Kevin and Blossom made their way around the end of the block to the service alley behind the house, where Kevin knocked softly on the kitchen door, a measured tattoo that beat out a code not shared with clients. The woman who welcomed him with open arms was taller than he by a full two heads, and it would have taken three or four Kevins to match her weight.
“Are you delivering something for himself?” she asked, rubbing vigorously on Blossom’s flea-bitten ears. Himself being Billy McGlory, whose name it was sometimes best not to mention aloud.
“Not tonight, Miss Brenda.” If Mr. McGlory chose to tell Big Brenda what it was about, that was his task to do. Until he received further instructions, Kevin would say as little as possible. “There’s some information as is needed about one of the gentlemen.”
“Is there now? You’d better come in and sit yourself down at the table. I’ll send word up to herself that you’re here.”
Herself was a madam whose house was bankrolled by McGlory, protected by the Metropolitan Police, and patronized by a stellar roster of political and financial bigwigs. Jolene had started her new life in America as a Gaelic speaking immigrant whose thick accent in English had been almost impenetrable when she got off the boat. She soon discovered that the accent meant she could claim any nationality she chose, and that deciding to be French brought a higher price for what she was selling on her back. Or any other position a client wanted. She’d been at it for more than twenty years now; there were times when she imagined she actually was French. Nobody cared enough to challenge her.
“What is it, Kevin? Brenda says you’re here for information.” Madame Jolene dressed in black silk, her low cut bodice and bustled skirts heavily beaded with black crystals and shiny jet that reflected candle and gas light in hundreds of tiny explosions. Perfumed, rouged, and powdered, coal black hair swept atop her head and liberally sprinkled with more of the black crystals and jet beads, Jolene was frighteningly beautiful, a fairytale witch come to life. She no longer drank alcohol or indulged in laudanum, seldom gambled on anything less sure than herself, and had a reputation among her girls for being fair and occasionally generous—if you worked hard. Met your quota. Satisfied your clients. Didn’t get pregnant. Like McGlory, she had a weak spot for Kevin Carney. Few people knew why. No one dared ask.
“His name is Joseph Nolan. Himself wants the complete story on him.”
“The complete story, is it? That may take some time. He’s just gone up with Sally Lynn. Paid for two hours. If he has any secrets, Sally Lynn will know what they are, but you’ll have to wait until he’s through.”
“I can do that.”
“Brenda will see that you get something to eat. The dog, too.” Kevin looked so much like Jolene’s youngest brother, long dead of poverty and the cholera, that every time she saw him she had to fight back tears. It didn’t do to remember too often what you’d left behind. “The cot in the shed’s made up, if you want it. You can take a pot of charcoal out with you.” She always made the offer and he always turned it down.
“Two hours you say?”
“He seldom stays longer than that. But he never stays less, either.”
“I wonder what he does for two hours.” In Kevin’s experience, ten minutes was ample time to milk the wiener.
*
One of Madame Jolene’s rules was that unless a client turned violent, a girl couldn’t pick and choose who she’d go with, go with being the euphemism for whatever the client requested and could pay for. Not that Sally Lynn had anything against dressing up and playacting, but what Mr. Nolan wanted gave her the shivers. The same thing every time. Never any variety. And if she tried to introduce something new, he’d turn cold and mean eyed until she fell back into the regular routine. He was the most baffling client she’d ever had, but at least he wasn’t dangerous. Mind numbingly repetitive, but safe. And he tipped well, which, since Madame allowed a girl to keep half of what a client thought was a little something extra just for her, made Joseph Nolan bearable.
He liked to give directions, as if she didn’t know how it started or what came next.
“Everything,” he instructed, “take off everything.”
He flicked a small cat-o’-nine-tails up and down, never striking her with it, never allowing it to come close enough to hit her accidentally. He seemed to be satisfied with the sound and the sight of the whip swishing through the air. She had to pretend to be afraid, which she did, mewling like a lost kitten, batting her eyes rapidly, fumbling at the belt to the Chinese robe she wore.
When Nolan had first brought the costume he wanted her to wear she’d almost laughed. Caught herself just in time, warned off by the look on his face—as though he were trapped in a trance or a vision, head tilted upward, eyes half rolled back in their sockets, mouth open but soundless. He held the soft black serge and the starched white linen on his outstretched hands until she was ready, until she had washed every inch of her body with the special odorless soap he had brought. When she was cleansed and dry he slipped the black gown over her head, sighing in contentment as the graceful folds covered her from neck to feet. He looped a white rope around her waist, tying three knots in each of the two pieces hanging down along the line of her skirt. Finally, he slid the starched white linen wimple over her head, tugging until only her face peered out of its folds. He pinned a white veil to the starched headband of the wimple, then stepped back to admire his novice nun.
If that had been all, Sally Lynn would have hiked her skirts up and gotten on with it. Some clients never removed a single garment during the whole experience; they were usually the ones who paid for thirty minutes and finished with time left over. But with Joseph Nolan, the costuming was just the beginning. There were prayers to say, which she had to repeat word for word after him because she had only the vaguest idea what the Latin meant. She folded her hands in the traditional prayer position, genuflected, stood up, took a few steps, genuflected again. She bent from the waist, resting her hands on her knees, then knelt with arms outstretched and head bowed. He watched, correcting her posture, the angle at which she held her head, the smoothness with which she dropped to one knee and got up again. Always the same actions performed in the identical sequence, always the incomprehensible Latin phrases.
The first time Joseph Nolan had put on a priest’s collar and cassock Sally Lynn was stunned. He looked so authentic, as if he’d just stepped down from the altar.
“Father?” she’d exclaimed.
He’d blessed her, and when they were finished gave her the largest tip she had ever received.
The part Sally Lynn really disliked was when he knelt, bared his back to her, and crossed both arms against his chest. She knew what it meant, and that it wouldn’t do any good to refuse. Madame Jolene would blame her if he took his fat purse elsewhere. Rules were rules, and it wasn’t Sally Lynn who was beaten until rivulets of blood bubbled up through broken skin.
Nolan wept as she laid on the lash, but wouldn’t allow her to lessen the pain by letting up on the strokes. The few times she tried, he grew frighteningly angry; it was the closest he came to turning the whip on her. He wanted to suffer. He insisted that she beat him with the full strength of her arm. She turned her attention inward, raising and lowering the cat-o’-nine-tails mechanically. Eventually she was only vaguely aware of what she was doing.
*
“The first time he came he used a different name, but he doesn’t bother with that anymore. It’s Joseph Nolan, all right.” There were clients waiting in the parlors, but Madame Jolene had instructed Sally Lynn to answer Kevin’s questions. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to invite Carney and his dog into her private office, so Big Brenda had cleared off a space at the end of the long kitchen worktable, setting down a pot of the heavy stewed tea that kept the Irish working class going when there wasn’t enough food to fill their bellies … which there seldom, if ever, was.
Tuesday was one of two weekly baking days at the brothel, the same as in a well-run priva
te home. So there was white bread and butter, slices of rich yellow cake smeared with dollops of currant jelly, and twisted pieces of unsweetened dough into which sharp cheddar cheese had been mixed. For every two bites Kevin Carney took, Blossom received at least one.
“We pretended we didn’t know who he was, as we do for all of our gentlemen clients who prefer to be called by an alias, but I make it a point not to do business with anyone whose identity I can’t discover.” Madame Jolene crunched down on one of the cheese straws. It would have tasted even more delicious with a nice glass of sherry, she thought regretfully, but she’d vowed herself off spirits after a disastrous night she’d rather not remember, and she wasn’t a woman to go back on her promises. “Tell Kevin what he needs to know, Sally Lynn.”
And so she did, unselfconsciously providing details that soon had Big Brenda’s shoulders jerking with suppressed laughter. The cook had left them alone at the table, but she didn’t miss a word Sally Lynn said as she mixed puddings and chopped soup vegetables for the next day’s lunch. Working hours were topsy-turvy, as the whores were at their busiest when respectable women slept. Since Big Brenda herself had once entertained clients, though she had unfortunately and rather quickly grown too tall and too broad for the job, she was neither shocked nor surprised by what she heard.
There were men who liked girls to dress up like their mothers or the upstairs chamber maid, others who could only achieve release when teased along with pinafores. One death obsessed client had paid handsomely to have a coffin stored in a spare closet; he eventually bought out his girl’s contract and set her up in her own house, presumably decorated as an undertaker’s establishment. Over the years Big Brenda had heard just about everything, but nothing had tickled her funny bone quite as much as the thought of Joseph Nolan dressing Sally Lynn up as a nun.
“You can forget you were ever asked about him,” Kevin instructed when Sally Lynn had dredged up every bit of information she could remember about her best paying client. He slid a five-dollar Liberty gold piece across the table, but it got no farther than Madame Jolene’s fingers. Sally Lynn shrugged her shoulders; she knew she’d eventually get her half if there was enough left over after her tab had been paid for the month.
“Back to work,” Madame Jolene instructed.
Sally Lynn took another gulp of the strong, sugary tea that would have to see her through until closing time. Nobody wanted a drunken whore in a well run house, neither clients nor madam, so whatever a girl drank in the parlors was liberally watered down. She wondered what Big Brenda was fixing for the meal she served at the end of the night. You slept better on a full stomach. No one knew that better than a girl who’d cried until morning because the hunger pains kept waking her up. Sometimes, toward the end of an evening, food was all she could think of. Clients thought the anticipatory smile was for them; it wasn’t.
One more mouthful of tea and she was off.
“I’ll give the floor a good sweep and a mopping,” Big Brenda said as she closed and locked the door behind Kevin and his dog. Their smell lingered in the kitchen, despite the aromas coming from the oven and the pots steaming on the cookstove.
Madame Jolene drew in a deep breath. Unwashed human and unwashed dog. Urine soaked alleyways and rotting garbage. The sharp tang of the newsprint they wrapped themselves in to keep out the cold. Kevin wouldn’t last much longer. Neither would Blossom. Life on the streets was always short and usually violent. She thought of the little brother who had died so long ago, and who would have looked just like Kevin Carney if he’d lived to become a man. Probably better that he didn’t, given the years of suffering life would have brought him.
Madame Jolene rubbed at the ink stain on her right forefinger. She’d tot up her accounts again tonight. Once upon a time she had dreamed of getting rich enough to sell out, but that had never been a realistic aspiration. The best she could hope for was a fat cushion to keep her safe, coins enough in her purse to continue paying off the police and to pay back, with interest, what Billy McGlory had advanced her, what he now demanded as a silent partner. You could depend on Billy, but only if you played the game his way. It was how she ran the house, and why they understood one another so well.
Flipping the gold Liberty five-dollar piece in the air and catching it on the fly, Madame Jolene went back to work.
CHAPTER 18
Mick McGuire understood what he was in for as soon as he was arrested. The way they did it told him everything he needed to know. He wasn’t quietly ushered out of his precinct through a rear door and taken down to Mulberry Street for a private talk with the detective in charge of the case. Not on your life. They came to his boarding house the Tuesday morning after Ellen was killed, when he was supposed to be off shift and after he’d been up all night drinking whiskey to drown his sorrows. The timing wasn’t accidental; they’d planned it that way.
Hands cuffed behind his back, uniform coat hanging wrinkled and unbuttoned from his shoulders, unshaven face mottled and drawn, Mick McGuire stumbled down Mrs. Ansbro’s immaculate front steps while a crowd of street urchins booed him on and reporters waved their notebooks in the air. Just in case anyone could be in doubt, the coppers hanging on to his arms volunteered his name more than a few times and confirmed that yes, he was being arrested for the brutal murder of Ellen Tierney, his erstwhile girlfriend. Her that was found in Mr. Francis Nolan’s stable yard Sunday morning, and a terrible thing done to her they weren’t at liberty to discuss until Captain Byrnes decided to release the details.
Mick had ridden in a Black Maria before, of course, but never as a prisoner in cuffs and leg irons to keep him from toppling between the two rows of wooden benches. The same coppers who would have drunk a beer or two or three with him at the end of a working day stared at him with frank disgust. A really bad cop made all of them look worse than they were and gave the reformers more ammunition. What the hell was the matter with him? He didn’t have to kill the girl, did he? And then cut her up like that? There wasn’t a shred of sympathy or understanding for Mick McGuire. The chief of detectives had ordered it to be that way.
McGuire was too important an arrest to trust to someone who might be tempted to go easy on him. With Steven Phelan to lend a hand from time to time, Byrnes himself put on the black gloves, lit a cigar that would envelop the suspect’s head in fumes, and set to work.
“Why did you kill her, McGuire?”
“I didn’t, sir. I swear to God I didn’t.”
Byrnes gave him no time to catch his breath and choke back the vomit a punch to his midsection had spewed out. He hammered him like a boxer softening up his opponent before landing the hit that would knock him out. Mick’s head snapped from side to side, the bones in his neck cracking with every twist. His ribs caved in under a fusillade of precisely timed blows not quite heavy enough to break them in half and puncture his lungs. Pain was the goal of the third degree, pain and confession. The Metropolitan Police had perfected their favorite method of interrogation; they seldom killed a prisoner outright because more often than not they got the cooperation they were after.
McGuire had seen and participated in too many third degrees not to know how they were run. He knew exactly what was coming to him. Whether it would prompt him to confess to a crime he hadn’t committed before his face got battered beyond repair and his jaw broken was a moot point. He was determined to keep on protesting his innocence, given the fact that a rope waited for him if he admitted guilt. The first time he passed out, Byrnes motioned to Steven Phelan to throw a bucket of vinegar water on the prisoner. Ostensibly it was to clean out his wounds, but in reality the stinging burn of the raw vinegar sometimes broke a man faster than fists.
McGuire shook his head like a bear getting ready for the dogs, but he couldn’t stand; they’d tied him to a splintery wooden chair.
“We can make it go easy or hard on you. You know that. So now tell me. Why did you kill Ellen Tierney? Was it because she was pregnant? Is that why you did it?”
McGuire stared down at the wet floor, at his polished boots soaking in the vinegar water. He’d had his suspicions when she started talking about marriage all the time, but he hadn’t been sure. He should have moved faster, should have gotten himself out of Mrs. Ansbro’s comfortable room before the murder happened. The boarding house was too close to where the body had been found. Dumped. He tried to think, tried to come up with an alibi for the time when she was being killed, but he didn’t have one.
He’d worked Sunday, but only half a shift. They’d sent a couple of men out to take him to the mortuary where he’d stared at the body and couldn’t believe it was really her. All that glorious red hair lying stiff with blood around her head, the crimson and black necklace under her chin. That’s what coppers called a slit throat, a necklace, especially if it was a woman wearing it. Nobody was accusing him of anything then. That happened later, when Byrnes had had a chance to think about it and pick out his suspect. By that time, McGuire knew it was all over for him. It was too late. His only hope was not to crack under the third degree, to hold on and pray that another killing while he was behind bars would eventually set him free.
He knew how prisoners broke under the third degree, spilling out one at a time the facts that condemned them. The important thing was never to say anything, not to respond to any of the questions, to ignore the goading designed to make a guilty man explode. Once you started talking, you didn’t stop. And while he knew he wasn’t guilty, Mick also knew that many an innocent man had been railroaded straight to the gallows. He wouldn’t be a scapegoat for anyone, he decided, clenching his teeth and sending his mind somewhere else. They could beat him all they wanted, he wouldn’t crack. He’d never beg them to stop, never trade the lies they wanted to hear for an end to pain.
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 18