by Rhys Bowen
“Quite right,” I said. This woman never failed to impress me. She would be my model from now on.
The cabby and I assisted Mrs. Goodwin to board and seated her with pillows in her back before we set off. There was brisk traffic across the bridge to Brooklyn. The half-day Saturday laws were beginning to take effect, meaning that many city workers were probably headed to the nearest beach to escape the heat. That beach would be Coney Island. I wondered how soon Mrs. Goodwin would be well enough to go there with me. I was anxious enough to go there, but not alone!
We crossed into Brooklyn and the cab deposited us on a street of wood-framed row houses and various small businesses. The brother-in-law’s house was at the end of the row, and the shed beside it sported an impressive sign: GOODWIN’S MOTOR SHOP. AUTOMOBILES REPAIRED.
We knocked and Mr. Goodwin himself appeared at the door—a big, ruddy man with arms like tree trunks, dressed only in an undershirt, with a hairy chest clearly visible.
“Sabella—well, I never. What a surprise to see you. Come in, do. Marge will be pleased.” He went to enfold her in a bear hug, but she blocked his advance.
“I’ve come to ask a favor, Bert,” she said, “and I’d like to introduce my young friend and helper, Miss Murphy. Molly, may I present Albert Goodwin.”
“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” He shook hands with awkward embarrassment at the formality. “Now come on in. What is it I can do for you, Bella, my dear?”
Bella explained her accident and our mission, then we had a pleasant cup of coffee in their little kitchen while Bert prepared the automobile. It was nothing like the sleek models that I had ridden in a couple of times before; in fact I suspected that it was partly homemade—not much more than a box on wheels. Bert had to crank it up several times, but at last it popped and banged and then chugged away merrily. He helped me into the backseat, Sabella into the front beside him, and we were off. Even though the ride was smoother than a horse and trap, I could see it was an ordeal for Mrs. Goodwin, although she’d never admit it.
Fortunately the first address was not too far away, on a small side street just off Flushing Avenue. It was obvious as soon as we came to a halt that we were in an Italian neighborhood—the smells, the sounds, the very exuberance of life. Italians don’t talk to each other—they yell, they laugh, they fight, and all with the maximum of arm gestures and flashing eyes. The children played equally loudly. A street musician was singing a haunting Italian song in a rich, pure voice. Our automobile caused much interest. The children stopped playing to swarm around it. Bert leaped out and drove them off before they could damage his precious vehicle or burn themselves on the hot hood.
We asked for the Rosettis’ residence and were escorted to it by a mass of dark heads. The man who opened the door looked as if he hadn’t slept in a few nights. Mrs. Goodwin showed him her badge, and we were ushered inside. A large woman, dressed head to toe in black, appeared from the kitchen.
“They’ve come from the police, Mama,” the man said in broken English.
“They bring news? News of my Rosa?” she asked.
“Not yet, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “But we’d like to ask your daughters some questions, to see if they can shed any more light—” she stopped, realizing she was going beyond his English skills—“if they can tell us anything we don’t know.”
“Bene.” He nodded. “Our young ones are here. Lucia come home from the factory soon. Gina! Sophia!” he boomed. “Mama, go get the girls.”
The wife disappeared and immediately two young girls came rushing into the room.
“What is it, Papa?” they asked and stood there looking shyly at us.
“They want to ask questions about Rosa,” he said. “Answer them good. Tell them everything you know.”
“We don’t know nothing, Papa. I told you that already,” the older one answered. “If we could do something to find Rosa, we would.”
Mrs. Goodwin produced the letter. “You say that she went to work at the factory that day and never came home?” she asked the father.
“Si. That’s right.”
“Do your other daughters work at the same factory? Didn’t anyone see her leave?”
“Her sister work there with her, but she’s been staying late. They’re trying to start a union, and my Lucia wants to be part of it. She is very”—he slapped himself on the chest—“my Lucia. Strong. With fire. Big heart.”
“So nobody saw Rosa leave that evening?”
“Another girl say she was in a hurry, and she look excited. But she didn’t tell anyone where she goes.”
“Did she have a young man?”
“Young man?” he boomed out the words. “She was sixteen years old. No boys. Too young. That’s what we tell her. We find her a nice Italian boy when the right time comes.”
He looked up at his wife, who was still hovering in the doorway, and she nodded.
Mrs. Goodwin glanced at me before saying, “Mr. Rosetti, would it be possible to talk to your daughters alone, without you and your wife in the room? They may be too shy to speak in front of you, but Rosa may have confided something to them. Something she didn’t want you to know.”
“My Rosa, she tell her mama and papa everything,” he said angrily.
“Sometimes even the best girls don’t tell their parents everything,” I said quietly. “You do want us to find out what happened to Rosa, don’t you?”
“You want I should go?” he demanded.
“If it helps to find Rosa,” Mrs. Goodwin said.
He gave a large, expressive shrug. “Bene. I go. Anything to bring my Rosa home to me. Come, Mama.”
The door closed behind them.
“Now girls,” Mrs. Goodwin said, “we need to know if your sister told you anything that she kept secret from your parents. Did she have a secret admirer? Did she give any hint that she was planning to meet a boy?”
“Oh no, signora,” the older girl said. “She wouldn’t do that. Papa would never allow it. When we go out, he makes us all go together and watch over each other.”
“Like this photograph at the beach?” She produced the picture.
They smiled. “Si, signora.”
“Was this taken at Coney Island?” I asked.
“Si.” They nodded again, their eyes smiling with the memory.
“Do you go there often?”
“When there is money to spare. It’s only a nickel on the train and Mama packs us a lunch so we don’t have to buy food. Sometimes Lucia treats us to a ride or a show. Sometimes we just walk around and watch the people.”
“And did Rosa ever meet a boy during one of these outings?” I asked.
“No. Never,” the older one said.
“But she did get that note,” the younger one reminded her.
“What note?” Mrs. Goodwin asked quickly.
The younger girl gave her sister a half-frightened glance then said boldly, “Last time we went. Rosa laughs and says some boy slipped a note into her pocket. He said he liked her and wanted to meet her alone.”
“Did you see the boy?” Mrs. Goodwin asked.
“No, and neither did Rosa. She just found the note in her pocket. It would be easy for someone to put the note there without her noticing because the crowd is so thick that it’s hard to move.”
“Where was this exactly?” I asked.
“On the Bowery. You know where that is? It’s like a street in the middle of the fun fair. Lucia had made overtime money and she treated. She told us we could choose what we wanted to do. So we went to the freak show, cos we’d never seen it before and we had a good laugh there.”
The older sister took over. “Then Rosa said she wanted to visit the Cairo Pavilion and maybe be snatched up by a sheik and taken to his harem. We all laughed. Rosa was naughty sometimes. She said wild things. Have you ever been there? They have real camels and belly dancers and fire-eaters—oh my, it’s wonderful. It’s like being in another world.”
“And did she keep the
note? Do you still have it?” Mrs. Goodwin asked.
“Oh no. Lucia made her throw it into the nearest rubbish bin. Rosa made a fuss and said Lucia was being a spoilsport and no boy had ever said nice things to her in a note; but Lucia grabbed it, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the bin. ‘You know what Papa would say about that, don’t you?’ she said.”
“And she never heard from the boy again?”
“Never. Lucia made us go straight home after that. She was mad at Rosa.”
“How long was this before she disappeared?”
The girls wrinkled their foreheads. “Four days,” the little one said. “It was the weekend before she vanished.”
“Mrs. Goodwin got to her feet. “I’m going to ask your father if I can look through her things. She might have a secret hiding place for letters and treasures.”
The girls looked at each other and laughed. “We share a chest of drawers, all four of us,” the younger one said. “There is no place to be secret in our room.”
“Nevertheless, I’d like to see for myself.” Sabella was firm.
Papa Rosetti led us upstairs and we went through the room carefully. The girls owned nothing more than a change of underclothes, a few pairs of well-darned stockings, missals, rosaries, and a few treasures like a lace handkerchief or a cheap broach.
“Tell me, Signor Rosetti,” Mrs. Goodwin said carefully, “does Rosa have any special ways to identify her—a mole perhaps or a scar? Anything unusual?”
His face went ashen gray. “You think something bad has happened to her.”
“We’re not sure yet. But just in case.”
“No,” he said. “She has nothing wrong with her. She is a beautiful girl. Full of life. Everyone loves Rosa.”
At that moment the oldest girl, Lucia, burst in.
“They have news about Rosa?” she asked, her face bright with hope.
“Not yet,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “We think her disappearance may be linked to that of some other girls. We hear that your sister received a note from a boy while you were all at Coney Island.”
“Oh that?” Lucia shook her head. “It was just a bit of nonsense that goes on in places like that. Boys come there alone and tease girls. That’s what boys do. Anyway, I made Rosa throw the note away.”
“So you don’t think she could have gone back later to meet him alone?”
“How could she? I crumpled the note myself. I threw it into the bin. It was gone.”
“She could have memorized the important parts of the message first?” Mrs. Goodwin suggested.
“I don’t think so.” Lucia looked perplexed. “That is—I don’t know how long she’d been reading it before she showed it to us.” Then she shook her head violently. “But she wouldn’t do a thing like that. She knows what Papa would say. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.”
But I got the feeling that Lucia was not sure of this at all. Rosa, the fun-loving, naughty daughter, might very well have disobeyed Papa.
THIRTY-FIVE
The whole family escorted us to the front door. Papa shook our hands earnestly. “We thank you for all you do to find our dear daughter,” he said. “If you bring her back to us, we will be your servants forever.”
We tried to smile as we went back to Bert, standing guard beside his auto.
“At least we’ve established that she received a note on Coney Island,” I said as he got the automobile started again and then we edged our way, with much horn honking, past the inquisitive children and back onto Flushing Avenue. “We now know that two girls received notes from a boy saying that he liked them. It’s a pity we don’t know whether Rosa’s note suggested a time and place they could meet again. Or where that place was.”
“That’s true.” Sabella Goodwin nodded. “Maybe the other family will be able to show us the note their girl received.”
The day had heated up rapidly and the sun beat down on the front seat, sparing me in the back, where there was a rudimentary canopy that looked as if it came from an old carriage.
“I wished we’d thought of bringing a parasol,” Mrs. Goodwin said. She looked hot and uncomfortable, and I guessed that her side was hurting her. But she refused my suggestion to stop for a cool drink or an ice cream.
“Let’s get it over with,” she said. I realized it was not her own discomfort she wanted to end, it was the difficult meeting with another family, for whom the ultimate news could only be even worse.
We headed north along Fifty-eighth Street into Queens. The Lindquist family had an apartment over a baker’s shop and the delicious smell of baking lingered in the warm air. We went up the stairs beside the shop, and the door was opened by a round-faced young woman with light blue eyes and light hair.
“Are you, by any chance, Krissy Lindquist?” Mrs. Goodwin asked.
“Ya.” The girl looked worried.
“You wrote me a letter about your sister.”
“You have news for me?”
“Not yet. I wanted to ask you some questions about your sister,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “I wondered if we could talk.”
The girl glanced nervously into the interior of her apartment, then closed the door quietly. “Downstairs. On the street. Maybe safer,” she said, and led us down.
We stood under the awning outside the baker’s shop.
“Now, Krissy,” Mrs. Goodwin began. “You said your sister received a note from a boy. Did she show it to you?”
“No,” Krissy said. “I think she maybe made it up. She don’t always speak quite truthful.” Her accent was foreign with definite overtones of someone who has learned English on the streets of New York.
“And did she tell you anything about this boy she was going to meet?”
“No. Nothing. I ask her lots of questions, but she acts all mysterious. Very pleased with herself because I never had a boy want to meet me, and I’m older than her.”
“Had you been to Coney Island with her before she got the note?”
“No. She went. Not me. I was supposed to go too, but I got sick right before it. She said it was wonderful, like a dreamland. I was annoyed because I couldn’t go, so I didn’t ask her too much about it.”
“But you think she met the boy there?”
Krissy shook her head. “I don’t know. She could have met him anywhere, but Coney Island would be a safe place to arrange a secret meeting, wouldn’t it, because there are so many people. It’s like you’re invisible. Nobody to report home to my pa.”
“Do you have a picture of Denise?”
She glanced up the stairs. “Wait here. I bring you one.”
She came down again soon after, a little out of breath, and handed us a photograph. It was a portrait, taken in a studio, and it showed a pretty, plump girl with her hair braided in a rather unflattering way across her head. But the hair was light brown at best, and the girl I had seen on the morgue table had been much smaller.
“It’s not her,” I said, without thinking.
“You’ve found someone?” Krissy asked.
“Yes, a girl’s body,” Mrs. Goodwin said quickly, “but it’s not your sister.”
“Then there is still hope.” She put her hands together in prayer. “I tell you, lady. I feared the worst news. Dilly would never run off and leave me and Mama and Papa worrying about her. She was a good daughter and a good sister. So I really thought something very bad had happened. You read about it in the newspapers, don’t you—bad things happening to girls?”
Mrs. Goodwin touched her arm. “I can’t guarantee that something bad hasn’t happened to your sister, Krissy. Tell me—one thing the police will want to know. Did she have any distinguishing marks on her?” As Krissy looked puzzled she went on, “Anything we could recognize her by? A mole? A broken tooth? A scar?”
“Well,” Krissy said, “she lost the top of a finger once. It got slammed in a carriage door when she was little. You hardly notice it now, but she has no nail on the finger.” She pointed to her right hand.
“Thank yo
u. That’s most helpful,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “May we take the photograph with us?”
“If you bring it back to me,” she said. “It’s all I’ve got now. My parents won’t even talk about her. They won’t even listen.”
At that very moment loud footsteps stomped down the uncarpeted stairs and a big, fair-haired man appeared. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he wore red suspenders.
“What’s this?” he demanded and broke into a flood of Swedish.
His daughter answered him. As she spoke he glared at us.
“Go. Be gone,” he said, gesturing in a threatening manner. “Tell them.” And more Swedish came out.
Krissy looked at him imploringly. “But Papa.”
“Tell them!” he roared.
“He says he don’t want his daughter back no more, even if you find her. He don’t want to know. His daughter is no good. Ruined.” A tear escaped from the corner of her eye. “But please don’t believe him. Please go on searching for her. I beg you.”
“Don’t worry.” Mrs. Goodwin gave her a reassuring smile. “We will do our best, I promise you.”
We made our exit with Papa Lindquist watching us go, hands on hips and glaring.
“I fear we have just left two families whose hearts are destined to be broken,” she commented as the automobile got up speed and a warm wind blew in our faces.
Bert’s wife, Marge, insisted that we stay for a meal with them.
“You’re lucky you came today and not tomorrow,” she said as we helped her clear away the dishes. “You’d have got no sense out of him then. He’d be busy tuning and polishing that ridiculous motor vehicle so that it made it all the way to Coney Island.”
“Coney Island? You like to spend the day at the beach?” I asked politely, trying not to sound too interested.
He laughed. “Can’t stand it. Can’t stand crowds either, but I love a good fight. There’s a boxing match going to take place out there tomorrow evening. I reckon half of New York is going. I’ll be going early to get a good seat.”
“A lot of silly men watching two other men beat each other to a pulp,” Marge muttered to us. “You wouldn’t catch me there for all the tea in China.”