Murder in Greenwich Village

by Liz Freeland

  “What’s it to?”

  “The saxophonists’ apartment. They’re on the road for the next week and what’s-his-name said that we could stay there.”

  Eureka! “I was dying to get in there and look it over.”

  “You don’t think any of the saxophonists killed Ethel, do you?”

  “I don’t know. And until I do, I’m going to be wary of everyone.”

  Her brows raised. “Yet you’re still willing to stay in their apartment.”

  “Of course.” And while I was there, I intended to give it a thorough going over.

  CHAPTER 5

  I’d lived in New York for six months, but I’d never been so far north as Harlem before. “The city never ends, does it?” I said, looking north up Lenox Avenue. It seemed to unfurl into infinity—office buildings, apartments, and houses in a relentless rectilinear grid as far as the eye could see.

  Callie laughed at my awestruck marvel. “Oh, it ends, all right. Somewhere beyond all this is a whole lot of nothing, and at the end of that nothing is Little Yawns.”

  On the corner of 115th we looked around us, getting our bearings. This far uptown there were a few more carriages and carts vying for space on the road with trams and noisy, smoke-belching automobiles. What were we looking for? To the north, I made out a tobacconist and another shop selling Singer sewing machines. An old man with a high-sided pushcart came right alongside us, bellowing, “Cash for clothes! Cash for your old clothes!”

  “What are we doing?” Callie’s voice was tight. “It’s just a street like any other. Ethel could have had any one of a million reasons for being here.”

  “True. But to discover that one, we need to start looking.”

  We proceeded slowly, paying attention to each sign. From the names on the doors and various businesses, the neighborhood was predominantly Jewish and Italian, although we passed several Negroes working on the street, one selling fruit, another sharpening knives from a little wagon. The places we went into to ask after Ethel—tailor, pharmacy, barber, laundry, doctor, dentist—were all businesses Ethel could have found in Greenwich Village, closer to home.

  No one we asked had seen her. Despair had begun to set in, when Callie stopped and pointed across the street at three golden-painted spheres swaying in the breeze above a doorway. “Look.” The sign stenciled on the shop’s plate glass window read: LENOX PAWN. “I bet that’s it.”

  “Why would Ethel come all this way to visit a pawnshop? They’re a dime a dozen all over town.”

  “For anonymity. She might’ve wanted to make sure to visit one far from where we live. Just in case.”

  “In case what?” I asked.

  “In case I were to go in the store and see something of my family’s for sale.”

  “What would she have had to sell?”

  Callie crooked her head in thought. “I’ve been wondering about the way Dora spoke to me about Ethel. It was as if she’d done something really bad. I hate to speak ill of the dead . . .”

  “I know.” Although it wasn’t as if we’d spoken well of Ethel when she was alive.

  She continued. “But if she took something from Dora—something valuable enough to pawn—that would account for Dora’s anger, wouldn’t it? Maybe that’s where all that money we found came from.”

  “It also explains why she left Ethel with us after she came for that visit, and why Ethel was so upset.” Then I tried to square the image of Ethel sneaking out of Little Falls with the family silver with the woman I remembered. “I just can’t see Ethel stealing, though.”

  “I wouldn’t have imagined she’d wear my clothes, either,” Callie pointed out, “but she did.”

  The secret life of Ethel. “But even if she did pawn something here,” I said, “how could we possibly guess what that something was?”

  “I know everything of value Dora and Abel own. Dora may not have a lot to show off, but what she does have she displays like the natural history museum displays its stuffed buffaloes.”

  Without further warning, Callie plunged into the street. There was nothing for it but to take off after her. Possessing a dancer’s natural agility and timing, she was much more intrepid than I was about dodging carriages and streetcars. Darting after her felt like rushing headlong through a funhouse with things that popped out at me, only these things were horrors like buses, cars, and wagons able to flatten me under their wheels.

  When I leapt onto the opposite sidewalk, I was amazed to find myself in one piece. “Are you crazy? You’ll get us killed doing that!”

  “Don’t be a ninny. We’re alive.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Callie wasn’t listening. I followed her gaze, which was riveted on a bill taped to the building’s cracked window. “What if this was why Ethel came here?” Pawnbroker forgotten, she pointed to the hand-lettered advertisement.

  Fortunes Told

  Madame Serena

  4th Floor

  “Madame Serena?” Surely she was joking. “Fortune-tellers are charlatans.”

  “So are most of the peddlers who come to Little Falls, but that didn’t stop Ethel from buying a lifetime supply of The Queen of Sheba’s Healthful Beauty-Enhancing Cream from one of them.”

  Those pots of cream with an Egyptian figure etched in black against pink glass littered dressing tables and the flat’s tiny bathroom shelf. Maybe Callie had a point. In unspoken agreement, we entered the building and climbed the squeaky stairs. Every floor seemed to have its own questionable enterprises—a talent agent, a novelty distributor, and a business promising IMMIGRATION—REASONABLE FEES. The hallway reeked of old sweat, cigar smoke, and disappointment.

  At the top floor landing, a sign on the nearest door read:

  Madame Serena

  Fortunes Told, Palms Read

  “Your future for fifty cents”

  “Fifty cents!” I cried, outraged. “If I’d seen the price, I would’ve saved myself the climb.” No doubt that’s what this phony was counting on.

  Callie shushed me. “We’re just going to ask if she saw Ethel.”

  She overrode my grumbling with a sharp rap at the door, but no one answered. It was almost a relief not to hear any footsteps within.

  I hooked my arm through hers. “Let’s go to the pawnbroker’s. That was a better idea.”

  We’d only begun to turn back toward the staircase when the door suddenly and silently swung open. Before us towered a woman with skin as black as ebony, her hair concealed beneath a turban in shades of turquoise, yellow, and bougainvillea pink. Over her royal blue dress was draped a flowing piece of gossamer cloth in the same dazzling hues as the turban. Callie and I looked like two sparrows next to a fantastic hyacinth macaw.

  While we gawped, the woman inspected us through dark narrowed eyes.

  “Madame Serena?” Callie’s voice came out practically as a squeak.

  The woman gave no indication whether she was or wasn’t the fortune-teller, except to say quietly, “You’d better come in.”

  She turned and walked in, whispering halfway across the room before she noticed we remained motionless in the doorway. We were both staring at her feet. Madame Serena was barefoot, which accounted for her moving as quietly as a shadow. The foot peeking out from beneath her dress was arched, with toes lacquered in garish pink. I’d never seen such a thing.

  “Come,” the woman commanded us. We stumbled forward.

  The angle of the roof, which was one wall of the garret, made the room a trapezoid. Colorful drapes over the windows blocked the afternoon sun, and in place of natural light, several candelabras stood on low tables and on the mantel over a bricked-up fireplace. A long, narrow table dominated the room, with more candelabras at both ends. Madame Serena seated herself on one side of the table in a comfortable armchair. She gestured to the three mismatched wooden seats across from her. “Sit.”

  Her voice resonated with such authority that it was hard not to automatically do her bidding. Before I sat, however, I wanted to
make it clear that we weren’t there to fall for any mystical jabberwocky. “We only want information.”

  One of her jet brows arched turbanward. “Of course.”

  “I mean, we don’t need our fortunes told,” I said. “We just want to ask questions.”

  Madame Serena nodded. “One dollar.”

  “One dollar!” I was ready to walk out. “Your sign says fifty cents—and even that’s highway robbery.”

  “I see two of you.”

  “We only need to know if you’ve seen my friend’s cousin,” I argued.

  The woman’s gaze flicked to Callie. “Something bad happened to this cousin. I’m very sorry.”

  Callie’s mouth dropped open, but she said nothing.

  I shifted restlessly. Surely Callie wasn’t going to interpret the woman’s lucky guess as some sort of special insight. Of course Madame Serena would divine from what I’d said that something bad had happened to Ethel. For that matter, I doubted anyone came to see her when things were going swimmingly.

  “Your sympathy’s kind,” I said, “but it would be even kinder if you’d help us with what we want to know. And as for payment—”

  Before I could finish, Callie pulled several coins out of her little purse and placed them on the table. “There,” she said. “One dollar.”

  Exhibiting the reflexes of a mongoose, the woman snatched the coins and pocketed them. “Tell me about your cousin.”

  I glared at Callie, but she shrugged impatiently at me and sat down. I thumped down with a huff into the chair next to her. It wasn’t just the money. Part of my frustration was fear for my friend. She was already distressed. I didn’t want this woman to spout frightening mumbo jumbo at her, or lead us down a false path.

  Callie described Ethel to the woman in as much detail as she could. “Believe me, if she came here, you would remember. She had a very sharp personality.”

  “Poor soul.”

  Callie scooted forward in her chair. “Then you did see her?”

  “I do not think so.” Candlelight shadows flickered across Madame Serena’s face. “The description does not match any of the visitors I’ve had here.”

  “Good of you to tell us,” I said, “now that you have our dollar.”

  My sarcasm had no visible effect on Madame Serena. “I will tell you that I see a tragedy,” she said.

  I snorted. “Oh, of course. You noticed that my friend is worried, so you inferred that some misfortune befell her cousin.”

  The dark eyes swung toward me. “I didn’t say whose tragedy.”

  Callie gasped and grabbed my hand, and I checked the urge to fling it away. What hooey. “If you think for one moment that you’re going to scare us into giving you another dollar—”

  Madame Serena’s voice rose. “I see much pain, smirking girl. I hear a child crying. Crying. It has no mother. Where is she?”

  The room was stuffy from all the candles, but a cold wave washed through me. I tried to rise, but my limbs wouldn’t move. My muscles had turned to pudding.

  “Louise?” Callie’s face twisted in worry.

  My mouth opened and closed like a newly caught fish. Was this woman a sorceress, or a sadist? Did she have some secret knowledge of my life? But that was impossible. I’d never seen her, and nobody knew. Or almost nobody.

  Callie took my arm. “We should go.”

  “Yes.” I allowed her to hoist me back to my feet.

  Madame Serena didn’t get up. She crossed her arms, a pitying smile on her lips, her gaze never leaving mine. “I wish you good fortune.”

  Callie thanked her, but I was too torn to speak. Part of me wanted to stomp out, while another part wanted to fling myself back down in the chair, open my palms, and beg her to tell me what she saw in them. A child crying. What was I to do with just that little snippet? I needed more, or I needed never to have heard it at all. But Madame Serena was done with us. Callie’s money had bought me a dollar’s worth of torment.

  Out in the hallway, Callie closed the door and turned to me. “What happened in there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something she said upset you.”

  “She’s a fraud.” I repeated those words to myself for good measure.

  “Babies crying?” Callie’s smooth brow creased. “Did you have a little brother or sister once? Someone you left?”

  I clutched my satchel. “The whole thing was a waste of a dollar.” I wasn’t going to confess my deepest secret to Callie out in this hallway—especially not because a charlatan fortune-teller had spooked me with a well-chosen sentence. Already the gears of my mind were spinning, trying to justify how she might have guessed what she could say to upset me. She was a clever one, Madame Serena. Very convincing.

  “Let’s go to the pawnshop,” I said.

  We went, and Callie inspected all the wares on display there so closely that the proprietor suspected us of having sticky fingers. He watched us like a Pinkerton man the whole time. But even after spending a half hour poring over jewelry and silver and other valuables, Callie saw nothing she recognized as coming from her cousin Dora’s. When questioned about Ethel, the pawnbroker said he didn’t remember her. But then, he saw so many ladies. . . .

  Back out on the sidewalk, Callie sighed in discouragement. “What now?”

  “We keep going several more blocks,” I said.

  And so we resumed our hunt. But our survey of the merchants of the area yielded nothing. No one had seen Ethel. Or if they had, they weren’t admitting it.

  Then we spoke to the man sharpening knives. The old man was our last stop. When we saw him, he was taking a break, sitting on his three-legged stool, eating a piece of buttered bread and reading his newspaper. He looked up when we approached and listened at first patiently and then with growing interest as we described Ethel.

  “Ethel, you say?” he asked. “You mean Ethel Gail?”

  Callie and I sucked in our breaths. “Yes!” she said. “You did see her?”

  He nodded. “I imagine lots of people have.” He held up the newspaper in his lap to show us. Ethel’s face stared at us unsmiling from above the fold. THE VILLAGE BUTCHER’S VICTIM, the headline read.

  Callie and I exchanged confused glances. The picture was one Callie had had for years in a photograph album. How did the newspapers get hold of it?

  * * *

  As our train barreled southward on the way home, we both sat in our own worlds, unable to talk. A baby crying, Madame Serena had said. I could almost hear him myself. My insides felt as if they were crumbling, as though soon my spine would be like sand, unable to hold me up. I looked over to see if Callie noticed that I was in danger of turning into an invertebrate pile of nervous rubble, but she was staring at a Cream of Wheat ad above the windows, lost in her own thoughts.

  What was the matter with me? I hadn’t experienced this kind of torment for months and months. I was getting better. I was forgetting. Or so I’d thought.

  But then, as if to taunt me, my memory replayed it all—that afternoon over a year ago now, back in Altoona. On a fine spring Saturday, the kind of winter-finally-over sunny and warm day that tempted even grown men to skip down the sidewalks, I finished work early and returned home. Because my call of hello was met with nothing but echo in the empty house, I guessed everyone was out enjoying the glorious afternoon. I was in a hurry to change clothes after working the morning in my uncle’s shop and get back out myself.

  It was as I was changing that Mr. Tate found me.

  Artie Tate was a young salesman, a bit flashy and loud, but very successful—at least to hear him tell it. I didn’t like him a bit, but I was always pleasant to the boarders, as Aunt Sonja had admonished me to be. “We didn’t expect to have an extra mouth to feed,” she’d told me more than once, “so the boarders have been a blessing to us.” I had been the extra mouth, after my parents died of typhus when I was seven. Aunt Sonja and Uncle Dolph had three sons of their own, all younger than me.

  Despite all I owed
my aunt, I was definitely not inclined to be pleasant to a boarder who was standing in my doorway while I was stripped down to my petticoats. Seeing him there, I lifted my dress over my corset and flashed a glare at him. “What are you doing? Shut the door.”

  He smiled. “All right.” He slipped inside and shut it behind him.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Wasn’t it?” he asked, oozing toward me.

  I stepped back but bumped into my dresser. The predatory way he eyed me made my stomach turn. I was used to teasing from men, even the occasional leer, but the hard glint in his eye signaled something unfamiliar, and dangerous.

  “I’ve seen the way you look at me,” he said.

  I swallowed, confused. “I never did.” My mouth felt bone dry—and my corset cover far too flimsy.

  He reached out and ran his hand up my bare arm, ending with a tight squeeze on my shoulder. Revulsion shuddered through me, and I slapped at his arm. “Don’t touch me.”

  I stepped around him, ready to charge out in the hallway half-dressed if I had to, but he caught me by the waist of my petticoat and yanked me back. Breath woofed out of me.

  He hauled me toward the bed while I struggled and kicked. Who would have thought a hosiery salesman would have such strength?

  “Oh, you’re a honey.” He flipped me and shoved me down so that I was pinned to the mattress beneath him. I gasped for breath. One of his hands pressed my face into the lace coverlet over my quilt. The other pushed and ripped at my clothing. The mattress muffled my cries. The shock and humiliation of it—of him, there—almost matched the pain. Pinned beneath the grunting, frenzied weight of him, I squirmed and thrashed, but that only seemed to make him push my head down harder till I couldn’t breathe.

  The nightmare seemed to go on forever, but when he was finally done, he pulled down my skirt and buttoned up as cheerily as if we’d just enjoyed an ice cream sundae together.

  “You’re a nice girl,” he said, casually. “Shame I’m leaving today. Not sure I’ll be back, but tell you what. I’ll leave you some samples.”