An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen

by Liz Freeland

  “Yes . . .” I frowned. “But both Beggs and Eileen, the woman downstairs, said they thought Ruthie’s financial situation had improved in the past month, and the forty-six dollars bears that out. Who kills herself when her life is actually getting better?”

  The younger detective shook his head and gestured around the apartment. “If this was an example of my life improving, I’d down a bottle of whiskey and cut my wrists, too.”

  “The neighbor also said Ruthie didn’t drink.”

  Stevens laughed. “Sure she didn’t. Tell me another one.”

  “Did the neighbor know anything about next of kin?” King asked me.

  “Ruthie told Eileen she was from Nebraska, but she never mentioned any town or person by name.”

  “Sad,” King said. “I’ll ask the other tenants if they know any more about her, and maybe get something more out of Beggs.”

  “There’s a picture in the next room. Might be her parents.”

  Stevens shook his head. “They’re not going to pop out of the frame and tell us anything.”

  Something tugged at my elbow. I turned and O’Mara was frowning down at me. “We’d better go down and wait for the wagon, Two.” He escorted me to the hallway and then asked in a fierce whisper, “What do you think you’re about, telling detectives their business?”

  “I was giving them information I’d learned talking to Eileen. Isn’t finding things out what we’re supposed to do?”

  “It’s what they’re supposed to do.”

  “They don’t seem inclined to,” I said.

  “And they won’t be more inclined to because a young woman decided to boss them around.”

  Then they were fools. “Ruthie’s parents, wherever they are, would be the next of kin of this baby.” I nodded at the baby in my arms. He weighed next to nothing. “For all we know, they’re all the family he has.”

  O’Mara’s pitying look could have been meant more for either the baby or for me. “He’s an orphan. Exactly like thousands of other orphans in this city.”

  I stared down into Eddie’s face. The dazed expression had cleared from his eyes, and now he looked up at me almost as if he trusted me. My throat constricted. I could remember the devastation of losing my parents, who’d died when I was seven. At least I could remember them a little—that was a luxury Eddie would be deprived of. Yet we were both fellow orphans.

  “Not exactly like the others,” I said, holding him tight. Eddie Jones had at least one person looking out for him. Me.

  * * *

  The patrol wagon took O’Mara back to the precinct before driving Eddie and me to the New York Foundling Hospital. The motorized wagon had mesh windows in the back, but I asked the driver to cover them, both for warmth and so I didn’t look like a fallen woman being carted through the streets of Manhattan.

  This wasn’t my first trip to the foundling hospital. Established by a few Catholic sisters in the last century, the charity had ballooned into an institution responsible for taking in and placing hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children every year. The hospital had an administrative wing, the medical building itself, and a separate wing for the children. New York Foundling also gave care to unwed mothers, and ran a nursery for working mothers. If I had been in New York City two years earlier, I might have ended up there myself. Instead, I had gone to a smaller home in Philadelphia. I tried not to think about those days, but it was difficult when I was holding a helpless infant in my arms as I’d never once held the son I’d given birth to. We hadn’t been allowed.

  Eddie and I were received by a nun named Sister Eleanor. Though she was dressed in the same long white habit and bonnet as the other sisters I’d encountered on previous visits, her manner was shorter on warmth. She inspected Eddie the way a factory foreman might check out goods: with an eye out for flaws.

  “Underweight.” She laid him down in the wicker receiving cradle and pulled the blanket off him. The baby kicked unhappily at the cool air or the indignity of her examination, or both. “Needs a good washing.” She shook her head. “And mute, did you say?”

  “So far as we know. Will he get special care?”

  With brisk movements, she folded the blanket back over him. “A doctor will examine him, but there’s little enough doctors can do for a child like that.”

  “I heard him make a noise while we were in the wagon. Maybe he’s not really—”

  “Was it a throaty sound?”

  I nodded eagerly. “More than a gurgle, but not quite a cry.”

  “That’ll be all he’s capable of,” she said. “You shouldn’t let it raise your hopes.”

  God forbid anyone have hope. “He’s very sweet.” I put out my finger so he could grip it.

  “The slow ones often are. Our Lord’s saving grace.”

  Slow? Not having the gift of speech didn’t mean he was slow. My fears for Eddie’s future ramped up a notch. “If it turns out that we are able to find his relatives, would they be able to take him?”

  “That would be a desired outcome, if the family members are of good moral character.”

  Unlike his mother, you could almost hear her say.

  “Perhaps someone will claim him.”

  She looked at me with pity. “You have a good heart, Miss Faulk, but you said that the poor little soul’s mother was a fallen woman. Believe me, even if that girl did have family somewhere, they probably wouldn’t welcome a dumb, fatherless child any more than they would have welcomed her. That sounds harsh, I know, but it has been my experience.”

  I wished I was able to contradict her.

  She reached out and touched her hand to the coat I wore over my uniform. “Pray for the best, but don’t expect happy endings for everyone in this world. You’ll go mad.”

  Behind us, the policeman who’d driven the wagon over cleared his throat. “About time we were getting back, Two.”

  My heart clenched at the thought of leaving Eddie here. He looked so tiny and helpless. “May I visit him sometimes?” I asked Sister Eleanor.

  Her lips pursed. “It would be a kindness, though if he were older I wouldn’t recommend becoming attached to a child you’re in no position of helping. We don’t like to give children false hopes, you know.”

  Hope obviously wasn’t high on Sister Eleanor’s list of virtues.

  I said goodbye to Eddie and then rode back with the driver in the open front seat of the vehicle, chatting aimlessly with him all the while so I couldn’t attend to the trembling sadness in my chest. Facing forward, I let the darkness hide the tears stinging my eyes. Miserable as it was, the steady drizzle that had come down all day added a sheen to the paving stones and sidewalks of the city, especially illuminated by the streetlights and the headlamps of the wagon. Everything glistened. From my perch, it looked as if the entire city had been shellacked. As we turned downtown, the illuminated Diana atop the tower at Madison Square Garden shone like a beacon.

  Back inside the station house, I hurried downstairs, shed my wet coat, and ran into the detective on the case, Lieutenant King, who’d returned and was shooting the bull with Schultzie. I was a little surprised. I hadn’t been that long at the foundling hospital. King, evidently, hadn’t spent much time gathering evidence at Ruthie’s.

  Schultzie, leaning on a broom, regaled King with his story about arresting the governor’s brother-in-law sometime during the last century. I’d already heard it and so probably had King. Yet we both dutifully laughed as Schultzie reached the kicker. “ ‘Sorry I didn’t vote for your sister’s husband,’ I tells him. ‘Don’t be,’ he says. ‘Neither did I.’ ”

  “May I speak to you, Lieutenant?” I asked King after Schultzie was done.

  He exhaled a stream of smoke from the cigar he was enjoying. “Sure. Fire away.”

  Schultzie didn’t move, but neither of us expected him to. He knew all the secrets of this station. His droopy eyes watched me as expectantly as King’s did.

  “I wondered if I could take a closer look at the photo
graph from Ruthie Jones’s flat. The one of the couple.”

  King shrugged. “Belongs to the landlord now.”

  “It isn’t part of your investigation?”

  “Investigation into what?”

  “Ruthie’s death.”

  “It was suicide,” he said. “The coroner said so at the scene, and the evidence backs him up. We don’t investigate suicides, we report them and move on to more important cases. Cases we can do something about.”

  “There’s no room for doubt, then?” I asked.

  The impatient look he leveled on me made me question myself. Other detectives were temperamental or dismissive, but King was usually nicer than the rest. “Maybe you don’t realize this,” he said, “but there’s more going on in this city than the death of a prostitute.”

  “But what about the other clues? The money on her body, the fact that she’d left one of her babies alive, the liquor bottle—”

  “What about the fact that the woman was behind a locked door, lying in a bathtub next to the razor she’d used to slash her wrists?” The retort had come out rat-a-tat, but in the next moment his expression softened. “It was suicide, Louise. Go home and get some sleep.”

  Schultzie’s sagging cheeks puffed up and then he sighed out a long breath, agreeing sympathetically. “Sleep usually makes things clearer.”

  Arguing with the lead detective would serve no purpose, I knew that. If I’d run into Stevens, I might have tried harder, even though it would have been like hurling words against a brick wall. Perhaps King was even right. He’d seen more suicides and murders than I had.

  “It’s been a long week,” I said. “I’m glad I have tomorrow off.”

  “That’s the idea.” King blew a smoke ring. “Wash this place out of your mind for a day. Eat Thanksgiving leftovers.”

  “If there are any left,” Schultzie joked.

  King smiled, and the expression in his eyes was achingly kind. “That was a rough thing to see tonight. Sad. Everybody was shaken. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. But at least I’d have a night to consider everything I’d noticed in Ruthie’s apartment, and weigh what my next step should be.

  CHAPTER 3

  When I emerged from my bedroom the next morning, I discovered my roommate, Callie, in the kitchen, humming to herself. Her blond hair was braided and pinned up in an artful pile, with her soft fringe and ringlets framing her eyes. Over an unseasonably thin cotton dress she’d wrapped a wool schoolgirl sweater that hung below her hips. “Who are you today?” I asked.

  She beamed at me in greeting, and struck a pose. “Serena in June Bride. Do I look dewy and virginal?”

  I staggered gratefully toward the percolator. “I’d marry you for your coffee making alone.”

  She laughed.

  This up-with-the-larks version of my roommate took some getting used to. When she was doing stage work, she kept Count Dracula hours, rarely rising before noon. These days, though, she put roosters to shame. Not that there were many roosters in Greenwich Village.

  “I was going to wait up for you last night,” she told me, “but I conked out over The Titan by Theodore Dreiser. Your aunt loaned it to me yesterday. It’s better than a bromide. Oh, and she sent you a piece of pumpkin pie.”

  That was good news. “Better breakfast than Grape-Nuts. Do you want to split it?”

  “I already swallowed some burned toast. I need to hurry if I’m going to make it to 175th Street. It’s a train, trolley, and long hike to get there.”

  Callie had already brought in the milk. I poured some into my coffee and then quickly opened the window and put it on the sill. Seeing the milk bottle there reminded me of the one on Ruthie Jones’s fire escape, which brought to mind the whole grisly scene at Ruthie’s apartment. There went my appetite, even for pie.

  I shut the window again as fast as possible. “It’s cold out there.”

  “We’re doing a picnic scene today. I’ll be shivering in short sleeves.”

  After her last show closed the past summer, Callie found work in motion pictures to tide her over and had kept on making them. There were film studios all over—in Queens, in the Bronx, New Jersey, on Midtown rooftops, even. While the theater thrived at night, the picture business lived in daytime, and the hours were long. In my opinion it seemed a lot of effort for very little. I’d seen Callie in one of her pictures already, a comedy about a man with a nagging wife. Callie portrayed a shop girl the film’s hero flirted with. She’d been the best thing about it.

  “You never go on auditions anymore,” I said.

  “I do so. I went to one just . . .” She thought back. “Three weeks ago.”

  “You used to get antsy if you’d gone even three days without making the rounds of producers’ offices.”

  “It’s almost December, and the Christmas season’s a slow time for auditions and casting,” she explained. “Besides, I don’t have to worry so much now that Alfred Sheldrake at Empire State Pictures is offering me all the work I could want.”

  “Movies.” I shook my head. How gratifying could that be? “You knock yourself out for a few minutes of flickering across a screen in a silly fifteen-minute story.”

  “I know, you think I should be Ethel Barrymore. But guess what? Even la Barrymore’s made a picture. They’re the future.”

  If the future promised nothing but pratfalls and mimed melodrama, I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

  “Last week Alfred paid me ten dollars for a movie idea, too,” Callie said.

  “That’s great, but you should be lighting up Broadway.”

  “Who are you, my manager? You spend a couple of days with your backside polishing benches outside producers’ offices and come back and tell me how gratifying the Great White Way is. Anyway, I’ll be back in the theater someday. Otto’s promised me a part in his new show.”

  Our friend Otto, a songwriter, and the playwright he was working with had been laboring so long on this show, it was hard to believe it was actually going to come off. Elephants gestated calves more quickly than it took to get a musical comedy on its feet. “Have you spoken to Otto recently?”

  “He was at your aunt’s yesterday.”

  Of course. Everyone had been at my aunt’s. Except me.

  “He says it’s a go just as soon as they can line up a producer,” she finished.

  Which was like someone saying they’ll give you a sheet of paper just as soon as they find a seven-hundred-year-old oak tree to pulp. I held my tongue, though.

  Callie checked her bracelet watch, drained the last drops of her coffee, and put the cup in the sink. “I’ve got to go. They promised I’d be finished by three so I can drop off my knitting for the Belgians.”

  In the first month of the war, the stories coming from Europe had focused on the horrors and depredations committed by the Kaiser’s army upon the defiant Belgians as Germans advanced westward. Callie had joined a group of actors who gathered clothes donations and knitted for the Red Cross in the afternoons twice a week. Before the war started, I hadn’t known she could tell knitting needles from chopsticks. That fighting had now moved to the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine, but the knitters and bundle-gatherers soldiered on.

  “I’m getting compliments on the quality of my socks,” she said. “Sure you don’t want to join us? You’re welcome.”

  “Not this week.” I had plans simmering.

  Her brow wrinkled as she looked at me. “I don’t mean it as an insult to you, you know.”

  “Why would it be?”

  “Well, you know. You’re German.”

  “I’m not a German,” I said, my hackles up. “That is, yes, I’m a German-American.” Not that I actually thought of myself as what Teddy Roosevelt sneeringly called a ‘hyphenated American.’ I could speak the language, and many of my ancestors had emigrated from there, but I was two generations removed from the old country. “I’m just as American as people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflowe
r.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why, whenever someone mentions that I’m German now, does it always seem as if they’re checking to see if I’m hiding a bayonet in my petticoats?”

  She touched my shoulder. “Don’t get upset. Teddy says the war’ll be over in a few months anyway.”

  Teddy was Callie’s boyfriend of over a year now. “Does Teddy have a crystal ball?”

  “No, he has Hugh. Hugh’s convinced planes will be the key to victory for whichever side wins. Says airplanes will end the war in no time.”

  Hugh Van Hooten, Teddy’s friend, owned an aeronautics business, and Teddy was his most fervent disciple. “So Hugh’s not only a fortune-teller, he’s a war strategist.”

  She started putting on her coat, hat, and gloves. “What do you have planned for your day off?”

  “I thought I’d go to Aunt Irene’s.”

  “Speaking of fortune-tellers.” Callie smiled. “Last night she told me I’m going to meet someone who’ll change my life.”

  My aunt had recently fallen prey to the occult craze. She’d even had her milliner make up a couple of turbans for her to wear when practicing her new art. “Did you tell Teddy about the mysterious stranger in your future?”

  “It might not be a love interest,” Callie said. “It might be someone in the theater . . . or anybody.”

  “So in a city of over four million, you might meet someone. Aunt Irene’s powers astound me.”

  “You should get her to tell your fortune. We need a sampling to see how accurate she is.”

  “I’m just hoping there are leftovers in my future.”

  “You might get lassoed into housework. You should’ve seen the herd of people in and out of your aunt’s place yesterday. I imagine there’s a lot of cleaning up to do.”

  “I don’t mind.” It was hard not to contrast the fête my aunt had hosted yesterday with my evening in Hell’s Kitchen.

  “Is something wrong?” Callie asked.

  “Just an unpleasant thing that happened at work last night. A woman committed suicide, and left an orphaned baby.”

  “How sad.”

  I didn’t mention the other baby. Saddling someone’s thoughts with that tragedy this early in the morning didn’t seem fair. “The poor woman must have had family somewhere, but no one seems interested in tracking them down.”