These Shallow Graves (35 page)

Jo nodded. “All right. But know this: I'll never be sorry for what we had, but I will be sorry if I don't see this story through to the end. I'll be sorry for the rest of my life.” She rose, scooping the bill and Oscar's paper off the table. “Are you coming?”

Eddie looked at her for a long moment before he said yes.

“Sit
down,
Jo!” Eddie said through gritted teeth.

Jo, peeking through a pair of red velvet curtains trimmed with gold fringe, didn't even hear him.

They were in a small parlor inside the residence of Esther Arinovsky, on East Twenty-Fifth Street in the Tenderloin. She and Eddie had told the burly man at the door, Benny, that they were from a newspaper and wanted to speak with Esther. He'd nearly tossed them off the stoop, but assurances that they were only after information about Della McEvoy, and a dollar placed into his hand, had softened him. He'd led them through a garish foyer to the parlor and told them to wait there while he spoke with Esther.

“Why is it called the Tenderloin?” Jo had asked as they walked uptown, past the area's flashy restaurants, hotels, and bars.

“The cops gave it that name because it's rich and tasty, and they want a piece of it. Esther, like every other madam in the city, only stays open because she pays them off,” Eddie replied.

“There's more than one disorderly house here?” Jo had asked, astonished.

“In the Tenderloin? Are you kidding? There are scores of them. And thousands of girls.”

Jo, saucer-eyed, was watching some of those very girls now. They were clad only in skimpy silk combinations—one-piece undergarments that served as both chemise and knickers. Some wore stockings. Others were bare-legged. They had powdered cheeks and painted lips. Most were drinking.

Jo found their bareness shocking, but it was their eyes that truly unnerved her. They were empty and dead. The girls sat slumped on chairs and settees, retying a ribbon, twirling a tendril of hair, or smoking—until a customer walked in. Then, like windup dolls, they came to life. They sat up and blew kisses, displayed a pretty leg, or undid a few buttons to better show their wares.

“Most of them look like they're my age,” Jo said, still staring out from the curtains.

“They probably are. Will you
please
sit down?” Eddie asked, exasperated.

Jo watched as a scrawny man in a cheap suit and scuffed shoes came in. He puffed his chest out like a rooster and strolled among the girls, eyeing them each in turn. “You,” he finally said, pointing to a petite brunette. She dutifully stood and followed him up the dark stairwell. Jo couldn't bear to imagine what happened next.

“He didn't even ask her name,” she murmured, sitting down.

“I told you not to come here,” Eddie said.

“He eyed her the way Mrs. Nelson eyes a rib roast.”

“This is yet another bad idea. We should leave.”

Jo went silent. She thought about Oscar and his cadaver. He said the body was a female's, and that she'd died from syphilis. Had she been a prostitute, too? Jo had heard the disease whispered about. She'd seen beggars with their faces eaten away by it, and Katie had told her hair-raising tales of people going insane from it.

“Who writes about
them,
Eddie?” she asked.

“Who?” Eddie asked, his wary eyes on the doorway.

“Esther's girls.”

Eddie's gaze shifted from the doorway to Jo. “You could have,” he said, his blue eyes wistful.

Jo flinched. His words cut deeply. Not because they were thoughtless or cruel, but because they were true. She could have written about these girls, if she hadn't accepted Bram's proposal. Now she never would.

“Esther'll see you two now,” a voice said.

It was Benny. Jo and Eddie stood.

“Let me do the talking,” Eddie whispered as they followed Benny out of the parlor.

He led them to what Jo assumed was a study, though it was nothing like her father's study, or her uncle's. Gilded furniture—its finish chipped, its cushions worn and dusty—had been placed haphazardly. Three toy poodles roamed the room. As Jo watched, one lifted its leg and soaked the wallpaper. At the far end of the room, a large woman sat at a desk, writing in a ledger.

“Sit,” she said without looking up.

Eddie took one of the chairs in front of her desk; Jo took the other. Jo tried not to stare but couldn't help it.

Esther Arinovsky looked to be about fifty. Her hair, dyed black and thinning, was worn in a high roll. Powder had settled into the creases of her cheeks; lip rouge had bled into the lines around her mouth. She wore ropes of fake pearls. Her enormous breasts strained at the front of her dress, which was covered with a dusting of confectioner's sugar. A plateful of pastries rested on the desk.

After another minute or so, Esther closed her ledger and looked at them.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Arinovsky,” Eddie said. “I'm—”

“I know who you are,
pisher,
” Esther said with a Russian accent. “You think I let just anyone come in here?”

She looked at Jo next, cocking her head like a bird of prey. “But you? What brings you here, my darling? I cannot imagine such a pretty girl would need to go looking for work, but if you
are
—”

Jo blushed. Eddie cut Esther off. “This is Miss Jones. She's a reporter, too. We're looking for information,” he said.

“What kind of information?”

“Information that will help secure justice for the murder of Alvah Beekman,” Jo said.

Esther laughed. “You are looking for justice in New York? Good luck.” She leaned back in her chair and picked a piece of food from her teeth with a fingernail. “I give you what information you want. The police, as always, have it wrong. Alvah Beekman was not killed by the
meshuggener
with the tattoos.”

“Could one of Della's girls have done it?” Jo asked. “Or Della herself?”

Esther gave her a contemptuous look. “You ever cut a man's throat?”

Jo shook her head.

“It takes strength, let me tell you. Della's as thin as a piece of old rope. Her girls, they're not so strong, either. Della doesn't feed them well. Too afraid to spend a little money. She doesn't have my standards,” Esther sniffed as a poodle squatted in a corner behind her desk. “There was a fourth man on the sidewalk that night. Montfort, Beekman, Kinch, plus one more,” she continued. “This I know for a fact. I was told it by one of the girls at the
farshtinkener
Della's house. Lucy's her name.”

I was right,
Jo thought smugly.
Esther Arinovsky can't resist the chance to bury a rival.

“How do you know?” Eddie asked skeptically.

“Because I paid her to tell me.”

“Beekman would meet with this girl Lucy?” Eddie asked.

“No,
chochem,
he would meet with a chimpanzee!” Esther said, shaking her head. “Of
course
he meets with the girl! Beekman, he goes to her three times a week. She's seventeen years old. Print
that
in your paper!”

Mr. Beekman carrying on with a girl my age. His
daughter's
age.
Jo felt ill at the thought.

“He was late coming to her that night. She looked out of the window for him and saw him standing on the sidewalk, one house over from Della's. He was talking with his friend the
macher,
Montfort. As they stood there, two other men came up to them. One had tattoos all over him. The other was big. According to Lucy, it was the big one who knocked Montfort down and cut Beekman.”

“Did she tell the police?” Jo asked. “Is she helping them track the man down?”

“Help the cops?
Us?
” Esther spat on the floor. “We hate them. That is the one thing, the only thing, we have in common, Della and I. They take half what we make—half!—and use the girls for free.”

“Did Lucy see the big man's face?” Eddie asked.

“Well enough to see that he had dark hair and a scar on his cheek,” Esther replied.

Jo and Eddie traded excited glances.

“The other one, the one with the marks on him, Lucy said he looked sick,” Esther added. “He was staggering. Shouting. Like he wasn't right in the head.”

Jo wondered at that. Kinch hadn't been staggering or out of his mind when he was with Scully. He'd been perfectly lucid.

Esther smiled at them then with a mouthful of coffee-stained teeth. The smile did not touch her eyes. “I give you good information about what goes on at Della McEvoy's house. For free,” she said. “You use it and I am happy, but you write one word about
my
house, children, and I send Benny to cut off your hands. Then you never write nothing no more. We have an understanding?”

“We do,” Eddie said.

Jo quickly nodded. She'd seen Benny and didn't doubt for a minute that he'd do it.

Esther returned her attention to her ledger. Jo and Eddie were dismissed. They thanked her. She acknowledged their thanks with a flap of her hand.

“They were there
together,
” Jo whispered as they left Esther's study. “Kinch and the scar-faced man are working together!”

“It certainly looks that way,” Eddie agreed. “But only one of them's behind bars. You've
got
to be careful. Promise me you won't go out alone at night anymore. Promise me right now, or I'll … I'll go tell your mother.”

Jo laughed. “Really, Eddie? You'd
tattle
on me?”

“It's not funny, Jo, and I swear to God I will. I don't want to wake up one morning and hear the newsboys shouting that
you've
been found dead in an alley,” he said solemnly.

“I can't promise that, Eddie,” Jo said. “I'm too close to finding out why my father was killed to stop now.” She was as scared of the man who'd attacked her as she'd ever been, but she would no longer let that fear stop her. Scarface was scared, too—scared that she and Eddie were getting close to him, and to the truth. That was why he'd attacked them.

As they made their way to the front door, Jo saw that business had picked up while they'd been with Esther. At least half a dozen men were surveying the merchandise now. One was kissing a redheaded girl. Another was fondling a brunette's bottom.

Eddie grabbed Jo's hand and hurried her along. They passed a man sitting in a chair with a blond girl in his lap. She was trying to engage him.

“C'mon, handsome,” she cooed. “Come upstairs. You won't be sorry.”

She leaned in to kiss the man, but he pushed her off his lap. She hit the floor hard, banging her head against a table.

“I wan' a blon', dammit!” the man yelled drunkenly. “A
real
blon' who can
prove
it!”

The girl, dazed, struggled to sit up. Jo stopped dead, furious. She yanked her hand free.

“What are you doing?” Eddie hissed.

But it was too late. She marched over to the girl and helped her up. Then she turned to the man, eyes blazing, and said, “You owe this girl an apology.”

Eddie's eyes widened in alarm. “Jo! Come
on
!” he said.

The drunken man looked up at Jo, astonished.
“What?”
he said.

“You heard me,” Jo said. “Would you like someone to treat your mother, or sister, or daughter the way you just treated this young lady?”

The man guffawed. “She ain't no lady, you silly bitch. She's a whore!”

“And
you,
sir,” Jo said loudly—so loudly that everyone in the room stopped to listen to her—“are a vile, drunken pig!”

The man growled a nasty reply, but Jo didn't hear it. She'd turned on her heel and was marching back to Esther's office. Esther was still buried in her accounts as Jo walked up to her desk.

“Please don't buy Fay from the Tailor,” she said.

Esther looked up. Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know about that?”

Eddie, who'd caught up with Jo, took hold of her arm and tried to pull her away, but she shook him off.

“This is no place for her. She's had a hard life. If she comes here, it'll only get harder,” Jo said, pleading for her friend.

“We've all had hard lives, my darling. This is business. Between myself and the Tailor. I've already bought her. I was the highest bidder. The deed's done and it's none of your affair.”

“I have nine hundred dollars,” Jo said. “I'll buy her from you.”

Esther snorted. “It would take a lot more than that for me to sell her. She's young and pretty. She can work for a good ten years if she doesn't get sick. She'll bring me thousands.”

“But she's a human being,” Jo protested, heartsick at the thought of Fay's fate. “You can't just buy and sell her. That's slavery. Have you no sense of morality?”

“Morality is a luxury, my darling. A very expensive one,” Esther said.

“But—”

Esther cut her off. Her eyes, cold and calculating, locked on Jo's. “I know who you are Miss
Jones,
” she said. “I read the papers. I look at the pictures. And I know you've just gone to the highest bidder yourself.”