by Peg Cochran
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, giving Mrs. Murphy’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll try to get home as early as I can.”
Elizabeth looked at her watch and hurried out of the building, nodding at the doorman who held the front door open for her as she rushed out.
The wind was brisk and the sky clouded over with patches of blue showing here and there. Elizabeth tugged her hat down firmly and set off for the subway.
She walked swiftly although weariness dogged her every step, and she had to stifle a yawn more than once. She hoped her mother wouldn’t be too much of a bother for Mrs. Murphy, who was certainly not as young as she used to be.
Elizabeth couldn’t remember a time when Mrs. Murphy didn’t hold sway over the kitchen, which she considered her exclusive domain. She’d been a fairly young woman when she’d come to them, having just walked off the boat from her native Ireland the month before.
Elizabeth joined the crowd racing down the stairs to the subway. Fatigue was making her clumsy. She caught the heel of her shoe on the step and would have tumbled to the bottom if a gentleman in a black overcoat with a velvet collar hadn’t put out a hand to keep her from falling.
The train pulled into the station with a puff of stale air and screeched to a halt along the platform. Elizabeth elbowed her way on and quickly secured a seat. She had to marvel at how much she had changed—at one time she would have been far too polite to push and jostle the way the other riders did.
Her head began to nod in time to the rhythm of the subway car as they racketed along the tracks, the metal wheels grinding against the rails as they went around a bend.
The train slowed and came to a stop, and Elizabeth looked up, startled to find that she’d fallen asleep. She stared at the station sign in dismay—Thirty-third Street. She’d missed her stop and would have to cross over and take the subway back again.
As Elizabeth trudged up the stairs, she changed her mind. She would walk the ten blocks back. Perhaps the frigid air would wake her up.
Despite the freezing temperatures, Elizabeth arrived at the offices of the Daily Trumpet feeling warm and toasty with red-tinged cheeks and only the tip of her nose and the tips of her fingers feeling the cold.
She pulled off her gloves in the elevator and hastened to hang up her coat and hat when she arrived in the newsroom. Estelle was already a ghostly shadow behind the frosted glass door of her office.
Elizabeth slid into her seat. Estelle’s daily column waited on her desk. She flexed her fingers to warm them and began to type.
“Oh, fudge,” Elizabeth muttered when she realized she’d made an error.
She rooted around in her desk drawer, found her eraser and carefully began to erase the offending letter. Unfortunately, despite her care, the eraser tore a hole in the paper and she had to rip it from the roller and insert a new sheet.
She began to type again, fighting the urge to put her head down on her desk and close her eyes. Again, she felt guilt worm its way into her mind. She should be at home caring for her mother and sister, not doing a poor job of typing. Maybe she should quit. Maybe she wasn’t meant to be a career girl after all.
If only Kaminsky would call her for a story. Elizabeth turned around in her seat and scanned the desks in the newsroom. Kaminsky’s seat was empty—his white mug sitting forlornly in the middle of his desk.
Elizabeth turned back to her typewriter. She managed to type a few more words before her eyelids grew heavy again and her head began to droop.
A sharp rapping sound made Elizabeth jump, her eyes flying open like a window shade that had been pulled too hard.
“What?” She looked up.
Estelle was standing over Elizabeth’s desk, arms crossed over her chest, mouth pursed in displeasure or disgust or both—Elizabeth couldn’t tell.
Elizabeth stared at the middle button on Estelle’s black-and-white glen plaid suit jacket.
“You young girls are all the same,” Estelle said, her voice dripping with disapproval. “You want to have your cake and eat it, too. A good paying job and dancing and drinking until the wee hours of the night regardless of how it affects your performance at work.”
“I…I…” Elizabeth hastened to explain but Estelle cut her off.
“I feel I must speak to the editor about this. There are any number of young women who would be happy to take your place.”
Estelle emphasized her last words with a rap of her pencil on Elizabeth’s desk.
Elizabeth felt her face color. She prided herself on a job well done—she’d gotten almost all As at Wellesley and had never turned in an assignment late or incomplete. A moment ago she was thinking of quitting and now she was in danger of being fired!
“Please don’t say anything,” Elizabeth said, detesting the wheedling tone that had crept into her voice. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”
Estelle merely raised her eyebrows, spun on her heel and returned to her office.
Elizabeth wanted to flee the newsroom but that would only anger Estelle more. Suddenly the door flew open, and she looked behind her hopefully, but it was only Tom McCandless, a reporter on the business beat.
Thankfully Sullivan hadn’t caught her napping at her desk—he already had it in for her and looked for any excuse to fault her.
Elizabeth went back to pecking out Estelle’s column. A headache was forming behind her eyes and she stopped to rub her temples. The door to the newsroom opened again, only this time she didn’t bother to look.
“Biz.”
She heard Kaminsky call her name and spun around.
“We’ve got a story. A juicy one. Grab your stuff and let’s go.”
* * *
—
“The police have found the body of a woman under the elevated tracks near the Second Avenue and Fifth-seventh Street stop,” Kaminsky said as they walked toward Grand Central Station.
The clouds, which had been scattered earlier in the day, were now heavy, dark masses hanging menacingly low in the sky. An icy drizzle started as they made their way to the elevated station at Forty-second Street. Elizabeth stamped her feet and clapped her hands together to keep them warm as they waited for the train.
Excitement mixed with fear stirred in the pit of her stomach. Each assignment was a test—not only of her photographic ability but of her ability to stomach the seamier side of life.
The train came roaring down the elevated tracks kicking up a breeze that flipped up the hem of Elizabeth’s coat and threatened to make off with her hat. She clamped one hand on her head quickly and brushed tendrils of hair out of her eyes with the other.
“I don’t have many details,” Kaminsky said as they boarded the train. “No ID on the body but according to the report, the clothes suggest she was a…” Kaminsky coughed to cover his embarrassment. “A lady of the night, if you know what I mean.”
“A prostitute?”
“Yes.” Kaminsky looked both relieved and slightly taken aback by Elizabeth’s frankness.
“She was found strangled by a pal of hers under the Second Avenue El near the Fifty-seventh Street station. Horrible way to go.” Kaminsky gave a rumbling cough and pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He spit into it, wadded it back up and returned it to his pocket.
The train stopped at Fiftieth Street and Kaminsky got up to give his seat to an old hunchbacked woman dressed all in black and bent over a cane. She had a hooked nose and was wearing a kerchief tied under her chin. To Elizabeth she looked like one of those women who read your palm and told you your fortune.
Kaminsky grabbed the center pole, and Elizabeth got up from her seat and joined him.
“Have you ever seen a person who’s been strangled before?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, I haven’t.”
“No, I don’t suppose you have. Not a pretty sight, as you can imagin
e. There was this case once—a sailor just off the Queen Mary docked at Pier 92 over on West Fifty-third Street. He was a small fellow, one of those wiry types. He got into a brawl in some joint over by the docks. Some guy throttled him with his bare hands.”
Kaminsky pulled out his handkerchief and coughed into it again.
“The limey’s eyes were bugged out and looked like they were about to pop right out of his head.”
Elizabeth felt queasy suddenly, and it wasn’t because of the motion of the train as it rocketed around the bends and curves in the track.
“Sorry,” Kaminsky said, seeing her face. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You need to be prepared, though.”
Elizabeth swallowed hard. “I’m fine,” she insisted, lifting her chin.
It wasn’t until the train was pulling into the Fifty-seventh Street station that Elizabeth wondered whether Marino would be at the scene. The thought made her breath catch in her throat, and she surreptitiously checked the seams in her stockings, straightened her hat and smoothed down her windblown hair.
A curious crowd had already formed at the scene by the time Elizabeth and Kaminsky descended the stairs from the platform. Several uniformed officers were holding the onlookers back, creating a clearing around the body, which was covered by a worn-looking navy blue coat and looked as if it had been tossed on the ground like a bundle of rags—a very tiny bundle, Elizabeth thought—with its legs and arms splayed.
A man in a dark overcoat and brown fedora was circling the body, his hands behind his back, occasionally stooping to look closer at something that caught his eye. The set of his shoulders was familiar, and when he turned around, Elizabeth realized it was Marino.
Kaminsky held out his press card as they made their way through the crowd to the red-cheeked policeman standing facing them, his arms spread wide as if that alone would keep the press of people from pushing forward. He glanced at Kaminsky’s ID and with a jerk of his head indicated they could pass.
Elizabeth got her camera out even before they reached the body. She had the feeling she would need the distance it would provide between her and the scene of what looked to be a very gruesome murder.
Kaminsky’s earlier description of the sailor went around and around in her head on an endless reel as they approached the body.
Marino spun around as they got closer.
He smiled at Elizabeth and put a hand on her arm. “This isn’t something a lady should see.”
Elizabeth looked him in the eye. “I’m here to take photographs for the Daily Trumpet. I don’t expect it to be a tea party.”
Marino’s eyes lit up and he laughed. “Attagirl,” he said, slapping Elizabeth on the back. “I suppose you’ll want to take some pictures of the body.”
He stood aside, and Elizabeth stared down at the face of the dead prostitute.
Her light brown hair had fallen over her face, obscuring it. But Elizabeth didn’t need to see it to realize she was very young. And thin—her collarbones protruded alarmingly above the cheap dress she was wearing. Elizabeth wanted to cry. She was someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s sister? What had forced her into a life of prostitution? Because Elizabeth knew that very few women chose the profession of their own free will. Had it been circumstances? The Great Depression had left countless people without work, without money, without food. Maybe she was caring for someone—someone who depended on her. She looked too young to have a child—hardly any older than Rose—but Elizabeth supposed she could be wrong.
Death had left her skin devoid of color. Her lips, though, were painted a vivid red as if she was determined to show a brave face to the world. Elizabeth again felt hot tears pressing against the back of her eyelids.
A striped red tie, partially loosened, was knotted around her throat. Kaminsky pointed at it.
“Was that the weapon?” he asked Marino, his ever-present notebook already in hand.
“It would seem so,” Marino said. “The autopsy should tell us more.”
Elizabeth pulled her camera from the case, quickly held it to her eye and tried to concentrate on framing the shot and not on the young life discarded on the pavement like a used tissue.
Kaminsky turned to Marino. “Do these gals normally work this area?”
Marino shrugged. “We occasionally pick up one or two around here. Most of them are too clever to allow themselves to be caught.”
“Someone found the body, I take it? A friend or something like that, they said?”
Marino gestured over his shoulder. “She’s with one of our female officers right now. She was terribly shaken up, as you can imagine.”
Both Elizabeth and Kaminsky turned and looked over to where a police car was pulled up onto the sidewalk. The back door was open, and a pair of legs were swung over the seat. A policewoman was leaning over the car obviously talking with the occupant.
“Do you think she’ll talk to me?” Kaminsky said.
“I don’t know.” Marino stroked his chin. “I had trouble getting much of anything out of her—the barest details. She was nearly hysterical.” He turned to Elizabeth. “You might have better luck with her. A woman’s touch, you know.”
“Do you mind, Biz?” Kaminsky said.
Marino raised one of his dark eyebrows. “Biz?”
“Elizabeth is too much of a mouthful for anybody,” Kaminsky said, reaching into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. “I’ve christened her Biz.”
Marino looked at Elizabeth and she felt herself blushing. “Biz?” he said. “Do you mind if I call you Biz, too?”
Elizabeth had grown to rather like the nickname, although she hadn’t yet had the nerve to introduce herself with it.
She nodded.
“Why don’t we go on over and talk to the gal who found the body,” Kaminsky said, his hand cupping the flaming match he held to the tip of his cigarette. The wind gusted and the flame went out. He struck another match and this time, after a second or two, the tip of his cigarette glowed red.
All Elizabeth could see of the girl in the police car were her shoes—sturdy, sensible shoes with ties—not at all what Elizabeth would have expected. She’d imagined heels—high heels—in some fancy fabric like satin and a bright color like red.
The policewoman moved to the side as they approached, and Elizabeth saw the girl’s legs up to the knees. Her skirt was on the long side, but even so Elizabeth could see the braces on her legs.
She gasped and Kaminsky gave her a look.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so,” Elizabeth said. Her breath felt as if it was trapped in her chest, pressing against her lungs, stopping her heart.
It couldn’t be Irene—it just couldn’t be. There must be lots of women who needed leg braces, especially in a city the size of New York. The polio epidemic had been long and fierce and had affected thousands and thousands of people.
The policewoman put a hand on the girl’s elbow and she struggled out of the car as they approached.
It was Irene. She, too, was wearing red lipstick, a heavy layer of pancake makeup and bright spots of rouge on her cheeks as if she was trying to create a mask to disguise herself. Certainly this girl in the thin, low-cut dress and gaudy makeup wasn’t the real Irene—the Irene Elizabeth had known for years. Elizabeth had to force herself not to react.
“Elizabeth!” Irene cried when they reached her. She buried her face in her hands. “I’m so ashamed.”
Elizabeth turned to Kaminsky and motioned for him to leave them alone. He nodded his head knowingly and sauntered back toward the elevated platform. The policewoman also took the hint and moved away from the patrol car toward where several of her colleagues were huddled together against the cold, their collars pulled up tight around the backs of their necks.
Irene had her thin arms wrapped around herself, and Elizabeth saw the goose bumps bl
ossoming up and down them.
“Where’s your coat?”
Irene pointed toward the station platform. “I put it over Julia.” She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. “The wind is so bitter and she looked so terribly cold lying there in that thin dress.” She began to sob. “I knew she was dead but I couldn’t bear the thought. And I didn’t want everyone looking at her lying there…like that. I knew what people would think. She wasn’t…she wasn’t like that.”
“What was she like?” Elizabeth asked gently.
Irene lifted her face toward Elizabeth’s. It was streaked with tears, and rivulets of dark mascara ran down each cheek.
“She was kind.” Irene looked down at her hands. “She was kind to me.” She glanced at Elizabeth again and a look of determination crossed her face. “She was a good girl.” She wrung her hands. “I know that’s hard to believe but sometimes…”
“I understand.” Elizabeth knelt and took Irene’s hands in hers, barely aware of the grit and rough concrete digging into her knees.
Irene took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s not what you think. Sometimes…sometimes there’s no choice.”
“What’s happened, Irene? Please tell me. Maybe I can help. How did you…?”
Irene smiled briefly. “You know I lost my job at the Waldorf.” She gestured toward her leg braces. “I don’t have many skills, and I’m hardly fit for any kind of manual labor. I had no choice. I was only eating one meal a day as it was and then I was afraid that would become even more than I could afford. I didn’t want to starve like those women you read about.” She put her hands over her face and sobbed. “I was so frightened. I didn’t want to die.” She grabbed Elizabeth’s hand. “You don’t blame me, do you?”
“Of course not.” Elizabeth gave Irene a hug.
“Julia’s helped me so much. She rented a room down the hall from me, and we became friendly. She’s terribly young but she knows a lot. She introduced me to some clients.” Irene’s face was suddenly suffused with color. “Nice men—at least I suppose they are. But I can’t imagine who would have done this to her.”