Murder in the Bowery

by Victoria Thompson

  “I used to sell newspapers when I was a kid. It’s a hard life. I was lucky because I had a home and a family to go to every night, though. A lot of the boys are orphans.”

  Sarah nodded. “Or even worse, they’ve been abandoned by their families. I used to think all the children on the streets were orphans. I just couldn’t believe that people would turn out their own little ones to fend for themselves. Then I came to understand that sometimes they have no other choice.”

  “It’s amazing how many of the kids seem to do all right, though. I’ve seen boys as young as six or seven managing on their own. Of course, some of them end up in gangs, but the rest of them look out for each other.”

  “And the lodging houses help, too, I suppose. At least they don’t have to sleep on the streets in the dead of winter.”

  Gino shook his head. “The boys actually prefer sleeping on the streets. They like being able to come and go as they please. The lodging houses make you come in by nine thirty, but the boys like to stay out late and go to the theater.”

  “The theater?” Sarah exclaimed in delight.

  “That’s right, and then they go to a diner and have supper and smoke cigars and talk about the show.”

  “I had no idea!”

  “The boys also don’t like the way they’re always preaching to them in the lodging houses, trying to make them take classes and giving them lectures and even trying to convince them to go on the Orphan Trains out West to get adopted.”

  “Do a lot of them go on the Orphan Trains?”

  “Not as many as you’d think. They like their freedom, I guess, and city boys are a little afraid of living in the country and doing farm work, too. The Orphan Trains have more luck with the really small kids who are too young to know what’s going on.”

  “I expect the families like getting younger children, too.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they do if they really want more kids in their family, but a lot of them just want free labor for their farm, so they choose the older children and then turn them loose when they get too old to manage, or else the kids run away on their own.”

  “Not exactly the happy ending the Children’s Aid Society claims, is it?”

  “Not many orphans have happy endings anywhere.”

  Sarah supposed he was right.

  * * *

  So she finally found a house to suit her?” Malloy asked Gino when he turned up at their office. “I was starting to think it would never happen.”

  “The houses in that part of the city aren’t . . . Well, there’s not a lot to choose from.”

  “So I’ve heard, over and over again, every time Sarah goes looking.”

  “This one is pretty bad, too, but it’s the best we’ve seen, and it’s big enough. And Mrs. Malloy said she’s going to put Maeve in charge of supervising the repairs,” Gino added with a grin.

  “If you think I’m embarrassed because Maeve did a better job of that than I did at our own house, then you’re crazy. She can have that job and welcome to it. Now, we’ve got a new case, and it sounds like it might be fun for a change.”

  Gino perked up immediately. “Fun? Did somebody get killed?”

  “Gino, I’m ashamed of you. What would Maeve think if she heard you say a thing like that?”

  “She’d wonder why you were ashamed of me for telling the truth.”

  Frank sighed. “I guess you’re right. But no, nobody got killed. We’re just looking for a missing boy.” He gave Gino a summary of the story of the two brothers.

  “I always suspected those Orphan Trains weren’t a good idea. I was just telling Mrs. Malloy about them this morning. But you say this Will Bert wants to take his brother back to Mississippi?”

  “Minnesota. That’s what he said, so it can’t be too bad out there.”

  “Mrs. Malloy and I saw a bunch of newsboys on the way home. They were all gathered on a street corner, and it looked like one of them was giving a speech. The strike is going to make it harder to find this Freddie.”

  “I know, and even without the strike, we might not find him. A boy alone like that, there’s no telling what might have happened to him in two years, but the missing toes should make it easier to identify him. The boys remember things like that.”

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “I thought you could ask around at the Newsboys’ Lodging Houses, and I’ll check with the Children’s Aid Society just in case they sent him back out on another train or something.”

  Gino pulled out the pocket watch he’d just started carrying. “I should have time to visit at least a few of them this afternoon. They don’t serve supper until six, and not many boys will come in on a hot night like this anyway, even if they weren’t on strike. They’ll get supper from a street vendor and find a nice, cool rooftop to bed down. But like you said, if this Freddie ever stayed there, they’ll remember him, so at least we’ll find out if he’s been seen around lately.”

  “They also might know where he usually works, which would give us an idea of where to start looking.”

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky and find the boy tonight,” Gino said.

  “If you do, hang on to him. He seems like he might be a slippery one.”

  * * *

  Frank found the Children’s Aid Society offices in the United Charities Building on 22nd Street. Many of the major charities had taken office space in the building in order to more efficiently coordinate the distribution of charity in the city. What that meant in practical terms was that the charities were able to keep a master list of everyone who had received aid, so the poor couldn’t “abuse” the system by applying to more than one charity. Frank didn’t think that sounded very charitable, but nobody had asked his opinion, nor were they likely to.

  The Society’s office was a busy place with several clerks typing or filing. One of them took his name and escorted him in to see a Mr. E. E. Trott. The clerk described Mr. Trott as an agent for the Society. Trott was a tall, slender man with a shock of white hair and a matching goatee. His eyes were kind but a little suspicious.

  When the two men had shaken hands, Frank said, “That young man said you were an agent. What exactly does an agent do?”

  “I have the best job in the world, Mr. Malloy,” Trott said, motioning for Frank to take a seat in one of the chairs placed in front of his desk. “I help gather up the children here and escort them safely to their new homes out West.”

  “Is it difficult to find homes for the children?”

  “I wouldn’t say it was difficult, although it isn’t easy either. You see, another part of my job is to identify the leading citizens in each of the cities where we stop. I do this a few months before we bring the children out. Those individuals know their communities, and their task is to recruit the right kind of families who would be willing to take a child. Often, the families themselves will state their preference for a girl or a boy and the age of the child they want. Sometimes they even specify hair and eye color so the child will look like the rest of the family. When that is the case, we can sometimes match a child with a family even before we leave the city.”

  Frank thought that sounded a bit too much like ordering a child out of a catalog, but he kept his opinion to himself since he couldn’t afford to offend Mr. Trott. He still needed more information. “I see, and do you keep records of the children you place?”

  “Of course we do. We have a file on every child who has received our services. Is there a specific reason you’re asking, Mr. Malloy?”

  “Yes, a very specific reason. You see, I’m a private investigator, and I’ve been hired to locate one of the boys you placed out in Minnesota about five years ago.”

  Mr. Trott frowned. “Mr. Malloy, may I ask who hired you?”

  “Ordinarily, I don’t reveal my clients’ names, but in this case, I understand the matter is sensitive becau
se it involves a child, so I’m going to make an exception. My client is this boy’s older brother. Your agency placed both of them in Minnesota, but in different towns.”

  “That does happen from time to time. Siblings don’t want to be separated, of course, and we do try to place them together, but that isn’t always possible.”

  “I can understand that. The older boy was about sixteen, too, and he said not many people wanted a child that old.”

  “This is true, unfortunately. With a boy that old, you never know what his background might be, and people are afraid to take them into their homes.”

  “The older boy was placed with a storekeeper who recently died and left the boy his property. He was anxious to find his brother and share his good fortune. The younger boy is about thirteen now. But when he went to find the child, he discovered that he’d been sent back.”

  “Back here, you mean?” Mr. Trott asked with a puzzled frown.

  “That’s what he was told.”

  “And this happened recently?”

  “No, I believe the boy was sent back shortly after he was placed, so it would have been several years ago.”

  “Ah, I didn’t remember anything like that happening recently, although it does happen from time to time. We always try to find another family locally to take the child, of course, so the child doesn’t actually have to return here. I’m surprised that didn’t happen in this case. And the older brother didn’t know the boy had been sent back?”

  “The boys didn’t keep in touch.”

  Mr. Trott nodded. “The families would discourage that, of course. They’d want the children to forget their past. Even still . . . Well, I must tell you, Mr. Malloy, that children are hardly ever returned to the city.”

  “But you’d have a record of it if they were?”

  “We should have a record of both boys, and I’ll want to update the older boy’s record to record his good fortune. We like to tell stories like that to the children we’re trying to recruit. In fact, if this young man is in the city, perhaps he’d be willing to tell his story at the Newsboys’ Lodging Houses. The Society operates them as well, and they have proved a fruitful source of children for whom we have found homes. We like to have special visitors from time to time to convince the boys they can have a bright future if they leave the evil influences of the city.”

  “He might be willing, since he and his brother were both newsboys. I’ll certainly ask him, but meanwhile, I’d just like to find out if the younger brother stayed in the city or if he went someplace else.”

  “That is another possibility, of course, and there is also yet another possibility, although I hesitate to suggest it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The younger boy, well, the family said he’d been sent back, but it’s possible he simply ran away. We’ve had that happen a few times, I’m sorry to say. Perhaps he thought to join his brother or even come back to New York on his own. If that’s the case, we would have no way of knowing what became of him.”

  “I understand that. There’s also the possibility that the boy is dead, but I’m not going to even think about that right now.”

  “Of course not. Let me check our files. What are the boys’ names?”

  Frank told him, and Mr. Trott frowned again as he wrote them down.

  “Is something wrong?” Frank asked.

  “No, but I suspect the name Bert is not their real name.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Mr. Trott shrugged. “Sometimes the children change their names to disguise their ethnicity. People might be reluctant to adopt an Italian child, for example, or one they suspected of being Jewish or foreign in any way. I’m not saying this is true of these boys, but it’s possible.”

  “But if that’s the name my client gave me, it’s probably also the name the boys gave you folks.”

  “That’s true.” Mr. Trott was smiling again. “Let me take a look. Our files are very well organized, so this should only take a moment.”

  It took longer than a moment, though, and when he returned, Mr. Trott was empty-handed. He also looked very unhappy. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Malloy, but it appears that we have no record of either of these boys.”

  “Then maybe you were right, and they used a different name.”

  “I thought of that, of course, and my clerks and I searched the records for all the boys whose names started with B, but we did not find any that could possibly be these two brothers. I don’t have any indication at all that either of these boys rode the Orphan Trains.”

  * * *

  Gino started his search at the Duane Street Lodging House, since it was closest to Newspaper Row, where the boys picked up their papers. Located on the east side of Williams Street between Duane and Chambers, it stood seven stories tall and filled the entire block. Uhlig & Company Cloth House occupied the basement and first floor of the building. Gino figured their rent went toward support of the lodging house, which probably cost a lot more to run than the pennies the newsboys paid would provide.

  He found the newsboys’ entrance and climbed the stairs to the third floor. The place was eerily quiet, with no boys in sight, but even under ordinary conditions, they wouldn’t have started to arrive yet. Afternoon and early evening, when the afternoon editions came out and people were heading home from work, were the busiest times of day for newspaper sales. Besides, the boys had to leave the lodging house by seven o’clock in the morning and weren’t allowed back in before six o’clock in the evening.

  Gino stepped into the empty classroom with its neat rows of desks where the boys would take lessons after supper if they were so inclined and where all of them would register for the night with whoever was sitting at the table on the riser beside the door. No one sat there now, however, so Gino called out a greeting. After a few tries, he heard footsteps, and a middle-aged man appeared, pulling on his suit coat.

  Tall and a bit gangly, he greeted Gino with a warm smile. “You wouldn’t be one of my boys come back to say hello, would you?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid not.”

  “You’re about the right age to be one, and you wouldn’t be the first. They come by all the time to tell me how much they miss the place and how well they’re doing.”

  “That must be nice to hear.”

  “It is, it is, but you didn’t come here to listen to me babble. What can I do for you, young man?” He eyed Gino’s tailored suit shrewdly. “I’m pretty sure you aren’t looking for a bed for the night.”

  “No, I’m not. My name is Gino Donatelli, and I’m a private investigator.” He handed the man his business card.

  “Private, you say? I would’ve taken you for police, except they don’t wear suits that nice.”

  “I used to be with the police.”

  “Ah, that explains it then. I’m Rudolph Heig, the superintendent here. I hope this doesn’t mean one of my boys is in trouble.”

  “Not at all. Just the opposite, Mr. Heig.”

  “Call me Pop. That’s what the boys call me, Pop Rudolph. And what exactly is the opposite of ‘in trouble’?”

  “Getting a family, I guess,” Gino said with a grin. “You see, a young man has hired our firm to find his kid brother so he can give him a home.”

  “Now that is good news. Why don’t you come downstairs so I can get you a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about it.”

  Heig took Gino to his private apartment on the second floor, where he introduced his wife, known to the boys as Mother Heig. A plump, pleasant lady with a toddler perched on her hip, she welcomed Gino and made the two men comfortable at the immaculate kitchen table, serving them coffee and some cookies.

  “Now tell me about this boy you’re looking for,” Heig said.

  Gino told him the story. “So do you by any chance know this boy, Freddie Bert? His brother said he lost part of h
is foot in a streetcar accident, and the other boys call him Two Toes.”

  “Oh yes, streetcar accidents are far too common, I’m afraid. Too many boys are maimed and even killed from trying to hang on to the side of the cars for a free ride. And I do know the boy you’re looking for, I think. A lot of the boys who come here don’t even know their real names because they lost their homes so young, so all they know are the nicknames they’ve picked up in the streets. Others lie about their real names for various reasons, so I guess you could say that you’re lucky the boy you’re looking for is so distinctive. I remember him well, because of his foot, of course. We ask the boys to give a name when they register, and Freddie always says his name is Bert, although I’ve suspected it wasn’t his true name. Perhaps I’ve been wrong, though.”

  “And he went out West on the Orphan Train?”

  “That part I don’t know about. It’s possible Freddie didn’t start coming here until he returned from out West, in which case I might not have heard about it, although the boys do talk about the trains a lot, especially those who’ve gone and returned for whatever reason.”

  “Are there many of those?”

  “No, not at all. The Children’s Aid Society doesn’t like to send children back. They make every effort to place them somewhere else, so it’s possible Freddie returned on his own and didn’t talk about it because he didn’t want to be sent out again. But even without that, there’s a good chance the boy I’m thinking of is the one you’re looking for.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I couldn’t say exactly. We have hundreds of boys come through here every year, and it’s impossible to keep track of all of them, so I don’t even try. I’ll check my log book before you leave to give you an exact date for the last time he stayed here, but it wasn’t long, I’m sure. Not more than a month or two at the most.”

  A lot could happen in a month or two, but at least Freddie had been alive and in the city then. Gino wanted to whoop with glee, but he didn’t want to frighten Mr. Heig. “I don’t suppose you’d know where I could find him.”