Second Street Station (28 page)

Mary slowly descended the steps of Second Street Station. It had been ten days since her encounter with the Bowler Hat, and she had finally been cleared of any wrongdoing. It was officially labeled “self-defense.” Commissioners Jourdan and Briggs had ordered a full investigation, hoping to find some way to discredit her. Chief Campbell had followed their orders, had spent a reasonable amount of time investigating, and then had rendered a decision that he knew was correct from the beginning

It was a beautiful day, and Mary was in a mood for reflection. She decided to take a long walk around Brooklyn, the city in which she was born and raised. There was a movement afoot for it to become a part of New York City, but that hadn’t happened yet, and right now it was still her Brooklyn.

She turned down Fifth Avenue, then east on Lincoln Place to where it all started, the brownstone in which Charles Goodrich had been murdered. It had been called Degraw Street, but the city council, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the infamy of the Goodrich case was too much and renamed the section east of Fifth. If the reasoning was to protect real estate values, they should have renamed all of Degraw. But political logic often escaped Mary. What made sense to her were actual facts. Charles Goodrich was dead, Kate was locked up, and Mary was free of threats. Not all were happy occasions, but they were tangible.

Mary eventually found herself by the Sea Beach railroad line, and on a whim she took it to the end of Brooklyn, by the beach. She exited near the Sea Beach Palace Hotel, an expensive vacation destination that catered to the upper classes. Spotting an ice vendor, she bought a piece. The swelling on her face had almost completely subsided and the bruises were healing, but applying ice always made it feel better. The cool ocean breeze also helped. For the first time in a long while, Mary felt at peace with herself.

She heard a commotion by the hotel and turned. A group of women were in front protesting, demanding that women get the vote. As she drifted toward them, Mary remembered she had read in the newspaper that President Grover Cleveland was holding a fund-raiser at the hotel. Mary had done a lot of thinking about her beliefs, and this case had altered some of them. The “powers that be” were so strong and so corrupt that the common man and woman needed all the help they could get. She decided to put aside her petty notions of the women in the movement. It didn’t matter that their privilege afforded them the luxury of protest. What mattered was numbers. That was all they had, and that was all the power brokers would understand.

Mary spotted Amanda Everhart among the protesters and approached her.

“Pass me a sign…sister,” Mary said.

Amanda didn’t say anything. She just handed Mary a sign and smiled. It was a welcoming smile with a touch of “It’s about time.”

Mary joined the other women. She faded into the crowd and pretty soon you couldn’t tell one from the other. All that could be perceived, all that could be heard, and all that really mattered was their resounding chant.

“Women are better. Women are better.”

A year after the Goodrich killer was caught, Mary Handley and Chief Campbell left the Brooklyn courthouse together, both happy the case was over. It wasn’t the trial of Kate Stoddard or Lizzie King or whatever she was calling herself. She never had a trial. Under a new law, she had been sentenced to the State Lunatic Asylum at Auburn for the rest of her life. On this day, the particular case that had been tried was one that Mary had brought against the Brooklyn Police Department. They—meaning Jourdan and Briggs—had refused to pay her the fifteen-hundred-dollar bonus she was promised if she caught the Goodrich killer. W. W. Goodrich had weaseled out of paying the thirty-five-hundred-dollar reward he had pledged, using as a loophole the fact that he had stated the killer must be tried and convicted. He was technically right. Briggs and Jourdan weren’t. They simply thought Mary would back down—another gross miscalculation on their part. She got her money.

Mary and Chief Campbell stood on the steps as they watched two very sore losers leave the courthouse and hurry into their carriages.

“If they think they’re upset now, this will seem like a picnic on Monday,” said Chief Campbell. “That’s when I start my job as superintendent of police.”

“My Lord, Chief, that’s fantastic!
Congratulations!”

Mary had been concerned about Chief Campbell. Months before, Jourdan and Briggs had fired him, citing his incompetence in the Goodrich case. It was a lie, it was outrageous, but they were the commissioners and it stuck.

An entertaining thought crossed her mind. “Chief, that means you’re their boss. You can…”

“Yes, I can,” he said, and he didn’t just smile. He grinned.

“I wish I could be there for that.”

“Firing them will no doubt ease the pain of being confined to a desk. I’m contemplating hiring a photographer and memorializing the event for all eternity.”

Mary and Chief Campbell laughed, enjoying their victories, then Mary got serious.

“Chief, I can’t thank you enough for testifying on my behalf.”

“You were only asking me to tell the truth,” he said, and then reminded Mary of her lament the year before. “It seems there is some justice left in the world.”

They shook hands and parted. They had formed a friendship that would last, whether they worked together or not.

On her way home Mary tried not to dwell on her disappointment that capturing the Goodrich killer hadn’t resulted in her garnering any other cases. There were positives. Her notoriety had diminished, but there was enough to get her a job in a Brooklyn bookstore where customers liked getting
recommendations
from the woman who had caught the Goodrich killer. It didn’t pay much, but it was more than the Lowry Hat Factory and she enjoyed such amenities as occasional breaks and access to all that was new in the literary world. She had gotten used to the possibility that Goodrich was her first and last case and that settling for something less than detective work might not be that bad. She had recently started to plan how she could combine the fifteen-hundred-dollar reward money with hard work to accomplish her second choice in life: becoming a doctor. Mary never thought small.

She found two letters waiting for her at home. One of them was from Charles Pemberton, and she eagerly opened it. She hadn’t heard from Charles in a while and was very curious how he was. The letter was long, rambling, and sometimes incoherent, but she was able to glean some information from it. John Pemberton had passed away, but not before selling Coca-Cola to a man named Asa Candler for a mere twenty-three hundred dollars. The family was experiencing serious financial difficulties, and though he didn’t say so, it was clear to Mary that Charles’s morphine habit had returned. He didn’t even make an attempt at hiding his lack of lucidity. Mary wanted to write him back and print in big letters, “GET HELP!” But she’d just be stating the obvious, and it would do no good. Charles was right. It was best they had separated. It wasn’t lost on Mary that her desire for an unconventional mate had resulted in unforeseen complications. Maybe she needed to reexamine that notion.

The second letter was from a woman in Chicago. Three weeks ago, during the worst rainstorm in Chicago history, her husband had gone for a stroll and never returned. The police were treating her as a hysterical woman whose husband had just simply run out on her. She contended her husband would never do that, not because their marriage was so strong but rather because he would never leave their pet dog. He adored the despicable beast beyond any reason, and it was still living with her. If Mary could find a way to get to Chicago, she had a place for her to stay and could afford to pay her four dollars a week.

Mary put the letter down. She understood why the police hadn’t responded to this woman. She sounded seriously off-kilter, just the type a husband might leave without a word. The offer was also a paltry one, and quite possibly not genuine. She could give up her bookstore job and travel all the way to Chicago for nothing. It was definitely not worth it. She had a new career plan, and she was going to follow it.

Mary was thirsty and decided to make herself some lemonade. She filled a glass with water, then took out a couple of lemons and sugar. As she squeezed the lemons into her glass, she admitted that she might be judging the Chicago woman too harshly. The fact that her husband would not leave his wife because he loved his dog seemed a little extreme, but then Mary knew of a man who had run into a burning house to save his cat. The cat was found outside, safe and sound, but the man had perished. It was unusual for the woman to express hatred of her pet. Pets were considered sacred by many, but so were children, and Mary had heard many parents, including her own mother, speak disparagingly about theirs.

Mary decided she would go down to the train station and find out the cost of a ticket to Chicago. Purely to gather information. How can a person make a decision without having all the facts? Not that she would ever consider going. Well, at least it was highly unlikely. Though maybe, just maybe, if the ticket was cheap enough, and if the bookstore owner would give her a leave of absence…He might. He was a nice man and being involved in another case would raise her profile and help business. And if he did, it was just possible she would get the answer to a question that had been nagging at her for some time.

Why did men like this woman’s husband and Senator Conkling take strolls in such inclement weather?

Second Street Station
is historical fiction and certainly should be read as part of that genre. However, it also contains many historical facts that are quite accurate. Though fictionalized, the murder case is based on a real one. Mary Handley, Kate Stoddard, Chief Detective Patrick Campbell, and Charles Goodrich were real people, as were many of the people involved in the case. Many of the events actually happened, some taken from newspaper articles of the day. Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, J. P. Morgan, and George Westinghouse are iconic figures in American history, and I have tried to reveal aspects of their characters that may not be commonly known. The problems encountered when first marketing Coca-Cola and the plights of the troubled John and Charles Pemberton are well documented. To give further examples, Vin Mariani was an extremely popular wine at that time, and Senator Conkling and Governor David B. Hill were actual politicos. Of course, there are other examples, but suffice it to say I have made a concerted effort to weave my fictional tale with enough historical truth to make it as engaging and as authentic as possible.

It’s interesting to note that the Edison/Tesla feud outlasted both their lifetimes. It prevented them from getting the Nobel Prize when they refused to share it with one another. Edison exited General Electric, the company he helped found, when they decided to switch to AC electricity. Of the two though, Edison certainly came out on top. He outmatched and outsmarted Tesla every step of the way. When he passed away in 1931, he was a very wealthy man and is still considered by many today as America’s father of invention. Edison held 1,093 patents, though Tesla, were he alive, would be the first to point out that it’s debatable how many of those inventions were really his work.

Tesla’s experience was almost the polar opposite of Edison’s. Unlike Edison, he made one bad business decision after another. He sold his interest in AC electricity to George Westinghouse in order to finance other projects and didn’t profit when it became the standard. Though his Tesla coil made him the father of the wireless age, he was destitute when he died in a New York hotel room in 1943. Adding to his image as a “mad” scientist, he became attached to pigeons in his last years and was reputed to think he could converse with them. He had accused Edison of stealing his coil technology and giving it to Marconi to invent the radio. Months after his death, a court decided that Tesla’s patents predated Marconi’s, and he was posthumously declared the inventor of the radio. Though he wasn’t around to gloat, Tesla had finally beaten Edison at something.

Lawrence H. Levy

From day one, my agent Paul Fedorko was excited and passionate about my book. His notes were always positive, and I found his enthusiasm encouraging and invigorating. I’m sure it was key to getting it sold in a very short time.

I would also like to thank Lauren Friedman for introducing me to Paul.

Sammy Bina, who is Paul’s assistant, read my manuscript and recommended it to him, as did Andrea Deignan. I’d like to commend them for their impeccable taste.

My editor, Meagan Stacey, is a very smart woman whose edits were extremely helpful. She has also been very patient and considerate in leading me through the process of getting my first novel published. I am fortunate to have her as my editorial champion.

Kim Silverton is Meagan’s assistant, and she, too, has been incredibly helpful in shepherding me through this process.

My late and very talented friend Louis Turenne, whose mind trumped the Internet in knowledge, was a wonderful source of information, and I thank him for it.

I know I mentioned my daughter, Erin, in the dedication, but anyone who has read my book multiple times and still finds the strength to give great notes should be mentioned twice.

I’d also like to thank Jane Putch; Michael, Helen, and Adam Levy; Roz and Elliot Joseph; Charley and Nikki Garrett; Stan Finkelberg; Bob and Randy Myer; Tom Szollosi; Lois Feller; Ron Marks; and James Gleason. As the saying goes, “It takes a village,” and these were just some of my many relatives, friends, and acquaintances who read my work, buoyed me with their genuinely positive responses, and made me believe my dream was possible.