Into the Suffering City

by Bill LeFurgy

  “The ghosts of those dead natives haunt me, I swear. I see them all the time—sometimes just a few, sometimes dozens. Mostly women and children. Babies. They’re all bloody. They cry and scream, babble at me in some strange language. They want my help, but I can’t do anything, just like I couldn’t do anything during the massacre. Drives me completely around the bend. I tell you, the spirits are as real as you sitting across from me now. I’ve never told anyone before because it sounds crazy.”

  “What you describe as ghosts are nothing more than a product of your mental anguish.” She focused intently on moving her water glass and bread plate one-quarter inch to the right. “There is no rational basis for spirits or the supernatural.”

  “I’m not so sure. Lots of smart people believe in spirits. There’s stuff in the paper all the time about it and I’ve heard about people called sensitives—they can talk with the dead and deliver messages to and from the living. Sometimes I think I should find a good sensitive and try to settle things with all my dead people.”

  “That is nonsense.” Sarah chopped the air with a stiff hand.

  “Come on.” Jack pointed a finger at her. “Wouldn’t you like to talk with certain dead people? Like your father and sister?”

  “The spirit world does not exist. I do not wish to discuss this topic any further.” Sarah swept her hand over the table, knocking over her water glass. She barely noticed the water dripping onto her lap.

  “I guess the deal here is that I have to spill my guts and you don’t.” Jack used his napkin to mop the tabletop while she sat still. “I’ve never met a gal like you before,” he said with a smile. “You want to talk about facts rather than how you feel—even though you feel plenty.” He tried to catch her eye but she refused. “You’ve had a rough day, Sarah. I’ll try to be nicer to you.”

  No one had ever been so calm and kind after she knocked over a glass. She had a long history of toppling things while dining, and the act always drew exasperated cries and rebukes from her dining companions. Jack treated the event as an unintentional accident. His insight into her personality was even more astounding. Warmth spread from the center of her chest to her hands and face. “How much money can one earn as a detective?” she asked with a hurried glance.

  “Are you knocking me again? Yeah, okay. I’m a soulless hired gun. I admit it.”

  “I am genuinely interested in the earning potential. As you know, I no longer have a job.”

  “What, it’s not enough being a lady doctor? You want to be a lady detective, too?” He laughed. “The pay varies from little to less than little. Got five hundred bucks riding on this one, though. Probably what a doctor makes every month for a whole lot less trouble.”

  “You said that earning money and pursuing the truth can coincide. I find that concept appealing. We should work as a team to solve Lizzie’s murder.” She blurted out the words in a tumbling rush before clapping a hand over her mouth. This impetuous behavior would only set her up for a rebuff. No man would put up with her if he had any choice in the matter.

  “I’d say you were joking, but I get the idea that you don’t kid around. Hey, you can take your hand off your mouth—nothing you could say would bother me too much.”

  She dropped her hand to the table with force. “Because you do not take me seriously. Do not underestimate me because of my sex.”

  “Sarah, I really admire your brains. Still, I can think of two reasons right off the bat why we can’t work together. First, I’m obligated to do what I can for Shaw, guilty or not. I gave my word. Second, there are some dangerous characters mixed up in this case. Too dangerous for a lady like you.”

  “I will not take no for an answer,” she said with a gesture that bumped and rocked the candelabra. “I insist we meet again tomorrow to talk further.” The room was slightly off center, and she was pleasantly light-headed. “I will visit my mentor at Johns Hopkins Medical School tomorrow at ten a.m. Tell me where to meet you at eight thirty a.m.”

  “Okay, let’s meet at the Monumental Lunchroom tomorrow morning. Once you see me in the clear light of day you may change your mind.”

  Sarah felt strangely relaxed, almost buoyant. All her cares and worries were still there, but now a big, fuzzy blanket rested on top of them. “Let me see your shoes.”

  “My shoes?” Jack yanked at his shirt collar, then stuck his feet out from under the table.

  “I glimpsed them earlier. I love how well-polished leather looks. Not patent leather. Real leather. Your shoes have a remarkable sheen.” She leaned down to get a better look and had to tell herself not to touch his shoes. They were hypnotically lustrous.

  “Okay, show me yours.”

  “My what?”

  “Your shoes.”

  “Mine are not so shiny.” She extended her feet and hiked her skirt and petticoat to reveal her sad-looking footwear. “I got them wet this morning and ruined them.” She banged her toes together playfully before appreciating that she was flashing her thin legs with shocking immodesty. The skirts came back down, and her legs shot back under the table. A furious blush heated her face. Stop behaving like a perfect fool, she told herself. Get yourself under control.

  Jack laughed. “Sarah, it’s okay. I promised no romantic overtures, remember?”

  “Correct.” She began rocking in her chair.

  “What’s with the swaying? And that thing with your hands?”

  “They are tics. Nervous habits. I have a variety of them.”

  “Know what? I do like you. You’re a hundred percent sincere all the time. That’s rare.”

  Sincere. Could he be referring to her complete inability to adjust her manner to suit different people in different circumstances? That aspect of her personality had caused her much trouble socially—was he now praising her for it? Or maybe he was taunting her in an especially cruel way. As he counted out the cash for the bill, she saw his hands were trembling.

  Outside, he hailed a motorized taxicab and put her bag of books inside. “Maybe I should ride with you to your residence. A woman out alone at night—it’s not safe.”

  “Any woman out alone at night in the city is considered a prostitute, I know.” She was wobbly on her feet. “That is yet another barrier to contend with. I am quite used to traveling alone in carriages—or auto machines—during the evening.”

  She turned away from him, got her feet tangled, and stumbled. Jack caught her arm and held it. She looked up at him. “I am,” she said, “uncomfortable with you touching me.”

  Jack let go and backed away with a grin. “Good night, Sarah.”

  She climbed into the cab with her heart pounding. As they motored off, she gazed at a series of electric shop lights demanding attention with their blinking garishness. She ignored them, wondering instead if her high spirits were justified. Jack could end up disappointing her—as most people did.

  Enough of that. Pursuing this case would require gathering and analyzing much evidence. She would start reviewing the physical clues tomorrow. But there was a way for her to obtain some new information tonight.

  Sarah knocked on the glass partition and told the driver to go to an address in the exclusive Mount Vernon Place neighborhood. To anyone but her, this was a most unlikely place to collect information about a potential murderer.

  Chapter 6

  Jack—Monday, October 11, 1909, 9:00 p.m.

  With Sarah canned from the Pinkertons, Jack knew the odds of getting another autopsy for Lizzie were long. Lucky about running into the sister. He had to get her to demand a second look at the body. Otherwise this case would stall and leave him where he started: dead broke.

  Jack hotfooted it west on Fayette Street on the way to Lizzie’s boardinghouse, which was down by the harbor basin steamship piers. The city courthouse filled the view off to his right, with banks and fancy stores on the other side.

  Turning left on Light Street took him past buildings named after fat cats. He walked by the Carrol Building, the Crane Building, and the
Lanahan Building. All new, built after the great 1904 fire that burned everything for blocks around. Those guys with their names in spiffy new brick and stone were enjoying a brief moment in the sun until the next fire, the next wave of construction, the next version of Baltimore appeared. The constant churn was something he liked about the city. It kept him on his toes and reminded him that everything changes.

  He came to the intersection with Pratt Street, which was a dividing line. South of Pratt was grittier—a place where people worked the docks, bottling plants, machine shops, and the wholesale produce trade.

  The harbor was off to the left, and the lighted hulks of side-wheel paddlers were floating like constellations on a watery horizon. One boat, farther out in the water, was shooting a spray of orange sparks from its smokestack. Streetcars rumbled by and knots of people were coming and going to the saloons, bordellos, pool halls, duckpin bowling alleys, assignation rooms, and other distractions offered in this part of town.

  A right off Light Street on Conway took him down a brick canyon formed by the hulking state tobacco warehouses on either side of the street. The sweet, earthy smell of the plant was so strong he could taste it.

  The next block gave over to fresh baking smells wafting from the nearby National Biscuit factory. The address he was looking for was at the end of the street, just across from the retaining wall for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad underground tunnel. Beyond the wall were a succession of huge wooden train sheds lined up against a five-story, thousand-foot-long brick warehouse. Locomotives groaned and hissed like fitfully sleeping dragons.

  Lizzie’s boardinghouse was a narrow three-story row job identical to others flanking it up and down the block. Its only distinction was a working streetlamp opposite the entrance that lit the front steps like a stage. He rapped on the door. A white-haired man appeared with a smoking oil lantern.

  “You want the room?” he asked.

  “I’m here about Lizzie Sullivan. Private detective.”

  The man shot out his lower lip until it almost touched his nose. It wasn’t a happy face. “Already talked to the cops. I want people to forget about that girl so’s I can get a new boarder. Get on out of here.” He tried to close the door, but Jack had his foot stuck against the jamb.

  “It’ll just take a minute, pops. Then I’ll leave you in peace.”

  The man backed inside with a grunt and started up a listing staircase. Jack closed the door and followed. The place smelled of greasy boiled meat. At the top of the stairs, the man threw open a door and went inside. The room was dreary with beat-up furniture and a bed with a sagging mattress. “Here it is. A nice, first-class room.” The guy swung the lamp around, hoping to prove his point.

  Jack looked at the door lock. The paint over it was undisturbed. He went to the window. Its lock was also in place. “There a fire escape?” He pointed outside.

  “Nope. Ain’t no law calling for one neither.”

  “When was the last time you saw the girl alive?”

  “Like I told the cops, she knocked on my door late Sunday night, close to midnight. Lost her key while out. Heard she was dead around six the next morning. That brick-top sister of hers found the body and told me to call the coppers.”

  “How’d the sister seem?”

  “Angry. No tears—tough moll.”

  “What happened to the dead girl’s stuff?”

  “Put it all in there.” He pointed to a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. “The sister pawed through it but didn’t want nothing.”

  Jack opened it. Lizzie’s belongings were sparse—a few dresses and other clothes, hairbrush and toiletries, ceramic figurines. Two things were out of the ordinary. One was a carpenter’s chisel, its wooden handle stained with something dark, maybe blood. The other was a piece of sheet music titled “Oh! The Suffragettes” with a picture of a cop arresting a well-dressed woman. He picked it up and a piece of paper with handwriting on it peeped out from the edges of two pages.

  “What did she do with that chisel? Whack rats?”

  “Got no rats in my rooms, bub.”

  “Mind if I take the tool and music?”

  “Go ahead—if you get on out of here.”

  Jack walked to a saloon on Light Street where cops hung out. He stepped inside just as the piano player finished pounding out a mushy version of “Come Along, My Mandy.” A red-faced copper threw a meaty arm around the ivory hustler and demanded to hear “Cuddle Up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine.” At the sound of the opening notes, the cop started a clumsy dance with a lavishly mustachioed colleague, much to the delight of the crowd. Cute. These guys were more fun than a crate of monkeys.

  Men and the occasional woman lined up hip to hip at the bar. The only empty space was near the end. Jack took his place and noticed an open door on the wall behind the bar, which meant the joint had a separate room for black patrons. Sure enough, he heard a red-hot tune pulsing through the opening. The beer might be staler and the whiskey weaker on the colored side, but the music was guaranteed to be a whole lot better.

  “What you having, chum?” The barkeep was a beanpole of a man with a mug only a mother could—maybe—love. He had a weak chin; hooked beak nose; and rough, red patches of skin splashed on his cheeks and forehead. With his shock of orange hair and long white apron wrapped around his scrawny body, he looked like a smoldering cigarette.

  “Branch water. In a clean glass.” He put a foot on the rail.

  “You look way too serious. This is a saloon, not a church.” A woman stood next to him, her red lips forming an inviting grin. She leaned over and crooned softly into his ear: “‘I’m so lonesome / I tell you what is more, my heart is feeling mighty sore.’”

  “Maybe this is a church,” said Jack as he put a hand on her back. “And you’re a canary that’s fluttered straight down from heaven.”

  “Can you get me out of this, honeybunch?” She tilted her head to the other side where a rough-looking guy with one of those newfangled toothbrush mustaches was leaning over and oafishly badgering the barkeep over the quality of his liquor.

  Jack dropped his hand and edged away from the woman. He didn’t have time to mess around with her, much less punch out the boyfriend and draw the attention of the dozen or more cops nearby.

  “Hey now, it’s Balt-ti-more’s battiest sleuth.” A man stepped into the new space next to him at the bar. It was the guy Jack had hoped to find in the joint—the one city detective with whom he was on good terms. “I keep expecting to find you dead in some alley with your face half chewed off by rats.”

  He was about Jack’s age, but already had a double chin and a set of jowls. Too bad the current fashion for younger men limited him to a mustache—the guy would have looked a lot better with a full beard. He had a Horse’s Neck cocktail tight in his grasp.

  “Didn’t know a bull could get away with knocking back those sissy drinks in public,” said Jack.

  The detective pointed at the water glass and snorted. “Who ever heard of a detective who don’t booze? It ain’t nowhere close to natural. Tell me why I should bother talking to a queer mug like you.”

  “Stay on my good side—I’ll put in a word for your wretched soul at the pearly gates.”

  “It’ll take a lot more than abstaining for you to make it to heaven, hoss.” The detective chuckled. “Hey, I hear you’re raking in cash from the Big Man.”

  “Then you won’t be surprised when I ask about the Lizzie Sullivan murder.” The detective looked around and rubbed the fingers of one hand together. Jack reached into a pocket, pulled out eight bucks, and decorated the mahogany with the bills. “Take it. That’s my bang-up Pinkerton dough.”

  The detective scooped up the cash. “Shaw did it, no question. We found a gun engraved with his name on it by the body. Coroner will swear the gun killed her.”

  “What else you got?”

  “Looks like Shaw was unhappy with the service she was providing. He shot her and got dressed in a big hurry. So quick he left his mono
grammed drawers and overcoat behind along with his pistol. Not only that, we got a cabbie who says he picked up a real agitated Shaw down near the girl’s place around one a.m. last night. Cut and dried. Shaw’s got big-time friends, but all the dough and connections in the world won’t keep him from landing in the clink after the coroner’s inquest tomorrow. Lipp’s made it clear he wants Shaw arrested, and the coroner’s happy to play ball. It’s a lead pipe cinch.”

  Jack brushed away a fly that was lazily buzzing around his head. “What’s the connection with Nick Monkton? He was the murdered girl’s pimp. Heard that Snake Eyes picked Nick up last night and gave him the third degree.”

  “Yeah. That colored pimp apparently has something real important.” The detective lowered his voice to a whisper. “O’Toole didn’t get what he needed before Patterson’s big Injun lawyer showed up. Snake had to turn Monkton loose—can’t bluff a swell mouthpiece about holding someone without a solid charge.”

  “What was Snake after?”

  “Let’s just say that the order came down direct from the main squash in the front office.”

  “Commissioner Lipp. How does Lizzie fit in?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Tell me on the level: Was what happened between Snake and Nick connected with Lizzie getting kicked? Maybe you guys have something linking Nick to her murder? Or anything else that could help me out here?”

  “I ain’t telling you nothing more about the case. You know how O’Toole is.”

  “Come on.”

  The detective looked away with a frown. “I gave you good dope, babe. Don’t stretch your luck. Hey, I got to see a man about a dog.” He left to join a group at the other end of the place.

  Jack stepped away from the bar and pushed his way outside into the cold, wet mist. Two men staggered into the street, arms draped around each other. One guy tossed his head back and let out a loony howl, causing something in his mouth to glint in the light of the guttering streetlamp. The other man stuck a hand in his companion’s mouth and yanked out a shiny prize. “I got them gold choppers!” he said, doing a clumsy jig.