Tasting the Apple

by Sherilyn Decter

“I run a boarding house in the Northern Liberties area, and I would like to borrow some money to repair the roof and make a few other improvements to the property.”

  “Hmm, I see. And was your husband not able to come in this morning, Mrs. Barnes?”

  “I’m widowed.” You’d think that after the war and the influenza epidemic that a widow wouldn’t be such a remarkable state.

  “A father then?”

  “My father is not available.”

  “Well, you see Mrs. Barnes, it is unusual to loan a woman money. In fact, it’s unusual to be dealing directly with a woman about a business transaction at all. Are you sure you don’t have a brother or another male relative, a fiancé perhaps, who could represent you?”

  “Mr. McKim. I run the boarding house. The house is in my name after my husband’s passing. I have managed on my own now for several years, without the benefit of male oversight. I am perfectly capable of representing myself. Perhaps we could continue?”

  Mr. McKim fusses with the papers on his desk. “Of course. You say you own the property outright? Do you have the documentation to that effect with you this morning?”

  Maggie nods and hands him a file folder. “Inside, you’ll also find a quote from a company on how much they will charge to fix the roof. And two year’s monthly income and expense statements for the boarding house.”

  “This is very comprehensive. Why don’t you have the man who prepared these statements come by and talk to me and we can see about that loan?”

  “I prepared those statements and gathered the information myself, Mr. McKim. This is my business and I take it very seriously.” At least I can thank Father for my aptitude and familiarity with accounting ledgers.

  The granter of all financial wishes makes notes on a small legal pad. Tsk-tsk, the only sound in the room besides the scratching pencil. Maggie watches, ramrod in her chair. McKim returns the papers to the folder and tops it with his pencil.

  Maggie leans forward for the verdict. The silence stretches between them. Will she ask or will he offer? She leans back and smiles, playing the confident landlady.

  Mr. McKim clears his throat. “According to these numbers, Mrs. Barnes, you will be hard-pressed to repay the loan on time. I am uncomfortable extending you the amount of money you seek.”

  Maggie panics, the illusion of confidence gone. “I’m sorry, Mr. McKim. I double checked the numbers. They appeared doable to me. What interest rate are you charging for a commercial loan?”

  “Oh, no. We don’t extend commercial loans to women. Not at all. That’s just not done. We may consider a mortgage on your house, with the house itself as collateral, of course. But you understand that, if the payments are not made, we will take your house as repayment for the loan?”

  Maggie grips her hands. “No commercial loans to women? Certainly that’s ancient. These are entrepreneurial times, sir.” Maggie tweaks her tie.

  The banker remains firmly entrenched in his male-dominated business world.

  Seeing no respite, Maggie tries again. “A mortgage against the house. Surely the house is worth much more than a small loan for the roof. You would take the whole house if I can’t repay it?”

  “Yes. And sell it. Any proceeds left over, after fees and expenses, would be forwarded to you, of course.”

  I could lose the house. Do I dare? “And what would a monthly mortgage payment amount to? And for what duration?” Sitting across from Mr. McKim disadvantages Maggie. She longs for a desktop and a piece of paper to write things down. It’s not easy to hold the numbers in the same head that is screaming for her to give up, run away, and hide.

  “We can do fifty-percent of the equity in the house, at six-percent, over five years, with a bullet payment at the end. At that time, the loan must be repaid in full.”

  Maggie mentally calculates. To meet the number Mr. McKim has mentioned, she will need to raise the rents on three lodgers and also look at some other kind of income. There is no way to cut expenses that much to make up the difference between her current revenue and the new amount she’ll need. She can sell the house herself if she has to. Better she would do it than have the bank handle that. But only as a last resort, if it even comes to that.

  Maggie considers the consequences and then nods at Mr. McKim. “I can make this work. Let’s go ahead with the loan for the roof. I expect one-thousand dollars should do it.” I’ll worry about that last payment another day.

  Mr. McKim slumps slightly, then quickly resumes his posture. Maggie can see him imagining himself hammering the For Sale sign on the front of her house.

  “Erm, then. Well, Mrs. Barnes. I’ll get my clerk to draw up the paperwork for you to sign. Would returning on Thursday be convenient?”

  Maggie nods, now past the point of no return. “That works for me. I’ll see you Thursday. Thank you, Mr. McKim.”

  Mr. McKim stands, but does not see her to the office door. Maggie watches his mustache twitch. She turns and leaves the bank, the weight of the loan dragging behind her.

  Chapter 10

  M ayor Freeland—’call me Freddy’—Kendrick leans back in his office chair, drawing on the cigar he has just lit. Sitting across from him is the Director of Public Safety, Colonel Smedley Butler. Butler is extremely tall, rail thin, with a hawk-beaked nose. Kendrick has never seen Butler with a loosened collar. He’s never seen him slouch. Like the military man he is, Colonel Butler strides, never walks. And when he barks a command, there is a compulsion to salute.

  Mayor Kendrick loathes him. And he envies him, too. The mayor doesn’t have the luxury of marching forward through an unambiguous landscape of black and white convictions. Instead, Freddy weaves and dances through a terrain composed of shades of grey: compromise and pragmatism. And to his credit, Mayor Kendrick is an excellent dancer.

  Before he’d come into the mayor’s office, Colonel Butler had confided to his aide-de-camp, Sergeant Kelly, that he wished Mayor Kendrick would stop smiling. Always smiling. Perhaps it’s a weakness of character that drives a man to smile that much? No one is that happy all the time. The news is not always that good. Butler sees nothing in the current situation to smile about.

  “We’ve got to launch more aggressive strikes against the bootleggers, Mayor. They’re getting away with murder, literally. Philadelphia is a cesspool of crime right now. We can’t be faint in our attack.”

  “Oh come now, Smedley. We’re working together here. We’ve hardly been faint. You’ve closed thousands of speakeasies and arrested hundreds of lawbreakers. Those are commendable efforts. And the press and the public have noticed.”

  “But those thousand speakeasies have all reopened. Some of them more than once. Some of them more than once on the same day. It’s a mockery of justice. And those lawbreakers, back on the street, most without even a fine. You brought me in to uphold the law, Mayor. If we don’t have a united front, we won’t win this war. Neither civilian nor adversary will respect us. Criminals will continue to flaunt the law, especially when it’s a law even the police department and the courts don’t believe in.”

  Mayor Kendrick takes a deep breath—it doesn’t seem to interfere with his continuous smile. He’s heard the Colonel’s line before. “So, what do you recommend, Colonel Butler?”

  “I’d like for the two of us to meet with the magistrates and judges. We’re going to have to dig-in on this, Mayor; you need to lay down the law that they should be upholding. If they’re men of integrity, they’ll fall in line.”

  Mayor Kendrick puffs on his cigar, wondering, as he often does, whether the colonel uses jargon from the war as a way of showing his contempt for lack of war service. “Let me see what I can do. You know they’re a prickly bunch, judges. They take their independence very seriously.”

  “I’m not suggesting that we tell them what to do, Mayor. I’m suggesting that we lay out the information so that they can come to the right decision on their own about what they should do. Surely they are men of honor? They should know their duty. And it
is the law.”

  “Yes, of course.” Mayor Kendrick stands, one hand gripping a suit lapel, subconsciously posing for the cameras. “I was elected on a platform of law and order. I promised I’d clean up this town. The public expects to see some changes, and they will. I’ll have my secretary, Phyllis, set it up.”

  Colonel Butler remains seated. The mayor remains smiling on the outside, but frustrated on the inside; he’s forced to return to his chair.

  Mayor Kendrick makes a note for Phyllis and evaluates the next course of action to get this man out of his office. He decides on a full frontal assault. “I want to commend you on your actions, Colonel. You’ve been very thorough. As I said before, lauded in the press and by the good citizens of this great city. However, perhaps we might take this opportunity to also discuss the… ahem… the degree of thoroughness of your actions?”

  Colonel Butler’s expression is a serious one.

  “As you know, there’s been a lot of activity in the Second and Sixth Wards and Center City. I’ve been getting complaints from the business community. They feel that they’ve been singled out.”

  “Those districts have been getting a lot of attention. It’s where some of our most egregious scofflaws are operating.”

  “Well, perhaps, all in the interest of fairness, you could focus your attention on other wards? I need the business community on-side. They’re very generous contributors to elections—judges and the council. Maybe, if you refocus your efforts in another direction, everyone might feel a bit of breathing room. And if the business community is happy, it certainly will help with the magistrates and judges. They’re sensitive to these things, you know.”

  Colonel Butler remains stone-faced. Kendrick’s smile falters momentarily, and he decides it’s time for the carrot. “And I’ll be needing Council votes if we’re going to go forward with the reorganizational efforts you’re proposing for the police department. I know how committed you are to a new structure.” The mayor has made sure Butler’s reorganization efforts won’t amount to much. Since the mid-1800s, the mayor has had the power to appoint one lieutenant and two sergeants per police precinct, and can give them direct orders. And as far as Mayor Kendrick and his bank account are concerned, it’s a system that works just fine.

  “Your political pressures are an unfortunate consequence of enforcing the law, Mayor. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be the ‘law and order mayor’ and not clean up the city. When we first spoke, I made it clear that I was not going to be window dressing. You asked me to come to Philadelphia, to take a year’s absence from my command with the Marines. It was you who wrote to the President to secure my appointment here. I was brought in to do a job, and I will. I have never lost a war. I do not consider defeat to be an option. To be victorious, I expect full cooperation from all authorities, legal and political. Otherwise, I will return to my military duties.”

  Mayor Kendrick’s smile quavers, and then he stands up and reaches across the desk, hand extended.

  “Of course, Colonel. You have my full support.” Mayor Freeland ‘Freddy’ Kendrick beams.

  Colonel Butler stands; gives a brisk handshake. “Thank you, Mayor Kendrick. Now, I will see to my men. We have work to do.”

  Chapter 11

  M aggie is glad that Tommy is heading back to school Friday; she’s running out of chores for him. After breakfast, she’d sent him outside to start turning the garden bed to get it ready for planting. Watching him out the kitchen window, furiously shoving the tines of the garden fork into the hard dirt, she’d seen that he was as frustrated by the suspension as she was.

  She hopes that he’s learning his lesson. She also hopes that he’ll be learning a bit of math from Archie. The idea of tutoring sessions is not going down well, for either student or tutor.

  With Tommy outside, at least until lunchtime, Maggie takes the time to get to her own version of gardening: trying to coax green shoots from barren soil. Sitting in the dining room, she chews on the end of her pencil. Laid out in front of her are papers filled with figures. She’s been looking for a way to accommodate the mortgage payments into her budget. Earlier, she had contacted the roofing company to arrange for them to start on the roof. She hopes that their earlier estimate will stay true and there will not be any hidden surprises once the cheap shingles come off.

  “You look troubled, Maggie. Can I help?”

  “Hello, Inspector. No, I’m fine. Just trying to figure out which days of the week we’ll be fasting.”

  “Fasting? Is your new lodger religious?”

  “Ha. No, but I don’t think I can stretch my grocery budget to accommodate meals for all seven days a week.”

  “That’s no good. What’s happened? I thought having the third lodger in place would help with the finances.”

  “It would have, except I went to the bank to arrange a loan. I need money to repair the roof and I’ve also decided to buy a washing machine. The way I’m doing the laundry now with the washboard and tubs isn’t efficient, and I can use the time more productively. I figure, if I’m going to be on the hook for a mortgage, I might as well buy a bit of convenience for myself while I’m at it.”

  “That sounds like a reasonable plan. What is the problem?” Frank asks. There’s still much he has to learn about the times he’s living in, and perhaps banking and financial arrangements are different now.

  “I’d worked out my figures based on a commercial loan. But guess what? They won’t give me a business loan. Even in these modern times, because I’m a woman, I’ve had to put a mortgage on the house. That kind of attitude, especially in this day and age, is appalling.”

  Frank keeps his own council about the prevailing attitudes toward women and banking that he remembers.

  “The mortgage payments are a bit much for my current revenue. If I default, the bank stands ready to seize my house. Tommy and I will be on the street.”

  “That sounds extreme. I doubt it will come to that.”

  “Oh Inspector, I’m not sure what bankers were like in your day, but now? They’re not known for philanthropy. But enough.” Maggie gathers her papers into a neat stack. “Tell me how things are going at the brewery.”

  “It’s fascinating. On so many levels. The engineering still escapes me—how they’re actually doing it—but now that I know what to look for, I can see it. Certain nights, the brewmaster turns on the discharge lever of a vat and drains it. But… not to the bottling station. The vat is dry by morning, the beer gone.”

  “Sounds curious.”

  “Oh, that’s not the half of it. Max Hassel himself is also an interesting character. I must confess to thinking of him as a gangster in the same mold as Mickey Duffy. But he’s not like that at all. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him carry a gun. He’s unfailingly courteous to his staff. He consults with his brewmaster, seems to value his opinion. He’s a businessman wrapped in a bootlegging opportunity.”

  “Sounds like the opposite of Mickey Duffy, a gangster wrapped in a business opportunity.”

  “Exactly. When Prohibition ends, it will be the Max Hassels of the world that do well. I’m not sure Mr. Duffy will acclimatize well to the new order.”

  Chapter 12

  A warm spring evening envelops downtown Philadelphia. People bustle about, off to dinner or a show. Marquee lights flicker, twinkling beacons for eager patrons.

  Colonel Smedley Butler and Joe Kelly are inside a parked car. They watch the Venice Café from across the street. There’s a steady stream of customers going in and coming out, especially for midweek. It’s a popular supper club, with an adventurous, albeit illegal, cocktail menu. This is the sixth time this week that Joe and the colonel have surveilled it.

  “Never gets old, eh Kelly?”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “The thrill you get waiting for the charge. There’s a solid plan anchoring the effort; the battle is not yet joined, the outcome uncertain, the men are eager and unhurt. Yes, it’s the suspension in time, b
efore going forward, that I relish.”

  “Once more over the hill, boys?” Joe asks, daring familiarity with his commanding officer.

  “Exactly, Kelly. Once more over the top.”

  The two wait while more people go in. They want to time the raid for maximum effect. Colonel Butler has also tipped off the press, who should arrive within the hour. It will make for a great story in the paper tomorrow.

  Butler fancies himself a bit of a maverick and certainly likes the reputation of getting things done. The boys back at the Marines couldn’t understand why he’d taken a leave to tackle what was basically a civilian problem, but he likes the challenge. They said that it would be impossible to succeed, and he hasn’t failed yet in any of his campaigns.

  “I saw the notice about the lieutenants,” Joe says.