Mary had spent many a night bemoaning the fact that Charles Goodrich’s final entry in his date book read only “Meet Roscoe at his place.” It had always seemed too general for a man who was so exact. The lettering on John Pemberton’s card changed her perspective. What if “his place” was the name of a restaurant or place of business rather than Roscoe’s apartment? Mary did some research and soon discovered there was a tavern called “his place” down on the Bowery.
The Bowery was one of the most dangerous sections of New York. It bordered on an area called Five Points, which was infested with gangs and the bane of New York law enforcement. The Bowery had its own gang, the Bowery Boys, and the darkness, dirt, and noise brought on by the elevated subway, the Third Avenue El, made it a haven for criminals. As Mary trudged through the teeming streets, the sounds of poverty were all too familiar: a bloodied storekeeper screaming for police who never came, prostitutes calling to johns, a pushcart peddler chasing street urchins who regularly pilfered from his cart, husbands and wives battling over the misery of their lives. Every so often, as an exclamation point, the Third Avenue train blanketed the area with its roaring, nerve-wracking clatter, shaking the ground below and any building nearby.
Mary wasn’t scared. She knew how to handle herself in this environment. To her, the privileged world of Edison and Morgan was scarier. On the Bowery, you could spot your enemies, and the probability was that they’d come directly at you. The rich were more deceptive, being unwilling to dirty their own hands.
Mary entered his place and instantly realized it wasn’t just a tavern. It was a full-fledged “resort.” She had heard about resorts, meeting places for homosexuals, but she had never been to one, and his place was doing a booming business. Smoky, mobbed, and lively, the bar was packed with mostly men and some women, as were the tables. There was a dance floor on the far right next to a staircase, which led to a second floor that contained rooms for couples desiring more privacy. A man wearing full makeup and dressed in formal tails sat at the piano playing and singing “I’m Called Little Buttercup” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. The waitresses were men dressed in drag who joked and flirted with the customers. There were two hostesses, also men in drag, one a redhead and the other a blonde. They noticed Mary.
“My God, as I live and breathe,” the redhead exclaimed dramatically. “She looks just like that lady detective.”
“If I had those cheekbones, I could look like Mary Handley, too,” declared the blonde, sucking in his cheeks.
“In your dreams, dearie,” the redhead replied, then turned to instruct Mary. “Try more rouge and some wave in your hair.”
“I’m looking for a man,” Mary began to explain.
“Aren’t we all?” the blonde interrupted, sighing.
“His name is Roscoe. Spanish, dark, handsome, late twenties.”
“Oh, Señor Gorgeous,” swooned the redhead, then pointed to the far left corner. “He’s over there. But you’re wasting your time. He’s strictly for men only.”
At that, both the redhead and the blonde ran off, hopping into the laps of two customers, laughing and flirting with them.
Mary walked the length of the floor and turned left at the bar. When she passed, a man at the bar stuck his neck out from the crowd and watched her go. It was Samuel. He had told his employer that Mary Handley would find his place. She was that good. Her presence there was important information, and he promptly left to report it.
Mary stopped before she got to the corner booth and set her eyes on Roscoe for the first time. By all reports, he was a handsome Spaniard. Mary would have added that he was also very masculine and sexy. If she had any doubts that this man was Roscoe, they were erased when she saw that sitting next to him was her old friend Mortimer.
“Roscoe?”
Roscoe rose and smiled charmingly. “Well, it’s about time you found me,” he said with a slight accent and a twinkle in his eye as he suavely took her hand and kissed it. He then nodded toward his companion. “I’m sure you remember Mortimer.”
Mortimer waved and smiled meekly.
“Please join us,” said Roscoe. “We have before us a recent invention by a bartender in San Francisco. It’s called a martini, and it’s quite scrumptious.”
Mary joined them, and Roscoe ordered another pitcher of martinis for the table. They sat and drank and talked and drank some more. Mary had many questions, and Roscoe was not shy about giving answers.
“I couldn’t come forward,” Roscoe explained. “It would’ve been too easy to pin the murder on the homosexual, and then forget about it.”
The fact that opposites often attract was a well-known phenomenon, but one would think Roscoe’s open, debonair personality and Charles Goodrich’s closed, reserved manner wouldn’t have been remotely compatible. The reasons governing human attraction had been a puzzle since people had walked on this earth, and Mary wasn’t going to solve it that evening. It was this factor though that tipped Mary’s tone to the incredulous when she wanted to confirm what was now obvious.
“So you and Charles Goodrich were…?”
“We were lovers. Why is it so hard for the world to understand? It’s just love.”
“We live in intolerant times,” Mary said.
“Yet I suspect the intolerance will end for you before it will for me.”
Mary raised her drink in a toast. “Here’s hoping it ends for all of us, sooner rather than later.”
They clinked glasses and drank. A good-looking man of about thirty came to the table and asked Roscoe to dance. Not in the mood for frivolity, he declined. Mortimer had no problem being second choice and left with the man. Mary was trying to pace herself and was slowly sipping her second martini, which she found to be as delicious as described. By now, Roscoe had imbibed four that Mary had seen, yet the only effect she recognized was that he was much freer in expressing his emotions. His frustration and pain were very visible.
“Poor Charlie struggled so with who he was. That’s the only reason he got involved with that Stoddard woman.”
“He saw you the night he was killed, didn’t he?”
“Charlie begged my forgiveness and asked if I still wanted him. Of course I said yes.”
Trying to suppress his agony, Roscoe downed his drink and poured another one. Mary hated to keep probing into an issue that was clearly painful for him, but she couldn’t stop. There was another piece to the puzzle, and she had to find out about it.
“Did Charlie ever mention a journal, one that contained sensitive information?”
Roscoe nodded. “He gave it to me that night to hold for him. He seemed quite concerned.”
“I’m sure he was. He was about to expose Thomas Edison, opening a box of misdeeds that would make Pandora blush.”
“Well then,” he stated rather cavalierly, “we must finish what he started. Meet me tomorrow. The world will no doubt believe you before it will me.”
He handed Mary his card. Her detective work over, she allowed herself to feel the tragedy of Charles Goodrich.
“Edison said he had no gumption,” she told him. “Yet he was showing more guts than ten men.”
Roscoe could stand no more and finished his drink. He then delighted the man at the next table by asking him to dance. Before they left, Roscoe turned to Mary.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and he was gone.
Mary was gathering herself to leave when she spotted someone at the bar. Samuel had returned, and he was trying to be inconspicuous. He was good at his job, but it was hard for a man his size to blend into the background. Mary grabbed a spoon off a table and stuck it in his back.
“You’re feeling my derringer. It’s small, but it can blow a hole clear through you.”
As Mary guided Samuel to the exit, the piano player returned from his break. He dove right into “When I Was a Lad” from H.M.S. Pinafore. The redheaded and blond hostesses mimed the song and played with the customers while Mary pressed the spoon harder into Samuel’s back, and they stepped out into the Bowery night.
Having managed to get Samuel outside, Mary hadn’t figured out yet how she was going to get information from him before he realized she was threatening him with a spoon. Samuel started to fidget.
“Don’t move,” Mary warned him.
At that point, a man popped his head out of the window of a carriage that was parked in front. It was W. W. Goodrich.
“Can I give you a ride home, Miss Handley?” he said in a friendly manner, and then gestured toward Samuel. “Samuel won’t hurt you. He works for me.”
Taken aback, Mary slowly lowered the spoon. When Samuel turned and saw it, he smiled.
“Clever, very clever,” he said, then climbed up onto the empty driver’s perch.
This had been a night of surprises for Mary. Why not one more? She shrugged, joined W. W. Goodrich in the carriage, and sat opposite him.
As the carriage traveled through the Bowery on the way to the Brooklyn Bridge, W. W. Goodrich put in place the last pieces of the puzzle. He explained that Samuel was a military assassin trained in Prussia. He could have easily harmed Mary, but that was never the plan. He had ordered Samuel to keep an eye on Roscoe. His brother’s death was still fresh in his mind, and Roscoe was drinking heavily. In fact, Roscoe had been one of the three drunks outside of Longdon’s restaurant when Samuel shot at her.
“When the poor drunken fellow decided to reveal himself, Samuel had to distract you. So you see, you were never in much danger at all…from Samuel, that is.”
Mary listened to W. W. Goodrich’s entire story. While his words enlightened her, they didn’t offer her relief. Instead, she was overtaken by a strong sense of repulsion.
“You knew about this all along,” she said.
“Charles told me four months ago of his…inclinations. I informed him there was no way I would allow him to stain the Goodrich name with a deviant lifestyle. After all, why should I have to give up my life because of him?”
“It works both ways, you know.”
Either her comment went over his head, or he chose to ignore it and to continue.
“I suggested he immediately find a woman and marry her. I suppose I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.” And then W. W. Goodrich sighed, trying his best to approximate human emotion. He failed.
“Your remorse overwhelms me,” Mary said drily.
W. W. Goodrich shrugged off his lack of theatrical talent and got to his real purpose. He took a check out of his coat pocket. “Will this be enough to silence you?”
Just when Mary had thought her opinion of W. W. Goodrich couldn’t get any lower, he managed to drop another notch.
“Your brother’s private life is precisely that. I have no desire to reveal it.”
“Scruples. What a pleasant surprise,” he exclaimed as he stuffed the check back into his coat. He felt that he was on a lucky roll and took a wild guess. “You wouldn’t by any chance also have his journal? It’ll bring a tidy sum for both of us.”
In addition to being despicable, his proposition was also an outright lie. Mary knew how ambitious W. W. Goodrich was, and Edison’s sphere of influence was vast. “You mean you have no intention of using it as political collateral to advance your career?”
“Well, I suppose that is a possibility,” he said, not at all fazed about being caught in a fabrication.
“I thought you were opposed to profiting from your brother’s death.”
“Only opposed to others profiting. It’s perfectly all right if it’s kept within the family.”
They were in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, but she had reached her limit.
“The air has turned quite foul in here. Stop the coach. I’d rather walk.”
If Mary couldn’t provide W. W. Goodrich with his brother’s journal, she could be of no further assistance to him. What she thought of him mattered not at all.
“If you wish,” he said, and then banged the roof with his cane, signaling Samuel to stop.
As soon as Mary stepped onto the bridge, W. W. Goodrich’s carriage took off. He didn’t bother to look back. He stuck his cane out the window and waved it nonchalantly.
“Au revoir, Miss Handley.” And he was gone.
Mary turned and looked back at Manhattan. It was a clear starry night, and the moon reflected off the water, highlighting the beauty of the island. It was hard to grasp that beneath the surface of that magnificence lay such greed, intolerance, and brutality. Mary vowed never to give in to it.
Straightening up, she started the long walk toward Brooklyn and home.