“You the driver of this hack?”
“That's right.”
“Name?”
“What is this, anyway? I ain't done nothin'. I ain't been overchargin'! That old hag make a complaint? Listen, I took her a total of twenty-six squares and I took the straightest route. That's over two miles so I got every right to charge the extra fifty cents! She don't like it let her ride the streetcars.”
“Cool it. I wanna ask you about something else.”
He squinted, shifting his gaze from left to right. Then he said, “Hey, look. Can we take this somewheres else? It ain't good for business to have a copper breathin' down my neck.”
We nearly got run over by an omnibus as we crossed the street. The market sheds provided a little relief from the chill winds. I planted myself on the edge of a gro-cer's table and said again to the driver, “What's your name?”
My club was in my hand. He swished some tobacco juice in his mouth.
“Cowles. Bill.”
“Bill, a few nights ago you picked up a fare at the corner of Eighth and South. Early in the morning. Sunup. A woman in mourning. You remember her don't you?”
“What would I be doin' in darkyville at that hour?”
“I'm asking you.”
“I don't know what you're talkin' about.” His finger crept into his mouth and picked at his teeth. “Listen, I gotta get back to my hack.”
He started to walk away. Before he could make another move I poked my club in his face. I left it there propping up a couple of his chins.
“I think you know damn well what I'm talking about. I was there.”
“Please, officer. Please. I ain't done nothin' wrong.”
“I don't wanna have to hurt you, Bill.” I was telling the truth.
“I done what they told me to do! I don't unnerstand …”
“What? What did they tell you to do?”
He took a gulp. Down went his tobacco juice.
“They, they …” His eyes darted back and forth, like someone was watching him.
I took my fingers, stuck them in his nostrils, and yanked up. He gave a yip and jumped backward. My fingers dug into his flaccid chest.
“They told me not to say nothin'. About her, about where I took her.”
“You know her then?”
“No, no. I just took her where she told me.”
“Where?”
“Up Eighth. I let her off on Chestnut. I didn't see where she went.”
“Don't give me that.”
“Don't hit me! I ain't done nothin'. They didn't want me seein' where she lived. They told me to keep my trap shut if anybody came askin' around. They told me if I didn't, I'd take a dip in the river.”
Without wasting a breath I asked him, “Who's they?”
His eyes popped out. Sweat trickled through his whiskers.
“C'mon, Bill. I don't wanna have to take you to the sweatbox.”
“All right, all right. I'll tell ya. Just don't hurt me anymore.”
I waited for him to pull himself together.
“A copper told me. I don't know what his name was. But I think he was a dick.”
Now it was my turn to sweat.
“What did he look like, Bill?”
“Kinda big fella. Mustache like yours, but oiled. Salt-and-pepper it was. And, uh, I noticed one of his eyes looked at me while the other one didn't, like maybe it was fake or something.”
“Dandruff on his jacket?”
“What's that?”
“Flakes of skin, from his hair?”
“Yeah! He didn't have much hair though.”
“You're doing fine, Bill. Now, how much did he pay you to keep quiet?”
Cowles looked at the ground and said, “You ain't gonna make me give it back are ya?”
“Not if you tell me the truth. How much was it?”
“Ten cans.”
“That sounds about right.” I took my nightstick out of his face.
“Now get back to your hack. And you never spoke to me, understand?”
He nodded and got out of there.
I still didn't know where the woman lived. Chestnut was the busiest street, day and night. She could have gone anywhere from there. But there was someone who could point me in the right direction.
From the hackman's description I twigged that the copper who'd paid him his graft was Michael “Evil Eye” Seibert. He wasn't a dick like Cowles thought. Just a special officer, which was close enough. I knew him from my ward. He and I worked together busting up the Schuylkill River gangs the year before. Seibert had been a coward and a drunkard back then and he still was. After nearly two years as a roundsman he decided to buy himself a promotion. He was related by marriage to the cousin of a fellow in the Gas Ring. The special officer badge had been a bargain at five hundred. As a special officer he was about standard. It didn't take much gumption to round out buzzers from a depot or recover stolen property from warehouses that you partially owned.
I found Special Officer Michael Seibert with his back teeth afloat in a lager beer saloon near the central station house. It was the afternoon of the Sabbath, when all saloons were supposed to be closed for business. But you wouldn't see the police enforcing that law here.
This particular establishment was a “good” saloon, according to the blue bellies. If they called it “good,” that meant they could get free drinks from the owner. That made them overlook things like faro tables in the back, or opening on a Sunday in violation of the excise laws.
The German beer slinger didn't take me for a copper. I was in civilian clothes.
“Nickel,” the German said without looking at me.
“I'm not drinking.”
I had a bottle of rye stuffed in my coat. When I got to Seibert's table I put it on the top and said, “Crack a bottle with me, Mike?”
One eye glanced at a space a few inches from my head while the other stared right at me. Both of them were glazed with drink. His large head rolled from side to side like it had an ocean inside it. Tiny flakes settled on his shoulders. Some of the free soup that came with the drinks had gotten stuck in his mustache.
“Who the hell are you, friend?”
“You don't recognize me, Mike? I'm miffed. I really am. Tell me you don't remember our night together underneath the Chestnut Street bridge last year. With the Rangers. The night you jumped into the Schuylkill and left me alone to hold off those plug-ugly pieces of shit. I can still feel that broken arm I got when it rains.”
He leaned over the table like he was going to be sick.
“Hiya, McCleary.”
It came out like a groan.
“I see you do remember, Mikey. Took me almost half an hour to polish those Rangers off. And you remember what happened after that? How I didn't tell the captain you turned coward and left me to take your whacks for you? How I even told him what a great job you'd done, clubbing‘em left and right? I think you got a commendation for that one.”
“Yeah, I remember, you paddy son of a bitch.”
“Now, now, Mikey. Don't get personal.”
“Why'd ya do it, huh? Why din't ya blow the whistle on me?”
The words were slurred, mumbled. “
Here, Mikey. Have one on me. Have a barrel full.” I poured the rye into his beer stein, filling a good part of it. I pretended to take a swig from it myself saying, “Here's at you!”
After he slurped it up, he bit down on his lip and in haled. “That's mighty fine stuff, Mack. Mighty fine.”
“Have another.”
He was good and soused after ten minutes. The rye must have mixed well with the laudanum I put in it. Seibert started chuckling at things: me, the cig between his fingers, the room.
“How's the detective business, Mikey? I hear you've been a bad boy. Threatening cabmen and the like. Is that any way for an officer of the law to behave?”
“What you talkin'‘bout?”
“I'm talkin' about the fella who picked up some old mab on Eighth an
d South after she left a dead baby sticking out of a hay pile.”
“I don't know nothin'‘bout it.”
“Sure you don't. You're a good detective.”
“S'right. I do what they tell me to do.”
“Sure you do. They tell you to lean on the cabman, make sure he doesn't say anything about her … what's her name again?”
“Lena.”
“Lena, that's right. They tell you to make sure he doesn't say anything about Lena and you do like they say, right?”
“S'right. Sergeant Duffy don't want no trouble. She pays her dues.”
Seibert's head slumped onto the table. Drool trickled from his mouth.
I yanked both ends of his mustache. He turned to look at me, one cheek still pressed against the table.
“She paid me good. So did the sergeant.”
“That so? Lena and Duffy are pals?”
“Nah, nah. She just pays him rent, that's all. I used to do the collections before November.”
“I know, I know. That's why I came to talk to you. Sergeant Duffy wanted me to bring her something.”
“He got you doin' the collections this month?” “Yeah, and you know what? I forgot where her crib was! You wouldn't happen to remember where she … ?”
“I just been there last night! Duffy wanted me … keep a man there. Told me some copper was nosin' around with that cabman. One o' them square ones.”
“Guess there are one or two of them still around.
” Seibert snorted and said, “I'll hafta take … care of him. When I find out who he is.”
“Have another one, Mikey. You got a man over there now?”
“Yeah … but he'll let you in to get the … rent.”
“Well, can you tell me where to find her?”
“Sure, Mack. She's right on … corner of Seventh and Sansom. You give her my regards.
” “I will do just that, Mikey.”
His face was resting on the tabletop as I took my leave.
Walking my beat that night gave me time to think.
I had never heard of this Lena but she had to be pulling in the pieces, whatever her game was. Sergeant Walter Duffy didn't take graft from ragpickers. Big money was involved. They would kill me if I got in the way. I was a copper, but business was business. I would have to fly low.
The cabman must have peached on me. The scare I put in him had been just enough to keep his description of me vague. Otherwise Seibert would have been wise to me. I wondered if Cowles had seen the girl looking out of my head. Maybe he heard her saying, He's going to get her. No matter what.
I didn't like the idea of a bull guarding her house. It wasn't that I was afraid of a brawl. I just didn't want him to get a good look at my mug. There would be trouble then, from people bigger than he was.
I tried to take my mind off all my trouble by unwrapping the bone I'd brought. I hadn't seen the stray since we'd first met Lena in the alleyway.
Or maybe I had seen him, but just hadn't noticed, because I hadn't bothered to really look.
I thought on how many strays I'd seen in my five years as a copper, and how many mad ones I'd shot dead. Starved, ragged creatures—a whole society of them coursing through the streets and back alleys. You saw the miserable things so often you tended to ignore them. They became invisible, shadows flitting on the edge of the city.
It was easy to ignore creatures like them. They merely had to be contained, in a place like the Seventh Ward, a prison of sorts. I knew what it was like to be imprisoned for being nothing more than what I was. I'd been a prisoner of war in Andersonville. I became acquainted with misery there. And evil. And the bitter sting of knowing that the rest of the world didn't care if we lived or died.
The irony of my position now was not lost on me. Here I was in the Seventh Ward, sent by the city not so much to protect the population there as to contain them. My club was supposed to be like the pine walls of Andersonville, hedging them in, where they couldn't hurt respectable society. Let the swells prey on them in any way they could, but the moment they returned the favor, they were dealt with mercilessly.
That was the way our modern, nineteenth-century world worked. But I still took notice of the strays, just the same. I didn't feel the need to pretend they were invisible.
As dawn broke across the sky, I spotted the dog. He was curled up beneath a parked wagon. When he saw me, he got stiffly to his feet and clambered over. For a few moments we stared at each other. I held the bone out to him, urging him to take it in my gentlest, most soothing voice.
The dog thrust his tail between his legs and backed away from me.
Annoyed at being rejected by the stupid beast yet again, I threw the bone at him, aiming for his snout. It hit him dead-on.
Then the stray did a curious thing. Instead of fleeing from me, he stood his ground. With his eyes on me the whole time, he took the bone into his mouth, gingerly, and went back under the wagon. His eyes followed me as I walked away.
The next day, Christmas Eve, I went for her. On my way over there the murdered child's face was staring at me from the storefront windows.
Get her. Get Lena. That was what she was telling me to do. There was only one way to get her voice out of my head.
The Chestnut/Walnut car left me off at Eighth. I walked the rest of the way to Sansom, probably retracing Lena's own route.
The house was a three-story, redbrick row house with a dormer poking out of the slate shingled roof.
It had to be that one. A blue belly across the street had his gleems on it. He hadn't seen me yet. He looked like a reserve officer, one of Sergeant Duffy's thugs.
Circling the square, out of the guard's sight, I came to a rear court in back of the house.
The back door was locked, of course. Ash barrels and milk bottles were piled up around it, like a barrier. Some crates were thrown beside the neighboring door. I stood very still for a moment. No noise came from the house that I could hear.
The handle of my revolver broke a pane of glass right above the doorknob. I reached in and unfastened the lock.
I took a deep breath, hoping she wasn't at home.
Inside, there were smells of chicken broth. I was in the kitchen. Milk bottles were piled everywhere. The stovepipe leaked a little smoke. It hung in the air like mist on a pond.
The place seemed empty.
I went through the hall and into the parlor. It was furnished tastefully but not extravagantly. Yellowed lace curtains trailed to some threadbare Turkish carpets scattered on the floor. A few prints from Currier and Ives hung framed, all on the same level. Above a mirror was a motto. It said: “Safe in the arms of Jesus.” A crude figure cuddled an infant in one arm and held a shep-herd's staff in the other. I almost laughed at the irony. It made a good impression on her callers, I suppose.
A clock ticked on a false mantel draped with a dusty valance. The parlor's center table was decorated with a miniature cedar tree. Interspersed in the branches were tiny wax candles, resting in tin holders to prevent them from igniting the tree. Dangling from the branches were pieces of colored glass in the shapes of stars, fruits, and flowers. At the base of the table were a number of boxes, wrapped in white paper.
It looked like a typical Christmas scene. The only thing needed to top it off would be a warm, glowing hearth. As it was, the fireplace was cold and drafty.
She had certainly outdone herself in making her parlor cheery and festive. But there was something artificial about the whole scene. As if everything were arranged out of a sense of habit, almost perfunctorily.
Picking up one of the presents, I shook the box. There was nothing in it. It was the same with all the others. They were empty decorations.
Through the curtains I could see the copper across the street with his eyes on the front door. Nobody was coming yet.
For a moment I thought of walking out the way I came. What was I going to do to her anyway? How could I possibly prove that she killed the infant? She certainly wouldn't confess
to me.
But if she were paying “rent” to the police that meant she was dirty, somehow. All I needed to do was find out what her game was.
I took another peep out the window. A figure walked past the copper on the other side of the street, crossed, and headed for the front door. A veil covered her face. Her body was draped in layers of dull black crinoline. Lena was coming home.
As I turned back to the parlor, wondering what I should do, where I should go, I heard a baby crying. It sounded like it came from upstairs.
By the time I heard the key turn in the lock I'd made it to the second floor. The narrow hallway had one door closed at the end.
From behind it, I heard wailing from many infants.
There were sounds from downstairs, kitchen noises. Lena was making her luncheon.
I got closer to the door, moving quietly. I opened it.
The room inside was a little larger than a closet, but not much. Paint was peeling off the walls. On the wooden floor were piles of mouse droppings. There was barely any light. Heavy drapes covered the small window. It was frigidly cold inside.
The draft did nothing to alleviate the putrid stench.
In that room were six cribs, with a total of nine infants in them. All of the babies were naked. A few were crying. Eight of them were white. The other looked mulatto. Two seemed asleep. I nudged them just to make sure. The first one swiped at my finger with her tiny hand. The other one right next to her didn't move. His chest rose slowly, as if he were struggling for breath. I rocked him back and forth on the soiled linen. The child's flesh was covered with bedsores.
It reminded me of the kennel at the pound, where they toss strays for a while until they kill them all to make room for the next batch.
I'd heard about these places, knew they existed. But respectable people didn't talk about things like this. It was better to ignore them.
A baby farm.
To me, it seemed more like a fencing crib, where sneak thieves go to get rid of the goods they've stolen.
Here the daughters of society got rid of their mistakes and saved themselves from shame. Instead of giving them cash like a fence would, Lena gave them the chance to be respectable again.
If a young lady got in trouble, she could solve that trouble here. First the mother-to-be suddenly got sick. She was quarantined until she delivered. Then they dumped the newborn at a place like this. The masher or parent paid for the child's upkeep for a few months, just long enough to assuage the conscience. Once they were gone, the children could be easily forgotten, left to rot in their own peculiar prison. When the weekly payments of three dollars stopped, the child got sick and died. There was no sense in keeping it when it was worth nothing.
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