The Family Way

by Rhys Bowen

  “There you are at last,” I said as I appeared at the top of the stairs.

  He looked up at me. “What are you doing awake? You didn’t wait up for me, I hope?”

  “I was worried sick.”

  “But you never know what time I’m coming in,” he said. “As it happened I finished working late and went for a bite with a friend.”

  The worry and anger exploded together. “A bite with a friend?” I stomped down the rest of the stairs until I was facing him. “While your wife worries about you and pictures you lying dead in a gutter? It’s quite clear that you don’t care about my feelings at all.”

  He stepped back, clearly not expecting this onslaught. “Steady on, Molly. You know I don’t keep regular hours. I didn’t leave my office until after ten and I didn’t think you’d be up that late to cook for me.”

  “I had your meal all ready and waiting,” I said, but even as I said it I decided that I sounded rather pitiful. “And you’re lucky I went to the trouble,” I said, “after the humiliating way you treated me this afternoon. I was absolutely furious, Daniel.”

  “I wasn’t too pleased myself,” he said. “I thought I made it quite clear to you that I didn’t want you in the Lower East Side with all that dirt and disease. I can’t believe that you deliberately went against my wishes.”

  My hackles were truly rising now. That Irish fighting spirit was coursing through my veins. “For one thing I was on Broome Street, which isn’t the Lower East Side, it’s Little Italy,” I said.

  “You know what I meant,” he snapped back. “I meant any of those areas of pushcarts and crowded tenements.”

  “Greenwich Village isn’t exactly a rural haven, is it? I’m risking dirt and disease just as much when I go to the grocery on Charles Street to buy your food.”

  “I agree. That’s precisely why I wanted you to go to my mother for the hottest months,” Daniel yelled back.

  “If I’d known you’d rather eat out in a restaurant than come home for dinner, then I’d have gone long ago. I only stayed out of loyalty and devotion to you, but the way you order me around, you don’t deserve either.”

  “For your own good, Molly. I do it for your own good. You’ve become too accustomed to taking risks. You’re no longer making decisions just for yourself, as I am no longer making decisions just for myself. We’re a family, Molly. We have to pull together.”

  I had been raring for a fight, but his rational approach and the tender way he was looking at me took the wind out of my sails. In my heart I knew he was making sense. It did seem as if I were deliberately undermining him. I took a deep breath. “Daniel, you have to understand that I’ve been responsible for my own life and my own decisions for a long time now. If you take my own choices away from me and put them in the hands of your mother, it makes me feel that I’m worthless and useless and have no control over anything. I feel like a damned spaniel.”

  I knew I was swearing and did it deliberately to show that women were allowed to use as many bad words as men. He didn’t even react to it.

  “But it makes sense to use the experience of others. My mother moves in circles where people are used to hiring servants. Surely it is better for us to find a girl who comes with personal recommendations, rather than letting a complete stranger into our house, isn’t it?”

  I hated it when he was right. “I suppose so,” I admitted grudgingly.

  He put his hands on my shoulders, drew me toward him, and kissed me. “Now up to bed with you. You need your sleep.” Then his arms wrapped around me, pulling me closer to him. “And you don’t look a bit like a spaniel,” he said. “Your ears are much nicer.” And he nuzzled at one of them.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m dying to know about the kidnapping I witnessed today. What did you find out? Did the lady get her baby back?”

  “Molly, it’s past midnight. You need your sleep and so do I. And you know I shouldn’t discuss police matters with you.”

  “But I witnessed it. I’ve a right to know.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” he said, touching a finger to my lips. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Off to bed with you.”

  He slipped an arm around my waist and was about to escort me up the stairs when I said, in my most casual voice. “By the way, a letter came for my old detective agency today.”

  “I hope you returned it to the sender,” he said.

  “Hold your horses,” I said. “I was going to hand it to you to see if you knew of another private investigator who could look into the case. But the Irish woman who wrote it clearly has no money. She won’t be able to pay normal rates and you probably wouldn’t find any professional detective willing to take on her case. And this poor woman is worried sick about their niece who came to America and now has stopped writing to them. So I thought that since I had time on my hands…”

  “Oh, no…” he began. “Molly, what were we just talking about?”

  “Just a minute!” I snapped. “Would you stop behaving like the lord and master and listen to what I have to say. You know that raises my fighting spirit.”

  “But, Molly—you are expecting a child. We have agreed that you should be taking it easy and not running any kind of risk, have we not?”

  “I don’t intend to run any kind of risk. The person who wrote to me has the name of the household in which this young woman was employed. I thought I might ask some of our friends if they have heard of this family. You know, people like Miss Van Woekem who move in society. It’s a fairly uncommon name so what could be the harm in asking if anyone has heard of this family? And it would give me something to occupy myself with.”

  He shrugged. “I have no objection to your visiting our friends, as you know very well. But…”

  “I understand. If no one we know has heard of the family in question, I have to turn the case over to another investigator or write to the Irish people telling them I can’t help them.”

  “Finally you’re showing some sense,” he said. “Now we’ve talked quite long enough. If you don’t need your sleep, I certainly do.”

  He put his arm around me and led me firmly up the stairs.

  Five

  I must have been really tired because I awoke with the sun streaming down on me and Daniel no longer in the bed. I arose hastily, pulled on my robe, and went downstairs. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed and ready for work, with a mug of coffee in front of him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You should have woken me.”

  He looked at me with concern. “You looked so peaceful lying there that I didn’t have the heart. And you had a bad night, didn’t you? Moaning and crying out in your sleep.”

  “Did I?” I tried to remember. Something disturbing was lurking at the edge of my consciousness. “I must have had a bad dream. But I can’t for the life of me remember—” I broke off suddenly as a flash of memory came back. “Oh, I do remember now. The stolen baby. I dreamed that someone had stolen my baby and I was desperately searching for it. That poor woman, Daniel. She was distraught. Did you manage to help her?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s just going to be a matter of waiting. That baby will materialize again when the parents pay the ransom.”

  “But how can they afford to pay a ransom? They were obviously dirt poor.”

  “It’s been no more than a hundred dollars so far,” he said. “And people can usually scrape together that much from relatives and friendly societies and unions.”

  “So it’s true what one woman said. It really was one in a string of kidnappings?”

  He nodded. “It seems to be. Five of them now that we know about in the last couple of weeks, all over the Lower East Side. Of course there could be more cases that we don’t hear about. Parents might have been scared that something would happen to their child if they went to the police so they kept quiet, paid the ransom, and the child was returned.”

  “And it was the same method of operation in each case?” I asked.
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br />   “As far as we can tell. Child snatched from its baby carriage, ransom note delivered to the parents, ransom money paid, and child returned safely.”

  “That’s awful. And you have no idea who is behind it?”

  “Not yet. I suspect it’s the work of a gang of some sort. Not one of the big gangs because they assure me they are not involved.”

  “You take their word?”

  “In this case yes. We have a sort of gentlemen’s agreement that they provide cooperation if I overlook certain things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  He chuckled. “I certainly couldn’t share this information with you. It’s entirely confidential. But I do trust Monk Eastman enough that when he tells me it’s not his men, I have to believe him. No, I believe we’re looking at a gang of petty thieves who maybe tried this once and realized they were onto a good thing. It’s easy money with little risk. Who’s going to notice if someone takes a baby in those crowded streets?”

  “So how will you ever catch them?”

  “We’ll catch them in the end because like most criminals they’ll become more greedy and more daring. The first three babies were left to the care of their older sisters and they were all Jewish families who could find a local synagogue or benevolent society to come up with the money. So now they’ve branched out further afield—an Italian baby and now this one—an American-born couple from Pennsylvania, and they’ve started taking babies from under the noses of their mothers. Soon they’ll start demanding more than a hundred dollars, or start moving uptown to better neighborhoods, and then we’ll nab them.”

  “Could you gain no clue from the ransom notes? What kind of hand wrote them?”

  “No kind of hand. They were made up of words cut from a newspaper or magazine.”

  “So the kidnappers are literate, then.”

  “They can read, if that’s what you mean. Or at least one of them can read English, which might rule out a foreign gang, like those new Italian fellows. And frankly I don’t think they’d stoop to baby snatching. The one thing they value is the family.”

  “What about fingerprints on the ransom notes?” I asked suddenly as the idea occurred to me.

  Daniel laughed. “You’re too sharp for your own good. We haven’t been able to take any prints that we recognize yet. The trouble is that we need to build up a bigger repository of fingerprints. Most police departments don’t bother with them since they’ve never been admissible in a court of law. Myself I think they are the way of the future, but it’s hard to make people change their thinking.”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down across the table from him. “You’d think that some nosy old lady would have seen something from an upstairs window, wouldn’t you? Or a woman hanging out laundry.”

  “If some man had sneaked up and furtively grabbed a baby and run with it, then yes. But if the kidnapper was smart he’d have leaned over the buggy and acted as if the child was his. Then who would have noticed?”

  “You speak as if it was a man,” I said. “What if a woman is doing the actual kidnapping—a gangster’s moll?”

  “Quite possibly,” he said.

  “That would make more sense, wouldn’t it? The woman comes along, wheeling a baby carriage of her own, whisks the sleeping baby into her carriage, and pushes it away.”

  “I’m glad you’re married to a policeman or you might have ended up as a devious crook,” he said, smiling at me as he got to his feet. “I’ve already shared more than I meant to, and I have to go.”

  “Have you had breakfast? Let me at least cook you an egg.”

  “I’ll survive,” he said. “I’ve a meeting at eight-thirty. We have something a little more worrisome on our plate at the moment. We’ve been tipped off about a new anarchist group who have apparently set up shop in the city. I’d like to hand these kidnappings over to a junior officer, but we’re shorthanded at the moment, and since I’m the only one who is on good terms with Monk Eastman, I had to take this on myself or risk losing the goodwill I’d worked hard to establish.”

  He took his hat from the peg on the wall and bent to kiss me.

  “I could help,” I said, making him stop in his tracks.

  “Help doing what?”

  “With these kidnappings. I am an experienced detective, after all. I could help patrol the streets, keeping my eye open for kidnappers.”

  “Molly.” He smiled, shaking his head at the same time. “Even if I didn’t mind you wandering through disease-ridden streets there’s nothing you could do. They won’t strike again until these people have paid the ransom and then there is no guarantee where they’ll show up next. We’ll probably have to wait until they slip up—which most crooks do in the end, I’m glad to say.” He started for the front door. “Oh, and, Molly, I’d like you to get in touch with that employment agency and let them know that you’ll not be requiring their services.”

  The front door slammed behind him. I got up and started to clear away the coffee cups. I turned the water on in the scullery sink so violently that it splashed up all over me. I was brimming over with frustration and futility. That woman’s face hovered in front of me, her panicked eyes darting from side to side. Surely I’d have been able to help. I was a woman, after all. I wouldn’t stand out, like a constable in uniform. I was so tempted to go against Daniel’s wishes, but a small voice in my head whispered warnings. What if I did catch some terrible disease and I lost the baby or died myself? Besides I ran the risk of being seen by one of Daniel’s men or even Daniel himself and then I’d never hear the last of it.

  I went upstairs to wash and dress. A cool breeze was stirring the net curtains at the window. I took off my robe and sat on the bed, enjoying the feel of the breeze through the thin cotton of my nightgown. Surely there was something I could do to help. After all, I’d come out onto that street at the very moment that the woman screamed. Hadn’t I seen anything? I closed my eyes and tried to re-create that street in my mind. But all I could see was the woman, standing there screaming, people running toward her, not running away.

  My hand stroked across the silky fabric of the comforter and I turned my thoughts to last night’s dream. It was strange that I hadn’t remembered it when I awoke. Sometimes I had the most vivid dreams, but all I could recall of this one was the feeling of panic and dread as I stared into an empty baby carriage.

  Nothing. There was nothing I could do, except leave it to the police, as Daniel had told me so many times before. But there were times when I had ignored him and I had succeeded when the police had not. I had been a good detective, I reminded myself. The thought of doing nothing was more than I could bear, and yet this was how it was going to be for the rest of my life.

  Then I remembered the letter. Now here was something I could do. Daniel had told me he wanted me to contact the employment agency to tell them I’d no longer be requiring their services. He didn’t say how I should contact them, so I’d pay a visit in person this morning and this time be able to find out if they’d ever had a Maureen O’Byrne on their books or had heard of a Mrs. Mainwaring. If they hadn’t then they could give me the addresses of other employment agencies that Irish girls fresh off the boat might have used.

  Having a plan of action before me, I now dressed in a hurry, cleaned up the house, and then set off. The weather was changing. Clouds were scudding across the sky from the west, bringing with them a strong breeze that stirred up the dust as I crossed Washington Square. The square was populated with people enjoying the fresh air before it became too hot. Mothers sat on benches fanning themselves in the shade, while children ran around with hoops and jump ropes, doing what children do.

  I looked at the baby buggies stationed beside the seated women. Two women were deep in conversation, their arms waving expressively as they talked, and I realized how easy it would be to walk past, reach down, sweep up a baby, and go on walking. Had the kidnappers a particular target in mind before they took a child or were the kidnappings random? Someh
ow they had to find out the name and address of the victim to be able to deliver the ransom note, but that wouldn’t be hard. I remembered that the woman yesterday had been asked for her address by the police while I was there, and presumably had given it within the hearing of those around her. An accomplice of the kidnapper could have been among the crowd, ready to overhear and take down the particulars.

  I left the square behind me, walked to Broadway, and took the trolley to Broome. Then I faced the long climb up the stairs to the agency. How did women manage at home in Ireland when they walked several miles into town with one baby on their hip, another in their belly, and a basket full of shopping on their arm? Obviously I was not as strong as I thought.

  Mrs. Hartmann nodded in sympathy when I explained about my predicament. “I didn’t realize he’d already asked his mother,” I said, not wanting to admit that I’d gone against my husband’s wishes.

  “I quite understand,” she said, her gaze indicating that husbands were infernally annoying creatures, “but I’ll still keep my eyes open for you, Mrs. Sullivan. Your husband’s mother may not be able to find a suitable girl in a hurry and I think it’s very important that your servant learns your ways and the running of your household well before the baby arrives.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You have my address. If the perfect girl shows up, I’d certainly like to meet her.” I stood up to go, then lingered. “There’s one more thing,” I said. “I was going to ask you yesterday before we were interrupted. Is it possible that a girl called Maureen O’Byrne came to your agency about a year ago?”

  She frowned. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, but we deal with so many girls. A year ago, you say?” She called into the outer office, “Jessie, would you check the books and see if we ever had a Maureen O’Byrne as a client, about a year ago?” She turned back to me, “Was this a girl you possibly wanted to hire?”

  “Possibly,” I said. “Actually I’m trying to find where she is employed now for her relatives at home in Ireland. She hasn’t written for a while and they’re worried. I just thought that Maureen might well have been to an agency such as your own.”