In the Shadow of Gotham

by Pintoff, Stefanie

  “When was your last contact with Michael?”

  Clyde frowned, grinding the cigar into the heavy crystal ashtray. “Must have been about a month ago. He stopped by the house with his usual request for money. Of course he disappeared as soon as I gave it to him.”

  “Which was exactly what you wanted,” Alistair said. This reminder prompted Clyde to snort in response.

  “How much did you give him?” I asked.

  He jerked his head up in annoyance. “Why does it matter? That’s my private business.”

  “I am conducting a police inversting into a murder,” I replied evenly, refusing to be bullied. “That means where any suspect is concerned, there’s no such thing as private business.”

  He grew red in the face and glowered at me. I thought at first he would refuse to answer, or reply with another rude retort, but he reconsidered and answered, though his tone was gruff. “I gave him $500. It was a ridiculous amount, of course—but I hoped it would be enough to keep him away for a few months.”

  “So you had no indication that anything might be wrong? No signs of any sudden changes in Michael’s mood?”

  “Mood?” Clyde scoffed. “When has Michael’s mood ever been anything but surly? You know I was never concerned about his moods. It was his actions that caused trouble. He needed discipline to keep from acting out.”

  “It was never as simple as that,” Alistair began wearily, but Clyde cut him off.

  “Yeah, yeah, spare me your ideas about—what do you call it?—‘distorted thinking.’ Nothing but poppycock. The point is, you need to find Michael, and with as little fanfare as possible. Don’t want to see our family name dragged through the papers.”

  “Can you tell us where Michael was living?” Alistair asked. “I checked with the landlady at the last address I had for him; apparently he left there six months ago.”

  Clyde merely chortled. “Sounds like you haven’t been keeping on top of the boy as you promised. Last I heard, he had rented a room somewhere in the west Forties. Maybe Lizzie will know. She always had a soft spot for the boy. Though I can’t imagine why.”

  He cleared his throat and got up, ambling toward the door. “Well, I believe our business is done, and I trust you’ll take care of this situation quickly and discreetly. I summoned Lizzie over here after you telephoned because I thought, given her relationship with Michael, she would have more information to give you than I do. I’ll send her in.”

  And without a word more, he shuffled out of the room and we did not see him again, although we almost immediately heard him berating someone with respect to a household task left undone. Apparently it was the man’s nature to be disagreeable toward everyone he encountered. As Alistair later explained, Clyde Wallingford was an egalitarian in one respect: He was rude to everyone alike.

  Clyde’s aunt, Lizzie Dunn, was exactly as Alistair had described her earlier this morning: plain and mousy in both appearance and demeanor. It was easy to see why Clyde had prevailed upon her to take charge of a troublesome young boy; she was so excessively amiable she appeared unable to refuse any request.

  “Miss Dunn?” Alistair stood politely and made the introductions as she came across the length of the room toward us; we had moved from the area near Clyde’s desk to a sitting area by the fireplace. As I took her hand to greet her, I noticed it was icy cold, despite the general warmth that pervaded the house. She took the seat nearest the fire, sitting on its very edge.

  “Please, can you tell me what’s happened with Michael?” she asked nervously. “I know something awful has happened, or Clyde would never have asked me to come here. But he’s told me nothing.”

  I watched her face blanch as Alistair explained what we knew about Fromley’s disappearance and suspected role in a murder. It seemed the news would overwhelm the woman, and I prepared to summon help in the event she fainted. She recovered, but as I observed their exchange, I decided Alistair’s initial assessment had been remarkably precise: Lizzie Dunn meant well, but if Michael Fromley had anything of his half brother Clyde’s domineering personality, she could never have stood up to it.

  “No,” she was saying, “the last time I saw Michael was in early October for his birthday. I’d put together a little birthday dinner for him, and he humored me by coming by to eat it.” She smiled wanly. “You know, he doesn’t come around the way he used to when he was a young boy. I suppose that’s natural now he’s grown-up.”

  It was incongruous to hear this woman talk about Michael Fromley as a favored nephew—and yet, I had seen this phenomenon before, where a mother or grandmother described men I knew to be depraved criminals in the most endearing of terms. I supposed it was because they clung to loving memories of what the child had been—even when the man became something far different. And, as Alistair explained later, Fromley was capable of presenting a charming demeanor when it suited his purposes. Apparently he was always pleasant with his aunt Lizzie, for it led her to indulge him with money and gifts. It was also, as I would soon learn, the manner he initially employed with the women he terrorized.

  To Lizzie Dunn, Alistair merely said, “We both know Michael has had his share of problems. Was he in any particular trouble when you saw him last?”

  “Well,” she admitted, “he owed people money. I gave him what I could, but it didn’t cover even half his debts, so he probably went to Clyde for the rest.”

  “I see.” Alistair retained an easy, nonjudgmental tone. “Did you talk about anything else?”

  “He mentioned his new job at the docks, which he appeared to enjoy, though he wished it paid better. We also talked about a trip he was hoping to take to New Orleans in February for Mardis Gras.”

  I looked at Alistair with raised eyebrows.

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly in reply. He later reminded me that Fromley had merely applied for the job on Fulton Street; he hadn’t actually been hired. So Fromley had lied to his aunt, perhaps wanting her to think well of him.

  I asked, “Is there anything you can tell us about his routines? The friends he socialized with? The places he frequented?”

  Her response was automatic. “He loved all kinds of entertainment. You might check some of the dance halls down in the Bowery. I don’t know the names, but I know that’s where he went most weekends. But I can’t help you with regard to his friends; he never brought them to the house, or even mentioned anyone in particular.”

  “So I take it you never saw this person?” I showed her the picture of Sarah Wingate.

  “No,” she replied, after taking a dutiful look at the photograph. “As I said, he never brought any friends around.”

  “When did he move out of your home?”

  “After the incident,” she said, and from her gesture toward Alistair, I knew she was being euphemistic about the assault on Catherine Smedley that had first brought Michael Fromley to Alistair. “I wanted him to stay,” she added sadly, “but Clyde insisted. Said he was too dangerous. After he stopped staying full-time at your research center, I still let him stay the occasional night, whenever he asked, but by and large I think he moved from one rooming house to another. He probably stayed at nicer ones or cheaper ones depending upon how much he’d won or lost at gambling that week.”

  “Do you have the address where he is living now?” I asked.

  Lizzie shook her head sadly. “No. Michael never stayed in one place for very long before he wore out his welcome, usually by not paying the rent. I helped him when I could, but . . .” She looked at us helplessly.

  It lasted only a moment, but in that look, I saw a flash of fear. And I recognized the truth: Despite all outward appearances of a doting aunt, she was afraid of him.

  After we finished our conversation with Miss Dunn, Alistair and I lingered on the sidewalk just outside.

  “I suggest we visit your former precinct on the Lower East Side,” Alistair said. “Michael’s taste ran consistently to dance halls and gambling houses. Maybe someone there has seen him recen
tly. Do you know the most likely ones to visit?”

  I was familiar with them. To be honest, I knew them all too well. My own father had been a habitual gambler, for as long as I could remember. It had kept our family in debt my entire childhood—in fact, until one night when I was nineteen years old, a sophomore at Columbia, and he finally succeeded in gambling away our life’s savings and running off with another woman. His failings had devastated my mother and sister and radically altered my own future. With my family looking to me for financial support, my college days had ended.

  I did not share any of this with Alistair at the time—although I soon learned he knew it already. I was the man with whom he was prepared to entrust his larger secret, if it came to that. And so he had learned everything he could about my life history, even before he had shown up in my office this very morning.

  CHAPTER 9

  Despite some trepidation about parking his new Ford Model B in a tough neighborhood, Alistair drove us downtown. The Bowery in lower Manhattan could be a rough area, especially inside the entertainment halls and saloons of the sort we planned to visit. During the last reform administration, Mayor Seth Low had closed the saloons in hopes of improving the neighborhood. But as soon as the Tammany-endorsed McClellan administration claimed office, they reopened, and the Bowery filled once more with opportunists anxious to relieve the too drunk and the too naïve of their wallets and more. To be fair, one could find several more or less respectable saloons in the Bowery. But a man doing a job like mine was less familiar with them.

  Our first stop this evening was the Fortune Club on Pell Street, where the Bowery adjoined Chinatown. I had chosen it because I knew the manager—assuming he still worked there. When we entered, a young man was earnestly straining to master the high tenor of “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” Although the effect was slightly ludicrous, I made no sign that I thought so. I knew Nick Scarpetta was trying to emulate Mike Saulter’s Pelham Club and John Kenny’s Chatham Club, where singing waiters were the latest innovation in entertainment. Big Nick hoped one of his waiters would manage to attract as devoted a following as a young singer named Baline had done at Saulter’s. But I had trouble thinking of the place as anything other than a gambling joint—which, admittedly, was all it ever pretended to be. Unlike surrounding saloons where additional vices like prostitution and opium could be found in back rooms and on upper floors, Nick Scarpetta stuck with what he knew best: cards.

  “Does Nicky still manage the place?” I caught the ear of the first waiter who came by. The fellow nodded and gestured toward the back room, where a raucous poker game was in progress.

  Alistair, completely out of his element, simply followed as I made my way to a black door at the far left of the room. Inside, Nicky Scarpetta was seated at a large table, cigar in mouth, a pile of chips stacked high to his left. Clearly, he was having a good night.

  He looked up and recognized me instantly. “Well, I’ll be damned, if it isn’t Simon Ziele. How’re things going, old boy?” He got up and lumbered over to clap me on the back, careful to avoid my weak right arm. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. What brings you back to the neighborhood? You here on official business, or just for old time’s sake?”

  There was a searching concern in his drooped, baggy eyes that he would never overtly acknowledge. I had not spoken with him personally since my loss, but of course he would have heard about the deaths—so close together—of both my mother and Hannah.

  “Good to see you, Nicky,” I said warmly. He was a large man with a gruff demeanor, but it obscured a kind heart. Nicky always took good care of his friends, and I was lucky to count myself among them. I’d known him for as long as I could remember. Though he frequented the same gambling circles as my father, he possessed two qualities my father had forever lacked: a talent for cards and a sense of his own limitations. On countless occasions, he had visited my mother after a night at the tables with my father and pressed an envelope into her hand with a few brusque words. Waving away her tearful thanks, he always left muttering, “A man with young children’s got no business betting two weeks’ salary on a pair of aces.”

  Still, I never forgot for a moment that Nicky had another side—one more commonly reserved for those who crossed him—that was dangerous and unforgiving.

  “I’m here on business,” I answered him, “but not department business. I’m not with the precinct here anymore. Instead, I’m investigating a murder that happened north of the city; this is Alistair Sinclair, who is assisting in the investigation.” I nodded toward Alistair, whom Nicky acknowledged with a grunt.

  “Hey—Moe,” Nicky called to a man lurking at the back of the room by the liquor cabinet. “Fill in for me and finish the game, will ya?”

  “Sure, Nick,” the man said, and took the vacant place at the table.

  Meanwhile, Nicky led us to his office, where we could talk in private.

  “So what do you need to know?” he asked, as he lowered his large frame into an oversized leather chair and offered us his cigar box. We declined, and settled ourselves into the two chairs opposite him. Alistair pulled out his photograph of Michael Fromley.

  “We’re wondering,” he asked, “if you’ve ever seen this man?”

  Nicky grabbed the photograph and lifted it to the light, turning it first one way and then another, studying it intently. “What’s his name?”

  “Michael Fromley,” I responded.

  “I’ve seen him around,” Nicky said. “He’s played the back room, but not in a long time. Maybe six, nine months ago? Couldn’t hold his drink, and started trouble at the table—accused one of my guys of stacking the deck. Never let him in the game again after that. And I spread the word.”

  That meant Nicky had blackballed Michael Fromley among the Bowery’s other gambling hells, as they were called. With good reason, I might add, for when caught in the game, many men were tempted to sell their very soul to the devil. But while New York was filled with places catering to poker, stuss, or faro, it was far more expensive to get in a game anywhere outside the Bowery.

  Nicky took a final draw from his cigar before grinding its stub into an ashtray. “Still, you’d see him come in on occasion to the bar, usually with some dame who fancied herself an actress. What d’ya want him for?”

  “He’s the main suspect in our murder case,” I said. “We’re trying to find him for questioning, but it’s tough going—he disappeared a good two, three weeks back. Think anyone here would have seen him?”

  Nicky got up and went over to open the door; his steps were heavy on the worn wooden plank floor, causing it to creak loudly. His voice thundered out, “Hey, can someone tell Izzy I need him in here?”

  No one ever kept Nicky waiting, so almost before he was seated again, a heavyset middle-aged man with large eyes and drooping jowls had joined us. From the white towel hanging from his waist, I assumed he was one of the bartenders at the Fortune Club.

  “What can I do you for, boss?” he asked, his voice deep, soft, and accented in the unique style of a native New Yorker.

  “You seen this guy in here lately?” Nicky thrust the photograph of Fromley into the bartender’s hands. “A friend of mine needs to know.”

  It was an implicit authorization to talk. Otherwise, I had no doubt Izzy would have passed the photograph back to us with a flat denial and opaque expression.

  Izzy studied the photograph a full minute before handing it back. “Yeah, he was in here about two weeks ago. It was a Saturday night. He came in with one of those actress types. You know, I think it was Clara Murphy.”

  Nicky grunted. “You don’t say.”

  “She’s a regular?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Izzy said. “Fancies herself a Broadway chorus girl, but probably generates her rent doing private shows.”

  Izzy’s euphemism implied Clara Murphy was a prostitute rather than an actress—although there were some, I knew, who would maintain there was little difference between the two in the first
place.

  “Did either of them talk with you?” I asked. In a neighborhood such as this, a bartender like Izzy was often a confidant to customers, especially the regulars.

  Izzy shuffled his weight from one foot to another, and replied slowly, “Well, I talked with Clara when her fellow left her alone for a minute. She asked me if I knew whether the rumors were true about him.”

  “The rumors?” I shook my head. I’d heard any number of unsavory facts about Michael Fromley, but it was unclear which of them Izzy had in mind. From the look on his face, Alistair was also unsure.

  “Yeah,” Izzy said, “lots of rumors fly around about that guy. He always has a wad of cash and can show ’em a good time, so the ladies don’t want to believe the rumors, see? I always tell ’em to stay away, that he is bad news. But mostly they listen to the money, not to me.”

  “So what did you tell Clara when she asked?”

  “I said steer clear and find yourself another fellow—that this one’d got a reputation for getting rough with the ladies.” He cleared his throat and continued in an even quieter voice. “Some people said he roughed ’em up real bad, using . . . well, stuff that ain’t fit for polite conversation.” He eyed Alistair suspiciously as if uncertain how much detail to give. When he spoke again, he merely said, “She left the bar with him not long after that, so I’m guessing she did like most of ’em and listened to the money.”

  “Have you seen her since?”

  “Naw, she ain’t come in since.”

  “And no news about Fromley?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Do you happen to know where Clara lives?”

  “Think Clara’s got a place up on West Twenty-eighth Street. It’s a building where a lot of singers and actresses live, a block over from Tin Pan Alley proper. You might check there.”

  It was more substantive information than we’d gotten from our last couple of interviews, and with only a few more inquiries, we found the specific address of her flat. I thanked Nicky for helping us out. “Anytime,” he had said, and his gravel-toned voice managed to sound soft as he added, “Your mother was a fine woman, Ziele. A damn fine woman.” And with another clap on my shoulder, he returned to his game.