I started the trail for Katherine and Michael at the very tip of Manhattan Island where the ferry from Ellis Island lands the new immigrants. If they were penniless and knew nobody, then their first priority would be finding themselves a place to stay. I remembered clearly my own arrival from Ellis Island. I had been with Seamus, of course, and he had led me directly to his apartment on Cherry Street, but we had run the gamut of touts, waiting to prey on the newcomers. Those same touts were already lined up, bright and early in the morning, waiting for the first ferry from the island. Some of them clutched signs, some wore sandwich boards: The messages were written in Italian and Yiddish and Russian and God knows what else. A few, however, were written in English. MRS. O’BRIEN’S BOARDINGHOUSE, CHEAP AND CLEAN. ROOM TO LET. GOOD SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD . . . as well as the more ominous, PETER’S PAWN SHOP, 38 THE BOWERY, GOOD PRICE PAID FOR YOUR VALUABLES. Some men carried no signs. They lurked in nearby saloon doorways and watched and waited. Maybe they were hoping to find unaccompanied young girls, or even young men, but you could tell just by looking at them that they were waiting to prey on the weak and the unprotected.
I walked among the signs, taking down the addresses of the various boardinghouses and rooms for let. Then I started to visit them, one by one, beginning with those closest to the ferry dock. If they had arrived late in the day and were tired, they’d have chosen the closest.
Several hours later I was tired and footsore, and none the wiser. I had visited ten boardinghouses, God knows how many rooms for let, and none of them had heard of Katherine and Michael Kelly.
From what I knew, the Irish slum areas were along the waterfront, facing the East River, stretching from Cherry Street, where I had first lived with Nuala, down to Fulton Street where she now lived. There was also an area on the other side of the island, also along the docks, where my former employer, Paddy Riley, had lived, and then further up there was Hell’s Kitchen—although I didn’t look forward to going back there. I’d just have to start on the Lower East Side and work my way around. A daunting task, but I couldn’t think of any way around it. Again I was reminded how little I knew about being an investigator. Paddy would have probably been able to locate the missing couple with a few well placed questions. He had the contacts on both sides of the fence—the police and the underworld. I had no contacts, anywhere. Everything I did was by trial and error.
I decided to start on Cherry Street and comb the area methodically. It was now midday and commerce was in full swing. The saloons were open and a parade of men drifted in and out. It was likely that Michael Kelly had slaked his thirst in one of these. He was, from his photo, an attractive young man, with the ability to charm both Major Faversham and his daughter. He’d have been noticed. But women did not go into saloons. Again I was reminded how much easier this job was for a man.
I had to be content with stopping women on the street and asking about local boardinghouses or landlords who let cheap rooms. At each of these establishments I gave the same emotional plea about my dear lost cousin Katherine and her husband Michael. I asked about other boardinghouses nearby. Usually the answer was similar, “There’s herself down at Number Eighty-nine on the corner. Calls herself a boardinghouse but it’s so dirty even the mice won’t stay there.” I worked my way down Cherry Street, up Water Street, and then I moved inland—Monroe, Madison, Henry, and their cross streets. It was hopeless. In this area of crowded tenements almost every building had rooms that were let, sublet, and sub-sublet. Half the families took in boarders. And there were enough people called Kelly to send me on several wild-goose chases.