt Sonja, who’d raised me, had always despaired of my ever learning to be of any use in the kitchen, but I had absorbed one bit of cooking wisdom that she’d imparted: sometimes it was best to use what you had on hand.
I waited until I’d passed out of a puddle of light from the streetlamp. I wanted the advantage of being able to see my foe better than he could see me. I slowed almost to a standstill until the quickening steps were almost even with me. Then I grabbed the string bag with both hands and whirled like an athlete executing the hammer throw. I angled my string bag so that the heavy weight moved in an arc and clipped the man on the jaw with a satisfying smack.
Gerald Hughes cried out and stumbled to the ground. Not about to relinquish my advantage, I scurried over and towered above him while he tried to push himself up from one knee. If he made another move toward me, I was ready to slug him again with the ham.
He groaned.
“Why are you following me in the dark?” I asked. “You could have called my name.”
He cupped his jaw, wincing as he looked up at me. “What did you hit me with?”
“A smoked ham. How did you find me?”
He worked his jaw, testing it. “How do you think? I followed you last night.”
Last night? And I hadn’t noticed him. Worse, I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might do such a thing. I just assumed he’d fled out of guilt and wouldn’t want to be seen by me again.
“I watched you go into a house,” he continued, “but when I asked a man coming out of that same building today to tell me which apartment was Miss Frobisher’s, he said there was no Miss Frobisher living there. Only a Miss Gale and a Miss Faulk.”
Thanks, Wally.
“Miss Faulk, I presume?”
It was pointless to try to deny it. He knew my name, my address, everything.
Although . . . not quite everything.
“Imagine what a fool I felt—after I’d practically poured my heart out to you. I don’t know what kind of scheme you and that aunt of yours are operating. Is she really your aunt?”
“She is.” I was glad, in that moment, that there was something about me that was true.
“You must think I’m an idiot. I am an idiot. I knew women in this city lured men into traps, but you were very good. You seemed so genuine, and kind. It was the baby that gave me a jolt—I’d met his mother. I’m sure it was the same baby. What were you trying to get out of me? Money?”
“No.”
“So you say, but it’s always about money, isn’t it? Although if it was blackmail you intended, you took your time about it.” He was in a self-righteous swivet. “I should have reported you to the police. Or that detective you pointed out last night—maybe someone else hired him to follow you.”
“I am the police.”
He gaped at me. “You’re . . .”
“Officer Louise Faulk of the New York City police.” I purposely left out my precinct information and kept my badge in my satchel. I wasn’t through deceiving Gerald Hughes quite yet.
Hughes faltered back a step, and his face collapsed into the expression of a man who had just had shackles placed around his wrists. “Why would the police be watching me?”
He seemed genuinely puzzled. Lots of criminals were excellent actors, though. “I was looking into your connection to a woman named Ruthie Jones.”
“The mother of that mute baby. I knew it had to be the same one! That’s why I was so confused.”
“Ruthie, as you well know, was also a prostitute who lived on Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.”
He nodded, but in the next moment, his nod became a shake. “Was? I don’t understand.”
“I told you Eddie was an orphan. Ruthie died several days before Thanksgiving, when her body was finally discovered in her apartment. It was a grisly scene.”
“Are you saying she was murdered?” Even in the dark, I noted Gerald’s face went two shades paler. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear it.”
“But you did know Ruthie. She stole your passport.”
He blinked. “Yes. Or, rather, I’m fairly certain she did. When I confronted her, she denied it.”
“And that made you angry.”
“Of course—but not enough to kill a woman. Can you really think so little of my character?”
“Anything can happen in the heat of an argument, even over the most trivial matters.”
“But there wasn’t an argument,” he said. “When I discovered my passport missing, I went back to her apartment and asked her if she’d found it. I was sure she’d taken it and my money.”
“And?”
He lifted his arms. “She denied it, and I left and never saw her again. What else could I do? I got another passport through the British consulate here.”
“That’s how I found you.”
He shook his head sadly. “After what happened with Ruthie, I should have known better than to trust a woman in this town.”
“How did you meet Ruthie?” I asked. “The usual way?”
He blinked. “Louise, please.”
“Officer Faulk.”
“I don’t care who or what you are. There was nothing sordid about my evening with Ruthie, at least not in the way you mean. I bumped into her at a picture show.”
I’m sure my brows arched at that. “Really.”
“Yes. There was a Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand picture on the bill.”
“There usually is.” Those two seemed to make half of the pictures shown. “Go on.”
“I must be the easiest mark in the world,” he lamented. “I first noticed her behind me in line. I’d just finished buying my ticket, but she was a few pennies short, so I offered to pay for her. Afterwards, when I was leaving, she caught up with me to thank me. She seemed like a very pleasant young woman. I offered to treat her to a light supper, and we had some wine. I walked her home—a very shabby neighborhood—and she asked me to come up. I . . . I feel foolish saying this, but I felt I should accompany her. The building was so . . .”
I nodded. “I’ve been in it.”
“Yes, of course. Well, I went up, and she offered me another drink. I took it more out of politeness than anything else. I saw her children. There were two of them, and she’d just left them there—she said she didn’t trust anyone else to take care of them. One was normal, but the other, I remembered, couldn’t make a sound. She called him Eddie. Well, children or no children, I began to understand what she was. I was shocked, to be honest. I was going to give her money, not for services but out of kindness. But the next thing I knew I was barely able to keep my eyes open. It was worse than when you hit me with that ham.”
“You think she slipped something into your drink?”
“I’m sure of it now.”
I remembered something. “Do you recall a sweet smell from when you were at Ruthie’s?”
He frowned in thought, then shook his head. “No. I think it was something in my drink. Later, she either pushed me out of the flat, or I escaped on my own. I was awakened later on a park bench by one of your police brethren poking me with a stick. It was only when I was trying to catch a taxi back to my hotel that I realized that my money and my passport were gone.”
“You carried it with you?”
“I thought it was safer that way. Before I came to America, someone warned me of hotel maids stealing.”
I’d have to make sure Lena never heard that.
“I was so groggy,” he continued. “I walked to the hotel, rested, and looked for the passport. It took me a little time to piece what had happened all together, but when I went to confront the woman—Ruthie—of course she denied it.”
“And you were too embarrassed to tell the police.”
“Oh no. I went to them straightaway.”
His answer set me back on my heels.
“It was embarrassing,” he explained, “but I thought it my duty to try to keep others from becoming victims. Evidently I needn’t have bothered. They said I had no evidence of anything.”
“Where did you make this report?”
“At a station the desk clerk at the hotel directed me to. It wasn’t far. On Thirtieth Street, I believe?”
My heart felt heavy in my chest. “Do you remember which officer you spoke to?”
“I don’t think so. He didn’t give me much hope of retrieving the money.”
“Can you remember what he looked like?”
“He had a sort of long face. Perfectly friendly, if a little supercilious. He had an odd name.” His face tensed in concentration as he tried to remember it.
“Jenks.”
“That’s it.”
I felt like the biggest fool in the world. Jenks had been right in front of me all along, as big as a Times Square billboard. I should have been investigating him, not Gerald.
“Doesn’t my going to the police show I didn’t harm that woman?” Gerald asked. “I was trying to help her and I was taken advantage of. Is being robbed a crime?”
“No,” I said.
“Maybe the police should find out what they already know before persecuting innocent people.”
“You’re right about that.”
It was entirely possible, of course, that Jenks had told King and Stevens about the incident of Ruthie stealing Gerald Hughes’s passport. Maybe the stolen passport incident was the reason Ruthie’s neighbor saw Jenks going to Ruthie’s apartment.
Except she said she saw him on more than one occasion.
A more sinister scenario was forming in my mind: Jenks and Ruthie working in tandem, with Jenks at the nearby police precinct to absorb any complaints about her and make them disappear. He could also steer other officers’ investigations away. Even when it came to Ruthie’s murder.
Terrible thoughts entered my mind. A policeman would have known how to kill someone to make it look like a suicide. But why would Jenks have killed Ruthie? A mundane lover’s tiff? A business disagreement? Had she threatened to expose him to the brass?
The possibility that I’d stumbled on a case of police corruption made me feel ill. I already believed one of my colleagues was in league with Cain, even if I didn’t know his identity. And now I suspected Jenks of the vilest murder I’d been a witness to, and I didn’t know how many others were complicit in his crime. Whom could I go to with this information about Jenks? Was anyone at the Thirtieth Street station trustworthy?
“Well?” My silence had made Gerald anxious. “Are you going to arrest me?”
Luckily for me, he seemed to have forgotten who assaulted whom this evening. “No.”
“I’m sorry about that woman. She drugged and robbed me, but she was someone’s daughter.”
“Someone’s,” I echoed. “I wasn’t able to track down her family.”
He thought about this, but finally shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. “Then am I free to go?”
“Of course.” I couldn’t blame him for wanting to get away from me as soon as possible. There was no covering the awkwardness of the parting. “Good-bye, Mr. Hughes. Good luck.”
As he hobbled away, it felt as if something had cracked inside me. A piece of me was broken, too. I wouldn’t have a limp. No one but myself would know that I’d become so comfortable with trickery and lies that I’d driven a man to follow me down dark streets, hurling accusations of blackmail at me. He hadn’t deserved deceit, and my double dealings with him seemed even worse in retrospect, now that I knew he’d done nothing.
On the other hand, I had gleaned information. I was closer to knowing the truth. My clumsy investigation hadn’t produced the result I’d expected, but facts weren’t always convenient. Now I worried I would have to create another antagonist in my own precinct. How was I going to handle that?
* * *
“I just need to screw up my courage.”
No one had ever looked less like a man summoning courage. Otto resembled a cornered rabbit so much, he was almost twitching.
“Be honest with her.” I hunched deeper in my coat. Light flurries floated through the air and were beginning to dust the sidewalk around Pennsylvania Station. I peered ahead to see if Ziggy’s line was moving and noticed the men in front of us. One of them was a man with startlingly clear blue eyes. He and his companion were speaking in what sounded like German, from the few snatches I caught.
“That’s what you said last time we talked,” Otto said. “You must think I’m an awful coward.”
“I think you don’t want to disappoint her because you’re still infatuated.”
His mouth dropped open, but no denial came forth. “What difference does it make? She’s in love with Teddy.”
“Teddy’s off to England.”
“That’s even worse. Teddy, here, she might have gotten tired of eventually. Now he can be her romantic ideal—the one who dashed off on an adventure.”
Maybe Callie was going to romanticize Teddy now. “She was cooped up in her room last night, knitting.”
“Probably socks for Teddy.” He looked even more discouraged. “He’s her new Belgium.”
I laughed but then became distracted by the two in front of us. They were an odd pair. The blue-eyed man was tall, with a strong, clean-cut jaw. Blond hair peeked out from under his homburg, and he wore a mink-brown cashmere coat. His companion was stouter, and sloppier looking, with a belly that pushed against his overcoat. The two were speaking German at a clip difficult for me to keep up with. One phrase caught my ear, though. Die Reisepasses.
Passports.
Were my ears playing tricks on me?
“Jimmy was pointing out that there was a lulu of a part that Callie would knock ’em cold in,” Otto said.
My attention ricocheted back to my friend. “What part?”
“Agnes, the chambermaid. She has a fun novelty song in the second act. ‘Dust Away Your Troubles.’ ”
I rubbed my gloved hands together for warmth. “Give me warning before you tell Callie she’s being demoted from the title role to Agnes the chambermaid. I want to remove any breakable valuables from the apartment.”
“You don’t think she’ll go for it?”
Ahead of me, I heard the words mehr beschaffen.
Procure more . . . what? It was all I could do to keep my body from tilting forward to eavesdrop.
“I can’t do everything myself,” the plump one said. “I need help.”
“Louise?” Otto prompted.
I tried to focus on his problem. “I don’t want to speak for anyone when a job’s in the offing, but I doubt she’s going to be tickled pink.”
“Oh.” He drooped.
“A person expecting champagne doesn’t jump for joy over a bottle of beer.”
“You’re right.” He sighed. “I just wish you weren’t.”
“Then again, she might think beer is better than nothing.”
When we got to the front of the line and placed our orders, I questioned Ziggy while he loaded our brats. “That man who was just here . . . the one with the blue eyes . . . is he a regular customer of yours?”
“More faithful than you two,” Ziggy said.
“I like that. Otto and I are here every week—even in the snow.”
“That is nothing. Herr Neumann comes twice a week.” He winked at me. “A handsome man, ja?”
I made a show of fluttering and hoped Otto wasn’t staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Is he? I didn’t notice.”
“Sure, you notice nothing—only his blue eyes.” Ziggy laughed and tilted his head toward Otto. “Your taste in men is improving, fräulein.”
I smiled as Otto and I each handed over our fifteen cents in exchange for our food. It had taken me years to get Otto used to going dutch. Ziggy didn’t approve.
“What was that all about?” Otto said, bristling a little as we walked toward Pennsylvania Station to get out of the snow.
“Ziggy was just needling you.”
“I know that. But why were you simpering over some fellow in the bratwurst line?”
“Didn’t you hear the two men in front of us?” I asked.
“No, and I’m surprised you did, either. I thought we were having a conversation.”
“I can’t help it if my ears pick up snatches of what other people are saying. You can hardly blame me. They were talking about passports.”
“So?”
“They were keeping their voices very low, like they didn’t want anyone else to hear. Even so, I caught the phrase procure more.”
“That could mean anything.”
“Procure more passports? Who does that?”
“Government officials?” Otto guessed. “Consulate workers?”
“Passport thieves?” I added.
Otto chewed, shaking his head.
“Those two looked shady,” I said.
“Up until yesterday, you thought Gerald Hughes was shady,” he reminded me. I’d given him the whole story about Gerald. “Turned out he was just a luckless salesman who’d been fleeced.”
True. “I’m glad he wasn’t a murderer.”
“Ziggy’s blue-eyed customer probably isn’t a murderer, either.”
I forced myself to take a little of my own medicine and really listened to what Otto was saying. He was right, of course. There were almost five million people in New York City. What were the chances that I would bump into another man who’d known Ruthie Jones? From snatches of probably innocent conversation, I was imagining conspiracies.
But what else could the men have been talking about? Passports . . . procure more . . .
Resignation settled into Otto’s gaze. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”
“I’ll have to file it away for a later date,” I said. “I have other matters to contend with this afternoon.”
Namely, Jenks. I wasn’t fool enough to think I could handle him on my own, though.