Murder On Astor Place

“Take this here lady downstairs to one of the waiting rooms.” He used the word “lady” as if he didn’t really mean it.

O’Brien looked Sarah over in surprise. His eyes were very blue and a little frightened, and his pale blond hair was plastered to his skull with hair tonic. “Downstairs?” he echoed uncertainly.

“That’s right, O’Brien, downstairs. She’s waiting for Malloy. Maybe when you’re done, you can go find him for her.”

“Where is he?”

“How the hell…? Oh, sorry, ma’am,” the sergeant said, not sounding sorry at all. “How should I know? If he’s expecting her like she says, he won’t be far now, will he? And in the meantime, the lady can wait for him downstairs.”

Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what was “downstairs,” but she also didn’t want to leave without seeing Malloy since she had no illusions he would ever come to her, no matter how much information she promised him.

“I’ll be happy to wait, Officer O’Brien,” she assured him.

For a long moment, O’Brien seemed torn between doing his duty and obeying some higher instinct, but in the end, duty won. Or perhaps the Sergeant won. He certainly looked intimidating. Sarah wouldn’t want him angry with her, or at least no angrier than he already was.

“Come with me, then,” Officer O’Brien said, not letting himself look at Sarah again. Sarah knew she was probably making a terrible mistake by going with him, but she’d already come this far. Her chances of getting Malloy to her place were probably nil, she reminded herself, unless she killed someone herself, so this was her only option.

Determined not to show any hesitation, she followed Officer O’Brien down the long, dingy hallway. The walls were painted dark green beneath layers of dirt, and even though the sun shone brightly outside the many windows, the exterior awnings kept the interior dim.

O‘Brien led her down some rickety stairs that were littered with decades of dirt and refuse. Holding the rail, Sarah was glad she’d kept her gloves on. As they reached the basement, new and fouler odors assailed her, the origins of which she didn’t want to know. She was beginning to understand why O’Brien hadn’t wanted to bring her down here.

Through another hall, this one dirtier than the one upstairs, past several doors. Sarah thought she heard the sound of moaning coming from behind one, but she didn’t let herself think about it. Finally, they reached a door that Officer O’Brien opened and indicated she should enter. Unfurnished except for a small table and several wooden chairs, the brick-walled room was illuminated by a single gas jet that cast strange shadows into the corners. Although the sergeant had called this a “waiting room,” Sarah was pretty sure it wasn’t typically used for waiting.

“I’ll try to find him quick as I can,” O’Brien told her apologetically. “And I’d better lock you in. So nobody can bother you,” he added when Sarah widened her eyes in alarm.

Before she could change her mind and beg him to take her back outside where she could hail a cab and flee, forgetting the insane impulse that had brought her here in the first place, he was turning the key in the lock outside.

4

THIS WAS A MISTAKE, A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. SARAH knew that now. Her only hope was that Malloy wasn’t so furious with her that he’d leave her here to rot. Or that the desk sergeant upstairs wasn’t so annoyed that he didn’t bother to send for Malloy at all. But surely, someone would come for her sooner or later. This was a police station, after all, and she was an honest citizen who was only trying to help.

If only she didn’t know how little good that would do her if they simply decided to forget about her entirely.

But it was now too late to change her mind. Forcing herself to sit in the cleanest of the chairs, she drew a few deep breaths and managed not to panic. Once she had her control back, she concentrated on her surroundings. This must be one of the rooms they used to interrogate prisoners, she decided. To give them the “third degree,” a term developed by Thomas Byrnes, the longtime chief of the Detective Bureau and until recently the superintendent, whose methods of questioning prisoners were equally violent and effective. He had, they said, actually invented the “third degree.”

As awful as this room was, however, Sarah knew that those on the floor below would be even worse. There, prisoners were held in dank cellar rooms a floor below street level where no ray of sunlight or breath of fresh air ever permeated. They said that after a few hours in one of those cells, a man would confess to anything just to get out.

Until recently, the cellar had also provided housing to the homeless who were too poor even to manage the few cents required for floor space sleeping in a Bowery flophouse. So awful was this space that few people ever actually took advantage of the free lodging except in the worst weather. Still, it was the only place in town where a homeless woman who was not actively engaged in prostitution could stay. But Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had closed the police department homeless shelters a few months ago, on the advice of newspaper reporter and self-appointed reformer Jacob Riis. Riis seemed to think the shelters were a breeding ground for vice and sin. Sarah wondered if he realized that the people who had once used the shelters now had to sleep in the very streets instead. What kind of a breeding ground would that be?

Having satisfied herself that she had adequately proved Riis wrong, for a while Sarah passed the time by imagining what Malloy would say when he found her here, assuming he ever did. She could even picture the expression he’d have on his face when he came through the door, please God, let him come through very soon. He’d be furious and impatient and even a little smug, thinking she’d gotten herself into a fine fix and wasn’t it just what she deserved for sticking her nose into things that weren’t her business?

When she was finished with that, she rehearsed what she’d say to him, refining and clarifying what she had to tell him, so he wouldn’t have time to cut her off before he’d heard the most important information. He could be a little short, and she was certain he wouldn’t be in the mood for lengthy explanations when he finally arrived, which had better be soon. And when she was satisfied that her speech was perfect, she simply waited, imagining she heard rats scurrying and men moaning and cursing, and trying not to imagine that the spots she saw on the far wall were blood.

More than an hour passed before she finally heard a key turning in the lock, and the door was flung open to reveal Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. He looked exactly the way she’d expected, which was not at all happy to see her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

Thank heaven he had no idea how genuinely thrilled she was to see him. To see anybody, in fact, who might rescue her from this hellhole. Resisting the impulse to jump up and throw her arms around him in gratitude and carefully keeping all trace of elation from her voice, she said, “Didn’t they tell you? I have some information about Alicia VanDamm’s murder.”

Malloy ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of exasperation. Hair, Sarah noticed, that appeared to be uncombed. Just as his cheeks appeared to be unshaven. And his tie was crooked. Indeed, he looked as if he’d just gotten up and had dressed in a very big hurry. It was early in the morning, but not that early.

“This better be something really important,” he warned her, closing the door behind him with a decisive slam.

Frank couldn’t believe it. Sarah Brandt was sitting in an interrogation room. Had actually been locked in an interrogation room, and for quite a while, if what O‘Brien told him was true. O’Brien was an idiot. He’d been looking all over town for Frank when he’d been right here in the building, sleeping in the officer’s dormitory upstairs after having been up half the night investigating a warehouse robbery. A warehouse robbery that promised to add substantially to Frank’s savings, if he played it right, and he most certainly would.