by Ann Parker
He brought her hand to his lips for a kiss. “Hold on to that fortitude, Mrs. Stannert, and there’s nothing on earth or in the hereafter that we cannot face and overcome together.”
“Reverend!” A child’s whispered cry shattered the moment, leaving them standing once again in the dankness of the alley.
Yanking away from the reverend’s embrace, Inez whirled toward the voice. Tony stood a short distance away. The whites of her eyes shone eerily in the candlelight struggling through a nearby window. curtained. With no hat, the stubbornness wiped off her face, she looked much younger than before and as terrified as if chased by the hounds of hell.
“Quick. My maman. She, she…” Tony darted forward and grabbed the reverend’s sleeve. “Please!”
Tony tugged and pulled. They hastened after her.
Inez lost track of the turns and twists but recognized Mrs. Gizzi’s fortunetelling hovel once they reached it. The door gaped open. Tony let go of the reverend’s coat sleeve and dashed inside, followed closely by Reverend Sands and Inez. Tony was already kneeling by a single bed, tucked far into a dim corner of the room. Reverend Sands reached the bed first. Inez saw him pause, remove his hat, then go down on one knee by a still form in the bed.
Drawing closer, Inez saw the form on the bed was Drina Gizzi.
Tony, fingers working frantically at the fortuneteller’s throat, sobbed, “Maman, no. No. Wake up. Wake up. Help me!” This last was directed at Reverend Sands. “She can’t breathe, she needs to breathe.”
Sickness grew with realization inside Inez. Drina Gizzi, Tony’s mother…she’s dead.
Stepping around to the head of the iron bedstead, Inez saw that Tony tore at a cord biting tight around Drina Gizzi’s neck. Tony’s frantic actions lifted the fortuneteller’s neck off the thin mattress. Drina’s head fell back, her crown of dark hair touching the threadbare sheet. Dead eyes—one dark, one light—stared at Inez.
Reverend Sands stilled the youngster’s frantic efforts. “Tony, your mother is now beyond pain, fear, or breath.”
Tony scuttled away from the reverend’s touch. She curled up on the floor by the foot of the bed, fists to her face, shaking.
Reverend Sands stood and moved to the table in the center of the room. Inez heard the snick of a lucifer. Light flared as he lit the candle. The flame’s brilliance flung the shadows back and made them dance about the room.
Steeling her resolve, Inez leaned over the body to get a closer look. Now aware of Tony and Drina’s kinship, she could see other echoes of one in the other, aside from the eyes. The petite stature, graceful swoop of eyebrows, and no-nonsense aquiline nose, each carried them as a badge of kinship. However, Drina’s blood-suffused and swollen face and protruding eyes bore little resemblance to the bird-like visage Inez recalled from the brief interval at Abe’s house earlier that day.
Bile rose in her own throat as Inez focused on the thin rope wound tight around Drina’s neck, savagely cutting into the flesh. The material gleamed like liquid moonlight in the wavering candlelight. Not quite believing her own eyes, Inez removed a glove, and reached out. She touched, then smoothed the silver and gold cord, cousin to the corset laces in her pocket. She picked up one end, and let its quicksilver length slither and slip through her bare fingers.
During Inez’s examination, Sands had returned to the bedside. Inez rose and said in a low voice, “You must find a policeman. It won’t be easy, this time of night. You’ll probably have to go up State Street to Harrison or maybe over to Chestnut. It will take time. I will stay here with Tony. This,” she glanced at Drina’s body, “is no accident.”
“It’s not safe, leaving the two of you here alone,” said Sands. “Perhaps whoever did this is still nearby. There’s no telling what or who might be lurking around.”
“Would you have me go search instead?” Inez said. “The only other option is for all three of us to leave, and I suspect Tony would not go willingly. We will wait here. And we do not wait defenseless.” She showed him her revolver.
Reverend Sands seemed to turn this over in his mind, then nodded, albeit reluctantly. He then turned to Tony. “Tony.” He repeated the name several times until the small body stopped shaking. “We will find who did this to your mother. They will pay. There will be justice in this world and in the hereafter. I promise you. You will not be abandoned. Mrs. Stannert and I will stand by you. Right now, I must go find the nightwatch. You understand? If the person or people who did this to your mother are to answer for their crime, I need to bring the law into the matter.”
He waited.
The curled up form did not respond.
Sands continued. “Mrs. Stannert will stay here with you. I’ll be back as quickly as possible. Have faith, child, in these, the worst of times. The Lord God will walk beside you to guide you through the darkness.” With a final glance at Inez, he departed.
After some hesitation, Inez approached the newsie. Tony curled up tighter, as if to shut out the rest of the world.
“Tony,” said Inez. Corralling her petticoats, the awkward hooked-up hem of her evening dress, and the yards of cloak, Inez eventually managed to lower herself to the floor by the child. Tony didn’t respond. Inez sighed, and looked around the room. She spied the “Worthless Rotten Brown” pistol abandoned on the dusty floor, half under the bed, and decided not to delve any deeper into the shadows. That would be taken care of by the proper authorities. But who would take care of the child?
Inez tentatively put a hand on Tony’s shoulder. The shoulder tensed. “Tony,” she began, “I’m so sorry for your loss. To lose a mother is one of the hardest trials life can offer, aside from the loss of a child.” That last just slipped out. Inez winced, realizing the ache she identified in her own heart was not only in sympathy with Tony but also tied to the “loss” of her own young William. Mothers and their children. It was an unbreakable bond, for better or worse, through birth, life, separation, and death. William is not dead, but it often feels as if he is dead to me. He will never view me as his “maman.” That role is Harmony’s.
Swallowing the lump in her own throat, Inez continued. “I wish I could offer the saloon to you as a place to stay. I myself have living quarters on the second floor. However, it would not be wise while those men you antagonized are in town. However, there are other options.” She took a deep breath. “There is the mission that Reverend Sands and the brethren of the church built. It would be a safe place for you, for now.”
Muffled words emerged from the ball on the floor. “I’m not going to no poorhouse or orphanage.”
“The mission is a refuge, for those in need. And it’s just for a little while, until we can find you a home.”
“I can take care of myself.” Stronger, more stubborn.
Inez shook her head in frustration. “It isn’t safe for you here or on the streets. You can’t live rough, under the boardwalks, like those boys that, that…Tony, I know your secret. Your name, it’s Antoinette? Or Antonia?”
Tony convulsed, then sprang to her feet, staring at Inez. “What did you call me?”
“I know you are a girl. Not everyone would see through your disguise. I don’t believe Reverend Sands knows, but Mr. Stannert and I, we saw.”
Tony seized her red cap and pulled it down so tight it almost covered her eyes and ears. “Stop!” she shouted.
Inez began to rise, her narrow skirts and rigid corset complicating the motion. “The mission is the best, safest place for you right now until we can figure out who killed your mother and why. Perhaps you are in danger yourself, don’t you see? This may sound strange, but I understand, and I want to help you.”
Without another word, Tony shot across the floor and out the door.
Inez cried, “Tony, wait!” She finally made it to her feet, hurried after the girl, and unpocketed her small revolver, cognizant of the dangers that lurked in the shadows and the light.
A small shadow topped with a cap ran up a small footpath that twisted to the left. Inez followed as fast as she could on the ice-skimmed paths. The makeshift lifts for her skirts had come undone, and the hems were tangling around her ungainly galoshes while she cursed her clumsy attempt at reaching out. Another sharp turn yielded a fleeting glimpse of a shadow flitting around a cistern. Inez followed, only to have three gentlemen—if such term could be applied to them—stumble out from the left to block her progress.
“Who’s the pretty lady out taking the evening air?” bellowed one.
“No one you want to mess with,” Inez snarled back, breath puffing into the frigid air.
The three started forward, then beat a hasty retreat after Inez sent a bullet into the crusty dirt at their leader’s feet, spitting icy shards of frozen dust upon his boots.
Once they had gone, Inez stopped to catch her breath and get her bearings. She had no idea where she was in Stillborn Alley and whether she faced north, south, east, or west. She doubted she’d be able to retrace her steps to the shack. The best course of action was to head toward one of the main streets and search for the reverend.
Tony, she was sure, had any number of hidey-holes and places to go to ground. Inez hoped she had not put the girl into an untenable situation.
“I was only trying to help,” she said to the night air. Her breath curled out with a sigh, the warmth rising and dissipating to leave only the icy pinpricks of stars overhead.
With that, she gripped her pistol with a firmer hand and headed toward the jagged dark line of silhouetted buildings that marked the direction of either State or Chestnut.
Chapter Fifteen
Fury fueled by grief added speed to Tony’s mad dash. Who did this to Maman? It’s my fault. I left her. I said I wasn’t coming back. If I’d been here, this wouldn’t have happened. We should have left, today, with the gold. Now it’s too late. Now I’m all alone.
She ran, panting out tears and sorrow, gasping in a storm of contrary emotions. Why had she asked the reverend for help? What could he do? He was getting the coppers. What would they do?
Nothing.
They didn’t care what happened in these alleys, not to people like her and Maman. Well, they wouldn’t catch her. None of them knew the alleys the way she did. Tony’s mind twisted along with the small footpaths that led her farther west, toward Coon Row. Where, where could she go? Where would she be safe, at least for a while?
The answer came to her, almost as if Maman had whispered it into her ear.
The newsie shed.
Tony doubted Mrs. Stannert, the reverend, or any of the rest knew of it. Mr. Elliston was good about keeping mum about that arrangement. “When you kids need someplace to bunk, use the shed,” he’d said. “Just don’t set fire to the paper stock or knock over the ink barrels.” He left burlap sacks aplenty for the newsies to burrow into and even brought bread and cheese for those whose stomachs were empty in the morning.
Tony heard Mrs. Stannert shout her name and used the sound to move farther away.
Since The Independent office was up on East Third Street on the other side of Harrison, Tony decided the best thing to do was cross West Chestnut and use the alley on the other side to work her way up to Harrison and across, then make her way behind the buildings on the east side of town. That way, she could avoid the lights and being recognized or remembered by anyone. At least, by anyone standing up and sober. And if she ran into trouble, well, she had her gun.
Tony skidded to a stop, panting out a soft “Damn!”
She didn’t have her gun.
It was back there. With Maman. Right by the bed, or maybe under it.
Tony swiped at tears of frustration.
She had to go back. Now. Before the reverend showed up with the coppers. Before Mrs. Stannert went back to the shack, if she did.
Tony inhaled with a shuddering gasp. The icy air felt as if it froze her from the inside out. She turned and doubled back, careful to keep close to, but not in, the deep shadows that might hold dangers that couldn’t be handled without her gun.
Closing in on the place she and Maman had called home for the past two months, she slowed, then stopped, toes clenching inside the threadbare woolen socks. Cold from the ground below leaked into the thin soles of her too large shoes.
There were voices, male voices, near by.
Her fingernails dug into the rough edge of the brittle plank of the neighbor’s wall as she leaned forward, venturing a one-eyed peek around the corner. Pisspot Brown lounged under the fortunetelling sign, leaning against the doorframe. The door hung open, a traitor to her and Maman, allowing any and all access. Brown was smoking, the end of his cigarette glowing red. He leaned into the shack and Tony heard him say, “She couldn’t have gone far. Not this time of night.”
The slam of a cupboard door and muffled curses told Tony that at least one other was inside, searching. Are they looking for me? How do they know where I live? How do they know about me, about Maman??
The thought of her poor Maman, lying cold and dead on the bed while those nasty nobs tossed the place looking for…what? Her fingers curled uselessly at her chest, searching for the missing pistol handle, and finally tightened into a fist. If only she had her gun. Right now. She’d kill them all. A sob ripped free from her throat. Pisspot Brown’s head swiveled in her direction. She shrank back, away from the corner.
“Someone there?” he called out. She heard the scrunch of ice beneath a boot heel as he stepped in her direction. “Show yourself or bugger off!”
She faded into the embracing darkness, silent as a ghost. No use waiting now. To linger was to invite discovery and disaster.
She’d come back early morning and hope that the nobs or the coppers or whoever else showed up didn’t spot her gun first and take it with them.
Wiping away tears before they froze to her face, Tony slunk away. She dashed across Harrison, small and low, trying to be invisible, and made her way over to and up East Third. Squatting in frontier splendor next to an assay office, The Independent had a couple of storage shacks in back, looking anonymous and no different from the storage shacks all higgledy-piggledy behind the assay office. Tony went to the rear of the shed, where empty barrels and broken pieces of equipment, and splintered crates were leaning and stacked against the plank wall. She found the barrel lying on its side, and rolled it away to reveal a hole cut in the back of the shed.
She crouched down to the opening and said in a low voice, “Ace? It’s me. Tony.”
A couple barrels, side-by-side, provided a sort of inner wall she’d have to crawl around to reach the interior. A weak snip of light slipped around the barrels, wavering on the dirt floor.
A small shuffle, then Ace said, “Well, c’mon in, Tony. Close it up so that wind doesn’t sneak in. It’s cold enough as is.”
She scuttled in, and then turned and set a hand on the inside of the barrel, rolling it back in place to block the entrance. The barrel settled into a hollowed out spot, keeping it in place. She moved around the stacked barrels and spied the candle, flickering fitfully from a tin plate on the floor.
“Mr. Elliston won’t like that,” said Tony, aware that the candle was breaking one of the newsman’s primary rules: No fire around the paper.
Ace said, “We’re bein’ careful. Freddy, he’s scared of the dark and he’s new, so hey, we’re gonna just wait ’til he’s asleep.”
A lump of burlap sacks by the candle moved slightly, and a small hand slipped out and pushed the sacks back. A face peered out at Tony, a whopper of a shiner on the left side of his face. She moved closer, curiosity about another’s misfortune dimming the darkness of her own. “What happened to him? Hey, he’s just a little guy.”
“Yeah, well, Freddy’s pa works the smelter, like my pa.”
Tony stared. None of them ever talked family. This was the first Tony’d heard tha
t Ace wasn’t a loner.
Ace continued, looping an arm over the small boy. “Lie down, Freddy. That there’s Tony Deuce. Wait ’til morning and you get a gander of his eyes and you’ll see why we call him Deuce. Tony sells more sheets than any of us. Tony’s okay.” The pride and affection in Ace’s voice surprised Tony. Ace never delivered praise to the other newsies, preferring to toot his own horn or say, “Well, just had an off day, that’s all” when Tony bested him in the daily sales.
The little bruised face disappeared and the burlap pile wiggled around as Freddy burrowed back in.
“His pa got tight tonight and…” Ace made a fist and punched the air. “Not for the first time, neither. So I told Freddy here I knew a nice warm place to bunk for the night, a place where he’d get a breakfast that’d fill his belly. He can help me sell the sheets for a while and I’ll split my five dollars with him. That’s two-fifty a week, damn good money, hey, Freddy? Right up there with old Tabor hisself. Bet he wasn’t making two-fifty a week when he was four years old! That way, Freddy don’t need to go back to that old mule never again if he don’t want to. Let that mule go kick someone his own size, right, Freddy?” Ace nudged the pile of sacks, which shifted in response.”
“Hung-y now,” said a small voice from under the burlap.
With a start, Tony remembered the biscuits that Mr. Stannert had given her. She dug into both pockets and pulled out the pieces that hadn’t been crushed to crumbs and crumbles. “Ace, Freddy, they gave me these at the Silver Queen tonight. Some of Mrs. O’Malley’s biscuits. Take ’em.”
Tony dumped the biscuit bits into Ace’s cupped hands and an especially large piece into the small dirty hand that crept out beneath the sacks.
Ace ate greedily, seeming to swallow his portions whole. But he must’ve at least tasted them before they disappeared down his gullet, because a strange expression crossed his face and he said, “Cheese? Mrs. O’Malley put cheese in her biscuits?”