“If these stories are true,” said Rockefeller, “the truth about them should be definitely known; if they are false they should be silenced.” The Rockefeller Commission on White Slavery was called to investigate these crimes in the same year as the passing of the Mann Act, which was designed to prohibit the transportation of prostitutes across state lines. When the commission’s final report emerged in 1913, it concluded that there was actually no vast network of slavers at work on American soil.
“We have found no evidence,” the Commission declared, “of any organization or organizations, incorporated or otherwise, engaged as such in the traffic in women for immoral purposes, nor have we found evidence of an organized traffic in women for immoral purposes.” All over the city, people breathed sighs or felt vindicated. But those who read further than the lede found disturbing news. The marrow of the report revealed that although there didn’t seem to be a rigid organization of slavers, they still very much existed as an individualized, decentered evil:
It appears, on the other hand, from indictments found by us and from the testimony of witnesses that a trafficking in women does exist and is carried on by individuals acting for their own individual benefit, and that these persons are known to each other and are more or less informally associated.
People still stared at women who walked on certain streets, their perfume trailing out into the air behind them. On these same streets, New Yorkers heard taps on dark windows as businessmen lingered on the sidewalk. People read the papers and saw the films. They knew what was happening even if they shied away from the actual words. A man imprisoned in the Tombs named Yushe Botwin claimed that he had operated a white slavery ring with over three thousand girls over the last ten years. “Sometimes we get the girl from the school,” he said. “Her parents are hard on her. She runs away.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes they find her in a dance hall and there is something put in her soda water.” He sat there, looking at the detectives. “The younger they are, the easier the work, and the greater the value.” The papers were wondering if Ruth Cruger too had become lost to this “army of the vanished.”
*
Ruth Cruger wasn’t the only person in the case who was being spoken of in terms of white slavery. In late February, Mrs. Cocchi returned to Fourth Branch to complain that private detectives had broken into her home at 75 Manhattan Avenue at one o’clock in the morning.
“They threatened my life!” Maria Cocchi said. “They demanded I admit that my husband was a white slave agent! They wanted to know where Ruth Cruger was.” The rumor was that these detectives were working for Henry Cruger. He dismissed the accusation but also said that he had no doubt that Mrs. Cocchi could aid the police a great deal if she cared to do so. He pointed out that if Alfredo Cocchi had merely been frightened away, as Mrs. Cocchi said, he would have taken the first opportunity to write and reassure her.
The district attorney disagreed. Seventeen days after Ruth Cruger disappeared, authorities announced that they were certain she had voluntarily left her home.
“Ruth Cruger will be found yet,” Edward Swann, the district attorney, said. “The thoroughness of the police search indicates that she is alive. The wide publicity which has been given to the search is the thing that will eventually lead to her discovery.”
That afternoon, in front of reporters, Henry stood with his two other daughters, his friend Mr. Brown, and a middle-aged woman dressed in mourning, who was standing off to the side. The reporters thought she might be the grandmother. They were surprised at her dress and immediately wondered if there was going to be an announcement about Ruth. They got ready. Henry told the reporters that, even though none of the recent clues had borne fruit, the Crugers had no intention of abandoning the search for their missing daughter. Henry reiterated that his reward of $1,000 for any information still stood and that he hoped someone would come forward. The only other news was that Henry had hired a new lawyer.
The woman stepped to the front and announced herself. She was the Crugers’ new lawyer, Mrs. Grace Humiston. In a firm voice, she asked that all letters to the paper, from this point forward, be signed so as to help with their evaluation. She promised the strictest confidence. Low whispers began to course through the crowd. Why was she interested in clues? She seemed more like a detective than a lawyer. Who was this mysterious woman in black?
“Mrs. Sherlock Holmes,” someone may have said.
*
That night, in the north Bronx, at the border of Westchester, residents noticed flashlights in the woods. They saw policemen walking in slow formation around the lakes and ponds that the young skaters favored. They kicked through underbrush and thickets still white with late snow. They looked deep into the night and feared every potential moment when they might see a girl’s dead face flashing back at them. Van Cortlandt Park Lake, one of Ruth’s favorite haunts, was still iced over, though authorities were being pressured to go ahead and break it up with dynamite. At night, Ruth’s mother thought of the black water beneath all that shimmering ice and it turned her blood cold.
There were clues and people being followed and scrutinized like signs in the stars. There was still Butler and Many, but also the cab driver, Rubien. There was the queer photographer, Mr. Lee, and the mysterious passenger he saw get into the cab. There were also the little mysteries of scrawled notes and sightings—perhaps the police had missed something there. Perhaps Ruth was somewhere—and with someone—where she did not want to be found. Or perhaps she was already dead. They were still seeking the Italian, Cocchi, for more information on why he had run off. There was also the unsettling feeling that there was a darker, more sinister evil that they had yet to fully see.
After the initial spark of Cocchi’s disappearance faded from the papers, some of the reporters remembered having heard of him before. Last winter, people had been talking about a man on Broadway who, after a mammoth snowstorm, rode a strange black machine up and down the empty, white streets. When the neighbors went to investigate, they saw a single floodlight opened and blurry on one end of the street. It sat there, as the sound behind it revved and burned. Once the spotlight began moving toward them, slowly, then swiftly, they could see it shake as the snow fell cold and quick.