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Near Prospect Park

Page 11

by Lawrence H. Levy


  “Rogue, like Susie Johnson?”

  Mary had just upped the stakes. He was even more uncomfortable. “Is it possible? Anything is possible. I did hear and observe that she was a very ambitious young lady.”

  “Fifteen. She was fifteen.”

  “Yes, and her girlhood was taken from her. A shame, a tragedy. There really is no excuse. That’s why I am warning you.”

  “Well, I’m not fifteen, and I’m not taken in by lecherous older men.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Now, can we move on to a more pleasant topic, like your beautiful eyes?”

  “Have you been taking lessons from Stanford?”

  “Mary, I…it was genuine.”

  She laughed. “I was joking. A bit of advice: if you want to flirt with me, appeal to my intellect.”

  “How can I? It’s abundantly obvious you’re far brighter than I am.”

  “Ah, I see you’re a fast learner.”

  The two of them laughed. There was definitely something charming about this man, and they seemed to have a connection. But again, it was too soon.

  The rest of the ride they talked about many things and seemed to have a lot in common, including a passion for women’s rights. Mary told him about her search for Harvey Iglehart. He said he would ask around about him.

  “Please give me your phone number, and I will call you if I discover anything.”

  “Are you honestly trying to help or is this just an excuse to get my phone number?”

  “Both, with a definite emphasis on the latter.”

  Mary smiled and gave him her business card with the phone number of Lazlo’s Books. He may have been charming, but her business came first, and this business was too important for any distractions.

  When they arrived at Lillian Russell’s house on Seventy-Seventh Street, he opened the carriage door, got out, and offered his hand to help her down. Mary wasn’t much for this type of gentlemanly behavior, but he did it in such a self-deprecating manner that it was fine with her. Fuller rode off in his carriage and she looked after it for a while. Feeling guilty, she opened her pocketbook, took out her picture of Harper, and looked at it. It reminded her that she wasn’t ready for a new relationship. The pain was still there. Then she turned and found herself staring at Lillian Russell’s front door.

  The butler answered Mary’s knock, but Russell was soon behind him waving for Mary to enter. “Mary dear, Jim called and told me you were going to stop by. How nice of you to pay me a visit!”

  “Thank you for welcoming me, but my visit isn’t purely social.”

  “I’m not surprised. You strike me as a person who makes very few social visits.”

  This stopped Mary. “I do?”

  “Indeed you do, dear.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s not a fault. It’s to your credit. When we women assume a job that’s viewed as man’s work, we have to be twice as bright and three times as dedicated. And sometimes that results in—”

  “Sounding very serious and businesslike all the time. I hadn’t noticed that.”

  “Well, only a party girl like me would. Besides, it’s your business, and you’re doing quite well. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “But your original instinct was correct in spite of how I sound. This is a social visit and not about business, at least not my business.”

  “Only more proof as to why we women should be running the world. We’re far more perceptive than men.”

  “Hopefully, the world will catch up someday.”

  “Until then, let the boys think they’re in charge, something they will never be when it comes to women like you and me.”

  For the first time, Mary started to look around Russell’s home. It was very expensively furnished but not in the best taste and overly done. A good portion of it looked like a shrine to her, with framed photos and playbills from her productions, and photos of Russell herself.

  “Don’t worry, dear. I’m going to fill that space.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The empty space at which you’re staring. I’ve been shopping for paintings and expect to purchase one soon.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort. I was just admiring your beautiful home.”

  “Thank you. I do try to make it cozy. Now, what is this favor that has brought you here?”

  “I’m sorry to impose on you, Lillian—”

  “No, you’re not, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “True.” As Mary pulled Walter’s play out of her pocketbook she said, “You see, I have a play I would very much like you to read. It’s a musical comedy.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve written a play, Mary. My God, everyone seems to be doing that.”

  “It’s not mine and I have no ambition in that direction. But I must say you’re making this much more difficult than I expected.”

  “It should be, unless you think the theater is easy.”

  “Of course I don’t, Lillian. I—”

  “Please don’t get flustered. I’m just having fun with you. You see, life for me is on the stage. When I’m off it, well, life doesn’t work out as well. So I fill it with satisfying my desires and having fun. That’s why Jim and I are such good friends.”

  “Well then, I’ll just forge ahead. This is a play by Walter Cooper, a very close friend of mine. I wasn’t sure if it was worthy of you, so I read it, and it’s quite good.” She handed Lillian the play.

  Lillian held the play in both hands as if they were a scale weighing it. “Well, certainly feels like a winner.” She smiled at Mary then looked upstairs and yelled, “Junior. Junior, please come downstairs. Mother needs you.”

  In a matter of seconds a cute twelve-year-old girl came bouncing down the stairs. She was Russell’s daughter by her former husband, composer Edward Solomon. The word “husband” was up to interpretation since Lillian had discovered after their daughter was born that Solomon was still married to his first wife. Solomon was arrested for bigamy, and Russell obtained a divorce. Russell had named her daughter after herself, Lillian Russell Solomon, and enjoyed calling her Junior. She had once told Diamond Jim, “If men can do it, women can certainly do it better.” It was foggy as to what that meant with respect to naming a child, but Russell’s intent was clear.

  “Junior, I’d like you to meet one of Mother’s friends. This is Mary Handley.”

  Junior curtsied. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Handley.” Her behavior was too perfect to be casual. She was well rehearsed.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, too, Junior.”

  Lillian handed Walter’s play to her daughter. “I want you to read this play as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, Mama.” She immediately started leafing through the pages.

  Mary was taken aback. “Junior is your reader?”

  “Only for the important plays, the ones that come with an offer. I read the ones she likes. Junior’s quite good at picking winners for her mother. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

  “I have a ninety-four percent success rate,” Junior proudly stated.

  “Of course. I’d expect nothing less from such a bright young girl,” said Mary, buttering up the child. After all, she was going to read Walter’s play.

  “So you see,” said Russell, “I’m giving your friend’s play a high priority even though there is no offer attached to it.”

  “Thank you, Lillian. Makes me wonder what happens to the other plays that come with no offer attached.”

  “They’re collecting dust in my office. Must be at least a hundred of them, possibly more. I might get to them someday. Who knows?” She shrugged cavalierly.

  An idea popped into Mary’s mind, one that excited her. “I apologize, Lillian.”

  “For what?”

  “I lied to you.”

&n
bsp; “About reading your friend’s play?”

  “No, I did and it is good. I mean when I said this isn’t a business call. It turns out that it is.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Mary. The wheels are always turning. No male detective with the exception of Sherlock Holmes would ever be this dedicated.”

  “You do know that Holmes is fictional?”

  “So is the world in which I live.”

  Having gotten to know Russell fairly well, Mary couldn’t argue with her on that point. “The suspect I’m looking for fancies himself a playwright along the lines of Gilbert and Sullivan.”

  “He doesn’t aim terribly high, does he?”

  Mary ignored her swipe at the famous duo and continued. “Since he hasn’t had much success and you are the premier musical-comedy actress of our era—”

  “Oh, Mary, don’t make me blush.” She wasn’t blushing and Mary doubted she ever did.

  “The point is, he might have sent you his play in the hope you’d fall in love with it, and with you attached, he’d be able to find financing for its production.”

  “Like your friend Walter.”

  “I guess so, but—”

  “Say no more. Feel free to peruse the piles in my study. It may take some time. Would you like to temporarily move in?”

  “Not necessary. I have little desire to read the plays.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “All I have to do is find the playwright’s name and the address he left in case you were interested.”

  “Well then, Mary, I wish you the best of luck.” She ushered Mary to her study and opened the door, revealing many stacks of plays. “Voilà! I leave you to your work.”

  Mary entered and Russell closed the door.

  “I’ll read this right away, Mama,” said Junior, referring to Walter’s play.

  Lillian replied in a whisper, “Don’t bother, darling. Just put it on the ‘no’ pile. In a couple of weeks I’ll write the gentleman a lovely rejection letter.”

  “But you told Miss Handley—”

  “Sometimes Mother has to tell little white lies in her business in order to spare the feelings of friends. It’s taken a long time for your mother to get into this position and there is absolutely no way I’m going to accept a play without the proper remuneration I deserve guaranteed.”

  “So, lie to your friends but tell the truth to your enemies.”

  “Smart girl. After all, there’s no reason to have concern for your enemies’ feelings.”

  It would have upset Mary if she had heard this conversation, but far more important things were happening. It was not very long until she was out the door, calling out her thanks to Lillian. Under her arm was the forty-ninth play she had opened. On the title page were Harvey Iglehart’s name and his address.

  14

  Harvey Iglehart lived in a tenement on Mulberry Street near Mulberry Bend, once considered to be the worst slum in New York City. It was part of Bandit’s Roost, the most infamous area of the Lower East Side, where squalor ruled and violence was the norm. Criminal acts were overwhelmingly ones of poor on poor, because no well-to-do person with a scintilla of sense would enter that section of town, nor would they have any reason to. Of course, there were the occasional carriages of the spoiled rich who thought it was fun to “slum it.” Most of them drove by quickly or carried weapons. Those who didn’t would rarely escape unscathed. Harper’s friend Jacob Riis had written about it and had taken extensive photographs of that area for his book How the Other Half Lives. When he had toured the area, he had a police escort. Mary had met Jacob Riis on her first date with Harper, and thinking of Jacob reminded her of Harper and how much she missed him. She had to steel herself against the pain and sadness that were threatening to consume her. There was no time for that. She had a job to do.

  It was dusk when she arrived, a time of day that made Bandit’s Roost even more ominous. With her considerable jujitsu skills, Mary had no fear of any attacker. However, she’d had a sharp reminder a few weeks earlier that jujitsu was useless against a bullet, so she was wisely cautious as she passed through.

  Mulberry Bend had been torn down the year before and now held the beginnings of a city park. It was an effort to clean up the neighborhood, or perhaps make it a neighborhood. Still, a couple of blocks from there were more tenements, not quite as seedy as the wooden shanties that had populated Bandit’s Roost but they still reeked of abject poverty. That was where Harvey Iglehart lived.

  His tenement building embodied the phrase “filthy pit.” It had the requisite peeling walls, strewn garbage, and uneasy feeling that it could collapse at any moment. As Mary climbed up to the fifth floor, where Iglehart lived, the noises of poverty consumed the air: she heard couples arguing, children screaming, and doors slamming. Rats scampered around freely and cockroaches were ever present. It occurred to Mary that she might have wound up in a place like this if she hadn’t managed to leave her job in a sweatshop for detective work. The old saying “There but for the grace of God go I” raced through her brain. It made her feel great empathy for the people who lived there. But she also felt the need to keep reminding herself that one person’s nightmare was another’s home.

  When Mary arrived at the fifth floor, she saw a round woman wearing an apron with a yellow flower design pounding on a door and screaming, “Open up or I’m coming in! You can’t dodge me.”

  She had a reddish complexion and stringy light brown hair and was planted in front of a door with the number twenty-two on it. The second 2 had broken loose from whatever had been holding the top part of it and was dangling upside down. The apartments were numbered in a straight numerical sequence, so even if that second 2 had fallen completely off, Mary would have recognized it as Harvey Iglehart’s apartment.

  “What seems to be the problem?” Mary asked as she approached the woman.

  The woman had worked herself into a frenzy and was still shouting as she spoke to Mary. “The problem? The problem is I’m too nice, a sucker. Even my husband calls me a chump.”

  “I’m sure you’re not. Where would we be without empathy and reason?”

  “I’d be a lot richer. That’s where.”

  “What can I do to relieve your upset?”

  “Why do you want to relieve mine? Why not your own?” Before Mary could answer, the woman continued. She had an overwhelming need to vent. “This scalawag, this scoundrel, this”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“bastard”—then reverted to her previously loud level. “Three months. Three months’ back rent. He says I’ll get it to you and then some by this morning. I’m cooking dinner. Does this look like morning?” She banged on the door again. “No more chump, Iglehart!”

  “Harvey Iglehart?”

  “Yes, and I hope you’re here to arrest the deadbeat.”

  “I wish I could, but I am a woman.” Mary shrugged, indicating the fact that there were no female police officers. “But you are the landlady, I presume. Don’t you have a key?”

  The woman slapped her hand to her forehead. “Of course! I’m too respectful. Well, no more. Here I come, Iglehart.” She took a key out of her apron pocket and opened the door.

  Calling Iglehart’s abode an apartment would be unfair to apartments everywhere. It was a small, dingy room with a rusted sink, a broken-down dresser that had probably been reclaimed from a junk pile, and a rickety single bed that looked like a haven for bedbugs. There was also a terrible odor.

  “That bastard skipped out on me,” bemoaned the woman, no longer concerned about her language due to the surprise. She crinkled her face in disgust. “And I’ve gotta pay to have this pigsty fumigated.”

  Mary’s eyes were trained on the bed, which had several blankets and pillows piled on it along with some clothes. “He didn’t skip out. He never left.”

  She pulled back the blanket
s and there was Harvey Iglehart lying on his stomach with a bullet through the back of his head in almost the same exact place where Harper had been shot.

  The landlady got hysterical. “Oh, my lord! My lord! And here I was cursing the poor man! Forgive me, dear God.” She looked skyward and crossed herself twice, then continued, “The poor, poor man. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”

  Mary was calm. She turned Iglehart over, stared at him, and immediately saw how with a few days’ growth of beard and a blackened tooth, he could easily have been the man she’d encountered in the alley. Her analytical eyes then started searching the room, but first she had to get rid of the landlady. “Before you do anything, might I suggest you call the police?”

  “The police. Yes, of course. I will get them here right away. They’ll take care of poor Mr. Iglehart. Find out who killed him.” She ran out of the room.

  Mary could now search every nook and crevice for any clues. She figured he had been killed by his partner in crime. Greed had a way of severing bonds any criminals had. But who was his partner?

  Next to the bed she found a shriveled piece of cotton. She picked it up and stared at it, then brought it to her nose and smelled it.

  She now knew who had killed Iglehart and Harper.

  15

  It was Sunday night. Gilbert and Dottie were in his study when Mary was once again ushered in by the butler.

  “Mary,” said Gilbert. “You’re working late.”

  “I could say the same of you.”

  “The theater never sleeps. Does it, Dottie?”

  “Not in my experience.”

  “In my case,” said Mary, “I wanted to stop by to inform you I found Harvey Iglehart.”

  “Good going. I knew you’d find him. Is he the one?”

  “Did he confess?” asked Dottie.

  “It was a bit difficult for that to happen. You see, he’s dead.”

  “Oh, my God!” cried Gilbert. “Your suspects are dropping like flies!”

 

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