Here
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Contents
Part I
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Part II
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Here: A Robert Falconer Mystery
Sean Moynihan
ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54396-355-7
ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54396-356-4
© 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known historical figures and events, all persons, events, and names are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For my mother,
who urged me to write
And for June Douglas,
who let me use her typewriter at my father’s office when I was a boy
Part I
New York City
April 23, 1891
1
Mary Miniter looked to her right as she stood up behind the bar at the East River Hotel and saw the couple through the doorway. They were standing next to the front desk and were obviously looking for a room. Mister Jennings was not about at this late hour, nor was Mister Thompson, so she would have to deal with them. She looked over at Eddie Fitzgerald, the bartender, to alert him. “Eddie,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the small, dingy lobby of the hotel, “we’ve got some people coming in here—I’ll deal with them.”
Eddie nodded back but said nothing, turning his attention back to the ten or twelve dreary people drinking up the hotel’s liquor in the small barroom before him. Mary wiped her hands on a dirty dishrag, threw it into a bin below the bar, and walked out into the lobby to greet the customers.
“Good evening to you, sir,” she said. “Good evening, ma’am. Will you all be looking for a room, or just a drink now?”
The man looked down at his companion, who then turned to face Mary and spoke up, slurring her words slightly. “Yes, honey, we would like a room, please.”
Mary recognized the lady—the older one who came around every so often to linger in the barroom, or to take a room with the customers she grabbed on the street. She was always quite drunk like this and was spouting off her poetry—a real spectacle. The man, though, was a stranger. Mary looked him over and wondered how the old girl had nabbed him on this night.
“Well,” she said to them, “why don’t you just come over here to the counter and I can get you settled, all right?”
She moved over behind the counter that contained the hotel’s registry, and the man and woman followed. Behind her, hanging from a collection of hooks on the wall, were the various room keys for the place, all well-used and tarnished from the many hands that had held them.
“Now then,” she said, “it’ll be fifty cents for the room, and first order of refreshments from the bar will be complimentary. Here’s the key.” She handed it to the man. “It’s number thirty-one, up to the fifth floor and straight on down the hallway to the end on your left.”
“I see,” the strange man finally said. He had an odd accent of some sort. “Um…is there any need to register?” he asked.
“No, sir,” she replied with the slightest hint of a knowing grin on her face. “That’ll be just fine for the one night.”
“Thank you,” the stranger said quietly, placing the key in his breast pocket.
“Will you two care for that drink from the bar now?” Mary asked.
“Yes, dear, that would be just grand,” the woman said. “A pail of mixed ale and two glasses, please.”
The woman turned to the man and held out her hand, and, after a moment of hesitation, he reached into his pocket and handed a dime to his companion.
“Here you go, sweetheart,” the woman said, smiling and handing the dime to Mary. “We’ll just wait right here on that drink, all right?”
“Thank you,” Mary replied. “I’ll have that right away.”
She then moved off to the barroom where the noises of shrill voices and sharp clinking of beer glasses could be heard. Entering the bar, she requested the pail of ale from Eddie and grabbed the two glasses. Eddie quickly poured the ale and handed the metal pail to her, and she rang up the transaction in the old, metal cash register affixed behind the bar. Walking back out into the lobby, she saw the man and woman standing quite close together, chuckling quietly to each other.
“Here you are, folks,” she interrupted, handing the pail to the man and the glasses to the lady. “I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know if you want more. Oh, and let me get you a candle here.”
Mary reached down behind the front desk and grabbed a candleholder containing a small white candle. Lighting it carefully, she handed it to the woman. The woman smiled back at her, while the man gave no expression, and Mary knew that the unspoken agreement was in place and understood between all parties. This transaction had happened time and time again in this rickety old hotel, and no deeper questions were ever asked, and no further information was requested or furnished. It was nothing more than a visiting man—in this case, a gentleman to whom the utmost discretion was to be afforded always—and a simple woman of the streets who were meeting for one night of pleasant “conversation” and enjoyable company. And, of course, the implicit understanding was that this was, in fact, a man and his wife who simply needed a place to stay for an evening in New York City, and there was nothing extraordinary or out of place, or even improper, about it.
The stranger took the pail of ale from Mary, and, without a word, nodded his head as he curled his arm around his companion’s lower back. The two guests then walked down the hallway and disappeared into the blackness of the ascending stairs that led to the upper floors of the old and slowly disintegrating hotel. Mary Miniter saw them off in this way and turned back to her duties as evening housemaid.
2
Robert Falconer sat at the end of the bar, quietly sipping the frothy beer t
hat had been handed to him fifteen minutes earlier. He turned on his stool and surveyed his surroundings. The noisy barroom in Lupone’s Hotel and Bar was awash with celebrants of every stripe and color from the city’s dark nooks and crannies: dock workers, prostitutes, street peddlers, musicians, off-duty waiters and cops, priests and parasites—all drinking in the energy of the evening and the second-rate alcohol provided by an eager staff headed by the proprietor, Benny LuPone.
Falconer looked down the bar and saw LuPone standing near the cash register, quietly lording over his kingdom, as he did on every night. Falconer knew of him somewhat: a former prizefighter and sometime convict who was born in Salerno, and who, after many years of struggling to earn his keep, had finally settled into a life running a bustling and randy gin joint on Fourteenth Street where everyone was welcome and there would be no problems as long as you paid up and didn’t start anything.
Falconer’s gaze moved from LuPone to across the room, where the very large doorman, Goose McPherson, stood amidst a gaggle of young women. Goose was typical of the doormen working the saloons in the neighborhood: a big brute of a man, silent and simple, the person who was paid to deal with a problem if it came up—the person who would come calling if someone got cock-eyed with the proprietor or with a girl upstairs, and who would promptly ram the malefactor out the bar’s front door headfirst into the muddy street below with quick dispatch.
Falconer turned back around and took another gulp of his beer. There had been no problems since he had arrived twenty minutes earlier, and everyone around him seemed to be smiling and laughing, clinking their glasses in unison, and making quite a joyful scene as the clock approached eleven o’clock in the evening. But the harmony of the scene didn’t last.
From his seat down at the end of the bar, he suddenly heard a high-pitched scream emanating from somewhere high up on the second floor where the girls would take their customers for the quick business transaction and perhaps some gratuitous small-talk before sending the rogues on their way. He looked above at the ceiling, and heard some muffled bumping and crashing, and then more screams.
Looking down the bar again, he saw Benny LuPone beckoning his man, Goose the Giant, over near the door. With a quick jerk of his extended thumb towards the direction of the drunk-infested stairwell to the rear of the establishment, LuPone yelled a curt command to the doorman: “Get up there and see what’s doin’!”
Falconer watched as the broad-shouldered enforcer immediately sprang into action, leaving his bevy of young swans looking in puzzlement at each other. Goose walked towards the stairwell in between stained and beaten up tables with a surprising grace and agility for a big man. He then disappeared in an instant up the stairs, and Falconer thought that this would be the end of it, with a resultant cuff to the side of the head of the offending miscreant and a quick dragging of the stunned body down the stairs and out into the street, as per usual.
Instead of hearing that expected melody, however, Falconer and the crowd heard something different this time: first, a wild and savage yell from another male voice clearly not Goose McPherson’s, and then, just as suddenly, a plaintive yelp that sounded as if it came from a half-beaten hound dog that had just been kicked solidly in its protruding ribs.
“Help! Help! God, he’s stabbed me…Benny!”
LuPone and Falconer both looked up in the direction of the fierce, desperate cry, and then strangely looked at each other for just an instant.
A stabbing. This was moving from bad to worse.
Falconer stood up immediately off his stool and flashed his badge at LuPone, who had just grabbed a baseball bat from beneath the bar. The two men then moved swiftly over to the stairs together.
“Police?” LuPone said as the two ran up the stairs. “I thought you were just some dumb bricklayer who was going to run out on me without paying.”
“I shouldn’t have to pay for that swill you poured me,” Falconer replied.
“I’ll consider it,” LuPone said, “if you get whatever damned bottle-head is up here kicking a shindy in my place.”
At the top of the stairs, the two men were greeted with the sight of the bleeding Goose McPherson slumped down against the wall of the hallway, weakly pointing to a door near the end of the hall through which the screaming was clearly coming.
“Big guy,” Goose wheezed. “Knife…think he’s gone loony….”
LuPone looked up at Falconer and then barked down to a busboy who was looking up curiously from the bottom of the stairs: “Get some towels—quick! And fetch a doctor!”
Falconer motioned for the proprietor to walk silently down alongside the opposite wall of the hallway as he himself slowly moved down along the wall nearest to him. As he did this, he removed the large Colt .45 Army double-action revolver that was strapped to his side underneath his coat and moved it into a ready position up near his ear. The two men then edged closer towards the room where a slow moaning could be heard in between sharp grunts and low, guttural growls. Then they heard a man’s loud voice.
“You be quiet, I said, you damned bitch! I’m the ruler here, see? I’ll cut you all up and eat you like a stew! QUIET, GODDAMMIT!”
They silently approached the door through which the yelling was heard, and Falconer quickly alerted his companion that he was going to try the doorknob. With his revolver cocked and ready, he slowly placed his hand on the knob and twisted and was surprised to see that it was not locked. He gently pushed the door open and thereupon saw a large, muscular man standing completely nude over near the window, with one enormous arm wrapped around an equally nude woman’s throat and a large buck knife pointed directly at the side of her neck.
Falconer looked at the man’s eyes and saw that they were very round and open, like those of a crazed, hungry monkey that had been cornered in a cage at a zoo. Falconer looked over at LuPone, and, with a mutual nod of the head, both stepped gingerly inside the room.
“Listen, pal,” Falconer said to the man. “No need to hold that lady there anymore. Let’s just get you a nice drink and talk about this, huh?”
The man smiled wildly and shook his head from side to side. “No way, jack! I know what you’re doing here. This here is my room, and I paid for it. Now you all git!”
The detective and barman looked quickly at each other again, and Falconer turned back to the man. “No one needs to get hurt here,” he said to him. “Now you haven’t really done much of anything to this nice girl yet, so you may be able to walk away if you just let her go and get dressed. You hear me?”
The man at the window winced and grew visibly angrier. “I said for you to get out, bub! And you, too, mister! You get away from me with that bat there, or I’ll stick this pretty thing like a pig in a poke. This is my room, and I want you all out, understand?! Don’t you interrupt my party! I’m gonna’ count to three now, boys, and if you ain’t out of here, she gets it. One…”
Falconer clinched his jaws together and narrowed his eyes. Looking over at LuPone, he could see that the proprietor was becoming more panicked, gripping the bat feverishly in his hands.
“Two…”
Falconer then lowered his revolver directly at the man’s knee and fired once. The tremendous noise of the gunshot reverberated throughout the room and the hallway outside, and the smell and haze of acrid gunpowder immediately filled the surrounding air. Almost as instantly, the man fell to the floor, screaming in agony, and the girl fell, too, shrieking hysterically.
As the man’s painful cries wafted down the hallway, Falconer stepped toward him and removed some handcuffs from his belt. Kneeling, he placed the handcuffs quickly around the man’s wrists, and then grabbed a shirt hanging from a metal bed frame and wrapped it around the man’s bleeding knee. He then looked up and saw LuPone running into the room with a few women, who knelt to attend to the frightened victim crying in the corner. Falconer stood up and turned to face LuPone, who had a look of shock and befuddlement on his face.
“You shot him,” LuPone said. “
I can’t believe you shot him.”
Falconer holstered the revolver at his side. “Did you have any better ideas?” he asked, and then he strode out into the hallway.
3
Falconer waited for a time downstairs until an ambulance and patrol officers arrived to deal with the incident that had occurred upstairs. The patrons were pushed out the front entrance and now a crowd of onlookers lingered outside out on the street and sidewalk, waiting for a look at what had happened. After conferring for a brief time with the officers and a ward detective who appeared, he decided to head home and deal with any further reports in the morning.
Stepping outside into the windless, misty air of the mild spring evening, he brushed by the mass of grimy patrons and chattering passersby who loitered outside the front entrance. Turning west, he headed down Fourteenth Street toward the elevated train at Sixth Avenue. As he strolled past the numerous gambling dens, spit-drenched saloons, and disguised harlot houses bustling with the wild celebrations of an unshackled and booze-soaked populace inside, he questioned again—as he so often did on these late-night solo ramblings about town—the wisdom of his choice of becoming a policeman, a law enforcement officer in a city showing itself increasingly unable to be guided at all by law or moral compass.
When he had started out as a young patrolman, it had not been so thorough or pervasive, so ingrained in the workings of the city. Or perhaps it had been like that but had not been so apparent to him, simply because he was so naive at the time and sheltered from the way things really worked along the great avenues and in the hidden alleyways and the dark corners where vice grew like great weeds and thickets. Back then, he thought he could do something worthwhile—thought he could help bring order to a growing chaos that was being fed by sudden and great advancements in technology and human ingenuity. Society now was surrounded and infected from within by fantastic machines, enormous engines, and clever devices that could never have been dreamed about a generation earlier, and these machines augured a new era in human progress and prosperity. But with the machines, the chaos grew, and the men charged with leading the people in this exciting but dangerous time only grew more corrupt with it. And now Falconer, the former young patrolman who once eagerly walked his beat with his uniform sharply pressed and his buttons shined, only grew older, more tired, and more cynical.