Una maintained her hunchbacked guise for several blocks until she was safely hidden among the towering brick and wooden tenements of the city’s lower wards. There, she loosened the travel bag from her back but didn’t bother to adjust her coat. The streets were thick with a week’s worth of garbage, horse manure, and mud. No sense in dirtying the good side of her coat when there was no one around to deceive or impress.
She walked with a measured pace, neither too fast nor too slow—just like someone who didn’t have on her person an engraved cigarette case and a handful of stolen trinkets that could get her sent straight to the workhouse on Blackwell’s Island. Her stomach growled, just as it had at the station. If it weren’t for that boy, she’d already have sold off her loot at Marm Blei’s and be enjoying a pint of ale with her supper at Hayman’s grocer. She knew better than to get tangled in other people’s business. The first rule on these streets was to keep your head down and look out for yourself. Her mother had been a do-gooder, and look where that had landed her—burned to a crisp like an overcooked steak. Never mind where that had left Una.
She gave a nod to Officer O’Malley at the corner of Bowery and Grand Street. She’d convinced him she worked in a soap factory, and Marm Blei paid him to believe it. He tipped his hat in return and continued on his way. Even so, the cigarette case felt like a weight in her pocket. She’d feel much better when it was exchanged for a pocketful of coins.
A block and a half farther on, she spotted a tall man in a dark blue frock coat leaning against a lamppost. Her eyes caught the glint of silver at his throat before recognizing his face—Barney Harris. He was pretending, rather clumsily, to read a magazine, as if it was perfectly normal for a well-dressed reporter to be lingering in the slums. He shifted nervously, his eyes darting over the top of the magazine every few seconds. The screeching brakes of the nearby el train made him jump; he straightened up abruptly, fumbling with his magazine and nearly stumbling off the curb.
Una chuckled, even as she slowed. Maybe she ought to turn down the next alley to avoid him. Marm Blei hated being kept past supper. Besides, Una didn’t feel much like gabbing. But she owed him for giving her a false alibi last month at the opera house after a man accused her of stealing his signet ring.
The soprano had been magnificent that night. And if the coppers had taken her back to the station and frisked her, they’d have found more than the man’s ring hidden in the folds and flounces of her skirt. But when they’d questioned her, she told the coppers she’d been in the company of Mr. Harris all night. He had, in fact, sought her out during the first intermission and shyly complimented her dress (stolen, of course, and a bit too tight). So the yarn she’d spun for the coppers wasn’t entirely a lie. Thank God Barney correctly read the look on her face when she approached with the coppers and, after a moment’s bubbling, corroborated her story.
Una owed him. And she hated owing anyone. It went against her rules. So despite the plunder weighing down her skirts, she continued in his direction.
“You stand out around here like soot on snow,” she said, approaching him. “You take the First Avenue el in the wrong direction again?”
“Miss Kelly! A pleasure to see you. I hoped you’d be by sooner or later.” “You beat dirt all the way here from Newspaper Row to see little ol’ me?
I don’t know whether to feel flattered or frightened.”
“Flattered, I assure you. I’d have brought flowers if I thought you fancied such things.”
“I fancy gold. Diamonds. Imported French silk.”
“I’d try that too if I didn’t think you’d take it straight to Marm Blei’s back door.”
She shrugged. “A girl’s gotta eat.”
He pursed his lips, and made a soft hmm sound. His gray eyes narrowed. Not in disapproval—Una had seen enough of those squinty-eyed looks to know—but in bemusement. Like she were some rare bird in a curiosity shop, songless and molting. A bird in need of saving. Could he be the man to do it? his eyes seemed to say. Could he spring the lock of her unfortunate circumstances?
He was a decent man, Barney was. Handsome in a boyish kind of way. Had enough brass in the family coffers to afford silly ornamentation like the silver tie pin he wore. (His wages at the New York Herald certainly
wouldn’t be enough.) Trouble was, he had a cage of his own—bigger, perhaps, and cast in finer metal—waiting for her if she took his bait.
So instead of batting her eyelashes and smiling shyly, she jabbed him on the shoulder, swiping his pin while she was at it. “I know ya didn’t come all this way to whisper sweet nothings in my ear. What do ya want?”
He frowned and tucked the magazine under his arm. “You know anything about the murder last Saturday on Cherry Street?”
“You mean Big-nosed Joe? What of it?” “How’d it happen?”
“Heard he was strangled. Ain’t heard much else.”
A woman pushing a wheelbarrow full of second-hand stockings trudged toward them. “Fifteen cents a pair,” she called to anyone in earshot. A greasy rag covered her head, and a faded shawl hung around her shoulders. Una grabbed a pair and examined the darning. “Five.”
“Ten,” the woman said.
Una held the cotton stockings to her nose. They smelled enough of soap to wager they’d recently been washed. She fished through her pockets and handed the woman a dime. Barney, she noticed, had trained his eyes on the fishmonger and his slimy wares across the street, his cheeks flushed red.
“That eel there what got your color up or these here stockings?” she said, dangling the limp cotton in front of him before shoving them into her bag. If he blushed like that over a pair of stockings, what would he do if he caught sight of her chemise? Una half considered dropping her bag like she had at the train station to find out.
Barney cleared his throat and pulled a pencil from his pocket. He patted his other pockets—presumably in search of a notepad—then sighed and unfurled the magazine. “Undergarments aside, you mentioned Big-nosed Joe was strangled. By whom?”
Una shrugged. “Take your pick. He played so much cards half the Bend claimed he owed them money.”
“The police report said he had ten dollars and a gold watch on him when they inventoried his belongings in the morgue. If someone killed him over a gambling debt, why not clean him out?”
“Maybe whoever done it didn’t have time.”
“But he had time to strangle him. A knife or bullet would be faster.” “And likely louder.”
“That’s a good point.” He scribbled a few words on the magazine cover.
“What do the police say?” she asked.
“They chalk it up to an argument over cards. Hazard of the profession, so to speak.”
“Probably was.” Joe was as famous for his temper as he was for his beak- like nose.
“But what if it wasn’t? Remember there was that prostitute found strangled on Water Street last month?”
Martha Ann. She’d been a girl at one of the fancy houses for a while, making better money in one night than Una earned in a week of hard grifting. But then, some years back, one of her regulars got jealous of another regular and carved up her face like a pumpkin. She’d been walking the streets ever since.
Una shifted her bag from one hand to the other and spoke past the thickness in her throat. “Like them coppers said, hazard of the profession.”
“Both of them were strangled with a rope or belt of some sort. What if they were killed by the same person?”
“A crazed strangler running about the slums? Now, that I would have heard of.”
“Not if he wasn’t from around here.”
“Especially if he wasn’t from around here.” She held up his silver pin. “Like I said, you outsiders stick out like soot on snow.”
He smiled at her and took back his pin. “Point taken. Just keep your ear to the ground, will you?”
“I always do.”
Barney pocketed the pin along with his pencil. He tore off the magazine’s cover and tossed the rest of it to the ground.
“Hey!” Una said, snatching it up.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think . . .there’s not much worth reading inside.
Nothing that . . .”
“Nothing that would interest the likes of me, huh? Probably forgot I could read at all.” She brushed a limp onion skin off the top page. “And here you were talking about bringing me flowers just a moment ago.”
Barney’s cheeks flushed again, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “I . . . er . . .”
Una let him fumble for words, enjoying his discomfort a moment before giving him a nudge with her elbow. “I’m only joshing you. Can’t let good privy paper like this go to waste.”
He gave a tight laugh and glanced back at the fish stand, avoiding her gaze. Una slipped her hand in his pocket, snagged the pin, and walked away. “See you around, Barney. I’ll let you know if I hear anything about your mysterious killer.”
She was a few yards away before he called out to her. Una turned around. “Be careful.”
