Gilded Needles

by Michael McDowell

  Duncan Phair could not afford to have it known that he was acquainted with one of the criminals that the Tribune had scourged the police department for not being able to find. It was already known in some quarters that Duncan Phair was assisting in the newspaper’s investigations and the discovery now that he had visited Bleecker Street in a private capacity would surely discredit the entire scheme, would raise the judge’s indomitable ire against him, and would infuriate and humiliate Marian. Just now his ultimate success or failure in life seemed to hinge upon the single question of whether Maggie Kizer ever discovered the surname of the protector she knew only as “Duncan.”

  Duncan suspected that the judge, much as he loved his daughter, would not be shocked or even particularly displeased to know that Duncan had taken a mistress; and Duncan was not even certain that Marian would be overly distressed herself. But that he had chosen to compromise himself in the bedroom where Cyrus Butterfield had been stabbed to death with an opium needle would be thought to be carrying indiscretion beyond permissible boundaries.

  Beyond these fears for his own future, the lawyer was distressed for his mistress’s position. There seemed little doubt that she would be indicted, and already James Stallworth had said that the trial, in the interests of publicity, would be a speedy and sharp one—and if the woman was guilty, as she certainly appeared to be, she would be hanged as an accomplice and accessory.

  “Hanged?” cried Duncan, “she needn’t be hanged, need she, Father? It wasn’t she, by the testimony of the landlady, who killed Butterfield?” Duncan had, with wavering vision and clenched teeth, read twice through the article that had appeared in that Sunday morning’s Tribune; this while locked in his dressing room, that his acute distress might not be viewed by either his wife or the servants. He had been fortunate in being alone when first discovering the dreadful news.

  “No,” said Judge Stallworth lightly, “but since we don’t have the man Kizer—who actually did the killing—we must make do with his accomplice. The wife will stand for the husband. I couldn’t let this go by, even if I wanted to—and I certainly don’t—for then the Democratic newspapers would come down upon me, saying that the Democrats caught her and the Democrats prosecuted her and a Republican judge let her off. We can hardly lay ourselves open to that sort of charge, Duncan.”

  “No,” said Duncan softly, turning away; ashamed of his own feeling of hope to think that if Maggie were tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged, he need fear for himself no longer.

  Duncan Phair told himself that if Maggie were guilty she deserved the law’s punishment, but it was a wrenching difficulty to imagine that fine woman standing on the gallows in a plain blue skirt, having prayers read to her by a greasy priest. And yet there was nothing that he could do to save her, Duncan told himself; his presence might console her a little, his assurances might lessen her fear for an hour; but she would mount the scaffold all the same, and the greasy priest would mumble the same useless prayers. The rope would break the same bones in her graceful neck whether or not he stood beside her in those last moments—so why then destroy his fine crowded future for the sake of a few moments of comfort proffered, perhaps vainly, a dying woman? If Maggie knew his position she would understand and not condemn his reluctant, difficult decision to abandon her.

  On the following morning, Duncan sent his father-in-law a message that he was ill in bed; and in bed he remained until shortly after noon, when he received word from Simeon Lightner that Maggie Kizer had been arraigned as an accomplice and accessory in the murder of Cyrus Butterfield. Judge Stallworth had set bail at fifteen thousand dollars, which sum Maggie of course had been unable to raise, and she had been immediately returned to her small stone apartments in the Tombs. Duncan Phair dressed and took the cars down to his offices on Pearl Street.

  Chapter 22

  On Thursday afternoon, after Maggie Kizer’s arraignment in the morning, Simeon Lightner made his way up to Bleecker Street, there to present Lady Weale with a bank draught for $3,340. The editor of the Tribune had authorized the payment—even though Maggie Kizer was not yet convicted—in the interests of publicity.

  Simeon was much surprised to find a great cart pulled up before Mrs. Weale’s steps, into which three large men of dangerous aspect were loading a substantial amount of fine furniture: chairs, sofas, rolled-up carpets, tables, mirrors, and crates of smaller items. They were not being as careful as they might have been and many pieces were nicked, chipped, stained, or even broken altogether. But what they lacked in delicacy they made up in discretion, and would not answer any of Simeon’s inquiries as to who had sent them, by whose authority they were emptying the house, and whither the objects were bound.

  Unsatisfied by the three men, who ignored him wholly except once or twice to butt him with the sharp corner of some piece of furniture, Simeon descended the half-dozen steps to Mrs. Weale’s kitchen entrance and knocked at her grimy window. Mrs. Weale, stationed just behind the door, motioned him to go away, but when he waved the draught for the reward money before the glass she grudgingly admitted him. Once she had received the draught and signed the receipt for it, she was all for Simeon’s removing himself; but Simeon began to question her about the activity outside the house, and persuaded her to ascend out of the kitchen to have a better view of the work in progress.

  “Are those the belongings of Madame Kizer?”

  “Yes, and everything you see there is mine!” cried Lady Weale. “It’s owed me in back rent. It’s all owed to me! And half of it was mine anyway, only lent for the duration of her habitude! And they’re taking it all away! Taking it all away!”

  “Who’s taking it away?” said Simeon.

  “Don’t you see them!”

  “Yes,” said Simeon, “but where are the things being taken?”

  “Don’t know, don’t know!” moaned Lady Weale. “Everything you see is mine there!” She kicked a dog that was passing on the walk, to send it yelping into the paths of two of the men carrying out Maggie Kizer’s bedstead; but one of the men gave the dog another kick, backward, and proceeded without mishap.

  “If it’s yours, then why don’t you have a policeman stop them from doing it? These men, even if they are licensed movers—and I’ve no reason to suppose that they are, since there’s no sign painted upon their cart—have no right to transfer the belongings of a person without her permission.”

  “They brought a cop with ’em, made me let ’em in, told me to keep out of their way! I went to get another cop, if you see what I mean, but the first cop told him it was all right. It’s not all right! Everything you see there is mine and they’re carting it away and I’ll never see a stick or a shred of it again. Holy Mother of Moses, I’m being robbed!”

  While Simeon Lightner comfortably seated himself upon a stone balustrade of the neighboring house, Lady Weale retreated to her kitchen, where she raised the window and tossed out potatoes onto the walk, in hopes of tripping up the three men who were depriving her of Maggie Kizer’s belongings. The reporter amused himself then by noting an inventory of the goods that were brought out, and peering over into the cart and making up a list, as best he could, of what had already been loaded. A quarter of an hour later the cart was filled, and two of the men jumped up onto the board.

  The third went and stood just above the kitchen window in the cellar of the house, where Mrs. Weale growled at him and hurled another potato.

  He caught it, squeezed it to pulp and water in his powerful fist. “We’ve not done,” he said, “so don’t try to lock up or we’ll just break down the door when we return.”

  He hopped up beside his compatriots and the two overburdened horses attached to the cart lumbered away.

  Traffic on Bleecker Street was heavy and the animals’ progress was slow. Simeon sat on the balustrade a few minutes more, then hopped down, tipped his hat to Mrs. Weale who had come out to gather up her potatoes—either for the pot or a repeated assault—and sauntered on after the cart.

  “
They’re going to Houston Street,” snapped Lady Weale, and Simeon paused.

  “You do know then?”

  “No,” she said, “not certain, but I’ll bet these potatoes they’re on their way to Black Lena’s.”

  “What’s the number?”

  Lady Weale shrugged, and descended the steps to her cellar door.

  Simeon considered whether he might not hurry ahead to Houston Street, hunt out Black Lena’s, and wait for the cart; but then he considered that Lady Weale might be mistaken, or even deliberately trying to mislead him, and thought it better, on the whole, if he followed the cart at a distance. Piled high with fine furniture, it was distinctive enough a vehicle in that neighborhood that Simeon had no difficulty in keeping it in view from a distance. He did not want to risk the ire of the men driving if they discovered that he were dogging their tracks. So in this easy but discreet fashion, Simeon Lightner followed Maggie Kizer’s belongings from Bleecker to West Houston Street and watched, from a little distance, as everything was carried into the shop at number 201.

  The next evening, Duncan Phair and Judge James Stallworth dined at the Republican lawyers’ club on Seventeenth Street, and the judge said to his son-in-law: “Well, I hope that you’re relieved of your indisposition, Duncan. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that you were unable to attend the arraignment yesterday.”

  “Oh yes,” replied Duncan nervously, “I’m much better now, almost my old self.”

  “I didn’t like seeing Lightner there alone, but I must say that it looks as if he may at last have done us a piece of very good business.”

  “What’s that?” asked Duncan curiously.

  “Surely you read the Tribune this morning.”

  Duncan nodded. Simeon had reported on the removal of all the accused woman’s belongings from Lady Weale’s house to Black Lena Shanks’s pawnshop on West Houston Street. He had noted that Black Lena Shanks, “a notorious and long-standing receiver of stolen property whose transactions are almost exclusively with the female element of the criminal population,” was the sister of Alick Kizer, the actual murderer of Cyrus Butterfield. He had gone on to describe the rest of the Shanks’s ménage: the elder, hard-visaged mute sister who was an adept at paper mischiefs—forgery; the younger pretty sister, who was one of the best-known abortionists in the city; and the two children, identical twins who—raised in such surroundings—could not help but be vicious themselves.

  “Yes,” said Duncan, “but I don’t know how Simeon’s account can help us. I saw him today, congratulated him upon a fine piece of research. He had talked to neighbors, talked to Mrs. Weale again, talked to the police. The old woman herself, Black Lena Shanks, chased him out of her shop, but at least he got a glimpse of the whole family. I congratulated him, because it would have been worse than useless to upbraid him for doing these things without my assistance. But how does the account help us?”

  “Don’t you see, Duncan? It’s the family that we wanted, the family of criminals that I postulated at the beginning of this entire affair. I’m just surprised we haven’t turned up another before this. We wanted to find out a family mired in vice, raised in criminality, and here at last they are: doubly vicious because they’re all female, doubly vicious because they run the race of so many criminal activities: if we include Maggie Kizer, we have a murderer, prostitute, fence, forger, abortionist—and we can always accuse the children of thievery. Everything but blackmail and kidnapping, in fact.”

  “Yes . . .” said Duncan doubtfully. “And where does that leave us—and them?”

  “Oh it’s simple,” said Judge Stallworth. “We merely have to bear down upon them now. Everything’s already set up for it. One of them has absconded, and one in jail already. Alick Kizer is probably at the end of the earth by now, and there doesn’t seem to be much possibility of bringing him back, so it might behoove us to implant a rumor that he’s dead, killed in an attempt to rob a bank or some such, so that we can have him out of the way. Maggie Kizer’s in jail, and I’ll make certain—well, I’ll take care of that. Her trial will be played up high enough in the papers without our having to prod. And as soon as that’s done we’ll start in on the others. As a plan, Duncan, it’s faultless.”

  Duncan nodded silent agreement with his father-in-law’s estimation.

  “Now,” said Judge Stallworth, “I did a little research of my own this afternoon, through my own files. Lena Shanks came up before me in 1865—the name had sounded familiar, I was sure of it, when I read it this morning—and I put her on the island for a number of years. The two girls, grown now of course, were made wards of the court, but were taken away directly after the trial and kept hidden. Lena’s husband was hanged in the Incendiary Plot, which was before your time, but it was the first important trial that came under me and I recall it vividly—it was just after I was elevated to the bench. So I have all these records, and you should send Lightner over to me tomorrow and he and I’ll talk of this.”

  “The Tribune of course will have its own files as well; for surely the trials were covered,” said Duncan. Though he did not relish this plan at all, he felt that some contribution was wanted, lest his father-in-law become suspicious of his implied recalcitrance.

  “Yes,” said Judge Stallworth, smiling, “exactly. For twenty years now, this family has swum beneath the notice of the police and the courts. A calculating, intelligent woman Lena Shanks must be, to have kept out of sight for so long, building herself up, building up her business with all those women. And all to be cut down because her brother picked up an opium needle off his wife’s dresser.”

  Duncan trembled, but the judge only smiled. “We’ll have everything in readiness. As soon as Maggie Kizer’s out of the way, we’ll take up another of ’em, and so on until the entire family is ground down into the dust of the Black Triangle.”

  “Oh yes,” echoed Duncan Phair, “into the dust.”

  Chapter 23

  Maggie’s trial was set for March 6, ten days after her arraignment; Judge Stallworth considered that this would be ample time for Simeon Lightner and his son-in-law to blazon the case in the Tribune, but not so long a delay that the public would grow restive. But the judge was vexed that Duncan, always with one excuse or another, would not come near the Tombs while the murderess—or accomplice to murder—lay incarcerated there.

  During this unhappy interval Simeon Lightner, who was frequently at the prison, daily provided details to the readers of the Tribune of Maggie Kizer’s conduct, appearance, and unsociable habits: how she refused to speak to reporters, to priests, to warders, to anyone in fact but a little boy who visited her twice a day with a small basket over his arm. The boy, evidently a simpleton, came from no one knew where, replied to no interrogatory with anything like sensible speech, and seemed to vanish as soon as he stepped out between the fat Egyptian columns of the Tombs. At first it had been assumed that this was Maggie’s own child, but Simeon Lightner provided the news that it was rather her nephew, by name, Rob Shanks, resident on West Houston Street.

  Early on the Monday morning set for Maggie’s trial, Duncan Phair visited Judge Stallworth in his chambers in the Criminal Courts Building, the enormous red brick and terra-cotta structure adjoining the Tombs. The judge’s office was an unhappy sort of dark room far removed from his court—the fine apartments were distributed among the Democrats, while the few Republican judges and officials were relegated to the higher floors, to the noisy corridors, to the single-windowed or leaky chambers.

  Duncan told his father-in-law that important business necessitated his spending the morning in City Hall. He would be unable to attend the proceedings against Maggie Kizer.

  “Why can’t Peerce take care of it?” demanded the judge. “That’s why you took him into partnership, to handle such matters.”

  “George has developed a stomach catarrh, Father. It really is necessary that this business be conducted today.”

  “This trial won’t take so much of your time,” said Judge
Stallworth, obviously displeased with Duncan, “I don’t understand why you must rush off.”

  “Peerce left some very important business undone that must be attended to at once,” replied Duncan lamely, and when his father-in-law’s silence seemed to demand a better excuse, Duncan went on: “. . . contracts that want the signatures of all the Aldermen, and it’s rare enough we can get them all in the city at once, much less in the same room. . . .”

  Judge Stallworth eyed his daughter’s husband intently. “I don’t believe you,” he said evenly.

  Duncan looked away in confusion.

  “You’ve been deliberately avoiding this place since that woman was arrested. You’ve refused to have anything to do with this entire business, even though I have pointed out to you time and again the necessity of our being in control of it. Now I’m weary of your excuses and I demand to know why you prevaricate with me. Tell me quickly,” he said, adjusting his robes, “for I’m due in the court in a quarter of an hour.”

  Duncan Phair knew that his lies had only been tolerated by his father-in-law; there was no real deceiving of the old man. For a time, Judge Stallworth had accepted the false excuses, but now his policy was altered, and Duncan had no choice but to submit with the truth.

  “Cyrus Butterfield was a lawyer—” began Duncan.

  “That is hardly news,” said Judge Stallworth.

  “But he was not the only lawyer who had the acquaintance of Maggie Kizer.”

  “Ah,” said Judge Stallworth coldly, “she had a weakness for the profession then.”

  “It was coincidence, I believe. The lawyers were not acquainted with one another—at least not in their identity as . . . as intimates of Maggie Kizer.”