Murder on St. Mark's Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “You promised me some ice cream!” she reminded him, shooting Sarah a look meant to freeze her blood. The girl was even younger than Sarah had thought, but her eyes were old with experience, just as Lisle’s were.

  “So I did, my dear,” he said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm and patting it soothingly. “I’m afraid I must excuse myself now. Sarah, it was so nice to see you. Malloy, enjoy the ride.”

  His smirk was knowing as he steered the girl away. Sarah turned on Malloy.

  “That was a fine job,” she said as soon as Dirk was out of earshot.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about all that male posturing,” Sarah said furiously. “The two of you were like schoolboys, puffing out your chests and trying to see who could be King of the Mountain.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “No, I’m angry!” she corrected him. “If you hadn’t insisted on taking offense, I might have gotten some information out of him.”

  “Information about what?” he scoffed.

  “About Coney Island and what goes on here. It’s obvious he comes here often.”

  “Yes, and you know why he comes here, don’t you?”

  “Of course. To meet shop girls.”

  “He does more than meet them,” Malloy said, his expression hardening.

  “I’m sure he does. He buys them treats and takes them on the rides, and they reward him with their favors. It’s the kind of exchange that goes on all over the city every day.”

  “And maybe he even buys them things, like hats. Or red shoes.”

  That silenced Sarah, but only for a moment. “Dirk isn’t a killer.”

  “Why not? Because you know him?”

  Sarah remembered she had known the killer of Alicia VanDamm, too, and it had been someone she had never suspected.

  “All right, Malloy, you win. Dirk could be the killer just as easily as every other man here.”

  “Maybe even more easily than some. He doesn’t have to come all the way out here for female companionship. And why would he dress like a dry-goods salesman and prowl around a place where he’ll probably never see anyone who knows him?”

  “Because the female companionship of girls of his own class would be heavily chaperoned. A liaison with one of them would be impossible. He’s probably dressed the way he is so none of the girls will suspect he’s wealthy and try to blackmail him. And he certainly doesn’t want any of his friends to know how he satisfies his baser urges. Keeping a mistress would be perfectly acceptable in their eyes, but apparently, Dirk doesn’t want to go to the trouble.”

  “Or the expense, maybe.”

  Sarah shook her head. “He could keep a woman if that’s what he wanted. I’m sure his father would provide for him if he knew the alternative was to have him consorting with the trash he’d consider these girls to be.”

  “Maybe this is his way of rebelling. Maybe he hopes you’ll go back and tell everyone you saw him here. Maybe he wants to embarrass his family.”

  Sarah didn’t know what Dirk’s motives were, and she really didn’t care, but she did know she could learn a lot from him. But not when Malloy was around. She’d have to seek him out when she got back to the city.

  “Well, Malloy, since you cost me a chance to find out something from Dirk, you have to take me on the Shoot-the-Chutes.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Or are you going to make me go alone?”

  “What would you want to go on that thing for?” He stared at the contraption in horror as yet another boat came splashing down into the artificial lagoon.

  “I want to find out everything I can about Gerda Reinhard’s last days, and on the last Sunday of her life, she rode on that ride. Now, are you coming or do I have to find another escort?”

  He opened his mouth, ready with another argument, but Sarah beat him to it.

  “You’re not afraid, are you?” she challenged.

  Of course he was, but he’d die before he admitted it. Sarah knew that, and she managed not to grin with triumph when he grabbed her elbow and determinedly steered her toward the line of people waiting to board the boats.

  He was muttering something under his breath, and Sarah chose not to hear. It was easier than getting into ah argument. She could sympathize with his fear of mechanical contraptions. She wasn’t overly fond of them herself, but she was terribly curious to learn what Dirk had meant about the thrills on the first part of the ride.

  They waited the better part of half an hour before they were handed into a boat. Malloy nearly upset the thing when he climbed in beside her, but the water was so shallow that truly upsetting was actually impossible.

  “Easy there, sir,” the young boy assisting them cautioned, helping Malloy sit down on the seat beside her. They were crowded in with their knees pressing against the people on the seat in front of them and the knees of those behind them pressing against their backs.

  Malloy shot her a reproachful look, but she simply smiled serenely.

  When everyone was seated, the boat started with a jerk, and Sarah realized it was being propelled by some sort of motorized pulley device. They glided down the chute, and the next thing they knew, their boat was swallowed up by a tunnel.

  “So this is what he meant!” Sarah whispered to Malloy as the darkness enveloped them.

  In the sudden silence of the tunnel, where they were shielded from the raucous noises of the rest of the park, they could hear the sounds of rustling clothing and provocative giggling and even the smack of lips as the other couples in the boat took advantage of the momentary privacy for some hasty petting.

  “If that’s all you wanted to know, I could’ve told you,” Malloy said, the disgust evident in his voice. “We didn’t have to get on this cursed thing.”

  “At least try to enjoy yourself, Malloy,” she chided.

  Just then the couple in front of them nearly toppled into their laps, and by the time they were all untangled, amid much giggling and cursing, the boat was emerging into the daylight again.

  The couples discreetly stopped kissing, but they kept their arms around each other as the boat began to travel upward at an increasingly steep angle.

  “Oh, my,” Sarah said as the ground fell away and the boat seemed to be going almost straight up into the air.

  “I tried to warn you,” Malloy reminded her as she instinctively clutched at his arm for support, but by then she was too distracted to take offense.

  What had she been thinking? This was insane! She could be killed! She most certainly would be killed! This flimsy boat would never withstand the impact she knew it would take when it went plummeting down the chute to splash into the water below. Malloy was right, but she would never have the opportunity to tell him so because suddenly the whole world was tipping over, and they were going down and down and down, faster and faster, until a scream was literally ripped from her throat, and she thought her very heart must be torn out with it. And just when she thought she couldn’t bear it another second, the boat hit the water with an impact that sent them slamming into their seats. The spray of water showered them, and then it was over, and they were gliding safely, surely to the shore, where men with grappling hooks were waiting to pull the boat in so they could disembark.

  Only then did Sarah realize that in her terror she had thrown her arms around Malloy and that she was still clinging to him desperately.

  “Oh!” she cried, mortified, and released him at once, except she couldn’t exactly release him because he was clinging to her, too, in equal desperation.

  But his reaction was only an instant later than hers, and they sprang guiltily apart, or at least as far apart as they could get in the crowded boat. For a moment their gazes locked and they shared their mutual embarrassment, but a moment was all they could stand. They looked away, up or down or anywhere but at each other.

  Good heavens, what had come over her? Sarah wasn’t clingy or helpless or at all the kind of woman to clutc
h at a man for anything. Or at least she wasn’t in the normal course of her life. The normal course of her life had not, until now, involved a terrifying plummet down a water-filled chute to what felt like certain and imminent death, however. That, apparently, changed her into a quivering mass of feminine weakness.

  And it had turned Malloy into a quivering mass of male weakness, too, it seemed. He was the first one out of the boat when the attendant had secured it to the wooden wharf, and he let the attendant help her out, too. Which suited Sarah fine. She didn’t feel quite ready to have Malloy’s hands on her again.

  She immediately changed her mind, however, when she discovered that her knees were trembling as she made her way toward the exit. She could have used a steady arm to support her, but one look at Malloy’s expression told her not even to consider it.

  “That was certainly an experience, wasn’t it?” she managed, hoping her voice didn’t sound as breathless as she was afraid it did.

  Malloy didn’t bother to respond.

  Luckily, there was a vacant bench nearby, and Sarah and Malloy both plopped down on it. For a few moments they just sat there, staring at the people walking by. Sarah was waiting for her heart rate to return to normal, and she supposed Malloy was doing the same.

  Finally, he said, “I hope you know who the killer is now, because I don’t think I can survive any more of this investigation.”

  Sarah looked at him in amazement, but then she saw the glint of amusement in his dark eyes and realized he was teasing her. Malloy was teasing her! She knew it wasn’t funny, but she had an irresistible urge to laugh, and before she could stop herself she was laughing, and then Malloy was laughing, too. Or chuckling at least. And shaking his head and chuckling some more. She had never seen him laugh. It was so amazing, she laughed even harder, until she had to wipe the tears from her eyes and take some deep breaths to compose herself.

  “Oh, Malloy, I’m sorry I put you through that,” she said when she could speak again. “I had no idea it would be so frightening. Everybody looked like they were having such a good time!”

  “You thought they were screaming because it was so much fun?” he asked skeptically.

  He had a point, but she didn’t give it to him. “And I’m sorry I behaved so ... so foolishly. Clinging to you the way I did,” she added with chagrin when his look grew puzzled.

  He nodded in understanding, then turned his head away, seemingly studying the passing throng for several moments. “I didn’t mind,” he said quite casually.

  This time Sarah was dumbfounded. “Malloy, are you flirting with me?” she demanded, not at all displeased.

  When he turned back to her, his expression was bland. “I thought you were flirting with me.”

  Had she been? She thought back to her behavior throughout the day and realized she hadn’t been acting at all like herself, at least not the way she usually acted with Malloy. And he hadn’t been acting at all like himself, either, if the truth were told. They’d both been almost playful and slightly adventurous and much more informal than they had ever been in each other’s company.

  “It’s this place, isn’t it?” she realized. “Here a person can break all the rules of propriety and not suffer any consequences!”

  Malloy frowned, but she was too busy thinking aloud to notice.

  “In the city, strangers don’t speak to each other, but here they offer advice as if they were dear friends. In the city, a man wouldn’t dare even tip his hat to a woman he didn’t know, but here he can introduce himself to a girl he’s never seen before, treat her to rides and buy her food and even kiss her in the darkness of the tunnels.”

  Malloy was still frowning, but not in disapproval. He was thinking, too. “You’re right. People don’t act like themselves here,” he said. “No one knows them, so they don’t have to worry about what anyone else will think of them.”

  “Which is why young people come here, so they can meet new people and have fun and their families won’t know what they’re doing. A girl can be forward and flirt and do things she wouldn’t dream of doing in her neighborhood where anyone might see her and ruin her reputation. Even going to the dance halls, a girl has to be a little careful because word might get back to her family, but not about what happens on Coney Island.”

  “And men like your friend Dirk come out here to prey on those girls,” Malloy reminded her.

  “Men of all kinds prey on them,” Sarah corrected him. She looked at the crowd passing down the midway before them, hundreds of people of every size and shape and age and status in life. Any one of them might have met Gerda Reinhard and treated her and tempted her and lured her to a dark corner and beaten the life out of her. “It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” she asked in despair.

  “Finding the killer, you mean?”

  She nodded glumly.

  He sighed and watched the crowd with unseeing eyes while he considered. “If it was just one girl, then yes, it would be impossible.”

  “But it wasn’t just one girl, was it?” How could she have forgotten? “There were three others! I found out their names from Gerda’s friends. I was going to tell you today, but in all the excitement, I forgot!”

  He didn’t look at her. “They were Eva Bower, Luisa Isenberg, and Fredrika Lutz.”

  “That’s right!” Sarah’s surprise quickly became anger. “You knew all along! You were just playing with me!”

  “Don’t be a fool. I would’ve told you if I did.”

  She supposed this was true, although she really had no way of knowing for sure. “Well, then, if you didn’t know their names before, how do you know them now?”

  “I know Eva’s name because I worked on her case. She was the first one, as near as I can figure, which is why nobody thought it was anything out of the ordinary. Just another girl who took up with the wrong man and got beaten to death for her mistake.”

  “You didn’t investigate?” Sarah was outraged.

  Malloy just gave her one of his long-suffering looks. “She was just like this Gerda. She’d known dozens of men, and the ones we could find all had alibis. Nobody saw it, nobody knew anything, nobody cared.”

  “But what about the others! Why didn’t you start questioning their friends to find out what men they all knew in common?”

  “I didn’t know about the others until you told me the other day, remember?”

  “But you know their names now!”

  “Only because you told me other girls had been killed. I started asking around, and that’s when I found out about the other two cases. Two different detectives had them, and they didn’t know about any of the others, either.”

  “How could this happen? Don’t policemen talk to each other?” Sarah was incredulous.

  Malloy rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if he were getting a headache. “We talk to each other about important cases.”

  “And the deaths of four girls isn’t important?” Sarah cried, but she didn’t need Malloy’s pitying look to remind her that no, these deaths weren’t very important in the grand scheme of things. No one outside their families cared about them, and none of their families had the money or connections necessary to ensure a thorough investigation. Even with all the resources money could buy at their disposal, the police were unlikely to solve any single one of these murders, simply because the pool of suspects was so very large.

  But now Sarah saw a way to surmount all these difficulties. “The deaths of four girls is important if we can prove they were all killed by the same man, especially since he’s likely to kill again.”

  “We don’t know the murders were committed by one man,” Malloy pointed out reasonably.

  This time Sarah was the one giving the pitying look. “Oh, Malloy, I thought we already settled that. All the girls had been to a dance hall, and they were all killed the same way in the same neighborhood. How many men do you think are skulking around the city beating young women to death?”

  “More than you’d like to imagine, I’m sure,” M
alloy said. “And even if one man did kill all these girls, we don’t have any reason to think he’ll kill again.”

  “How can you say that? He’s gotten away with it four times! He must think he’s invincible by now. If anything, he’ll start to kill more often!”

  “What makes you such an expert on the criminal mind, Mrs. Brandt?” he asked sourly.

  Sarah couldn’t resist. “All the training I’ve received from a very wise police detective.”

  Malloy’s expression was priceless, but Sarah didn’t gloat. She merely smiled serenely.

  Malloy finally found his tongue. “Do you feel up to walking back to the trolley station now? I’ve had enough of this place.”

  “So have I,” Sarah agreed. “On the way back to the city, we can discuss how we’re going to proceed with our investigation.”

  SARAH WAS ACTUALLY quite surprised that Malloy had agreed to allow her to help investigate the murders. She’d only been teasing him when she suggested they work out a system, but he had been willing—if not eager—for her to assist him. Apparently, the investigation into the murders of all the other girls had been abandoned just as Malloy had abandoned his, and for the same reasons. Sarah suspected that Malloy felt a bit guilty for not trying harder to solve the case that had been his originally, even though they both agreed the task had been hopeless with only one victim. Now, of course, they had a way of narrowing down the list of suspects.

  Sarah had planned to begin with Gerda’s sister first thing the next day, but an early morning call delayed her. By the time she’d brought a healthy baby boy safely into the world, it was late in the afternoon. Men were returning to their homes carrying their now empty lunch pails, and the smells of thousands of suppers being prepared filled the hot, summer air as thunderclouds gathered overhead. At least a storm might break the oppressive heat.

  Sarah hated to intrude on the Otto family at this time of day, and she certainly didn’t want to encounter Lars Otto again, but she also didn’t want to lose any more time in her quest to find Gerda’s killer. Maybe she could catch Agnes before her husband came home from work.