Winter at Death's Hotel (49 page)

“No!”

Dunne shouted at Reception. “Hey, you in the fancy coat—where's your doctor at?”

“He took a woman to the hospital! An injured woman—I told him to—”

“Oh, Cripes. All right, Mrs. Doyle, we'll get you to a hospital ourselves.”

“No!”

“Look, don't give me grief, please; I know you've been through a lot, but—”

A voice as big as Dunne's bellowed from the front of the lobby, “Follow me, men!” It was Commissioner Roosevelt.

Dunne groaned. “Godamighty, Cassidy, tell him we're getting things organized already, will you?”

Cassidy, who had been briefing his dozen cops, tried to push toward Roosevelt. The commissioner, looking peppy and full of fight, jumped on a table and waved a six-gun as big as a meat cleaver. “I want every policeman within the sound of my voice to rally to me at this spot where I now stand!”

Dunne squeezed his fingers into his eye sockets. His lips moved. He turned to the dozen cops and said, “All right, six teams of two each.” He began to point at them. “You two, Fifth Avenue door.
Move.
Nobody goes in or out.
Nobody!
” He pointed at two more. “Mezzanine level.” He pointed at the staircase. “Up there. Entrance into the annex. Got it? All right, you two—second floor, you reach it by the stairs; don't wait for the damned elevators, they're mobbed. Second floor, find the entrance to the annex, stay there. Nobody in or out.” He sent the remaining pairs to the kitchen entrance and what he called “the back door.”

Roosevelt was still on his table. He bellowed, “Where are those officers going? You there! You are under my orders! I order you to— What? What's that?”

Dunne stood on tiptoe. “What a balls-up. Pardon me, ladies.” He walked away, shaking his head.

“They won't catch him,” Louisa said.

“Yes they will,
chérie.
” Marie smoothed her hair back. “You look dreadful, if I may say it. A hospital would be—”

“No! I don't want them to touch me.” She didn't have to say whom she meant by “them.” She squeezed Marie's hand. “What I want is to bathe. I feel filthy. He's covered me with his filth.”

“That's in your mind, my love. Just don't think about it. Did he… Did he really—?”

“He put his hand
inside
me
. Is that clear enough?”

“Oh, love, don't take it out on Marie. I mean it for the best. But did he… I mean—”

“He couldn't do it. If I thought I was going to have his baby, I'd cut it out myself.”

Marie sucked her breath in.

Louisa had stopped weeping. She closed her eyes. Every muscle seemed to hurt. Was this shock? She wondered how she had done what she had done. If not for the gun… She heard voices, like the buzzing of flies: the crowd were talking again. Somebody was angry; somebody was pounding a fist on something. It was all distant, all stupid. She should get out of the hotel. She should go somewhere he couldn't find her. But she couldn't move.

She dozed. And woke suddenly. There was Marie beside here, still holding her hand. There was the crowd, the lobby. It must have been only seconds.

Where
was
Galt?

She was dry-eyed now. She said, “I didn't tell him about Newcome. Galt murdered Newcome.”

“Why would he kill a man?”

“I think they saw each other in the alley the night that Minnie Fitch was killed.”

Dunne and Cassidy came back. The starch had gone out of them. Dunne said, “Roosevelt's in charge now.”

“I didn't tell you—Galt killed Newcome.” She told him about the Italian knife.

“We've got a kid in the lock-up for it.”

“Galt wouldn't let anybody live who'd seen him.”

Dunne sighed. He beat his hat against thigh. He jerked his head at Cassidy, then motioned with his thumb to Manion. “You—let's have a look upstairs.”

“He'll kill you!”

“We'll be the judge of that, Miz Doyle.”

“Don't go into the tunnels.
Please.
”

“His Nibs is going to do that, as soon as his ‘picked squad' get here from Mulberry Street. Cassidy and me are going upstairs to gather
evidence
.” He saw her look of horror. “It's what detectives do, Mrs. Doyle. We're the Murder Squad.
Facts
.” He touched Cassidy's arm, grabbed Manion, who gave a sick look toward Louisa, and they rushed away.

More policemen went past them. Some of them came back a minute or two later as if they didn't know what they were doing. The fire alarm had stopped, she realized. Were there firemen walking the corridors now? Might Galt kill one of them and take his hat and coat and vanish?

“Follow me, men!”

She looked up. Roosevelt, six-gun in hand, was standing by the staircase to the mezzanine. A dozen policemen piled up behind him as, seeing Louisa, he held up a hand to them. “Wait here!”

He strode across to her. His eyes seemed to be open too far; his face was pink with excitement. Dropping his revolver to his side, he said, “Are you the little lady we owe a debt of gratitude?”

“I am Louisa Doyle. And this is Miss Corelli.”

Roosevelt hardly glanced at Marie. “You have suffered greatly, I'm told, and have persevered and come through with a magnificent display of pluck!” He held up a finger. “We shall catch this monster for you! We shall lay him at your feet as a tribute to your courage! Now, it is best if you leave this place and seek medical care.”

“I shall decide what care I seek, thank you.”

“You need your husband in this hour of trial.”

“My husband seems not to be here.” She stared into the pince-nez. She said, “I would advise you not to go into the tunnels, Mr. Roosevelt.”

“The tunnels are precisely where we
will
go! We will trap this madman in there.”

“Galt knows them and you don't.”

“The criminal mind has cunning, but it does not have intelligence. He is a criminal, and he is only one, and we are many. Fear not, dear lady.” He actually bowed and turned back to his troops. “Follow me!”

She watched them go up the staircase. Several had dark lanterns; all had nightsticks and revolvers. She imagined them in the tunnels, Galt playing hide-and-seek, coming up behind them, going down a ladder while they went up at the opposite end, Galt going into one of the rooms while they prowled the darkness. Or was Galt so badly injured from her bullets that he was lying in his own blood somewhere? The idea swept through her like a drug; she thought,
Yes, die!

She shuddered.

“What is it, love?”

“Only thinking.”

“Louisa, my dear little thing, a doctor could give you something to put you to sleep. When you woke, everything would look—”

“Everything would look the same! Everything will always look the same! I don't want to sleep. I want to hear that he's dead. I want to hear that he died from the bullets I put into him. I want to hear that there's some justice for those women and Ethel and me!”

Marie stroked her head. “There, there, my love. Of course you do. And that's what will happen, you'll see. They'll find him up there and he'll be dead. And it will all be like a dream…”

The Pennsylvania Railroad terminal was in Jersey City, which Arthur knew was in New Jersey—although barely so. It lay across the North River from New York, and it was one of the many vexations of his tour that after rattling into Jersey City and reaching the terminal, he wasn't yet at his destination but had to take a ferry to reach New York.

“It's a pity there isn't a bridge,” he had said to a man with whom he'd struck up a conversation as the outskirts of Jersey City flashed by.

“Maybe they'll build one. Or a tunnel. They can build anything nowadays.”

That seemed to be true. Wherever he had gone in the United States, they seemed to be building something new and gigantic, and they always seemed to want to build something even bigger.

“Not the happiest scenery to introduce one to New York,” Arthur had said as the train had slowed and they had passed shacks, pigsties, enormous piles of cinders, ponds of a revolting green color and the factories that made them so. The other man had said something about Jersey City's having its pretty side, but not along the tracks. Arthur had thought that so it always was, even in England: where the railway met the city, the effect was always sour.

He got down and walked along the platform looking for something that would direct him to the ferry. Most people, he figured, would be taking the ferry into New York, so really it was a matter of following the crowd. He looked at his watch—right on time, and in thirty minutes he should be with Louisa. The thought of her wrung his heart; he knew he had been cruel to her, stupidly cruel; he yearned for her and he knew that his own stupidity had put a barrier between them.
Louisa, my little Touie…
Over money—stupid, wretched
money.

What had possessed him, to be so niggardly with her? They had plenty of money; why should she not spend it on female fripperies if she wanted? But he, in his arrogance and his stupidity (as he thought of it), had hardened his heart against her to teach her a lesson! But what lesson? That he was an unfeeling dunce?

He shook his head in irritation with himself. There would be a difficult scene that he hoped would be short. He would be contrite; he would crawl, if he had to. He couldn't have her angry with him, couldn't bear it. She was his Gentle Touie, and to have angered her meant that he had been brutal, savage, a troglodyte: she might as well have a husband who carried a club and dragged her about by the hair.

So, some painful minutes of contrition, and then the pleasure of making up. And then he would show her the tickets he'd bought for her for the rest of the tour, and in a day they would be whisking along the railways together, and everything would be well.

The truth was, he couldn't bear the idea of her not loving him. If some of that love was the love of a child for her father, that was only as it should be.

He stopped at a stall outside the river end of the station and bought a bunch of bright yellow and blue iris. He supposed they had been raised in a “hothouse,” as they called it here. He already had in his satchel a box of something called “handmade fudge,” about which he knew nothing except that he'd sampled a piece and it was terribly sweet but delicious. He had brought only the one satchel, really an overnight bag; the rest of his luggage would be waiting for him in Philadelphia. He hoped.

He had been walking without looking for signs, actually following a party of half a dozen men who seemed to know exactly where they were going. Then he saw over their heads a sign, “To Ferry,” with an arrow, so he knew he was all right. And he was in luck: the ferry was waiting. The men got on; he got on. One of them smiled at the flowers and then at him, as if they shared some male secret about returning to the little woman.

He stood by the rail and watched Jersey City recede—perhaps the best way to see it, he thought. He walked to the side and watched New York City grow larger and then begin to slide by as they turned downstream. That didn't seem too odd to him; he supposed the terminal was somewhere near the tip of the city. They were supposed to dock somewhere called Cortlandt Street.

More of the city went by, mostly only the tops of buildings seen over the huge sheds of the steamship docks that lined this side of the island. Arthur tapped his foot; the scene was pleasant enough, lots of bustle and vigor, that sense of adventure that water travel always brings, but he wanted to be where he could hail a cab and hurry to Louisa.

He looked at his watch. They should be there by now; if they took much longer, he'd be late.

A large park came into view. He felt the ferry turning. Now they would be heading for the shore. But they didn't. They stayed the same distance from New York as they steamed around a green area that his guidebook told him had to be The Battery. If he had cared about history at that moment, he'd have seen it as the site of the original Dutch fortification; as it was, he was seeing it as only something that was not the terminal of the Cortlandt Street ferry.
Where
was Cortlandt Street?

He walked along the rail and said to another passenger, “Do you know when we reach Cortlandt Street?”

“Cortlandt! This is the Brooklyn Annex Line. We're going to Brooklyn.”

“I don't understand.”

“You got on the wrong ferry, my friend. Lots of people do. It's a good way to see lower Manhattan.”

Ahead and to the left, a large bridge soared toward the sky. This, of course, would be the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The ferry began to turn away from it, heading for a shore at the bridge's far end.
Dammit
to
hell!

He was going to be late. Louisa would be impatient, thus even crankier than she must be already. His plan of a speedy contrition over a nice lunch was blasted.

Hell!

He paced the deck until the ferry, seemingly hours later, bumped the dock and almost threw him off his feet. He was one of the first ones off but immediately got lost in the Pennsylvania Railroad terminal. He wanted a convenience rather desperately; he had to ask twice for directions, then got lost again finding his way to the street and a sign that said, “Cabs Here.” There were no cabs there. When, after another five minutes, one pulled up, he threw his satchel and the flowers into it and yanked himself up on the step.

“New Britannic Hotel, and I'm in a hurry.”

“That's across the river, i'n'it?”

“Close to Fifth Avenue. Twenty-Third Street.”

“In New
Yawk.
”

“In New York, yes. I'm in a devil of a hurry, really.”

“If I go inta New Yawk, I got a hell of a time getting a fare back to Brooklyn, y'unnerstand me? I come back to Brooklyn wit'out a fare, I'm buggered.”

“You are required to take me where I wish to go!”

“Not outside a Brooklyn. Brooklyn ain't New Yawk. 'Course, you wanna pay me to come back, I can take you.”

“You'll just pick up a fare and get yourself paid twice for it!”

“I should be so lucky.”

“This is robbery.” He got into the cab. He fumed about the unfairness of it all, the wasted money, the humiliation of being duped by a clown with no more education than the horse he was driving.

The driver waved his whip at something up ahead. “The famous Brooklyn Bridge. Toll is t'ree cents, which you can gimme now or add it to the bill.”

Arthur produced three pennies. They clopped through the toll gate and joined the traffic on the bridge. The driver, who clearly had done this many times before, began a spiel. “This famous bridge was de wonder of de woild when completed in 1883 at a cost of fifteen million dollars. It is five t'ousand, nine hunnert and eighty-nine feet long. Four cables dat used enough wire to go mosta da way around da woild hold up da bridge, which is a hunnert and fifty-t'ree feet above da water. Hey—last week we got a moiderer, he jumped off da bridge to excape da cops, wuddya t'inka dat? And he survived! Least they didn't find him. The Bowery Butcher. Some jump, huh? Where was I?”

***

Louisa sat on, numb. When Marie said she had to leave for a minute to visit the convenience, Louisa begged her not to go. Marie pointed to a policeman at the bottom of the staircase, but Louisa shook her head. Finally, Marie found another woman to stay with her.

The hotel's guests and staff had all been gathered in the lobby, although when the police—now led by a deputy chief until Roosevelt reappeared—saw how many there were, they allowed some to move into the restaurant and the bar. There was no food, however; the police had moved the entire staff out of the kitchens. Marie came back to say that there were long lines at both of the women's rooms on the ground floor, though the men seemed to be moving through theirs fast enough. “Superior equipment,” Marie murmured. “Superior clothing, anyway.”

She had drawn up a chair next to Louisa's. She thanked the other woman, a big, oddly timid woman in a kimono who drifted away; she had been complaining to Louisa about having been ousted from her room before she was dressed. She said she was outraged but sounded no more exercised than if she'd found a bonbon that had a cream rather than a chocolate center.

Mostly, people stayed away from Louisa. She knew that word had spread through the lobby: people stared at her from a distance, whispered to each other. She heard the word “violated” spoken by a female voice. Only Cody came to ask her if he could do anything; Marie waved him away. Irving came toward them then but veered off when Marie shook her head. Mrs. Simmons, with her little dog tucked under her arm, was allowed to come close. All the stuffing had been knocked out of her; when she got close enough to speak, she burst into tears. She couldn't kneel, but she bent over Louisa. “I'm so sorry. So sorry. All these years I've been here, and all the time, he was…he was…” She patted Louisa's shoulder. “You're the bravest little girl I ever saw.”

When she was gone, Louisa whispered, “No, I'm not.” She squeezed Marie's hand. “Do they know everything?”

“I think they've put it together,
chère
. Some of them heard you and Carver and then Dunne.”

At one point, there was a demonstration at Reception, where the deputy chief had set up his command. Several guests were demanding to be let out of the hotel. “You're keeping us locked in here with a murderer!” But the police were taking statements and they wouldn't let anybody leave.

Then the lift descended, and everybody looked toward it before it reached the floor, because it was the first one to come down since the fire alarm had been shut off. There was a collective shrinking back and a collective holding of breath, and then the doors clashed and Manion pushed out an invalid's chair with a draped something in it. Dunne and Cassidy were close behind him. Manion and Dunne both looked at her; the same expression of bewilderment came over their faces when they saw her absolute indifference to them: Louisa was looking not at them but at the chair. She saw the shape of the old man and the shapes of the bottles and jars under the white cloth. One of the jars had spilled or broken and the cloth was wet.

“I'm going to be sick.”

***

Roosevelt was sweating heavily in his wool jacket and thick waistcoat. His revolver felt like a fifty-pound weight in his hand. He had tried shoving it into the waistband of his trousers, but it dragged them down too much and made his braces cut into his shoulders.

It was hot and airless in the tunnels, and there was a smell. Twenty years of collected foulness whose identity he could only guess. He thought he knew men from his time in the West, and he thought he knew criminals, but he didn't know this one at all. How could a man have done such things?

He was leading half his policemen along the third floor. The other half were on the floor below, searching in the opposite direction in hopes that they would prevent the maniac from using the tunnels. Roosevelt, however, knew now how flawed his plan was: there were too many tunnels and too many ladders, and for all they knew, the murderer could be safely going up and down ladders on the other side of the hotel.

“Fire!”

“What?” His voice was hoarse, hushed. He felt exhausted.

“I smell smoke! Smell it?”

Roosevelt stopped. He sniffed. Indeed, there was a smell of heat and burning. “It's the lanterns.”

“No, Commissioner—it's a fire. That's wood smoke!”

“Forward!” He pushed on. They followed him; he could hear their muffled footsteps, see the glow of their dark lanterns. Discipline held.

Until he got to the top of a ladder and could see in the tendrils of smoke curling up in the lantern light. He could smell it, too—burning wood.

“Stay calm, men! I don't want to hear any one of you shout the word ‘fire'! Any man who does will be summarily dismissed from the force! I want the entire unit to right-about-face and proceed in the opposite direction until we find the hatch to one of the doors, and we'll descend and leave these tunnels. Ready? Right—
about
face!
”

A sergeant who had been right behind him and was now right in front of him turned and whispered, “What about the other boys, sir?”

“They're on the floor below—we'll disperse as soon as we're out and keep opening these infernal doors until we find them!”

He didn't question that it was his responsibility. He was picturing the tunnels as they'd been described to him and guessing where the other policemen were.

Somebody called from up ahead that they had the correct hatch and they were opening it.

“Down as fast as you can, men. Break through the door down there if you can't open it. Down you go—down, quickly, quickly…!” He caught the sergeant's sleeve. “Sergeant, you take charge of getting them down to the ground floor and tell the senior man down there that there's a fire—a real fire this time.”

“You ain't coming, sir?”