by Amy Stewart
The boy fumbled with his keys and finally pushed one into the lock. The sheriff stole up behind him, took hold of the door, and pushed in after him. I couldn’t see the boy’s reaction, but I heard a scuffle and crept closer.
Sheriff Heath mumbled something I couldn’t hear, and the boy yelled, and one of them hit the other. I ran up to the door, which had drifted closed but not caught, and opened it in time to see the sheriff pulling the boy’s hands behind his back and putting handcuffs on him. They were both on their knees in the narrow hallway. Sheriff Heath staggered to his feet and pulled the boy up with him.
The sheriff looked over at me and jerked his head for me to step inside and close the door. “Not a word,” he said to the boy in a low voice. “Just nod yes or no. Any sound and I’ll make it worse for you.”
The boy nodded. He was turned away from me. I had a feeling that Sheriff Heath didn’t want him to see me. Maybe the boy would be more frightened if he thought there were no witnesses.
He stood behind the boy, keeping hold of the handcuffs, and spoke quietly in his ear. “Is Dr. von Matthesius upstairs?”
The boy shook his head no.
“Has he been staying here?”
He nodded yes.
“Then who are we going to see? Just say it real quiet. Don’t wake anybody up.”
“Rudy Schilga.”
“Rudy? Rudolph?”
“I guess so.”
“Apartment?”
“What?” The boy tried to turn around again and Sheriff Heath gave him a little shove forward.
“What apartment? Where are we going?”
“Oh. 3R.”
With that they began to climb the stairs, the boy in front and the sheriff right behind him, still holding him by the cuffs. At the top of the first flight, the sheriff leaned down from the landing and waved me up. I climbed as quietly as I could and stayed out of sight.
On the third floor, they stopped in front of 3R. The boy didn’t say a word. He kept his head down and panted from the exertion of the climb.
“Key?” Sheriff Heath whispered.
“In my coat.”
The sheriff reached around and pulled it out of his pocket. He turned the key and pushed the boy inside.
I stepped in behind them and closed the door. The place was empty. It was an ordinary tenement flat, with a bathtub in the kitchen and two bare iron beds against the walls. There was a shelf holding cups and saucers and a battered tin pan. Apart from these few furnishings, there was no sign that anyone lived there. It smelled of dust and grime.
At the sound of the door closing, the boy turned sharply and jumped when he saw me. “Who is she?”
“Keep your voice down,” Sheriff Heath said. “This is Miss Kopp. What’s your name, son?”
“Reinhold Dietz.”
It was a German name I wouldn’t have any trouble remembering. Reinhold kept his eyes on me. He had a round, doughy face and blank, nickel-blue eyes. “I got followed, didn’t I?” he said, sounding resigned about it. “Rudy told me to watch for police, but he didn’t say nothing about a lady.”
Sheriff Heath yanked his handcuffs and turned him away from me. “What’s the plan, son?”
“Am I going to jail?”
The sheriff paused and looked down at him, taking in his navy coat with holes at the elbows, and a pair of old shoes that were starting to split at the soles and leak newspaper stuffing.
“That depends upon you.”
In the room next door a man succumbed to a tubercular coughing fit. His steps fell heavily across the floor and there was the sound of water being poured from a pitcher. We waited in silence until he settled down and then the sheriff said, “Reinhold, I’ll let you go the minute I get von Matthesius. When I put the cuffs on him, I’ll take them off you. It’ll be just like that.”
Reinhold kept his head down. “Rudy said if he wasn’t here to go meet the Baron at the ferry building.”
“What ferry?”
“East River. Twenty-Third Street.”
“When?”
Reinhold twisted his neck around, glancing first at me and then at the sheriff. “Now! I should be there by now.”
That was all the urging Sheriff Heath required. He told Reinhold again to be quiet and the three of us shuffled out of the apartment.
“Is anybody coming back here tonight?” the sheriff whispered on the stairs.
“Nobody’s lived here since they moved the Baron out. It’s just a meeting place.”
Outside, the sheriff looked back up at the building and over to me.
“I can stay here in case someone comes,” I said.
“Except you won’t stay.”
“I will if I say I will.”
“I see. But not if I tell you to. You only take orders from yourself.”
Reinhold Dietz looked back and forth between us like we were two parents arguing over a child.
“I can’t leave you on Second Avenue in the middle of the night,” he said.
“You left me in Hackensack.”
“At a church!” The sheriff shook his head and groaned. “Let’s get going. As long as we have Reinhold, we’ll get the Baron. Won’t we, son?”
Reinhold gave a discouraged moan but went along without a fight. This time we took a more direct route up to Twenty-Third Street and over to the ferry building. If it was unusual for a man and a woman to lead a boy along in handcuffs in the quiet hours after midnight, I wouldn’t have known it. No one who passed us gave us a second look.
The streets of New York’s East Side at that hour were far livelier than those of Hackensack or Paterson had ever been. There were lights on in every building—not all of them, but enough to let me know that for every dozen people asleep, there were one or two awake and doing whatever a body does at two o’clock in the morning. Silhouetted against one window was a woman walking a fretful baby, and in another a man leaned over a fire escape with his cigarette. Even some of the shops were occupied. I saw a boy pounding dough in the kind of nondescript bakery that turns out nothing but brown rolls and dark bread. At a laundry two women bent over sewing machines, each illuminated by a single gas lantern. At the corner of Nineteenth Street, two men appeared to be emptying the contents of an apartment onto the curb, and a horde of rag pickers had already found it and started to carry the mess away.
Reinhold panted noisily as we walked, with great puffs of steam coming from his mouth in the cold. The handcuffs seemed to throw him off balance and he kept stumbling against us. I thought about telling the sheriff that we should unchain him, but I knew that he was in no mood to make things comfortable for Reinhold, so we stomped along, heading east on Twenty-Third until the ferry building came into sight under the ruddy glow of the street lamps.
As we approached, Sheriff Heath said to Reinhold, “Does von Matthesius know you? Does he know what you look like?”
“He knows me.”
“Well, he knows us, too. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll find a nice comfortable bench and chain you to it. Miss Kopp and I will be nearby even if you don’t see us. If you call out any kind of warning to him, you’re coming back to Hackensack for a nice long stay in my jail. As soon as we get him, I let you go. Agreed?”
Reinhold coughed and nodded. “Suppose so.”
We stood across the street from the ferry building and Sheriff Heath looked it over. It was a long, low-slung building in the shape of an L, with wide bays for boarding carriages and motor cars. There were plenty of spaces to hide. We could have used five or six more men.
“Why does he meet you here? Where is he coming from?” Sheriff Heath asked.
“I don’t know. I never know.”
Sheriff Heath gave his handcuffs a little tug, the way you might pull a horse up short. “Where would you wait for him?”
Reinhold nodded toward a row of benches where the two sides of the building came together. “Over there, maybe.”
“That’s fine. Miss Kopp, go take a walk. See if he’s h
ere. Try to stay in sight of us. After I get our friend settled, I’ll come find you.”
I ran off without a word. There was a walkway of wooden planks around the edge of the ferry building, and when the heel of my boot struck a loose board, the sound rang out like a gunshot. I dashed under a canvas awning near the ticket window, in a deep shadow, hoping that von Matthesius hadn’t spotted me.
But there was no sign of him, or any other man expecting a rendezvous. There were only the men hauling buckets of water out of the river and washing down the docks, coiling enormous ropes around their posts, and cinching gang-planks into place. A few of them looked up at me but didn’t say anything.
Across the way, Sheriff Heath had Reinhold on a bench and was kneeling in front of him, locking him to it. I saw him take Reinhold’s face in his hands and speak to him. Reinhold nodded vigorously and Sheriff Heath stepped away. The boy arranged himself so that it looked like he was just sitting casually and not chained to the bench.
The sheriff joined me at the far end of the building. “Nothing?”
“Just a few dock workers.”
“All right. I’ll go talk to them. You keep watch around this side. Stay in plain sight and do not lose sight of that boy. If von Matthesius does turn up, he’s likely to go straight for him.”
He disappeared behind the ferry building. I stayed at my post at the far end, where I had a clear view of Reinhold and would see if anyone approached him from the street side. It wasn’t until I was standing still that I began to feel the biting cold that blew in off the river. In spite of my gloves, the blood had drained from my fingers and I had to rub them together to get the feeling back. My feet were just as frozen but I didn’t dare stomp around and make too much noise. Behind me, along First Avenue, came a steady rumble of motor cars, and from farther away, across the whole of the island, there was the general din of horns squawking and engines misfiring and boilers hissing that made up the incessant, spectral roar of the city.
Reinhold Dietz sat perfectly still on the bench with his chin down against his chest. He might have fallen asleep, although I couldn’t tell from this distance. I worried about leaving him for too long in the cold. I paced back and forth simply as a matter of survival and couldn’t believe that Reinhold could tolerate sitting still for much longer in his thin coat.
Every few minutes I caught a glimpse of Sheriff Heath moving along the docks on the other side of the building. Men’s voices rose and fell, drifting around the way they do so close to the water.
Finally he emerged at the opposite end of the ferry building and stood out in a little pool of light cast by a lone street lamp. He raised his palms up to show that he’d found nothing and I did the same. Reinhold Dietz lifted his head long enough to look at each of us and dropped it again.
We both stayed at our posts a while longer, but no one approached except a few dockworkers coming and going. When the clock tower read three o’clock, the sheriff crossed the trolley tracks and sat down next to Reinhold. They spoke for a few minutes and then he released the boy from the bench, locked his arms once again behind his back, and the two of them walked over to me. Even in the darkness I could see that the boy’s face was red and puffy. He’d either been crying or he was frostbitten, or possibly both.
“We’re going back to the apartment,” the sheriff said. “Reinhold says that von Matthesius is never late. If he hasn’t shown by now, he isn’t going to. There’s no point in waiting around in the cold anymore.”
I hated to leave the only place our fugitive might be expected to turn up. “I’ll stay here,” I said. “You two go back.”
Sheriff Heath squinted at me. “Is that your punishment? You’re going to stand out all night in the cold?”
“Would that take care of it?”
He rolled his eyes. “There’s another meeting set up for tomorrow at the subway station. We’ll get him there. This way, Miss Kopp.” He had Reinhold Dietz by one elbow and took me by the other.
“Why don’t you call her deputy if she works for you?” Reinhold asked as we hurried back to the flat.
“Deputies follow the orders given to them by the sheriff. That is the sole purpose of a deputy. People who don’t follow the sheriff’s orders are more commonly referred to as . . .” He paused here as we navigated a tricky intersection along Twenty-Third, and Reinhold offered a suggestion.
“Outlaws?”
Sheriff Heath fought back a smile as he pulled us down the street. “Thank you, Mr. Dietz. Outlaw is exactly right.”
23
WE SAT IN THE DARKENED APARTMENT, Sheriff Heath and Reinhold on one bed and me on the other. Sheriff Heath watched the boy uneasily. Reinhold didn’t seem clever enough to fabricate much of a lie, but we had every reason to wonder if we were being misled.
“Can’t you think of any other way to get word to him?” the sheriff asked.
Reinhold shook his head. “I only talk to Rudy. If Rudy has a job for me, he comes here or he leaves word at a restaurant over by Times Square.”
“Murray’s?”
Reinhold lifted his chin and looked Sheriff Heath in the eye, impressed. “How’d you find out about Murray’s?”
“She did.” Sheriff Heath jerked his head toward me.
“Her? Say, I didn’t know they had lady detectives.”
“It’s a new idea. I haven’t made up my mind about it myself.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going, so I said, “How does Rudy know von Matthesius?”
“Rudy? Rudy knows everybody. He used to run errands for a doctor uptown. What was his name—something about a rat?”
“Dr. Rathburn?” I put in.
“That sounds right. Dr. Rathburn wanted Rudy to find places for the Baron to hide. Rudy knows all kinds of places.”
“And Dr. Rathburn’s paying to keep the Baron hidden?” I asked.
Reinhold shrugged. “Somebody pays. They leave the money at Murray’s. Or they were for a while. Something went wrong. There hasn’t been any money for a few weeks.”
“What happened?” I asked, although I already knew.
“All of a sudden the doctor was just gone, and another fellow who used to leave money for Rudy stopped turning up too. Rudy’s been stuck with the Baron. We don’t know what to do with him. We were supposed to keep him hidden and move him every few days, but nobody’s paying us. It was Rudy’s idea to ask at the general delivery window.”
“Why didn’t the Baron just leave town?” the sheriff asked, trying to sound casual about it. “If I were running from the law, I’d get on a train.”
Reinhold leaned back against the wall and rolled his neck around. “The doctor said not to let him get too far. Said the Baron owed him money. He wanted to keep him close.”
“And Rudy has no idea where Dr. Rathburn went?” the sheriff asked.
Reinhold was slipping away. He slumped over to one side and mumbled, “Nobody tells me.”
We watched his eyes roll shut and his head drop. After a few minutes he commenced a quiet snore. There was nothing in the room to look at but each other and the broken plaster on the wall. I looked at the wall.
After a long stretch of each of us studying the cracks above the other’s head, Sheriff Heath said, “I might have suggested it was selfish of you to go after von Matthesius on your own. I didn’t mean to put it that way.”
“Of course you did. And it was.”
“You felt a sense of duty and you acted upon it. I wish more of my deputies would.”
I unpinned my hat and sat it down next to me. “It doesn’t matter why I did anything. I’ve made a mess of your affairs and all you ever did was to try to help me.”
“I wasn’t interested in trying to help you, Miss Kopp. I hired you to do a job.”
“And look at what happened.”
Reinhold gave an enormous snort and we feared we’d awakened him, but he settled back into a dull snore.
“It’s been difficult for you, too,” he said.
“Mrs. Heath will be back tomorrow,” he said. “Her father will tell her she never should have married me, and her mother will tell her she has a duty to her husband, and she’ll be so tired of it that she’ll come back just to get away from them.”
“You should ask her to come home,” I said. “A wife wants to be asked back.”
“I don’t have to. She knows where she lives.”
It wasn’t my place to lecture him about Cordelia, so I didn’t.
“Get some sleep while you can,” he said.
“I’m not going to sleep on the job.” But I unlaced my boots and tucked my feet under my coat. It was almost as cold inside the apartment as it had been outside. There was a rusted iron radiator under the window, but it served no purpose other than to attract soot.
“You sleep on the job almost every night,” Sheriff Heath said. “You’re there so much we should charge you rent. Most people want to leave their jobs in the evening.”
In the darkness I couldn’t see his eyes, just the two shadows across them. We faced each other over a long silence.
“I don’t want to leave my job.”
The next time I looked up, the meager light of early morning had crept into the room. Reinhold Dietz was still asleep, having fallen over to one side, his feet still on the floor. Sheriff Heath was looking straight ahead with the impassive air of a lawman who was accustomed to waiting alone for long stretches of time.
I sat up quickly, my hair down in my face and my skirt tangled around my knees. Reinhold heard me shifting around and he yawned and tried to stretch, but was hindered by his handcuffs. He pushed himself up and looked around the room, blinking at us in surprise.
“I must have dreamt it,” he said. “I dreamt you let me go.”
“I let you go to sleep,” the sheriff offered.
He bent his neck from side to side, groaning. “Did you tie me in a knot first?”
“You’ll be all right.” The sheriff stood and shook out his coat. “It just so happens that witnesses in the custody of the sheriff are entitled to a decent breakfast. Get yourselves washed up, both of you, and we’ll go.”
