These Shallow Graves (22 page)

Fay looked away, but not before Jo could see the hopelessness in her eyes.

The Tailor caught it, too. “Oh, come now! That's no way to repay my kindness,” he scolded. He rose and walked behind her. “I took you in, girl. Taught you a trade.” He skimmed his hands over her waist to her hips. She stiffened but didn't move away. “And when the time comes, Madam Esther will teach you another. Only the rich can afford to be idle,” he said, looking pointedly at Jo.

Jo's skin crawled at the way the Tailor put his hands on Fay.

“Who's Madam Esther?” she asked, aiming the question at Fay.

Fear flickered in Fay's eyes. She walked away without answering and busied herself at the stove.

Jo wanted an answer. She turned to the Tailor. “Who's Madam Esther?”

Eddie took her arm. “Forget it,” he said. “We're leaving.
Now.
”

The courtyard was empty as they climbed down the ladder. As soon as it was hauled up again, the Tailor stuck his head over the balcony.

“You're not quite the clever negotiator you think you are, Miss Montfort,” he said tauntingly.

“I'm not?” Jo said, looking up at him.

“Next time, I'll expect a tenner for any information I give you. And I'm doubling Tumbler's rate, too,” he gloated. “You want my help, miss, you'll pay for it.”

“Yes, I suppose I shall,” Jo conceded. “Still, I didn't do so badly,” she added. “Do you recall that Woolworth watch you returned to me?”

The Tailor nodded.

Jo smiled. “It's really Cartier.”

Eddie and Jo stood on the corner of Baxter and Canal, gasping for breath. They'd run all the way there from the Tailor's roost.

“
Cartier?
You came down here with a Cartier watch? Are you insane? I can't believe he didn't come after us. He still might. Put it down your corset—
now,
” Eddie ordered.

“
What?
How? I can't!” Jo protested.

“Put it in your underwear or I will.”

Jo saw that he meant it. She unbuttoned the top of her jacket, then her blouse, and dropped the watch down her corset.

“His eyes must be getting bad. Or maybe it was the light,” Eddie said as she buttoned herself back up again. “If he'd seen what that watch really was, he
would
have thrown us off the balcony. I can't believe you got it back. Where'd you learn to negotiate like that, anyway? Your father?”

“Certainly not,” Jo said. “He never talked business around me. I learned it from Katie, my maid. We haggle all the time.”

“Over what?”

“The cost of her services. I pay her to sneak things into the house that my mother doesn't approve of, and to help me sneak out. These past few days, I've paid her a small fortune. She's in my bed right now pretending to be me. And probably wondering where on earth I am.”

Eddie checked his own watch. “It's late. If we walk at a good clip, we should get you home before two.” He took her hand and they started walking east on Canal. It's been a very interesting evening in your company, Miss Montfort. As usual,” he said. “But once again, it seems we've ended up with more questions than we started with.”

“Speaking of questions,” Jo said, “no one ever answered mine. What was the Tailor talking about when he said Fay would have to learn a new trade? Who's Madam Esther?”

“You should probably ask your mother about that,” Eddie said. Then he shook his head. “What am I saying? Whatever you do,
don't
ask your mother about that. She'll never let you out of the house again.”

“What do you mean?” Jo said.

“Esther is … well, she's like Della McEvoy.”

Jo remembered her conversation with Katie. “You mean she's a pimp?”

Eddie nearly choked. “Um,
madam
is generally how such women are referred to. Where did you learn
that
word?”

“Does that mean Fay will work for Esther? As a prostitute?”

“It looks that way,” Eddie said grimly.

“Because the Tailor's making her?”

“Yes.”

“But that's terrible!” Jo exclaimed, outraged. “She's not a slave, to be bought and sold. We have to stop him, Eddie.”

“I wish we could.”

“We could tell the police what he's doing. They'd arrest him.”

Eddie shook his head. “No, they wouldn't. He
owns
the police. At least, the ones in the Sixth Ward. He pays them to turn a blind eye to his activities.”

“We could tell them about Madam Esther, then.”

“She probably pays the cops more than the Tailor does.”

“Eddie, this isn't
right,
” Jo said, upset.

“No, Jo, it's not.”

“How can the police allow such a thing to happen? They're supposed to protect people!”

“Fay's not a person to them. She's a throwaway girl. One of thousands in this city.”

“There must be a way to help her,” Jo said, unwilling to accept defeat. “There must be
something
we can do. I could—”

“Go to your mother? Your uncle? Tell them you met a pickpocket who's about to become a prostitute and you'd like to help her out?” Eddie suggested.

Jo saw the impossibility of the situation. She fell silent, remembering how scared Fay looked when the Tailor talked about Esther. How young she looked underneath all the rouge. Jo remembered something else, too—how Fay had spoken to Eddie, warning him that Jo would be the death of him. Her tone had been familiar and knowing.

Another question surfaced, demanding an answer—one that had been gnawing at her ever since they'd encountered Mick Walsh. “Eddie, how do you know all these people in the Bend?”

“Work,” he replied quickly. Too quickly.

Jo looked at the side of his face. His expression had become unreadable.

“No, I don't think so,” she said slowly. “Mick Walsh was surprised to see you. He said it had been a long time. He wouldn't have said that if you were around here all the time scaring up stories. Fay knows you, too, doesn't she? Pretty Will. The Tailor, too. He said you'd left this place. He said—”

“Hey, Jo?” Eddie cut her off. “Just because you're playing reporter doesn't mean you are one.” His tone was cold.

Jo stopped dead. She felt as if he'd slapped her. “That was rotten, Eddie. And mean. And not like you at all,” she said, wounded.

Eddie laughed, but it had a hollow sound to it. “Not like me?” he echoed. “And what makes you think you know me? You
don't
know me, Jo. Not at all.”

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again and looked around. As if he was seeing the Bend in a new way.

Or perhaps,
Jo thought,
an old one.

“You know these people because you used to be one of them.”

As Jo said the words out loud, she knew them to be true.

Eddie nodded. “I fought Pretty Will. Played with Fay. Filched Mick's gin. Stole for the Tailor.”

He turned his eyes to hers, and she saw why he'd hidden them—they were filled with sadness.

“This place was my home,” he said.

“You lived in an apartment here?” Jo asked. “In the Bend?”

“We weren't that posh,” Eddie said. “We lived in one room of an apartment.” He nodded at a decrepit-looking building on the corner of Canal and Mott. Its front door hung crookedly from its hinges. “In a building just like that one. My parents and five kids, but two died when they were babies.” He was staring at the building, but Jo felt he was seeing something else—his past.

“I want to go inside,” she said.

“No, you don't.”

But Jo didn't listen. She walked up the stoop and pushed the door open. The smell was eye-watering—unwashed bodies, urine, and smoke. A small gas lamp sputtered in the dank, airless hallway, illuminating the crumbling walls. A man was sprawled on the dirty staircase in a drunken stupor. Two thin, dirty children sat on a step above him, prodding him with a stick and laughing.

Dead cockroaches crunched under Jo's feet as she made her way to the backmost room. Live ones disappeared into cracks in the walls. The room's door was partly open, too. In the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp, she could see that it was small, no more than ten feet by twelve. Children lay on the floor sleeping. A thin woman stood by the only window, silhouetted in the moonlight. She was rocking a wailing baby in her arms. A man sat on a chair, his head in his hands. He told the woman to shut the brat up or he would.

Jo had never seen poverty like this, or people so helpless against it. She turned and walked out of the house, grieved to know that Eddie had suffered such poverty himself, amazed that he'd survived it.

He was in the shadows of the building, looking up at the night sky, when she rejoined him.

“Have a good look?” he asked.

Jo ignored the edge that had crept back into his voice and took his arm. They started walking east again. “This place is why, isn't it?” she said. “It's why you became a reporter.”

Eddie nodded. “I want to tell the stories of the people in that house,” he said. “The ones that never get told. I want to tell the world that these people exist. Nelly Bly's doing it. Riis and Chambers are doing it. They're changing things. I want to change things, too. That's why I want to leave the
Standard.
”

Jo realized she had tears in her eyes. She blinked them back, not wanting Eddie to see them. He was proud and would think they were tears of pity, not sorrow.

“Where are they now? Your brothers and sisters? Your parents?” she asked.

“I haven't seen my father since I was five. He left us. My mother died when I was ten. Two days before she passed, she took us—me, my brother, and sister—to Saint Paul's, a church orphanage. We didn't want to go, but she said the Tailor wasn't getting her children. She didn't know it, but he already had me. Sometimes the only money we had were the coins I'd earned thieving for him. The church took us in. They fed us, educated us, and beat us silly. My sister Eileen lost the hearing in one ear after a beating. She was only eight.”

Emotion choked off Eddie's words. He got hold of himself, then said, “She's a maid for a family in a big house now. They're good to her. Tom, our brother, he's in a big house, too,” he added bitterly. “He's in prison. For manslaughter.”

“He
killed
someone?” Jo said, wide-eyed.

“He went after the priest who beat Eileen,” Eddie explained. “Tom punched him in the face. The priest fell and hit his head on the altar step. Cracked his skull and died. Tom got twenty years. Turns out it's a life sentence, though. He caught tuberculosis in prison. He doesn't have long.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Jo said, her heart breaking for him. “I'm so sorry.”

He looked at her and she saw more than sadness in his eyes; she saw regret.

“Why am I telling you all this? I shouldn't be,” he said. “You know something, Jo? You're right to be sorry. Not for me, for yourself. And I should be, too. Because I have no right to take you to a place like this—”

“You didn't
take
me. I came here.”

“—and I have no right to drag you into the Tailor's lair, or Walsh's, or my past. I
am
sorry, Jo. I really am.”

Jo took his face in her hands and stopped his words with a kiss. “You weren't sorry a few hours ago. In the museum,” she said.

“Don't,” he warned. “This isn't a joke.”

She kissed him again. “Are you really sorry? Because I'm not.”

“More than you'll ever know.”

She kissed his cheek, the smooth spot under his ear. “Still sorry?”

“Jo …”

She kissed his chin, his neck, and then his mouth once more. “Are you sorry, Eddie?” she whispered.

He pulled her to him and held her tightly. “No. God, no. But you will be, Jo. And when that day comes, it'll kill me.”