Secret of the White Rose (13 page)

Remembering my own altercation with Drayson, I added, “Also, I can’t imagine Al Drayson was a cooperative prisoner, especially if a guard approached for no good reason. The message would have smoothed their interaction.”

Another thought nagged at me. “Why you, though?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Mei Lin said, her face deadpan. “I am just stupid Chinese girl who cannot write well. What can you expect, right?”

Now I understood. “People would assume you were not educated. They wouldn’t question the hyphens. Still, Drayson never received your messages,” I said.

She shrugged. “He was unlucky man.”

“Yet you sympathize with him … approve of what he did?” I asked cautiously.

A flash of anger crossed her face as she ground the remains of her cigarette into an empty saucer. “I don’t like violence. No one does.” She cocked her head back. “But people don’t listen. If they fear us, maybe they pay attention to us.”

“Were you aware of a plot to kill Judge Jackson?” I asked.

Her eyes were serious when they met my own. “I know no one planning to kill a judge. Why would they?”

“It might create a mistrial that would free Drayson—or, at the least, prolong his life by delaying his date with the executioner.”

“But he no longer matters. His work is done.”

Now I was genuinely puzzled. “You think even if he lives, he can do no more? Isn’t he one of you—of use to your cause?”

She shrugged. “No more than anyone else. Others take his place. He not so special.”

“Perhaps others think differently,” I said, watching her reaction closely.

But she was noncommittal. “They might. But why waste effort on just one man?”

Someone shouted in Chinese from the kitchen.

Mei Lin sighed. “I need go. Have I answered your questions, Detective?”

“For now, yes,” I said, and thanked her for her time. “If you think of anything—or hear anything—please let me know.” I passed her my card with the Nineteenth Precinct telephone number, knowing she would never call.

*   *   *

“Do you believe her?” Isabella asked the moment we were out of earshot, even before the restaurant door closed behind us.

“It’s hard to say.” I shepherded her through crowded sidewalks toward Canal Street, where we would have better success finding a hansom cab. “What she told us makes perfect sense—and yet I believe she is fully capable of spinning a good tale. To her credit, precisely because she seems smart, I believe she would not have told us about her cipher messages to Drayson had she truly been involved in the judge’s murder. And had she known about the musical cipher at the murder scene, she’d never have acknowledged writing any sort of cipher.”

“Yet it’s a coincidence that may point to someone within the anarchist organization.”

“Exactly. It’s a solid link between the anarchists and the judge: someone is behind this who is a code writer.”

We continued north on Mott Street, stepping around garbage that had simply been dumped on the sidewalk. It felt more deserted than usual; with tonight’s damp chill in the air, the outdoor vending stands that typically lined the street were empty.

“Would you mind if I took the cab with you only partway?” I asked.

“You’d like to get your conversation with the Strupps over with,” she said. “It’s fine, Simon. I understand.” She placed her leather-gloved hand on top of my arm for the briefest of moments.

We hailed a passing cab, I helped her in, and she arranged her voluminous skirt onto the seat, making room for me beside her.

“There’s a workers’ demonstration backing up traffic in the Bowery ahead,” the cab driver called back to us. “May take an extra few minutes.”

After I assured him it was fine, he swung his horses to the east, toward the river, before cutting north on First Avenue. The neighborhood deteriorated over the next few blocks as the saloons and gambling dens of the Bowery gave way to block after block of abandoned buildings and street beggars—many of them mere boys of no more than eight or nine. The cab drew near Third Street and we were in what had been Little Germany—a place at once strange and oddly familiar.

Isabella had been gazing out the window intently. Now, she turned to me and spoke as though she knew my thoughts. “This was your neighborhood, wasn’t it, Simon?”

“It was,” I said stiffly. A lifetime ago.

The neighborhood was a ghost town now, for most survivors had done as I had and left. Most had gone to the Upper East Side; others went to Astoria or the Bronx. The schools and shops I had known were now closed—and though new children and merchants had slowly arrived to take their places, the neighborhood neither looked nor felt the same.

Every block was marked in my memory. We passed the building where Andrew Stiel had lived with his wife and four children; he took his own life after his family was killed aboard the
Slocum
. Fifth Street was where the Felzkes and the Hartungs had lived; the
Slocum
had wiped out those families, as well.

Then I saw it: number 120 First Avenue. One of the more rundown tenements on the street, it was where I’d grown up—and a reminder of the vast divide that separated me from Isabella, a chasm of class and upbringing that seemed insurmountable. Her eyes seemed to widen as she took in the sight.

My onetime home was a brown box of a building, the most basic of brick structures unmarked by any detail of note. This evening it was nearly obscured by the vast array of laundry that seemed to connect each window. Those inside had needed to do their wash, and all manner of shirts, trousers, and bedclothes remained strung on the wire lines, despite the damp.

I leaned forward to speak to the driver. “Would you stop here, please?”

Then Isabella turned to me, her face sympathetic. “May I see it?”

“Of course,” I said, giving her a reassuring smile. “Just not tonight.”

I exited the wagon and handed the driver sufficient fare to take Isabella home. I tipped my hat to her and, as the driver started his horses, crossed to the other side of First Avenue and my former building. I looked up to the fifth-floor window overlooking the street. That had been our flat—a fifth-floor walk-up of the most miserable kind. Three rooms—a back room, front room, and kitchen—had housed the four of us. Three of us, really—for my father was rarely there. My mother had done her best to decorate it. She’d placed mantel scarves on all our shelves and displayed her dishes. She’d painted our back room walls green and put up a red paisley wallpaper in the front room. But all the colors and scarves hadn’t obscured what was a meager existence. And it was likely just as squalid an existence inside as it had ever been. I’d managed to escape all that—and I’d no desire to go back, even for the most fleeting of moments.

But tonight, I must.

Hannah’s building was the one next to mine—only slightly less decrepit and forlorn. With a deep breath, I steeled myself, entered, and ascended a narrow wooden staircase that reeked of urine.

On the third floor, I turned toward the Strupp apartment—number 3C. Perhaps they had moved, I thought for a fleeting second. But no—I smelled the odor of fresh-cooked brisket, which had been Mrs. Strupp’s speciality.

It had to be done. Waiting would make this no easier.

I knocked.

It seemed several minutes—but was in fact only seconds—before the door opened. A petite woman no taller than five feet two inches stood before me. Her jet-black hair, now heavily streaked with gray, was pulled back tightly into a bun, and her olive skin was heavily wrinkled from worry and age.

She opened her mouth—and suddenly her eyes registered a spark of recognition.

“Simon,” she said with a sigh of relief. “You’ve come.”

And before I could say a word in answer, she had enveloped me in a tight hug.

CHAPTER 8

120 First Avenue, Apartment 3C. 8:30
P.M.

The living room was as I remembered it: crammed from wall to wall with broken-down furniture and smelling of beef and potatoes. I had spent so many wonderful evenings here with Hannah and the Strupps, my surrogate family at the time, that I could describe the apartment with my eyes closed. Nothing was noticeably different since my last and final visit here two years ago. Yet the surroundings were drabber, the furniture more threadbare than I recalled. I wondered what had changed more: this third-floor tenement flat that was the center of my life just a few short years earlier—or myself, now that I had left this existence behind.

The Strupps had never boasted much in the way of material possessions. Hannah’s father, who owned a drugstore on the corner of East Ninth Street and First Avenue, was too kindly a man to run a successful business. He would extend his neighbors’ monthly accounts as a matter of course, with the inevitable result that some took advantage of his leniency and never paid at all. “You need medicine more than I need money,” he’d tell his elderly customers—even as Mrs. Strupp complained under her breath that “you’d think we were running a charity, not a pharmacy.”

The realization that Mrs. Strupp was talking to me shook me back into the present.

“Sit, sit,” she urged.

I complied with an awkward half-smile, taking a seat on a sagging orange sofa that was riddled with stains.

“I’ve made a fresh batch of knoephla soup. Please, have some.”

She beamed in anticipation. Knoephla soup had always been her specialty, and she prided herself on the light, fluffy dumplings that filled it.

“I just finished dinner,” I replied, shaking my head. But the moment I saw the disappointment that filled her eyes, I added, “But I’ll taste a small bowl. I haven’t forgotten how delicious your dumplings are.”

She was all smiles again as she stepped into the small kitchen just to the room’s left. I heard the sound of a metal ladle clanging against a pot as I surveyed more of the room: the coat rack with Mrs. Strupp’s thick green shawl flung across it; the peeling floral wallpaper, once red but now faded to the palest pink; the simple gaslights on either side of the sofa that provided some light to the room. That was when I saw the table, nestled behind a rattan chair. In dim gaslight, I had missed it at first. There, to the left of the window, placed so as to be protected from the rain—and it was covered with photographs. Unable to help myself, I drew nearer and saw Hannah: first as a budding beauty at sixteen with a winsome smile; then in our engagement photograph, me beside her, stiff and self-conscious yet beaming with happiness. I looked absurdly young: another man, living a life that was no longer my own.

I had returned to my seat by the time she appeared with two bowls of soup, handing one to me and placing another on the table.

“For Hans,” she explained, indicating her husband. “He will be home any moment.”

I glanced at my watch. It was half past nine—which meant he was working late hours at the pharmacy, a fact she soon confirmed.

“Times are tough,” she said. “So many neighbors have left since…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. I knew better than anyone how many, like me, had chosen to move away in the months that followed. I’d certainly found my own grief easier to bear when it wasn’t mirrored in the faces of everyone around me.

“Hans works hard yet brings home less than ever,” she said, her eyes clouding with worry.

Then just as suddenly, she brightened and asked, “But tell me about you, Simon. Are you still working up north?”

“Up north” meant Dobson, the small village in Westchester County just fifteen miles north of Manhattan where I had spent two years forgetting my life in the city—or certainly trying my best to do so. I knew that for the Strupps, anything north of Fourteenth Street was uncharted territory—so from their perspective, my move to Dobson had taken me beyond the pale. I had often wondered why the same people who possessed enough spirit of adventure to come to America in the first place chose to limit their existence to a few square blocks once here. The Strupps had done just that—and they certainly were not alone.

“I just returned,” I said, explaining to her between spoonfuls of soup that I was a detective working for Declan Mulvaney, now a precinct captain.

“Ah my.” She clapped her hands together in delight, for she had known Mulvaney well when I first joined the force and he was my partner on patrol in the Lower East Side. Her expression turned wistful as she added, “You boys have come far. As I always knew you would.”

What remained unspoken was her hope—now forever lost—that I would take Hannah with me.

A key turned in the lock and a tall man with gray whiskers, a thick handlebar mustache, and gentle eyes came into the room.

“Hans,” she whispered, “look who’s here.”

He came farther into the room, turned to me—and his look of surprise was almost immediately replaced by a broad grin as he came over to pump my right hand vigorously. I managed not to wince, though the shot of pain that raced up and down my arm was terrific. He had forgotten my injury—and that was a good thing.

As he ate his soup hungrily, the three of us talked of the past two years, focusing on mutual acquaintances and changes in the neighborhood. Neither of the Strupps showed any sign of resentment or anger toward me—a fact that did little to assuage my own sense of guilt. What we avoided was any mention of Hannah, for my own presence here after two years’ absence was more than reminder enough. In this room where time seemed to stand still, her ghost hovered around me, threatening to take hold of my long-fought-for sanity.