Murder in the North End

by P. B. Ryan

  “Fakin’ it is easier than you think. I can give you a few pointers, and I’ll tell you, men believe what they want to believe. You could easily pass for cherry—time and again.”

  It occurred to Nell that Mother Nabby was, for whatever reason, trying very hard to talk Nell into this. Plumbing her mind for a reason to put her off, Nell said, “If I work at a regular brothel, I’ll have to pay the proprietress, and—”

  “You’ll be payin’ me if you work out of here,” Mother said. “And him, too.” She glanced at the door through which Will had departed. “He’s mackin’ for you, ain’t he? What’ll be left for you? Ten percent? Twenty? At a first class bumshop, you’ll be chargin’ more and keepin’ more.”

  “Um, I’ll... I guess I’ll think about it. But, um, in the meantime—”

  “You let me know, and I’ll find you a place. I know a few madams that run very discreet houses, very high-tone and discriminating. Only the best johns. Clean, rich. They tip pretty heavy, some of ‘em.”

  “Pardon me for asking,” Nell said, “but what’s in it for you?”

  “They’ll pay me for findin’ you, and believe me, it’ll be a lot more than what I’ll make off my cut of your takings here. Mind you, you won’t owe me one red cent. It’ll all come out of their pocket.”

  “I’ll, um, take it under advisement,” Nell said.

  “You do that. Meanwhile...” Mother shifted in her chair, looking off toward the bar. “You want to go out there and fetch me Flora, or one of them other girls? I need the jakes, and I got trouble walkin’ on account of my gout.”

  “Oh. Um...I can take you out back,” Nell offered.

  “Out back?” Mother snorted in derision. “Honey, I don’t pee in no damn outhouse. I got my own personal W.C. right over there.” She nodded toward a door in the back of the room. “Hand me those, would you?” She pointed to a pair of canes leaning against the wall.

  Nell brought them to her and supported her while she heaved herself with a groan of effort out of the chair, one hand gripping the head of each wobbly cane. Mother’s skin felt unctuously soft, and moist where it was bare. She smelled, through the haze of tobacco and lamb grease, like something old and stale and sick. Standing, she looked even more massive, a good five-hundred pounds if she was an ounce.

  Walking was an arduous ordeal for Mother Nabby. For each footstep, she had to plant the cane, shuffle a foot, and regain her precarious balance. Nell drew upon her years of nursing to assist Mother without displaying any hint of impatience or distaste.

  “I was right about you,” Mother grunted as she huffed and puffed her way across the floor. “You’re just naturally sweet, ain’t you? I’m tellin’ you, you can get top dollar for that. Top dollar.”

  Chapter 11

  By the time Nell finished escorting Mother Nabby to and from the W.C. and made it out front to the bar, Will was deep in conversation with Pru at a dark little corner table. A waiter girl set two fresh drinks in front of them and removed two empty glasses. As soon as she turned away, Will switched the two glasses, exchanging his drink for Pru’s, which presumably contained no alcohol. They shared a conspiratorial smile that made the hairs on Nell’s nape prickle, and then Pru, sitting with her back mostly turned toward Nell, lifted her glass and gulped down a good portion of it.

  She said something to Will, to which he replied—his lips were easy enough to read—”You’re welcome.” Leaning over the little table, Pru trailed a hand along the lapel of his sack coat while saying something that made Will smile. She might have been sweet on Finn, as Denny Delaney claimed, but it would appear that didn’t prevent her from testing the waters elsewhere.

  As he sat back to lift his drink, Will caught sight of Nell and tilted his head in a discreet beckoning gesture. The raucous conversation in the bar, on top of the din from the music hall—the can-can dancers were still stomping and kicking—made it impossible to hear anything of Will and Pru’s conversation until she was almost upon them.

  “...wondering why you didn’t tell anybody about seeing Detective Cook leaving Mary’s flat that night,” Will was saying.

  “I just figgered it’d be smarter to tell Mary what I knew, and see what it was worth to her for me to keep my mouth shut.” Pru’s speech was a little woolly around the edges. The booze was relaxing her, as Will had no doubt hoped it would.

  “That was smart,” Will said.

  “Ten bucks a week, and she didn’t even try to bargain me down. She was scared Johnny would find out. He had a temper, just like his brother. My pa was like that, and my uncles. Comes with the territory, I reckon. You want a real man, not some namby-pamby, you gotta be ready to take the bad with the good. Course, I only got the one payment from her ‘fore she up and left, but at least I’m ten dollars richer than I woulda been.”

  “Tom—here you are,” Nell said as she joined them. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Moira.” Will rose and pulled out a chair for her. Pru slid her a look that dripped poison as she pulled a booklet of rolling papers and a little tobacco pouch from the chatelaine on her belt.

  “Have one of mine,” Will said, opening his tin of Turkish Orientals and offering it to her.

  “Oh, Tommy, you’re a reg’lar gentleman, ain’t you?” Pru said as she took a cigarette.

  Tommy? Nell darted an oh-brother look toward Will, who appeared to be biting his lip.

  “I ain’t never smoked an already-rolled cigarette,” Pru said as Will lit it for her.

  “They may be a little stale,” Will said. “I don’t smoke very much anymore.”

  “Tastes like heaven to me, but then I reckon I’m easy,” the whore purred, her gaze locked on Will’s.

  “So, do you think Detective Cook and Mary were in love?” Will asked Pru.

  She shook her head as she drew on the cigarette. “If he was, he wouldn’t of shared her. Men ain’t generous like that with women they’re serious about. They like to keep ‘em all to themselves. Me, I figger if a fellas’s got an appetite, there should be more’n enough to go ‘round.”

  “I shouldn’t think Cook had too much choice about sharing Mary,” Will said, “considering what she did for a living.” He was getting tired, it seemed to Nell; his natural British inflection was starting to creep back into his voice. Or perhaps he just reasoned that Pru was too tipsy at this point to notice or care.

  “I’m not talkin’ about her johns,” Pru said. “I’m talkin’ about this fella Cook brung around a few days ago, Monday, I think. Yeah, Monday night—pretty early, ‘round eight or nine, ‘cause it was just gettin’ dark. Some pal of his, a timber-toe.”

  “Timber-toe?” Nell said.

  “He had a wooden leg. I think he mighta had a glass eye, too. Pretty normal looking other than that, real nice clothes, but gammy nonetheless.”

  Will met Nell’s gaze. Ebenezer Shute.

  “Are you saying Cook brought him here to...share Mary with him?” Nell asked.

  “That was my take on it. The two of them was sitting up front near the bar, drinkin’. Well, Timber-toe was drinkin’—pretty heavy, too. Not Cook. I ain’t never seen him lift a glass here. Mary was sittin’ in her corner with her milk. She didn’t so much as look in their direction, prob’ly ‘cause Johnny was prowlin’ ‘round, and she didn’t want him to see her and Cook bein’ too friendly. They was lookin’ at her, though—Cook and the crip—and talkin’ ‘bout her.”

  “How could you be sure of that?” Nell asked.

  “I passed by their table a couple times. I heard Cook sayin’, ‘Her name’s Mary Molloy,’ and that she was older than she looked, and ‘a real good sort.’ Later, when I passed by again, the crip’s sayin’ how beautiful she is, and how he’s got to have her—which just goes to show you that crips’ll settle for anything, ‘cause she’s got the puniest little diddies I ever seen on a grown woman.”

  “Did he take her downstairs?” Will asked.

  “Not right then. Cook asked Riley, the bartender, where�
�s the cleanest place to get oysters nearby, and they left. Then, a couple hours later, Timber-toe comes back alone, walks right up to Mary’s table—none too steady, I could tell he was fuddled—and sets himself down. Ten minutes later, she’s sashayin’ down to the basement with him stumblin’ along behind her on that wooden leg.”

  “Did Johnny follow them downstairs?” Nell asked.

  “Sure, he always did. ‘Bout twenty minutes later, him and the crip are back up here, with Johnny kinda shovin’ the crip toward the front door, and the crip shovin’ back and yellin’ ‘bout how he wasn’t gonna take it, how he knew what was Johnny was up to, that kinda thing. He got even more worked up when Johnny got Finn to help muscle him out of the building. He’s yellin’, ‘You’ll be sorry, I’ll make you sorry, just see if I don’t.’ That kind of thing. He fell down when Johnny pushed him out onto the sidewalk, on account of the wooden leg—and him bein’ so soused, I guess. There was a big crowd out there, and they all laughed and kind of, you know, made fun of him.”

  Nell looked toward Will, who was sitting in a pensive posture, arms folded, one hand covering his mouth. He met Nell’s gaze and raised his eyebrows.

  Pru chuckled at the memory. “He’s screamin’, ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard, you’re a dead man,’ with Johnny and Finn grinnin’ and walkin’ away, brushin’ off their hands.”

  “Did you tell Constable Skinner about this incident?” Will asked.

  “Nah,” Pru said. “I tried to, but he kept goin’ back to Cook, so I just figgered he didn’t want to hear it.”

  Because, of course, he’d already homed in on Colin Cook as the man he intended to arrest for Johnny Cassidy’s murder.

  “May I ask you something, Pru?” Nell said.

  Pru blew a stream of gin-scented smoke in Nell’s face and formed her bloodred lips into a smile.

  “We found a hole in a wall of the flat,” Nell said, “the one between that room and the coal cellar.”

  “This is a rundown old building.” Pru finished the rest of her drink in one breathless swallow, whereupon Will signaled for another round. “It’s fallin’ apart little by little, ‘specially the basement. If you want a nice, fancy place with flowered wallpaper and Oriental carpets, you’re gonna end up payin’ a hell of a lot more than Mother’ll charge you.”

  “It’s not that kind of hole,” Nell said. “Somebody made it deliberately, so they could spy on the flat from the coal cellar.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Pru said with a snorty little chuckle. “A spy hole. Some joints have ‘em—you know, the kind of grinding shops where a fella can get anything he wants, long as he’s got the green to pay for it? There’s some johns like to watch other johns while they’re peggin’ the girls. Some of ‘em, that’s all they want to do, is just watch.” She spat a fleck of tobacco onto the floor. “Their money.”

  No sooner were the fresh drinks delivered, and duly switched by Will, than Pru set about draining hers. “That hits the spot, Tommy,” she sighed as she slumped back in her chair. “You’re a real sport.”

  “So you didn’t know anything about the hole downstairs?” Nell asked.

  “Not till now. If I had to guess, I’d say Johnny was caterin’ to them that likes to watch. He had more ways to make a dime than anybody I ever met—‘cept maybe Mother. Course, after Mother locked the door to the coal cellar, he woulda had to get the key from her every time he wanted to...” Pru had been raising the cigarette to her mouth, but now she lowered it slowly. “That’s why Mother put the lock on that door.”

  Nell and Will exchanged a look of bafflement. “Why?” Will asked.

  “‘Cause of Denny.” Pru sat forward on her elbows, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. “See, about a year ago, Denny got caught spyin’ on Mary.”

  “Wait,” Nell said. “Spying?”

  “Watchin’ her, you know, in her room in the basement. Prob’ly tryin’ to catch her out of that little schoolgirl frock. He’s been moonin’ over her ever since his voice started crackin’. I didn’t think about it much. I guess I thought he was peekin’ in the window, or the door was half open or somethin’. But now I’m thinkin’ he was lookin’ at her through that spy hole you’re talkin’ about. On account of the coal cellar wasn’t locked then. Anyway, they figgered it wasn’t the first time he done it.”

  Will said, “‘They,’ being...”

  Pru shrugged as she sucked on the cigarette. “Johnny, Mother, Riley... What I heard was Denny was peekin’ in on Mary when Johnny came in and started workin’ her over a little. So Denny barges into the room like the knight on the white horse. Little boneyard somehow manages to pull Johnny off her. Didn’t hurt that Johnny was drunk as an owl. Mary runs off, Denny runs off, and Johnny passes out, on account of he’s lushy. Anyway, the next day, Mother figgered Denny needed to be taught a lesson, so she sicced Finn on him.”

  “‘Sicced?’“ Nell wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of this.

  “Denny’s scared to death of Finn. Everybody is.”

  Nell said, “Yes, but Johnny was the... Well, if there was a victim in all this, it would have been Mary, but Johnny would be the natural choice to take revenge, wouldn’t he?”

  Pru said, “Yeah, but Finn is Johnny’s brother, and a he’s lot bigger than Johnny, to boot. He’s a lot bigger than anybody, and once, a couple years ago...” Pru looked back and forth between Nell and Will, smiling as if she were about to impart a delicious bit of news. “He killed a man in the ring.”

  “During a boxing match?” Will said. “Killed him?”

  “Dead. Seven hammer-punches to the head, one after th’other, first round,” Pru said proudly. “And he’s come close a few other times, on account of he keeps whalin’ even after they’re down, that’s how excited he gets. One fella, Johnny kicked him in the head, and after he came to, he went simple, has been ever since. They had to put him in the loony house. So anyways, Denny gets the shakes every time Finn comes near. Little priss.”

  The air left Nell’s lungs. She heard it leave Will’s.

  “I was there when Finn cornered Denny,” Pru said as she flicked her ash on the floor. “Little mollycoddle wet his pants. You could see it, this dark stain spreadin’ down the front of his trousers. I just about laughed myself sick.”

  Nell glanced at Will. His jaw was thrust forward the way it got when he was holding himself back. His face looked as if it were carved of stone.

  “Anyways,” Pru said as she lifted her glass of gin, “Finn punched him in the stomach and the nose, and once he was on the ground, he stomped on his hand just for good measure. Went easy on him, if you ask me. Mother told him if she ever caught him spyin’ on Mary again, or any of the other girls, she’d send him to Deer Island. And she put that padlock on the door to the coal cellar, just to keep him honest.”

  Pru dropped her cigarette butt on the floor and crushed it under her shoe.

  “Do you suppose Denny made the hole or found it there?” Will asked Nell. “He told us it was there when he came to Nabby’s, but he might have just been saying that.”

  “What I’m wondering,” said Nell, “is why Mother padlocked the door, but didn’t have the hole filled in. Regardless of whether Denny made it or just stumbled on it, there was evidently some reason to keep it there, behind lock and key.”

  “Some reason that didn’t have anything to do with Denny,” Will said. “Someone wanted that hole for his own use.”

  “Johnny,” Pru said, as if it were obvious. “So he could charge fellas to peek at Mary with those la-di-dah johns of hers.”

  “Or so he could peek at her himself,” Nell said.

  “What kind of a man was Johnny?” Will asked Pru.

  “Lousy boxer,” she said as she tilted her glass to her mouth. “He never did get on the bill as often as Finn, on account of he just didn’t draw enough of a crowd. Finn’s the one they all come out to see. He boxes two nights a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays. They set up the ring on the dance floor. It’s ju
st a four-dollar purse, but there’s hundreds wagered in bets, thousands sometimes, if enough nobs show up.”

  “And they were both bouncers, too?” he asked.

  “They were Mother’s only bouncers,” Pru said, her eyes bleary, her voice growing slurred. “Finn only bounces on his nights off from boxing, so on Tuesdays and Saturdays, it was Johnny’s job. He bounces for the rent on the chicken house and boxes for his spendin’ money. Johnny jus’ bounced for a little bit of extra cash whenever he wasn’t runnin’ other stuff on the side for Mother.”

  “Such as...?” Will asked.

  “Well, I know he looked after the wagering.”

  “On cards, you mean?” Nell asked. “The back room?”

  “And the fights, which is more complicated, ‘cause they’re fixed, half of ‘em.” She winced. “Which I’m not s’posed to talk about, so please don’t let Mother know I said anything.”

  “You have my word,” Will said.

  “There’s also the hop joint downstairs,” Pru said. “Johnny bought the gong and made sure the dope fiends had what they needed, the pipes and all the rest of it, and that the cops were paid to look the other way. And he did other stuff that didn’t have anything to do with this place. Mother’s got business all over this part of town.”

  “What kind of business?” Will asked.

  “I couldn’t say.” Holding a finger to her lips, her head slightly wobbly, she said, “It’s real hush-hush. I know she’s got a stable of plug-uglies that do her bidding, but nobody really knows what they do. Johnny was her go-between with them. He’d do whatever Mother needed doin’, is the gist of it. I heard he made a good penny at it.”

  “Then, of course, there was whatever Mary took in,” Nell said. “You said he kept it all for himself?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, whatever her johns paid...and maybe the occasional fella that liked to watch, huh?” Pru said with a drunken chuckle.

  “If Johnny was earning so much money,” Nell asked, “why was he living downstairs in that...hole?”