“If you’re sure,” Jake said doubtfully, lunging to scare away a filthy boy who looked as if he wanted to pick his pocket. “Do you want me to get you tomorrow at your house?”
“No, I’ll find my own way,” Sarah said.
“Best come around noontime,” he said. “Everybody sleeps all morning, and I guess you want to get there before the customers start coming.”
“Yes, I do,” Sarah said, trying not to let her disgust show. “Thank you for your help.”
“Glad to be of service, Mrs. Brandt,” he said with a small bow and an insolent smile.
Sarah couldn’t help recalling how Amy had said he would kill her if she tried to help the girl get away. She managed not to shudder. He handed out her black medical bag and waited until she was safely inside before climbing up onto the carriage and driving away.
The girl who answered the door at the Mission greeted her warmly and scurried away to find the matron, Mrs. Keller.
Sarah set her bag down in the front hallway and glanced around. She’d come to know the place well since first discovering it a little over a year ago. In spite of its shabby furnishings and worn carpets, this truly was a refuge for girls. How could she have mistaken the house she’d visited last night for anything other than it was? No one would decorate a refuge for wayward girls the way Mrs. Walker’s house was furnished.
Mrs. Keller was walking toward her from the back of the house, drying her hands on her apron as she came. “Mrs. Brandt, we’re so glad to see you. How are Catherine and Maeve doing?” she added.
“Catherine is growing like a weed, and Maeve has blossomed into quite a young lady. I’ll bring them for a visit very soon.”
“Please do. Have you come to see me about something? I’ve got bread in the oven, and I was just cleaning up the kitchen, so I have a few minutes if you need me.”
“No, I don’t need to see you, but I do need to ask you a favor. I was wondering if one of the girls would take a message to Police Headquarters for me.” Police Headquarters was located just a block down Mulberry Street.
Mrs. Keller smiled. “I’m sure any one of them would. Is the message by any chance for Detective Sergeant Malloy?”
Sarah smiled back. The residents at the Mission had many reasons to be grateful to Malloy. “Yes, it is, and if his fellow officers find out I sent him a message, he’ll never hear the end of it.”
Sarah and Malloy had worked together on quite a few murder cases in the past year and a half since they’d first met, and their relationship had made Malloy the butt of many jokes, not all of them good-natured. Sarah didn’t want to cause him any unnecessary embarrassment, but she desperately needed to speak to him about what she’d learned from Amy last night.
“Come back to my office and write your note. We’ll say it’s from me, that I need to see Malloy right away. They’ll think I’ve got a troublesome girl here.”
A few minutes later, one of the girls had been dispatched with Sarah’s note and her instructions to say it was from Mrs. Keller. Sarah didn’t really expect Malloy to be available, but she’d wait until the girl got back, just in case they knew when to expect him. She was too tired to wait long, however. She’d either have to go home soon or ask Mrs. Keller if she had a spare bed.
To her surprise, however, the girl returned in short order with Malloy on her heels. He pulled off his hat as he entered the foyer, looking around for her. She’d been waiting in the parlor, and she went to meet him.
“Malloy,” she said, absurdly glad to see him, and she felt her fatigue falling away. His solid figure seemed to dominate the foyer.
“Mrs. Brandt,” he replied, as he always did. His dark eyes examined her critically.
She touched her hair self-consciously. She must look a fright after being up all night.
“Your note said you needed to see me,” he said, mindful of the girl still standing there, hanging on every word, and Mrs. Keller, who’d followed Sarah out of the parlor.
“Yes, I have some questions I need to ask you, if you have a few minutes.”
“Hilda and I will get you some coffee,” Mrs. Keller said tactfully, ushering the reluctant girl down the hallway toward the kitchen and leaving them alone.
Sarah led him into the parlor and closed the pocket doors behind them.
When she turned toward him, he was frowning in apparent disapproval. “And where have you been all night?”
“In a whorehouse,” Sarah replied baldly, in no mood to be disapproved of.
If she’d hoped to shock him, she’d more than succeeded. “My God, are you serious?”
“Perfectly. I was called to a birth yesterday, and the mother happens to live in a brothel.” She took a seat on the horsehair sofa that someone had donated to the Mission long after its usefulness was over.
Malloy plopped down beside her as if his knees had suddenly come unhinged. “Where?”
“In the Tenderloin,” she said, naming the triangular neighborhood north of Twenty-third Street between Ninth Avenue and Broadway whose northern portion was Longacre Square.
“My God,” he said again, looking at her in utter amazement. “Why did you let them take you there?” Now he sounded outraged.
“The young man picked me up in a carriage. All the curtains were drawn, and I enjoyed the privacy and didn’t pay much attention to where we were going. We stopped in the alley behind the house, and they took me in through the kitchen and up the servants’ stairs to the girl’s bedroom. I thought it was a boardinghouse.”
He rubbed a hand over his face and muttered something that was either a prayer or a curse.
She pretended not to hear. “As you can see, I emerged unscathed, but I do have something I want to ask you about.”
His dark eyes were nearly black when he turned to her. “You’re not going back there. And you’re going to start paying attention to where people are taking you when you go to deliver babies. And furthermore—”
“Stop it, Malloy,” she snapped. “I already have a father whose opinions I have to ignore. I don’t need another one. Now stop lecturing me and listen. I’m very tired and my patience is wearing thin.”
He didn’t like it, but he pressed his lips together into a thin line and just glared.
“Good,” she said, seeing his compliance. “The girl whose baby I delivered asked me to help her escape.”
This time he did curse, making Sarah jump. “Are you crazy?” he almost roared. “Do you know what happens to people who try to get girls out of places like that?”
“Yes, they get killed.”
He’d already opened his mouth to continue, but her reply stopped him dead. “What?”
“You were going to tell me that I could get killed. I know that. Amy told me.”
“Who’s Amy?”
“The girl who had the baby. It’s a little boy, Malloy, and they’re going to take him from her.”
“Of course they are. A brothel is no place for a baby.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” Sarah agreed. “It would be awfully bad for business, I imagine.”
Malloy glared at her again. “If you’re going to ask me to rescue this girl or something—”
“No, I wouldn’t ask you that. If they’d kill me, they’d probably kill you, too.”
“They wouldn’t kill me, but I’d lose my job. Places like that pay the police to protect them, not kidnap their girls.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m sure there’s a lot of things you hadn’t thought of, like not going to a brothel in the first place.”
“You don’t have any reason to be angry with me. I already told you, it wasn’t my fault.”
He rubbed his face again. “I’m not angry with you. I’m just . . . angry.”