THE INTERSECTION OF Duane and Chambers Streets was jammed with omnibuses, wagons, coaches, cabs, and every kind of dray, all competing for space with vendors hawking cookware, tools, knife sharpening, shoeshines, buttons and sewing needles, oysters on the half shell, pickles, nuts, sausage, cheese and curds, meat pies, and hard candy. Newsboys shouted for customers, bellowing the more exciting or salacious headlines from the three o’clock editions.
Anna saw a younger man lounging against the wall of a coffeehouse, his eyes roaming the crowd and then stopping on Jack. He disappeared almost instantly, which was proof of what she had known in theory. Jack was known to more people in the city—good and bad—than she could ever count.
The lodging house constructed and run by the Children’s Aid Society was an imposing four-story brick building that took up most of a city block. A clothier occupied the front of the ground floor, but the rest of it provided shelter and food for homeless boys. During the day they hawked papers and matches, shined shoes, played battered violins on busy corners, lifted and hauled in factories and on the docks and wharves. There were scullery and stable and errand boys, rat catchers and wharf rats who stole what they could not earn or beg.
Anna did not see them as hapless victims or as hardened criminals, but as children who simply refused to give up and die. An unprotected child who survived the streets of the city for even a month was a child who had learned to take advantage of any opportunity, or to create opportunity where none existed.
Though she was watchful and aware, Anna had had her pocket picked more than once; early in her career she had learned that poor children could not be left alone in an examination room or office. Even the youngest of them would take anything that might have value on the street, from a few inches of gauze to wooden tongue depressors and once in a while, scalpels and retractors.
Jack opened a door and they went up a staircase, the floorboards swept clean, the banisters polished, and not a single mark on the whitewashed walls. She wondered how the housekeeper managed it with so many boys under her roof.
The reception area was almost empty in the middle of the afternoon but for a high counter and off to one side, a smaller table where a single boy sat frowning at an exercise book. Behind the counter a middle-aged man in shirtsleeves was writing in a ledger while a woman sorted through the afternoon mail. Jack made a polite sound in his throat to get their attention, and succeeded.
“Jack Mezzanotte!” The woman held out both arms as if he were a favorite brother come home unexpectedly. She was red-cheeked and rounded, her hair piled up into a fuzzy topknot, but there was a sharp intelligence in her eyes and a stubborn set to her chin, and Anna had the sense that she was not to be trifled with.
She was saying, “It’s been too long. Where have you been keeping yourself?” Her gaze moved to Anna and her smile broadened. This time there was a dimple.
Jack introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Howell and presented Anna first just by name and then, quite formally, added on the fact that she was a physician and surgeon. He did this as though a lady surgeon were nothing out of the ordinary, and still the cheerful look on both faces before them went momentarily blank with confusion.
Then their enthusiasm and good manners reasserted themselves and they lost no time ushering Jack and Anna into the manager’s apartment just off the reception area. Mrs. Howell called to someone in the kitchen for tea, and then they sat down on well-used couches in faded chintz. For the next few minutes they peppered Jack with questions about his well-being, his family, goings-on at police headquarters, the activities of the Italian Benevolent Society, and the case of one of their charges who had been arrested for theft.
Once the tea had been set out by one of the Howells’ daughters, Mrs. Howell’s attention turned in another direction.
“And how do you know Dr. Savard, Jack?”
Jack leaned back and smiled at her. “I’ll let Anna tell the story. It’s why we’re here.”
It was beginning to feel like a set piece, but Anna told it all. Mr. and Mrs. Howell listened closely, stopping her once in a while to ask questions.
“You examined all four of the children?”
“Yes,” Anna told Mrs. Howell. “They were all comparatively healthy. Tonino was very well grown for his age, quite strong. The baby was alert and not fearful.” She described them in as much detail as she could give.
“Jenny?” said Mr. Howell, looking at his wife.
She shook her head. “The baby wouldn’t come through our doors, and I haven’t seen the older boy. It doesn’t mean he hasn’t been through here, but it’s unlikely. I’ll ask our Thomas when he gets home from his classes; he takes the desk every day for a few hours. And there’s—”
She paused as a younger boy came into the parlor to lean against her chair and send longing glances to the plate of cookies that sat untouched on the table. Anna wondered how many children of their own they had raised in this very building.
“Timothy,” said Mrs. Howell. “Go see if Baldy is in, please. Tell him I need to talk to him, right away.” She turned back to Anna.
“And in the meantime, I’d like to hear more about you, Dr. Savard.”