Murder in Midtown

by Liz Freeland

  I was admiring the work in progress on the dressmaker’s form when the woman turned back to me with the baby in her arms. Seeing me on this side of her threshold obviously annoyed her. The baby was several months old and wore a white gown that was probably nicer than the one I’d been christened in. The child looked plump and clean, as if it belonged in a different world.

  “Is Jacob here, Mrs. Cohen?”

  “Miss Cohen,” she said. “Myrna. I’m Jacob’s sister.”

  Myrna. The name hit me like a thunderclap. I hadn’t made a connection between the names Cowan and Cohen. I’d come here to uncover why Jacob had been at Hugh’s aerodrome. But following that lead had led me straight to a bigger puzzle: Myrna Cowan.

  Her eyes narrowed, and I could tell she thought I was judging her for being both a miss and a mother. If only she knew.

  “Jacob’s not here, then?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I stared at the baby. He was a perfect little dumpling, rosy-cheeked and with pale blue eyes. Pale blue eyes with a metallic glint. Edith Van Hooten’s eyes in a cherub face.

  Myrna caught me staring and turned slightly, shielding her child. “Who are you? What are you to Jacob?” Her hostile gaze swept over me again. “You can’t be his girl. You’re not his type. And that’s no insult to you, believe me.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Myrna was wary of me already. I gestured at the dressmaker’s form. “That’s a beautiful dress, and I’m assuming you made what you have on. You do fine work.”

  “I get by.”

  “In a better part of town, you could do a whale of a business.”

  “Do you know about the dressmaker’s trade, Miss”—she twisted her lips—“I still don’t know who you are.”

  “Louise Faulk.”

  “Jacob never mentioned you.”

  “Our days at Van Hooten and McChesney didn’t overlap, but he’s visited the office. I was Guy Van Hooten’s secretary.”

  She tightened her hold on her baby, who let out a gurgle. “Why are you here, really?”

  “I thought, since you’re a seamstress—”

  “Don’t lie. You aren’t a customer.” She took in my dress with a single dismissive sweep of her eyes. “You don’t care about clothes. That’s a dress off the discount rack at B. Altman’s, I’d put money on it.” She sniffed. “Small wonder they couldn’t sell it. The blue-and-tan stripe looks like a mattress cover.”

  The dress had cost me $7.95. That’s what came of taking Callie’s advice to add variety to my wardrobe. I always went wrong when I ventured away from plain skirts and white shirtwaists. My usual day wear might be boring, but at least nobody told me I looked like a mattress.

  She continued to eye me suspiciously. “What’s the real reason you’re here?”

  “I heard Jacob had gone to see Hugh Van Hooten at his air park. I wanted to talk to him about it.”

  “I would rather not speak about that.” She lifted her chin. “I don’t even want to think about that family.”

  “But aren’t they . . .” I nodded at the baby. “Guy was the child’s father, wasn’t he?”

  If I’d assaulted her, she couldn’t have reacted more vehemently. She stepped back, glaring. “I want you to leave.” She turned and put the baby in its crib, the nicest piece of furniture in the room.

  “Am I wrong?” I asked.

  She straightened up from putting the baby down, her hard glare still in place. “I don’t know you, and I don’t like a stranger coming in and poking her nose where it doesn’t belong. Guy is dead. The baby is mine.”

  “I didn’t mean to be nosy,” I said. “I really was just looking for Jacob, but then I realized you must be someone I’d heard of. Myrna Cowan.”

  A shadow fell across her face. “That was the name Guy said I should use.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?” She shook her head in disgust. “I guess he thought the landlady wouldn’t rent to a Jew. Or maybe he just wanted to forget what I was when he was with me.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes, it was. And my going along with it was terrible, too. But you see, I was in love. I would have called myself anything he wanted me to. He promised me so much—you wouldn’t believe the life I was going to have as Guy Van Hooten’s wife. Like him, I also thought if I became Myrna Cowan long enough he would forget I was a Cohen.”

  “But he didn’t,” I guessed.

  “That was the part of me he would never forget.”

  “But he did promise you would be his wife?”

  “Oh yes. And the most foolish thing is that I believed him. At least in the beginning. He was full of promises about my becoming Mrs. Van Hooten, just as soon as he could prepare his mama for the shock of having a Jewish daughter-in-law. He never thought we’d fool her. In the meantime, he gave me gifts to string me along. Foolish, extravagant things—furnishings, clothes, jewelry . . .”

  That explained his need for money, the debts. And now most of the gifts had enriched the landlord and his wife.

  “I was at your flat.”

  “On Thirty-fourth Street?” Wistfulness filled her eyes.

  “It was so close to the office, but I never knew.”

  “And yet he was probably at the flat more often than at the office.” She smiled. “I used to wonder how he could possibly be making a living, but he seemed to have enough to pay my rent, and buy my clothes, and trinkets.” She pushed the cuff up from her wrist, revealing a pearl bracelet. “He gave me things like this—pawned now, most of it. Then he gave me that sewing machine.” She eyed it mournfully. “That was at the end. A rich man who intended me to be his wife wouldn’t buy me a sewing machine. It was his way of assuaging his guilt, you see. I was working for a seamstress when we met. He was giving me a means to support myself again.” She looked at the bassinet. “Me and his son.”

  A son. How could Guy not have wanted to be a part of his son’s life?

  You’re a hypocrite, Louise. I had abandoned a son, too.

  “The baby tore it for him,” Myrna said. “He knew he’d never be able to present that lady dragon he called a mother with a Jewish grandchild. He was a coward. And when he realized that I knew he was a coward, he abandoned me.”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “That’s why I haven’t shed a tear over his death. Not one tear.” Her expression was so pained, so tight, I wanted to cry for her. But I knew the tears were there, waiting for a day that would sneak up on her. “I cried when I left that flat. I cried when I held our baby in my arms. But I won’t cry now. For me, Guy Van Hooten died the day he told me it was over.”

  Guy was dead, yes. But her baby was still a Van Hooten and lived in a tenement. “You have Guy’s son. His flesh and blood. Surely now your religion would be irrelevant to the family.”

  “To the Van Hootens?” A bitter laugh erupted from her. “It matters more to them than if I’d been walking the streets. Which his mother probably would assume I had been if she knew of me.”

  “She doesn’t know she has a grandchild?”

  “No, and if I have my way, she’ll never know.”

  I tried to piece it all together. “Then why did Jacob go see Hugh?”

  She reddened. “Jacob’s a fool. He came up with the bright idea to beg money from Hugh on his own. For all the good it did him. All he got for his trouble was insults. Hugh said we couldn’t be sure if the baby was Guy’s.”

  “That’s despicable.”

  “That’s what Van Hootens are. I tell you, I’ll sell my body before I’ll accept a nickel from any of them. My baby’s name is Noah Cohen, Cohen, and the father’s name on the birth certificate is ‘unknown. ’ There’s less shame in that than carrying the name of a family that uses women the way Guy used me.”

  “Wasn’t Jacob angry with Guy?”

  “He always believed Guy would come around, even after I moved out of the apartment and came here to have the baby.” />
  I surveyed the crowded flat again. “Does Jacob live here now?”

  “He keeps things here, but he mostly stays with friends. Our father died last year, in a place near here, where we grew up. I’m all the family Jacob has now, but he hates the baby’s crying. I know Jacob’s young to be independent, but he’s always been headstrong. I don’t have the energy to mother him and Noah both.”

  “But why do you stay here?”

  She fixed me with a proud stare. “I won’t be here forever. I’m saving my pennies. I’ve got a bank account, and I’m putting money by for Noah. He’ll have things, and he’ll get the best education I can give him.”

  “The Van Hootens could give him those things now. If you’d just show them the baby—”

  “I won’t beg for their charity. Guy abandoned me, and Hugh Van Hooten as good as called me a liar. I don’t need them. Someday Noah Cohen will be a man the world looks up to, and then the Van Hootens will be sorry they turned their backs on him.”

  “Edith Van Hooten can’t turn her back on a child whose existence she’s unaware of,” I argued. “The Van Hooten wealth could help you find a decent place to live.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Anywhere’s decent where I don’t feel beholden to people who think they’re too good for me. Maybe you can’t understand what it’s like to be treated like garbage, to be put out on the street when you’ve been used up. How could you?” Her gaze swept up and down my person again, and her contempt felt almost like a physical rebuff. “I suppose you’re a thoroughly decent person. In fact, you should get out of here before my shame rubs off on you.”

  I wasn’t going to pour out my own sob story to prove my hard luck bona fides. “I wish I could help,” I said simply.

  She wasn’t having any of my sympathy. “Do you think I’m such a fool that I haven’t pieced together why you came here? You’re wondering if I or Jacob had some part in that fire. That’s really why you wanted to talk to Jacob, isn’t it?”

  “It was, initially,” I admitted.

  “The police spoke to Jacob already. If they thought he’d done it, he’d be in jail by now.”

  But the police didn’t know about his sister’s relationship to Guy, I bet. Or his visiting Hugh Van Hooten. Hugh probably wouldn’t have wanted to mention that connection to the police, either.

  “Jacob’s no arsonist,” she continued. “What would be in it for him to harm Guy, a man he idolized? And I certainly didn’t set fire to Van Hooten and McChesney, if that’s what you’re thinking. I won’t cry, but I’m sorry Guy died. I don’t know why he was in that place when it caught fire, or why he didn’t get out in time. Was he drunk?”

  I recalled Muldoon’s warning not to say too much. “Something like that.”

  “Poor fool.” Her eyes brightened with moisture, but only for a moment. She shook her head and glared at me. “You can take your nosy questions and leave now. You won’t find a firebug here.”

  “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  “Just do me a favor,” she said. “Forget you ever saw me.”

  I doubted I could do that. Myrna Cohen wasn’t a person you could forget. Guy hadn’t. He’d said her name, longingly, in a drunken delirium last summer. And the money Guy had been desperate to lay hands on . . . had it just been to pay down his usual debts, or could it have been for his son? If he’d known the conditions the baby was living in—and surely Jacob had told him—he might have felt the need to help was urgent. Urgent enough to go into some kind of business deal with a man like Leonard Cain.

  I took one last look around the place. The shelves were crammed full, but a yellow box with red lettering drew my eye. Bromley’s Rat Killer. A skull and crossbones appeared at the bottom of the box.

  “Do you have a problem with rats?” I asked.

  “We did,” Myrna said. “I got rid of them.”

  CHAPTER 10

  On the way home, a witch stopped me in my tracks in front of a hardware store on Bowery. The owners had attired a coat rack in a black dress and cape, fashioned a head out of a flour sack draped over the top, drawn on a scary face, and topped it off with a pointy black hat. Halloween was a few days away, and the witch triggered a pang of nostalgia in me. I’d outgrown the days of dressing up and tramping through the neighborhood years ago, but I’d always enjoyed carving pumpkins with my cousins, Aunt Sonja’s boys, helping them with their disguises, and sending them out to create whatever mayhem grammar school goblins were capable of. I would miss that.

  Household items spilled out onto the sidewalk from the mouth of the store, everything from boxes of screws and nails to lanterns, mops, and axes, all marked with inexpertly painted price signs. I went inside and found a clerk hidden in the crowded shop. Along the walls, packed, musty shelves ranged to the ceiling, and the floor was an obstacle course of everything from piles of cement mix to a bathtub. Bicycles hung from ceiling beams. When I told the clerk what I wanted, he swung a ladder over and clambered up to retrieve a box of Bromley’s Rat Killer off a high shelf. It looked identical to the one I’d seen at Myrna Cohen’s. Underneath the skull and crossbones was written: Danger: poison. Potassium cyanide.

  “Thank you.” I handed back the box.

  “You don’t want it?” he asked, confused.

  “No, I just needed to see what was in it. I don’t have rats.”

  “It’ll kill other things, too,” he assured me.

  “It might have already.”

  My suspicions had been running amok since I spotted that box of poison at Myrna Cohen’s. She was certainly bitter toward the Van Hootens—but bitter enough to poison Guy? He was the lover who’d spurned her, yet I could have sworn I’d also discerned regret and a lingering kernel of love for him in her eyes.

  Jacob Cohen could also have visited the office that night before the fire and killed Guy. It would have been easy for him to slip something into Guy’s drink. But according to Myrna, Jacob admired Guy. And would he have shaken down Hugh after he’d just killed his brother? That would have taken a boy with a special kind of gall.

  Then there was the matter of the three thousand dollars, which surely Guy’s killer had taken. Jacob and Myrna Cohen weren’t living like people sitting on top of that tidy sum. Although she’d mentioned “putting money by” for the baby . . .

  When I got back to my building, the Bleecker Blowers were playing “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland.” As I climbed up the stairs, I sensed someone watching me. Sure enough, Wally’s beady eyes were staring up at me. Not that there was anything to see except my ankles. Callie and I had long since realized we had to gather our skirts in one hand. Being hobbled was a small price to pay to deprive the creepy landlady’s son a peek at our drawers.

  Today, though, I welcomed an encounter with The Troll. “Wally—just who I needed to talk to.”

  He flinched. “Me?”

  I backtracked down to the foyer. “Do you have any Bromley’s Rat Killer?”

  His head tilted. “You got rats in your apartment?”

  “No.”

  “Then what do you want rat poison for?”

  “I’m just curious if you have it.” I considered for a moment. “Though I suppose it doesn’t necessarily have to be Bromley’s. Any rat poison would probably do.”

  “You just said you don’t have rats.”

  “We don’t. I’m just curious.”

  “About rats?”

  “No—about keeping rat poison. Specifically, any poison containing cyanide.”

  He scratched his head, setting off a small avalanche of dandruff. “I got something in the basement. I ain’t sure what’s in it, though.”

  “Is it in a yellow box with red lettering?”

  “Maybe. You want to come down and take a look for yourself?”

  Not even for the sake of the investigation would I set foot in Wally’s basement lair. I gathered my skirts again. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  He edged closer. “Callie ain’t been around lately. She leave
you?”

  “She’s in Philadelphia.”

  His head turned in a considering way, like a fat lizard. “That business with you two—that was a gag, right?” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t tell Ma.”

  “Thank you for that, Wally,” I said gravely, avoiding the question. Then I turned and continued upstairs, my mind focused on cyanide again. The rat poison had seemed like a damning clue when I’d seen it on the shelf in Myrna Cohen’s flat. But how many households in New York City had an identical box?

  The next morning before going to Aunt Irene’s I swung by our police precinct, Muldoon’s base of operations, but he wasn’t there. Rafferty, the officer I spoke to, recognized me from the previous summer. “What’ll you be wanting with Muldoon? Helping him solve another case?” He winked.

  “This outfit needs all the help it can get, doesn’t it?”

  When he finished laughing, he answered, “I’ll tell Muldoon you said that, Miss Faulk.”

  The week progressed, though, and I didn’t hear from him. I began to wonder if ignoring me was his way of signaling that I should stay out of his investigation. Wednesday evening, I went back to the fur warehouse to talk to Jacob Cohen. He was not happy to see me.

  “What did you want to get my sister all stirred up for?” He led me out by a loading dock so he could smoke. “She was already mad at me for talking to Hugh Van Hooten.”

  “Why did you?”

  He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Are you kiddin’? You saw the dump she’s living in. Myrna oughta have something for the kid. Guy’d want her to.”

  “He didn’t help her after the baby was born.”