Page 21 of If Looks Could Kill

“Fire in the Five Points!” the little newsboy on the street corner bellowed.

“Republicans triumph with Harrison over Cleveland in a landslide! Mrs. Gould at death’s door!

Another murder in East London! Kansas miners buried in an explosion!

More detective work by Nellie Bly and a new story by Bret Harte!

Get your Evening Edition for just one copper penny! ”

“Evening, Oscar,” I told him.

The boy plied his trade as usual, still clad in the knickers he always wore, revealing bare legs despite a biting November chill bringing tidings of winter in its wake.

He barely spared me a glance. “Evening, Sally.”

“That’s not my name.”

He pulled a face. “You think I’ve got time to remember you?”

“Yes, I do,” I said, “since I buy a paper off you weekly and tell you my name each time.”

He rolled his eyes. “You wanna be remembered? That’s gonna cost you tips.”

“Tips?”

“Coin,” he said, as if I were a dunce. “A gra- too -ity. What the French call a ‘poor boy.’?”

Pearl looked at him, puzzled.

I laughed. “?‘Poor boy’! You mean, a pourboire?”

He stuck his pinkie finger up in the air. “If you’re snooty, then, yeah.”

“?‘Pourboire’ means ‘for a drink,’?” I told him. “I’m not buying you a beer.”

“S’all right.” He shrugged. “I’m more partial to whiskey.”

Pearl looked as scandalized as I felt.

“I’ll pay for my paper,” I said. “But no whiskey for you, my lad, not one drop.”

“Young man,” cried Pearl, “promise me you won’t drink that poison again. At your age!”

“That’s nothing, girlie,” he said. “I was raised on rum. Since I was a babe in arms.”

Lower East Side families who couldn’t afford milk raised their children on small beer. But whiskey! Rum! And the little fiend’s impertinence. Girlie, indeed!

“No tips, Oscar, but I’ll buy you something wholesome to eat,” I told him.

“Then you’ll have to sell my papers for me,” he said, “cuz if I don’t hit my quota, I don’t get paid. I got no time for a dinner break, and you yammering is costing me customers.”

I gestured to Pearl. “You’re looking at a championship paper-seller right here.”

To my surprise, Pearl got on board. She scanned the headlines and began calling out, “Fire in the Five Points! Rescuers Unable to Reach the Kansas Miners! London’s Horror—The Whitechapel Excitement Grows More Intense!”

Oscar’s rebuke to Pearl followed me as I pushed my way into a diner. “?’Ere! You’re doin’ it wrong. You don’t read dem papers, you sells ’em!”

And “sells ’em” she did. By the time I came out of the diner armed with a roast beef sandwich and a pickle, Pearl was distributing papers and collecting pennies from a gaggle of men suddenly overwhelmed with journalistic curiosity. Oscar watched, open-mouthed.

“Here you go, sir.” I presented him the sandwich. “We kept our part of the bargain. Let me see you eat this.”

He took an enormous bite of the sandwich. “The pretty one’s gotta keep selling,” he said through a barely chewed mouthful, “or no deal.”

“Do you promise to swear off rum and whiskey?” Pearl asked him.

He laughed through his meal. “Haw! Haw!”

“Fine,” Pearl said. “No more liquor this week?”

He stuffed another bite into his face and winked at her.

With each reply, she grew more upset. “You incorrigible little imp,” she said. “If I sell enough papers now to meet your quota, promise you won’t touch a drop to drink tonight .”

The little dealmaker scrunched up his forehead and took a thoughtful bite of pickle with his scraggly teeth. “You got no way of knowing if I keep that promise or if I ain’t.”

That was a fact.

“But this here pickle’s an extra-good one,” he said, waving its stump in my direction, “so all righty. You win, Sallys. I’ll stay off the juice. Tonight. For the two of yous.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Pearl with a deep bow, “Your Majesty.”

“Come to classes at the Five Points Mission School,” I told him, thinking I might as well try. “For every class you attend, we’ll help you sell more papers.”

Oscar scowled at this but didn’t refuse the idea, which I found promising.

We stayed a few more minutes, during which time Pearl made selling papers look like picking buttercups. When Oscar’s quota for the day was satisfied, we took our leave of him.

“We haven’t a prayer,” Pearl groaned. “If tiny children are raised on rum, what hope do we have of leading adults away from it?”

“Maybe the Temperance ladies will carry the day,” I said, “and put a stopper on booze.”

“When pigs fly,” she muttered.

There seemed no point in trying to cheer her up. So I didn’t bother. The pretty one. Bah.

“Oh!” Pearl cried. “Look!”

She pointed to a petite young woman passing by. I turned back to Pearl in confusion.

“Never mind,” she said. “I thought it was Freyda. Suppose she’s forgotten about us?”

“Maybe she thinks we’ve forgotten about her,” I said. “But she’s probably moved on from us. There are lots more interesting things to write about than us.”

“That girl in the window,” Pearl said. “I’ll bet she feels the world has forgotten her.”

I squirmed at that. October had been so occupied with all our soupy, soapy work that I largely had forgotten about her. Some rescuers we were.

“I hope she’s all right,” Pearl said. “I hope she’s still alive.”

Of course she’s still alive, I wanted to say. Don’t be melodramatic. But she might not be. She might be ill or dying. Shame on me, a lifetime of shame, for not doing more, and sooner.

“We don’t need Freyda,” I told Pearl. “Let’s go look for the girl again tomorrow.”

I paused under the glow of glaring saloon lights to peruse the front page of my paper.

“Those poor miners,” I said, scanning the article. “Only two survivors. One hundred and sixty-two of them, killed in one explosion.”

“Their poor families,” Pearl said quietly. After what looked like an inner struggle, she added, “Er, what does it say about the murder in London?”

Oho. Not even Pearl the Prim could resist a story as tantalizing as the Ripper case.

I turned to the first column and forgot my wicked amusement. “A younger woman,” I whispered, “was found mutilated in a rented room.”

We stared at each other for a moment. Mutilated. I blinked away the image.

I could tell Pearl was shaken too. “How utterly wicked.”

I wanted to wrap a protective armor around my own body, alive and intact and with all its parts and organs safe and working.

“Why would anyone do that?” Pearl said. “When will it ever stop?”

“That’s the question,” I agreed. “Each new murder makes it more shocking.”

“What possible reason could anyone have for such gruesomeness? Such brutality?”

“Sadism?” I said. “Some perverse kind of”—I could barely say the words, as the thought was so grotesque—“sexual thrill from it?”

Pearl closed her eyes. I regretted voicing the thought aloud.

A long silence prevailed before Pearl spoke again.

“We’re told God loves all his children,” she said, “but some people are just so… so…” She searched for a fitting word.

“Unnecessary?”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

Here it came. The religious scolding. I wasn’t in the mood. “Hmm?”

“You said ‘unnecessary.’?”

I would neither confirm nor deny it.

“It’s not the word I would’ve used,” she said slowly, “and I’m not sure it’s what the Lord would want us to think.”

Leave it to Pearl to let no opportunity for a spiritual rebuke get away from her.

“But sometimes,” she said, “you do have a knack for words.”