by Michelle Cox
“Katie?” he asked incredulously. “My God, back to this! Katie is my dog, you silly girl,” he said, agitated. “That’s what the boys at the station meant by ‘my girl,’ idiots that they are. They obviously didn’t think about how someone might interpret that. If I do get out of here, every one of them will live to regret it,” he said grimly.
“So . . . so you don’t live with a woman?” she asked, a smile creeping across her face.
“No, I live alone, if you must know,” he said, ruefully.
Henrietta found herself laughing, almost giddy, despite their terrible situation, not able to believe what she was hearing. It all made so much sense now. How foolish she had been. She looked up into his face then and saw the longing in his eyes. “Oh, Clive . . . I’ve been so stupid.”
“No, it’s me who’s been the stupid one. I should have spoken earlier. And now look at us.”
“Yes, a bit of rotten luck, I suppose.”
“You once told me that luck doesn’t come into it.”
Henrietta smiled that he still remembered the details of their first meeting. “I suppose you’re right—” she began to say but stopped abruptly, her breath catching at the sound of the little door behind the bar creaking open.
“They’re back,” Clive muttered as they both struggled to stand up. Henrietta instinctively moved behind Clive who braced himself, afraid of what might be coming next. He wasn’t about to give up Henrietta without fighting for her with every ounce of what he had left. He heard her whimper, huddled behind him, and he strained again against his bonds.
“Clive . . . I’m so frightened!” she said, her voice cracking. “I . . . I have a confession of my own.” Clive winced, guessing what was coming next.
“I . . . I’ve never . . . done this—done it—before,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I know I pretended to, but I haven’t actually.” They could hear footsteps now and Clive turned to face her, gazing down into her deep blue eyes and long lashes, so innocent, so trusting. “Before they . . . he . . . takes me away, I just want you to know . . . I . . . I would have wanted it to have been you. You know what I mean, don’t you?” she asked tentatively.
He nodded slowly, his heart in his throat, unable to speak. Not since Catherine had he had so much emotion flowing over him. He could hear that their captors were almost upon them and he bent to softly kiss her one last time, just as they heard the key twisting in the lock and the door pulled stiffly open. As it scraped across the stones, Clive whipped around and shielded Henrietta, momentarily blinded as he did so by the beam of a flashlight in his face.
“Don’t you dare touch her!” he shouted, twisting his head around the light, trying to see.
The beam lowered then, and Henrietta was surprised to hear Lucy’s voice shout out joyfully into the hall, “We found them!” before she fainted in a heap at the inspector’s feet.
CHAPTER 16
Henrietta was not sure how long she had been out. As she slowly opened her eyes, she realized that the rocking motion she was experiencing was due to being in the backseat of a car. Her head was pounding. “Clive?” she asked hopefully, lifting her head from the shoulder beside her. She heard a sigh.
“No, it’s Stan, actually.”
Henrietta sat up straight, her head pounding, surprised to see none other than Stan beside her in what appeared to be a taxicab.
“Where are we?” she asked, looking out the windows at the dark, abandoned streets passing by.
“I’m taking you home. You’ve had a nasty shock. Don’t you remember? A bit too much if you ask me, but then again you don’t, so I guess it’s not my business,” he mumbled to himself.
She groaned as she put her hands to her head. It was all coming back now, the failed plan, the dark tunnel, being locked up . . . Clive . . . the nightgown . . . his kisses . . . She looked down in a panic and breathed a sigh of relief to see that she was somehow dressed in her flannel shirt and overalls. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember it?”
She peered at him closely. “Why do you have a mustache?”
Stan rubbed it irritably. “It was part of my disguise. But now I can’t get it off.”
“Disguise?” she said, puzzled, trying to remember. Something Clive had said about the pipsqueak getting in the way . . . locked in the squad car. “How . . . how did you get out of the squad car?” But where was Clive? She seemed to remember seeing Lucy . . . she had come to briefly in the dressing room . . . Lucy had been there, helping her to change . . . Larry! “Wait a minute!” she said, panicking, looking out the car windows again to get her bearings. “Why aren’t we at the Marlowe? I need to see Clive!”
“Clive, is it?” Stan said biting his lip. “Not Inspector Howard?”
“Is he okay?”
“Of course he’s okay. He told me to take you home.”
“He did?”
“Boy, you really don’t remember, do you?”
“I think I was drugged, if you must know,” she said groggily.
Stan urgently bit his nails. “My God, Hen, see what I mean? How could you ever get involved in something like this? We’ve been worried sick, you know!”
“Who’s we?” she asked nervously, afraid it might mean her mother. “Me and Elsie, of course! She’s the reason I was there tonight, in case you idiotically go thinking it was for you. I . . . I promised her I’d follow you, like I . . . well, like I used to.”
Henrietta smiled in the darkness despite the pain in her head. “Worried sick, she is,” he kept on. “And who can blame her? You telling her your hair-brained scheme of posing as a prostitute to catch some crime lord. Course she was worried! She’ll be up now, waiting,” he said, peering out the window as if urging the cab along faster. “Worried sick, she is,” he said, relapsing into anguish. “You could have been killed—or worse!”
“Yes, I’m aware of that, Stan,” she sighed. “You’re not my father, you know.”
“Thank God I’m not!” he said animatedly. “I’d probably send you off to a convent.”
“Really, Stan, calm down. You’re getting ridiculous now.”
“Elsie wanted to tell your mother, but I said I’d handle it.”
“And you did such a brilliant job, didn’t you? If I remember correctly,” she said, rubbing her temples, “you’re the reason the whole thing got bungled in the first place!”
“Well how was I to know you weren’t going to be . . . ravaged . . . by that creep,” he said, his knee jittering up and down now.
“He was an undercover cop! You don’t think Clive knew what he was doing?”
“Well, not particularly, since it seems in the end you were rescued by a gang of women.”
Yes, she remembered now. Lucy and Gwen had turned up. “Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”
Stanley sighed. “I don’t know all the details, but something like some dame named Lucy and her friends got worried and called the cops.”
“But the cops were already there.”
“Yeah, but obviously not enough of ‘em to do the job, ‘specially since the inspector and his two sidekicks got themselves knocked out or tied up within the first five minutes.”
“Because of you.”
Stan ignored her and went on. “Lucky they called. Backup came, raided the joint. While they were rounding up the main suspects, it seems this Lucy found the keys behind the bar and went looking for you. Apparently you fainted just as they found you.”
“Then what happened?”
Stan shrugged. “I don’t know everything. I was locked up by his highness, remember? When he finally let me out of the squad car, he asked me to take you home. He’s obviously busy filling out forms or whatever he does all day. He seemed a bit preoccupied. Cops were swarming everywhere getting statements, hauling people off to jail. I think that’s the only reason they remembered me is that they needed the car,” he said moodily.
“Did they catch Neptune?” she asked anxiously.
“Who’s Neptune?”
Henrietta sighed. “Doesn’t matter.”
The cab was stopping now, and when Henrietta looked out she saw that they had pulled up in front of her dark apartment building. Stan rustled in his pocket for the fare. “I’ll get it, Stan,” Henrietta said, looking on the floor to where someone had put her handbag for her, probably Lucy.
“Naw, the inspector gave me the money. I told him to get lost, but he insisted.”
Stan plopped the money into the cabbie’s outstretched hand, and the two of them wearily climbed out.
“Did he have any message for me?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound disinterested as they approached the building. Traces of what they said to each other were floating back to her. Had he really told her he loved her, or had it been she who had said it? Or maybe she had dreamed it? She felt so confused, so tired.
“He said to lay low and that he’ll come round when he gets a chance.”
“That’s it?” she asked, disappointed. But then again, did she really think he would pass on some further declaration of his feelings through Stan?
Stan shrugged. “Did you expect something else? He’s a copper. I did try to warn you, you know.”
The front door of the building creaked open, then, and Elsie peeked out. When she saw that it was Stan and Henrietta, she gave a cry of delight and threw her arms around Henrietta while she flashed a grateful smile across to Stan. Holding tight to Elsie, the weight of the night suddenly washed over her, and Henrietta let the tears finally come in earnest.
“Hey! Cheer up!” whispered Mr. Hennessey, giving her a little nudge with his elbow. “Looks as though you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.” Henrietta looked up at him from the bar she was leaning against and smiled sadly. She had missed him more than she had realized. It seemed like an age since she had quit Poor Pete’s to become a taxi dancer at the Promenade.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he added. “Why don’t you take it easy for a bit?”
Henrietta stood up straight and methodically resumed wiping the bar, though no matter how many times her rag passed over it, it still seemed dirty to her. “Yes, I know,” she answered, trying to be cheerful, “but I . . . I want to. I like to keep busy.”
“If you need money,” he said gently, “all you have to do is ask, you know. A loan!” he added quickly, not wanting to embarrass her by offering her a handout. “Pay it back when you can.”
“Thanks, Mr. Hennessey. I’ll remember that, if I need it.”
In truth, she was okay for money just at the moment. She had been receiving a meager paycheck from Mrs. Jenkins for the short time she had been at the Marlowe, and the tips, despite her less-than-full stations each night, were better than any she had received from any other job. The “double” salary, however, that the inspector had promised her when he first propositioned her had not yet materialized, and Henrietta suspected it never would.
It had been just over a week since her ordeal at the Marlowe, and she was still trying to figure it all out. There had been nothing in the papers the next day when Henrietta had slipped out of the apartment early in the morning to buy a paper at the corner stand. She had considered telling Ma that morning that she was ill again, but she knew Ma wouldn’t buy it so soon after the last time. Besides, Ma would tell her to go in to work anyway, as she was always going on about how people like them didn’t get to be off sick. “You’ll be the first to be let go, and then where would we be? No, better not risk it, Henrietta,” was what she would have said, so instead, Henrietta, still a bit woozy, left the apartment the next day at the usual time and walked in Palmer Square Park for a while, collecting her thoughts, before making her way over to Poor Pete’s, where a jubilant Mr. Hennessey had greeted her back with open arms. He had readily agreed to give her job back when she had asked and had not pushed her for any explanations. This somehow made her all the more eager to eventually tell him, however, about what had happened at both the Promenade and the Marlowe, at first holding some of it back but then spewing it all forth, except, of course, the last part of the whole story, the part about Clive.
She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t wanted to share this part, perhaps because she wasn’t sure yet what to think herself. As the days had gone on, she had tried to remember exactly what had happened that night, but most of it still remained in a fog, only bits and pieces becoming clear as the days wore on. She was fairly sure Clive had indeed told her that he loved her, and the way he had looked at her had been so intense, almost violent, yet his kisses had been surprisingly tender and soft, the memory of which caused her breathing to speed up, even now. And she was pretty sure that she had not told him, in so many words, that she loved him back, had she? But why, then, had she thought it necessary to reveal to him that she was a virgin? And what about Clancy’s revelation to her the other day in the park? She was still so confused and unsure about it all. And why hadn’t Clive appeared as Clancy said he would?
Roughly two days after the ordeal, she had been surprised when she was approached by none other than Clancy as she walked in Palmer Square, waiting for Poor Pete’s to open up for the day. She had been startled at first to see him as he blustered across the park toward her and was immediately disappointed when she saw that Clive did not accompany him.
“There you are!” Clancy said, breathing heavily when he finally reached her.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked nervously, praying he hadn’t stopped at the apartment.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” he said in response to the look on her face. “Inspector told me not to knock at your place. We’ve got other ways a knowin’,” he said, smiling and tapping the side of his nose. “Now, then . . . ” he said, fishing in his pocket for a pencil. He already had out his small notebook.
“Such as?” Henrietta asked.
Ignoring her question, Clancy licked the tip of his pencil. “Officially, Miss Von Harmon, I’m here to take your statement, but off the record,” he said, leaning toward her confidentially, “I’m to tell you that the inspector will meet up with you very soon.”
“Oh,” Henrietta said, a bit deflated. “Well, perhaps you could tell me more about what happened that night. I . . . I’m afraid I fainted,” she said, blushing.
“I’d heard that,” Clancy said, and grinned. “Well, you know most of it, I should imagine. Couple of dames called for help; me and the boys jumped in the paddy wagon and off we went . . . got the rats really scramblin’ then. Managed to catch a few in the net, though, so not a bad night all in all.”
“A few? Which ones?”
Clancy screwed up his face as if to remember. “A Mrs. Jenkins, she’s one of the ring-leaders, I believe. Couple of the bouncers. They’re still in the clink, trying to get them to squeal a bit more, as they say,” he said, giving her a conspiratorial wink.
“What about Neptune?”
“Which Neptune you talkin’ about? The little one or the big one?”
“The . . . little one,” Henrietta shuddered.
“Nope. ‘Fraid not. Your girl friends was fooled, too. Seems they still thought he was Larry the custodian and let him slip out the back. They helped nab big Neptune, a.k.a. one Vic ‘Snake Eyes’ Martelli. Didn’t realize till later they got the wrong guy. Still, they tried. Pretty good work for some dames, deviants at that, the inspector tells me. Shame, that is,” he said, rubbing the corners of his mouth with his thumb and index finger.
“How did they manage to catch Vic?” Henrietta asked, ignoring his comments. She could hardly believe that Lucy and the gang had had a hand in his capture.
“Seems one of ‘em, one Rose Whitman, kept a pistol, little one, like, in the dressing room. Inspector’s been back and forwards with her about it all. Seems they got a gun between them after one of ‘em went missing ‘bout a month ago.”
Henrietta shifted to absorb all of this. Why hadn’t they told her they had a gun? But what reason would they have had to tell her th
is? Either way, she realized, she owed her life to them. She would have to find them when this was all finished.
“So, Larry got away?” she asked, suddenly feeling chilled.
“‘Fraid so, miss. We’ll catch him, though. Don’t you worry.”
“What about Polly? Have they found her yet?”
“Miss Shoemacher? Can’t rightly say, but funny you should ask. Inspector’s got a lead on her. They think she’s been hidin’ out in Arkansas with an aunt. Inspector himself went to check it out. Him and Charlie. Poor Kelly’s in the hospital. Still touch and go, poor kid.”
Henrietta did not think of the beefy Kelly as a “kid,” but she did feel sorry for him, especially considering it was probably her fault that he had been clobbered so badly. She wondered if it would be appropriate for her to visit him.
“I’m keeping Katie for him while he’s gone, see,” Clancy went on.
Henrietta shook herself from her revelry. “Oh, yes, his girl. You had me confused with that.”
Clancy suddenly scowled. “Yeah, the boss smacked me a good one for that. Told me to stop shootin’ my mouth off, ‘specially in front of a lady,” he said, still scowling. “Beg your pardon, miss, but I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Don’t know what I said wrong, actually.”
Henrietta smiled, especially at Clive’s designation of her as a lady. Didn’t that mean something? she hoped, but the thought was fleeting. “Don’t mention it,” she said, giving Clancy a little smile. “So you’ve got Katie for a few days?”
Clancy nodded. “I do indeed,” he said, his smile returning. “Beautiful girl.”
“Has he had her for long?”
“Hmmm,” Clancy said, screwing up his face again to remember and rubbing the side of his head with the stub of his pencil. “Must be goin’ on about six, maybe seven years now. Says he found Katie in the streets. Brought her home. That was just after his wife died, I think, just before he joined the force. It was a blessing, really. Having Katie, that is, not his wife dyin’, you understand,” he added quickly. “Helped him no end, we all thought down at the station. Mind you, he’s always kept himself to himself, but in the early days, sometimes he’d talk after a few whiskeys.”