What the Dead Leave Behind

by Rosemary Simpson

  “I never do.”

  * * *

  Russell Coughlin hadn’t turned everything he found over to Ned Hayes. That last case, the one he’d been told to pay particular attention to, might turn out to be a gold mine. If he read it right, the fix had been in, but the judge didn’t come through, and a good-looking, nineteen-year-old kid who claimed he was innocent died a few months after arriving in Sing Sing. Reformers were screaming their heads off about alleged prison abuses.

  It was a great story. Coughlin was thinking of writing a book about it.

  “The morgue doesn’t always have every issue of the paper,” he told Hayes. “It’s supposed to, but you know how it is. Somebody comes looking for something, walks off with that day’s rag under his coat because he’s in a hurry and can’t be bothered to copy down the information he needs. Sometimes the missing edition turns up, sometimes it doesn’t. From what I’ve read, you’ve got enough without it.”

  Ned Hayes didn’t like it, but he didn’t have any choice in the matter. He promised Coughlin he’d let him know when he could break the bribery story, then took the clippings the reporter had given him to Billy McGlory. Hayes had a bad feeling about Victoria MacKenzie. She needed to be stopped. Fast. And Billy was the man to do it.

  * * *

  Artie Sloan was younger and handsomer than his only brother. He had the face of an angel, an easygoing disposition, and a way with the ladies that was guaranteed to get him into trouble. He drifted into Billy McGlory’s orbit when he was still wearing short pants, and never saw any reason to leave it. The pay was good, the work easy, the drink cheap, and the women always available. Artie had no ambitions in life; he was happy enough drifting along. Maybe something better would come his way, maybe not.

  Artie didn’t think much of it when Jack killed his wife and her lover. They had it coming, and in his world there was only one punishment. The best thing about the way his older brother handled the whole business was setting fire to the house. Sheer genius. The coppers decided that the husband had killed his missus because she had been unfaithful, then burned the house down, getting caught in the conflagration before he could escape. Served him right, they said. Then the neighbors started talking. They remembered seeing two men go into the house that night. Where was the other body?

  When one of the detectives from Mulberry Street picked up Artie for questioning, he’d thought McGlory’s accountant had forgotten to pay the weekly vig and the detective had been sent to hassle him to make the point that coppers could be mean when they got grouchy. They accused him of an adulterous relationship with his sister-in-law and the murder of the brother who’d confronted him. The woman, too. He couldn’t tell them Jack was alive; they’d want to know who the dead man was, and that would put his brother’s neck in a noose.

  So Artie trusted in Mr. McGlory’s well-oiled system to solve his problem and told Jack to take the next train to Chicago and stay out of sight. Which he did, changing his name to Obediah Jackson. Jackson was easy to remember, and Obediah was biblical. It meant servant of God.

  The accused had worn a new suit and tie the day he came up before Judge MacKenzie, knowing there might be reporters in the courtroom. Billy liked his men to look their best. Artie wondered if the judge was sick; he looked terrible. He didn’t worry even when he was bound over for trial; appearances mattered. He’d be out before morning.

  It didn’t happen. Artie stood trial, was convicted of the heinous crime of fratricide and the incidental slaying of his sister-in-law, and sentenced to life at hard labor in Sing Sing. His lawyer told him not to be concerned; he was working on it. Nothing like this had happened since the deal was first struck with Judge MacKenzie; nobody could explain what had gone wrong.

  If Artie had told the lawyer the truth, things might have turned out differently. But he didn’t. He couldn’t take the chance that Jack would be charged with murder, and he knew for a fact that people were looking out for him. He just had to be patient.

  So Artie Sloan went up the Hudson River to Sing Sing. It was the worst place he could have been sent. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut, so they put him in the dark cell for a hundred days. By the time he came into the light again, his mind had failed; he’d found refuge from the unbearable in madness. He declined rapidly after that and died before his twentieth birthday.

  The only thing the reporter who wrote the Artie Sloan stories had not known was that the kid really was innocent. The brother he was supposed to have killed was alive and well in Chicago, where an out-of-date New York newspaper his landlady had put aside to clean the windows with tore the heart out of him.

  * * *

  “It’s coming apart, Billy.” Ned Hayes tossed a packet of newspaper clippings onto McGlory’s desk. They were alone in the luxurious second-floor office and parlor where he and Geoffrey Hunter had first pursued the tenuous connection between Victoria MacKenzie and the owner of Armory Hall. A bottle of champagne stood in a silver ice bucket, a crystal glass of the golden liquid fizzing at each man’s elbow.

  “You better tell me what this is about, Ned.” McGlory nudged the stack of clippings with one manicured forefinger, sliding them around in front of him until he saw an artist’s caricature of Patrick Monoghan grinning up at Judge MacKenzie after his murder charge was dismissed. Dismissed for insufficient evidence, absence of key witnesses, and a laundry list of other failures of the prosecution to prove its case.

  “The Judge didn’t trust her. How could he? Victoria blackmailed him into marriage by threatening to ruin his daughter’s life. You gave her that ammunition when you dropped Patrick Monoghan’s name; it was the first, but not the only case the Judge threw for you. He needed the money that initial time, and later on he was in too deep to be able to get out. Victoria knew there had to be others besides Monoghan, so she set out to find enough of them to hog-tie her prize bull. I don’t know how many she eventually identified. Five, six? Maybe more. She’s the only one who can tell us.

  “But the Judge would always be smarter than she was. He kept a notebook and hid it in a place no one but his daughter would know to look. Thirty-seven names, Billy, every one of them duly recorded by the city’s newspapers. Somewhere among those thirty-seven names is the man who’s going to send you back to prison. One of them will squeal until his curly tail falls off. He’ll make a deal. Or maybe it’ll be Victoria herself. She can testify in court against you, and I’ll bet any jury in the land would believe her.”

  “They know to keep their mouths shut.” McGlory emptied his champagne glass, poured himself more of the imported French wine. “You know how the system works, Ned.”

  “I do. But there’s one small detail I’m not sure you know. And that’s going to make all the difference.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Victoria will sell out to save her own skin.”

  “It’s not a crime to marry a wealthy, older man. As for blackmail, I doubt that can be proved if the only document you have is a marriage license.”

  “She got impatient, Billy. She killed him. The doctor who signed the Judge’s death certificate is having second thoughts, and the undertaker who put him in his coffin will also urge an exhumation. Whatever Victoria used on him will still be there; it’s only been a little over three months. She doesn’t have any family behind her to buy off a conviction, so she’ll have to work out her own deal. You’re a big fish, Billy, maybe the biggest one in town. The politician who brings you down can write his own ticket. He’ll have every reformer and do-gooder in the city organizing their supporters behind him. All he has to do is prove you bought Judge MacKenzie once, just once. Victoria can give him that proof, and don’t doubt for a minute she will.” Ned Hayes wasn’t smiling now. “I’m sorry, Billy, but I thought you should know what’s going to come at you.”

  “So Judge MacKenzie’s widow walks free and I go inside. That hardly seems fair. Murder wins out over a bribe?”

  “That’s the way it looks to me.”

  “How
long do I have?”

  “Not long enough. The way I think it will go down is that Conkling or some other lawyer will represent the Judge’s daughter and go after the exhumation order. The district attorney will indict Mrs. MacKenzie, and she’ll have her own mouthpiece working out a plea bargain before the story hits the papers. You’ll go down on her word, and once you take that first step, the rats will start coming out of the woodwork. Everybody will be jockeying for a piece of Billy McGlory’s empire. That’s the way I see it happening.”

  “Very tight, very simple.”

  “I’m sorry, Billy.”

  “I pay my debts, Ned.”

  “I know.”

  “I also collect on what’s owed me.” And Victoria MacKenzie owed more than Ned Hayes suspected.

  “I know that, too.”

  “As long as you understand how things work. A man who doesn’t act on the information he gets is a fool. Nobody’s ever said Billy McGlory is a fool.”

  “I hope nobody ever will.”

  “Drink up, Ned.”

  “What am I drinking to?”

  “Good health to old friends and bad cess to new enemies.”

  * * *

  It was the only way. Geoffrey Hunter hadn’t agreed; he’d asked Ned to stay away from McGlory, at least until Hunter had talked to Warneke again. Ned had nodded, but promised nothing, and in the end he’d known it would be folly to wait. Victoria MacKenzie might have stepped up into another social class entirely, but she’d gotten there at the cost of at least two men’s lives. The law would never touch her, so someone else would have to bring her and her brother to justice. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. Simple. Final. Debt paid.

  Ned was sorry to have to deceive Hunter, but he had no second thoughts about turning Victoria MacKenzie and Donald Morley over to McGlory’s tender mercies. Someone had to sweep the streets.

  * * *

  Donald Morley staggered out of the Haymarket just before he would have been thrown out. He’d long ago lost count of his drinks, and there’d been more than one partner in the dark cubicle rented out to customers by the half hour. One of his pants pockets was turned out, the other just as empty. The skin of his face felt as though someone had rubbed sandpaper across every part of it. He gingerly stroked the tenderest spots and wondered which of his favorites he’d spent time with tonight. They’d all blurred together after a while.

  Inside the Haymarket the music blared and beat on, cigar and cigarette smoke hung low above the tables, and the mingled stench of cheap perfumes and shaving lotions, raw whiskey, sweaty sex, and vomit made it hard to breathe. When you ran out of money, you were invited to leave or were tossed out into the street, whichever you seemed to deserve at the time. Just as well. The shock of cool and relatively clear night air was clearing his head and soothing all the sore places on his body. Early April was still cold once the sun went down; he thought it must be well past midnight.

  Victoria would be fast asleep in her bed when he got home, but no matter, he’d had enough experience sneaking in with his shoes in his hand to manage it one more time. There was something he had to do, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Somebody who hadn’t been home when he’d gone after him on his way to the Haymarket earlier in the evening, somebody he needed to deal with tonight if he could figure out who it was. He stopped for a moment, ran a hand inside one of his boots, straightened when he felt the handle of the thin bladed knife in its sheath. Knives were his favorite weapons, as exciting to hold and use as a child’s best-loved toy.

  Donald had defied Victoria tonight, but he was confident she’d never find out. The thought of Prudence in a straitjacket had aroused him in a way he knew the denizens of the Haymarket wouldn’t be able to assuage. So earlier in the evening, before he’d made his way uptown to the Haymarket, he’d slipped into Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall, unnoticed, he thought, eased his way up the stairs to the second floor and into one of the private, curtained cubicles. Where he’d waited.

  The danger of being spotted by McGlory had been worth it. The young man who’d pleasured him for the one sublime hour that was all Donald could afford was rapturously adept. Innocent and soiled at the same time, with lips that coaxed the last drop of sensual delight from his client. T-Boy. That was his name. Afterward, they’d lain together in a tumble of arms and legs, drinking out of one another’s glasses, laughing, whispering, and nibbling their way down from the heights to placid satiety. He remembered telling T-Boy things he shouldn’t have, boasting about the most successful schemes he and Victoria had pulled off, the grandest being the Judge, of course. Gulling the great and feared Billy McGlory himself. Had he told all? He couldn’t recall, but he had the uneasy feeling that he might have described the sudden flash of inspiration he’d had when that Sulzer fellow walked into the Astor House and began regaling everyone there with the tale of Conkling and Linwood still outside in the blizzard, determinedly slogging their way up Broadway.

  They hadn’t always been lucky, Donald and Victoria, but that afternoon, trapped in the Astor House bar by the storm raging outside, Donald Morley had felt the hand of fate on his shoulder. For the first time in his life he made a decision without consulting Victoria. And acted on it. Linwood had never suspected a thing, though he had looked behind him once. Stupid fool. Victoria had never intended allowing Linwood to live long enough to assume control of Prudence’s fortune, but neither had she been able to work out exactly how to kill him. Donald solved that problem; she’d looked at him without the usual scorn in her eyes that made him squirm. He’d rendered her speechless. For once in his life, he’d held the winning hand.

  Donald hated to leave T-Boy, but he’d had no choice. He was short on money, and he had a job to do. Josiah Gregory had to be eliminated, the killing made to look like an interrupted robbery. So he’d left Armory Hall as surreptiously as he’d entered it, nearly sober by the time he got to Gregory’s dark and empty apartment. He’d waited, but not too long. The arousal T-Boy had momentarily satisfied crept over him again like an itch that gets worse the more you scratch it. He’d taken Gregory’s poorly hidden stash of money, locked the apartment door behind him, and left. Gone to spend the secretary’s money at the Haymarket, confident that the killing could be done another night. There was always time for murder.

  He had to piss. He had a feeling he’d piss more than once on his way home tonight. Whiskey did something to his insides that set everything free. And then there were all the beer chasers he’d poured down his gullet. He stepped over to the gutter, but there was a pile of reeking horse manure stinking up the street. Weaving back and forth like he was, he’d probably step in the damn stuff. So he backed up, turned around, and leaned one arm against the first building his feet carried him to. With the other hand he fumbled at the buttons on his trousers, determined not to ruin another pair of pants, especially these. The way the waistband was sewn held his gut in and minimized the belly he’d grown since Victoria had started them both living the good life again.

  He’d just gotten a decent stream going when he heard a soft footfall behind him. Damn, he couldn’t let go, couldn’t turn around. Maybe whoever it was would keep on walking. He could still make out the Haymarket’s door in the light from the streetlamps. The bouncer whose name he never remembered was pacing up and down rubbing his hands together. This close there wouldn’t be any danger. Still, it might be a good idea to make his way back and wait for a hansom cab with the bouncer for company. Nothing left for a tip, but he was good for it. Damn. He’d already pissed out a river and couldn’t seem to stop.

  The knife took him under the ribs, under and across and into the heart in one swift upward thrust. The lungs were punctured for good measure, and because the knifer was exceptionally careful when he killed, he sliced the liver into two neat pieces. He held Donald Morley up until the blood stopped pumping, then he eased him to the pavement and rolled him against the wall into the puddle of piss. The body looked like another drunk sleeping it off where he fel
l. The knifer tweaked Donald’s coat over his exposed and shriveled private parts, then strode off down the street into the darkness. The Haymarket bouncer never heard a thing, noticed nothing except a customer who was pissing against the brick one minute and gone the next.

  * * *

  Victoria sat in the parlor until nearly eleven, not because she thought Donald would make it home before dawn, but because she was too angry to go to bed.

  Cook had sent up a late and very ample cold supper, so that, at least, had been all right. Everything else had rubbed her wrong.

  Neither Jackson nor Mrs. Barstow had come back this evening. And Kincaid wasn’t in his usual place in the stables, either. Questions hung in the air between servants and mistress, but the staff could not ask and their employer would not have answered.

  Victoria couldn’t imagine what had kept Mrs. Barstow. She supposed that Kincaid might have gone off in search of one of those disgusting smelling liniments he was always rubbing into the horses’ knobby forelegs, and then met up with some fellow drivers. They were worse than old women the way they gossiped. She’d have a few words to say to the three of them in the morning.

  One niggling worry refused to go away. That was Billy McGlory. He lurked at the edge of her consciousness like a spider in the farthest corner of a seldom-used room. She had stolen something from him and gotten away with it, yet she knew, she had heard it said many times, that McGlory always paid his debts and collected on what was owed him.

  Information and intimidation were at the heart of the empire of illegal activities over which he presided, but he had let her go free without any restraints or further contact. The seeming generosity bothered her; it was unlike him to give anything away, especially a judge with the power to keep skilled killers on the right side of prison bars. She was almost certain that once she claimed Judge MacKenzie for her own and persuaded him that he was certain to be caught if he continued taking Billy’s bribes, McGlory had cut him loose. He didn’t like sharing with anyone and he didn’t trust even the hint of a partnership.