An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen

by Liz Freeland

“I just got back. What were you doing there?”

  “I come to tell you about that gent you asked me to look out for.”

  My pulse leapt. “Gerald Hughes?”

  “That’s him—the gimp. He checked in to the hotel this morning.”

  Finally, I’d be able to talk to one of the elusive passport men. Someone with a real connection to what had been going on with Ruthie before her death. “Lena—that’s wonderful. Thank you.”

  “The way your face lit up, anyone would think you were sweet on him.”

  “I’ve never even seen him before. I do want to talk to him, though.”

  “He’s in room 815.”

  I filed the information away, then frowned as new difficulties reared in my mind. It wasn’t as if I could barge up to a man’s hotel room door and start interrogating him. No—I would need a little more finesse for this, too. And possibly an alias.

  “If you see me in the hotel in the next few days, Lena, you must pretend you don’t know me.”

  “I get it. You going to be a detective?”

  “That’s it. What does Mr. Hughes look like?”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t know if I could say much about him. There’s the limp, of course. And he wears nice suits—tweedy looking things. Browns and grays. He’s some sort of salesman, I guess, because he usually carries a case with him, like a drummer. And he’s not bad looking, even if he is a cripple. Brown hair, clean shaven, thick brows over the darkest brown eyes you ever saw. Like coffee beans. He’s tall but a little on the thin side, and might be self-conscious about it. He stoops a bit.”

  I laughed. “You should be the detective.”

  “Will that do?”

  “It will definitely do.”

  “Got to hurry back to work before my lunch break’s over,” she said. “I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled, turned, and disappeared into the crowd flowing uptown, a river of people being swept toward a world of big billboards and lighted marquees.

  Gerald Hughes. Though just this morning I’d admitted the chance that the passport men were unconnected to Ruthie’s death, I was happy to return to the possibility that they were. It was much more comforting than the troubling prospect of trying to prove the guilt of one of my colleagues.

  “You all cover for each other,” Eileen had said.

  And I’d denied it. But I couldn’t deny now that the prospect of pinning blame on my own colleagues made my stomach clench in dread. It was a relief to turn my attention to investigating Mr. Hughes.

  CHAPTER 11

  Lucky thing the Hotel McAlpin was so impressive to look at, because I began to fear I’d be there long enough to inspect every square inch of it. I wandered from one seating area to another in the three-story-high marble and stone thoroughfare of its lobby, armchair to bench to velvet-upholstered circular banquette, trying to find the best vantage point to scope out the passing parade without drawing attention to myself. I drank in the splendor of the arched columns decorated with painted murals of women representing the colors of jewels, all the while keeping one eye on the building’s entrance and elevators. For a break, I strolled to the candy store and purchased a copy of The Smart Set, hoping to blend in with the fashionable crowd coming and going. I chose another bench beside a potted palm from which to observe the lobby over the top of my magazine.

  I worried my chances of spotting Gerald Hughes this way were slim. The hotel was so massive and self-sufficient, someone could spend a week there without feeling the need to see the city outside. Why should they? In addition to the newsstand and candy store, it contained a grill, a Chinese tearoom, a spa, barbershop, a miniature hospital on the twenty-third floor, a Turkish bath, a pool, and a club on a floor set aside specifically for male visitors. And to show that they were a progressive-thinking hotel, one floor was reserved exclusively for women, with its own registration desk so that women traveling alone could register without feeling awkward. The building was a city unto itself.

  After two hours of watchful loitering I was definitely discouraged. And that was before my luck took a turn for the worse.

  A finger poked me on the shoulder. “Time to move along, sister,” a gruff voice said.

  I looked up into the face of a middle-aged man with hard blue eyes. His brusque voice mimicked the way cops often spoke, but this character wore a baggy brown suit gone shiny in the pants, which even our plainclothesmen would shun. His look was topped by an old fedora tipped low on his forehead. His shoes weren’t even properly polished.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “House detective.”

  That explained it. House detectives were often former, and sometimes disgraced, policemen.

  “Am I doing something wrong?”

  “Not so far, lady. That’s why the management would prefer it if you pushed off.”

  “I have a right to sit here, don’t I?”

  “Depends. Are you a guest at this hotel?”

  “I’m waiting on someone who is.” Technically, this was true. That Gerald Hughes didn’t know me was another matter entirely.

  “You mind giving me his name?”

  By this time, I was livid. “I certainly do mind. Why I’m here, or whom I’m meeting, is none of your business.”

  “Wrong. It’s my business to keep respectable guests from becoming marks of females like you.”

  I rose to my feet. Females like me? I had half a mind to show him my badge . . . except the station was just six blocks away. If the detective happened to mention this incident to one of the neighborhood’s beat cops, I’d be in for it.

  Better, I decided, to act a part. I straightened my shoulders and raised my chin. “The management of this hotel will hear about this.”

  “Sure,” the odious man said. “I’ll tell ’em about it myself.”

  Were men ejected from hotel lobbies this way? I felt frustrated. Thwarted. How was I supposed to get any investigating done at all if people wouldn’t leave me in peace?

  I couldn’t afford to cause a scene—and I doubted my plight would have mattered to a management invested in keeping women of ill repute away from their guests—so I was out on my ear. Outside, I stood a few yards from the lobby doors, squinting at the winter sun in a clear sky that had just begun to beam directly down on the concrete city. Adjusting my hat to shade my eyes, I was wondering where to go next when a man emerged from the hotel. At a glance, he fit Lena’s description of Gerald Hughes—tall, slightly stooped, dark eyes, carrying a large case.

  “Do you need a cab, sir?” the uniformed doorman asked.

  “No, thank you. It’s a fine day,” he answered with a pronounced English accent. “I’ll walk.”

  A few paces assured me I’d found my man. He moved with a distinctly uneven gait.

  Hughes only walked as far as the Sixth Avenue El that came within a stone’s throw of the hotel on the corner where Sixth and Broadway intersected. A newsboy thrust a paper toward him, and the gentleman shook his head. He then went up the stairs to catch the train. I followed, my heart beating a little faster. I’d been pushed in front of an elevated train once, so I hung back a little from the tracks until I could feel and hear the downtown train rumbling toward the stop. Plenty of people got on and off, but I managed to step into the same car as Hughes.

  Now that I was finally seeing him in the flesh, Gerald Hughes intrigued me. I could tell why he’d stood out to Lena. Even if I hadn’t seen his passport or heard him speak, I might have guessed he was a foreigner. His clothes seemed cut slightly differently from American men’s suits. The collar wasn’t so high that it looked as though it might strangle him, and his jacket was fitted a little more neatly than the loose tailoring Americans favored now.

  I settled into my seat, pretending interest in my magazine, expecting Hughes to be heading to the financial district. Instead, he got off after only two stops. Luckily he wasn’t quick or I might have lost him then and there. I darted off the tra
in at the last minute, then remained a safe distance behind as he carefully descended the staircase.

  Hughes headed to Sixth Avenue, walked north a block, and then entered a brick building with Koster Brothers stenciled in block letters above the door. Staying well back, I surveyed the block. Callie would have known it. This area was her old stomping ground from her days as a mannequin. The garment industry in New York was booming and spreading north. Koster Brothers, from the age of the paint on that peeling sign, had been here a while.

  Hughes remained inside for a half hour. When he came out, case in hand, he walked north two blocks and went inside another garment manufacturer called Smithe Designs. Another half hour. He visited two more businesses before stopping for lunch.

  The restaurant was one I hadn’t noticed before, even though we were nearing the bounds of my precinct. I’d never walked a beat—policewomen didn’t do that job—but over the course of a year I’d visited what I’d considered most corners of the area on various errands. The White Rose had never drawn my attention. After I waited five minutes and followed Hughes inside, I understood why. It was a place Callie would have called pokey—white tablecloths over too-small tables; ivory wallpaper in a cabbage-rose pattern; narrow, high-backed chairs from back when women wore such constricting clothing that it didn’t matter if furniture was comfortable or not.

  The clientele veered toward the female and aged. Hughes had been shown to a table in the back, while I seated myself at the front counter on a metal stool facing a display of cakes, tarts, and fussy cookies. The menu the frilly-aproned waitress handed me offered a variety of sandwiches, soups, and a few specialties like steak-and-kidney pie.

  “See anything you like, dearie?” the woman asked in a strong English accent.

  That was probably the reason Hughes had stopped here. Like Otto and I going to Ziggy’s. Nothing scratches that itch for one’s home like the sounds and tastes you’ve grown up with.

  From the fuss the waitress made over him, I assumed he’d been here before. She paid him more attention than any other customer, and practically drowned him in tea. As soon as he’d taken a few sips, she was back at his table to pour out more from the pot she’d left at his table. She delivered his food—the steak-and-kidney pie—with a flourish completely lacking when my roast beef sandwich was unceremoniously pushed across the counter to me. Hughes accepted all the attention with cordiality and even humor—something he said to the waitress made her toss back her head and laugh. Then she suggested he choose a dessert and nodded in the direction of the dessert tray.

  Quickly, I buried my head in The Smart Set until the woman had come and extracted a tart—lemon, not a bad choice—from the case. I ate the rest of my sandwich quickly and paid before Hughes could finish so I would have time to position myself across the street and see where he headed next.

  The remainder of the afternoon was more of the same: garment houses and a few smallish sewing factories farther west, toward the river.

  Maybe it was here that he’d encountered Ruthie, I thought as I stood waiting for him to emerge from one of the factories. It wasn’t too far from her flat. Or maybe he might have heard of her from another customer, a recommendation from one out-of-towner to another.

  I was working the night shift at the precinct, so I followed Hughes all the way back to the McAlpin and then went straight to work. My legs were killing me. I’d been on my feet most of the day, and what had I discovered? That Hughes was a salesman. Lena had already told me that. Not much return for a day’s surveillance. A day when I should have been resting. It was going to be a long night.

  “Evening, Louise. You on graveyard again already?”

  I smiled at Schultzie. “I told Evelyn I’d take her shift this week. Her father’s on a night shift and she didn’t want to leave her kid sisters alone all night.”

  “Best time of day to leave ’em alone,” he insisted. “At night, all they do is sleep. Of course, kids are coddled now.”

  It was a familiar refrain. According to Schultzie, all the kids in his neighborhood growing up were put to work by the age of six and were thoroughly jaded and battle-scarred by the time they’d reached ten. If his stories were even fractionally accurate, I wasn’t sorry to be living in modern times.

  While he expounded more on the spoiled youth of today, I found myself staring at his coat. Even he finally noticed.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, looking down. “I spill something on myself again?”

  “You’re missing a button.” The observation set off a queasiness in my stomach. The buttons on his uniform jacket were the same size as the one I had at home—the button I’d found at Ruthie’s.

  “Darn things are always coming off,” he said with a cluck of disgust. “Hope I can find it at home.”

  I hoped so, too. I leaned in closer to inspect the buttons that remained. They were brass with a design in the center. Some kind of whorl. Not a bird.

  I released a sigh. “I thought I had one at home that matched it, but yours is different.”

  I wobbled downstairs and relieved Fiona. “I don’t want to jinx you,” she said, “but it’s been quiet so far.”

  It was quiet for the rest of the night, too, except for the thoughts storming through my mind. What was wrong with me that, even for an instant, I’d suspected Schultzie—old, sweet, talkative Schultzie—of being mixed up in Ruthie’s murder? The man was seventy if he was a day. Of course, seventy-year-old men were still men.

  But was it Jenks whom Eileen had described, not Schultzie? I still hadn’t decided what to do about Jenks, or given more thought to what his conversation with the man in black the day before portended.

  I’d been up too long. During the night I had to transport a woman prisoner to Bellevue. It would have been the perfect time for an escape; if she’d chosen to make a dash for freedom I would’ve been too exhausted to put up much of a chase. At the end of my shift, I dragged myself home, envisioning my head sinking into my feather pillow with each step. It was a wonder that I didn’t fall asleep standing up at a corner, waiting for a produce wagon coming from the Gansevoort Market to pass.

  When I let myself in, the curtains were pulled and it was still dark inside the apartment. Shrugging off my coat and hat and hanging them on the tippy coatrack, I noticed a strip of light beneath the bathroom door. Callie was up. There was no hurrying her out of there when she was readying herself for a day of filming, so I went straight to my room, prepared to hurl myself onto the bed just as I was, boots and all. What I wasn’t prepared for was finding a half-dressed woman in my bedroom. I yelped, leapt back, and slammed the door shut.

  Disoriented, I stared at the closed door. There had been a woman in there, hadn’t there? Or was I so tired that I was having weird waking dreams?

  The door opened again and the dream emerged, all apologies. Anna—of course it was Anna—had pulled another of Callie’s dresses over her head and was buttoning up as fast as she could. “I’m so sorry, Louise. You see, you weren’t here, and Callie swore you wouldn’t mind. Anyway, it’s almost like we’re family now, isn’t it?”

  What? Was that some reference to an imagined relationship between her brother and me? “I don’t—”

  Callie crashed out of the bathroom—it always sounded like people were crashing out, because the door had begun to warp, requiring several mighty yanks to unstick. “What’s all the ruckus?”

  “Anna took me by surprise,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Anna piped up, to both of us this time.

  “It’s okay,” Callie assured her. “Louise is always out of sorts after working nights.”

  I was?

  “The bathroom’s free if you want it,” she continued, addressing Anna.

  “Thank you.” Anna scuttled into the bathroom.

  “Honestly,” Callie muttered after Anna managed to shut the door on her third attempt. “This flat.” She turned on her slippered heels and headed for the kitchen, passing the tree, which still s
tood undecorated on its crossed-slat stand. It smelled good, at least.

  I trailed after her, giving up on the idea of sleep for the moment. “What’s the matter with our place?”

  She laughed incredulously as she poured herself a coffee from the pot sitting on our little range. “What isn’t? It’s inadequate in every way.”

  “You loved it here when we moved in.”

  “We were both broke when we moved in. It was the best we could do.”

  “Two bedrooms and no going down the hall for the bathroom,” I reminded her.

  “What seemed luxurious then seems shabby now. Surely we can do better.”

  A feeling of panic filled me. Not that I was overly attached to our flat—certainly not to the constant intrusion of saxophone music at all hours, and our grumpy landlady and her nosy son. Mostly I worried this change of attitude wasn’t entirely about the apartment. “Did Anna say something about it?”

  Her long-lashed eyes blinked at me over her coffee cup. “What’s Anna got to do with anything?”

  I hesitated, then plowed forward. “She seems to be staying here quite a bit.”

  “Alfred’s taken a shine to her and decided to give her a little part as my kid sister. Staying with me saves her time getting uptown—and it wasn’t as if you needed your bed last night.”

  “I might’ve liked some warning that my room would be occupied when I got home.”

  “So I should’ve made a special trip to the station house on Thirtieth Street to ask your permission for someone to stay in a room you weren’t even using?”

  Of course not. I felt silly for saying anything now. “I was just wondering if Anna’s being here has made you suddenly feel as if you don’t like the apartment.”

  “Well, you have to admit that there’s not much room for company.”

  We’d found that out when her cousin Ethel had stayed. And stayed.

  “I didn’t even know Anna could act,” I said, despairing at the idea of Anna as a perpetual guest.

  “I can’t.”

  Her bright voice at my back startled me. How had she gotten out of that bathroom without my hearing her? She must have tried extra hard to pry it open without making a sound.