by Rhys Bowen
“Not you,” he said. “The boss don’t want you back. You’re a troublemaker.”
There was a clamor around me. “But you have to have Molly back! That’s not fair.”
I was gratified to hear this, but those girls didn’t realize how relieved I was never to have to work in that place again.
“It’s all right.” I turned to face the girls. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine. No sense in making a fuss about me. I’ll get myself a better job somewhere else.”
Rose pushed her way to stand beside me. “No, Molly, it’s not all right.” She stood on tiptoe and glared at Katz. “If you don’t let her come back then we’ll all go on strike again.”
“Rose—it’s all right.” I put my hand on her shoulder to restrain her. “The girls have got you and you’ll do just famously, so don’t worry about me.” I gave her an encouraging smile as she looked at me dubiously. “No, honestly. I have a hundred plans of things I want to do. Just make sure you don’t let that bully Katz get away with anything. Remember what Lowenstein promised you and make sure he puts in electric light straightaway. And better heating too.”
I leaned across and gave her a little kiss on her cheek. “I’ll stay in touch,” I said. “I’ll come to Samuel’s Deli at lunchtime to get all the latest news.”
I gave Mr. Katz a haughty stare, then I pushed past the rest of the girls waiting on the steps. I was free of Lowenstein’s. It felt wonderful. And it was also playing into my plans—I could now quite legitimately go back to Mostel’s, tell Mr. Mostel what had happened, and start working there again. That way I could keep an eye on his son, as well as on anyone else who might want to sneak up to his office and come down with his designs. And I could ask questions about Katherine too. Just perfect, in fact. I skipped down Essex Street with sprightly step.
Later that morning I was reinstated at Mostel’s. The conditions inside were not much better than at Lowenstein’s—cold and drafty and the only heat coming from a couple of oil stoves, one at either door.
“I don’t know why the boss was softhearted enough to take you back,” Seedy Sam said, looking at me with great distaste. “First you walk out and then you want to come back. You should recognize a good thing when you see it.”
“I’ll let you know when I see it,” I said, eyeing him with the same distaste. Then I breezed past him to take my old place next to Sadie. She looked surprised and delighted to see me.
“How come they took you back?” she whispered.
“My uncle did the boss a favor once. I’m not letting him forget it,” I said.
A little later Mr. Mostel himself showed up. “I’ve been working on the new designs all weekend, girls,” he said, waving a briefcase at us, “and I think we’ve got the goods this time. My new styles will be all the rave. They’ll go off the racks like hot-cakes. I just need to put some finishing touches and get the sample hands to work on them, and then it’s full speed ahead.”
At lunchtime the girls crowded around me as we went down the stairs.
“How come you’re back again? Mostel never takes anyone back!” Golda said.
“Where did you go, anyway?” Sadie asked.
“I had things I had to do,” I said vaguely. “Now I’ve done them and I need to start earning money again.”
“I know where she went.” Little Sarah gave me a knowing look. “She went to work for Lowenstein. And I know what she was really doing there too.”
“You do?” The alarm must have shown on my face.
“Sure. You’re not really one of us, are you?” She stood on the sidewalk, smiling at me, blushing at being the center of attention for once.
For once I didn’t know what to say. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I heard about the strike,” she said triumphantly. “Everyone is talking about it. I heard you were sent there to help organize the workers. You really work for the union ladies, don’t you?”
“Not exactly,” I said, relief rushing to my face. “But I did help organize the strike there, it’s true.”
“See, I knew it.” Sarah looked smug.
The rest of the girls pressed closer. “You helped organize a strike? And did the girls win?”
“Yes, they did. They went back to work today with better pay and better conditions.”
“And is that why you’re here—to do the same thing for us?” Sadie asked, her fact alight with excitement.
“I’m here to earn money,” I said.
“Oh sure. Of course you are.” Sadie touched the side of her nose and winked at me.
“You tell us how we can go on strike too.” One of the girls tugged at my sleeve. She was a beautiful stately Italian called Gina and had been very upset when Paula was fired.
“Strike? Us? Why should we want to go on strike?” an older woman asked. “We have it good here. Six dollars a week and no funny business.”
“Good? You call that good?” Gina demanded. “All garment workers are treated like dreck and you know it. It’s about time we show Seedy Sam and old Mostel that they don’t rule the world.”
“This isn’t a good time to go on strike, you know,” I said hastily. “Mr. Mostel wants to start work on his new designs this week, remember.”
“Then what better time?” Gina said. “He wants to get those garments in the stores for the holidays. He’d probably agree to anything we wanted just to keep us working.”
“He could also fire the lot of you and hire new girls to replace you,” I said. “That’s what Lowenstein threatened to do. I don’t know why he gave in so quickly.”
Disappointed faces looked at me. “Are you saying we shouldn’t go on strike like the Lowenstein girls?” one of them asked. “You think we have it so good here that we should all be happy?”
“Of course not,” I said, “and I didn’t say you shouldn’t go on strike. But you have to know what you’re doing. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You need the backing of the Hebrew Trades and the other garment workers, or they’ll make mincemeat of you.”
“Mincemeat? They kill us?” one of the Italian girls asked, staring at me with huge eyes.
I laughed. “No, but they’ll threaten you. They sent the starkes to attack us and when we tried to defend ourselves, some of us got carted off to jail for causing trouble.”
“You got sent to jail? Oy vay!”
I looked around the group of expectant faces. “Look, if you really want to organize, you need to join the union. You need to choose your union representatives to go to meetings for you and get advice on how to go about your strike.”
“We already had one girl start doing that stuff, didn’t we?” Golda asked. “Remember Kathy?”
“Oh sure. Kathy.” The name went around the circle of girls.
“Kathy? Was she American?” I asked.
“No, she was English. She talked funny, like you,” one of the girls said.
“She was the greatest. She stand up to Sam and she don’t take no nonsense from him.”
“What happened to her?” I asked.
Blank faces stared at me. “We don’t know,” Golda said. “She was at work one day and then she got called out of the room and she never came back.”
“We asked Sam where she had gone and he didn’t know neither,” another girl added.
“Did somebody come for her? Who called her out of the room?” I asked.
Several shrugs.
“We’re not supposed to look up when we’re working,” Sadie said. “You know how Seedy Sam likes to take our money from us.”
“I work near the door,” a bouncy little redhead called Ida said. “I saw her go past and I heard her say, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”
“But you didn’t see who it was?”
“No, but soon after that Mr. Mostel’s son came in.”
“Enough of this,” Sadie said loudly. “Kathy’s gone. All the talking in the world isn’t going to bring her back. Let’s go eat. You know Sam is just dying to dock our pay for be
ing late again.”
Nobody could disagree with this and we surged down the street to the little café where some girls bought hot drinks to go with their sandwich and others splurged five cents on the daily special. I joined the latter and had a bowl of stew that must have been made from a tough old buffalo. As I chewed on pieces of gristle, I also tried to digest what I had just heard. So Katherine had actually disappeared in the middle of the day from Mostel’s, lured from the room by someone who came for her—someone she knew. And another interesting fact had come out—Ben Mostel had come into the room right after Kathy disappeared.
If Michael Kelly was still alive, maybe he would be able to take up the story from that point. Surely he would have found out what had happened to her, especially if he was a member of the Eastmans. Gang members always have an ear to the ground, don’t they? So my number-one priority was to find Michael Kelly. Not an easy assignment. I had no desire to follow Nell Blankenship to my doom. Maybe it was now time to shake off all notions of foolish pride and ask Daniel to help me.
That evening when I returned home, I took up pen and paper.
Dear Daniel,
I witnessed an ugly incident at a garment worker’s strike on Friday last. I think that some of the starkes were members of the Eastmans gang, and one of them looked very much like the photograph of Michael Kelly. Since I am forbidden to do any more foolish investigating in that part of town, I wondered if you could find out for me if Michael Kelly is indeed still alive.
Yours sincerely,
M. Murphy
On Tuesday morning I hurried to work with great anticipation. Today was the day that Mr. Mostel was going to bring in the finished designs for the sample hands to work on. Today someone might try to borrow, steal, or copy them. Of course, if that someone was his son Ben, then why would he need to do it at the office? He could more easily take a peek at them at home in his father’s study—unless the old man kept them under lock and key.
I sat at my machine and worked with an eye on the door until Mr. Mostel came in.
“Here they are—my new designs,” he said, tapping his briefcase. “All finished and ready to go like I promised. And they are spectacular, if I say so myself. So different—so chic. You girls are going to be proud just to be working on them.” He looked around the room and was met by a lot of blank stares. Of course many of the girls just didn’t understand him, but those who did were not showing enthusiasm. Mostel smiled at us. “If you girls work hard and we get the first lot shipped by December first, there will a bonus all around. Then we’ll all have a good holiday with something to celebrate, won’t we?”
“A good holiday? He doesn’t even give us one day off over the eight days of Chanukah,” Sadie muttered to me. “He gives us Christmas Day off and what good is that to Jewish families?”
Mr. Mostel went up to his office and then returned. “Sam—I got to pop out for a while,” he called down the length of the room. “If the sample hands come in before I get back, tell them the designs are in the top drawer on the right. Got it? They can start work straightaway.”
He’s certainly laying it on thick, I thought. If I were the spy, I might begin to smell a rat.
“New designs. As if we care,” Sadie muttered to me. “A collar is a collar is a collar.”
We hadn’t been working long when the door opened again and Ben Mostel came in. With his top hat and silver-tipped cane he looked like a peacock in a henhouse.
“Morning, girls. You’re all looking very lovely today,” he said, picking out some of the younger, prettier girls to grace with his smile. A general titter followed him down the room.
“Your dad’s not here, Mr. Ben,” Sam called as Ben passed us in the direction of Mostel’s office.
“No matter. I just wanted to leave something for him,” Ben said.
I was on my feet instantly. “I need to go to the washroom, Sam,” I said. “It’s really urgent. Can I go?”
“Okay, I’ll give you permission this once,” he said. “Only don’t make a habit of it.”
“How come she gets permission when I don’t?” Sadie asked.
“Because she ain’t running in and out all day like some I could mention, including you,” Sam said. He jerked his head to me. “Go on then, if you’re going.”
I sprinted through the door like a girl who has to go in a hurry. I even opened the washroom door, went in, and closed it behind me, just in case Sam was still watching me. Then I opened it a crack, checked around it, and was up the stairs like a shot. The door to Mostel’s office was open and Ben was so busy looking in one of the drawers in his father’s desk that he didn’t hear me coming.
“Did you find what you are looking for?” I asked.
He spun around with a guilty look on his face.
“Your father has worked hard to give you all the benefits he never had,” I went on, “and this is how you repay him?”
“Who the hell are you, and how did you know?”
“I’ve been watching you, Ben Mostel,” I said. I was enjoying this moment, confident that I could run down the flight of steps ahead of him and was within shouting distance of a roomful of girls. “What do you think your father would say if he knew you were betraying him to Lowenstein?”
Without warning he came around the desk and while I was still thinking I might have to defend myself after all, he closed the door.
“What do you want?” he hissed at me. “Is it money? Is that it? All right then, how much?” He reached for his wallet.
I was no longer feeling quite as brave as I had been, but I decided I was still within shouting distance.
“Since all the money you have comes from your father and he is paying me in this Lowenstein business, I don’t require to be paid twice over,” I said.
Ben looked puzzled and horrified. “My father is paying you to follow me? He must have heard about me and Letitia then. You can tell him he doesn’t have to worry—it’s nothing serious. Just a bit of fun, you know.”
He was talking very fast, his eyes darting nervously like a schoolboy caught at the cookie jar.
“What do you mean, it’s not serious—betraying your father to his rival?”
“Betraying?” He laughed uneasily. “Oh, come on, that’s a bit strong, wouldn’t you say? I only took the girl to supper a few times. I take hundreds of women to supper.”
“Only this girl’s name was Lowenstein. But taking Letitia Lowenstein to supper wasn’t what I was talking about, and you know it. I’m talking about the other matter—your father’s designs. You were looking in the wrong drawer, by the way.”
“Designs—what designs? I don’t follow you.”
“Isn’t that what you came here for, the moment your father left his office? Had he kept them locked away at home?”
He laughed again, a little more easily now. “I’m afraid I don’t see what my father’s designs have to do with me and Letitia.”
“Oh, so you weren’t just about to copy them and slip them to Mr. Lowenstein?”
“Why on earth would I want to do that? My old man might be dashed annoying, but I’m not out to ruin him.” He stared at me and I saw the worry grow on his face. “Is that what he believes—that I’m out to betray him? I know he thinks poorly of me, because I’m rather a duffer where money is concerned, but surely he must know—I mean, you must set him straight, miss—uh.” He was looking at me like a scared schoolboy again.
“So you’re telling me that you didn’t come here to sneak a look at your father’s new designs then?”
“I had no idea he had come up with new designs. I’m not at all interested in the fashion industry, much to his disappointment.”
“Then what were you doing in his desk?” I couldn’t help asking.
He blushed scarlet. “If you really must know, he keeps his checkbook in that drawer. I thought I might—uh—borrow one of his checks.”
If Ben Mostel was acting then he had better apply for the lead role in Ryan O’Hare’s next pla
y. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?” He tried a winning smile.
“Not if you replace it immediately.”
“Oh, very well, although there will be a certain restauranteur who may not be happy if I don’t pay the bill after dinner tonight.”
He gave a sheepish smile, half opened the drawer, then looked up at me thoughtfully.
“You say you are working for my father, but I’ve seen you before, among the girls on the shop floor.” Not quite as inane a young man as his father had thought. “So it seems to me that you might not want the fact that you are working secretly for my father to be revealed.”
“Most astute of you. So you are suggesting that we have a bargain—I say nothing about your helping yourself to your father’s checks if you say nothing about my not really being a seamstress?”
“Exactly.”
We looked at each other for a long while in silence. “Very well,” I said. “However, if your father ever comments on anything missing from his desk, I shall feel obliged to tell him what I witnessed.”
“And if any of the girls comment that you are behaving strangely, I shall be obliged to set them straight.”
“I never behave strangely,” I said with the ghost of a smile.
“So sneaking up to the boss’s office isn’t strange behavior?”
“I am supposed to be in the washroom, which is where I am going when you are ready to leave.”
“Don’t trust me in here alone, huh?”
“Your father tells me you give him a lot of grief.”
“My father is a stingy old man who keeps me permanently short of cash. How is a fellow to enjoy life if he has no money?”
“It must be hard to have to go without champagne every now and then, or not to be able to see every new show that opens,” I said sweetly, but he caught my sarcasm and blushed again. “So tell me—how did Letitia Lowenstein come by that very attractive, unique locket I saw around her neck?” I knew this was really taking a chance. If Ben had acquired Katherine’s locket, it might have been taken from her dead body. This inane, overgrown schoolboy act might conceal a clever killer for all I knew.
This time he flushed almost beetroot red. “So that’s what you were getting at all the time! I guess you already know, don’t you?”