McGlory turned to the slender stranger in the black coat. “You’ve a claim on him that I intend to honor.”
“He’s dead now. That’s all that’s required.”
“Is that enough?” McGlory nudged the knife with one immaculately shod foot. “Do what you want.”
Dominic Pastore shook his head. “Nolan owed Nora his life and he’s paid the debt. He very nearly had the whole of his throat ripped out while he was still conscious. It’s over.”
“Then we’ll leave him for the police to deal with.” McGlory held the carriage lamp above his head and nodded to his bodyguards. “Take a last look around. Make sure there’s nothing that could link him to Miss MacKenzie. Or to ourselves. One of you tell the first beat copper you run into that you saw a dog come running out of the Carousel with blood dripping from its mouth. Tell him you think someone’s been attacked. Give him this.”
Billy held out one of the five dollar gold Eagle coins he was never without. No awkward questions would be asked.
*
“It’s him, all right,” Detective Phelan said. “It’s Joseph Nolan.”
“His throat’s been gnawed and the blood vessels punctured.” Ned had seen worse during his days as a New York Metropolitan Police detective, but not by much.
“He didn’t die easily.” Geoffrey Hunter picked up the butcher knife that lay within a finger’s reach of one of Nolan’s hands. “It doesn’t look as though he had time to defend himself. The knife’s clean.”
“A dog? Or a pack of dogs?” Hayes asked.
“One dog was seen running out of the Carousel area with a bloody muzzle. That’s all we know. The policeman didn’t get the name of the man who gave him the information.”
“Paid off?”
Phelan shrugged. “Probably.”
“At least we can be certain Prudence and Josiah didn’t see this,” Geoffrey said. “Danny must have spotted their cab following him and shaken them off.”
Ned Hayes held up the nun’s habit with its now filthy white linen wimple and white novice’s veil. “This is what he had Sally Lynn wear.” He bent to retrieve the knotted cord, the rosary, and the priest’s Roman collar and cassock. “There can’t be any doubt.”
“Do we let the reporters in?” The copper who asked the question stared at the bloody corpse then shook his head. If he’d been the first to discover the body, he’d have found a way to make it pay.
“Might as well,” Phelan answered.
Chief of Detectives Tom Byrnes would want as much good publicity out of this as they could get. A third woman was dead, but so was the man who’d killed her. And the others. There was a tidiness about what had happened to Joseph Nolan that would appeal to the readers of New York’s daily newspapers.
A killer who cut his victims open needed to die at least as badly. The reporters would emphasize the coroner’s conclusion that Nolan had sliced his victims after they were dead while he himself had had his throat ripped open while he was still alive. The symmetry was good. Someone would point out that it hadn’t been the police who’d caught him, but one of the animals wandering the city streets, living off whatever it could scrounge or kill. By that time the reading public would be so relieved they wouldn’t care. Once Fahey and McGuire were released and their innocence confirmed, the story would be as dead and buried as Joseph Nolan.
“I’ll go back to Madame Jolene’s place,” Geoffrey said. “Tie up the loose ends.”
As far as the Metropolitan Police was concerned, there weren’t any loose ends. Tammany would use its influence to bury whatever needed to be concealed. Phelan wanted to wrap up this case as quickly as he could. If there were still some unanswered questions he could live with that. As long as there weren’t any more slit-throat murders. One of the reporters had coined that phrase after Ellen Tierney’s death, slit-throat murder, and it had caught the popular imagination.
“Go ahead. There won’t be any of my men there and I’ve released the crime scene. Big Brenda will be pushing the maids to get all of the rooms ready so the house can open on time tonight.”
“Sally Lynn’s?”
“I didn’t see any point keeping it locked up. The coroner examined the body on site and we bagged up anything that could be used as evidence. There’s nothing more to find.”
“I’ll tell Madame Jolene that one of her best clients won’t be coming back. It’ll settle down the rest of the girls to know he’s dead. No more threat. No danger.”
“There’s danger every time they take a john inside a room and close the door behind them. The whores know it, I know it, and you know it.” Phelan didn’t like having to deal with what was routinely done to ladies of the night. Chokings, beatings, disfiguring knife wounds. Prostitutes were among the most vulnerable of the city’s inhabitants; their lives were usually short and brutal. Nobody defended them, not even the pimps and madams who lived off their earnings.
“I’ll come with you, Geoff,” Ned Hayes offered. He handed over the bloodied bundle of clothing whose symbolism had so obsessed the dead man. The heavy wooden rosary snagged on the buttons of his coat.
“Keep it as a souvenir,” Phelan laughed. “We’ve got enough to prove Nolan did it. Killed Sally Lynn and two other women as well. I don’t think Captain Byrnes will want to hold that rosary up at a press conference and have to explain how it was used. I doubt you’ll read anything at all in the papers about the kind of dress up games Nolan liked to play. Archbishop Corrigan would be all over Byrnes in a minute. The Church runs a lot of this city from behind the scenes. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“What loose ends were you talking about?” Ned asked quietly as he and Hunter walked up the ramp into cold, bright sunlight. He tried shoving the rosary into one of his coat pockets, but it wouldn’t fit.
“I don’t know. I may have to figure them out on the way.”
Ned stopped to coil the rosary and wrap his scarf around it. “Does it strike you that the solution to this case suddenly became too convenient, too neat?”
“Much too neat. Coincidental, too. I don’t trust coincidences and I don’t like easy answers.”
CHAPTER 29
It would be said later that his son’s death forever changed Francis Patrick Nolan, but that wasn’t true. The boy had always been a disappointment to his father, so it wasn’t Joseph’s loss that ate away at him. It was knowledge of the secret life his son had led.
The story appeared in all of New York City’s daily papers. Newsboys shouted the grislier bits on every street corner. “Avenger dog rips Slit-Throat Killer.”
Joseph Nolan’s body lay in the Bellevue morgue viewing room for crowds to come and gawk at until his enraged parents paid Warneke and Sons Mortuary Services an exorbitant sum to haul it away at night when there would be no witnesses to document where the corpse had been taken. Hastily but well embalmed, Joseph was buried in the churchyard of an obscure parish miles outside the city. No stone marked the grave, then or ever.
Christmas was approaching. New Yorkers forgot about the Slit-Throat Killer as soon as they crumpled up their newspapers and used them to light their kitchen fires. All but the father. Detective Phelan had told him the truth about Joseph’s odd predilections at Madame Jolene’s, while at the same time assuring him that the police department had decided to sit on the details. The humiliation of siring a son who pranced around in a priest’s cassock and paid a whore to dress up like a nun burned at Francis Nolan until the only thing left was a hard nugget of stubbornly unquenchable anger.
He stopped talking to his wife and daughter. Meals were taken in a silence broken only by the clatter of silverware against a plate. Lillian retreated into the laudanum haze she’d flirted with for years. Alice made quiet preparations to enter the Visitation convent in Brooklyn. She’d mentioned it once, and once only, the day of Joseph’s burial, before her da erected his wall of silence.
“Go,” he’d said bitterly. “Go wherever the hell you want. I’ll not stand in your way.�
�
When she asked for the money she needed for the dowry the Visitation order required, he’d scribbled a note to his banker and handed it to her. Alice took out the funds that same day, afraid he’d change his mind. But he didn’t. He was through with ungrateful children and finished with a wife who’d birthed two such useless pieces of human wreckage. Lillian had been fertile, but too weak to carry to term all of the children he’d gotten on her.
The only things left in Francis Nolan’s life that gave him satisfaction were the slaughterhouses that reeked of beef on the hoof and the fleet of horse drawn wagons carrying his cuts of meat to all of the city’s best restaurants. He wasn’t as rich yet as the men who gambled fortunes on Wall Street, but he would be. Someday.
Everybody ate meat.
*
“I’m so sorry you’re not well, Prudence,” Alice said. “I wouldn’t have disturbed you had I known, but you were so kind to me when Ellen was murdered and the police were asking those awful questions that I wanted to tell you myself before it became common knowledge.”
“What is that, Alice?” Prudence’s badly bruised ribs were tightly taped and Doctor Worthington had wound thick gauze bandages around both her wrists. The medicine he would have prescribed for any other patient was poison to her, so she was reduced to the time honored remedy of hot tea with lemon, honey, and a teaspoon of brandy. No amount of cajoling or scolding had persuaded Prudence to tell him how she had sustained the massive bruising that made movement painful.
She’d had to confide in Geoffrey, of course, and Josiah had provided details aplenty. He was less contused than she, but sporting the first black eye he’d ever suffered. He’d bought himself a dramatic pirate’s patch to conceal the discoloration.
“I’m mending very quickly,” Prudence assured Alice. She shifted her weight on the sofa, a grimace she tried to conceal giving the lie to her claim of swift healing.
“You must have taken a terrible fall,” Alice commiserated.
“I did. But there’s no permanent damage, so let’s not talk about me any more. What is the wonderful news you’ve come to tell me?”
“Only that my father has finally given in to my request. I’m to enter the Visitation Convent after Christmas, Prudence. Mother Superior said I would be most welcome to test my vocation among the sisters. Isn’t that marvelous?”
It was probably the last thing Prudence would describe in that way, but she wasn’t Catholic and had only the vaguest notion of what nuns did with their lives after they shut themselves up behind stone walls. The bright smile on Alice’s sweet face and the tears of happiness in her eyes spoke volumes.
“We shall all miss you,” Prudence said, “but I wish you great joy. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“Oh, I will. I know I will. When I’m allowed visitors I’d like it if you came to see me.” Alice’s eyes fell to her lap. “No doubt you’ve heard about Joseph,” she murmured.
“Perhaps it’s best not to speak of him,” Prudence suggested. “It can only bring you sorrow.”
“I pray for him.” Alice almost confided that she had thought of a way to get extra penances that she could apply to what was bound to be Joseph’s long term in purgatory, but she knew Prudence wouldn’t understand. Would probably think her as addled in the head as her poor brother. Alice was convinced that Joseph had whispered an Act of Contrition in his last moments, saving him from the eternal fires of Hell. She was planning to put her plan into action in a few days … the next time she went to confession.
“I know you’re terribly tired, Prudence,” she said, getting up to leave. “I’ll come back soon, I promise. Is there anything I can bring you? A book perhaps?”
“That’s very kind, Alice, but I have everything I need.”
“Well, then. I’ll be on my way.” Alice very carefully and gently deposited a kiss on Prudence’s cheek before she left.
When the parlor door closed behind her visitor, Prudence struggled to her feet and walked gingerly back and forth from the fireplace to the windows overlooking Fifth Avenue, counting her steps as she went. Yesterday she had managed a hundred, today her goal was an additional fifty.
She’d taken Geoffrey’s fury as best she could, too exhausted then to fight back. It was probably just as well she didn’t; Prudence had never seen him so angry. By the time she had put together a good argument in her defense—after all, if it hadn’t been for her following him, they might never have caught Joseph Nolan—she decided against using it. She’d seen the pallor of her partner’s skin and recognized the effect of fear. Her father had looked like that when her mother’s consumption began to threaten her life. Geoffrey was at war with a circumstance that might have taken her life, might have taken her from him. She knew it as certainly as she knew it would be a very long time before either of them brought up the subject again.
Josiah had just stood there, swathed like Prudence in Dr. Worthington’s dressings, his eye purpling and swelling. He’d caught the rough side of Geoffrey’s tongue also, for allowing Miss Prudence to do something so foolhardy. It would never, never happen again, Geoffrey promised them. And Josiah hadn’t argued with him either.
He, too, understood the fear that drove the rage.
Josiah had thought they were a good match for each other the first time he’d watched them together. He still thought so. And he wondered how long it would take them to discover it.
*
Not until the Saturday following Sally Lynn’s murder did Madame Jolene allow Geoffrey Hunter and Ned Hayes more than the most cursory of visits to the brothel.
“Unless you’re here as clients, you can take yourselves off,” she’d told them when they brought the news of Joseph Nolan’s death. “I’ve got a business to run.”
“Don’t you want to know how he died, Jolene?” asked Ned Hayes.
“I hope it was at least half as bad as he deserved.”
“He had his throat ripped out by a dog.”
“What kind of dog?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Come back in a week or so, when things have settled down,” Jolene had said, easing the door closed as George the bouncer moved into position beside her. “We’re expecting an overflow crowd tonight. I’ve already got more advance requests for Sally Lynn’s room than the girls can accommodate. I guess murder is better for men than the ginkgo they sell down in Chinatown.”
*
“They’re all exhausted and sleeping late.” Big Brenda poured fresh coffee and took a pan of hot cross buns from the oven. “I know how you like your sweets, Detective,” she said, setting out plates and forks. She sat down at the kitchen table, a woman as large as her name suggested. “I don’t know when I’ve seen the parlors so full. Upstairs, too. Madame Jolene got real strict about appointment times. Usually, if we’re not busy, the girls hang around the parlor playing cards and chatting up the regulars in between clients, but not the last few days. If I heard Madame say once that she was running a business here, I heard her say it a hundred times.”
“We’re really interested in just one client.” Geoffrey Hunter took his coffee black, but he bit into one of the hot cross buns with all of the gusto Big Brenda could want. “Delicious,” he said, wiping the sugary frosting from his lips and fingertips.
“We need to know everything you can tell us about Joseph Nolan.” Ned Hayes reached for his second bun.
“He’s dead, Detective.”
“I know he’s dead, Miss Brenda. I saw his body.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Loose ends. We’re clearing up the loose ends.”
“I’d have thought you’d let the police do that.”
“They’re busy. This close to Christmas people start drinking to celebrate, and before you know it they’re trying to kill each other. Nothing has changed in that respect since I was on the force.”
“What do you want to know?”
Geoffrey Hunter took out his notebook. He didn’t really need
it, but seeing their words written down made witnesses remember more than they thought they could. The written word was always more serious than the spoken word. “I’m going to give you two dates, Miss Brenda. You tell me whatever you can about what you saw or heard happening here in this house on those days.”
“That’s all?”
“Saturday night and into Sunday morning, November tenth and eleventh.” He wrote on a fresh page in the notebook, ripped it out and handed it to her. “Now here’s another one.
Saturday night and into Sunday morning again, but this time it’s two weeks later, November twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth. That was just before Thanksgiving.” A second page followed the first. “Take your time, and if you need to jot something down to jog your memory, go right ahead.” He gave Big Brenda the pencil he’d been writing with and took another out of his jacket pocket.
“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.” Brenda twirled the sharpened end of the pencil in her mouth, getting it good and wet for the laborious task of writing.
“We mainly want to know if there’s anything you can tell us about Joseph Nolan on those dates,” Ned Hayes put in.
“I remember November tenth and eleventh because of reading about the Ripper’s latest killing in the paper. The girls were all nervous and Sally Lynn started fretting and worrying about Mr. Nolan coming to see her that night, Saturday night … because of what he always had her do. Dressing up like a nun and using the whip on him. I guess we can talk about it now he’s dead.”
“Go on,” Ned encouraged her.
“Madame Jolene calmed her down the way she always does, but it was harder than usual that day because she’d promised to talk to Mr. Nolan, but she hadn’t done it yet. Sally Lynn wanted to go to Saint Anselm’s that afternoon, but it was cold and she was complaining about being sore. Madame Jolene convinced her to stay home and drink a hot toddy.”
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 30