Murder on St. Mark's Place

by Victoria Thompson

  Frank looked at the photograph again, trying to picture what she was describing. “And this is the boat?”

  “From what I understand, this is a duplicate of the boat. A photographer poses people as if they’re on the ride. See how they’re pretending to be frightened? Then they buy the photograph as a souvenir.”

  “And you think this fellow with her bought her the shoes?”

  “It’s certainly possible. According to her sister, she got them at Coney Island that day.”

  Frank looked at the photograph more closely. “Well, even if this fellow did buy her the shoes, that doesn’t prove he killed her, does it?”

  She frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Frank gave her a look that told her that was why she wasn’t a professional detective, and she didn’t like it one bit. “If she’d been killed the day she got the shoes, you might have something here. If,” he added, “you could even identify this fellow from the photograph. It’s not a very clear picture of his face. The shadow of his hat brim is covering half of it.”

  She took the photograph out of his hands and looked at it again, very closely. “I’m sure if you knew this fellow, you’d recognize him.”

  “But I don’t know him,” Frank pointed out. “Do you?”

  “Gerda’s friends will.” She sounded awfully certain, which made Frank think she wasn’t certain at all.

  “If they do, are you just going to go find him and ask him if he killed this girl?”

  His sarcasm was wasted on her. “I think it would be a better idea to find out if the other girls who were murdered knew him, too.”

  “What other girls?”

  “I don’t know their names, but three other girls from that neighborhood have been murdered the same way Gerda was.”

  “Beaten, you mean?” Frank was getting an uneasy feeling.

  “Yes, and their murders are unsolved, too. I think there’s a good chance the same man killed all of them. I’m sure if you questioned their friends, you could find out which men all the girls knew in common and—”

  Frank wasn’t listening anymore. He was remembering a case he’d investigated last winter. The girl was from the same German neighborhood near Tompkins Park, and she’d been beaten until her face was practically smashed in. They’d identified her from her clothes and a birthmark on her back. No one had cared much about her death, except her family of course, but they were working folks with no money to spare. She’d been one of those girls who went out dancing all the time, and Frank had soon realized that finding the one man who’d killed her would be nearly impossible. He’d gotten busy with other things, and now he couldn’t even remember the girl’s name.

  Why had no one told him there were others?

  “When were these girls killed?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I should have found out, but I thought you’d know all about it.”

  “I’m not the only detective sergeant on the New York City police force,” he reminded her more sharply than she deserved. “There’s no reason for me to know about cases I don’t work on.”

  She didn’t take offense. She was too amazed. “Then there’s no way for anyone to realize these four girls’ deaths might be connected somehow?”

  “You don’t know that they are,” he pointed out.

  This time she gave him a condescending look. “Are you asking me to believe that four different men beat four different young women from the same neighborhood to death in exactly the same way during the past few months?”

  “It could’ve happened,” he said, but he didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

  She smiled sweetly. “If you’re that naive, I guess I’ll have to make sure you don’t play any games of chance when we go to Coney Island tomorrow, then.”

  “What?” Frank was certain he’d misunderstood her.

  “I think we should go to Coney Island, don’t you?” she asked. “We can look around and ask questions and get an idea of what happens out there. Maybe we can figure out how Gerda met this fellow. We might even find someone who recognizes him from the photograph. We should at least be able to find out where she got the shoes. Someone might remember who bought them for her.”

  “This isn’t my case,” he reminded her, although his conscience was pricking him. The nameless girl who had died last winter had been his case. If he’d solved that one, this Gerda might still be alive.

  “It’s my case,” she said, “and you’d be helping me. As a friend,” she added, taking a sip of her lemonade.

  When he didn’t reply, she said, “Did I tell you I left a message for Dr. Broadstreet? He’s the surgeon I told you about, the one I thought might be able to help Brian.”

  The lemonade that had been so refreshing a moment ago now felt like acid in his stomach. He hated being in debt to anyone, and Sarah Brandt was dragging him deeper and deeper into her debt every time he saw her.

  “Mrs. Brandt, your talents are wasted. You should have been a criminal.”

  “A criminal!” she asked in surprise, although she seemed more pleased than insulted. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean you’re awful good at blackmail and making people do what you want them to.”

  “It’s just my female powers of persuasion, Malloy. Since women don’t have any real power in the worldly sense, we have to compensate by using the powers we do have.”

  Frank didn’t think he agreed with that. Women might not be able to vote or own property or go into business, but they certainly managed to do whatever else they wanted. “Find out the names of the other girls who were killed,” he said. “I’ll see if there’s any connection between them.”

  She sat back in her chair, looking smug. “I’ll have that information for you on Sunday when we go to Coney Island.”

  FRANK COULDN’T BELIEVE he was going to Coney Island. He’d never been to the beach in his life, and he had no desire to go now. At least he wouldn’t be expected to bathe in the ocean. He’d done some research on Coney Island and learned that the main attraction nowadays was the amusements and rides that had been built near the beach. You didn’t have to go in the water unless you wanted to, and Frank had no intention of putting on one of those ridiculous bathing outfits and jumping in the ocean. If God had intended for men to go in the water, they’d have fins.

  Coney Island had always been a place where people from the city went to escape the summer heat, but the place had eventually been overrun by gamblers, roughnecks, confidence men, pickpockets, and prostitutes, so that decent folks had stopped going. Fires in ‘93 and ’95 had destroyed the worst sections of West Brighton, however, and then a fellow calling himself Captain Paul Boyton built an enclosed park where people of modest means could pay an admission price of ten cents and enjoy themselves all day without being bothered by the riffraff that used to prowl the streets of the island.

  From what he’d learned, the park was like a carnival, only larger and far more elaborate. The games of chance and the freak shows were there, but this Captain Boyton had added rides designed to thrill and frighten people. Frank saw plenty of things in his everyday life that thrilled and frightened him. He didn’t need to pay ten cents to have the life scared out of him in a phony boat.

  Which explained his foul mood when he met Sarah Brandt early Sunday morning at the trolley. He’d been pleasantly surprised to learn he didn’t have to take a boat ride just to get to Coney Island. Last he’d heard, the ferry was the easiest method of transportation. But progress had come when he wasn’t looking, and now a nickel trolley ride would take anyone out to Captain Boyton’s park.

  “Oh, Malloy, you look like you’re going to your own funeral,” Mrs. Brandt said when he found her. “This is supposed to be fun!” She certainly looked ready for fun in her flowered summer dress and broad-brimmed hat.

  Malloy cast a jaundiced eye around at the crowd of people waiting for the trolley. There were middle-class families decked out in their Sunday best, children scrubbed and brushed a
nd braided and fidgeting with excitement already. There were young women, girls really, decked out in the kind of finery that pennies could buy. Frippery, his mother would have called it. They looked cheap and gaudy and very, very young. Hovering around them were young men in their checked suits and straw hats, preening for attention from the girls who were studiously ignoring them.

  “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” Mrs. Brandt asked.

  “What?”

  “Watching the way they act. The girls are so desperate for attention, but the men are equally desperate. You’d think that would make it easier, since they both want the same thing, but it somehow makes it more difficult.”

  Frank had no idea what she was talking about, but he did think it was interesting the way the men were sniffing around the girls. He could imagine what his mother would say about those girls, too. They didn’t look like decent females, yet he knew they weren’t prostitutes either. They fell in some mysterious gray area between.

  In Frank’s experience, young girls went nowhere unescorted by a chaperon. He himself had never been alone with his own wife until their wedding night. Kathleen’s parents and brothers had seen to that, and he’d understood completely. He’d respected Kathleen as much as he’d loved her and wouldn’t have dreamed of taking advantage of her innocence. Had she flaunted herself the way these girls were doing, he would have been shocked. These girls lived in a different world than the one he’d known, however. The rules were different there, and Frank didn’t understand them.

  And he understood Sarah Brandt even less.

  “What do you hope to accomplish with this ... this ...” He gestured vaguely at all the people gathered for the trolley to Coney Island on what was promising to be the first truly nice Sunday of the season.

  “Excursion?” she offered, smiling. “I don’t know. It’s awfully hot and uncomfortable in the city. You should thank me for making you go to the country for some sea air.”

  Frank was saved from answering by the arrival of the trolley. He and Mrs. Brandt waited until last to board, watching how the other people conducted themselves. The girls got on first, then the families, and then the young men, who jockeyed for position near the girls they had picked out. There was much jostling and arguing, and Frank was glad he and Mrs. Brandt got separated in the crowd. It saved him from making conversation with her on the ride out, even if he did have to stand up the whole way because of the crowd.

  After what seemed an interminable time later—but which was less than an hour—they arrived at the station at West Brighton Beach. During the ride, Frank had learned that criminals weren’t the only people who used outrageous slang and that flirting had changed a lot since he was a young man.

  Mrs. Brandt was waiting for him when he got off the trolley. She still looked as fresh as she had when they’d left the city, although Frank felt damp and rumpled.

  “What do you think?” she asked, surveying the view.

  Frank didn’t know what to think. The place looked like something out of a storybook. A band played nearby, apparently to welcome the new arrivals, and in the distance he could see the dark expanse of the ocean, ominous and never-ending. On the other side he saw what must be the amusement park Mrs. Brandt had told him about. Surrounded by a fence to keep out nonpaying customers, it seemed to stretch for acres and probably did. Odd-looking structures rose above the fence, hinting at the wonders inside.

  “Look,” she said. “The girls have already paired off with those fellows. That’s so they’ll pay their admission fee to the park.”

  The girls who had so studiously avoided the men at the station and had offered only token interest during the ride out were now accepting offered arms and allowing themselves to be escorted through the front gates. As the men fished in their pockets for the fee, the girls giggled and batted their eyes and acted coy.

  “How long will they stay with the fellows once they’re inside?” Frank wondered aloud.

  “I’m sure they have their idea of what’s appropriate. Maybe if they like the fellow, they let him spend money on them all day long.”

  “Whoever called them Charity Girls was wrong. They’re outright thieves.”

  “Don’t judge them too harshly,” she said as she started walking toward the entrance gate to the park. “It’s the only way they can have a good time.”

  “By making men spend their hard earned money on them?” Frank hurried to catch up.

  She gave him a disapproving glance. “Those girls only earn about six or seven dollars a week. After they give their families money for their room and board, they usually have only a dollar or two left for themselves. Out of that they’ve got to buy their lunches, ride the trolley, and keep themselves clothed. With a budget like that, the five cents for the trolley ride out here is about all they can manage.”

  “They why don’t they just stay home?” Frank asked reasonably.

  “It’s a new world, Malloy. Women don’t just stay home anymore.”

  Of course she’d say that, a woman who had a trade and made her own living, just like a man. Kathleen had just stayed home, and if she was still alive, she’d be home still, taking care of their son.

  At the gate, an obnoxious young man took Frank’s money so fast he didn’t even feel it leave his fingers, and the fellow never even missed a word in his ongoing spiel. “Step right up, ladies and gents, see the Seven Wonders of the World, see Little Egypt dance the dance of the seven veils, see the two-headed calf and the bearded lady, sights you’ll never see again. Come one, come all, only ten cents for a day in Paradise. Step right up!”

  As if these people needed encouragement. They’d already ridden an hour on the trolley to get there. They were hardly likely to decide to turn right around and go back, now, were they?

  “You didn’t have to treat me, Malloy,” Mrs. Brandt said. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression of my motives.”

  She was laughing at him, but Frank could get in the last word. “Just don’t expect me to buy you a hat, Mrs. Brandt.”

  That sobered her instantly.

  They stepped through the gates and into another world. The noise was overwhelming. People talking and screaming in terror on the rides, barkers trying to lure the unsuspecting in to see the freak shows or play the games of chance, the clank of machinery, the shots from the shooting gallery, the din of the calliope, and the brass of an oompah band somewhere.

  “People come here to get away from the noise of the city?” Frank shouted into her ear.

  She merely shrugged.

  They strolled along the avenues running through the park, looking at the various attractions and studying the people. Everywhere they saw groups of young men and women, obviously enjoying themselves, or at least pretending to. There was food and drink and entertainment everywhere, and nickel postcards, with photographs of the beach and bathing beauties in skimpy costumes that showed practically all of their legs, were available to send back to friends and family who hadn’t made the trip.

  “This way for the Streets of Cairo!” a barker shouted as they passed a booth where several buxom girls dressed in shimmering veils and little else were gyrating suggestively. “One hundred and fifty Oriental beauties! The warmest spectacle on earth! See her dance the Hootchy-Kootchy! Anywhere else but in the ocean breezes of Coney Island she would be consumed by her own fire! Don’t rush! Don’t crowd! Plenty of seats for all!”

  “I’ll wait if you want to go inside and see the show,” Mrs. Brandt offered with a sly grin.

  “Oh, it’s perfectly respectable,” a man standing behind them said. “Don’t have to worry about taking the missus inside.”

  Frank looked at him in amazement. In Frank’s experience, total strangers didn’t offer their opinions on such matters. In fact, total strangers didn’t speak to one another at all except perhaps to say excuse me.

  He was a short, round man in a suit that had been bought when he weighed twenty pounds less. With him was a woman of equal girth, and bo
th of them were smiling at Frank and his companion as if they were old friends.

  “Sam’s right,” the woman offered. “You won’t be offended at all. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how those girls could be so limber!”

  Frank knew Mrs. Brandt must be offended at being addressed so familiarly by people she didn’t know, so he took her arm and steered her away. “He must be drunk.” he said by way of explanation when they were out of earshot.

  She nodded, still looking as puzzled as Frank felt.

  In the crowd, they came face-to-face with another couple, a tall lanky young man with a scraggly mustache and a girl with buckteeth who was holding a stuffed bear. “Hey, old man, you should try your hand over there. Ring the bell and win a prize for your wife. Big fellow like you shouldn’t have any trouble at all!”

  Frank nodded as politely as he could and guided Mrs. Brandt around them. They passed an attraction at which a man was using a large hammer to strike the base of a tall tower in an attempt to drive a ball up and ring the bell on the top. The sign called it the HI-STRIKER MACHINE.

  “People here are certainly friendly,” Mrs. Brandt observed.

  “Or rude,” Frank offered.

  Frank lived in two very different worlds in his life, and the rules for each of those worlds were strictly prescribed. Prostitutes spoke to strangers and strangers spoke to them—and did a lot more besides—without the formality of an introduction, but a respectable man didn’t so much as tip his hat at a respectable female unless they were acquainted.

  Here, however, those rules seemed to have been forgotten. Since no one could possibly mistake Mrs. Brandt for a prostitute, there could be no other explanation. As Frank looked around, he quickly realized that everywhere strangers were meeting and conversing like old friends, then going on their way, never to meet again.

  “I can see why young people like this place so much,” Mrs. Brandt observed. “No one seems to observe any of the rules of propriety. Strangers become friends in a moment, and there’s no chaperon looking over your shoulder to disapprove.”