by Nerys Leigh
Toby instructed the driver of the cab they found to take them to a place called the Five Points, in Lower Manhattan. The request earned him a look of disbelief, but the man nevertheless drove them, for an extra fee, to the edge of the notorious place, where he refused to go any farther.
“I’m not going in there and you shouldn’t either, especially not with a lady. Place is dangerous.”
“We’ll be fine.” Toby handed him twenty-five cents. “Wait for us here and there’ll be another quarter when we get back. We won’t be long.”
“It’s your funeral,” he said, nevertheless taking the money. “If you’re not back in half an hour, I’m leaving.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Clara said as they walked away.
“Do you trust me?”
She looked up into his gray eyes and knew she could. “Yes.”
“Then yes, I know what I’m doing. If you want to be a Pinkerton agent, there will be times when you’ll be required to go to places that aren’t necessarily safe. The sooner you lose your fear, the better able you’ll be to keep yourself from harm. Just stay alert and keep close to me. I’ll look after you.”
She tightened her hold on his arm. He was right, this was part of a Pinkerton agent’s job. She could do it, with Toby at her side. Without him… well, she’d deal with that problem when she came to it.
Five Points was the kind of area Clara’s father had always warned her to never, ever go anywhere near. It was just as well he had no idea she was there now. He’d likely have given Toby a black eye just for taking her to such a place. Her father wasn’t a violent man, but he took no nonsense from anyone.
Tenements crowded the streets on all sides, wooden structures jammed between the brick buildings wherever there was a little space to squeeze in extra rooms. People were everywhere, men, women and children of all colors, side by side. Barrooms and taverns lined the streets, occasionally punctuated by some other store. Groups of men gathered on street corners, leering at any women who walked by.
The odor was unlike anything Clara had ever experienced. New York as a whole carried an air of dung and garbage, but this place seemed to be the epicenter of the nasal assault.
She hoped they didn’t spend long there. She had a pressing need to breathe soon.
A man staggered out of a tavern door in front of them, forcing them to stop or walk into him.
He regained his balance with some effort, noticing them for the first time. “’Scuse me.” His eyes traveled down Clara’s form and back up again, sending a shudder down her spine. “How much for twenty minutes?”
Her eyes widened, outrage temporarily eclipsing her fear. “I beg your pardon?”
He leaned towards her and raised his voice, speaking slowly as if to someone hard of hearing. “How much for twenty minutes? I’ll take ten, if you’re in a hurry.”
She flinched, raising a hand to her nose as the smell of alcohol and worse enveloped her. “I am not…”
Toby placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, firmly moving him back. “Keep walking, friend.”
The man squinted at him. “You her pimp?”
Clara gasped. She would have slapped him, had she not been reluctant to come into contact with any part of his fetid body. “Well, I never!”
The man reached for her. “I don’t mind if you ain’t never. I’ll still pay.”
Toby grasped his outstretched hand and twisted.
The man yelped as he was forced to bend to one side or have his arm broken.
Toby’s voice emerged as a low growl. “Leave. Now.”
The man staggered back as he was released. “All right, all right, no need to get like that.”
Toby pulled her into motion again and they left the man glaring after them and nursing his hand against his chest.
“Can you teach me that thing you did, with his hand?” Clara said as they walked.
He’d appeared to use barely any force at all, but the move had nevertheless all but brought the man to his knees.
He wiped his palm against his jacket. “Certainly.”
She looked down at her perfectly respectable dress. “Do I look like a… a…” She lowered her voice, barely able to bring herself to even whisper it. “Soiled dove?”
“No, but a lot of the women in places like this are. It’s why we’re here.”
“It is?”
He suddenly tugged her sideways, changing course. “Over there.”
With all the people on the street, it took her a few moments to identify which of them he was heading for. When she did, her mouth went dry.
Her footsteps slowed and she pulled back on his arm. “But isn’t she a,” she dropped her voice to a hiss again, “prostitute?”
“Who better to tell us where Miss Chamberlain might have gone to take care of her baby than someone who would have need of such services?”
It made perfectly logical sense, she had to admit, but that didn’t assuage her reluctance.
She looked around them. “People will think we’re soliciting her.”
“No one will care.”
“I’ll care!”
He stopped and turned to face her. “If you’re going to be a Pinkerton agent, there will be times when you have to do things that aren’t comfortable. That’s why I brought you with me this morning, to show you what you’re getting into.”
The way he said it wasn’t unkind, but she nevertheless felt as if she were being reprimanded.
“But if you don’t think you’re up to it,” he said, “I can take you back to the cab and…”
“No! I can do it. I was just caught by surprise, is all.” Lifting her chin, she took hold of his arm again and headed for the woman he’d pointed out. Before what little nerve his offer to take her back had given her failed.
Their quarry wore a frilly pink and white dress that had seen better days. With hair splayed over bare shoulders, ruby red lips, and cheeks rouged, it didn’t take a detective to tell her line of work. It was near impossible to guess how old she was past the world-weary set of her features, even though she smiled at the men passing by.
Seeing them approach, her eyes drifted down to Toby’s feet and back up, and one corner of her mouth hitched up. “Well, aren’t you a big one?”
He inclined his head. “Good morning, ma’am. May we have a little of your time?”
“If you’re paying, I’ll give you all the time you want,” she said with a wink.
“He doesn’t need that kind of time,” Clara said firmly, moving closer to her husband and tightening her grip on his arm.
He glanced down at her and she looked away, just in case she was blushing. She hadn’t intended to sound quite so possessive.
“All we need is a few minutes of your time and some information,” he said.
The woman’s flirtatious attitude vanished, her eyes darting between them. “You cops?”
“Pinkerton agents.”
Clara’s heart sank. Toby may have been more used to places like this than she was, but he didn’t have much of an idea how to deal with the people.
“What’s that?” the woman said, frowning.
“We’ll pay you for your time,” Clara interjected, before she became any more suspicious. They’d come this far; she didn’t want to have to approach another prostitute on the street.
At the mention of payment, the woman tilted her head. “How much?”
“We’ll give you fifty cents for ten minutes.”
“Make it a dollar.”
“For ten minutes?”
“You can always find someone else.”
Clara had to give it to her, she knew how to haggle. “All right, a dollar.”
She held out her hand. “In advance.”
Clara looked up at Toby, flicking her eyes pointedly at the woman. With a slight sigh, he reached into his jacket, pulled out a dollar bill, and handed it to her.
She stuffed it down the front of her dress. “This way.”
“Wait,” Clara said as she turned towards the tenement behind her, “where are we going?”
The woman glanced back at her. “Up to my room. I’m not having people round here thinking I’m a snitch.”
“But the people out there will think we’re… you know,” she whispered to Toby as they followed her into the building.
“You wanted to pay her.”
They climbed three flights of dark, dingy stairs before the woman led them along a corridor and into a room, closing the door behind them.
The place was tiny, with just enough room for a bed covered with a stained sheet, a battered chest of drawers, and two wooden chairs. A grubby narrow window looked out at a brick wall five feet away.
The woman sat on the bed and waved them into the two chairs. “What do you want to know?”
Toby pulled a piece of paper and a pencil from his pocket. Clara made a mental note to carry her own paper and pencil around with her. She usually just relied on her memory, but writing things down would look more professional.
“We need to know all the places in the city where a lady can…” He paused, as if searching for the right words.
“Where a woman can have an unwanted pregnancy taken care of,” Clara said. She was sitting in a prostitute’s bedroom; at this point, language hardly seemed to matter.
The woman’s eyes dropped to Clara’s stomach. “I see. So you’re…?”
She gasped in a breath. “Certainly not!”
“We need the information for a case,” Toby said, apparently unconcerned that everyone they met seemed to think she was a hussy. “We’ve been hired to find a woman who may or may not have had an abortion, and we want to check all the places that provide them to find out if she did.”
The woman sat back, immediately suspicious again.
Clara really needed to teach him that honesty wasn’t always the best course.
“We just want to know that she’s safe,” she said. “The father of the baby is worried about her. He’s a good man, I promise you.”
She studied the two of them for a few moments before nodding. “All right, I guess I can help you with that.”
Fifteen minutes later they had a good list of doctors, nurses, and backstreet practitioners that Miss Chamberlain might have visited.
As they rose to leave, the woman sidled up to Toby and ran one hand down his chest. “Why don’t you stick around? For another dollar, we can have some fun.” She flicked her head at Clara. “She can even watch, if that’s your thing. What do you say?”
Clara grabbed Toby’s arm, inserting herself between him and the brazen woman. “He says no. Thank you for your time. We’ll be leaving now.”
Not waiting for a reply, she pulled him to the door and out into the hallway. The sound of the woman’s laughter followed them along the corridor.
“Would you mind loosening your hand?” he said as they started down the stairs. “It’s getting painful.”
Mumbling, “Sorry,” she released the death-like grip she had on his arm.
They descended a flight before he spoke again. “I had no intention of taking her up on her offer, you know.”
“I didn’t think you did.”
“Good.” There was another flight of silence. “It’s just, you seemed very eager to drag me out of there.”
“Not at all. I just thought that since we’d got what we went there for, we should leave.”
“Ah.” They walked down a few more steps. “Glad we could get that cleared up.”
She didn’t look back at him, in case he saw her cheeks burning.
Because the very last thing she wanted him to know was that when the woman had made Toby the offer, Clara had been gripped by such an overwhelming urge to force her away from him that the woman was lucky to still have both eyeballs intact.
He really, truly didn’t need to know about that.
~ ~ ~
The door was black, with faded, peeling paint. It made Clara shiver.
“Are you sure this is the place?” she asked, looking around.
The house appeared no different from those around it, although she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. A sign?
“This is the address she gave us,” Toby replied, consulting the piece of paper on which he’d written all the places offering abortions in the city.
This was the second they’d been to. The first was a doctor, and he did have a sign.
Assuming Miss Chamberlain had to have been living within fairly easy walking distance of the hotel she’d told Aaron she was staying at, in case anyone ever took her home, Toby had worked out the most likely area in which she would have actually been staying. He’d then found the closest places on the list that the woman in Five Points had given them.
Clara hoped he was right. She didn’t want to visit too many of these. “Let’s get this over with.”
He knocked on the door. It opened so quickly it made Clara jump.
A gray-haired woman in an equally gray dress looked her up and down. “How far along are you?”
So that answered the question of whether it was the right place.
“I’m not expecting,” she replied. Really, why was everyone assuming the worst of her?
The woman frowned. “Then what do you want?”
Toby took his badge from his jacket pocket and held it up. “Ma’am, we’re from the Pinkerton detective agency and we…”
“Not interested.” She grasped the edge of the door and pushed it. Her frown deepened when it came to a halt against the boot he thrust in the way.
“We only want a few minutes of your time,” he said. “We’ll pay you for the inconvenience.”
Evidently, he was learning.
At the mention of payment, she opened the door again. “How much and what do you want to know?”
“Thirty cents,” Clara said. “And we want to know if a certain woman came to you in March or April of last year.”
“Seventy-five cents,” the woman replied.
“Fifty.”
“Sixty.”
“Done.”
Once paid, the gray-haired, gray-dressed woman led them past a waiting room with chairs arranged around the wall to a door further along the gloomy hallway. An acid tang hung in the air that made Clara want to run back outside and take a cleansing breath of the pungent city air.
The room they were led into contained a small desk, two wooden chairs, and a sleeping pallet.
The woman took a ledger from a shelf behind the desk and opened it. “What’s the name?”
“Josephine Chamberlain,” Toby said.
She ran her finger down a shockingly long list of names, then turned the page and did the same on a further list. “No, no one by that name.”
“Any Josephines or Chamberlains at all?” Clara asked.
“Not a one.”
She took the portrait of Josephine Chamberlain from her pocket and unfolded it. “She may have used another name. Does she look familiar?”
The gray woman glanced at the picture. “I don’t recall the… no, wait.” She took the portrait, examining it more closely. “There was a woman who came to me around that time, but she didn’t stay. This looks like her. I remember her because she looked well dressed, better than most of the women who come to me. All the rich folks usually go to a doctor. Not that they’d get any better care. Probably worse, if you ask me.”
She handed back the picture.
“So she didn’t get an abortion?” Clara said.
“Not here. Can’t say whether she went somewhere else.”
Clara exchanged a look with Toby and smiled. Maybe they’d have good news to take to Aaron at the end of all this.
Once back outside in the fresher air, she wrapped her arm around his. “There really was a baby, and she kept it.”
“We don’t know that for certain.”
“She did, I’m sure of it. She would have had it done there if she was going to. Aaron will get to be a father, once we’ve found her.” W
hen he didn’t answer, she looked up at him. “You don’t agree?”
“I just think something’s not adding up. If she kept the baby, why didn’t she go back to Wetherington to tell him? At the very least, I’d have thought she’d try to get more money out of him.”
She had to admit, he had a point. “Well, once we’ve found her we can ask. I’m not giving up hope for a happy ending just yet. Josephine Chamberlain is out there with her baby. I can feel it.”
“Feelings are not an accurate basis for fact.”
“Haven’t you ever just felt something was true, even without proof?”
“I prefer to stick with the evidence.”
She smiled. “Well, you have your evidence and I have my instincts. Maybe together we’ll make a pretty good team.”
The tiny wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Maybe.”
Chapter Nine
“What’s our plan for tomorrow?”
Toby looked up from his list of hotels and boarding houses. “We find wherever Miss Chamberlain was staying. We know now where she went for the abortion. With that and the location of the hotel she pretended to be living in, we’ve got a reasonable area to concentrate our search.”
Clara looked at the very long list on his lap. There seemed to be such a huge number of places where people could find a bed in the city. She’d never imagined so many could be wanting for a permanent home in one place. New York was an exhilarating, disturbing place.
“Is this what it’s always like, being a Pinkerton agent?” she said. “Just searching until you find something?”
He sat back, propping the ankle of his left leg on his right thigh. “Not always. I usually have more to go on because I can collect evidence. So much can be learned from the scene of a recent crime, but not something that happened over a year ago. All we can do is go on logic and do the best we can with the information we have.”
“It’s frustrating.”
“I know, but it’s just what we have to do. If it was easy, I imagine one of the other investigators Wetherington hired would have already…” He stopped and slapped a hand over his mouth as he yawned.
It was his fifth yawn in the past ten minutes. Clara had been counting.
