Murder in Midtown

by Liz Freeland

  Jenks sent me a disgusted look. “I don’t mean can’t she talk, I mean doesn’t she have much going on upstairs.” He tapped his own skull—surprisingly, there was no echo. “C’mon, girlie. You get another chance to tell your story.”

  As he steered Mary out of the cell, she stumbled alongside him, still mute but with a backward imploring gaze at me. I relocked the cell to the usual barbed remarks and complaints from the other women left behind.

  “Don’t let them push you around, Mary,” one of the women called out.

  Why would anyone push Mary around? Either she could help the detectives or she couldn’t. But once Jenks had led her away, I thought about Cain’s threats to me. Then I wondered again why a girl like Mary would appear to want to be in jail. Unless, as the detectives seemed to think, she was commanded to by her stepfather.

  What were they hoping to learn from Mary? Could it have anything to do with Guy’s death?

  Maybe Muldoon was one of the detectives.

  I waited a few minutes and then went upstairs. The interview was taking place in a room near the coffee cubby. A few officers were standing by the open door. Normally my appearance drew attention—the jailbreak still had my colleagues rolling in the aisles—but today all eyes were on the two detectives talking to Mary. Neither was Muldoon.

  “Now’s your chance, Mary. You tell us exactly what Cain had you doing, and we’ll get the judge to go easy.”

  The detective who spoke was an older man, almost as tall and thin as Jenks, and his partner, spreading out over a chair turned the wrong way, was just as stout as his partner was lean. Physically they created quite a contrast, but they worked together like parts in a well-oiled machine.

  “Go easy?” the stout one said. “What’re you talking about? Any judge’d look at this sweet kid and just let her go. If she helped us.”

  The tall man leaned over Mary. “Hear that? If you help us. It’s no good if you sit there clammed up like a . . .”

  “Clam,” the fat detective finished for him.

  “Right. ’Cause you can sit there playing all dimply and innocent, but there’s the question of what a girl like you was doing all alone on a street at night, approaching strange men.”

  “And if you don’t say anything, there won’t be a question left in anyone’s mind.”

  “Certainly not a judge’s.”

  “Straight-up solicitation.”

  Red splotched across Mary’s cheeks, and her chin raised a notch. Pride finally forced her to speak. “I was asking directions.”

  The stout detective chuckled. “We’ve heard that before.”

  “It’s the truth,” she said.

  “Directions where?”

  “To a hotel.”

  The two detectives exchanged a long look, and the expressions on the faces of the cops around them were nothing less than gleeful. Indignant, I stepped forward—but a hand on my shoulder stopped me. I whipped around. Schultzie was shaking his head at me. Let the detectives handle it, those bloodhound eyes told me. Schultzie had decades more experience at this. Jaw clenched, I faced forward.

  “Now, what’s a pretty young girl like you want with a hotel when you’ve got a nice home to go to?”

  Mary looked down at her hands. “I was running away.”

  “Where to?”

  “Baltimore. I’ve got a girlfriend there.”

  “Thought you said you were going to a hotel.”

  “I missed the train. I was tired.”

  It sounded reasonable enough to me, but the detectives didn’t think much of her story.

  “All the way to Baltimore without luggage?”

  “I checked it at the station.”

  “Where’s the claim ticket, then?” He turned. “Did we find a claim ticket on her?”

  Jenks stood at attention. “Not that I recall.”

  “It was in my purse,” she said. “The officers took it after they brought me in.”

  The stout detective snapped his fingers but didn’t look away from Mary. “Find it,” he directed.

  Jenks nudged the officer nearest him, and the man turned on his heel and darted off.

  The thin detective began to pace in front of Mary. “That man you solicited—excuse me—asked for directions. Turns out he had a bag of heroin on him. He says you gave it to him.”

  She lifted her head. “He’s lying. Heroin? Why would I want that?”

  “You tell us.”

  “I’ve never seen it except in the cough syrup my mother gives me when I’m sick.”

  The detectives shared a smile at that. “Cough medicine, she says.”

  “Leonard Cain’s daughter.”

  She stiffened. “Stepdaughter.”

  “What do you think pays for your nice clothes?”

  Her mouth opened and closed like a beached fish, as if she were genuinely trying to figure that out.

  “See, a nip of heroin every now and then’s not bad,” the seated detective explained. “Cough syrup, sure. Stuff’s safe enough for kiddies. But others don’t stop at a nip. They become fiends for the junk. Government’s trying to put an end to crooks peddling the stuff around in large quantities, and not for medication.”

  This information cast an entirely different light on Guy’s “business investment.”

  “Just tell us he put you up to it.”

  “Nice girl like you wouldn’t get involved in all this sordid stuff. Not without his influence.”

  “He forced you to, didn’t he?”

  “And now he’s not lifting a finger to help you. Why, he sent your own mother to tell us to keep you here.”

  Mary’s face registered these last words with surprise. “Mama was here? She said that?”

  “Sure she did.”

  Tears glistened in her eyes.

  “Cain doesn’t deserve your loyalty, Mary,” said the fat man.

  She stiffened, and her sadness turned into pure contempt. “I wouldn’t lift a finger for him. You can lock him away forever, for all I care. But I didn’t do what that man said. I was only asking directions.”

  The cop who’d been sent to look for the claim ticket came puffing back. “Not there,” he said.

  Mary’s mouth dropped open. “That can’t be.”

  “Did you lie to us, Mary?” the older detective asked.

  “No! It was there. I saw them take it out of my purse.”

  “Maybe you want to go to jail.”

  The harangue went on for another half hour—thirty exhausting minutes of threats, insults, insinuations. When it was over, Mary looked numb. She’d never veered from her story. I practically had to drag her downstairs, and she seemed so forlorn that I took her aside toward the little washroom set aside for Fiona and me, out of sight of the others. I stowed my things in a little cabinet near there.

  “Would you like a donut?” I asked her, remembering Schultz’s offering to me.

  Perhaps it was the donut, or being out of the presence of the men, but tension seemed to gush out of her. A tear spilled down her cheek. “I just wanted to go to Baltimore.”

  I sat her down on the cot provided for the policewomen. It was in a corridor, with nothing but a privacy curtain on one end. This was probably against a dozen rules, but I was playing a hunch. She wasn’t saying why she’d run away from home, but my suspicions had been brewing since the detectives’ harangue had begun.

  I handed her the greasy waxed paper. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  “The detectives say I’ll go to jail.”

  “I’m not talking about the trouble the gorillas in suits up there were referring to. You’ve had other troubles, haven’t you?”

  Tears spilled faster. “I couldn’t help being out tonight. Mama kicked me out—said the most horrible things about me.” She looked at me, remembering I was the police. “I guess you know that, if she came here. She called me all sorts of names at home. But they aren’t true.”

  “A man took advantage of you,” I said.

&n
bsp; Shock leapt into her eyes, and I knew I’d hit the nail on the head.

  “It wasn’t hard to guess.” After her boarder attacked me, my aunt Sonja had wanted me gone, too. At least to Aunt Sonja “gone” hadn’t meant to jail.

  Her mouth tightened. “ ‘Took advantage’? That’s a polite way of saying it, isn’t it? He’s a brute, and he used me like a beast would. Do you understand? He said I couldn’t cause trouble that way.”

  I nodded, feeling sick.

  “I told Mama, but she didn’t believe me at first. Said I was fantasizing. Fantasizing—about that pig! Then she told me that if I were pregnant, that would be one thing.” She shook her head. “I told her I couldn’t be pregnant, but if I were I’d throw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  “Who was it?”

  A bitter laugh tore out of her. “Are you a fool? It was Leonard Cain! Why else do you think my mother doesn’t want me back? Why else would she turn against me and call me a whore to complete strangers? She’d rather I rot in jail than let the world know what kind of man she married.”

  I sank onto the cot next to her. Dear God. Her own stepfather.

  She dashed tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I should have left a year ago, only I was such an idiot. I hoped I was wrong about the way he looked at me. And I hoped Ma would protect me. Ha! She’d swap the happiness of both her daughters for that man.”

  “You have a sister?”

  “I told him if he so much as laid a hand on Lena I’d kill him, and so help me, I will.”

  “You can’t protect Lena from Baltimore,” I pointed out.

  “I’m going to send for her when I get there and find a job. I’ll do anything . . .”

  “But now you’ll be in jail. Why didn’t you tell the detectives what you just told me about Cain?”

  “Would you have? My own mother didn’t believe what I told her, and the policemen were already accusing me of passing a package of drugs to a man. But I swear I only stopped him on the street to ask directions.”

  I remembered the cold, menacing threat in Cain’s eyes, and the way I’d instinctively recoiled from him. He was capable of what she said, I knew he was. “I believe you.”

  Mary sniffed. “That’s fine, but I didn’t see anyone asking your opinion upstairs.”

  I couldn’t deny that. “The police want to catch your stepfather doing something illegal. What he did to you was a vile crime. When they hear you out, they’ll be inclined to take your side.”

  “But Mr. Cain will deny it, and my mother will back him up.”

  “It’s your word against his, but you have truth on your side, and his word is hopelessly tarnished. You heard the things the police suspect him of, and believe me, drugs are the tip of the iceberg.” I thought about the gambling and all the murders he was rumored to have ordered. “The police will want to hear your story. Tell them.”

  “It’ll be my word against his.”

  “But it might not be your word alone,” I said. “If Cain brutalized you, he probably did the same to others. We could find these women and make your story more credible to a jury. Your testimony could put your stepfather behind bars for years and might save other girls. It might save Lena.”

  That, more than anything, broke the dam of her reluctance. “I’d kill him.”

  “You don’t have to kill him. You just have to tell the truth.”

  After a little more cajoling, I convinced her to speak again to the detectives and explain the whole ugly story.

  Upstairs, I let the sergeant know what I’d found out. His eyebrows shot up and he asked, incredulous, “You want I should call the detectives back for that?”

  Anger rose in me. “Isn’t rape still a crime?”

  His fat chin jutted out at me, but after a moment’s reflection he called Jenks over. “This better be the truth, Two. If it’s not, your days are numbered.”

  He whispered to Jenks, who hurried out to do his master’s bidding. No doubt that would involve rousting the detectives out of whatever all-night beanery they’d retired to.

  I wanted to stay to hear the interview, but the sergeant put the kibosh on that. “You’ve got your real work to tend to.”

  Reluctantly, I left Mary in his charge and headed back downstairs. An hour dragged by, and I was fighting the mid-shift drowsies when I heard a scream. There was a commotion in one of the cells—a woman had tried to slash her wrists with a key she’d hidden beneath her skirts. Blood stained her dress and her wrists looked gruesome—God only knew how she’d managed to create so much damage with a brass key. The sergeant informed me that I would be escorting the prisoner to Bellevue. The cross-town errand stretched into a few hours.

  By the time I got back, dawn was peeping over the city and my shift was almost over. As I entered the precinct, I was startled to see a distinguished, uniformed man with salt-and-pepper hair and a toothbrush mustache talking to Sergeant Donnelly, who nodded at me. “There she is now.”

  My heart sank into my heels. The stranger was wearing a captain’s bars. This had to be the elusive McMartin. He and Donnelly had obviously been discussing me, which, according to my mind-set at the time, could only mean bad news. The sergeant had warned me that my days might be numbered, but I never dreamed that my hours might be, too.

  I approached them and stood at attention while I was introduced to Captain McMartin.

  “So, Faulk, there’s been a stir here tonight. Sergeant Donnelly’s been telling me you were responsible for getting Leonard Cain’s stepdaughter to talk.”

  “I could see she was holding something back, sir.”

  “You guessed she was,” Donnelly corrected with a glower.

  “Saw, guessed . . . it makes no matter.” McMartin clasped his hands behind his back. “However you divined the truth, you were able to dig down to the truth that two seasoned detectives couldn’t coax out of her.”

  The word coax made it hard for me to keep my countenance. Their coaxing had looked like straight-up bullying to me.

  I would gain nothing by criticizing two veteran detectives, however. And I couldn’t toot my own horn when it was only my own hidden history that gave me insight into what Mary had been holding back. “It was a delicate matter,” was all I said.

  The captain nodded. “No doubt. Nevertheless, your success is a credit to you and this precinct. And, I daresay, your sex. Makes me think having these women around might not be such a bad idea after all. Eh, Donnelly?”

  The sergeant turned a putrid shade of green. “Sir.”

  Relief flooded through me. I wasn’t being fired. “Will a charge of rape be made against Leonard Cain?”

  “Rape?” McMartin’s forehead wrinkled. “No, but Mary’s agreed to testify against him in the matter of the drugs. Selling that much raw heroin unlabeled is a clear violation of the Wiley Act of 1906. Shameful for a man to use an innocent young girl as a go-between in that dirty business.”

  I frowned, confused. “But he didn’t. Mary was adamant. Cain raped her, but she knew nothing about the drugs.”

  “That’s as may be, but it’d be a whole lot harder to make a charge of rape stick to Cain, especially when the mother denies it. Cases like that are always uncertain, especially if it goes before a jury. Never know which way the cat will jump.”

  I was astounded. “But the rape accusation is true, while the other—”

  Donnelly pinched my arm. “The girl says the drug story’s true.”

  Since when? “If she says that, it’s only because she wants her stepfather in jail for something.”

  “That’s what we all want,” said McMartin. “And now, thanks to you, it’s like Christmas coming a month early. We’re all getting our wish. Mary’s testimony should put Cain away for at least five years, so long as he doesn’t get to the jury.” He clapped me on the back. “Well done, Faulk.”

  I froze in bewilderment. Encouraging perjured testimony? It was hard to imagine a circumstance under which the jailing of Leonard Cain could be se
en a moral wrong, but the NYPD had just managed it.

  I balked at Sergeant Donnelly’s warning glare. Clearly he thought I’d said enough.

  “Where is Mary now?” If I could just talk to her . . .

  “She’s being taken downtown till we can figure out where to stash her until the trial. Her mother obviously won’t have her back.” The captain commended me again. “Keep up the good work, Officer Faulk.”

  I attempted a smile, as did the sergeant. The moment the captain was out the door, though, Donnelly rounded on me. “Don’t go getting a swelled head, Two. Playing a lucky hunch doesn’t make you a good cop.”

  As if I took pride in any of what had just transpired. “Tell me this,” I said. “Did those drugs really have anything to do with Cain? Was there even a package of drugs at all?”

  Donnelly frowned. “Cain’s up to his ears in nasty business. Now we’ll have him. That’s what matters.”

  “More than truth?”

  He shook his head. “Go home, Two. You’ll think straighter after some shut-eye.”

  As I was leaving a short time later, I bumped into Schultzie on the stoop. “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  “Tonight, you mean.”

  I groaned. He was right. Sleeping during the day had turned my sense of days topsy-turvy. Tonight would seem like tomorrow after I managed to get some sleep. Which I fully intended to do.

  I should have remembered the old saw about best-laid plans.

  CHAPTER 17

  When I arrived home, I almost slipped on a note someone had pushed under the door. It was from Abe Faber.

  Louise,

  Ogden McChesney has requested a visit from you. He did not tell me why, although I believe my theory is once again proving true: the caged bird is looking outward. A positive development! I will be in court all day, but if you could find it in your heart, and schedule, to visit him, it could prove beneficial to his spirits, and therefore helpful to the prospect of mounting a successful defense.

  Yours sincerely,

  A. Faber

  Desire for sleep warred with curiosity. Why would Mr. McChesney want to see me?