Genevieve stole a quick glance down at the plain blue dress and short woolen jacket she’d had made just for her investigative journeys into the city’s less prosperous neighborhoods. She always dressed simply, but this was Spartan even for her.
“So which is it, miss?” asked the man from his metal perch. “Lost or following?”
Genevieve decided she’d better get to the point quickly. “My name is Polly Palmer,” she explained, offering her pen name rather than her real name. “I am a journalist with the New York City Globe. I want to speak with you about Robin Hood.”
At the mention of Robin Hood, the men went still. Genevieve waited, her heart in her throat, half terrified and half hopeful. All her years of thankless toil at the newspaper writing asinine stories comparing talcum powders, all her long, desperate efforts to write something meaningful, seemed to boil down to this moment.
A deep chuckle from above broke the silence in the alley; then came the grinding of metal on metal as the man lowered his considerable frame down a rusty ladder hanging from the edge of the fire escape.
“It’s disgusting back here, isn’t it?” Mr. Fire Escape asked, chuckling good-naturedly. He extended his hand. “Paddy, miss,” he introduced himself. “I thought it’d be better if we could talk on the same level.”
Genevieve felt a surge of relief; perhaps her boldness had paid off. “I am pleased to meet you, Paddy.” She took his hand, but what she saw in his face made her blood run cold. Paddy might have been laughing, but there was absolutely nothing good-natured about the look in his eye.
“Now, what makes you think we know anything about the Hood?”
“I overheard you talking on Mulberry Street,” Genevieve answered swiftly. “I know the articles in the press have been rather one-sided, and I want to write a story that does him justice. But I need your help.”
Genevieve nervously took a small pad of paper and a pencil from the leather satchel slung over her shoulder. “Do you believe,” she said, clearing her throat, “that Robin Hood stealing from the wealthy to give to the poor is a sign of the city’s indifference to the lower classes, as some claim, or is it simply a publicity stunt on his part? Do you know anyone who has personally benefited from one of his forays? The police can’t find a soul—either the man is lying about what he does with the loot, or the recipients are an extremely closemouthed lot.” She nodded to herself as she squinted at her list of questions in the weak light, temporarily forgetting her fear. “I tend to believe the latter,” she muttered, then looked toward her subjects and took a deep breath, pencil poised on pad. “But I’m here to find out what you think.”
Paddy regarded her gravely. “Miss, I think you should have stayed lost.”
Genevieve felt her heart sink in both disappointment and fear.
“Aw, c’mon, Paddy.” It was the third man, who leaned toward her and pinched at the fabric of her sleeve. She pulled the wool from his fingers and took a step backward. She decided she needed to leave right then, but before she could take a step, Paddy seemed to come to some kind of decision.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll answer your questions.”
Genevieve glanced past Mr. Pineapple Waistcoat, who was standing like a stoic sentry, and toward Mulberry Street, measuring her longing for the well-lit street against her longing for a lead. Contrary to her better judgment, her ambition won out, and she hesitantly put pencil to paper again, nodding at Paddy to continue.
“But we can’t talk here, in the open.” Genevieve followed Paddy’s sweeping hand gesture around the claustrophobic space, marked only with indistinguishable piles of refuse. “Come back this way, into the building.” With that, he disappeared into the closed end of the alley and a pool of deep, dark shadows.
“But there’s nothing back that way,” Genevieve called after him nervously, inching away from the third man, Billy, who seemed determined to get a good whiff of her hair.
Then a shaft of weak light shone from the end of the alley, lighting Paddy from behind. Genevieve could discern only his silhouette in an open doorway, gesturing her to follow.
Thin as it was, the light emanating from the building brightened the alley. Not by much, but just enough that the shadowy forms in the corners and the heaps against the walls began to coalesce and take shape. She started forward, then hesitated, her gaze catching on what looked like a pile of rags.
What she had assumed was another mound of garbage against the far wall had a face, its mouth stretched into an unnatural frozen grimace. The remainder of the body—for it was suddenly, undeniably obvious that the lumpish form in the corner consisted at least in part of a dead man—was impossible to fully distinguish, as it was partially buried under rubbish.
Genevieve froze, rooted to the spot with fear, her eyes locked on the milky ones staring back at her from the gray, mottled face of the corpse. Bile rose in the back of her throat, but as ghastly as the scene was, she found she could not look away. She’d seen dead bodies before—not in the street, but elderly relatives, respectfully cleaned and laid out for viewing—and knew enough to recognize that the man had been dead for many hours, if not a full day. He was middle-aged, she could see that now, and the dark shadow of his beard was evident, as was the large dent in the side of his skull that gave his head a misshapen, lopsided look.
Her trance was broken when Billy grabbed her upper arm, pulling her toward the open door.
“Hey!” Genevieve yelled, trying to wrench out of his grasp. Panic
