Lies That Comfort and Betray

by Rosemary Simpson

  “For the moment I’ll choose to believe you. But if I find out differently …” Pastore spun on his heel, sending a spray of small white pebbles across the grass. Within moments he had reached the cemetery’s back gate.

  Before she could weigh the result of what she was about to do and before he could disappear into the shadows of the pine grove, Prudence rushed after him. She waved Geoffrey back, vigorously shaking her head no at him.

  Pastore turned when he heard the sound of her running feet on the graveled walk.

  “Wait,” she called out, “please wait. It’s important.”

  He hesitated, remained where he was, one hand on the gate.

  “There’s something you should be told,” Prudence said, the words tumbling out as she caught her breath. “Nora wouldn’t have kept it a secret much longer. You have a right to know.”

  “Know what, Miss MacKenzie? If you’re going to tell me she had decided to go through with the marriage to Fahey, I won’t believe you.”

  “She was pregnant, Mr. Pastore. Nora was going to have your child.”

  “That’s a lie. She would have told me.” Disbelief warred with some other emotion deep in his eyes. The muscles of his face contorted, the hand on the gate clenched into a fist.

  “I think she was about to do just that. I can’t be certain, but it would be logical for her to try to confirm her condition before she said anything. Perhaps that’s what was so important that she was in too much of a hurry to wait when she left the basket at the kitchen door.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “I do.” Prudence took a piece of paper from the pocket of her coat. She had asked Josiah to hire a copyist to make two duplicates of the entries in Nora’s diary. One copy remained at the office, the other she brought home. This morning she had taken the most important page with her when she left the house.

  She handed it to Dominic. “It’s a copy,” she said, “so the handwriting isn’t Nora’s. But the words are hers.”

  *

  “What do you think, Prudence?” Geoffrey asked.

  “He didn’t kill her either.”

  “Is that why you told him she was pregnant?”

  “How did you know?”

  “By the look on your face and his reaction.” Geoffrey took her arm to guide her along the pebbled path to the horse and buggy they had rented at the ferry dock. “I should have stopped you.”

  “Why?”

  “In my book Pastore is still a suspect, and now he knows everything we do. That’s never a good idea. We don’t have any more leverage over him.”

  “I thought he had a right to know, Geoffrey. It was his child she was carrying.” Prudence stopped, waited until he, too, came to a halt. Faced her. “I think you’re wrong,” she said as strongly as if he weren’t far more experienced than she. As if he weren’t the ex-Pinkerton authority in all things criminal. “You may not agree with me, but I’m right. I know I am. Dominic Pastore did not kill and mutilate Nora.”

  “Are you saying he’s incapable of killing?”

  “No. I think he could be a dangerous man. But I believe very strongly that he was as much in love with her as she with him. He wouldn’t have hurt her, no matter what she did. Even if she decided to marry Tim Fahey to satisfy her parents and keep a family feud from breaking out on the island. Even then, he wouldn’t have harmed her.”

  “Have you ever heard of the Black Hand, Prudence?”

  “I’ve read about them. Aren’t they Italian gangsters who extort money in places like Little Italy?”

  “They threaten kidnapping or murder if the victim doesn’t pay. And they send a letter signed with the symbol of an upraised hand in black ink. Sometimes there’s a stiletto piercing the hand.”

  “What does that have to do with Dominic Pastore?”

  “I think his father may be Vincente Pastore. Did you notice the suit he was wearing? The shoes? All handmade and very expensive. Vincente Pastore didn’t have two coins to rub together when he came to this country from Sicily. All he had was a reputation. Now he owns one of Staten Island’s highest hilltops. He built a house and a compound the police would love to be able to raid. But he doesn’t give them any provocation. I don’t know how or when your Nora and Vincente’s son came together, but she must have known what she was letting herself in for.”

  “How do you know this, Geoffrey?”

  “It goes back to when I was a Pinkerton. I can’t talk about the case or who hired us, but I can tell you that Vincente Pastore is probably one of the most lethal men I’ve ever investigated.”

  “You’re not saying he killed Nora because of Dominic? Please tell me that’s not what you mean.”

  “He doesn’t do his own jobs anymore, but Vincente employs men who kill on his orders. It’s a possibility we can’t ignore.”

  “I refuse to believe Dominic would ever consent to something like that.”

  “He wouldn’t have known about it, Prudence.”

  “Nora’s parents had no idea who she was involved with. As far as we can tell, no one else did, either.”

  “A man like Pastore survives because he always has an ear to the ground. He pays well for information. He knows everything about everyone. He was probably told about his son as soon as an informant realized he and Nora were getting serious about one another.”

  “Then why didn’t he put a stop to it? Order Dominic not to see her anymore.”

  “I imagine he wanted the boy to sow his wild oats, and perhaps he thought he’d come to his senses once the passion burned itself out. Rebellion is not something he would expect from his son.”

  “Where do you think Tim Fahey is, Geoffrey? Is he even still alive?”

  “You heard Dominic say the ocean is deep.”

  “Are the police that corrupt?”

  “I think they have him stashed in a cell somewhere until they decide what to do with him. The third degree didn’t break him. Phelan has to be wondering why.”

  Her thoughts flew to the handsome young Sicilian who might have escaped his father’s past if Nora had lived, if they had managed to put Staten Island behind them and start over in a place where no one knew who they were. She imagined Tim Fahey lying on the floor of a freezing cell, determined not to give in to the men who were torturing him, stubbornly refusing to believe that the girl he loved had betrayed him. One life destroyed, two others ruined beyond redemption.

  Oh, Nora, what did you get yourself into? What made you do it?

  CHAPTER 9

  The ferry back to Manhattan was only slightly more crowded than on the outward run, but the wind had picked up enough to discourage passengers from standing on deck. Prudence and Geoffrey settled onto a padded bench in a corner of the main saloon. After the fresh breezes of Staten Island, the indoor cabin air smelled stale and heavy.

  “Geoffrey, you told Dominic we had feelers out,” Prudence began.

  “I exaggerated. Josiah’s contacts are all in the court system and mine are largely left over from my Pinkerton days. This isn’t the kind of case where those types of informants will do us much good. Our killer is buried too deep.”

  “Is it possible he hasn’t killed before now?” Prudence asked. “That he isn’t known to the police because he doesn’t have an arrest record?”

  “I think that’s more likely than not. Career criminals are caught because they repeat themselves too many times. Their modus operandi becomes a recognizable signature. Any detective worth his salt can list dozens of characteristics he uses to weed through any number of suspects. A burglar who always enters through a rear window at a certain time of night, for instance. A pickpocket who works the same streets over and over again because they’re familiar to him and he feels comfortable there. Until he’s caught. Murderers repeat themselves, too.”

  “I was hoping Dominic would be able to tell us something more than we already know.”

  “Other than informing him she’d be working on Fifth Avenue, Nora kept him in the dark about w
here she was going and what she planned to do. Deliberately.”

  “The pregnancy, Geoffrey. It changed everything for her.”

  “Either she wanted it confirmed and was afraid to go to a doctor or midwife on Staten Island or someone had given her a name and she’d decided to get rid of it.”

  “Nora was too Catholic for that.”

  “Religion doesn’t matter when you’re desperate.”

  “You saw Dominic’s face. He would have welcomed a child.”

  “Now that it’s too late.”

  “What do we do next?”

  “Ned Hayes. We pay a visit to Ned Hayes.”

  *

  There’d been a rumor in the bars frequented by New York City coppers that not only was ex-detective Edwin “Ned” Hayes still alive despite the drugs and the drink, but he was mixed up with Billy McGlory again. He’d been seen going into McGlory’s Armory Hall Saloon and Casino on Hester Street—going in then coming out all in one piece and looking very pleased with himself—which could only mean that his odd friendship with one of the city’s most notorious criminals was on again. Favors had been exchanged, but no one knew for certain what they entailed.

  “Your reputation will be in tatters if word leaks out you were here, Miss Prudence,” Ned Hayes said. He raised a crystal glass to his unexpected visitors. Geoffrey sipped the Kentucky bourbon Hayes preferred to all other drinks. Prudence had asked for tea.

  “If not this it’ll be something else,” she said. “I’m beginning to realize how heavy a burden maintaining a good reputation can be.”

  She was also understanding that just as Ned Hayes had never fit the Tammany mold, and Geoffrey couldn’t be shaped into the perfect Pinkerton, neither could she ever become the type of woman her social class demanded she be. Some moments were pivotal in an individual’s life; he or she was never the same afterward.

  Injustices had eaten away at Ned Hayes until his only option was to resign from the police department before he was booted out. Geoffrey had never divulged the details of his quarrel with Allan Pinkerton, only that neither man had ever forgiven the other. And a fierce, transforming anger had washed over Prudence at Bellevue when she’d looked down at Nora’s body.

  Prudence felt more akin now to these two men who considered themselves outsiders than to any woman she could name. Life had opened up a field of choices she had never dreamed could be hers to make. She had already decided that docile spouse of a wealthy and domineering husband would not be one of them.

  She wondered what her deceased father would say if she could explain it to him.

  “There’s one person who can get the kind of information you need,” Hayes said.

  “That’s why we came to you.”

  “Such a compliment, Geoffrey. It betrays your Southern roots.”

  “No one else can get anything from him, Ned. You know that’s true.”

  “McGlory can’t be held back if he decides to go off on his own. It’s a risky chance to take,” Hayes cautioned.

  “I don’t see that we have any choice.” Geoffrey wasn’t prepared to compromise.

  “Miss Prudence?”

  “I told Geoffrey that in my opinion the monster who killed Nora is somewhere in Manhattan. It’s not her fiancé or the handsome Sicilian she was about to jilt Fahey for. We have no leads, Ned. This man is a bottom feeder; he thrives on evil we can barely imagine. The only way we’ll find him is through the kind of information your friend McGlory gathers to stay in business. He wouldn’t be able to keep his saloon open if he didn’t know who to bribe or blackmail, if he didn’t have his finger on the pulse of everyone and everything that’s most corrupt in this city.”

  “I have to warn you again that McGlory is a law unto himself,” Hayes insisted. “It would be a grave mistake to believe I can have any influence over him once he sets his mind to something.”

  “All we’re asking is that he pass along to us anything his network of spies and informers hears that could shed some light on why an Irish maid was brutally murdered and then butchered,” Geoffrey said. “Someone had to have seen or heard something. Told someone else as the price of a drink.”

  “Agreed. You’ll never find him on your own without help.” Hayes swirled the golden brown liquid around in one of the crystal glasses that had come north in his Southern mother’s trousseau. Whiskey tasted better when it was drunk out of heavy lead crystal, so there were only a few of the trousseau glasses left. One by one they’d fallen from his numbed fingers and shattered on the floor beside the chair in which he passed out. For almost a year now, he’d been closer to sobriety than he’d been since the black day when the Tammany Hall bosses ordered him off the force. His crime had been to save Billy McGlory’s life and see to it the saloon keeper was nursed back to health. Hayes had slipped now and then, but not all the way down, not as far as he’d once plunged.

  The drugs still dulled his appetite and kept him far too slender, but his silvery gold hair was clean, curled, and only lightly touched with strands of gray. The deep blue eyes shone clear of broken blood vessels, and the once blotched drunkard’s skin was as smooth and unmarked as a baby’s bottom. Ned Hayes had been born looking angelic; there hadn’t been a year of his life when women weren’t irresistibly drawn to him. Not much about his appearance changed as he grew older. Tyrus kept a close eye on him, as faithful in freedom as he’d once been bound in slavery. But if it hadn’t been for the cases thrown his way by Geoffrey Hunter, not even old Tyrus’s loving sternness could have saved Ned Hayes from the slow death he’d been chasing ever since the war.

  “He’ll kill again, Ned,” Geoffrey said.

  “The only thing that will stop him is his own death,” Ned agreed. “From what you’ve told me, he planned the Kenny girl’s murder very carefully and in great detail. He’s not a stupid man. Far from it. The fact that no one seems to have seen him carrying the body from wherever he killed her to Colonial Park is the least believable part of the whole tale. Someone saw him. He just hasn’t stepped out of the shadows yet.”

  “But you think Billy McGlory can find out who he is?”

  “I’m as sure of that as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow and Tyrus will be chiding me not to drink so much.” Hayes smiled and set down his glass. “I know what you’re going to ask, Miss Prudence. And no, you can’t go to Armory Hall to meet Billy McGlory. It’s no place for a lady. The police in this city wink at what goes on as long as they get their graft every week, but that doesn’t make what they ignore any less dangerous. I’ll call in another favor from Billy, but then we’ll have to sit back and wait. Eventually he’ll decide he’s paid his debt to me in full. When that day comes, even I won’t dare go to Armory Hall.”

  *

  “Why should I care if a girl gets herself pregnant and then killed? It happens every day in this city.” Billy McGlory ordered only the best French champagne served on Ned Hayes’s infrequent visits. He knew the ex-detective’s weakness for stronger drink and the drugs he himself never touched. Part of the debt he owed Hayes for saving his life was not to hurry along his disintegration. Champagne was like expensive water to Ned, and now that Tyrus had succeeded in weaning him off the worst of the narcotics, Billy saw to it that when Hayes did buy, he got only the best, uncut with rat poison or talc. He took his obligations seriously.

  “A copycat Ripper would be bad for business,” Ned said. He thought Billy looked exceptionally prosperous tonight, clad as always in black, with a blindingly large diamond stickpin lighting up his Irish face. Dark eyes and hair, pale skin that never saw the light of day, a thick, sweeping mustache glistening with brilliantine. McGlory was the king of New York vice, but Ned had never seen him drunk, never known him to be anything but in full control of every one of his senses. His one slip had taught him a hard lesson he never forgot.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever killed Nora Kenny will kill again. And again. The coppers will eventually have to concede to the newspapers that the murders
are connected. And when they do, your business will drop like a granite tombstone. Nobody will believe he’ll stop at killing just women. Men who don’t think twice about coming to the Armory now will decide to stay home rather than risk dark streets and alleyways. Wives will plead with husbands not to leave them alone, and they won’t. You’ll lose money, Billy, a lot of money. And you won’t begin raking it in again until the Ripper copycat is caught and executed. Or killed outright one of these nights.”

  “And all you want is information?”

  “All we want is the service of the eyes and ears that keep you informed about everything that happens on the streets and in the saloons. The brothels, too,” Hayes added. “Somebody saw or heard something. You know there’s no such thing as the perfect murder. Never has been. Never will be.”

  “Where are the coppers in all of this?”

  “Byrnes wants the murder off his books. A detective named Phelan has arrested the girl’s fiancé, a fisherman from Staten Island called Fahey. He’s got him stashed somewhere in the Tombs.”

  “A fisherman?”

  “The girl was gutted, Billy. Phelan figures she cheated on Fahey, who’s good with a knife. Means, motivation, opportunity. He thinks he’s got an open and shut case.”

  “But you don’t agree.”

  “I’m here because Miss MacKenzie and Geoffrey Hunter have asked for my help.”

  “And they knew you’d come to me.”

  “Who else? Nobody in the city has the kind of setup you do.”

  “I’ll think about it, Ned,” McGlory said. Which meant he’d more than likely grant Hayes’s request.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do any more than that, Billy. Just put the word out. See what happens. Wait for someone who saw something to crawl out of his hole.”

  Both of them knew it wouldn’t take long.

  *

  “What did you see?” Billy McGlory stood at the end of the long bar in Armory Hall. A circle of respectful silence moved with him wherever he went. If you needed or wanted to talk to McGlory you waited until you were invited to approach. Usually, unless you worked for him or you had something he wanted, the summons didn’t come.