33
MORAN/Inquiry and Assistance
INQUIRY AND ASSISTANCE
By
Terrie Farley Moran
Published in ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE, January/February 2016
Roosevelt kept telling us the worst was over. Might be true for him, but I was heading into my third year without a job. I still had my two best suits, one brown, one navy, and a gray snap-brim fedora, but shoes were becoming a problem.
Until things went south, I’d been a bookkeeper for Quality Furniture up in the Bronx. Now, I’d take anything I could get but there was never enough work to go around. Whenever the newspapers reported more than the usual number of cargo ships coming into port, I’d follow my cousin Luke to the west-side docks and we’d shape for day labor. Luke knew a guy, a big cheese in the ILA, who gave us a couple of fake union cards, so the wharfies didn’t give us “what for” when we got in line. If I was lucky, the foreman would point and say “you, yeah, you.” Backbreaking work, lifting crates twice, three times my weight, for twelve, fourteen hours straight. At the end of the day I’d get less than two bucks for my trouble. I kept hoping to get enough work to pay my bills and buy a nice pair of glossy wing tips at Thom McAn. On the docks I’d wear dungarees and boots, saving my suits for the real job I was sure would show up soon. The guys who shaped on the docks in suits, well, you just knew they’d given up.
Most days we didn’t get the foreman’s nod. If we had a few nickels, me and Luke would stop in the Automat. We’d each grab a coffee, his black, mine loaded with the free milk sitting on the counter, and we’d split a sweet roll. After that, Luke saw only two ways to go. Either get an early jump on the line at the soup kitchen or go back to Aunt Lottie’s and sleep the day away.
We were lucky to have Lottie, the only one of the “auld” ones left in our family. A spinster, she worked as a nurse’s aide on Welfare Island and her cramped apartment on east Fifty-seventh Street was always open for any niece or nephew who needed a bed and a meal. For a while it was so crowded that some of us slept on the floor. But our Duggan cousins headed west to try their luck. Then Luke’s sister, Kathleen, got a cushy job as a live-in maid on Sutton Place, so Lottie’s was pretty much down to me on the couch and Luke on a folding cot in the hallway.
It was Kathleen living on Sutton Place that gave me the idea. Here we were with nothing and a few blocks away, the swells were living like the Depression never happened. As often as I could, I put on a suit and my fedora and walked the streets of Sutton Place tipping my hat to ladies with fox skins draped around their shoulders.
I figured if I spent some time walking those streets like I fit in, some day the job and the money would come. I tried to tell the guys down at Hanratty’s that you gotta have goals and dreams, but they say I’m just nuts.
I was strolling Sutton Place one morning when my cousin Kathleen walked out of Number Three. I could see she was in a hurry but was too polite not to stop and ask after Aunt Lottie. I barely answered when she interrupted.
“Tommy, Missus is waiting, I have to get her headache medicine at Mister LeGrande’s.”
“Kathleen?” A white haired man, sporting one of those old fashioned mustaches with wax on the ends, was getting out of a Packard. A chauffeur, dressed in livery black, held the car door wide.
Kathleen, who spent our childhood boxing my ears, bowled me over when she bent her knee in a slight curtsy. “Mister Van Helden, I’m on my way to the druggist . . .”
He gave me the old up and down. “So I see.”
Kathleen blushed.
“Oh, no, sir. This is my cousin, Thomas Flood. We just happened to meet. Missus needs her headache medicine.”
“Yes. Yes. Well, get to it then.” And he marched toward the building, as the doorman scurried to pull the handle of the big brass door.
I tipped my fedora to his back. You can never tell when a well-blocked fedora will come in handy.
#
Lottie insisted all the cousins attend Mass every Sunday morning, and Luke and I struggled to oblige. The High Mass at Saint John the Evangelist on Fifty-fifth Street started at eleven-thirty and went on forever. If a guy had a whiskey or two on a Saturday night well, all that singing would make your teeth ache. So, we usually caught the twelve-thirty or, more likely the one-fifteen, which Lottie called the Heathen’s Mass. She swore it was scheduled to keep drunkards, who already had one foot in hell, just a bit in touch with the Lord. When Lottie came home from High Mass to find Luke and me sprawled out with a pot of coffee and the New York Herald Tribune, she’d snatch the newspaper right out of our hands, throw a few sharp glances at the clock, and begin muttering about the end of Prohibition being the ruin of all fine young men. The muttering would be the final push that got us dressed and out the door.
After Mass we were standing outside the church debating a quick stop in Hanratty’s when Kathleen came down the church steps. She dismissed Luke’s “hiya, sis” with a quick bob of her head and grabbed my arm with an urgent tug.
“Tommy, Mister Van Helden asked if I would be seeing you on my half Sunday. He wants you to call on him at his office tomorrow morning at ten. I wasn’t bold enough to ask if he’d be offering a job.”
She pushed a small piece of stiff white cardboard in my hand. A business card, the bosses at Quality Furniture called them. The raised script shouted that Van Helden was president of the family-named securities firm with offices on Park Avenue South.
#
And that was how I came to be waiting in a fancy room, listening to a pretty young receptionist struggle to control her New York accent as she spoke into the telephone. “There’s a Mister Flood here. He claims to have an appointment with Mister Van Helden, Senior, but I do not find him on the schedule.” And she gave me an evil eye that could only come from a Brooklyn girl.
After listening for a moment she said “thank you” and placed the receiver lightly in the cradle, as if the person on the other end of the phone would hear too loud a click if she wasn’t gentle.
She continued filing index cards in a box and answering phone calls, all the while pointedly ignoring me. I was starting to figure that I’d wasted a morning better spent shaping on the docks, when a man, old but very erect, opened a door to my left and slid along the thick carpet. Everything about him was gray—hair, eyes, suit, even his skin had a grayish tinge.
“Mister Flood, if you will . . .” and he turned, walking back toward the door. I looked at the receptionist who surprised me with a wink and a thumbs-up.
I was knocked for a loop by Van Helden’s office, which looked exactly as I imagined the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria—flocked wallpaper, thickly padded furniture, and crystal chandeliers.
He was sitting behind a desk roughly the size of Lottie’s living room. I nervously fingered the rim of my hat as I waited for him or the gray ghost to ask me to sit down, but neither did. Finally Van Helden put down the piece of paper he was reading and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on his well-fed belly.
“Morris will be transcribing our conversation. Written agreements help me keep track of business.”
No answer came to mind so I stood and waited for more.
“I don’t know how much Kathleen has told you about our family.”
I knew to stop him right there.
“Kathleen doesn’t gossip. We know where she works. Our Aunt Lottie has a telephone number for emergency use. The rest of us don’t even know that number.”
He cleared his throat.
“Let me get right to the core of the matter. I have two sons who work here at the firm and a daughter who has far too much time on her hands. At an age when she should be married, with a home and family of her own, she roams Manhattan as if it’s a playground. She’s nearly twenty-four years old and shows no interest in settling down. Soon she’ll be too old for marriage and I’ll be stuck with a spinster on my hands.”
So, why am I here? Does he want me to marry the skirt? Must be ugly as sin if she looks like her old man. I waited for him to get to the point.
“Some years ago my sister got the silly idea in her head that she was a flapper. Rolled stockings, fringe dresses, the whole ridiculous obsession. Almost married a musician. I’m afraid my daughter has the same foolishness in her blood.”
“Irene demonstrates a penchant for unsuitable men. After one too many close calls, I’ve decided to provide her with some harmless entertainment with an inappropriate man of my choosing. She’s already been warned that one more dalliance will be the end of her generous allowance and marriage to a suitable man will be enforced regardless of how her mother pleads and begs on her behalf.”
“You, Mister Flood, are reasonably presentable and so unsuitable that I’m sure my daughter would find you attractive. So I’m asking you to find a way to meet my daughter, then show her the low side of life. Escort her to places she’d consider exotic or dangerous. I will pay thirty-five dollars a week and expenses. Oh, and a clothing allowance to start you off. And we both know your cousin Kathleen would be out of a job should anything untoward happen.”
Was he pimping me to his daughter? An easy job earning more cabbage than I’d get driving a bus or a train. And he’d toss in new clothes and shoes. I could throw a few bucks Luke’s way, and help Lottie with the rent. Double sawbucks were flying around inside my head. I think I stunned us both when I said. “Sorry, I’m not your guy.”
“That’s too bad. Due to your disinterest, it seems that Kathleen will be out of a job anyway.”
I should have seen that coming. What the rich guy wants, the rich guy gets. This rich guy wanted me. And he knew how to get me.
I raised my hands in surrender.
“I know when I’m beat, Mister Van Helden. I’m in. Tell me how you want me to play it.”
I wanted to smack the smile right off his face. Instead, I let my shoulders slump and my head droop. Let him enjoy the victory. Who knows how this would play out over time?
He looked past me to the mousy guy, who was scribbling in a steno pad.
“Morris, have you written all the terms as discussed?”
The mouse said he had.
“A transcript, please. And be sure the terms of Kathleen’s employment are duly noted.”
Morris nodded and left the room. Van Helden rocked back and forth in his leather chair, while I resisted the urge to knock him right out of it. Finally Morris came back and handed a folder to Van Helden, who glanced at the papers inside before returning one page and a photograph to Morris, who solemnly delivered them to me. I court the girl. I don’t touch the girl. Kathleen keeps her job. I get a clothing account at the fancy Brill Brothers store on Broadway and Forty-ninth, and weekly cash payments of thirty-five dollars plus expenses. I call Morris each day. Part of his job is to keep tabs on the girl and he’ll tell me where to find her. He’ll keep track of us and be the go-between for Mister Van Helden and me.
If Morris is already tracking the girl’s every move, I couldn’t see what use I’d be, but saving Kathleen’s job and a bushel of cash made the deal worth doing.
Van Helden must have signaled somehow because Morris said, “this way, please,” and I was out of the plush office, in the elevator and out on the street so quickly that if it wasn’t for the picture and the page of rules still in my right hand and the money in my left, I might have made the whole thing up.
In the bright sunlight, I finally looked at the picture. It was grainy. You’d think a guy with all that money would have a better camera. A light, wide ribbon tried to tame the dark curls cascading to her shoulders. She was pretty enough in a schoolgirl kind of way. The only glimpse I got of her clothes was a collar primly buttoned at her neck. This picture was of a child the father could control, not the young woman he’s pretending is still sixteen. I bet those lovely, full eyebrows are thin half moons right about now. Be a shame if she did that.
I went to the Automat for coffee, bacon and eggs, while I pulled my ideas together. Then I went in search of Luke. An hour later he was on my payroll at ten dollars a week and we were both in Brill Brothers having the time of our lives trying on the latest men’s fashions with Mister Paul ushering our every choice.
He had the manners of a Nancy boy and started every sentence with, “per Morris.” As in “per Morris, you will need club clothes immediately and casual clothes before the weekend.”
He was flustered by the idea of dressing not just me but Luke as well. He calmed down when I referred to Luke as my assistant and suggested that his clothes be a peg or two down the price line. He relented with, “per Morris, I am supposed to meet all reasonable needs.”
We left Mister Paul altering and packaging our clothes for delivery to Lottie’s by six o’clock.
“Tommy-boy, I know the rich have it easy, but getting clothes sent to the house? That’s just wacky. Now I get why we never see them lugging groceries or walking dogs. It’s a wonder they can wipe their own arses, or do they need help with that, too?” We laughed at the rich folks, poor slobs who couldn’t do a thing for themselves, and decided to celebrate our new found fortune with a cold one at Hanratty’s.
Luke wanted to buy the bar a round but I nixed showing that we’re flush. If word got out, might not be true for long. So we settled for a couple of beers and listened to the gab going on around us. Rumors of work at a factory over in Jersey, talk of the Yankees trading Babe Ruth, and lots of chatter about the upcoming Kentucky Derby. Moxie, a runner for Andy Corcoran’s book, said his boss really liked Discovery and was giving extra odds on Cavalcade, a horse Luke thought was being oversold and could wind up scratching.