Murder in the North End

by P. B. Ryan

  “Cook may not have been rich,” Will said, “but if he was a paying customer, why should Johnny have had a problem with it? Why should Mary have felt like she had to keep it a secret from him?”

  Perhaps, Nell thought, because he didn’t get to watch.

  Pru shrugged as she slid hairpins out of the topknot and pushed them back in. “Maybe Mary wanted to keep Cook’s money all to herself ‘stead of handin’ it over to Johnny. Or maybe it was ‘cause her and Cook had a little bit more goin’ on between ‘em than just business. She didn’t have no other reg’lars. He was the only one I know of that ever came back for seconds, and when I was watchin’ ‘em that time, well... He didn’t look at her like she was no whore, and he didn’t talk to her like the johns talk to the rest of us. He was...gentle like.”

  “He paid her, though,” Will said.

  “That don’t mean he didn’t have them kinds of feelings for her. Didn’t you ever give money to some girl you fancied? Or special little gifts, even if you knew she’d just turn around and pawn ‘em?”

  Will conceded her point with a little duck of his head and a rueful smile.

  “Thing is,” Pru said, “only fella Mary Molloy was s’posed to be spreadin’ them skinny little legs for on a reg’lar basis was Johnny Cassidy. If he’d of found out about Cook, he’d of likely wrung her neck.”

  Will said, “You told Constable Skinner all this, about Cook leaving Mary’s place that night?”

  “He asked me if I’d ever seen Cook doin’ anything untoward. That was how he put it—‘untoward.’ So I told him about Cook and Mary.”

  “Did anyone else know?” he asked. “Had you told anyone, after you saw Cook leave her flat that night?”

  “Not right after, but I thought about it. I never did like Mary. Uppity little bitch, thinks she’s better’n the rest of us working birds.”

  “If you didn’t like her,” Will asked, “how come you didn’t tell?”

  With a sly little smile, Pru said, “I had my reasons.”

  “You decided to blackmail her, didn’t you?” Nell asked.

  It was the first time Nell had spoken, and it was probably a bad idea, because Pru cut her a scornful look and said, “I reckon I’d best be gettin’ back upstairs before Mother starts wonderin’ what’s takin’ me so long. She don’t like us girls to spend too much time down here. Eats into her profits as well as ours.”

  “She takes a cut of what you’re paid?” Will asked.

  “She takes the money and give us our cut, which is half of what the johns pay—greedy old haybag.”

  “Don’t seem quite fair,” Will said.

  “It’s that or the street,” Pru said. “Used to be, it was the other way ‘round—they’d pay us, and we’d give Mother her half—but Mother always thought we was cheatin’ her. Like, if we told her we just did a French trick, she’d say no you didn’t, it took too long, it must been reg’lar, and she’d keep it all, on account of reg’lar costs double what French does.”

  “In that case,” Will said, “you must have been tempted to get away with what you could from time to time. I know I would have been.”

  “From time to time,” Pru admitted. “Not too often, ‘cause we didn’t want to push our luck. One time, ‘bout four, five years ago—” she glanced up the stairs and lowered her voice “—this girl Ellie was holdin’ back way too much. She got careless, you know? Well, Mother found out, and next thing you know, they find Ellie floatin’ facedown in the Charles River. Coroner said she’d been strangled and dumped there. After that, we toed the line, you know what I mean? When Mother started doin’ the collectin’ herself, I was actually relieved.”

  “Understandable,” Will said. “I’ve just got one more question, if you don’t mind.”

  “You sure got a lot of ‘em.”

  “Like I said, I just want to know what really happened before I lay down my money for that flat.”

  “I told you what happened.”

  “Did anybody else see what you saw?” Will asked. “Seems to me I heard there were other witnesses.”

  “Yeah, there was a couple of young swells smoking gong back in there.” She nodded toward the hop joint. “They came stumblin’ out when they heard me scream, and they seen Cook standin’ over Johnny with that gun. They were hopped up pretty bad. One of ‘em had to hold onto the wall just so’s he could stand. The other one actually started gigglin’, like it was funny or somethin’. I hightailed it upstairs, but I think them two mighta just gone and laid back down and smoked some more dope, ‘cause I didn’t see ‘em after that.”

  “Did you recognize them?” Will asked.

  “I never seen ‘em here before. I think they was just a couple of young fellas from Beacon Hill or the Back Bay out for a little taste of the lowlife. A little night spree in the North End, you know?”

  “Do you know whether the constable who came questioned them?”

  “I dunno, but if he did, I reckon they woulda told him the same thing I did. Don’t listen to that stupid Denny Delaney. He just don’t want to face up to his precious Detective Cook doin’ somethin’ like that, but I seen what I seen, and I know what I know. You ask me, Cook was drillin’ Mary, and Johnny came in and caught ‘em. Johnny gets worked up, so Cook shoots him in the head and runs off with Mary.”

  “Any idea where they might have gone?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care, but if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll stay clear of here. Finn says she’s the reason his brother got killed. He says he’ll put a bullet in her brain if she ever shows her face here again.”

  Chapter 10

  Nell and Will stood in the doorway of Mother Nabby’s back room listening to Finn Cassidy, looming over her desk with his back to them, make his case for not renting out his late brother’s flat.

  “Christ Amighty, Mother, it’s only been two days since Johnny got killed,” Finn said heatedly. “It ain’t right, lettin’ somebody else move in so soon.”

  “He ain’t comin’ back, y’know,” Mother said around a mouthful of the roasted leg of lamb sitting on a platter in front of her.

  “I know he ain’t—”

  “And meantime, I got a business to run.” She washed down the lamb with a long swallow of beer, eyeing Nell and Will over the rim of the tankard. “Well?” she said as she wiped her mouth with the back of her bare arm. “D’you want the place or not?”

  “I think so, but I have a few questions,” Will said as he ushered Nell into the room with a hand on her back. He kept it there, for which she was grateful. Mother Nabby made her nervous, and it was comforting, that physical contact.

  “Johnny paid you through the end of the month,” Finn told Mother, “so you got no right to rent it out till August.”

  Mother slammed the tankard down so hard that beer sloshed out onto her desk, but if she noticed, she didn’t seem to care. “You tellin’ me what I got a right to do in my own place, Finn Cassidy?” she demanded, a forbidding glint in those hard little raisin eyes.

  He actually cringed, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “It’s just...you already been paid, so—”

  “I been paid the rent,” she said, “but I ain’t been paid the rest of what I’m due.”

  “He always gave you your cut of what Mary took in,” Finn said.

  “Not all of it, and don’t you try and deny it. Plus, he was skimmin’ part of the take from the other, always did.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I can’t prove it, but I know it. You spend enough years doin’ business with ragsters like him, you learn to tell when they’re dealin’ you dirty. Plus, half the time he was doin’ bouncer duty, he was so drunk, he the one pickin’ the fights. I needed a bouncer to bounce him.”

  “Um, Miss Nabby?”

  They turned to find Pru’s portly customer, now smartly turned out in a frock coat and silk cravat, standing in the doorway, top hat in one hand, gloves in the other.

  “Eveni
n’, Mr. Jones,” Mother said. “You were with Pru, right? That’ll be eight dollars. You can pay Riley at the bar.”

  “I, er...was wondering if you wouldn’t be so kind as to start an account for me,” he said.

  “C’mon in, then.” Wiping her greasy hands on a napkin, Mother withdrew a small, leatherbound book from a pocket of her pinafore, dipped a steel pen into her inkwell, and made a notation in the ledger. From where Nell was standing, she could read it upside down.

  July 7, 1870

  Josiah Honeycutt

  Regular w/Pru

  $8.00

  Nell recognized the name. Josiah Honeycutt sat on the Boston City Council.

  “If I could just have your signature right here, Mr. Jones.” Mother handed the pen to “Mr. Jones,” who signed the ledger and departed.

  “You let the johns pay with credit?” Will asked as Mother returned the little book to the pocket.

  “For them that deserve it, them I can trust. ‘Specially if they’re rich and well-connected, ‘cause then chances are they won’t try and wriggle out of payin’ up when the time comes. They know what I can do to them if I set my mind to it.” She pinched up some tobacco from a Black Cat tin on her desk and stuffed it into her pipe.

  “Allow me,” Will said as he leaned over to light the pipe, all smiles and gallantry.

  Mother surveyed him coolly as he did so. The front of her pinafore, over the mountain of her breasts, bore spatters of grease and beer, as well as little flecks of lamb that hadn’t made it into her mouth.

  “So the flat will serve?” she asked, expanding her gaze to encompass Nell.

  “I expect so,” Will said as he flicked out the match. “Mind you, the blood’s a bit much.”

  “I’ll have that scrubbed up,” Mother said. “When are you fixin’ on movin’ in?”

  “Not for a few days,” Will said.

  “It’ll be gone by then. You’ll never know it was there.”

  “Is it true the former tenant was murdered?” Nell asked.

  “By a cop,” Finn growled, “over the rotten little grubber he was livin’ with.”

  “Grubber?” Mother said with a smirky little smile. “C’mon, Finn, I seen the way you’d look at her when yer brother wasn’t watchin’.”

  “There ain’t a man in this place didn’t look at her that way,” Finn said, his face darkening. “Her in them little schoolgirl frocks, battin’ them big cow eyes at everything in trousers.”

  Mother said, “Funny, I don’t seem to recall her battin’ them at your particular trousers.”

  “She’s a lyin’, stinkin’ little scut,” he railed, spittle flying. “She got my brother killed ‘cause she was grindin’ some cop, fer Chrissakes, and you don’t even care.”

  “That’s enough, Finn,” Mother said in a low, ominous tone.

  “Johnny got shot in the head over that little bitch, and you just sit here like some prize sow, seein’ how much money you can squeeze outa his—”

  “Riley!” she bellowed.

  The bartender came runnin. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Our friend here ain’t thinkin’ too straight,” Mother said without wresting her malevolent gaze from Finn, “He’s sayin’ some things that make me think he ain’t right in the head. Why don’t you take him out back to the chicken house ‘fore he ends up hurt?”

  There was a subtle emphasis on that last part about ending up hurt, very subtle, but from the way the color leached from Riley’s face, it was clear that Mother’s implicit threat wasn’t lost on him. For a bruiser like Finn Cassidy to fear a woman spoke volumes about Mother Nabby’s ability to punish those who displeased her. No doubt the doomed Ellie wasn’t the first or last victim of her appetite for revenge.

  “C’mon, pal,” Riley said, and pulled Finn out of the room by his shirtsleeve. “Lay down and get some sleep, and when you wake up tomorrow, try and not be such a horse’s arse.”

  “Is it true Mary Molloy was killed over a cop?” Nell asked.

  “She was bangin’ him, I know that,” Mother said as she tore a shred of lamb off the leg with her fingers and crammed it into her mouth. “State cop, big mick that comes around here from time to time to try and keep us on the up and up. He’d sneak into the basement flat through the outside stairs when Johnny wasn’t around.”

  “You know this for a fact?” Nell asked.

  “Little birdie told me, so I had Riley bring him to me—the cop. He admitted it, said he was kinda like keepin’ her, but he didn’t want Johnny to find out ‘less he take it out on Mary, and of course he didn’t want his wife findin’ out, neither. I’ll say this for him, he knew enough to grease my palm without me needin’ to spell it out. I told him just nail Mary on the sly and make sure he didn’t get caught, ‘cause I didn’t need any trouble with Johnny. So then, don’t you know he gets sloppy and lets Johnny find him bouncin’ her in his own bed. Stupid goddamn mutton-shunter.”

  “So you think that’s the way it really happened?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know how it happened,” Mother said, taking a puff on her pipe as she ripped off another hunk of lamp. “You ask me, that’s more’n likely how it went. What’s it to you, anyway?”

  “I’m asking ‘cause I’m little worried about Moira’s safety,” he said, pulling Nell close to him. Her arm ended up crushed awkwardly between them, so she curled it around his waist, hoping it looked more natural than it felt. Absurdly, she felt the blood rise in her cheeks.

  Will said, “If shootings are a regular thing around here—”

  “They ain’t, and they better not get to be,” Mother said. “I pay four-hundred and fifty bucks a week in protection to keep things nice and quiet here.”

  “Yeah, well, things weren’t too quiet Tuesday night,” Will pointed out. “Are you sure the people you’re paying are doing their job?”

  Mother sat back heavily in her thronelike chair, chewing as she raised the pipe to her mouth. “Three-hundred of it gets divided amongst the cops at the Division Eight station house over on Commercial and Salutation. Most of the local joints pay ‘em—the ones with card games or whores, anyway—but we pay the most, ‘cause we got that plus the gong, plus the wagering on the fights. Little rat called Skinner makes the rounds all over this neighborhood every Saturday night. Strolls up and down North Street, his pockets gettin’ fatter n’ fatter. If he wasn’t a gun-totin’ bluebottle, he wouldn’t make it half a block around here with that much dough on him. The only cop that ever really hangs around here is that state cop that was screwin’ Mary. He’d come and sit down like a regular customer, drink himself some cider, walk around and talk to folks... So far he ain’t arrested nobody, so who knows—even though he answers to the state, maybe he’s pocketing part of Skinner’s take.”

  “The payoffs are so they’ll turn a blind eye to what goes on here?” Nell asked.

  “And so’s they’ll come runnin’ when I send for ‘em. If a fight breaks out, and it’s a bad one with a roomful of drunks raisin’ hell, it sometimes take more than one or two bouncers to make it stop—that, and it doesn’t hurt to let them that was in on it spend the night in lockup.”

  “What about the other hundred and fifty?” Will asked. “Who gets that?”

  “That goes to Brian O’Donagh. You know him?”

  “I know of him,” Will said. “The Sons of Eire.”

  “They help out when the problem has to do with things the cops have to pretend they don’t know about. Like they make sure them that cheat at cards or take knives to the girls never show up here again.”

  “And how do they manage that?” Will asked.

  Mother answered that with a how-do-you-think look. “Let’s just say I don’t ask. O’Donagh also makes sure his own boys leave us be. Enough jawin’. You want the flat or not?”

  “How much?” Will asked.

  “Depends. You want it for business or just to live in, or both?”

  “Both, I guess. Moira will be living there,” he said as he s
troked her side, “and she’ll also be conducting some business.”

  “It’s forty a week, plus six bucks for every ten she takes in.”

  “Six?” Nell said. “I heard the other girls only pay you half.”

  “Those girls are my girls,” Mother said. “I got an investment in them. Every john you take away from them is one my girls don’t get, and there’s just so many of them to go around. Sixty percent. Take it or leave it.”

  “Was that your agreement with Johnny and Mary? Sixty percent?” Nell noticed, in the corner of her eye, Will smiling at the way she was dickering over the cut.

  “Mary wasn’t a sporting girl,” Mother said.

  “She wasn’t...?” Nell began. “But I thought...”

  “Not in the usual way,” Mother amended. “My arrangement with Johnny was a little more complicated, but he still owed me a cut—not that I always got what was due me. Johnny held out.” Turning to Will with a frosty glint in her eye, Mother said, “Don’t hold out.”

  Mother sent Will out to the bar to pay the first month’s rent to Riley, who handled her cash transactions, but she asked Nell to stay behind for a minute so that they could “get to know each other.”

  As soon as Will was out of earshot, Mother said, “Why are you here?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I mean what the hell is a pretty little jay like you doin’ in a rumhole like this, when you could be hawkin’ your mutton in some highfalutin flash house over on Cambridge Street?”

  “Um...”

  “Look at you,” Mother said, gesturing with a colossal pudding arm. “You got class. You can’t hide class, no matter how much tit you show. And there’s somethin’ in your eyes, an innocence, a sweetness. You blush real good. Johns’ll pay top dollar for them blushes. Maidenheads is big business in your line of work.”

  “I haven’t had one of those since I was sixteen,” Nell said truthfully; not since her wedding night with Duncan.