An Orphan of Hell's Kitchen

by Liz Freeland

  That did not bode well for my future.

  The Skipper poked his head down. “Herr Neumann! Someone is coming.”

  Holger scowled at him. “Another boat?”

  “Yes. Behind us, from the city.”

  “A boat on the Sound is not unusual.”

  “It’ll gain on us quickly if I can’t get the damn motor started. I’ve got the rowboat out, though. We could use that.”

  The contempt on Holger’s face intensified. “And leave all this—to be captured in a rowboat?”

  “We could get to shore and run for it.”

  “Keep working on the motor,” Holger said. “I need to take care of this first.”

  The cabin was cold and damp, but nothing chilled me to the bone like hearing myself referred to as this. There was no suppressing panic now. He was going to kill me, and then what? Toss me over the side? I wondered whether there really was someone behind us. Please let it be a police boat. The windows were curtained, so I couldn’t even tell where we were. Holger had mentioned the Sound. Long Island Sound, if that’s what he meant, was wide and led to open ocean. Is that where we were headed, in this rickety houseboat full of stinky fish, canned goods, and dynamite?

  Instinctively, I backed away from Holger. Not that there was anywhere to go. I moved toward the little desk where I supposed the passports had been doctored—a change of age here, a few inches added to a man’s height there. All to funnel a few dozen men back to the German army. In the big scheme of things, how much difference could that make? Enough to justify the deaths of Ruthie and Johnny . . . and me?

  “You should have stayed asleep,” Holger said.

  “Are you going to bring your chauffeur in to knock me out again?”

  “Unfortunately, he is not aboard, and I am all out of ether. I have no painless way to render you unconscious.”

  If he only wanted me unconscious, perhaps that was a good thing. Unconscious was preferable to dead.

  “You could just leave me,” I said. “Tie me up or something and take the Skipper up on that idea about the rowboat.”

  “Leaving you would not be wise.”

  From outside, the Skipper called to him again. “Boat’s coming closer!”

  My chances of getting away were looking impossibly slim. A wave of despair hit me, followed by a surge of determination. I couldn’t give up. I wasn’t going to be bested by a cold-blooded murderer, the man whose own hands had left Eddie an orphan. I wanted to see Ruthie vindicated, too. The men at the precinct had seen nothing of value in Ruthie Jones. But at the end of her life, when she had so much to lose, she’d made a stand for what she believed was right. She’d shown courage and had paid a terrible price for it.

  If I died, the full truth of her death might die with me.

  I glanced around, looking for a weapon. There was nothing. The few cooking utensils—including, I assumed, a knife—were on the other side of the cabin where the large metal table was, near the Skipper’s bunk. I’d backed myself into the wrong corner. On the desk, there was only glue, ink, paper . . . nothing that would help me. The Skipper’s typewriter was one I recognized from my days in secretarial school, an L.C. Smith Model 2, a clunker of a machine prone to sticky keys and a carriage return requiring the arm muscle of a stevedore.

  I sidestepped around the table to position myself in back of it. I’d been to a circus once, and for a flash of a second I envisioned myself fiercely wielding a chair to fend off Holger, as the lion tamer had fended off his two large, roaring cats. Anything I could do to buy a little more time, to get ready to run. My limbs were still rubbery—jittering fear didn’t help—and if I did make it topside, there would be the Skipper to contend with. I’d have to cross that bridge if I was lucky enough to reach it.

  Holger sneered at my maneuvering. “Are you really going to try to play puss-in-the-corner, Miss . . . ? I’ve already forgotten your real name.”

  “Faulk. Louise Faulk.”

  “Faulk,” he repeated, bemused. “A German name.”

  “It was when it belonged to my grandparents. It’s been American since I’ve had it.”

  “Ah, I see. You are one of your countrymen who denies your heritage. You’ve also bought into the lie of American neutrality.”

  “No,” I replied honestly, “I see your point about Wilson’s dealings with the Germans. I just don’t agree with your methods. You are a butcher.”

  While I spoke I tried to get a grip on the chair, but to my chagrin, the thing wouldn’t budge. It, like the tables, had been bolted to the floor. The Skipper had battened down furniture as if he’d expected a typhoon on the East River.

  Holger reached into his coat and pulled out a revolver. “I have had enough of nonsense, Fräulein Faulk.”

  Blood drained from my face in a dizzying rush. Nothing rivets attention like a firearm, especially one with its blue steel barrel aimed right at you. I tried, with my shaky knowledge of guns, to focus on detail. A single-action weapon. Probably .38 caliber. For all the good that would do me.

  “It’s the American method, no?” A grim smile tilted his lips. “The Wild West.”

  My future, I knew now, would be determined in seconds. He was armed and all I had was instinct. That, and a very deep animus against L.C. Smith typewriters. He pointed the gun at my heart. I dropped to a bent-kneed crouch, summoned every ounce of strength in my body, and hurled the typewriter at his face.

  He wasn’t expecting my action, but does anyone ever expect a typewriter to be lobbed at them? The surprise of it saved my life. My aim wasn’t very good, but neither was his. His gun went off as the machine struck him, and his shot went wide, hitting the wall behind me.

  I scrambled around the table and nearly stumbled over him. He reached out with one arm, but I sidestepped, and then slipped. As I touched a hand down to catch myself, I spied what Holger had been looking for. His revolver. It was on the floor, a yard from my feet, closer to me than to him. We both lunged for it, and I snatched it and sprang away just in time, wrapping my hand around the unfamiliar grip. My weapons training had been minimal. Armed women were the last thing the hidebound brass of the NYPD wanted to set loose on the streets. But a group of us had been allowed a demonstration and a chance each to fire at a target. I held the revolver now, arms extended, in a two-handed grip.

  Holger attempted to adjust to the power shift that had occurred in the cabin. He held both hands up, though whether in a calming gesture or one of surrender I couldn’t tell. Nor did I care.

  I cocked the revolver.

  “Leisl—Louise—don’t make an ape of yourself. You will not shoot a man.”

  “You were going to kill me.”

  “I only wanted to frighten you.”

  Rage rose in me like bile. “Did you say something similar to Ruthie before you killed her?”

  “You are not Ruthie. That woman was a whore. You are as different as night and day.”

  If he was hoping to win me over with words like that, he was mistaken. “She was a mother, and a human being.”

  “Of course she was,” he said, his tone even, reasonable. “But this is war, Miss Faulk. Do you know how many will die before it is done?”

  “It’s not my war, and it certainly wasn’t Ruthie’s. You had no right to take her life.”

  “And do you think you will take mine?” he asked. “Kill a man in cold blood?”

  Did I have it in me to kill someone? I abhorred murder . . . almost as much as I hated him.

  “Besides,” he said, smirking, “the revolver’s chamber is not full.”

  Those words caught me off guard. But if I were aiming a gun that wasn’t loaded at him, why wouldn’t he have rushed me already?

  I stood my ground, but doubt must have showed in my eyes. He took a step toward me. “Louise . . .”

  “Stop,” I said.

  A cloud passed over his eyes, a darkening, a deadening. That was all the warning I had. He charged as a bull might. He expected to push me over, to disarm me.
He assumed I wouldn’t have the reflexes, or the nerve, to shoot.

  I shot.

  His body reeled as if a whip had cracked him, then he stumbled to the side, falling to his knees as his face drained of color. Surprise showed in his eyes—surprise to be shot, and shot by me. Maybe he really had doubted how many rounds were left in the chamber. He was clutching his left shoulder.

  I watched him, half expecting him to leap up again like a melodrama villain rising to take a bow at the curtain call. But he only groaned, which was joined by the sound of a lowing horn of a ship.

  “Neumann! We need to go. Now.”

  At the sound of the Skipper’s footsteps at the hatch, I pivoted, gun still in my hand. The old man’s eyes went round.

  “Help me tie him up,” I said, indicating Holger.

  “You’re crazy.” He turned and ran.

  Holger sneered at me through a grimace of pain. “You thought he would help you?”

  I scowled at him. “He’s certainly not helping you.”

  A boat’s horn sounded again. Rescue. Despite everything, my heart lifted. I was going to get out of this mess, after all. I decided to go up and investigate. Holger, who had fallen over, was hardly a threat in his current condition.

  Though I’d deduced we were on Long Island Sound, seeing the lights of the city so far away shocked me. I must have been unconscious quite some time. The tallest skyscrapers were distant beacons, and the bridges just lights arcing toward Manhattan. As I faced Manhattan, Connecticut was to my right, Long Island to the left, but both were too far off to make out any landmarks—not that there were any out here I would recognize. The lights along the Long Island shoreline were only intermittent.

  But it didn’t matter. I could see the lights of a boat heading toward us. They weren’t far.

  A splash in the water alerted me that the Skipper had gone over the side. I hurried to the edge and squinted down. At least there was a moon. The old man was adjusting the oars, preparing to make his getaway.

  “Stop!” I aimed the gun at him.

  The whites of his eyes became visible as surprise registered, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind me.

  I pivoted. Holger, still holding his shoulder, had climbed topside. He was far enough away that I wasn’t too worried, although keeping my attention on both of them would be difficult. “I’m not letting you get away,” I said. “Either of you. You’re both under arrest.”

  Listing, Holger laughed. He seemed more preoccupied with a barrel container on the houseboat’s deck than with my gun, though.

  “Dear God, Neumann!” the Skipper shouted. “Don’t do it. The Silver Swan’s not yours.”

  “It will not be theirs, either. And I will not be sent to a barbaric electric chair over the death of a whore.”

  Their interchange perplexed me, until Holger overturned the container. Liquid surged over the deck, rushing toward me. Gasoline fumes stole my breath.

  “He’s crazy!” the Skipper yelled.

  I didn’t know how crazy until I saw Holger bring something out of his pocket. Matches.

  “The Americans will never know what’s on this ship.”

  There was only a second to decide between life and death. Fire or water. I chose water, hurling myself into the ice-cold salty ink of the Sound, diving as far as possible and then stroking toward the rowboat. The light wool fabric of my dress was like a coating of cement now, dragging at me, pulling me down. The water was freezing. I was freezing.

  And then the deck of the Silver Swan exploded in flames. The fireball blotted out the lights of the distant city, the approaching boat, and for a moment even the moon. The fire was all I could see—I could not see Holger, though I heard a piercing scream. The horrible sound rent the air.

  What was coming would be even worse, I knew. So did the Skipper. The rowboat skimmed past and I grabbed hold. “Fast,” I said, struggling to stay above the waves around me. My teeth were clacking from the cold. How long could I stay alive in this water?

  I worried the Skipper would dislodge an oar and knock me away. But he didn’t waste time on that. He rowed, and his rowing probably saved us when the fire reached the dynamite in the cabin and the second explosion struck.

  I cringed, closed my eyes, and ducked behind the rowboat. Debris flew through the air, and plopped into the water around us, some sinking, some floating. The air stank of petroleum and acrid smoke. When the shower of burning wood died down, a moan from the rowboat made me pull up and peek over the side. The Skipper was doubled over. “Something hit my eye.”

  I struggled to lift myself into the boat. It felt even colder out of the water than in, but I knew I wouldn’t last long in the water before hypothermia set in. “Give me your hand,” I said.

  Still covering one eye, he reached to me with his free hand. I managed to work my way into the boat like a beached, shivering fish. “Let me see,” I told him, trying to force my teeth not to chatter. He removed his hand from his face, and it was all I could do not to recoil in horror. A large splinter had hit him in the eye. “You need a doctor,” I said. “The men coming on the approaching boat will take you to Bellevue.”

  I said this with assuredness, although I was doubtful about the identity of the boat that had been following us right up to the moment when I saw Captain Percival Smith at the prow of the tug-shaped police vessel, glasses perched on his nose as always, with a life vest over his long dark coat.

  “Is that you, Officer Faulk? You lived through that explosion?”

  “Yes, sir. But the main suspect didn’t. It was he who blew up the boat.” I pointed down at the Skipper. “This is the boat’s owner, and Holger Neumann’s accomplice. He needs medical help for his eye.”

  “Does he now,” Captain Smith said. “We’ll see about that.”

  It seemed to take forever to get transferred from the rowboat to the police boat. Once I was aboard, Captain Smith put a blanket around my shoulders, while Operatives Halloran and Lunt peppered me with questions. They wanted to know what had happened, and what materials had been on the Silver Swan—how many passports, how much explosive, and if I’d seen any money. I answered their questions as best I could. To be honest, I was only half listening. I couldn’t take my eyes off the city as we drew ever closer to it. Never before had it seemed so brilliant, so expansive, so like my home.

  “So Anna Muldoon found you?” I asked Captain Smith. I’d expected she’d actually look for her brother first, and that perhaps he would be here. I tried not to feel a stab of disappointment that he hadn’t come.

  Smith nodded. “Quite a capable messenger you sent. We picked up that fellow Johann Schmidt at the boardinghouse address you gave, and when he realized what hot water he was in, he immediately began to tell all.”

  “What you can’t tell us about the Silver Swan, Schmidt probably will,” Halloran said. “When the captain here informed him he could be charged with the murder of the prostitute, he was ready to spill everything he knew about everyone from Holger Neumann right up to Kaiser Bill.”

  “Quite a talkative fellow,” Luft added. “What he doesn’t know, he might make up.”

  “Schmidt told us that Neumann and this other fellow had a plan to hide the Silver Swan with all its contents for counterfeit and sabotage at a cabin Neumann owned outside Mattituck, on Long Island. That’s how we were able to find you.”

  “There might be more explosives in that cabin,” Smith said.

  Halloran nodded. “Hopefully no one like these characters will be able to get their hands on any of it.”

  “Holger Neumann’s gone,” I said, almost in disbelief, trying not to remember that scream. A new little something for my nightmares. “The ringleader.”

  Halloran frowned. “We’re not so sure he was the ringleader. The English say there’s an old German aristocrat—supposed aristocrat—operating in this country. We were hoping to track him down through Neumann.”

  The Secret Service men huddled, discussing what efforts sh
ould be made to recover Neumann’s body. I didn’t care if they left him to a watery grave.

  I turned back to Captain Smith. “Thank you, sir, for coming out to rescue me.”

  “You seemed to have matters well in hand. A shame you weren’t officially working for the NYPD tonight. Might’ve earned yourself a commendation or a medal.”

  “Just being alive is reward enough for me.”

  “Good, because we certainly don’t want word of this getting around. No press—I’m sure you understand.”

  “No, sir, I’m not sure I do.”

  “German saboteurs in New York City?” He took off his eyeglasses and rubbed the spray-splattered lenses with a handkerchief. “A fine panic that would cause. And we certainly don’t want it to get around that a policewoman was involved in a gunfight and an explosion that took a man’s life. The public thinks little enough of us without having to worry about gun-wielding females working for us.”

  I stared at the water turning to foam as the boat sliced through it, then disappearing into our wake. Something inside me seemed to be turning to foam, too.

  “No, we need to think of another explanation for the explosion, in case some people saw it,” he continued. “And I’m sure they did. It was like the Fourth of July in December. I thought you were dead for sure.”

  “For a few moments, I worried I was, too.”

  “We’ll give you a week off.” He patted my shoulder. “You deserve a rest. We’ll tell your precinct that you caught a fever on your trip upstate.”

  As miffed as I was about my deeds being erased, the thought of a week off was a balm. “Thank you, sir. I’ll be glad for a week.”

  He looked amused. “What do you intend to do?”

  “Celebrate,” I said. “I’m going to celebrate Christmas, and celebrate being alive.”

  “There’s something else you can celebrate,” Smith said. “You were right about Ruthie Jones all along. My detectives were wrong.”

  Cold as I was, and numb from all that had happened, in that moment exhilaration filled me.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  Was this insanity? Was it crazy to hate danger, yet feel a rush at having cheated death for the third time in my life? And—icing on the cake—I’d had my most skeptical superior officer tell me that I’d been right all along about a case. That was a sweeter melody than anything Otto could have thought up.