The following evening she worked the trade at her usual Five
Point tavern. Henry Monahan held court
with a few other Irish, drinking and making plans for the journey out west,
which would never happen. Maude made two
trips upstairs and was preparing to lead a third man to ecstasy, when she heard
Lottie scream from the corner.
“Oh, Gawd. He’s
bleedin’, you bastard,” Lottie wailed.
“Son of a bitch was cheating,” the man yelled back. “Look in his pocket. Look in the bastard’s pocket,” he demanded in
a drunken slur.
Maude set her jaw, pulled free from her trick and headed
towards the commotion. “Hey, whore. I ain’t done with you,” the man called after
her.
Maude walked up to Lottie. “Wipe your eyes and take my trick upstairs.”
“I can’t,” Lottie cried. “Oh, Maude. I think he’s dyin’.”
“Lottie,” Maude lowered her voice and gripped the girl’s
jaw, forcing her to look into her eyes. “Take my trick upstairs. Now. These men are all friends,
and it won’t take much for them to convince the police it was a whore who
stabbed him for his money. You’ve got
his blood all over the side of your dress. Now, take the trick upstairs for an alibi, and clean yourself up before
you come back down.”
Lottie looked down at her dress and shuddered. “All right, Maude.”
Maude stood at the card table, glaring at the shocked
men. “You’ve got two choices. You either agree Charlie Dugan knifed him or
you don’t remember a thing. What’s it
going to be? This man was your friend,
and he’s got a wife and brat waiting at home for him. What am I going to tell her?”
Charlie’s mind was clearing fast. “You don’t have to tell her nothing.”
“You worked the docks with him, Charlie. At least, when you bums bothered to
work.” Maude reached out and scooped up
the coins from the pot.
A young man at the table glared at her. “Put the money back, whore.”
Maude turned and slapped the man so hard that his head
rocked back into the wall with a bang. “I’m giving this to his widow to pay for a proper funeral. I owe her that much.” Maude walked towards the door, and
stopped. She looked over her shoulder
and stared at Charlie. “Clean this up
and get your story straight.”
Maude followed Mulberry Street and slipped down the small
walkway to her old tenement in the back. She stood on the porch for a moment before knocking. It had been more than a decade since she
walked through the door of the apartment she had been born in. Her mind reeled back to a scene of her mother
sitting beside her, reading the newspaper filled with other peoples’
lives. Now she was twenty-three, and she
felt the shroud of an old woman threatening to drape over her shoulders. Maude knocked.
“Yes?” Maggie opened
the door a little wider and held up her candle. “Maude?”
“Maggie, something bad has happened. Kathleen is going to need your help with
Anna.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Maude.”
“Henry’s been knifed. He’s dead in a tavern up at Five Points.” Maude held out her fist and placed the coins
from the poker table in Maggie’s hand. “I collected it to help with the funeral.”
Maggie held the coins in a fist against her chest. “Oh, poor Kathleen. What is she going to do? All the kids left her and all she has is
Anna.”
“You ask me, she’s better off without him. I know your kind gets fixed on a man,
though.” Maude looked across the dark
backyard. A single candle flickered in
the window to guide Henry safely back home. “Is she still trying to get on at that laundry?”
Maggie nodded. “Her
name’s been listed for years, but she’s being passed over for younger, stronger
workers.”
Maude nodded. “I
think I might be able to help with that, too.”
“Maude, why? Why
would you do this for her now?”
“She helped me once and only asked for fair payment in
return. That, and she asked if she could
give her baby my mother’s name.” Maude
shrugged. “I never could figure the
reason for that. My mum was never nice
to her.”
“Anna,” Maggie whispered. “Kathleen still had her dreams, back then. The Irish have funny superstitions about
carrying on family names.” Maggie stared
across the backyard.
“I owe her this, Maggie, but she can’t have my kind holding
her hand through it. I’ll pay you, if
that’s what it will take.”
“No, Maude. I’ll get
her through it. Will there be an
arrest?”
“Not much sense to it. Henry was called for cheating over a game with his friends. I suspect he was. It was a stupid act that never should have
happened.” Maude continued to stare at
Kathleen’s door. “Little Henry was
sitting at the table, Maggie. He never
said a word ’til I reached for the coin in the pot.”
“The poor boy watched his father die?”
“The poor boy called me a whore and told me to put it
back. I slapped him so hard his lip
split.” She turned back to Maggie. “Kathleen doesn’t need to know that part.”
Maggie was finally beginning to see the spirit in Maude that
Kathleen seemed to admire. “Thank you
for that. I won’t mention it.”
Maude shrugged. “I’ve
got to get back. I’ll send for Johnny
McLaughlin to pick up Henry. He’s the
fairest on a burial.” She stepped off
the porch and called quietly over her shoulder, “Kathleen will be hearing from
the laundry in a week. It will give her
time to set score with her grieving.”
For once, Mickey refrained from giving Maude crap for her
shortage. He did ask what she did with
the poker pot, but he knew Kathleen acted as a mother to her when the cholera
took her family and accepted her explanation. He appreciated those who took care of their own. Mickey was not so understanding when Maude
asked for the following Thursday evening off.
“I’ll move right now back to Kathleen’s,” Maude threatened.
“She won’t let a whore into her home,” Mickey sneered.
“I paid for her Henry’s funeral. She wouldn’t turn me away.” Maude continued rifling through the rags for
her best dress.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
Maude slammed her room’s door and called out, “Uptown.”
“They’ll chase you off,” Mickey yelled back.
“Not tonight, they won’t. Not where I’m going.” Maude
pinched her cheeks and twirled a lock of black hair loose from the tail,
letting it fall down the side of her face and setting off her determined violet
eyes. Men tripped over themselves
begging for a trick as she walked through the tavern and headed out of Five
Points.
She waited by the edge of a high wrought iron fence until a
thin figure walked through the gate. Maude had spied on the man, played the stall again to learn his
routine. Thursday was the only evening
he left the grounds to share whiskey with anonymous men and seek the company of
an anonymous whore. “Mr. Winthrop?”
Eugene turned at the sultry deep-throated purr of what he
found to be an extraordinary strumpet. “I usually don’t find such a lovely woman waiting in the dark for me,
Miss…?”
“Maude. Just
Maude. Mr. Winthrop, I have a
proposition for you.”
He chuckled, and made a thin, whistle sound. “I don’t know how it works at Five Points,
Maude, but uptown it is the gentlemen offering the proposition for a whore’s
company.”
Maude had no delusion her dress or attention to her
appearance would deceive him from what she was or where she came from. She merely needed it to stall him long enough
for her offer. “There is a widow on your
list in need of a position in the laundry. I can vouch on her experience in such matters with her own family
through the epidemic. Not one child was
lost to the disease.”
Eugene held out his arm, and Maude smiled and looped her own
through his while they strolled casually the length of the fence around the
block the sanatorium was situated on. “And, the details of this proposition?”
“You have my services free, from dark to midnight one night
per month.”
“Once a week,” Eugene countered, feeling he would be lucky
to find such a woman once a year.
“No. One night per
month, Mr. Winthrop. The woman isn’t
family and, naturally, I don’t reside with her. I have my own expenses to think of.”
“Your offer for the woman is quite generous, then. You are certain she is a good worker?”
“I’ve staked this evening’s pleasure for you to try
her.” Maude waited for him to open the
gate. “Mr. Winthrop, one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“You are never to tell Mrs. Monahan of our arrangement.”
“Trust me, Maude. She
will never hear of it.”
THE FIRST CHAPTERS
