Una spent the next day in the back room of Marm Blei’s dry goods shop, buffing away the maker’s marks on a cache of metalware. It was tedious work, and as the hours wore on, Una itched to be out on the streets.
Every so often, the doorbell would jingle, and a new buyer or seller would appear. Una watched from the corner as Marm Blei hustled and haggled. Most of the small, less expensive goods she acquired were sold alongside her stock of legitimately purchased items in the store. But large, unique, or expensive loot was either melted down or hidden away with a particular back-door buyer in mind.
Una admired Marm Blei’s shrewdness even as she begrudged her controlling hand. True, the money and goods Una forked over to her day after day paid for the cadre of aldermen and judges and coppers who—most of the time—looked the other way and let Una and the rest of Marm Blei’s underlings be. If Una had been arrested yesterday, she’d be out on bail already, and, likely as not, the charges would be dropped. If not, Marm Blei had lawyers on retainer.
But Una hadn’t been arrested. She’d gotten out of the scrape using her wits. Sure, a thief like Deidre needed Marm Blei’s protection. Her pickpocketing skill was rudimentary at best, and her ambition extended about as far as Una could spit.
Una wanted more. Precisely what more, she wasn’t sure. But she certainly wouldn’t find it here, buffing and polishing, a mere hand puppet. When the curtain fell and the hat went out, she, Marm Blei, reaped all the coins.
Well, Una would be doing some reaping of her own later tonight. The cuff links she’d pinched last night were worth over a hundred dollars. Traveling Mike wouldn’t give her more than thirty for them, maybe forty- five if she promised to send more of her business his way. All that money was going straight into the tin. She wouldn’t drink or gamble away a cent of it. A nice dinner at Delmonico’s wouldn’t hurt, though. Filet de boeuf and
asperges hollandaise. Glace napolitaine for dessert. A fine cordial afterward. Never mind they wouldn’t seat her unless she spruced up her duds and found a man to accompany her. But that could be arranged. Una could almost taste the sweetness on her tongue.
* * *
By late afternoon, Una had buffed the goblets clean of any markings their former owner could identify.
“You’ve a good eye for detail, sheifale,” Marm Blei said, inspecting her work.
“Can I go then?”
“Always in a rush.”
“I . . . er . . . wanted to make it to the pig market before sundown.
Damaged eggs go for a song there.”
Marm Blei shook her head and waved her off. A strange, needling sensation pricked the back of Una’s neck as she grabbed her coat. Guilt? They were only a lousy pair of cuff links, and it wasn’t as if Marm Blei was hurting for business. She mumbled “gut Shabbes” over her shoulder and hurried out before her nerve failed her. Yesterday when she’d seen the boy about to be hauled over to the police, she’d forgotten rule number one: Look out for yourself. She wouldn’t be forgetting that rule again.
* * *
Outside, puffy gray clouds choked the sky, and a light snow was falling. Just in case Marm Blei or one of her eyes were watching, Una hurried home by way of Hester Street, waving off the miserable street urchins offering to brush away the snow-turned-mud from her path. Peddlers crowded the sidewalks, calling out their wares. Tin cups for two cents. Hats for a quarter. Tattered coats—good as new!—for a dollar. The smell of freshly churned horseradish and warm bread mingled with the stench drifting up through the sewer grates. The gong of an ambulance sounded above the din, and the horse and wagon dashed past, splattering Una with mud.
“By jiminy,” she muttered, brushing off her coat and shaking out her skirts. When she’d first seen these hospital wagons some dozen years before, what a marvel they’d seemed. Now, they were just another nuisance.
Una arrived home to find her roommates arguing over whose turn it was to lug the ash bin down to the trash. “I did it last week,” she said before they could wrangle her into their argument. She hung her coat on a peg on the wall and hurried to the bedroom. It took three tries to light a candle. Once the sputtering flame had gathered into a steady burn, she eased shut the door. Una had known her roommates for years, Deidre since they were twelve years old. They drank together. Brawled together. Went on heists together. They were the closest thing to friends Una had. But that didn’t mean she trusted them. They all kept a stash of money hidden somewhere— in the wall, beneath a loose floorboard, behind a secret panel in their trunk. Una even slept with her boots on, a holdover from when she first left home and slept on the streets.
She hadn’t left by choice. Not really. Soon after her mother’s death, she and her father were evicted from their home. He’d given up all pretense of looking for steady work and spent his days and his money drinking. All their nice things—from the crystal vase and silver tea service Great- grandma Callaghan had brought from Ireland to the lace tidies her mother had sewn to the porcelain doll Una had gotten for Christmas just the year before—were sold. They moved to a boarding house and then a tenement in Five Points. By then she’d gotten used to rifling through his pockets for loose change to buy bread, milk, or potatoes.
Whereas before, Una had attended school, taken piano lessons, and practiced cross-stitching, now she spent her days wandering the streets, scrounging for coal or picking through trash barrels. Her father was often gone to some saloon or other by the time she returned home. One day, she opened the door to their dingy flat to find the last of their meager possessions gone—taken by the rent collector to cover a month’s worth of debt—and another family moved in. All she had left of her old life was her mother’s necklace, tucked beneath the collar of her dress. She searched for her father long into the night, finding him in a back alley drinking hole, far too in his cups to comprehend what had happened. The other men in the bar laughed as she pleaded and tried to rouse him to his feet. In the end, she gave up, filching the last coins from his pocket and stomping off into the night.
The Points in the daytime was a crass, boisterous place. In the dark hours after sunset, it was sinister and menacing. She found a secluded corner in the rear yard of a nearby tenement but didn’t sleep. Each time her eyelids
would droop closed, a creak or clatter or scream would startle her awake. The next night passed much the same. She caught snatches of sleep during the daytime only to be roused by a copper’s boot or billy club.
Experience was an unforgiving teacher, but Una learned quickly. After her boots were stolen when she took them off to sleep, she never let her eyes close again without anything of value hidden away or securely strapped to her body. She spent a few days with a band of river pirates, then fell in with a gang of other street children who taught her how to fight and forage and cuss up a storm. Then with Marm Blei, who taught her how to steal.
Una had run into her father again a few years later. Instead of a saloon, he was stumbling out of an opium den. She hesitated before approaching him, worried he wouldn’t recognize her. She was clean and respectably dressed again—Marm Blei insisted everyone in her crew look presentable—and at least a head taller. At first, his glazed eyes stared right through her. Then, for a moment, they seemed to clear. “Una, a stór!”
My treasure. He hadn’t called her that since she was a small girl. Before her mother’s death. Before the war. When they’d all been whole and healthy and happy. But just as quickly, the glassy, faraway look returned to his eyes. She slipped several dollars into his pocket and watched him shuffle away.
Una shrugged off the memory. Rule number fourteen: Don’t waste time on the past. She listened at the bedroom door to ensure her roommates were still fighting about the ash bin, then retrieved her tin from the wall. The ruby-and-silver cuff links glimmered in the candlelight. A handsome pair, to be sure. Solid and well made. She’d not take less than forty for them. She slipped them into one of the hidden pockets of her skirt along with Barney’s pin. Maybe she’d sell it after all, depending on Traveling Mike’s offer. She grabbed her brass knuckles too—just in case he tried to nab the cuff links without paying up.
Una had only just secreted the tin box back inside the wall when the door opened, and Deidre traipsed in.
“I drew the damned short stick.” She flung herself down on the nest of straw and rags that was her bed. None of them had proper mattresses or bed frames to raise them off the floor. But someday Una would. The cuff links stowed in her pocket were proof that she was moving up in the world.
“Best get it over with before the snow gets worse,” she said. “I’ll give you a nickel if you do it.”
“Not a chance.”
“Fine. You got any paper I can use in the privy? Might as well make the most of my trip.”
She grabbed Barney’s magazine, tore out the first few pages, and handed them to Deidre. “Here.”
“What’s it say?”
“What do you care? You’re just gonna wipe your ass with it.”
“That don’t mean I don’t like to know what’s going on in the world.
Besides, I like it when you read. Gonna learn myself someday.”
“Yeah, right after you find yourself a rich husband and move into a house on Millionaire’s Row.”
Deidre wadded up one of the sheets of paper and threw it at her. “You swallow a hornet’s nest on your way home today?”
“No.” Una stood and straightened her skirt, careful not to rattle the cuff links in her pocket. As an afterthought, she wedged the magazine into another pocket—a page or two might come in handy if she found herself splashed with mud again—and then extended a hand to Deidre, hauling her up from the floor. “Sorry.”
“Don’t know why you get so sour when Marm Blei has you work in the shop. Wish she’d ask me.”
“It’s a punishment, not a reward. Besides, you ain’t careful enough. Remember last time when you forgot to remove the name stitched inside that fancy fur coat? Marm Blei had a hell of a time explaining that one to the coppers.”
Deidre pouted. “That weren’t but one time.”
“And the crystal cup you mixed up and put with the glass ones? How about that time you—”
“Okay. Uncle!”
A backward glance to be sure the flap of plaster that covered her secret trove lay smooth against the wall, and Una followed Deidre from the room.
“Where you off to?” Deidre asked when Una grabbed her coat.
“Nowhere that’s any of your business.” Her words came out sharper than Una intended, and she added, “Just for some eggs.” Rule number twenty- seven: Once you pick a lie, stick to it.
“I’ll come along,” Deidre said.
“No!” Una all but shouted. She took a calming breath and continued, “I ain’t gonna wait while you shlep the ash bin down to the yard and back. I’ll
bring you some back.”
“And a pickle. Or maybe one of those sausages from Grutz-macher’s.” “I’m not going that way,” Una said over calls for sausages from her other
roommates too.
“I bet she’s off to see that reporter she’s sweet on,” Deidre said to them and then smirked at Una. “We can all clear out for a while if ya wanna bring him back here.”
Una shook her head while the women laughed, not bothering to correct them. Better they think she was on her way to shake the sheets with Barney than guess at the truth. She flung her scarf around her neck and left them to their snickering.
Outside, snow continued to fall but slower than before. A fat flake here and there. Like the clouds had turned themselves inside out and were shaking out the final dregs. Una walked quickly but measured. She met passersby in the eye and smiled. Twilight had crept over the city, offering Una a few minutes of shadowy cover until the streetlamps flickered on.
The neighborhood had transformed since she’d been a girl. Brick tenements had replaced many of the old wooden ones with fire escapes crawling up their sides. The new rubber factory spewed smoke into the air. The trash didn’t pile up quite as high along the streets. She heard Italian spoken now. Greek and Chinese. The thick Irish brogue like that of her father had vanished from many voices like a wrinkle ironed out of a shirt.
But some things never changed. Street children still huddled over steam grates. Beggars rattled their tins. Gangs prowled the alleys. The Democrat ticket won. A boxing match, a free lunch, or a burning building were still the surest things to draw a crowd. And there was no such thing as an honest thief.
At the corner of Centre and Pearl Streets, Una stopped. Pallid light dribbled from the saloon’s frosted windows across the street. She glanced casually in the direction that she’d come from to be sure no one from Marm Blei’s crew had followed her. A few paces off, a man cranked out a tune on his barrel organ. Una stepped closer, listening to his song as she scanned the street again. Night’s deepening shadows made it impossible to see the faces of anyone more than half a block away, but Una couldn’t wait around forever. She tossed a coin to the small monkey roped to the organ grinder’s side and crossed the street to the saloon.
Inside, the air was warm and heavy with the scent of stale beer. A quick sweep of the dimly lit room, and she spotted Traveling Mike at a table in the far corner. A snifter of brandy sat before him. His wooden peddler’s case rested on the floor beside his chair. Unlike Marm Blei, who seldom did business outside of her store, Traveling Mike was a nomad who conducted his fencing business in rear tenement yards and alleyways and abandoned cellars throughout the city. Operating entirely out of his dingy peddler’s case, he couldn’t move large items like fur coats or marble vases, but if a thief had something hot—a diamond ring, a gold watch, a pair of ruby cuff links—and needed it gone quick, Traveling Mike was your man. Word on the street was that he cleared thousands of dollars a year.
Una was one of only two women in the joint, the other being an old, leather-skinned barmaid, and every eye followed Una as she crossed the room toward Traveling Mike. The din of voices and clanking glasses diminished to a murmur. An ambulance bell clamored from the streets outside. The soggy hem of Una’s skirt swished over the sawdust-strewn floor.
Instead of sitting down at his table, she took a chair one table over beside a middle-aged man with an overly waxed mustache. She smiled at the man and said, “Buy me a drink?”
He blinked once, then stood so quickly he nearly toppled his chair and scurried to the bar. Una waited until he was out of earshot before whispering, “I’ve got some swag that’ll interest you.”
She didn’t look at Traveling Mike as she spoke but knew he’d heard her by his soft chuckle.
“That so?”
“I certainly ain’t here for the weak beer and lousy company.”
He chuckled again. “I figured you were one of Marm Blei’s girls. You know she doesn’t take kindly to traitors.” His slow, drawling accent marked him as a Southerner, but there was a dangerous undertone to his words.
“That’s my business, not yours.” The mustached man was coming back with her drink, and she chanced a quick look at Traveling Mike. “Well, are you interested?”
He tossed back his brandy in a single gulp and got to his feet. “Wait ten minutes, then meet me in the alley, half a block down Pearl Street.” He grabbed his peddler’s case and headed for the door just as the mustached man returned to his seat, sliding half a pint of pale beer across the table to her.
Cheap bastard. He could’ve at least sprung for a full pint. The beer tasted like rat piss—or what Una imagined rat piss would taste like—but she needed any courage she could muster. Traveling Mike had it right: Marm Blei didn’t take kindly to turncoats.
She managed to pass the next ten minutes without saying much; the mustached man was more than willing to fill the silence. She allowed his eyes to roam over her, from her face to the curve of her breasts and the way her skirt flared around her thighs. But when his hand followed suit, she slapped it away and stood up. Half a pint of lousy beer only bought so much, and her time was up anyway.
Outside, the snow continued to fall sluggishly. Una scanned the street before making her way toward the alley where Traveling Mike had told her to meet him. As she walked, she listened for the creak of the saloon door, making sure no one was following her. The air had grown colder with the deepening dark, and her breath rose like steam from her lips. Ice crystals gathered on the brim of her hat. She peered into the shadowed corners and doorways, reassuring herself she was alone.
Just as she reached the mouth of the alley, a hand shot out and grabbed her.
