Last Stop in Brooklyn

by Lawrence H. Levy

  “How could it be? You’re a policeman, and I was attacked by a maniac. The only better time would have been if you had prevented it in the first place.”

  “You surely don’t think I could have—”

  “No, no, no. Please excuse me, Tom. I’ve never been face-to-face with a bomb before.”

  “Havin’ faced a few bombs in my day, I know how they rattle yer nerves. Sent me runnin’ for a whiskey more than once.”

  “Don’t tempt me. I might turn into a drunk.”

  “Now, we both know that’s one thing Russell Sage will never be. Yer too fond of yer business ta disrespect it.”

  Sage mulled over Byrnes’s words. They were hard to refute. “Speaking of my business, should I assume my office is a total loss?”

  “It’ll take a good bit of rebuildin’ and then some.”

  “Of course! What did I expect? A damn bomb exploded!”

  “Do ya want ta hear about the others?”

  Byrnes was referring to Sage’s employees, and Sage couldn’t have cared less. All of them were easily replaceable, but he knew society dictated that he be concerned.

  “Yes, please. I hope they’re all right.”

  “Most of them have minor wounds, like yours.”

  Sage gave Byrnes an indignant look, suggesting that his discomfort could hardly be called minor. Byrnes soon corrected himself.

  “Minor, that is, in comparison ta what happened to your stenographer, Mr. Norton.”

  “What happened to Bentley?”

  “Benjamin,” Byrnes corrected him. “He was blown out of the window, along with his typewriter, which landed on his face.”

  “Oh, my lord!” he exclaimed, more appalled at the event than the state of poor Benjamin Norton.

  “Needless ta say, he is no longer with us. Then there is William Laidlaw.”

  “Laidlaw? I don’t know a man named Laidlaw.”

  “Really? He was found on top of ya.”

  “Oh, him. That was some bank clerk. Never met the man before.”

  “I’m sure he wishes ya still hadn’t. He’ll be in the hospital for some time.”

  “This whole thing is awful, incomprehensible! What about that demented anarchist who blew us all up? I suppose that lunatic got away scot-free!”

  “I was just gettin’ ta that.” Byrnes walked to a mahogany dressing table and set down the wooden box he had been carrying the whole time he had been at Sage’s residence. He opened it and casually pulled out a severed head. “Is this the man who bombed yer office?”

  Not the least bit fazed, Sage stared at the head, analyzing it, then responded in a completely calm, unemotional tone. “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Are ya certain?”

  Sage nodded. “Remarkable. He had his head blown clear off and not a mark on his face.”

  “It’s the one bit of luck we’ve had in this case. Now we can find out who he is.”

  “What difference does it make? You can’t put a head on trial.”

  “No,” said Byrnes as he put the head back in the box and closed the top. “But we can find out if he has any friends with similar inclinations. Good night, Russell. Get some sleep. They say it’s the best cure.” And with that, Byrnes picked up his box and left.

  It had never occurred to Sage that someone might come after him again and he’d be forced to relive the horror of that day with possibly less fortunate results. The calmness and indifference he’d exhibited when hearing about the demise of Norton and the crippling of Laidlaw suddenly disappeared. This was different. It was him, and he saw no good night’s sleep in his future until Byrnes got to the bottom of this.

  1

  Mary Handley was being followed. She didn’t know why or who the person was, but she had no doubt about it. The first time she had realized it was ten days earlier. A passing carriage had splashed street water in her direction, and as Mary jumped to avoid getting doused, she inadvertently turned and caught a glimpse of him. Taken by surprise, her tail, as they refer to such a person in detective parlance, immediately struck up a conversation with a complete stranger, acting as if they were old friends. Later, when she glanced his way, he would duck into a store, stop to roll a cigarette, or pretend to window-shop. It wasn’t that he was terrible at following people but rather that Mary had been acutely aware of such things ever since a few years back, when she had let a particularly heinous criminal named Shorty catch her off-guard with disastrous results.

  On this particular day, August 30, 1894, the Thursday before the first federally sanctioned Labor Day holiday, Mary was walking on the sidewalk next to the beach at Coney Island. No one there seemed to mind that this holiday was merely President Grover Cleveland’s attempt to appease labor after the troops he sent to squash the Pullman Strike in Chicago killed thirty strikers. It was a day off from the drudgery of their jobs, and they were going to do their best to enjoy it.

  Mary didn’t like Coney Island, though she had been there quite a few times with her good friend Sarah Cooper, formerly McNish, whom she had known since childhood and who had been married for a dozen or so years to a successful lawyer. Sarah had four children ranging in age from four to eleven, the oldest being Virginia (Ginny); then Harold (Harry), who was nine; then seven-year-old James; and finally four-year-old Lucy. Mary loved playing with the children on the beach, riding the carousel with them, and watching them marvel at the arcade games and sideshows. She had even taken Ginny and Harry with her on the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway, a roller coaster that reached the death-defying speed of six miles per hour.

  Sarah and her children were the only reason she would go to Coney Island. To her, it represented a microcosm of the nasty bigotry and inequities that existed in the world. Black bathers were forced to use separate bathhouses from white bathers, as if their ethnicity were a transmittable disease. The arcade had games like “Kill the Coon,” where white people would line up to throw balls at a black man who would stick his head out of a hole in a curtain that was painted to represent an African jungle or some other such locale meant to be demeaning. Jews were banned from several establishments that had been built there.

  Most people either agreed with these practices or didn’t question them, making them acceptable. Mary and Sarah’s repulsion placed them firmly in the minority, and they did their best to educate Sarah’s children about the equality of all people, hoping it would stick in spite of what they witnessed. Sarah’s dilemma was that she had no desire to deprive her children of the fun of the beach. So, call it hypocritical, call it love, the result was that they all went. But Mary wasn’t with Sarah and her family that day. She was on a case.

  It was the type of case that Mary would have normally refused: a domestic one involving infidelity. Matters of that kind were rife with emotional turmoil and usually the messiest. If Mary found evidence of adultery, the client would often fly into a rage. If she concluded that the spouse was being true, the client usually didn’t believe it and chastised her for doing shoddy work. In other words, it was impossible to please, and even if all these reasons hadn’t existed, there was something unsavory about spying on the love lives of others. At the end of each day, Mary felt the need to take a long, cleansing bath.

  Mary’s private investigator career had blossomed over the past four years, so much so that she could afford to turn down cases she considered undesirable. She had taken this one under protest and under much duress for a very specific reason: her mother, Elizabeth.

  “What good is having an unmarried daughter who is a private investigator if she won’t help out a friend?” Elizabeth had asked while standing in the family kitchen stirring a stew she was cooking. Naturally, the word “unmarried” was emphasized. Elizabeth hoped that returning to the same sore subject time and time again, no matter what they were discussing, would spur Mary into doing what Elizabeth wanted her to do: give up her career, find a man, get married, and have children, as if family and working were mutually exclusive. Nothing, certainly not considerati
on for Mary’s feelings, could stop Elizabeth.

  “One matter has absolutely nothing to do with the other,” Mary answered. “So don’t try to goad me into doing something I despise.”

  “Are you referring to marriage or to this perfectly fine offer from a very reliable man who needs your help and is willing to pay your fee?”

  “Mother—”

  “Even though you really shouldn’t charge him,” Elizabeth jumped in. “His mother has known you and your brother, Sean, since you were born and has been one of my closest friends here in Brooklyn ever since the day I first set foot on these shores from good ol’ Ireland.”

  “Tell me, Mother. What was so good about ol’ Ireland? You were starving there.”

  “It has to do with respect for where you came from and for family, something that you obviously don’t understand since you’re still unmarried.”

  “Okay, you win.”

  “Win what? This isn’t a contest.”

  “Yes it is. I will take the case if you will stop pestering me about marriage.”

  “Well, that doesn’t seem fair. Because I’ve asked you to do a charitable deed and help out a friend, I can never mention—”

  “Not never, right now, today, while I’m with you.”

  Elizabeth stiffened and reluctantly acquiesced. “I suppose I can do that…though I should point out to you that a few months back you had a big birthday. Most women, by your age…”

  Mary winced, thrusting her crystal-blue eyes skyward while shaking her head and thus tousling her blond hair. “Yes, Mother, I’m very well aware that I’m thirty and firmly entrenched in society’s old maid column. If I weren’t, I’m sure I could count on you to remind me of it as often as possible. Good-bye, Mother.”

  Leaving her parents’ house at a slow but deliberate pace, Mary realized that it had been a while since she last stormed out in a fit of anger. In a way, we have made some progress. But her optimism soon faded. The fact that she had resigned herself to her mother’s behavior did not mean it had changed or that she felt any less miserable when she saw her. It was merely a coping device to avoid shouting matches.

  Brian Murphy was the name of her client and the son of her mother’s friend Lauren Murphy. He was concerned that his wife, Colleen, was having an affair.

  “I don’t know who the bastard is, Mary,” Brian said, then stopped. “I’m sorry for my salty language. I guess it comes from being away at sea for too long.” Brian was in the merchant marine and would often be away for months at a time.

  “I’ve heard and said much worse, Brian,” Mary responded. “Your language should be your least concern at this point.”

  “I suppose a good deal of the blame should be placed on me. I am away a lot…. But Colleen knew that when she married me. We’ve got three children, for God’s sake!” Brian stopped again, trying to get control of his anger.

  Brian had insisted on meeting Mary at his home in Carroll Gardens, an Irish working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. She wanted to get to the point and get out of there, lest Colleen and the children return. Should that happen, matters could escalate and get very ugly quickly. “The question is, really, why do you think she’s having an affair?”

  “Her behavior has changed tremendously since I’ve been home from my last voyage. In the past, she’d greet me enthusiastically and get her mother to watch the kids for a few days while we got reacquainted, so to speak.” He looked at Mary.

  “I know what you mean. Go on.”

  “This time it was a peck on the cheek and that was it. She disappears for hours at a time, and, well, she seems distant, indifferent. It’s very unlike her.”

  “And you’ve been married for how many years?”

  “Eight years.”

  “Sorry to bring this up, but eight years and three children? She may not love you any less, but isn’t it possible the bloom may be off the rose by now?”

  “I know Colleen. If the bloom is off the rose, then it’s bloomin’ someplace else.”

  Mary agreed to find out what she could, and that was why on this Thursday before Labor Day, she was at Coney Island, keeping an eye on Colleen. It was Mary’s seventh day on this case, and Colleen hadn’t exhibited any behavior that would indicate she was having an affair. Mary had observed her shopping at the market, dropping her children off at the house of a friend who watched them while she was at work, and doing many other activities that weren’t close to being those of an unfaithful wife. Even walking along the beach that day seemed perfectly innocent. It was totally understandable that a woman who had full responsibility for the house, the children, and the bills while her husband was away might want to sneak out for a few hours in order to clear her head and discover whether she still had any thoughts worth thinking.

  As Mary followed Colleen, strolling east, away from the honky-tonk amusement park, she glanced back occasionally to view what her own tail was doing. At that moment, he was buying an ice-cream cone from a vendor. It was several scoops of strawberry stacked high and could have doubled as a cover for his face if Mary wasn’t already well acquainted with his looks. He was a black man, about forty years old, of African or Arab descent, possibly both. He had a narrow, neatly groomed beard, running from both sideburns, outlining his jaw, and meeting at his chin, covering most of it. Above his mouth was a closely cropped mustache. The man wasn’t bad at his job, whatever that was. The sudden splash by a passing carriage that had revealed him to Mary ten days earlier would have been difficult to anticipate, even for the most seasoned detectives.

  The further they walked east, the nicer the surroundings got, and they started passing hotels that catered to a much wealthier crowd. The Brighton Beach Hotel was first. It was a resort opened by William Engelman, who had made his fortune selling horses to the army during the Civil War. The rich would stay at the ocean’s edge and splash water on themselves, but that was usually as far as anyone would go. They considered swimming to be unseemly. Besides a place to cool off during a hot summer’s day, the beach was a place for them to show off their bathing suits, which, regardless of whether they were male or female, covered most of their bodies. Then they would leisurely dine at one of the posh restaurants that had opened up at one of the beachfront hotels.

  Past the Brighton Beach Hotel were the Manhattan Beach and Oriental Hotels. Newer, they were developed by Austin Corbin, a railroad titan who owned the Long Island Rail Road. Corbin had colluded with John Y. McKane, the corrupt political boss of the Coney Island area, to acquire the land on which his hotels now stood. McKane filled the local council meeting with his cronies and Corbin was able to buy the land from Brooklyn for fifteen hundred dollars instead of the fair market price of one hundred thousand. McKane was presently in jail for his many illegal activities while Corbin roamed free, enjoying the fruits of his. A rabid anti-Semite, Corbin was a founding member of the American Society for the Suppression of Jews and generally intolerant of anyone who was “different.” No Jews or people of color were allowed in any of his establishments.

  Colleen passed the Manhattan Beach Hotel but turned in on the path to the Oriental Hotel and entered. Mary followed her inside. The Oriental Hotel was Corbin’s newest hotel and built in a Moorish style. Though Mary preferred not to patronize establishments owned by men like Corbin, she took solace in the fact that she wasn’t purchasing anything. Besides, she had learned long ago that if she refused to enter all businesses run by prejudiced white men, she’d have trouble buying anything or traveling anywhere. In this instance, there was a plus side. The man who was following her would not be allowed inside, and she could concentrate completely on Colleen.

  Mary took a seat next to a tall floor lamp that would give her some semblance of cover. She momentarily turned to look around the lobby and spotted Austin Corbin strolling by in deep conversation with another man whom Mary didn’t recognize. The man was in his late thirties and had blond hair and a mustache. He was dressed in what was obviously a very expensive suit, expertly tailo
red and imported no doubt. As they chatted away, laughing intermittently, she concluded they were of like thought. She realized her speedy assessment might be a result of her own form of prejudice, but he was chumming it up with Austin Corbin.

  Mary turned back toward Colleen, who seemed perfectly happy to wander through the lobby, peek into the various shops, and do what any busy mother might do given a few hours of freedom. At this point, she was prepared to go back to Brian Murphy and tell him not to worry about his wife. The poor woman just needed some time to herself.

  Mary was about to leave when, from a distance, she saw a man approach Colleen. He was about five foot ten, possessed what appeared to be a fairly slim, athletic body, and was appropriately dressed for the summer, wearing a white linen suit and a straw boater hat. She only saw him from behind, the hat making it even more difficult to get a good look at him, but there was something familiar about his walk. She wasn’t able to place it, and it momentarily bugged her. Colleen’s face lit up when she saw the man. Their greeting wasn’t particularly passionate, but they were in a public place. Mary’s sympathy for Colleen quickly started to ebb. She didn’t necessarily think her husband was right, but it was unusual. Colleen was from a working-class family. The odds were against her bumping into a man she knew at the Oriental Hotel, a man who by his dress clearly had money.

  Laughing and enjoying each other’s company, Colleen and her gentleman friend headed down a corridor with their backs to Mary. Mary rose and followed. When they got into an elevator together, Mary knew she was in trouble. She had learned long ago that when on a case she needed to wear sensible dress and shoes even if she defied fashion. Fortunately, one of the results of the bicycle’s soaring popularity was that styles for women had changed in order to allow them the freedom to ride. Corsets, petticoats, and billowing skirts, all of which hampered movement, were giving way to bloomers and even baggy pants. Mary didn’t have a bicycle, but the changing style gave her the ability to wear more amenable dress when on a case without attracting attention. She scolded herself for thinking she wouldn’t need the mobility that day, then took off her shoes and held up her dress as she ran up the stairs. She got to the second floor in time to stick her head into the hallway and see the elevator stop. A couple got out, but it wasn’t her couple. She continued to the third floor, but the elevator didn’t stop there, so she had to rush up to the fourth floor.