Winter at Death's Hotel (15 page)

Louisa came puffing along behind her and was grateful that the elevator wasn't there—the crashing sounds were well below them—and she leaned against the wall. Immediately at her eye level, somebody had written in indelible pencil,
Fitch
eats
the
hairy
banana.

She thought she knew what “banana” meant but didn't understand the “hairy” part, although she'd seen only the one and maybe other men had hair on theirs. “Eats” was also somewhat murky; if it meant what she thought it did, eating was not what went on—no biting and chewing, she would have thought. She had never performed this act, which seemed to her particularly unappetizing, nor had Arthur ever asked her. Could she ask him about it? And about “hairy banana”? Probably not.

The elevator doors opened and the gates crashed. Two men stood at the back; both, to her surprise, removed their hats.

“
Goandown!
”

She was able to lean a shoulder against the wall of the car as they fell. She was already, she knew, worn out. She dreaded having to get herself a cab to go back to the hotel. Who would help her in? And out?

The two men insisted on waiting until Fitch and Louisa had left the car; then they came out and had to steer around Louisa and her crutches. Fitch said, “It isn't far.”

“Must we walk?”

“Unless you can fly.” She held one of the heavy front doors until Louisa was on the pavement. Light snow was still coming down. Fitch said, “You mentioned Shakespeare.” She pointed to her left. “This way. Yeah, there was a murder on the Bowery six years ago, a whore who called herself Shakespeare, but it was too long ago. There's no connection.”

“She was mutilated. One of the newspapers said there was some talk of the Ripper's having come to New York.”

“Honey, they say that every time a woman cuts her finger with the bread knife. No, it's got nothing to do with our murder.”

Louisa registered the “our” but said nothing. After another couple of slow steps, she said, “Is it Mrs. or Miss Fitch?”

“Call me Minnie. And it isn't ‘Mrs.' Not that I haven't had offers. And I like men, don't get me wrong—I'm not what those cretins in the newsroom call a ‘morphadite.'”

“What is a morphadite?”

Fitch laughed. “What you or I would call hermaphrodite, if we ever had a chance to use the word. A hermaphrodite—you know. Both sexes.”

“Oh—a gynander.”

“A
what
?” Fitch was walking almost backward, looking into Louisa's face. “Girls who like other girls, get me? You ever hear of a Boston marriage?”

“Like a Sapphist, you mean!”

“Saffist! Gee, I never heard that one. Is it dirty?”

“It's from the name of the Greek poetess.”

“You don't say! That's cute.” She had taken a notebook from some pocket in her skirt and was writing as she walked. “S-A-F-F—”

“No, it's P-H.” She spelled Sappho.

“I'd think it'd be Sap-pho, but it's all Greek to me.” Fitch guffawed. “Here we are.”

They had arrived in front of a narrow bakery. Fitch opened the door and showed Louisa into a long room with wooden counters on each side, glass fronted, with tray after tray of pastries and sweets and desserts, and behind them against the wall shelves full of many kinds of bread. Three tables were set in a row down the middle of the room.

Fitch pointed at a chair. “Sit. My God, those things do get in the way, don't they.” She meant the crutches. She raised her voice at a woman behind one of the counters. “Two coffees, Mamie. And some of those cookies with the powdered sugar.” She fell into a chair opposite Louisa. “Okay, we can talk here. Shoot.”

“I haven't seen the sketch artist yet.”

“You're as tough a bird as I could find on the Bowery! Don't you trust me?”

Embarrassed, Louisa murmured, “Well…no, actually.”

Fitch made a face and then reached across the table and lifted Louisa's veil. “Hey, that's some mouse! Your husband do that?”

“My husband adores me, and I him! I suffered a fall at my hotel.”

“It would make a great little story—‘Mrs. Sherlock Holmes Married to Wife-Beater.' I know, I know, I'm not supposed to mention you.”

“My husband is a
gentleman
, Miss Fitch
.”

“Call me Minnie. I guess you'd be surprised how many gentlemen use their wives to tune up for a fight with Sullivan.” Her eyebrows went up as the shop door opened. “Well, speaking of gentlemen—our sketch artist, and only a little the worse for wear. You're late.”

Louisa saw a quite dapper little man dressed in a dark lounge suit buttoned very tight, a bowler hat, and spats; she saw, too, that he was quite drunk. Yet he was one of those drunkards who remain upright and more or less coherent even though the drinking day had started at dawn. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose red, and his breath beery.

“I hurried every step of the way, Minnie, m'dear.” True, he was puffing.

“This lady has a question for you, and get on with it so's I can do my business with her.”

Louisa tried to give him her best smile, but he was studying her face where her veil was still up. “That's some eye,” he said. “Your husband do that?” He pulled a chair around and more or less fell backward into it, putting himself between Fitch and Louisa. “My wife does that to me sometimes. Information?”

“I shall say once more, and once more only, my husband had nothing to do with my injuries, which were the result of an accident. I do not like rudeness, Mr. McClurg!”

“She knows my name!” He had said that to Fitch, now turned bleary eyes back to Louisa. “To put it in the plainest possible terms, Mrs.—Mrs.…?”

“Doyle.”

“Irish gal, eh? Well, I've always been able to get along with the Irish. I say again, what's it worth to you?”

Louisa calculated how much was in her purse, how much pinned inside her corset, and how much more in her stocking case in the hotel. All of it together didn't add up to much. “Two dollars,” she blurted out. A whole eight shillings! How carefully she'd have thought about spending eight shillings in London.

McClurg looked at Fitch and then at the table. “That seems fair. Shoot.” He took a small pad from a pocket, then a pencil and a bit of red stick and a lump of something white and began to move the pencil over the pad.

“You drew a sketch of the woman whose body was found in the Bowery. I want to know if the sketch was accurate.”

The pencil stopped. “Accurate? You accusing me of not being
accurate
?”

“I mean, Mr. McClurg, if someone thought she recognized the dead woman from your sketch, would they be justified in saying it was she?”

“'Course.” He finished whatever he was doing with the pencil and flipped the pad around for Louisa to see. Although he had been looking at her, it was a sketch of Minnie Fitch, and a very good one. McClurg laughed, showed the sketch to Fitch and turned to a new page.

Louisa said, “Did you make the newspaper sketch from the corpse itself?”

“'Course.”

“But it had been ‘disfigured.'”

“Pretty bad, too.”

“In what way? How was she disfigured, Mr. McClurg?”

He looked at Fitch. She said to Louisa, “If he tells you, you may need the convenience in a hurry. Straight back through the door and turn left.”

Louisa said, “Miss Fitch, I am a physician's wife.” That was sheer bravado; she hated seeing other people's blood. She looked at McClurg. “Well?”

McClurg was drawing again but raised his eyebrows. “Well, her nose had been cut off. And both lips. And her eyes were gone.” He looked up, perhaps to see if she was going to be sick.

Louisa was afraid she was. She thought she might faint, as well: the idea of having her lips cut off—it was the lips that did it, the
lips
—was too much for her, and she made a great effort and cleared the threat of darkness from her eyes, then fought with her stomach. She breathed deeply. “That poor woman,” she said in a strong voice.

“Hey, she's not so bad,” Minnie Fitch said to McClurg. For answer, he spun his sketchbook so Fitch could see it, then Louisa. It was a sketch of Louisa, bruises to the fore, done in pencil with touches of red and white. Louisa shuddered. He said, “Just to show you I can be
accurate
.”

“But—if her nose and her l-lips were missing…”

“Sewed 'em back on in the morgue. They do a good job there, better than some taxidermists. There was swelling, and the stitches, but I know what to do.”

Louisa felt a little faint again. “The eyes?”

“They didn't put those back. Stuffed the, you know, the cavities and sewed the lids shut in case some loved one wanted a peep at the peepers.” He was sketching again. “I didn't show any of that stuff—the stitches, the swelling—I been at this thirty years, you think I don't know the tricks of the trade?”

McClurg spun the pad to her again. On the new page was the recognizable face of the murder victim, but with the lines of sewing on the lips and nose. “That's what I saw. But that doesn't go into the paper.”

Louisa looked at Fitch. “And you didn't mention the disfigurement in your article.”

“I tried; I always try, but they always edit me. Can't put that stuff in a ‘family newspaper.' I've actually been told that part of our job is ‘protecting the city's women.' You like that? You feel protected? Myself, I think a little real horror might get us down the road to helping some of those girls.”

McClurg tore the three pages from his book and distributed them as if he were dealing cards, one to Fitch and two to Louisa. “On the house,” he said.

Louisa produced a little purse. “Of course, I shall pay you more, Mr. McClurg.”

“Not for the sketches, you won't.” He put a hand over hers, looked into her eyes; beery breath flowed past her. “For information, sure. For my art, no.” He took the two-dollar silver note she produced and smoothed it between his fingers. “Man's best friend.” He stood. “Back to the den of alcoholic iniquity. Nice to have met you, Miz Doyle.” He nodded at Fitch. “Minnie.” He hiccuped. “Editorial knows where to find me.”

They watched him leave. Minnie Fitch said, “He's a nice fella. And a sad case. ‘His art.'” She shook her head. “Nobody's ever satisfied, are they.”

“I'm ready to tell you what I know.”

“At last, as they say in the mellers.”

Louisa told her about seeing the woman in the hotel, her letter to Roosevelt, then about the visit of the police. “They tried to
bully
me.”

Fitch was excited. “Because they were on the take and they thought you'd queer it! They
know
something
! I wonder if Roosevelt knows. Jeez, could Roosevelt be on the take, too? That would be the greatest story of my life! Jehosephat, if I could nail that one down I could move to the
World
!”

“I hardly think Mr. Roosevelt the type to be ‘on the take.'”

“Honey, in this city, it's like leprosy—they come in pure and clean, and they get down in the dirt with the lepers, and in no time they've lost their noses and their ears and they've got their stumps held out for cash like all the rest. The biggest talkers are the biggest crooks. Oh, sweetheart, if I could nail Roosevelt!” She wiggled her eyebrows and rushed on. “Cleary and Grady, huh? Cleary's a lieutenant, big, tried to scare you to death with a look? Yeah, Cleary of the Murder Squad. He must think he died and went to heaven, making money from your hotel on a dead whore. Murder Squad doesn't get so many chances to dip their hand in the till, y'know? It isn't like gambling or prostitution, where the protection money rolls in like the waves at Coney Island. The whorehouses over on Twenty-Third pay by the month; it's like having a pension.”

“My hotel is on Twenty-Third Street!”

“Yeah, but a couple of blocks away. You gotta go west of Sixth Avenue to start seeing the whores.” Fitch looked down into her cup of by then cold coffee. “This is great. You really handed me a story on a plate.” She drank half the coffee in a gulp and set the cup down hard. “What am I supposed to tell you in trade?”

“I think Mr. McClurg told me. Although I'd like to know the woman's name, I think. To…give her reality.”

“You playing detective, Mrs. Arthur Conan Doyle?”

“Certainly not!”

Fitch put a coin on the table and started toward the front, where the cashier sat behind a machine on which she had been ringing up purchases with a good deal of noise. Louisa tried to jump up to say that she would pay, but her crutches had been moved into an alcove by the door, and all she could do was signal. By the time that was straightened out, the bill was paid, Fitch had refused Louisa's money, and they were standing on the pavement. The snow had ended.

“You gonna promise me you won't take this anyplace else?” Fitch said.

“Why would I do that?”

“For money, most likely, but I guess you got a lot of that.”

“Will you share what you find with me, Miss Fitch?”

“Minnie.”

“Minnie, then.”

Fitch was leaning on her umbrella. She pushed out one side of her mouth and cocked an eyebrow. “I'll share when I've written it into a story and it's gone to press. I can't do better than that. If I sit on anything, I'm gonna be doomed to spending the rest of my days in the newsroom of the lousiest paper in New York.” She grinned. “Take pity on the working girl.”

Louisa thought that Fitch needed pity about as much as a steel dreadnought did, but she said, “I think we should agree to share and share alike.”

“
If
I can scoop everybody else.” Fitch waved the umbrella toward the south and said that Louisa could get a cab “down there” and now she had to hurry, because she had work to do. Louisa watched her go, feeling with an odd sadness that the story of the murdered woman was going with her—as if she had let go of the woman somehow, had given her up. It was a peculiar feeling, a sense of loss, a sudden loneliness. Was that what the murdered woman had meant to her—a kind of companionship? Or, even more crassly, merely something to think about, to entertain her?