Sherlock paid no attention to my greeting. "Dr. Watson's carriage I presume?" he asked. "As well as his man. May we please take them?"
"Take them where?" I answered, looking up to see my grandmother peering anxiously out the window of her parlor. "What the devil is going on, Holmes?"
"Sergeant McElroy and another man, Noth, went down to talk to the Fonzerelli boy's parents this morning. They came back and said they'd found nothing----but there was blood on the cuff of McElroy's shirt. A game is afoot, I am certain, and I want to find out what that game is." He wasn't looking at me, maybe because he knew what my reaction was likely to be.
"This wouldn't happen to be one of your drug-induced hallucinations, would it?" I asked. Sherlock didn't answer, but a look of bitter disappointment filled his face, a frustration so severe that all I could do was open the calash door. "What about it, Herman?" I said. "Any objection to taking Mr. Holmes and myself on a little errand?"
Herman shrugged. "No, sir. Not as long as I'm back at the Institute by the end of interviewing hours."
"And so you shall be. Climb aboard, Holmes, and meet Mr. Herman Jackson."
In an instant, Sherlock's aspect went from ferocious to exuberant---and an uncommon transformation for him. "There are times, Randall," he said, jumping up onto the calash, "when I think I may have been wrong about you all these years." He shook Herman's hand eagerly and then sat down, tossing a blanket over my legs and his when I got in. Directing Herman to an address on Mott Street, she clapped her hands once excitedly as the calash started moving.
There aren't many people who would have ventured into one of the worst parts of the Lower East Side with such relish. But Sherlock's adventurous spirit had never been much tempered by prudence. Furthermore, he had experience with the area: right after Holmes's graduation from college, his family had gotten the idea that her education might be fully balanced by some firsthand experience of light in places other than Rhinebeck (where the Holmes' country estate was located) and Gramercy Park. So he put on a starched white shirt, dreary black trousers, and spent the summer assisting a visiting nurse in the 10th Ward. During those months she saw a great deal---most, indeed, of what the Lower East Side could throw at a person. None of it, however, was any worse than what we were bound for that day.
The Fonzerellis lived in a rear tenement a few blocks below Canal Street. Rear tenements had been outlawed in 1894, but there had been a grandfather clause in the bill so that those that already existed were allowed to stay standing with minimal improvement. Suffice it to say that if a tenement building that fronted the street was dark, disease-ridden, and threatening, the smaller buildings that often stood behind them---in place of a yard that might have brought at least a bit more air and light to the block---were exponentially more so. By the look of the particular front tenement we pulled up before that day, we were in for a classic experience: huge barrels of ash and waste stood by the urine-soaked stoop of the structure, on which was gathered a group of filthy, rag clad men, each indistinguishable from the next. They were drinking and laughing amongst themselves, but they stopped abruptly at the sight of the calash and Herman. Sherlock and I stepped out and onto the curb.
"Don't wander too far, Herman," I said, trying not to betray my jitters.
"No, sir," he answered, gripping the pommel of his horse-whip tightly. With his other hand, he reached into the pocket of his greatcoat. "Maybe you should take these, Mr. Waterhouse." He produced a set of brass knuckles.
"Hmmm," I noised, studying the weapon. "I don't think these will be necessary." Then I dropped the sham. "Besides, I wouldn't know how to use them."
"Hurry, Randall," Sherlock said, and then we mounted the stoop."
"Here!" One of the loitering men grabbed my arm. "D'you know there's a coon driving your rig?"
"Really?" I answered, guiding Sherlock through the nearly visible stench that hovered around the men.
"Black as the ace o' spades!" another of the men asserted, seemingly shocked.
"Remarkable," I replied, as Sherlock got inside. Before I could follow, the first man grabbed me again.
"You're not another cop, are ya?" he asked menacingly.
"Certainly not," I answered. "I despise cops."
The man nodded once but said nothing, from which I divined that I was permitted to pass.
To get to the rear building it was necessary to navigate the pitch-black hallway of the front structure: always an unsettling experience. With Sherlock leading we felt our way along the filthy walls, trying but failing to adjust to the lack of light. I started when Sherlock stumbled onto something; I started even more violently when that something began to wail.
"Good heavens, Randall," Sherlock said after a moment. "It's a bloody baby."
I still couldn't see a blessed thing, but as I got closer the smell gave it away----a baby, all right, and the poor creature must have been covered in its own feces.
"We have to get it assistance," Sherlock said, and I thought of the men on the stoop. When I looked back toward the front door, however, I saw them outlined against the snowfall outside, swinging sticks as they watched us, and sometimes laughing in a very unpleasant way. There would be no help from that quarter, so I began to try doors inside the hall. At last finding one that would open, I pulled Sherlock towards, then through it.
Inside were an old man and a woman, ragpickers, who would only accept the baby after I offered them a half-dollar. They told us that the infant belonged to a couple across the hall who were out, as they were every day and night, jabbing morphine and drinking in a dive around the corner. The old man assured us that they would get the baby something to eat and clean it up, at which Sherlock gave them another dollar. Neither of us was under any illusions as to how much good some cleaning and feeding would do the child in the long run (I suppose you could argue that we were simply soothing our own consciences), but it was one of those all-too-common moments in New York when one is faced with a damnable set of options.
Finally, we reached the back door. The alleyway between the front and rear buildings was overflowing with more barrels and buckets full of garbage and sewage, and the smell was indescribable. Sherlock placed a handkerchief over his mouth and nose and instructed me to do likewise. There were four apartments with what seemed like a thousand people living in them on the first floor. I tried to identify all the languages being spoken but lost count at about eight. A smelly collection of Germans with growlers of beer were camped on the staircase, and they parted grudgingly as we went up. It was evident, even in the half-light, that the stairs were coated with nearly 1 inch of something extremely sticky that I didn't want to identify. It didn't seem to bother the Germans.
The Fonzerelli flat was on the second floor in the back: the darkest spot in the whole building. When we knocked, a small, horribly thin woman with sunken eyes answered the door, speaking the Sicilian dialect. I knew just enough Italian for the opera, but Sherlock was better off----again because of his classical education---and communicated quite easily. Mrs. Fonzerelli was not at all alarmed to see Sherlock (in fact she seemed to have been expecting him); but she expressed must dismay over my presence, fearfully demanding to know if I was either a policeman or a reporter. Sherlock had to think fast, and said I was her assistant. Mrs. Fonzerelli looked puzzled at that but at last bid us welcome.
"Sherlock," I said as we entered, "do you know this woman?"
"I do not," he answered. "How very odd that she seems to know me, though."
The flat was composed of two rooms without any true windows, just little slits that had recently been cut into the walls to comply with new tenement regulations concerning ventilation. The Fonzerellis had rented one of the rooms to another family of Sicilians, which meant that six of them----the parents and Mario's 4 brothers and sisters---lived in a space about nine feet by sixteen. There was nothing hanging on the bare, soot-encrusted walls, and two big buckets in the corners took care of sanitation. The family also had a kerosene stove, of the inexpensive type that so often used to put an end to such buildings.
Lying on an old, stained mattress in one corner and wrapped in what blankets they had was the cause of Mrs. Fonzerelli's great agitation: her husband. His face was cut, bruised, and swollen, and his forehead was drenched in sweat. There was a bloody rag lying next to him, and, incongruously, a rolled-up wad of money, which must have amounted to I-don't-know-how-many hundreds of dollars. Mrs. Fonzerelli took up the wad, shoved it at Sherlock, and then urged him at the husband, tears starting to stream down her face.
We soon discovered that Mrs. Fonzerellis believed Sherlock to be a doctor. She had dispatched her four children to find one only an hour earlier. Again thinking quickly, Sherlock sat and began to examine Fonzerelli, quickly discovering that one of his arms was fractured. In addition, most of his torso was covered with bruises.
"Randall," Sherlock said firmly, "send Herman for bandages, disinfectant, and some morphine. Tell him we'll want a good clean piece of wood to use as a splint, as well."
In what seemed one movement I was out the door, through the Germans and the alleyway, and down the stoop to the curb. I shouted the order to Herman, who sped off in the calash, and as I went back through the men on the stoop one of them held a hand to my chest.
"One moment, please," he said. "What's all that for?"
"Mr. Fonzerelli," I answered. "The man's badly hurt."
The man spat hard at the street. "Damn cops. I hate those damned guineas, but I'll tell you, I hate cops even more!"
This recurring theme seemed once again to be the signal for me to proceed. Back upstairs, Sherlock had gotten hold of some hot water and was washing Fonzerelli's wounds. The wife was still chattering, waving her hands and sometimes bursting into tears.
"There were six men, Randall," Sherlock said to me, after listening for a few minutes.
"Six?" I echoed. "I thought you said two."
Sherlock indicated the bed with a jerk of her head. "Come over here and help me----she'll be suspicious, otherwise." Sitting down, I found that it was difficult to say which smelled worse, the mattress of Fonzerelli. But none of it seemed to bother Sherlock. "Mason and Adam have definitely been here," he said. "Along with two other men and two priests."
"Priests?" I said, taking up a hot compress. "What in hell...."
"One Catholic, apparently, and one not. She can't be specific about the second. The priests had the money. They told the Fonzerellis to use some of it to pay for a decent burial for Mario. The rest was a----consideration, apparently for silence. They told her not to allow anyone to exhume Mario's body, even the police, and not to talk to anyone about the matter----especially not the press."
"Priests?" I said again, wiping at one of Fonzerelli's welts with no great enthusiasm. "What did they look like?"
Sherlock put the question, then translated the answer. "One short, with large white sideburns---that was the Catholic---and one thin with spectacles."
"Why in the world would two priests have any interest in this?" I wondered. "And why would they want to keep the police out of it? You say Mason and Adam were here for that conversation?"
"Quite so."
"So whatever's going on, they're involved. Well, Teddy will be pleased to hear that. Two more vacancies in the Division of Detectives, I'll bet. But who were the other two men ?"
Again, Sherlock put the question to Mrs. Fonzerelli, who rattled off an answer that Sherlock didn't seem to understand. He asked again but got the same reply.
"I may not understand this dialect as well as I thought," Sherlock said. "She says the other two weren't policemen, but then she says that they were policemen. I don't..."
Sherlock stopped and we all turned when a loud knock came at the door. Mrs. Fonzerelli shied away from it, and I was in no hurry to thrust myself into the breach; but Sherlock said, "Oh, go on, Randall, don't be foolish. It's likely Herman."
I stepped to the door and opened it. Outside in the hall was one of the men from the stoop. He held up a package.
"Your medicines," he said with a grin. "We don't allow no coons in this building."
"Ah," I said, accepting the package. "I see. Thank you very much."
Giving the goods to Sherlock, I sat back down on the bed. Fonzerelli was by this time semiconscious and Sherlock administered some of the morphine: she intended to set his arm, a trick she'd learned during her days with the visiting nurses. The break was not bad, she said, but it nonetheless made a somewhat nauseating cracking sound as she got it back into place. Between his grogginess and the drug, however, Fonzerelli didn't seem to feel anything, though his wife let out a nice little howl and some kind of prayer. I started wiping disinfectant on the other wounds while Sherlock continued his conversation with Mrs. Fonzerelli.
"It seems," Sherlock said at length, "that Fonzerelli got very indignant. Threw the money in the priests' faces, and said he demanded that the police find the killer of his son. At that point the priests left, and..."
"Yes," I said. "And." I was well aware of how Irish cops generally dealt with a lack of cooperation from the non-English-speaking population. A good example of the technique was lying next to me.
Sherlock shook his head. "It's all so strange," he sighed, beginning to apply gauze to some of the worst cuts and bruises. "Fonzerelli nearly gets himself killed---yet he hasn't seen Mario for four years. The boy's been living on the streets."
Mrs. Fonzerelli's trust had been inspired by Sherlock's care for her husband, and once she began to tell us the story of her son, Mario, it would have been impossible to stop her. Sherlock and I kept laboring over Fonzerelli's wounds as if they were the primary center of our attention, but our thoughts were very much fixed on the odd story we just heard.
Mario was a shy boy in his early years, but smart and determined enough to attend the public school on Hester Street and get high marks. Starting at about age seven, however, there was a problem with some other boys at school. The older ones were apparently able to persuade Mario to perform sexual acts, ones that Mrs. Fonzerelli didn't much want to define. Sherlock pressed her on the issue, however, sensing that such information would be vital, and we found that it involved sodomy of both the anal and oral varieties. The behavior was discovered and reported to the parents by a teacher. The Latin concept of masculinity being as broad and forgiving as it is, Mario's father nearly lost his mind and took to beating the boy at regular intervals. Mrs. Fonzerelli demonstrated for us how her husband would bind Mario by his wrists to the front door, then whip him across the backside with a wide leather belt, which she also showed us. It was a cruel implement, and in Fonzerelli's hands, it apparently inflicted such damage that Mario sometimes avoided school altogether, just because he (literally) could not sit down.
The strange thing, however, was that instead of becoming more compliant, Mario only grew more willful every time he got a whipping. After months of such punishment, his behavior progressed to an extreme: he began to stay away from his family's flat for nights at a time and quit school altogether. Then one day the parents spotted him on a street west of Washington Square, wearing ladies' cosmetics and hawking himself like any lady of the evening. Fonzerelli confronted the boy and said that if he ever returned home, he'd cut his throat. Mario screamed vicious insults at him, and the father was getting ready to assault him right then and there when another man---likely Mario's panderer---intervened and advised the Fonzerellis to disappear. That was the last they ever saw of their son, until they saw his mangled body at the morgue.
The tale roused many questions in my mind, and I could see that Sherlock felt the same. We would never get to ask them. Just as we were wrapping Fonzerelli back up in the worn, dirty blankets in which we'd found him, a booming came at the door; and I, thinking it was the men from the stoop, opened it. Instantly, two large, mustachioed thugs in suits and bowlers had forced their way into the flat. The mere sight of them sent Mrs. Fonzerelli into hysterics.
"Who the hell're you people?" one of the thugs demanded.
Sherlock made a brave show of saying he was a doctor, but the explanation that I was his assistant, which had worked so well on a desperate woman who didn't speak English, got us nowhere with these two.
"Assistant, is he?" the thug said, as they both moved on me. Sherlock and I carefully edged our way to the door of the flat. "That's a hell of a rig out there, for an assistant!"
"Well, I do value your opinion," I said with a smile; then Sherlock grabbed my arm and we few down the stairs. Never have I been so grateful that he was of an athletic disposition, for even in his heavy clothes he was faster than our pursuers. Such did not help, however, when we reached the hall of the front building and saw the men on the stoop blocking our exit. They began moving our way, slapping their sticks in the palms of their hands menacingly.
"Randall," Sherlock said, "are they really trying to trap us?" His voice was, I remember thinking, damned steady---which, given the circumstances, I found extremely irritating.
"Of course, they're trying to trap us!" I said, breathing hard. "You and your detective games, we're going to get beaten to death! Herman!" I cupped my hands and bellowed at the front door as the men began to move our way. "Herman!" I let my hands fall, despondent. "Where the hell is the man?"
Sherlock only clutched her bag tightly without a word; and when the two thugs in the bowlers appeared at the rear end of the hall, apparently sealing our fates, she reached into it. "Don't worry, Randall," he said confidently. "I won't let anything happen to you." And with that, he withdrew a .45-caliber Army Model Colt revolver, with a 4-and-a-half-inch barrel and pearl grips. Sherlock was what you might call a firearms enthusiast, but I was not reassured.
"Oh, my God!" I said, ever more alarmed. "Sherlock, you can't just blast away in a dark hallway, you don't know what you'll hit..."
"Have you a better idea, old chum?" he said, looking around, realizing that I was right and feeling alarmed for the first time.
"Well, I...."
But it was too late! The men from the stoop were on us in a screaming rush. I grabbed Sherlock and covered him with my body, hoping he wouldn't shoot me in the gut during the ensuing attack.
Imagine, if you can, my shock when that attack didn't materialize. We were momentarily buffeted by the men with sticks, but that was only as they passed. Still screaming, they fell on the two things behind us with rare ferocity. Given the odds, it wasn't much of a contest: we heard a few seconds of shouting, grunting, and wrestling, and then the hall was filled with heavy breathing and some moans. Sherlock and I got out onto the stoop and then raced to the calash, where Herman stood waiting.
"Herman!" I said. "Are you aware that we could have been killed in there?"
"It didn't seem very likely, Mr. Waterhouse," he answered calmly. "Not given what those men were saying before they went in."
"What were they saying, pray tell?" I asked, still unsatisfied with his attitude.
Before he could answer the bodies of the two thugs came flying out the door of the tenement, hitting the snowy pavement hard. Their bowlers followed. The men were unconscious, and in a general condition that made Mr. Fonzerelli look a picture of health. Our friends with the sticks followed triumphantly, even though a few of them had taken over at us, producing huge frosty clouds as he breathed hard.
"I may hate coons," he said with a grin. "But, damnation, I do hate cops more!"
"That," Herman muttered, "was what they were saying."
I looked at the thugs on the ground. "Cops?!" I said to the man by the stoop.
"Ex-cops," he answered, walking towards me. "Used to be roundsmen in this neighborhood. They've got a hell of a nerve, coming back to a building like this." I nodded, looking at the unconscious bodies on the sidewalk before me, and then signaled thanks to the man. "Your honor," he said, indicating his mouth, "that was thirsty work." I pulled out some coins and threw them to him. He tried but failed to catch the money, at which his mates fell grabbing the ground. They were soon at each other's throats. Sherlock and I rushed into the calash, and in a few minutes, Herman had us on Broadway, heading uptown.
Sherlock was full of good cheer, now that we were safe, and he fairly leaped around the carriage, recalling each dangerous moment of our expedition rapturously. I smiled and nodded, glad that he'd been able to have a moment of positive action; but my mind was on something else. I was going over what Mrs. Fonzerelli had said, and trying to examine it as Holmes would have. There was something in the story of young Mario that reminded me of John's account of the children in the water tower; something very important, though I could quite put my finger----Eureka!" The behavior, Watson had described two troublesome children, embarrassments to their family---and I had just been told about another such youth. All 3, in Watson's hypothesis, had met their fates at the hands of the same man. Was this apparent similarity of character a factor in their deaths, or just a coincidence? It might have been the latter. But somehow I didn't think Watson would find it so....
Lost in these thoughts, I didn't quite hear Sherlock asking me a rather shocking question; but when he repeated it, the outlandishness of the notion became clear even to my distracted mind. We'd been through a great deal, however, that day, and I could not find it in me to disappoint him.
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