Murder in Greenwich Village

by Liz Freeland

  As I stood there, Number Seven’s front door opened and the end of a black perambulator poked out the front door like a clumsy bear backing out of its winter den. A stout girl wearing a dark blue dress, white apron, and cap wrestled the contraption down to the sidewalk, twitched her shoulders straight, then pointed the buggy toward the park.

  My heartbeat picked up, and before I could talk myself out of it I set myself on a course parallel to hers, arriving at my corner just ahead of her. I darted across Eightieth Street in front of an automobile only slightly smaller than a steamship. The chauffeur honked his disapproval. The ah-yoooo-gah! of the horn hurtled me the last few feet onto the opposite sidewalk. I nearly plowed right into the nanny.

  Apologies spilled out of me in a gush of nerves. “I’m sorry—so absentminded. I hope I haven’t disturbed—” Though I was speaking to the woman, it was the carriage I was attempting to look into. At first I glimpsed only a yellow-and-blue blanket and a green knit cap.

  The woman, who had been pursed up in displeasure, softened a little as I gaped at her charge. “It would take more than a bump to upset the little mite when he’s out for his walk,” she said in a British accent. “He’s that fond of the outdoors, is Master Calvin.”

  “Calvin!” I was too aghast to hide my surprise. Outrage bristled through me—as if I should have been consulted in the naming of young Master Longworth.

  “Seemed a little peculiar to me, too, at first,” the young woman confided. “But I suppose there are worse. I had an uncle named Obadiah. Imagine having that pinned on you for good and all.”

  There was opening enough in the traffic for us to scurry across Fifth Avenue toward the park. I continued to walk with her, and she didn’t seem to mind the company.

  I was trying to adjust to the idea of a family choosing such an unexpected name for my baby while at the same time craning my neck as I walked to get a long glimpse of him. He was also dressed in his Sunday best—a starched white jumper, stockings, and booties. His limbs seemed well-fed and pudgy, and his cheeks were rosy with good health. I hesitated to look too closely at his face for fear I’d see the arrogant countenance of his father. But what I saw was almost as eerie. Eyes that I knew only from the mirror stared back at me, brown flecked with green. His soft downy hair was also strikingly similar to my mouse brown. Better for a boy, I thought.

  “Is everything all right, miss?” the nanny asked.

  “Wha—?”

  My voice couldn’t squeak past the baseball-sized lump in my throat, but she didn’t seem to notice that. “Your face looks reddish and queer. That was a near miss you had with that automobile.”

  I shook my head, gulped, and nodded toward Calvin, who was kicking impatiently inside his little chariot. “He’s very sweet, isn’t he?” I choked out.

  “And why shouldn’t he be?” she asked, almost as if offended. “He’s the luckiest little boy in the world.”

  “Is he?”

  “Certainly. His parents might not be quite as rich as the Rockefellers, mind you, but he’s the apple of their eyes, and he’ll have everything his heart desires.”

  That knot was back again, but I managed to nod and mumble, “Lucky.”

  She leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “Especially since the poor mite was a little foundling.”

  “He wasn’t!” I couldn’t check the anger in my voice. She made it sound as if I’d abandoned my child in an alley.

  She nodded, and kept her tone confidential. “Adopted. No telling who his people were—and now look at him.” She chuckled. “Like a little prince.”

  For months I’d feared this encounter, yet held out hope that finally setting eyes on the child I’d given away would give me reassurance and resolution. The effect fell short of what I’d hoped. Frustration filled me. If he grew up and discovered he was adopted, what would he think of me? Clearly mothers who gave up their children were seen as only one type of woman.

  But he was better off. Like a little prince.

  It was only Madame Serena who’d confused me, with her talk of the forlorn baby crying for its mother. Mrs. Longworth was the mother—not me.

  Unexpectedly, envy for the Longworths hit me in a wave, like a fever. It frightened me. I shouldn’t have come.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  The nanny nodded, as if my leaving were just a matter of course. She hadn’t realized how close I’d come to grabbing the buggy and running. Or just dropping to the ground and sobbing.

  “Take good care of him,” I said, backing away.

  The woman probably thought I was a lunatic. I was beginning to wonder myself.

  For months I’d dreamed of viewing the Longworth house and catching a glimpse of the baby, and now I had. It had accomplished nothing.

  And everything.

  As I made my way back down Fifth Avenue, I felt bound to this city more than ever. The world might not know it, and he certainly never would, but my son lived here.

  * * *

  I expected more hullabaloo after Margaret Attinger’s arrest. A few papers reported what had happened Saturday night, some with quite a few dramatic details. Happily, my name was only mentioned far down in the articles, and my picture never appeared. News of a war breaking out in the Balkans hit the headlines Monday morning, along with a report of an entire game between the Cubs and the Reds in which only one baseball had been used, and so interest in the Attingers and Ethel’s murder began to fade away.

  At home, the mood continued to be more somber than usual until midweek, when Callie received an offer from the old producer to join the chorus of his show. I’d never seen her so jubilant—she practically danced through every mundane activity. She also began a strict regimen of “shaping” exercises and eating. “You’ll blush when you see my costume,” she said. “It shows every curve and bump.”

  I was happy for her. We’d needed good news.

  On Thursday, at work, I was typing a letter for Mr. McChesney when Ford Fitzsimmons strolled into the office as if he owned the place. At the sight of him I tensed in my chair, eyeing him warily over the top of my typewriter. What was he doing here? The possibility that he’d come to finish off what a shove in front of a train hadn’t accomplished crossed my mind. But why would he? Margaret’s capture meant there would be no more suspicion cast on him. In fact, if she pleaded innocent to the charges, he would be a star witness at the trial.

  Yet aside from a brief, wry glance, Ford barely acknowledged my presence. He didn’t have to. Jackson was already hopping up with obsequious eagerness.

  “Fitzsimmons—how wonderful that you could come so soon!” He clasped Ford’s hand, shook it, and then led the way directly to Guy Van Hooten’s office. “Guy’s eager to meet you.” He knocked at the door and then turned back to me. “Fetch us some coffee, won’t you, Louise?”

  They went inside and I stewed in my chair for a good two minutes before standing to do as bid. I deduced that Jackson, who had nixed Ford’s first book, had undergone a change of heart with the second. Naturally, Guy’s opinion had nothing at all to do with the recommendation.

  When the coffee was brewed, I carried it inside on a tray, doing my best impersonation of Walter as I passed cups around. The men were being especially effusive in their admiration of each other.

  “Guy’s got an eye for quality,” Jackson was saying—and, I assumed, lying. “It’s what people always said of him, even back in our university days.”

  “You’re old school chums, then?” Ford asked.

  “Back in Boston.” Guy and Jackson laughed with immodest modesty. You could always tell a Harvard man.

  “It’s really Jackson you owe your good fortune to, Fitz,” Guy said. “He gave the manuscript a glowing recommendation. Called it a taut, raucous drama.”

  Actually, I had said that—before I had tried to unsay it. But I was now invisible. “Will you be needing anything else?” I asked.

  Guy glanced up as if he’d barely noticed me till then. “No, thank yo
u, Louisa.”

  I gritted my teeth.

  Jackson cleared his throat. He had enough decency to look abashed. “You know Louise, don’t you, Ford?”

  “Of course.” Ford’s blue eyes settled on me with what I could only describe as triumphant amusement. “She’s been indispensable to me.”

  Except that time you decided to dispense with me altogether with a fatal shove.

  “Indispensable—that’s just the word,” Guy said. “Makes a mean hangover cure, too. What would we do without her?”

  I smiled. He would have the opportunity to learn the answer to that question in the not-too-distant future, I hoped. When Aunt Irene had secured this job for me, I’d been so grateful to have a place in New York City. But now I knew it wasn’t enough to accept whatever was handed to me—or taken from me. I intended to forge a path of my own.

  Imagine my surprise that evening when, at Aunt Irene’s at-home, Muldoon walked in. With his black suit, dark features, and grim look, he seemed more like an undertaker arriving for a pickup than a party guest, but Aunt Irene greeted him with the zeal that she usually reserved for the local luminaries who stumbled into her orbit. “Detective!” she exclaimed. “Come in. So nice of you to join our soirée. Have you met Madame L’Huillier of the Metropolitan Opera?”

  I amused myself a full quarter hour watching the detective’s discomfort as he was passed along the room from opera stars to actors to city councilmen to a Russian painter who didn’t speak a word of English, who I suspected only came for the free food. I handed the painter my sandwich tray and plopped down in a chair next to Muldoon.

  “This is quite a gathering.” He eyed Callie laughing among a group of young men. “Your friend seems in better spirits.”

  “We all are.” I nodded toward Otto playing a rag on the piano. A young lady had sidled up close to him on the bench. By the weekend, perhaps she would be his muse.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “I’m doing fine,” I said. “I’ve made some resolutions this week.”

  “Let me guess—to never again visit the observation deck of the Woolworth Building.”

  I laughed. “I’m considering avoiding five-and-dime stores altogether.”

  The comment earned a rare smile. “I don’t blame you.”

  “I’ve also decided to join the police.”

  His smile faded. “Is that joke meant to needle me?”

  I folded my arms. “Who’s joking? There are women police officers, aren’t there? Why not me?”

  “We have police matrons who watch our female prisoners,” he said. “You wouldn’t enjoy the work.”

  “I wouldn’t enjoy it more than being an office drudge?”

  “You say that now. Spend a day around the jail cells and then report back to me.”

  “I’ve spent a bit of time there already, as you know.” I smiled. “I think the NYPD could use me.”

  He shook his head.

  “Was I or was I not key in capturing Ethel’s killer?” I asked. “The NYPD has one woman detective, why not more?”

  “She doesn’t work homicide.”

  “Why not?”

  “The brass would never assign a woman to homicide.”

  “Now, you mean.”

  He sputtered. “The department isn’t going to change just because you want it to, Louise.”

  “It might. Someday. It’s had to make changes before—ask Teddy Roosevelt. He was the one who put women in police jobs.”

  Muldoon’s expression said clearly that he gave the man no thanks for that. “Why would you want to be around crime and corruption all the time? Girls should have higher aspirations than that.”

  “Like marriage and babies,” I guessed. “Maybe I should ask Otto to play ‘Home Sweet Home.’ I sense one of your stirring soliloquies on old-fashioned girls in small towns coming on.”

  “Are you telling me that you don’t want marriage and family for yourself?” he asked. “I thought every girl had a loving, protective instinct inside her.”

  The image of little Calvin Longworth kicking in his baby carriage came to me. He would have everything a little boy could dream of. And I would do my part to make sure the world he grew up in was as safe and just as I could make it. Perhaps Muldoon wasn’t wrong about that protective instinct. I couldn’t watch over the child I’d brought into this world, but I could watch over his city.

  At my lack of response, Muldoon took a breath. “I see. Well, don’t worry. I won’t try to talk you out of anything.”

  “You couldn’t if you tried.”

  He laughed, showing even white teeth, and his dark features became a shade less forbidding. “Believe me, Louise. I know.”

  A sharp hitch in my chest caught me by surprise. My aunt was right. There was something about him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Write the book you’d like to read” is the writer’s advice I’ve tried to follow for most of my career. But two and a half years ago, after the sudden loss of my middle sister, Julia, who was also my lifelong confidante, my first best friend, and sometimes coauthor, I’d hit a wall. I’d never written anything without having Julia as my sounding board. Half the joy of it all was writing a book she would like to read, too.

  That I kept writing at all is thanks to some wonderful people. First, John Scognamiglio, my editor at Kensington, who knew just the right moment to nudge me in a different direction. Without his encouragement, I’d probably still be staring at a blank screen in Word. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Annelise Robey at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, for seeing me through a period of trial and error—lots of error—with unflappable humor and good advice. Endless thanks to my husband, Joe Newman, for proofing and being my partner in crime, and to my sister, Suzanne Bass, for reading and critiquing this manuscript, and listening.

  I ended up writing a book I hope Julia would have wanted to read. She loved a mystery.