Last Stop in Brooklyn

by Lawrence H. Levy

  “That was before you forced me to sleep with you on a wet beach.”

  “I think we should stop right there,” Superintendent Campbell said as he raised his right hand. “This is getting a bit too personal for me.”

  As the carriage took off in the direction of the Kings County Penitentiary, Superintendent Campbell filled Mary in on some of the details she had requested. The woman who was killed by the bathhouses in Coney Island the night before was Lucy Broadhurst, a white prostitute who had been carved up in the same Jack the Ripper manner as Meg Parker and Carrie Brown. Edgar Jefferson was found standing over her, covered in her blood. He was being charged with both the Broadhurst and Parker murders. Mary followed with her information, which clouded what seemed like a very clear case. He listened carefully, and when she was done, he turned to Harper.

  “It certainly sounds like opium.”

  “It felt wonderful, but I have no intention of ever trying it again. I’m a cynic and ‘wonderful’ clashes severely with my worldview.”

  “I see,” Mary said. “And do you ever feel joy without the aid of alcohol or drugs?”

  “Most definitely, every time I prove you wrong.”

  “Poor, joyless boy.”

  Superintendent Campbell examined both of their faces. It was obvious they cared for each other, and he wondered when they were both going to realize it.

  “I almost forgot,” he said. “Thomas Byrnes contacted me. He wanted to know why I unsealed the Margaret Parker file.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Only that he had no business sealing a file in my jurisdiction.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  “He’s no dummy. I’m sure it didn’t fool him. He knows you’re working on the Ameer Ben Ali case, and it’s common knowledge that we’re close. So, watch your back.”

  The Kings County Penitentiary was in Crow Hill, one of Brooklyn’s early African-American ghettos. It was a prison for both men and women with a section that was a workhouse for less violent offenders. The prison had been a hotbed of scandal since its inception in 1848, known for its mismanagement, deplorable conditions, and abject cruelty to prisoners. Since the prison was always under intense scrutiny, the warden was quick to please Superintendent Campbell and grant his unusual request to allow two citizens to be in the room with him when Edgar was being questioned. Superintendent Campbell neglected to inform the warden that he didn’t personally intend to do any of the questioning, but why muddy the waters when he already had the warden’s consent?

  In shackles and handcuffs, a badly bruised Edgar was escorted by a guard into a bare interrogation room, equipped with only a table and three chairs. His right eye was swollen shut and the marks on his face were ghastly. Mary and Harper both gasped.

  “What happened to this prisoner?” Superintendent Campbell demanded.

  “He fell,” the guard replied.

  “He fell, eh? From the looks of it, he must have bounced around a bit.”

  The guard shrugged as if he knew nothing about it. Superintendent Campbell decided not to press it at that moment but filed it away in his mind for when more atrocities came to light about the prison. He told the guard he could leave and after experiencing some reluctance, he turned his request into an order. When the three of them were alone with Edgar, Superintendent Campbell suggested that Mary, Harper, and Edgar take the chairs while he stood. It wasn’t his case, and besides, he thought he might get more out of it standing unobtrusively in a corner and observing. Edgar silently sat across from Mary and Harper, his movement and demeanor indicating a sullenness and mistrust. Harper tried to break the ice.

  “Hi, Edgar, Harper from Les Girls.” He held up his hand. “See? Still white.”

  Having taken a number of punches to his cheek and jaw, when Edgar spoke he sounded as if his words were being filtered by cotton. “What do you want?”

  “Just some information, Edgar,” said Mary.

  “I’ve heard that before,” he said as he felt his sore cheek.

  “We’ve been tracking a mass murderer who is guilty of at least eighteen murders that we know of. Miss Broadhurst and Miss Parker are two of them. You’ll be happy to know you don’t come close to fitting his description.”

  “That’s what I told them. He’s a white man, a couple of inches shorter than me, has blond hair and a mustache.”

  Mary and Harper were completely taken aback. Superintendent Campbell inadvertently leaned toward them, moving a short step forward. Their reactions didn’t go unnoticed.

  “You’re tracking the same man.” Edgar allowed this information to sink in, then almost involuntarily, as if his body were rebelling against his efforts to restrain his emotions, he screamed, “Then why don’t these idiots let me go?”

  Mary remained calm and businesslike. “The police have a different agenda. My name is Mary Handley. I’m a private investigator. My client has spent three years in jail for one of those murders, a murder he didn’t commit.”

  “Then…I’m finished.”

  “That’s not so.”

  “Really? I’m black, I’m in jail for killing a white woman, and the police are ignoring the facts. You tell me what my chances are.”

  “The truth? They’re not good, but if you don’t tell me what happened last night, I can’t help you and they’ll be worse.”

  Trying to compose himself, Edgar took a deep breath. The lady detective, Mary, made sense. He didn’t believe she was trying to railroad him like those bastard policemen.

  “When I met Harper, I was looking for him. Him. I don’t know his name, and the search was a problem. It’s almost impossible for a black man in a white man’s bar to be unobtrusive.” He stared at them. “Yes, ‘unobtrusive.’ Amazing, a black man knows a word like that.”

  “Edgar, we’re not your enemies. Please understand that.”

  Edgar paused. “You’re right. I apologize.”

  “I understand. I’d be insanely furious and panicked if I were in your situation, but we do need you to focus.”

  “I did enjoy meeting you, Harper. Most white people snub you or go overboard to show how accepting they are. You treated me like a regular person.”

  “Thanks, Edgar,” said Harper. “I enjoyed meeting you, too. I felt we were simpatico, like we could be friends—”

  “Harper,” Mary interrupted him, “before you two start exchanging phone numbers, I’d like to address the murders. Is that okay?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a human moment. It cuts the tension.”

  “You’re increasing it as we speak.”

  Edgar looked at them. “Are you two dating?”

  Mary’s eyes rolled and Harper smirked. She gathered herself and continued, “Did you know the beer you handed Harper was drugged?”

  “Drugged?”

  Harper nodded. “With opium.”

  “I had no idea, Harper. Honest. I got it at the other side of the bar. He must have already known I was following him and slipped it into my drink. Damn it!” He pounded his fists on the table. “If I had known that, all this never would have happened!”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Edgar. If this man is who I think he is, he has brilliantly avoided the authorities for years,” said Mary, remaining focused. “Let’s hear the rest of the details.”

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Okay.” He took a breath. “Harper knows I was asked to leave Les Girls. On the way out, I saw him, so I ducked behind a curtain and watched.”

  “How did you know it was him?”

  “My friends on the midway helped me narrow it to four men, then I whittled it down. One of the others was there that night, too.”

  “Dr. Lawrence?”

  “Again, I don’t know his name, but he was sitting at a table up front with one of the girls.”

  Harper confirmed it. “Dr. Lawrence.”

  “I had spoken to some of the prostitutes, and they told me he was just
a pervert who liked to play sick games with black girls.”

  “That is him,” said Mary, shaking her head.

  “So, he leaves. I follow him to the Bowery, where he picks up a prostitute and heads to the bathhouses. I stay back, playing it smart, thinking I’m a big-time detective. And like that, they’re gone, vanished, nowhere. Then, whack! I’m hit on the head and wake up to every black man’s nightmare: a dead white woman.” Edgar’s face was full of incredulity.

  “Did you know her?”

  “No…. How could one human being do that to another? How?”

  Edgar’s energy level ebbed, as if retelling the events had drained him. He became depressed, almost despondent. Mary didn’t want to push, but there was still a huge hole in his story that had to be filled.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said softly, “is why you were following this killer.”

  “Because I promised myself I’d protect her and I didn’t,” he replied, a lump forming in his throat.

  “You just said you didn’t know Lucy Broadhurst.”

  “Not her. Meg.”

  “Meg Parker? Did you know her?”

  “I guess you could say that,” he said, his face tensing, fighting back pain. “She was my mother.”

  25

  There were certainly reasons why a person whose mother was a prostitute might form a hatred for all those in the profession and want to kill as many as he could. In Edgar Jefferson’s case, there were too many other factors that pointed in the opposite direction, the most compelling to Mary being the man with blond hair and a mustache. Edgar’s description fit the ones given by Horace Mitchell and Klaus Kastner. Was it possible that there were two Jack the Ripper impersonators or one real Jack the Ripper and one impersonator? Yes, but highly unlikely.

  “The first time I met my mother,” he recounted, melancholy having seized hold of him, “she offered herself to me for five dollars.” He shook his head. “Difficult to follow that with ‘Hi, Mom.’ ”

  Edgar told them his story, not because they needed to hear it, which they didn’t, but because he had hidden it from the world for too long and he needed to finally tell someone. They saw no reason to deny him.

  Meg had been repeatedly raped by her father, and when she was fifteen, she ran away from home. “If you could call it that,” said Edgar. It was not surprising that a young black girl on the streets turned to prostitution. Inexperienced, she got pregnant pretty quickly and had Edgar shortly after her sixteenth birthday. She knew she couldn’t care for her baby and gave him to her older, married sister with one caveat. She made her swear to tell Edgar she was dead. Meg was barely literate, but she could write enough to ask the simple question “How is he?” Her letters were rare, but her sister’s answers—she’d corral anyone who could read into telling her what they said—confirmed that she’d done the right thing. Edgar was healthy and blossoming.

  Edgar’s aunt was a wonderful mother. She treated him as if he were her own and saw to it that he got the best in life that a poor black family in Brooklyn could give him. He was educated at a black church school, and she did everything she could to feed his thirst for knowledge. When he announced his desire to become an actor, she didn’t discourage him by telling him that a black man’s best hope of finding acting work was in degrading black minstrel shows. She filled him with stories of Ira Aldridge, the American black actor who achieved fame in England and all of Europe for his brilliant portrayals of Shakespearean characters. Edgar was loved by his aunt and was never made to feel like an outsider, even though she had three of her own children.

  Two years ago, on her deathbed after catching a fatal case of pneumonia, his aunt had told him about his mother and that her last letter indicated she lived somewhere near the Gut. Edgar’s world was thrown out of control, but it was only temporary. His anger and confusion soon turned into sympathy for the woman who gave him up. His dream was to save up enough money to go to England and accomplish what Ira Aldridge did. He would just save more and bring his mother along so she could start a new life. That made perfect sense…until he met her.

  “I took a job on the midway, but she wanted no part of me.” Edgar shrugged, exasperated. “I kept at it, though, chipping away at that tough shield she had….” His voice trailed off, then he looked up at Mary. “All I wanted was to make her life better. That’s all.”

  “You had done so well without her. She probably thought she’d mess it up for you.”

  “My big success: the main attraction in Kill the Coon.”

  “Stop it. That kind of thinking is the last thing your mother or your aunt would want.”

  “You’re right. Besides, my boss, Arthur, is a good man. He made it bearable.” Edgar grew sad in a nostalgic sense. “I have some money put away. I’m going to use it to bury her next to my aunt. I think they’d both like that. That is, if I ever get out of here.”

  “You will,” said Harper. “You’ve got Mary, me, and that man over there in the corner.” He pointed to Superintendent Campbell. “He’s the Brooklyn superintendent of police. With the three of us working for you, we’ll get you out of here.”

  “Speaking of that,” said Superintendent Campbell, “let’s wrap this up. I need to go.”

  They said their good-byes on a much friendlier basis than their hellos, called for the guard, and before he left with Edgar, Superintendent Campbell issued his warning. “I’ll be coming back. I’m telling you the same thing I will tell the warden. I better not see any more marks on this prisoner or I’ll have your job and his. Good day.” The guard’s nonchalant attitude melted into fear as Superintendent Campbell gave him a perfunctory nod and they left.

  Outside the prison and in Superintendent Campbell’s carriage, he gave Harper a strict dressing-down. “Don’t ever tell a prisoner that I’m in his corner unless I’ve already said so.”

  “But you heard the same thing we did. Edgar clearly had nothing to do with this murder, from the description of the real killer to his life story.”

  “It could just be a story, and he might be a very good storyteller. Besides, a lot of men have blond hair and a mustache. Maybe he got lucky describing a killer who looked as different from him as possible. But what stands out is that he conveniently omitted one very crucial detail. When he was discovered on the beach, he had a bloody scalpel in his hand.”

  Mary and Harper were both shocked. “It would have been nice if we had that information beforehand, Chief,” said Mary.

  “Isn’t it possible,” added Harper, “that he forgot? He has suffered a great deal.”

  “Yes, it is possible. It’s also possible he didn’t bring it up because any excuse seems manufactured, phony, or just plain stupid.”

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “Convince a jury of that.” A moment of silence passed as they considered his words. “Edgar seems like a nice enough fellow and he tells a convincing tale. Remember though that psychopaths can be very likable. That’s what makes them so deadly.”

  “All right, Chief,” said Mary, “out with it. What does your instinct tell you?”

  “My instinct and my police experience both tell me that regardless of whether Edgar is guilty or not, he better get a good lawyer. People have been convicted on much less evidence than they have against him. The blond-man defense probably won’t work since Edgar was the only one alive who saw him and you haven’t proved that a blond man killed Carrie Brown.”

  “Then I have no choice but to prove it. Two lives are depending on me.”

  “You better do it soon. The evidence against Edgar is even stronger than what they had on Ameer. He’ll be facing the death penalty, and there’s no coming back from that.”

  26

  Mary asked Superintendent Campbell to drop her off in Williamsburg at Sarah and Walter’s house. She didn’t really know whether Walter did criminal work, but even if he didn’t, he might know a good lawyer who did and was willing to donate his services for a good cause. It wasn’t
an easy task and Edgar wasn’t her client, but he seemed like a decent man and she didn’t want him to become yet another victim of this maniac killer.

  When they had arrived and Mary had alighted, Superintendent Campbell spoke to her through the carriage window. “Mary, I’ve been a policeman for quite a few decades now, and the human garbage I’ve seen tends to make me pessimistic. Please know that I hope you’re right about both Edgar and Ameer. I just can’t commit to a person’s innocence until solid evidence is in my hands.”

  “I know, Chief. Being a curmudgeon is part of your charm.”

  “It’s the curse of being a public servant.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m out on my own.”

  Harper opened the carriage door and joined Mary. He cut her off before she could speak. “I know that you are closer friends with Walter than I and you think you can handle this best alone. That’s not necessarily so. The last time Walter saw us together we were decidedly on opposite sides of the fence.”

  “You were irrationally antagonistic.”

  “Let’s argue the merits of that disagreement another time. The point is, if Walter sees both of us passionately vouching for Edgar, it might help sway him in our favor.”

  “That’s incredibly perceptive, Harper. Why can’t you be like that all the time?”

  “Because I leave that to you.”

  “Wise man.”

  As they headed for the house, Mary turned back to Superintendent Campbell to say good-bye and saw him mouth the words I like him before his carriage drove off.

  Shortly afterward, when Mary and Harper were let into the Cooper house by their maid, Sophie, Mary could tell that something was wrong. Sarah was always in the backyard when the children were playing, and she could see they were alone. She turned and spotted Sarah and Walter in his office, engaged in what seemed like a very serious conversation. When Sophie alerted Sarah and Walter to their presence, Sarah marched out of the office to greet them. Her behavior was unnaturally reserved.