I stood watching them run through dead leaves, hearing their whoops of exuberance and started the letter to Major Faversham in my mind. “It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that your daughter appears to have met an untimely end.”
It was a pity that I couldn’t confirm the awful truth. It would leave the parents never being completely sure. It did seem to be the most logical answer, however. Either Michael had crossed the Eastmans or run afoul of a rival gang and wound up dead in an alleyway. But I couldn’t believe that Katherine had drowned herself in despair. That girl in the photograph with the proud stare and determined chin didn’t look as if she would give in so easily. She had, after all, dared to leave a life of privilege to run off with a family servant. That took spunk. Being pregnant and alone in a strange city, and in grief for her new husband too, might have driven her over the edge, but I just couldn’t see Katherine flinging herself into the East River. If she truly had wound up in there, then somebody else threw her in. Which meant that I should look into this a little further.
Hold your horses, I told myself severely. I had promised myself never again to get involved in a criminal case. I was not the police. I could share my suspicions with Daniel and he could look into it or not as he chose. My work on this case was done. I had located Michael and Katherine and now I all had to do was report the sorry news and collect my fee. It left a bad taste in my mouth, but that was that. On to Lowenstein’s in the morning and back to a life of drudgery.
“You’re no fun today, Molly,” Shamey said, tugging at my skirt.
Twelve
Whereas Mostel and Klein’s garment factory had been in a loft, up several flights of narrow stairs, Lowenstein’s was in a basement just off Houston Street, at the northern boundary of the Jewish quarter. From the heights to the depths, I thought as I stood outside the building on a cold, damp morning and peered down into a narrow well area. The first chill of winter was in the air and the horse that pulled a wagonload of barrels past me was snorting with a dragon’s breath. I felt frozen to the bone and wished I had worn Paddy’s lovely long wool cape. But sweatshop girls couldn’t afford capes. They wore shirtwaists and skirts and wrapped themselves with whatever might pass as a shawl.
I picked my way down a flight of broken steps and ducked in through a low doorway. I found myself in a long dark room with a low ceiling, lit only by two high windows up at street level, through which some railings and the base of a lamp were visible. The ceiling was strung with pipes and festooned with cobwebs. There were gas mantles hissing away, but they did little to dispel the gloom. The clatter of fifty sewing machines echoed back from the brick walls. I had arrived just after seven and it looked as if everyone here had been working away for hours. Not a good sign. I had thought that Mostel’s had crammed in as many machines as possible into that one room, now I saw I was wrong. The girls here were working, crammed so closely together that they could barely move their arms without hitting each other, and there was hardly any space between the tables. It suddenly occurred to me that there might not be a vacancy for me after all, in spite of Mostel’s insistence that I’d get a job here with no problem.
I stood in the doorway and looked around for the boss. Not one of the girls looked up from her work to notice me, but a little child—a thin little scrap who couldn’t have been more than ten, who was squeezing her way down the table, cutting off threads from finished piles with an enormous pair of scissors—looked up, saw me, and reacted with a start, jogging the elbow of the nearest girl.
The machinist yelled something in Yiddish, and slapped the child around the head. The child started to cry and pointed at me. Heads turned in my direction.
“Hello,” I said brightly. “I’m here about a job—whom would I see?”
It turned out I didn’t have to ask. At this outburst of noise a man had come out of a room at the far end. “What is it now? Can’t I leave you lazy creatures to work for five minutes while I get the books done?” he shouted. He had a heavy European accent but he spoke in English.
“It’s a new girl, Mr. Katz,” someone at my end of the room said.
The man forced his way toward me. He was younger than Seedy Sam, thin, angular, good looking almost in a depraved sort of way, with heavy-lidded dark eyes, a neat little black beard, and a sort of half smile on full lips. He was wearing a formal black suit and white celluloid collar, although the black suit was now well decorated with pieces of lint and thread.
“So this young lady thinks she can disrupt the work of a whole room, does she?” He stared at me. “And for why should I hire you?”
“The child was startled when she looked up and saw me, that’s all. And I’m here because I’m a good worker and I was told you are about to hire more workers for the busy season.”