by P. B. Ryan
Riley, the bartender, nodded as they walked over to him, a vague disappointment in his gaze as he surveyed Nell’s attire. She wore the same gaudy tournure skirt of Mary Agnes’s that she’d had on Thursday night, but with a lace-trimmed white blouse of her own. Even with the top few buttons undone, it was a considerably more modest, if still somewhat humble, costume.
After a couple of minutes of small talk, Will asked Riley if he happened to have noticed the one-legged fellow Johnny Cassidy threw out of the saloon Monday night. “I wasn’t here,” Will said in his provincial Boston accent, “but I heard about it. Thing is, he sounds like he might be this fella I knew in the Army, so I was wonderin’ if anyone knows who he is.”
“I saw him when Johnny ousted him,” Riley said as he wiped the bar down using the same slimy rag with which he “cleaned” the glasses. “Don’t know his name. He ain’t a regular.”
“Are you sure?” Will asked. “I heard he mighta come back the next night.”
“Tuesday? Not that I noticed,” Riley said, “and I’m right here near the front door. But then, there was all that mayhem after Johnny was shot.”
“He would have come in before that,” Will said.
Shaking his head, Riley said, “Finn might know. He was boxing Tuesday night, but there ain’t much goes on here that escapes him.”
“Thanks, I’ll go ask him.”
“You’ll have to wait till the match is over.” Cocking his head toward the dance hall, Riley said, “That’s him in the ring right now, fightin’ Bulldog Cunigan.”
They paused in the entrance to the dance hall, where scores of cheering and jeering onlookers stood gathered around a roped-off wooden platform in which Finn and his shorter but beefier opponent pounded each other with bare, blood-slicked fists. The clamor was deafening, the fight rawly savage.
“Attaboy, Southpaw!” someone yelled. “Teach ‘im a lesson.”
“Get him, Finn!” screeched a woman pressed right up against the ring, clutching the ropes: Pru. “Hammer him!”
Finn did hammer him, landing punch after punch to the head as Cunigan staggered backward. Sweat flew off the big Irishman as he pummeled his opponent, his face contorted in a feral grimace that made Nell shiver. With Cunigan now pinned against the ropes, Finn drove his left fist like a mallet into the poor fellow’s face, splitting his eyelid open and spraying blood.
Nell clutched her stomach, willing herself not to be sick.
“Nell.” Will wrapped an arm around her and hustled her away from there. “Are you all right?” he asked, half-yelling to be heard above the din.
Expelling a shaky breath, she said, “He’s an animal.”
Will nodded. “It’s not a sport with him, it’s a kind of mania. You can see it in his eyes. Come—let’s finish this up so I can get you out of here.”
None of the bar girls or waitresses they questioned had seen Ben Shute return to Nabby’s Tuesday night. By the time they got around to questioning Mother Nabby herself, the fight was over. Nell was surprised it had lasted as long as it had, given the magnitude of the punishment Cunigan had absorbed.
“I don’t see nothin’ that happens out front, sittin’ back here,” Mother said as she puffed on her pipe. “But I do know Johnny had to boot out some cripple Monday.”
“You didn’t hear anything about him coming back?” Nell asked.
Mother shook her head. “Hey, listen, that flat’s ready for you to move in any time you want. Blood’s all cleaned up.”
“Good to know. Is Denny Delaney around?” Will asked.
“Yeah, he’s downstairs, sweepin’ up,” she said. “Or s’posed to be. Prob’ly down there with his nose in a book, lazy little scrap heap.”
* * *
“A leg and an eye both?” Denny asked. They’d found him lying on a pallet in one of the empty “dance booths,” reading The Last of the Mohicans by candlelight, his broom on the floor next to him. He’d panicked when they found him, fretting about getting punished for holing up down there, until they promised him they wouldn’t tell.
Will said, “Yeah, he lost them at Fredericksburg.”
“If he’s the old acquaintance you’re thinking of,” Nell said.
“If he’s the old acquaintance I’m thinking of.”
Sitting up, Denny said, “I seen him. Saw him. I noticed him ‘cause he was sittin’ with Detective Cook Monday night, so I figured they must be friends. Then they left, but the gammy fella, he came back later and...” He looked away, shifting his jaw. “Him and Mary...you know.”
“She brought him down here.”
The boy nodded, picking at the rough woolen blanket with his fingers. “Johnny threw him out. He used to throw a lot of fellas out, the ones that...went with Mary. I think they musta got rough with her, some of them. I’d see bruises on her face afterwards, and little scrapes and cuts. Course, Johnny used to slap her around, too, sometimes, but I guess he wanted to be the only one to do it. I asked her once how come she put up with it, and she told me it was complicated, and there wouldn’t be no way to make me understand.”
“Did you ever see him again, after that night?” Nell asked. “The man Johnny threw out?”
“Sure, he came back the next night. I remember, ‘cause it was right before Johnny got killed.”
Nell and Will looked at each other.
“There was a fight goin’ on,” Denny said. “Not the first fight, between Finn and Davey Kerr. That only lasted two rounds before Finn knocked Kerr out. The second fight had started, but only just.”
“The second fight,” Will said. “Muldoon against McCann, right?”
“Right. It was the first round. I’d gone out back to, uh...” He glanced at Nell. “You know.”
“Use the privy?” Will said.
Denny nodded. “When I come out, there’s this fella just kinda standin’ in the alleyway on the side there, lookin’ down at something in his hand. It was dark, so at first I couldn’t really tell what it was. He looked up, and I seen it was the fella from the night before that Johnny threw out. He had a top hat on, nice frock coat... He called me over, and when I got closer, I seen it was a newspaper he was holding.”
“A newspaper?” Nell said.
“Yeah, all folded up real tight. He said he’d give me two bits if I’d give it to Johnny Cassidy, but I had to give it to him myself, not just leave it somewhere for him. I said sure. He gave me the two bits and the paper and left.”
Will’s grim expression echoed Nell’s feelings. Chances were that newspaper was wrapped around a thousand dollars. Why would Ben Shute have paid Johnny the blackmail money, only to turn around and put a bullet in his head? This revelation boded well for Shute—but left Colin Cook as much a suspect as ever.
Nell said, “Did you get the chance to give Johnny the newspaper before he...?”
“Nah. Nah. It wasn’t that long after that that he, uh, got shot.”
“What did you do with it?” Will asked. “We’d like to see it if you still have it.”
Denny frowned in concentration. “I dunno. I guess I musta left it in the—” He cut himself off, looked up at them, then quickly away. “Um... I guess I, uh, must have dropped it somewhere, you know, after Johnny was shot. It was so confusing and all, with everybody yelling and running around.”
Nell crouched down so that she and the boy were at eye level. “Denny.”
He looked at her; looked away.
“Where is it, Denny?”
“I...I dunno. I told you.”
“You opened up the newspaper, didn’t you?” she asked. “You saw what was inside.”
“No. No, I swear. I just—”
“It’s all right,” Will said soothingly. “We’re not cross with you. We just want to—”
“I don’t have it!” Denny leapt to his feet. “I never even opened it up. I swear!”
“Denny, we think there’s a great deal of money hidden inside that newspaper,” Will said. “A thousand dollars.”
; The boy gaped at him.
“We know you’re a good kid,” Nell said. “You’re like Detective Cook. You believe in doing the right thing. If you know where that money is, we’d like to give it back to the man who gave it to you.”
“Who are you, really?” Denny demanded. “You ain’t here to rent that flat, else you wouldn’t know all this stuff. You wouldn’t be askin’ all these questions.”
With a glance at Will, Nell said, “We’re friends of Detective Cook’s. Just like you.”
“We know you lied to us,” said Will. “You let us think you were upstairs when Johnny got killed, but you were down here.”
Pushing between them, Denny said, “I gotta be getting back up there before they—”
Stopping the boy with a hand on his shoulder, Will said, “We know you saw Detective Cook standing over Johnny with his gun in his hand. And that Mary sent you upstairs.”
“Finn woulda...” Denny clawed his hands through his hair. “I...I wasn’t supposed to be down here.”
“You saw what you saw,” Will said, “yet you still don’t think Cook killed Johnny?”
“He ain’t a...” Denny grimaced, sighed. “He isn’t a murderer. He didn’t do it.”
“Is that why you didn’t you tell Constable Skinner that you saw him?” Nell asked. “Or was it that you didn’t want to get in trouble for being down here?”
“They don’t like me hanging out down here, reading.”
“But they don’t seem to mind you reading upstairs,” Nell pointed out.
“Is it because Mary lived down here?” Will asked. “Because they didn’t want you spending too much time near her flat?”
Denny looked back and forth between them, the blood rising in his cheeks.
Will said, “We know you used to watch her. We know that’s why they put the padlock on the coal cellar door last year.”
“We know that’s why Finn broke your fingers and your nose,” Nell said. “It seems like a pretty cruel punishment, if you ask me, worse than you deserved.”
Denny shoved his hands in his pockets and muttered something that included the word “Mary.”
“I’m sorry?” Nell said.
“I said even Mary thought so. She told me so. She asked me how come I started doin’ it, and I told her I just found the hole one day when they sent me down to the coal cellar for booze, and I looked through it and there she was, sitting and playing cards all by herself. There was a candle on the table, and it made her hair look like a big red halo, like in those pictures of saints, and she looked kinda sad, but so pretty. Not in the way them other girls...those other girls are. With her, you know it’s real, not just paint and stuff. And it was just...hard to stop lookin’. I told her it wasn’t true, what they said about me watching her when she was...you know. When she didn’t have her clothes on. I didn’t do that.”
“Never?” Will asked.
Looking down, the boy said, “Once, when I was watching, she started getting undressed for bed. I...watched till she was down to her, you know, her petticoats and stuff, and I reckon I... Well, part of me wanted to keep watching, but I knew if I did that, I’d have to confess it to Father Gannon, and I also knew it’d ruin everything, you know? It’d make it dirty, the watching. It had never been dirty before. So I left.”
“And you told Mary all this?” Nell asked.
Denny nodded. “She said she was proud of me for leaving. She said she didn’t like bein’ watched at all, really, but she understood. She said I was just a boy with no girls around, no nice ones, anyway, and that boys get curious.”
“Did she know you were sweet on her?” Nell asked gently.
Denny looked up sharply, as if to refute it, then lowered his gaze and mumbled, “I don’t know. Maybe. She’s pretty smart, and she knows a lot about, you know, people and stuff. She used to talk to me, after...after I got caught lookin’ through the hole. About girls and stuff, and how I should get away from here before this place poisoned me. That’s how she put it. She thought it would change me, being here. She wanted me to go back to school.”
“You miss her, don’t you?” Nell asked.
The boy nodded miserably. “It ain’t gonna be the same around here. She’s gone, Detective Cook’s gone...”
“Cook is back, actually,” Will said.
“He is?” Denny’s look of delight evaporated as he took in their sober expressions. “They think he did it, huh?”
“He’s been arrested,” Will said. “They arraigned him yesterday afternoon, which means going to court to be charged with a crime. He was charged with murder and he pled not guilty. The judge denied bail, so he’ll be held in jail until the trial.”
“What’s gonna happen then?” Denny asked.
“Well, we’re hoping he’ll be acquitted,” Will said.
“Found not guilty,” Nell explained.
“Do you think he will?” the boy asked as Nell and Will started up the stairs.
They paused, glanced at each other.
Nell said, “I promise you, Denny, we’ll do everything we can to make sure that happens.”
* * *
After coming back upstairs, Nell and Will re-interviewed everyone they’d spoken to before, trying to determine if anyone had seen a folded-up newspaper the night of the murder. Understandably, the question tended to inspire odd looks; who cared about a four day old newspaper?
“Prob’ly got tossed out with the trash,” said Mother Nabby.
A thousand dollars, Nell thought, carted away to wherever trash gets carted in this city. It made her feel vaguely nauseated.
Finn Cassidy strode into the back room, still clad in his sweat-stained boxing pants, his bare chest speckled with blood. Pru was with him, carrying a red-smeared towel as if it were the victor’s pennant.
“I heard you was lookin’ for me durin’ the fight,” Finn said. “Riley said you was askin’ ‘bout that crip Johnny tossed outa here Monday night. I never seen him before or since. He a friend of yours?”
“I thought it might be this fella I knew during the war,” Will said, “but it’s probably—”
“There you are, you little pest,” Mother growled.
They turned to find Denny standing outside the room, eyeing Finn warily. His face and clothes were stained with black dust, and he had something tucked under one arm.
“‘Bout time you came back up here,” Mother said. “What’s that you got there?”
Denny held it up so she could see it, but he was looking at Nell and Will. “J-just a newspaper.”
Chapter 17
Finn snatched the newspaper out of Denny’s hand. “You were readin’ downstairs again?”
“He does it all the time,” Pru said as she wiped the towel over Finn’s back and shoulders.
Making a fist, Finn said, “I’m thinkin’ maybe he needs a little remindin’ about—”
“It’s my newspaper,” Will said as he grabbed it from Finn. “I’ve been looking for it. Thanks, Denny. You’re a good kid.”
“Wait till you know him a little better,” Pru sneered. “He’s a worthless little rat if ever there was one.”
Finn swatted her away as she reached up to dab his face with the towel. “Would you cut that out? I can’t hardly breathe with you crawlin’ all over me like that.”
“Speakin’ of rats,” Mother said, “Skinner stopped by just now to collect his weekly take. He said they caught that state cop that shot Johnny Cassidy. You know,” she said to Nell and Will, “the fella that used to live in the room you’re rentin’? He said they’re holdin’ the bastard without bail. Said he’s gonna swing fer sure.”
“Good riddance. Murderin’ son of a bitch.” Finn spat on the floor. “May he roast in Hell.”
Pru turned, hands on hips, to glare at Denny. “What the hell are you starin’ at? Finn, do you see how this little quat is lookin’ at you?”
Indeed, there was no mistaking the fury that Denny was leveling at Finn. His jaw got that same hard thrust to
it that Will’s did, Nell noticed.
“You got some nerve, lookin’ at me that way,” Finn said.
“Yeah,” Denny said in a voice that shook as much with anger, it seemed to Nell, as with fear, “well, you got some nerve, callin’ Detective Cook a murderer when it was you that put that bullet in Johnny’s head.”
Finn stared at Denny, the whites showing all around his irises. “What did you say?” he asked in a strained near-whisper.
Pru’s sloppily rouged mouth was hanging open. “Why, you little—”
“You killed your own brother,” Denny said shakily. “If anybody’s gonna roast in Hell, I reckon it’ll be—”
Finn lunged for him, hauling back with his fist. Will reacted in a blur, blocking the punch and landing one of his own to Finn’s jaw.
“Get him, Finn!” Pru screamed. “He can’t fight! He’s a fairy! Knock him out!”
“Pru!” hollered Mother as the two men traded punches. “Go fetch Skinner. He just left. Look next door.”
Nell executed a swift sign of the cross as Pru ran off, praying that Will’s long arms and semi-dormant boxing skills would be a match for the vicious, brawny Irishman. She flinched every time Finn’s fist slammed into Will, wondering how he could take the abuse—although Will’s punches actually connected more often, due to his quickness as his reach. One of those punches whipped Finn’s head around and sent him flying into the wall. He slid down until he was sitting with his legs splayed and his head nodding forward, like some monstrous, half-naked rag doll, eyes unfocused, face battered, blood trickling from his mouth.
“Holy gee,” Denny said, staring in awe at the felled giant.
“Are you all right, Will?” Nell asked. He had a purpling knot on his forehead and a pretty bad scrape on his cheekbone, and she knew he’d taken some shots to the midsection.
He nodded, dragging his hair off his forehead and straightening his frock coat. In a slightly winded voice—his own, reassuringly familiar British-accented voice—he said, “I’d forgotten what splendid exercise that is.”