In the Shadow of Gotham
Page 30
It was a generous offer, and for a moment I was tempted by the thoughts of what I’d once wanted—a college diploma, then on to a law degree. But my answer came with sudden clarity, for those dreams had long passed. It wasn’t that I was too old, though at thirty I was no longer young by the standards of the day. But time and experience had changed me. There was no going back to the man I once was, even if I wanted to.
Alistair seemed to understand, though he still handed me a bag containing three books.
“What’s this?” I didn’t look as we continued to walk.
“Three books you should read: a translation of Enrico Ferri’s Criminal Sociology, W. D. Morrison’s Crime and Its Causes, and Hans Gross’s Manual for Examining Justice.”
Hans Gross had been Alistair’s former mentor, I recalled.
“I don’t think further reading will change my mind,” I answered him as I accepted the books.
“That’s not why I’m lending them to you,” Alistair said, stopping to allow a carriage to pass before we crossed Columbus Circle. “You have a gift for reading people and understanding their behavior. If I didn’t know it before, I saw it clearly Sunday night when you managed both Fred and Horace. I know you’ll say it’s only a matter of understanding basic motives, but believe me—it’s something more. You should develop it, and these books may help you. And besides, you will need knowledge to advance your career in the city.”
“I have a new career in Dobson, in case you’ve forgotten,” I said.
He grinned. “I don’t think you were made for life outside the city, Ziele. This present case excepted, I’m not sure Dobson will offer you the sort of challenge upon which you thrive.”
We turned left toward the Church of St. Ignatius and he continued talking. “We need more police officers like you. Just as we need better educated lawyers and judges, sociologists and psychologists. Our knowledge of the criminal mind lags sorely behind where it should be. Because people consider criminals, especially murderers, to be so vile, it is almost impossible to overcome their moral concerns to do what we need to do toward real scientific achievement.”
“But all the same, you won’t stop trying,” I said.
He looked at me with a wry expression and laughed. “Very true, Ziele. Very true.”
Guilt was paramount in my mind when I walked slowly up the gray stone steps to the small midtown chapel where Stella’s memorial service was held. Light snow now fell steadily; it collected on the grass and trees, though the streets were kept clear for now by passing cars and carriages. Alistair and I brushed the snow off our hats and coats before taking a seat in a pew toward the back of the sanctuary.
The memorial was surprisingly well attended, with at least forty people filling the room. We had not expected a memorial service at all, but Cora Czerne had insisted and, together with the elder Mrs. Wingate, had made all the arrangements and covered the cost. It was odd seeing such an eclectic group of people gathered together. Mrs. Wingate was seated between Abigail and Cora in the first row, appearing fragile but sitting up straight. All of those from Stella’s past jobs were in attendance, too—from Maud, Mrs. Wingate’s cook and housekeeper, to a group of young women idly chatting toward the back, whom I took to be from Mamie Durant’s. To an outside observer, however, they would have raised no eyebrows; in the uniform of black mourner’s garb, they appeared the epitome of respectability.
The service proceeded smoothly, with the priest making the usual remarks: Stella would be missed tremendously by those who had known her; it was a tragedy that her life had been cut short while she was so young; and yet, none of us here should despair, as Stella had found peace in a better place now. It was the sort of thing people said to make those of us still living feel better, but such platitudes seemed insufficient to assuage the dark emotions stirred by a vicious murder like Stella’s. I looked around the room and wondered if the priest’s words really imparted meaning to anyone listening. Were they insincere and hollow only to me? Perhaps I was the only one in the room who was forever haunted by thoughts of the dead. I could never seem to let go of what might have been, if only the story of their final days could be rewritten.
I noted Mamie Durant’s arrival some twenty minutes late. Dressed all in black, save for a red scarf that poked out from beneath the collar of her woolen coat, she attracted no one’s attention. She sat silently until the service concluded, and no doubt would have preferred to leave without saying a word to anyone.
But after a hasty good-bye to Alistair, I managed to buttonhole Mamie as she was leaving. “Mrs. Durant? Might I have a word with you?”
“Why, if it isn’t the detective,” she said. “I can talk for a minute or two, but I don’t see how I can help you. Stella is dead, and from what I read in the newspapers, her murderer was someone entirely different from the suspect you were originally looking for. Too bad you weren’t faster on the uptake, or perhaps Stella would still be alive.” It was an insult meant to serve as a warning; clearly she did not want to entertain too personal a conversation.
“I just have one question. A loose end, so to speak,” I began.
“Go on,” she said, though she looked at me with a guarded expression as she directed me away from the main throng of mourners toward an area of the churchyard where we might find greater privacy.
“There was a girl called Moira Shea. She was probably murdered by Michael Fromley in August 1902. I saw her autopsy report in the course of my own investigation and something puzzled me. Just before her body was to be released for pauper’s burial, a woman claiming to be her mother came to retrieve it. That woman was you.” I paused to catch my breath, but not for too long, lest she interrupt me before I finished. “What was your relationship to Moira Shea that you couldn’t bear having her sent to Potter’s Field?”
When she didn’t answer, I went on to explain, saying, “I’m asking this personally. Your answer will not go any further. I give you my word.”
The pause that followed seemed interminable.
“Give me one good reason why I should tell you, Detective,” she said, challenging me in a dubious tone.
I smiled, trying to appear friendly. “A detective’s compulsion to tie up loose ends?”
She snorted. “You’ve got a lot of loose ends, from what I’ve seen. I’ll chalk it up to pure curiosity. You detectives don’t like it when there’s something you can’t figure out.” She looked at me hard. “Anything I say stays between you and me?”
I nodded in the affirmative.
She walked even farther away from the area where other mourners had clustered, wanting to ensure we would not be overheard.
“Moira was my daughter,” she offered, “at least—the closest thing to it I will see in my lifetime. Her mother worked for me before she got sick; she died of tuberculosis when Moira was just three years old. I was her guardian, though I never got around to adopting her formally. I guess I felt I didn’t need to—it wouldn’t have changed the way I felt about her.” She shrugged. “You see, we all make our own families, Detective. However we see fit.”
Her breath caught sharply. “While she was alive, I lived with her across town where no one knew me. I wanted the best for her. Better than what I had; better than what her mother had had.” Her voice began to shake, charged with a fury that seemed undiminished by three years’ passage of time. “What right did he have to take her from me? From everyone. And your police made a royal mess of it; they never even managed to put together enough evidence to arrest him. Their failure made it seem Moira died for nothing at all.”
I waited a moment. “How did you become suspicious of Michael Fromley? The police never suspected him with respect to Moira’s murder.”
“Blundering idiots,” she said. “I hired my own private investigators. They came to the same conclusion in Moira’s case that the police did in the Smedley girl’s case: There was plenty of suspicion but not enough proof. So I kept them on payroll to watch him.” Her eyes narrowed as she looke
d at me. “It wouldn’t have mattered what your professor did or didn’t do. If that researcher of his hadn’t murdered Fromley, in due time I’d have arranged it myself. That brute had no right—no right whatsoever—to keep breathing after my Moira was gone.”
Yet Mamie had helped Fromley evade justice after he attacked Stella—persuading the girl not to pursue charges, once again allowing Fromley to walk away from his crime scot-free.
I challenged her. “Then why didn’t you?”
Her response was as cool as ice. “I did arrange it, actually. Fromley was on the verge of getting exactly what he deserved when he was arrested for Catherine Smedley’s attempted murder, and your professor entered the picture with his strange desire to study that creature. That’s when I called it off.” She laughed, and it was a harsh, guttural sound. “Your professor thinks it was all his doing that he got Fromley in his clutches. He thinks someone like me can’t pay a bribe, call in a favor? Pay off a judge?”
She stood up straighter, speaking with fierce pride. “It cost me $500 to deliver Fromley to Alistair, free and clear of the jail-house and the electric chair. You see, above all, I wanted to know why . . . some explanation as to why he killed my Moira. And I thought maybe your professor could give me that, if I gave him the chance.” She added darkly, “I could always have Fromley killed later, which was to my advantage anyway. Too soon after Moira’s murder, suspicion might have fallen my way. But after a few years? By then, my relation to Moira would have been all but forgotten.”
So Alistair was cleared—or was he? The fact that Mamie had intervened didn’t necessarily exculpate Alistair from blame. And even if Mamie was solely responsible, I was certain that I would never tell Alistair—for his own sake, as well as my promise to Mamie. I didn’t want Alistair to feel absolution for his part in all that had happened. He needed something on his conscience to counterbalance his near-blind devotion to his research.
Disappointing, too, that Alistair had kept his relationship with Mamie from me. “I’m an open book,” he had lied.
“Did you ever get the answers you wanted from Alistair?” I asked.
“Oh, I spoke with the professor often enough, all right.” She made a noise of disgust. “I must say, I expected more for my money. He learned nothing at all that I could tell. He didn’t know why the lout picked Moira. He couldn’t even adequately explain why Fromley was driven to do the things he did.”
But I knew that no answer Alistair could have found would satisfy her. Knowledge could fill many voids, but not a loss such as hers.
She paused a moment before drawing herself up as she prepared to leave. “Good day, Detective. I hope our paths do not cross again.” And she was gone, her black coat and umbrella disappearing into the thickening snow and the jostling crowds along Broadway.
CHAPTER 32
It was time to go home. A somber mood had taken hold of me following Stella’s memorial service, and I keenly felt an empty sense of purpose. Snow was now falling fast, with a couple of inches on the ground and more expected tonight. On impulse, I ducked into a coffee shop that was bright and warm, its aroma of freshly ground beans pleasurably inviting.
“Biscotti and a double espresso, please.”
I placed my order with the short Italian man behind the counter who spoke no English, but appeared to make an excellent espresso—at least according to the customer in front of me. Then I settled into a small table overlooking the street and began reading my newspaper. Unable to focus, I put it aside, and turned instead to the note I had received last night.
Ziele,
Nice working with you, kid. I’ll be in touch.
—N.S.
Mulvaney had been right. “The devil always demands his due,” he had said.
In that instant, I was thrust into the underworld of illicit favors I had worked so hard to avoid. But the Lower East Side and its influences seemed to drag me back, whenever I thought I had succeeded in leaving.
Then again, what choice did I have? When she left the research center to seek out Horace, Isabella had taken with her the proof that might have led me to him. Without Nicky, I could never have identified Horace so quickly. I could never have saved Isabella. The alternative was unthinkable.
And Nicky himself was not the devil, even if he was a major player in the city’s system of money and favors—one that operated in all classes of society. Alistair traded well-placed donations for favors and bribed newspapers to sit on stories he didn’t want printed. The difference was that Alistair had a fancier name for it—quid pro quo, to borrow a lawyer’s turn of phrase. And he had shown me its danger: How the ease of manipulating others made it simple to go too far. Had Mamie’s admission of bribery absolved Alistair? Not necessarily. After all, a judge who took one bribe might have taken two. I didn’t know, and I decided it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that I was made of sterner stuff—at least, in that respect.
There were no simple choices. But I was resilient, if only through sheer determination and stubbornness. I would be able to handle Nicky and whatever new complications crept into our dealings with one another. We would cross paths again only if I chose to return here.
Was Alistair right that I craved the excitement and challenges of the city in cases I’d encounter only here? Maybe. Or maybe not. There was no need to decide now.
The espresso’s warmth invigorated me as I drained my cup and ordered another. Someone put a record on the gramophone in back, and the music of a violin concerto swelled over me as I sat, enjoying the experience of being here, one of an anonymous crowd, this moment on a snowy November evening.
I waited a long time before I got up to leave.
As I shoved Nicky’s note back into my coat pocket, my fingers brushed against something else. I pulled out a scrap of paper. It was my fortune from Saturday night’s moon cake, which I had shoved into my pocket and forgotten.
I placed it in front of me and smoothed it out, visions of Isabella filling my mind—for I would forever associate memories of that night in Chinatown with her.
The first step to better times is to imagine them.
I traced the slip of paper with my finger.
It called to mind a pleasant memory, nothing more.
I put it with the other papers I planned to toss—then reconsidered, folded it carefully, and placed it in my wallet.
And I ventured once more into the storm, where glowing billboards from nearby theaters cast half shadows of silver and blue onto the snow-covered ground, ghostly images that danced alongside me as I walked down the street and into the night.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of crime fiction grounded in a particular historical time—New York, 1905. Because it is a story first, I have taken liberties with historical fact wherever the story was improved by it, while striving to remain true to the spirit of the times. Of the many wonderful resources available, I turned most often to the holdings and helpful staff at the New-York Historical Society; the New York Public Library; the Hastings-on-Hudson Historical Society; the archives of the New York Times; Luc Sante’s study of the seedier side of old New York; Kenneth Jackson’s comprehensive history of New York, always an informative starting point; and Ric Burns and James Sanders’s illustrated history. I also found helpful a number of sources on criminology, including Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, edited by Peter Becker and Richard F. Wetzell; Inventing the Criminal by Richard F. Wetzell; and Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science by Colin Beavan. I consulted the above as well as contemporary accounts to frame the criminal himself; I am indebted to John Douglas in Mind-hunter for his discussion of the role fantasy can play in the criminal act.
A few historical side notes are worth mentioning. In reading both turn-of-the-century and modern accounts of killers and criminal scientists, I am struck by the fact that in both eras, scientists turned to violent criminals
themselves to learn about the criminal mind. Modern criminal profiler John Douglas has detailed how interviews with notorious killers yielded the knowledge that became the foundation of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit. But a century before him, the French criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne completed a similar project, albeit on a smaller scale. My fictional Alistair Sinclair follows their example. The earliest criminal scientists were limited by people’s fear that understanding the criminal mind would lead to excusing criminal behavior. Still, by the turn of the century, ordinary police officers had begun to work with criminal experts to organize and synthesize information about criminal behavior. Their uneasy alliance presages the relationship in this novel between Simon Ziele and Alistair Sinclair.
Moreover, the mayoral election held on November 7, 1905—the day this novel begins—really happened, as did the incidents of ballot box destruction and voter intimidation alluded to in the novel. Even by the looser standards of the day, this election fraud was so egregious it led to major reforms. And finally, Sarah’s research topic, the Riemann hypothesis, was taken from David Hilbert’s famous list of problems expected to be important in twentieth-century mathematics. Though he considered it to be one of the easier on his list, it remains unsolved as of this writing.