I thought it wise not to say that I was a detective. That might cast me with the enemy and I had a whole night to spend in their presence. In the months since I had fled from Ireland and come to New York I had become adept at lying without so much as batting an eyelid. When the police officers had grabbed me, I had tried telling the truth for once and look where it got me.
“I’m afraid the officers have made a terrible mistake,” I said, trying to sound sweet and demure. “Just because they found me sheltering from the rain on my way home from a tryst with a young man, they thought that I was—one of you.”
This caused great merriment. “Thought you was one of us—that’s a good one.” The large blowsy woman’s breasts heaved as she laughed. “You wouldn’t get many clients dressed like that, dearie.”
“They must have wanted their eyes testing,” the one in the corset agreed. “Look at you. Anyone can see you’re a proper young lady and not riffraff from the streets.”
“Getting too big for their boots, that’s the trouble with coppers around here,” Flossie in the red dress chimed in. “A girl’s not safe even when she’s paid her protection money. Just because there’s a Tammany mayor in city hall, the police think they can do what they damned-well like and nobody’s gonna stop them.”
“Language, Bessy, there’s a young lady present,” the blowsy one reminded her. She leaned across and patted my knee. “Don’t you worry yourself, dearie. You’ll be out of here in the morning and this will all seem like a bad dream.”
I looked around the cell and found the young girl awake and staring at me. She had big dark eyes and was looking at me with such a wistful expression that it almost broke my heart. It will seem like a bad dream for you, the expression said. For me there will be no waking up in the morning.
I shut my eyes, leaned against the cold brick, and tried to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. Now that I was over my initial fear, I was so angry I felt I could explode at the unfairness of it all. This would never have happened if I’d been a man. Men were free to walk when and where they chose in this city. But a lone female, out unchaperoned at night, was immediately suspected of being up to no good. I had already realized that there were many things that Paddy Riley had been able to do that were just not open to me. He had contacts with gangs, and with the police. He frequented various taverns. He could move freely and unobtrusively through the worst areas, and could change his appearance easily by means of a beard or a moustache. I had tried disguising myself as a young boy once and was amazed at the freedom it gave me. Of course, Paddy had seen through it right away, but maybe I should consider using such a disguise again, if I wanted to avoid more embarrassing encounters with the police.
And then again, maybe I should give up the whole idea of trying to carry on Paddy’s business. Divorce cases may have been Paddy’s bread and butter, but this short acquaintance with them had made me decide that they were not for me. I found them small, mean-spirited, and sordid. If I was going to stay in this business at all, then I should take up my original plan—finding immigrants who had lost touch with their families back in Europe. At least I’d be doing something positive then.
I should never have started along this train of thought. My mind moved from immigrants, to Ellis Island, to my own unpleasant experience there, and then to the little family I had brought with me when their mother couldn’t travel with them. I wished I hadn’t rehashed that particular worry. When I delivered them to their father, I had thought that my job was complete. It wasn’t. The father, Seamus, had not been able to work since he almost lost his life in a collapse of the new subway tunnel. They had been evicted from the flat I found for them and the latest I had heard, they were back rooming with relatives on the Lower East Side. The fact that I wouldn’t wish those relatives on my very worst enemy and that I had grown remarkably fond of the two little ones nagged at my conscience. I knew I should be doing something to rescue them, but I also knew it would mean leaving the most delightful circumstances in which I now found myself. My big room on the top floor of my friends’ house on Patchin Place was little short of heaven. Living in a house full of artists and writers and thinkers had made it one step better than heaven itself.