Turning up Broadway, she glanced around at all the theaters brightly advertising their programs and marveled at the numerous new cable cars rolling down the thoroughfare like dark, ominous rhinoceroses. These new mechanized conveyances seemingly bulled their way through the horse and carts and buggies that darted across the city streets, desperately holding onto their own existences and relevance in this rapidly advancing world.
She walked up the grand avenue amidst all the noise and the commerce, some legitimate, some not, and headed towards the elevated train station that erupted out of the ground right at Greeley Square, near to where the gorgeous new Hotel Imperial loomed over the wide-open expanse of the park, and the imposing Union Dime Savings Bank stood like a royal sentinel, stern and official, gazing down suspiciously on any lingering transgressor who would dare invade the placid green lawns of the park to pinch a wallet or start a scuffle.
Just before reaching the tall eminence of the shiny Imperial on her right, she momentarily and foolishly forgot her long-ago, self-imposed edict to never walk too close to the dark structures lining a street and to instead stick closer to the curbside, so as to avoid any hidden ruffian who might be hiding in the millions of shadowed crannies and alleyways that cut deeply through the city.
As she approached the large hotel in the distance with the light emanating from the front entrance leading into the polished lobby, with several bellhops and doormen loitering outside in their bright red outfits, she walked past a dark, little space that separated two old buildings that had stood on the street forever, eliciting no attention whatsoever from passersby over the years for any particular reason. They were two buildings, nondescript and probably housing an odd business or two, or perhaps several apartments in the stories above, and in the darkness of the evening, Eva thought nothing of them as she eyed the young men ahead who waited to attend to any lodger in the new hotel. For a moment on her journey to the train, she was not surrounded by anyone and no one seemed to notice her petite figure, silently moving up the street.
As she walked by the slim alley and glanced farther ahead to her left at the rising staircase to the train station across the park that was her objective, something suddenly grabbed out at her mouth, covering it as swiftly as a bolt of lightning from the sky, and she felt an arm grabbing her also around her small waist, hurling her back into the alley in an instant.
She could not scream, or even breathe, as the first hand, gloved in leather, held tightly over her mouth and allowed no break for air to move through. She wanted to scream, though—wanted to emit a piercing shriek so that the bellhops, or perhaps a passing theatergoer going home for the night, would come to her aid. But this dark figure was strong, she could feel, and he slowly moved her back, back into the farthest reaches of the little alley, and she felt that was literally being carried over the ground, for she could not feel her feet touching any hard surface. And then he spoke.
“Why, you are a shifty one, aren’t you?” he whispered forcefully into her ear. “I’ll have to be quick and careful with you.”
Eva moved hard in his grasp and tried to wriggle her torso free, but the iron grip of the assailant would grant her no relief and he held her fast, moving her behind an old barrel in the back of the alley. Then, he simultaneously turned her around without losing his grip over her mouth and threw her body against the brick wall, and she grunted from the momentary pain. She could not yell out, however, because as quickly as his grip had loosened to throw her up against the wall, it was now firmly grasping her around the throat with both hands, strangling her with an amazing force.
Eva struggled with her face being forced upwards and tried her hardest to look downwards and see her attacker. In the dim light, she could just make out the figure of a man with a dark hat and dark mustache, grimacing violently with gritted white teeth as he drove his fingers into her skinny throat. She knew that he was killing her now, and without any air to breathe, she would black out in any second, and she thought of how her family and her few real friends in this great big city would cry for her, and tremble with how she died in the back alleyway of a main thoroughfare in the Tenderloin.
As he slowly strangled the life out of her, she thought that this was simply not acceptable—that she would not go like this, killed by a madman like the girls over in London with a whimper and left bleeding all over someone’s back alley. And as she now began to see flickering stars in her field of vision, and knew that life would ebb away within seconds, she thought back to what her father had told her when she was just a young tomboy on a farm, long before she had ever come to the city for whatever reason it was—it did not matter now—and had gotten lost in this nightmare of an existence as a grown woman.
“If ever a man tries to violate you,” her father had said to her one day inside the barn as he took a break from shuffling the hay, “you hit him here, Harriet.”
Harriet. Her true name.
He had pointed to his private parts that day. “Hit him right here, sweetie, and he’ll go down like a dead tree cut with an axe. All the muscle in the world can’t protect him there, girl, and let me tell you—it hurts like heck. You hit him there really hard, Harriet, and he’ll regret he ever bothered you, you hear me, girl?”
And she remembered that she had smiled embarrassingly that day, not wanting to discuss these matters with her father. But it had stayed with her ever since, and she remembered it now so clearly as this dark man in the hat tried to kill her without a sound off Broadway at night.
Eva looked down at the man, and she could almost detect a slight smile on his lips now as she was turning a slight hue of blue in the face. As she saw this, she was slowly reaching one foot backwards against the wall and cocking it as if to release a slingshot at the man’s most vulnerable region. And as he raised his own head in some strange act of self-satisfaction, she suddenly kicked out and upwards at the man’s trousers, and she felt her foot hit something soft between his legs.
He yelped and suddenly released his grip, falling to the ground and catching himself with one hand. Eva could not run, though, for she had no breath, and she could only slump against the wall, and desperately gasp in huge heaves as she regained her senses. Sliding down against the wall, she sat for a few seconds on the cold surface of the alley and finally caught her breath there, and then she realized that the man was now slowly getting to his feet, cursing, and would be upon her again in seconds, this time even angrier.
Run, she thought. Run now.
She pushed herself up and bolted for the far entrance of the narrow alley, feeling the man lunge desperately for her skirt as she eased past him in the darkness. She reached the opening to the street and could see various small groups of people in the vicinity, but the closest were the red-clad bellhops of the Hotel Imperial, still loitering about near the entrance some thirty yards distant, and it was toward them that she now raced, her shoes clattering on the hard sidewalk like the steady trot of a show horse gliding proudly past a crowd during a summer parade.
“Help! Help me!” she cried as the young men turned and looked in her direction. “Please! Help me!”
Two of the young workers moved quickly toward her and reached her just as she was about to collapse onto the sidewalk. “What’s wrong, miss?” one of them asked, holding her in his arms and propping her up on his thigh as he kneeled next to her. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ve just been attacked,” she gasped. “Some man in the alley right back there—please keep him away from me.”
Some more men joined the bellhops now as they tried to console her, and hearing her report, several of them raced away in the direction of the entrance of the alley. Eva looked up at the face of the young man who was holding her, and she saw that he was trying to smile. “It’s okay, miss,” he said, “we’re fetching the police for you right now.” She leaned back in his arms and tried to breathe some more, and then some of the men who had just run off now returned to where they were on the sidewalk. “Did you see anything?” the y
oung man asked the men.
“No, nothing,” one of them answered, kneeling next to Eva. “He’s gone.”
34
Falconer stepped off the Sixth Avenue elevated train and walked briskly down the covered stairway leading out to the open expanse of Greeley Square. He headed across the park over to the Hotel Imperial where he was to meet with a friend he knew in the 19th Precinct, Sergeant Ed Servitto, who had notified Falconer earlier that day of an attempted strangulation of a prostitute occurring the night before. There wasn’t much to go on, Servitto had warned in his message, but it sounded like something Falconer had had in mind when he asked Servitto weeks before to keep an eye out for certain attacks happening to women in the busy Tenderloin district.
Falconer walked up to the entrance of the hotel and saw Servitto standing there, smoking and chatting with the bellhops. Servitto turned and, seeing his friend, walked over and greeted Falconer warmly with an extended hand.
“You made it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if this was something you’d want to look at, but it did sound like something you were thinking of when we talked.”
“Right,” Falconer replied. “You never know, so I appreciate the message, Ed. So where did it all happen?”
“Right down the walk here,” Servitto answered, motioning to a few buildings down the street. “Let me show you.”
The two men walked down the sidewalk to the alley where Eva Mallory had been suddenly abducted, and Servitto described the incident based on the investigation thus far.
“A girl named Eva Mallory—she works for Marcy McClure in a cathouse over on 30th. She was headed up the street here around 11:30 or so on her way to the El. Just about here,” he said, pointing to the entrance to the alley, “she says someone suddenly grabbed her and literally lifted her off her feet, bringing her back to the end of the alley. The suspect then threw her against the wall and tried to strangle her, but somehow, she managed to land a solid kick to his balls, and he fell. So, she took off and made it to the street, where the bellhops with the hotel helped her. They ran over here to see if they could get the guy, but he was gone.”
“Any witnesses to the actual grabbing?” Falconer asked.
“No,” Servitto said. “We’ve got no one who saw this, unfortunately. It was getting late and there were some people milling around the area, of course, but in the moment when he grabbed her, no one was looking over at this alley.”
“Anything left at the scene maybe?” Falconer asked as he slowly entered the alleyway, scanning the ground and the surrounding walls of the buildings.
“Our detectives scoured the scene earlier this morning,” Servitto answered, following Falconer deeper into the alley. “They found nothing, though—no blood, no clothing, nothing that might have fallen from the suspect’s pockets.”
“So, whereabouts did he actually try to strangle her against the wall?” asked Falconer, looking back at the sergeant.
“Right there,” Servitto said pointing to an area about ten feet away from them. “She said it happened right past this big barrel here on the left.”
Falconer walked over to where the large wooden barrel stood, full of garbage, ash, and numerous discarded items left by any number of unknown interlopers who had passed through this part of the alley. Just a couple of feet from the barrel were a couple of broken wooden pallets leaning up against the wall, and beyond those, the actual end of the alley formed by a brick wall that ran perpendicular to the long, brick walls of the two buildings that formed the great sides of the cavernous and narrow alley off Broadway.
Falconer crouched down near the barrel and pallets and scanned the ground, looking for any clue that might have been left by the mysterious assailant, anything that looked out of place, but it was as Servitto reported: a bleak alleyway typical of the thousands in the city that were bereft of anything that might catch the eye. Falconer then stood up and slowly walked over to the end of the alley, where the perpendicular brick wall rose to a great height. He looked up at the bottom of a metal fire escape that hung about a foot and a half above his head. The fire escape extended from this level all the way up to the top floor of the building to his right, five stories high. Falconer reached up to grab the end of the fire escape, but it was still too high, so he jumped up and grabbed the metal with both hands and slowly lifted his body up onto the ladder.
“What’s up, pal?” Servitto asked Falconer. “Any reason you’re climbing that?”
“Your witnesses said the suspect was gone when they reached the alley, right?” Falconer said. “No one saw him exit the alley, so where did he go? I’m thinking that he may have gone up here.”
He slowly climbed the metal staircase that zigzagged its way up to the roof of the building as Servitto watched from far below. At the top, he looked over the edge of the building and scanned the rooftop in the morning light. The roof extended over to the next building, which looked to be about a four-foot leap from the edge of the building that he was hanging onto.
That’s interesting.
Servitto called up from down below, asking if Falconer had seen anything of significance. Falconer looked back at his friend and then slowly walked back down the stairs, grabbing onto the bottom of the ladder at the terminus and slowly easing himself down to street level.
“Well,” he said to Servitto as he dusted off his jacket, “he could have escaped up there, Ed. You said our victim reported that he literally carried her off her feet, right?”
“Right,” Servitto replied. “That’s what she said—basically swept her off her feet and carried like a child down the alley here.”
“Even if she’s not a large woman, that would take some doing,” Falconer observed. “He’s obviously a strong guy, a guy who could jump up to the ladder as I did and make a run for it up there.”
“So, he’s gone now,” Servitto said. “And we’ve got nothing except a basic description provided by the girl.”
“Yeah, it looks that way,” Falconer admitted as he slowly walked around the end of the alley looking at the ground. “Unless…”
“What?” Servitto asked, as Falconer kneeled beneath the bottom of the fire escape and reached out for something with his handkerchief.
“Unless our strongman did mistakenly leave something at the scene,” Falconer said, as he looked up at Servitto and showed him the small, gold object lying in his handkerchief.
“What is it?” Servitto asked, squinting.
“Cufflink,” Falconer replied. “Pretty fancy one, too.”
Servitto moved closer and examined the object. “Interesting design,” he said to Falconer. “A dragon, right?”
“Looks like one to me,” Falconer answered, looking down at the cuff link. “And what’s this?” he said, turning the object over in his hand. On the stem of the cuff link was a tiny etched triangle containing an identifying mark: ‘A & Co.’
“Looks like a manufacturer’s emblem,” Falconer stated. “‘A & Co.’ You ever heard of that in the city?”
“Nah,” Servitto replied, shrugging. “I don’t know these things.”
“Well, I know a guy down at Macy’s who does,” Falconer said, standing up. “You have time to take a quick ride?”
“Sure,” Servitto answered. “You think this suspect actually left this at the scene?”
“It’s a possibility,” Falconer replied. “Maybe if, as I’ve theorized, he took off up that fire escape, he caught his sleeve, and this fell, unbeknownst to him. Stranger things have happened.”
“But people are milling around these alleys all the time,” Servitto observed. “You know that. Any number of people could have dropped this thing.”
“Look at it, Ed,” Falconer said. “That looks like an expensive cufflink, if you ask me. Not many of the bums you’d find down here would be wearing this thing on their sleeve, wouldn’t you say?”
“I get your point,” Servitto stated. “So, this guy down at Macy’s might be able to tell us a little bit about this thing?”
The two men then walked out of the alleyway and headed over to the elevated train across the park. Hopping aboard one of the cars pulled by the steam engine ten minutes later, they headed down to the R.H. Macy & Co. Dry Goods store located on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 14th Street, part of the infamous “Ladies’ Mile” section of town where wealthy women could lunch and then spend lazy afternoons shopping in more than a dozen large, fashionable emporiums that catered to their particular exclusive tastes.
Arriving at the station that loomed over the intersection just outside the store, the two men waded their way down the stairwell through the mob of shoppers and entered the building. Falconer motioned to Servitto to follow him over to a far corner of the first floor, where several enclosed counters contained scores of shiny pieces of women’s jewelry—bracelets, earrings, necklaces—and objects for men, too: tie pins, rings, and, over at a corner of a counter, cufflinks. Falconer looked around for his contact and spotted him assisting a few ladies on the opposite side of the enclosed rectangular counter: Sam Grumet, a man who had held court in this part of the store for well over a decade.
Falconer caught Grumet’s attention, and the still-youngish salesman walked over to where the policemen were waiting near the cufflinks in the display case.
“Detective Falconer,” he exclaimed with apparent surprise. “Why, hello—what brings you to these parts?”
“Good to see you, Sam,” Falconer replied. “Sorry, but can’t say I’m in the market for a new gold watch, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, then just a social call?” Grumet said, smiling.
“Actually, just wondering if I can have a minute of your expertise, if possible,” Falconer said. “This is Sergeant Ed Servitto of the 19th Precinct.”
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