Falconer watched as the men turned their attention back to him. Then he looked at Bly, who appeared calm still, unfazed by the discussion going on around her. “All right, Bly,” he finally said to her, “I suppose they’re right and it’s a little too late to shut you out. I don’t like the fact that you’re a reporter seeking a big story, but it’s clear you know your way around this city. And if you end up blowing it all up for us, then it’s your head, not ours, understand?”
“Absolutely, detective,” she replied coolly. “Let’s just find this killer and then we can worry about the story afterwards. Is it a deal then?” She extended her hand again at Falconer, who merely looked at it momentarily. “Sure,” he finally answered, slowly taking her hand in his and shaking it. “I never thought I’d be working with one of you reporters on a case, but there’s always a first, I suppose.”
“So, when shall we start, Falconer?” Penwill asked cheerily.
Falconer realized that everyone’s eyes were upon him again. “Right,” he said, stumbling to find words in response to Penwill’s query. “We start tomorrow evening. Inspector, you and an officer to be recruited will wander the lower Tenderloin, and Halloran here and I will handle the streets in our ward down around Oak Street. Whoever this person is, he seems to be focusing on those sections of town, but for all we know he may hit Harlem or the Bronx, or even out on Long Island. It truly is a situation where we’re trying to find a needle in a haystack. In fact, I don’t have much hope that any of us will encounter this person, and we’ll just be finding more bodies after the fact, unfortunately.”
“Well,” Penwill said, “we just have to try and hope for a bit of luck, don’t we? And, as you’ve said, detective, your chief inspector has seen fit to send out some other officers and ladies of the evening into the street, right? It won’t be just us out there.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Falconer conceded. “It seems the Central Office is taking this seriously now.”
“Detective Falconer,” Bly interrupted, “you just said the good inspector here would work closely with another officer to be named, but you neglected to tell me what I should be doing. May I suggest that I be the one who works with him? I do have a little experience tricking people into thinking I’m someone that I’m not, as you know.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Bly,” Falconer replied, “but it’s too dangerous—I can’t have you getting hurt out there on our account.”
“But you just said yourself that the police force is going to hire other ladies of the evening to try and draw this man into their net, didn’t you? If you’re willing to risk their lives, surely mine isn’t more valuable.”
“Well,” Falconer stammered, “I suppose you have me there, Miss Bly, but I’d still prefer to have you use your investigative skills and reporting experience and help us in that way, as opposed to actually dressing up as a prostitute and walking the streets at night, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry, detective” she said, “but I do mind. I’m perfectly able to take care of myself out there, and of course, the inspector would be right there near to me with those two impressive looking revolvers he has by his side.”
“Falconer,” Penwill interjected from his seat, “why not take Miss Bly up on her offer? She has fooled many people with her disguises as we have seen in her stories, and frankly, it seems that she had you fooled for a while there when she followed you out of the Cooper Union the other night. I say give her a chance to be Nellie Bly, the trickster of years past, and maybe it will come to something.”
Falconer looked at Bly and then down at the floor, rubbing his forehead with his hand. Then he finally looked up again and directed his gaze at the young woman sitting up straight in her chair. “All right, Miss Bly, you work with the inspector here, and I just hope you don’t get into any trouble out there.”
“Marvelous,” Bly said, turning to Penwill. “Inspector, I shall do my best as a young lady working the Tenderloin, and I look forward to catching our killer with you.”
“Jolly good,” Penwill said. “Splendid having you along for the ride, Miss Bly.”
“There’s still the issue of responding to the killer in the personal ads of the paper,” Falconer said. “Byrnes and his men have approved of giving some sort of a response so that we can try and get some sort of clue as to his identity or location, but I have to say I’ve been stumped about what to say. Anyone have any ideas?”
“Response, detective?” Bly asked. “What is this you’re talking about?”
“Oh, right,” Falconer said, “you aren’t aware of this yet. Here, give this a read. It’s a copy of a note found on the body of a young woman we just found in my ward.”
He handed the note to her, and she took it and read silently for a moment, then looked back at Falconer. “Oh, my,” she said. “Then it’s true.”
“Well, it could be,” Falconer said, taking the note back from her. “We have to proceed as if the Whitechapel killer is here in the city. Any thoughts on a reply?”
Bly and the three other men looked at each other as if waiting for someone to respond with a brilliant idea, but no one spoke up, and Falconer walked across the room with his hands clasped in front of him, as if he were a young seminarian deep in thought in a quiet corner of a divinity school.
“It has to be something that engages the man but doesn’t antagonize him,” he said, looking down at the floor. “And preferably, it would also draw out some helpful information from the suspect, but what?”
“Here, detective,” Levine said from over near the chair that he had been sitting in. He took out a little notepad and pencil from his coat pocket and began to write something down. Then, tearing out the page that he had written upon, he handed it to Falconer. “Perhaps this would suffice for our purposes?”
Falconer took the piece of paper and read what Levine had written down upon it, then smiled subtly and nodded his head a few times, pleased with the suggestion. Handing the paper to Penwill, he looked over at Levine. “I like it, professor—thanks.”
“Very nice,” Penwill said after reading through the response. “I know that game. Professor, what would we do without you?”
“May I please see it?” Bly asked, holding out her hand to Penwill.
“Certainly, Miss Bly,” Penwill replied, handing her the piece of paper. “Here you are.”
Bly looked down at the note that Levine had quickly scribbled on the page, and read it out loud:
Dear J:
When you play a game of Blind Man’s Wand like this, the Blind Man is normally allowed to ask questions of his opponents and receive hints in return. Will you play fairly?
F.
“Very clever, Professor Levine,” Bly said, handing the note to Halloran, who read it over and instantly chuckled. “Blind Man’s Wand…I imagine that might draw something out of him.”
“It’s a little odd, I must say,” Falconer said, taking the note back from Halloran. “And a little—how do you say it, inspector—cheeky? But I agree that it could potentially elicit something useful from our suspect. Are we all agreed to print it if Byrnes approves?”
He looked around the room and saw everyone nodding, and then tucked the note away into his jacket pocket. “All right then,” he said, “we’ll meet tomorrow at the Oak Street station at eight p.m. From there, we’ll head out and try to draw this suspect out into the open. I wish you all good luck and a safe return.”
“Detective,” Levine interjected, “you just approved of Miss Bly taking part in this clandestine operation, and I’d like to now request permission to join her and Inspector Penwill, as well, tomorrow evening. I know that I’m not a policeman and you said this activity could be dangerous, but I propose that I just serve as another pair of eyes near to Miss Bly, and I promise not to intercede in any unpleasantness, as it were. I’d really like to be out there, detective, if only to assist the inspector is spotting anything unusual.”
“Inspector?” Falconer asked, looking at Penwill who
was lighting his pipe.
“Well, I could certainly use the help, detective, to be honest,” Penwill replied. “And I could see to it that the good professor here keeps a safe distance from any contacts with suspects.”
“Very well, professor,” Falconer said. “You join them, but I do expect you to keep to that promise that you just made, understand?”
“Absolutely, detective,” Levine answered, “and thank you.”
The four visitors then gathered up their belongings and Falconer led them out the door and down the stairwell to the street below, which had grown relatively quiet in the mid-evening hours. A hansom cab trundled by with a glum-faced driver staring straight ahead towards downtown, and the grocer across the street appeared to be closing for the night. Levine offered to escort Bly to a street corner where he could hail a cab for her, and after saying their farewells, they departed.
Halloran bid Falconer and Penwill goodbye and walked off, as well, headed over several blocks to catch the elevated train uptown to his parents’ home up in the Bronx. As the young officer walked away, Penwill took a puff on his pipe and turned to Falconer. “I wanted to speak with you, detective—something that popped up recently.”
“Oh, what’s that?” Falconer asked.
“You remember your little tussle in the alley where we first met? Well, it seems in my travels and walkabouts through your city recently, I came upon the young lady and her fellow rampers who were there that night. I can show you their place of employ down in the Tenderloin, not far from the scene of your ambush, if you’d like—perhaps a little scout prior to bringing charges against them?”
Falconer looked at Penwill and slowly grinned. “Actually, do you have time to have a drink with me tonight, inspector? Down in the Tenderloin?”
“Right,” Penwill replied, smiling back. “I certainly have the time for that.”
54
Grace O’Neill stood wearily at the end of the bar with her service tray in hand and took a break from her duties. She looked over at Mick and Bob, who were engaged as usual in some sort of argument at a nearby table. She listened in and discerned readily enough that it had something to do with prizefighters. “Ah, Bob, what are you jabbering about?” Mick snorted dismissively. “Enough—big John L. would take that skinny Aussie bastard and wipe the ring with ‘em.”
Grace watched as the large roustabout with the cigar in his mouth, one of Fred’s henchmen at the bar, sneered haughtily at Bob, took a swill of his beer, and spoke up again. “If John L. wanted to, my friend, he’d knock out that beanpole Slavin in one round, guaranteed. Your man wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“One round?” Bob shouted as he, too, puffed on a cigar and intermittently drank from his overfilled mug of beer. “Sullivan won’t even meet with Frank, and that’s because he’s afraid of ‘em, Mick. And he should be after what Frank did to Jake Kilrain over there in Hoboken back in June. I was there, and it wasn’t pretty, I can tell you that. Frank gave him a solid rib-roasting with those hooks to the body and then knocked him cold in the ninth—Kilrain had to be carried to his corner, if you didn’t know.”
Grace’s attention was averted for a moment by the waving hand of a drunken customer across the barroom, and she nodded in the man’s direction, but then she looked back at Mick and Bob still going at it at the nearby table. “John L. ain’t afraid of no one, my friend,” Mick said loudly. “The only reason he ain’t fightin’ Slavin or anyone else is because he’s making a mint on the stage, see? Why leave all that money performing in them show halls just so’s he can get in the ring and beat up your beanpole for one night? He doesn’t need it, so shut your mouth for once, you goddamned lunkhead.”
“Lunkhead?” Bob said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Have you seen Frank fight, Mick? You haven’t, I’ll bet. Well, I have, and your fat Boston Strong Boy wouldn’t stand a chance against him! Frank would knock him out in five.”
“Ah, be quiet, you little Mary Ann,” Mick said, dropping some ashes onto the floor next to him and moving to get up out of his chair. “I’m sick of your barking—Grace, where the hell are you? I need another round.”
Grace smirked instinctively and then, wiping her hands on some rags, walked over to where the two men were sitting. “What is it now, Mick?” she asked him tartly.
“Get me another pint, girl,” he demanded. “I’m thirsty, damn it.”
“Fine,” Grace answered. “Your lordship.”
She grabbed the empty mug sitting on the beaten up old table and swept back to the bar, furious with the way Mick had treated her. “Another one for Mick, Roy,” she said to the place’s beefy bartender, Roy Hilton. He took the glass from her, poured another ale, and placed it back on her tray. “Thanks,” she said, turning on her heels to walk back to the table. She walked the few steps and placed the mug heavily in front of Mick, who sat quietly rubbing his prominent belly. “There,” she said, “hope that’ll keep you for ten minutes.”
“I’m sure it will!” he retorted loudly as she moved off to deal with some customers at another table. “Nasty tart.”
Grace spoke for a moment with the men at the other table, and then walked over the bar, where Roy stood behind the bar with his thick arms folded in front of him. “I’m going in the back for a minute, Roy,” she said to him. “Let me know if I’m needed for anything.”
“Sure, Grace,” he replied with a quick nod.
She walked back down the hallway leading to the back of the place, where a door opened onto a small set of wooden stairs descending to the hard ground of the alley. Opening the door, she looked back at the tumult in the barroom and sighed, grasping at the same time for a cigarette from a package lying in her apron pocket. Dunderheads, she thought, lighting the cigarette as she stepped lightly down to the alley. Not worth a damn, and loudmouths, too. I should think hard about leaving and going to work for my cousin, once and for all.
She took a drag of her cigarette and then started to turn, thinking she had heard something to her right in the silent alleyway. She never completed the move, however, as a strong hand suddenly came out of nowhere and gripped her hard around her mouth and shoved her against a brick wall nearby. Unable to speak and panicking, she peered up at the face belonging to her assailant. It was man wearing a dark bowler leering down at her with deep-set, blue eyes and a firmly set mouth and an angry look on his face. As she struggled to escape his tight grasp, she felt that she had seen him somewhere before, but in her vain convulsions and attempts to scream, she could not process the connection in her strained and racing mind. Holding her firmly against the wall, the man finally spoke. “Remember me, miss?”
Grace looked up at the man feeling terror in her heart, and quickly shook her head from side to side as best she could as she whimpered for relief.
“Are you sure?” the man asked again. “Do you remember the ambush back in the alley not far from here when you screamed to get those men to come help you? You remember that, miss?”
Now the thoughts came swiftly and more clearly to her, and she remembered Fred’s instructions that night and how the men all hid in the alley as the tall man came running down the alley to help her after she had cried out, feigning distress. The man they beat that night, she remembered. She nodded quickly now as the man held her head firmly against the cold bricks of the building. She felt that he was going to kill her now, or at least beat her severely for her part in the fray.
“Good,” the man said. “Well, now we’ve come back to pay you all a visit, and you’re going to tell me who’s inside from that night, understand?”
Grace looked past the man’s head and could see the hazy form of another man about ten paces away, and as she focused harder, she could see that it was the last man who came to the beaten man’s assistance that night, the one who aimed two revolvers at her and the men as they stopped hitting and kicking his friend on the ground—the big Englishman.
“Are any of the men from that night in the place right now?” the man who he
ld her asked sharply. Grace looked up at him again and nodded quickly.
“How many?” he asked. “Here, I’ll let go of your mouth now, but if you scream, you’re not going to like what follows, understand?”
She nodded understandingly, and the man slowly released his grip from her mouth, allowing her to turn to her side and breath heavily for a moment as she bent over slightly from her position against the wall.
“What’s your name, miss?” he asked.
She straightened up and faced him, still visibly frightened but heeding his warning not to shout out. “Grace,” she finally replied, breathing more steadily now.
“Well, Grace, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but we’re cops, see?” He showed her his badge attached to his jacket. “So right now, you’re basically looking at a charge of conspiracy to commit assault on a police officer, which wouldn’t be good for your immediate future. I’m willing to let this go, though, seeing as you were just the bait and you didn’t actually try to break my ribs in two that night. But you’ll have to help us out here—you understand?”
Grace nodded again, glancing back and forth between the two men.
“Who was in charge that night?” the man asked her as he stood just inches away from her still.
“Fred was,” she replied. “Fred always is.”
“And who’s Fred?”
“Fred,” she answered, as if the name should have meant something to the man merely by its utterance. “The guy who runs this place. Fred McGuire.”
“Is he inside now?” the man asked.
“No,” Grace answered. “He’s off on the town somewheres. I don’t know where.”
“What about his boys in there? How many are in there and what are their names?”
“Just two right now,” she said. “Mick and Bob. They’re just drinking at a table, like always.”
Grace saw the tall man glance over at the Englishman, who appeared to nod ever so slightly, as if they were communicating telepathically.
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