Hell's Gate

by Richard E. Crabbe

  They’d spent some time that morning trying to track Ginny, managing to find the bank branch she used, simply by canvassing the ones closest to Miss Gertie’s. Unfortunately, the only address on file was for the brothel. They got a promise from the manager to call if he saw her. Mike figured that couldn’t be long. With no source of income, she’d need money soon. It was a small step, but a hopeful one. As the day wore on he wondered where she was, how she was and whether she was thinking of him. The words from her diary entries repeated in his head.

  It was getting late, somewhere near midnight when Mike and Primo rendezvoused at the corner of Suffolk and Rivington to compare notes.

  “I’m seeing double,” Mike said, rubbing his eyes. “What about you?”

  “Triple,” Primo said groggily. “I fell asleep on a stoop up the block. The Pope could have gone to play stuss and I wouldn’t have seen him.”

  Mike looked at his watch. “Eighteen-hour day. Roll call at six A.M.”

  “Do not remind me,” Primo replied.

  “What’d that driver say?” Mike asked as he tucked his watch back into a pocket. Primo had come down the block to meet Mike and had engaged the driver of the parked carriage in a brief conversation.

  “Not much. Said his boss likes to gamble.”

  “That’s a surprise,” Mike grumbled. “He didn’t say who his boss is, did he?”

  “I did not ask. I thought it might be too nosey for just then.”

  “Nosey,” Mike said. “You’re supposed to be fuckin’ nosey. You’re a cop.”

  “Exactly,” Primo replied with his hands in the air. “But I don’ want him to know that!”

  Mike shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck it, we’re both so tired neither of us is thinking straight. Sorry.”

  “Maybe I should ask that question, but I did not say I no have the answer.”

  “Huh,” Mike said, unsure of what Primo had said.

  “We talked about the carriage; a fine one. Good horses. The driver, he said his boss works for the Knickerbocker Steamship Company.”

  “Never heard of ’em,” Mike said, sounding confused. “But did you just say you got his name, the boss I mean?”

  “Sure I got his name.”

  “But you just said you didn’t ask. What the hell were we just talking about?”

  “I no ask,” Primo said with a little grin. “That does not mean he didn’t tell me.”

  Mike gave Primo a shove. “You dumb wop. It’s too late to be playin’ games. You got the guy’s name?”

  “Sure, but it is a strange name. Saturn, like the planet.”

  “Saturn. You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  Mike looked back at the Bottler’s doorway. “I’m tired of waiting. I’m going to go play a little stuss before the night’s over, get a look at the Bottler in the flesh, and see if this steamship guy is cozy with him. Awful coincidence a boat captain or whatever he is being here.”

  “A coincidence, yes, but I go gamble, not you.” Primo said. When Mike started to object, he said, “I am easy mark. I do not speak so good English. They think they can take my money easy, not suspect I’m a cop, eh?” Primo said. Mike considered this for a minute and had to agree, though he hated to admit it. Primo was through the Bottler’s door a few minutes afterwards.

  * * *

  An hour later Primo emerged and met Mike in a darkened basement doorway down the street. “He is a big man around the waist,” Primo said when Mike asked for a description of the Bottler. “But he has the big shoulders and hands, like a stevedore. Nice satin vest in yellow, very good material. A big mustache and red cheeks like Saint Nick.”

  “A right jolly old elf, huh?”

  “Not exactly. He has the eyes of the hunter. Very hard eyes, but he tries to hide them with a smile.”

  “And that guy Saturn? “

  “He was winning when I left, but I think he was still down for the night. He sweats a lot.”

  “Knickerbocker Steamship Company,” Mike mused a few minutes later after they’d decided to quit for the night and were heading back to headquarters. “It’s definitely a connection to the waterfront but…”

  “They run those cruises or something?”

  “Yeah. I think they do those trips out to the North Shore of Long Island, the picnic grounds out there and such. Can’t see what an operation like that might have to do with the Hookers or the Bottler.”

  “Who knows, they…” They heard shouting two blocks behind them. Mike and Primo both turned to look, but neither could see the cause. Saturn’s carriage passed as it made the turn off Suffolk onto Stanton and disappeared from sight. It was moving fast.

  Mike looked at Primo. “What the hell was that?”

  Primo threw up his hands. Neither really wanted to go back and find out, but the shouting continued. Then they saw someone in the middle of the street.

  “Ah, shit,” Mike said. “Let’s go.”

  The shouting got louder as they walked back and they clearly heard the name Bottler. They sped up then, their weariness draining away.

  “C’mon out, ya bastard! Youse owe me, Bottler. Hear me in there? C’mon out so’s I can pop yer fat ass!”

  The man doing the shouting was still in the street and now that they were near they could see he was waving a pistol.

  “Bottler, goddamn it come outa there and get what’s comin’ ta ya! Twist says ya pays me an’ youse betta fuckin’ pay!”

  The man paced under a streetlight and for a moment turned in their direction.

  “Shit! That’s Kid Dahl,” Mike said, reaching for his Colt.

  “He’s an Eastman, right? So, he’s with Kid Twist.”

  “Yeah. I’ve pinched ’im twice the last couple years. Dangerous little bastard.”

  “Youse got ten seconds, Bottler! I’m comin’ in!” Dahl shouted from the curb, hopping like a spoiled child. Mike and Primo were on him before he knew they were there. “Wha da fuck?” he managed before the butt of Mike’s Colt cracked his skull. Primo kicked Dahl’s gun away when he fell and they had him in cuffs a second later, cursing and kicking, his head bleeding a little river into his collar.

  As if this were a perfectly reasonable excuse for waving a pistol in the street, Dahl said, “Twist gave me a piece. That fucker thinks he can hold out on me. Braddock:, that you? Shit, you busted my head for the last time, damn, it. When I get out youse betta watch yer back.”

  “Tough talk for a mug rolling in horseshit,” Mike said. He put a foot on Dahl’s chest and pushed him backwards onto the street. “So how’s it Kid Twist’s got claim to the Bottler’s game? That don’t figure.”

  “How da fuck should I know?” Dahl groaned into the cobbles as he tried to roll over. “Twist don’ need Kelly’s permission. He takes what ’e fuckin’ wants.”

  Mike and Primo yanked Dahl to his feet, trying not to get blood and shit on themselves.

  “Twist makin’ a move on Kelly’s territory?” Mike said, holding the Kid’s arms up painfully high behind his back. Dahl didn’t answer. Perhaps he’d finally realized that he’d said too much already.

  “Screw this,” Mike said after trying a few more questions with no success. “Let’s get him over to the Thirteenth.” The Thirteenth precinct station house was just a few blocks away at the corner of Delancey and Clinton.

  He and Primo had just started Dahl on his way when a patrolman came around the corner. After a brief conference, they gave Kid Dahl into his custody.

  “Disturbing the peace, public drunkenness, and whatever else pops into your head, patrolman,” Mike told him. “I’ll be by in the morning. I want to talk to him, got it?”

  The cop marched Dahl off to jail and Mike looked around. “Not gonna be so easy to carry out surveillance now, damn it.”

  “Not now,” Primo agreed.

  “Maybe shoulda thought o’ that before, but what the hell. We know somethin’ we didn’t know before. May as well take a look,” he said. The
Colt came out again. Primo followed.

  They entered through a heavy wood door, at least three inches thick, with steel straps and a tiny window with a steel cover. A second, interior door had been left open in an apparent hurry to leave. It opened on a parlor. The gaming room was behind that. There was no sign of the Bottler or anyone else in the back room of the tenement basement. A large, green felt-topped table stood at one end of the room. A number of chairs sat empty as did the bar. Cigars burned in ashtrays and seat cushions still bore the imprint of gamblers’ hindquarters, but there was not so much as a deck of cards left to prove that this was much more than a social club.

  “Fuck this,” Mike said after a quick search and a look out the back door. “Start fresh tomorrow?”

  Primo gave an audible sigh. “I am not so fresh now,” he said. “Maybe some rest is a good thing.” He nodded back toward the Bottler’s card table. “Leave it alone?”

  “Yeah. Besides, I wouldn’t bust the place up without clearing it with the Thirteenth first.”

  Primo grinned. “See? You are not so stupid. I do not care what they are saying.”

  “Go fuck yourself, partner,” Mike grumbled. He was too tired to kibitz.

  21

  GINNY HADN’T SLEPT well. She forced herself out of her bed, its springs squealing, and blinked like an owl at the thin light through her transom window. She forced herself to get moving quickly though, washing up and doing the best she could with her hair in what for her was record time; though still close to an hour. At the house she’d had hours to get ready for the evening’s customers, often taking long baths with one of the other girls to save hot water. Miss Gertie had insisted on cleanliness, a tradition held over from the great madam Mary, whom Ginny had only heard about in legend. The girls had all enjoyed that indulgence. They’d do hair and makeup for one another, often experimenting with exotic looks. At times they’d dress up, picking clothes from Miss Gertie’s extensive collection. There were always those customers who liked a girl dressed as a nun, a teacher, a schoolgirl, or a maid.

  Ginny thought of Mike as she put her hair up. He’d never asked her to try on any of the costumes. He’d liked her the way she was. She’d given him that, whether he’d realized it or not, given him her true self. Ginny smiled wickedly as she recalled his one weakness, a fondness for white corsets, with matching garters and black stockings. She’d taken them when she left Gertie’s. It was tempting to put them on and imagine he was there. Her hand stole down her belly and she closed her eyes, imagining it was Mike’s.

  But the image of Johnny Suds came flashing behind her eyes. Ginny took a deep breath and did her best to banish Suds to some particularly hellish corner of her brain. The urge to write in her diary about her experience brought the sudden realization that she’d left it behind at Gertie’s.

  The loss hurt for only a moment, when she remembered that this was a new life she was embarked on and that it was only right to put aside the things of the past. Mike was the only thing worth saving from those days, but even that reunion would have to wait a little longer. Ginny had a full day before her, so with a final check in her flaking mirror she set out to find a job.

  She had been a competent seamstress by her mother’s standards and like most girls had learned to sew as soon as she could handle a needle and thread. When she’d left home she’d taken her sewing kit with her—a small pair of scissors, two thimbles, and a few needles of various sizes folded into a leather case with a corduroy lining and a brass catch. Ginny tucked it into her handbag before closing the door behind her.

  Her breakfast was a roll she’d saved from dinner. It was a little hard now, but still soft in the center. She nibbled at it as she walked west and north, not knowing where she was headed precisely, only that she didn’t care to work on the East Side in what she’d heard were the most horrible sweatshops—cramped, dark, and smelling of unwashed bodies. She was determined to find work in one of the new, tall loft buildings she’d heard about, where they had windows and air and elevators, a modern place where a girl could feel like a human being. She knew such places existed, but wasn’t sure exactly where, only that somewhere around Washington Square there were a few.

  Ginny kept her eyes open, searching for HELP WANTED signs. Walking west on Washington Place, heading toward the leafy cool of Washington Square Park, Ginny was lost in thought when a girl, no more than a teenager, burst from a doorway and ran into her. Ginny had a brief impression of red eyes, cheeks damp with tears, of a hurried apology, and heels clicking on the flagstones as she ran off. Ginny stood as if woken from a dream, watching the girl disappear around the corner of Greene Street. Looking back at the doorway, Ginny could see no cause for such an hysterical exit. It was an ordinary New York doorway although to a hulking, modern loft building that bellied up to the sidewalk, climbing skyward with stony indifference. Ginny felt curiously drawn to the place, the mystery of the crying girl like a magnet, pulling her hand to the brass latch, and guiding her into the lobby.

  She looked about, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, a pair of men waiting at the doors to two narrow elevators and a sign for something called the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. What caught her attention were the words above the elevators: IF YOU DON’T COME IN ON SUNDAY, YOU NEEDN’T COME IN ON MONDAY. Ginny thought it a perfectly sensible sign, if a bit sinister. She hadn’t experienced a Sunday with no work for her entire adult life. Even at home, there had always been chores after church. It was a day like any other to her and so long as she was paid for it, a day not wasted.

  The elevators hissed and groaned until the doors of one opened, disgorging a dapper salesman with a bulging valise, two yarmulked tradesmen in black vests and white shirts, their sleeves rolled up on hairy arms, and a boy pushing a handcart stacked with boxes towering so high over his head that he had to peer around as he wheeled it out. Ginny stepped to one side to let the boy pass and was bumped from behind by a distracted-looking tradesman rushing for the elevator. They did a shuffling dance of mumbled apologies, which somehow carried Ginny into the elevator where a second later the door was yanked closed and the brass gate clattered shut.

  “Floor,” the operator said without looking at any of his passengers. He threw over a lever at his right hand and they began to rise. The man who’d bumped her mumbled, “Nine,” to the operator and Ginny decided in that instant that that’s where she’d go. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was listed as occupying three floors; eight, nine, and ten on the elevator directory, so nine seemed as good as any.

  Ginny counted the floors as they slid by the gate, trying to remember if she’d ever been so high and deciding by the fourth that she hadn’t.

  “Nine,” the operator intoned as the car bounced to a stop. The tradesman pushed out first and disappeared through a door to what appeared to be an office, leaving her standing beside an open barrel of machine oil, the hard, maple floor around it black with drippings.

  Like a mechanical hive, the place hummed to the beat of hundreds of machines. Rows of them receeded into the unnatural gloom of the factory floor, clattering and whirring in staccato bursts. The whole place vibrated; the floor beneath her feet and the oil in the barrel. A curtain of lint danced in the air to their incessant beat. Women were hunched over them, heads held low, feet pumping pedals, hands feeding fabric under blurring needles. Walls of windows let in light and air, but the billows of lint were not to be overcome. The machines farthest from the windows were in perpetual gloom. Gas jets burned halos in the clouds and Ginny could feel their heat even though the nearest was several feet away.

  “C’mon,” a man’s voice said beside her, startling her. He turned and walked to an empty machine near the end of a row. A pile of material sat stacked next to it.

  “I am seeking employment,” Ginny said to his back as she followed. The man turned and looked at her as if she might be insane. Ginny smiled, trying to appear firm yet affable, professional and pretty all at once. She wasn’t sure if she pulled it off.


  “Yeah,” the man said.

  “You have work, I take it,” Ginny said. She was doing her best to sound like a woman of some education might, a woman of experience and worth. The man looked her over and turned back to the pile of fabric with a slight shake of his head. “We got woik, an’ ya don’ gotta put on airs ta get it. Youse wanna woik; ya shows me what ya can do,” he said over his shoulder. “Sew dese up,” he told her, separating some fabric and tossing it on the chair in front of the empty machine. “Lemme see what ya can do, den we’ll talk about it.”

  Ginny got herself settled in. She got the feel of the machine, working the pedal to get some sense of its speed, the way the thread fed from the bobbin and checking if the needle was true. The man watched her for a moment, then stalked off down the row of machines, hands behind his back, bending now and again to examine a shirtwaist with a critical eye. Ginny set to work, trying her best to sew like the others, head down, feet and hands moving with practiced economy. She felt slow and awkward and was sure the women around her noticed, their sideway glances giving them away. Toward the bottom of her little pile though, she started to develop a rhythm and for a few rows of stitches felt she actually deserved to be there.

  The shop foreman returned before she was done and hovered for a minute or so, watching silently. He picked through the shirtwaists she had finished, pulling at the seams and turning them inside-out to examine the work. “Six a week. Not a penny maw,” he said before she’d finished the last piece. “Dis heya’s yaw machine. Youse get heya at seven, woik ta seven.” He looked at his watch. “Half a day’s gone awready. Fawty cents fer t’day.”

  Ginny said nothing. Six a week was what she’d hoped to make even though it was laughably less than she’d been accustomed to at Miss Gertie’s, where she’d easily make double that in an evening.