Murder in the Bowery

by Victoria Thompson

Heig shook his head. “Even under ordinary circumstances, I don’t know where his usual corner is or where he sleeps when he doesn’t sleep here, but now . . . Well, I guess you know the boys are on strike, so they aren’t coming here to sleep because they aren’t earning any money. Most of them wouldn’t anyway, not this time of year. When the weather’s nice, we only get a fraction of the boys who show up when it’s snowing.”

  “I know. I figured it wasn’t likely I’d find him here. I’m just glad to know he’s in the city. Will you send us word if he does come in?”

  “Certainly. I’d be only too happy for you to find wealthy brothers for all my boys, Mr. Donatelli.”

  2

  “What’s an Orphan Train?” Maeve asked, interrupting Malloy’s story.

  Sarah was always careful about discussing cases in front of the children, so Malloy had waited until Malloy’s son, Brian, and Sarah’s foster daughter, Catherine, were in bed, and their nursemaid Maeve had rejoined them in the parlor before telling them about his latest case. Malloy’s mother had already retired to her own rooms.

  Sarah smiled at Maeve’s question and turned to Malloy. “May I?”

  “Go right ahead,” he said, happy to let her explain.

  “Years ago, long before I was born, I think, the Children’s Aid Society decided that orphaned children in New York would be much happier if they were living on farms out West.”

  Maeve frowned her disapproval. “What made them think that?”

  “Everybody knows that country air is better for children,” Malloy said with a twinkle. He loved teasing Maeve.

  “I don’t know it. You couldn’t get me to live in the country for anything,” she said.

  “Then it’s lucky you’re a little too old to be adopted,” he said.

  “Adopted?” Maeve cried, horrified.

  “You’re getting ahead of the story,” Sarah chided them. “Yes, adopted. The Society decided to place the children with families in the country who could then adopt them, and through the years, they’ve taken thousands of children out of the city.”

  “Don’t people in the country have their own children?”

  “Of course they do, but not everyone who wants a child can have one, and sometimes a child dies or maybe the family is just willing to open their hearts to an orphan with no family.”

  “You make it sound like a fairy tale.” Maeve didn’t believe in fairy tales.

  “Don’t forget Catherine is adopted,” Sarah said.

  “Or at least she soon will be,” Malloy corrected her. “And we couldn’t love her more if she had been born to us.”

  “No, we couldn’t,” Sarah agreed, thinking they should really get started on the process.

  “And I wouldn’t have a job if you hadn’t decided to take her in,” Maeve admitted with a grin. “All right, I suppose it’s possible for families to adopt children and for everyone to be happy. Were these boys happy, though?”

  “If you let me finish my story, I’ll tell you,” Malloy said. “But the answer is probably no. The older boy was sixteen, so nobody really wanted to adopt him.” He told them about the shopkeeper who took the older boy and the legacy he left Will.

  “But was he happy with the man who took him in?” Maeve asked.

  “He didn’t say, but I got the impression the man treated him more like an employee than a son.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Don’t forget the boys would have been much worse off if they’d stayed in the city,” Sarah said. “They didn’t have a family or a home, and they lived on the streets.”

  “The younger boy had it worse, though,” Malloy went on doggedly. “It didn’t work out with the family who took him, and he came back to New York, or at least that’s what the family told Will when he went to look for Freddie after the storekeeper died.”

  “Smart boy,” Maeve said.

  “That’s sad,” Sarah said, thinking about how hard that must have been for such a young child. “He must have been terribly disappointed.”

  “Maybe he was relieved to get away from all those cows and chickens,” Maeve said.

  “What makes you think they had cows and chickens?” Malloy asked.

  “Because they live in the country. So this Will hired you to find Freddie?”

  “That’s right. He’s pretty well fixed now, I guess, and he wants the boy with him.”

  “So it will be like a fairy tale,” Sarah said, “if you can find Freddie. Have you had a chance to look yet?”

  “I sent Gino to ask around at the Newsboys’ Lodging Houses.”

  “Is he coming by tonight to give you a report?” Maeve asked with elaborate casualness.

  “I don’t think so,” Malloy said, pretending not to notice her frown of disappointment, although Sarah was sure he’d mention it to Gino. “Whatever he found out can wait until morning.”

  “And what about you?” Sarah asked. “Did you do anything?”

  “I went to the Children’s Aid Society’s office. They’re in the United Charities Building.”

  Sarah made a face. She’d had a bad experience with a charity located in that building. “What did you think they could tell you?”

  “For one thing, if Freddie really had come back and if they’d sent him someplace else.”

  “Could they do that?” Maeve asked, outraged this time.

  “I suppose they could, although I don’t know if they’d force him if he didn’t want to go,” Malloy said. “It doesn’t matter, though, because they didn’t have any record of either of the brothers.”

  “What do you mean, no record? You mean they don’t keep records of the children’s whereabouts?” Sarah asked.

  “They keep very good records. They claimed to have a file on every child. They even get annual reports from the adoptive families, or they’re supposed to, although I’m told not all the families send them.”

  “Of course they don’t,” Maeve muttered.

  Malloy ignored her. “But they didn’t have a file for either of these boys.”

  “What does that mean?” Sarah asked.

  “It could mean several things, but I don’t think it means the Children’s Aid Society lost their records.”

  “Do you think the boys really weren’t on the Orphan Train?” Maeve asked.

  “That’s certainly a good possibility.”

  “But why would this young man make up a story like that?” Sarah asked.

  “I have no idea, but I’m going to ask him the minute I see him. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, the people at the Society told me the boys might’ve given them a false name.”

  “Why would they do that?” Sarah asked.

  “That’s easy—so they couldn’t be found,” Maeve said impatiently.

  Sarah always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. “But who would be looking for them?” Maeve gave her a pitying look, and Sarah sighed. “I know, I’m hopelessly naïve.”

  “In spite of everything you’ve seen in the years since you met Mr. Malloy, too. I’m just glad you have him to look out for you now.”

  “Maeve, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Malloy said, marveling.

  “Don’t let it go to your head. So these boys either didn’t go on the Orphan Train or else they did but they lied about their names.”

  “And maybe Will forgot he’d given them a different name,” Sarah said, still hoping for the best.

  Maeve shook her head. “Either way, this Will Bert is a liar, Mr. Malloy. Maybe you shouldn’t try to find his brother at all.”

  “Oh, I’m going to find him, but don’t worry, I won’t turn him over to Will unless he wants to go.”

  Sarah had a quick vision of a small boy all alone in the city. “What will you do with him if you decide not to turn him over?”


  “I’m not going to adopt him, so don’t even think about it.”

  Sarah laughed at that. He knew her too well.

  * * *

  As he always did, Frank paused a moment to admire the gilt letters on the frosted glass of the door to his office, which said, FRANK MALLOY, CONFIDENTIAL INQUIRIES. When he’d started the agency—or more correctly, when he accepted that Maeve and Gino had started it before he and Sarah were even back from their honeymoon—he’d hoped for enough business to keep him from being bored. So far, he’d accomplished his goal, and this case was shaping up to be far from boring.

  Gino was already at his desk, his nose stuck in a dime novel with a fictional detective rescuing a lovely young lady pictured in lurid color on the cover.

  “What are the Bradys up to this time?” Frank asked, naming the popular detective duo featured in that particular series.

  Gino looked up, a bit chagrinned at being caught out. “A lot more exciting things than we are. I think I found the boy, by the way.”

  “What?”

  “Well, not actually found him, but about five weeks ago, he spent a night at the Duane Street Lodging House. Apparently, there was a bad thunderstorm that night, and a lot of boys came inside.”

  Frank dragged over one of the chairs they’d placed against the wall for waiting clients and straddled it in front of Gino’s desk. “You’re sure it was him?”

  “Pop Rudolph—he’s the superintendent—knew who I was describing immediately. We were right, the missing toes are pretty distinctive. The boy has a bit of a limp, so everybody knows about his accident.”

  “Did this Rudolph know where the boy works?”

  “His real name is Rudolph Heig, and no, he says he doesn’t even bother to keep track of that stuff, but at least we know the boy is alive and in the city.”

  “Or he was five weeks ago, anyway.”

  “One strange thing, though. Pop Rudolph didn’t know Freddie had been on the Orphan Trains.”

  Frank’s nerve endings started tingling. “Did Heig think it was strange that he didn’t know?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. All the boys know about the trains because the Children’s Aid Society is always trying to recruit them to go out West and get adopted. It’s pretty rare for any of the children to come back, though, and Pop thought there would’ve been a lot of talk about Freddie if he had.”

  “Did you know the Society operates the lodging houses, too?”

  “No! I guess that explains why they use them to recruit orphans for the trains, though. So did you find out anything interesting at the Society?”

  “Indeed I did. They keep careful records of all the children they put on the trains, but they don’t have any record at all of Will or Freddie Bert.”

  “Why not?”

  Frank shrugged. “I can think of a few reasons. Maybe they used a different name when they went on the trains.”

  “That’s possible. Pop Rudolph told me a lot of the boys use fake names and sometimes they don’t even know their real names. In fact, he said he always thought Bert was a fake name.”

  “The people at the Society said the same thing. The kids try to hide it if they’re Jewish or Italian or something. But they searched their records for any brothers that were the same ages, and they didn’t find anything to match them.”

  “Maybe the records got lost or something,” Gino said.

  “That’s possible, but I saw their files. They go back to the fifties. They’re very careful, and what are the odds that the only files they’ve lost in fifty years are the two we’re looking for?”

  “But what other reason could there be . . . unless they didn’t ride the train at all.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, but why would Will Bert have told us such a wild tale if it didn’t really happen?”

  Gino didn’t need more than a minute to come to the same conclusion Frank had after thinking about it overnight. “He wanted to give us a good reason to find the boy, one that would keep us going even if it got hard. But didn’t he realize how easy it would be to find out he was lying?”

  “He probably never thought we’d check to see if they really rode the trains. Why would we? He told us the boy is in New York, and Will probably knows he is, so we wouldn’t have any reason to look anyplace else. He’s not a detective, so he doesn’t know how we do things.”

  Gino sat back in his chair and thought about it for a few more minutes. “I know you’ll say I read too many of these.” He flicked the book lying on his desk. “But I don’t think he wants the boy so he can give him a home out in Michigan.”

  “Minnesota.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m afraid you’re right. And he couldn’t tell us the real reason he wants the boy because, well, it’s not a reason we’d sympathize with, I guess. So he made up this sad story about the Orphan Train.”

  “Which he probably knows a lot about if he really was a newsboy himself. So what are we going to do?”

  “We could tell Mr. Bert that we’ve decided not to take him as a client, of course, but—”

  “—but he’d just hire another detective,” Gino said in disgust.

  “Exactly. So I think we should take Mr. Bert’s money and find the boy and then see if the boy knows why Will Bert, or whatever his name is, is looking for him and if he wants to be found.”

  “And what if he doesn’t know why Bert’s looking for him?”

  “Then we’ll ask Mr. Bert some more questions, but we’re not going to just turn the boy over to him.”

  “Good. So what do we do next?”

  “I’m assuming you asked this Pop Rudolph to let you know if Freddie showed up at the lodging house again.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Then I guess the next thing we need to do is walk around the city until we find a bunch of newsboys and ask if any of them has seen Freddie.”

  Gino winced at the magnitude of such an undertaking. “Where should we start?”

  “I’m figuring Newspaper Row. I hear a lot of them are hanging out there and trying to prevent other boys from picking up papers from the World and the Journal. The Duane Street Lodging House is just a few blocks away, so if Freddie stayed there, his corner was probably in that part of the city, too. A boy doesn’t travel any farther than he has to when he’s ready for supper and a warm bed.”

  “And with any luck, the boys will remember him as well as Pop Rudolph did.”

  “With even more luck, they’ll know where we can find him.”

  * * *

  “I’m so glad you found a house,” Sarah’s mother said. Elizabeth Decker had stopped by to visit with the children that morning. Now Maeve had taken them back to the nursery for lunch while Sarah and her mother ate in the dining room.

  “I had no idea it would be so difficult to find a suitable place,” Sarah said. “I decided to open a maternity clinic almost five months ago. I thought we’d be delivering babies by now.”

  “What is the house like?”

  “It’s a disaster at the moment, but it’s enormous. It has two parlors, a library, a dining room, a kitchen and butler’s pantry, a servants’ dining room, five bedrooms, and three servants’ rooms in the attic.”

  “I’m surprised someone isn’t renting it out.”

  “Apparently, they did for a time, after the family who originally built it moved uptown to a better neighborhood, but the owner died, and nobody could locate the next of kin for several years, so the tenants moved out. People have been squatting there, I’m sure, but no one has taken care of it, so it’s a mess.”

  “How long do you think it will take to make it usable?”

  “Ordinarily, I’d think it would take a year to make so many repairs, but Malloy and I agree we’re going to put Maeve in charge.”

  “So you’ll be up and
running in a week or two,” her mother said with a grin.

  “Well, a few months, anyway,” Sarah agreed. “And this time I’m letting her hire the workmen so they know they have to answer to her.”

  “Have you told her yet?”

  “Yes. She’s anxious to see the place, but there’s no sense in going down there again until we’ve taken possession.”

  Her mother sighed dramatically. “I guess it was too much to hope that after your marriage, you’d become a respectable society matron and content yourself with visiting friends and doing good works.”

  “Delivering babies for poor women is a good work,” Sarah pointed out.

  “Not to society ladies, I’m afraid. They’d find it entirely too . . . messy,” she said.

  Sarah couldn’t help laughing. “Do you find it messy?”

  “I try not to think about it at all, but I know it’s important. You do know that once you start delivering babies for unmarried girls that the married women will stop coming.”

  “That’s why I plan to hire some midwives to live in the house. That way they can go to the women’s homes if they don’t feel comfortable coming to the hospital.”

  “I suppose you’ll want me to help you raise money to support this project.”

  “Of course, and I’ll have to come to your parties to talk about the hospital, so I’ll be mingling with all those society ladies after all.”

  “That’s a small step, I suppose.”

  Sarah decided it was time to change the subject. “What do you know about Orphan Trains?”

  “Nothing at all. Does this mean you’re adopting another orphan? Perhaps you should wait and see if you and Frank have some children of your own first.”

  “We aren’t planning to adopt any more children, at least not at the moment,” Sarah said, choosing to ignore the hopeful expression on her mother’s face at the prospect of more grandchildren. “It’s part of a new case Malloy is working on.”

  She told her mother what she knew about the two brothers. “Oh my, that does sound suspicious. And I had no idea that all those boys selling newspapers were orphans.”

  “Not all of them, but far too many are. There must be hundreds of children in the city with no homes or family.”