Page 24 of If Looks Could Kill

And so I sat in the waning light on the fire escape in the alley with the brothel, and waited.

As a little girl of nine or ten, I once accompanied my father on a fishing trip.

Just the two of us. No Aunt Lorraine. It was the Fourth of July, and a community picnic beckoned with games, company, and food galore, but we two took a picnic lunch to Cohoes and found a secluded spot on the southern tip of Simmons Island, where willow trees cast enough shade for us to bait our hooks, prop our rods, and leave our lines bobbing in the calmer little pool in the island’s lee.

There the rush on either side of us of swirling Mohawk River waters met in the middle and made peace with each other. And, Dad hoped, with the fish.

“What do we do now, Dad?” I asked my father.

“We eat lunch,” he said, “and we wait.”

Lunch disappeared quickly enough, but waiting took its time. Water raced past us on either side, talking loudly on its way. Scrubby brush at the river’s edge swayed and rustled with the breeze while gulls circled above and, in the muted distance, the Cohoes Falls roared.

“Nothing’s happening, Dad,” I told him.

“I know, Tabby Cat,” he said. “That’s the point.” He tipped the brim of his straw hat low over his brow and settled in to watch the fishing line in its quiet pool beside the churning river.

After what felt like an eternity, but was probably about three minutes, I disturbed his rest again. “Can’t we do anything, Dad?” I asked. “To hurry the fish along?”

He shook his head. “Not a blessed thing,” he said, “and that’s the best part of it.”

“The waiting?” I asked. “The doing nothing and the waiting are the best parts?”

He opened a pea pod and thumbed out baby peas into my hand. “Someday you’ll see.”

But I didn’t see. We caught no fish that day. I thought the outing a waste, and I resented missing out on hide-and-seek, jacks, and hopscotch with all the other children, my best friend Jane especially, not to mention the cakes, pies, and tarts the mothers would have brought.

But now, crouched on the fire escape, I could begin to see.

Six days a week, Dad’s newspaper office was a noisy, hectic, harried place, with deadlines and edits, with writers and workers clamoring for attention.

Six days a week, Dad was swept up in news flooding into Troy, a hub of science, commerce, and politics at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers and the Erie Canal.

Most nights Dad barely got home in time to kiss me good night.

But that day on Simmons Island, we shucked peas and shelled peanuts and drank lemonade straight from the jar.

Dad told jokes, and I tore leaves into bits, tossed them high, and watched them flutter down as “snow” upon his balding head.

He quizzed me on my state capitals, and I asked him how banks work, how businesses work, how government works.

He showed me how to lob acorns with a slingshot and how to skim a rock over the water’s surface.

I showed him how Queen Anne’s lace, upside down, looked like a fairy’s wedding gown.

As I kid, I thought I’d waited all day for nothing to happen. Much like today, on the fire escape. But I saw now what Dad meant. And, oh, if he were there to keep me company.

So consumed was I in thoughts of Dad that I almost didn’t notice, in the falling dark, when a pair of figures left the hidden doorway and ventured down the alley toward the street, bundled against the cold.

One was a burly man, puffing on a thick cigar.

The other was slim and pale, with a pouf of dark hair piled atop her head.

It was the girl in pigtails who’d been looking for Spring Street. The girl in the window.

She was alive. Finally, we’d found her.

I waited till they had turned the corner and vanished from sight, then I clattered down the stairs and ran after them. I barely saw them turn left at the corner up ahead onto Broome Street, heading toward the Lion’s Den.

I followed them closely enough to keep them in my sights.

The man, I noticed, when he turned sideways, had one large, misshapen ear, a common sight among boxers and brawlers.

They pressed along through foot traffic, together but not together.

The man put a guiding hand on the girl’s back occasionally.

She cringed away from him. From my father, the touch would mean, I’m here.

I’ll look out for you. From this man, it seemed to say, I’m here. Don’t get any ideas.

They reached the Bowery. Spring Street was just ahead. I was out of time. I had to do something. But how could I, with that possessive man hovering like a circling shark?

A passerby recognized the man and hailed him. This halted the pair as the bodyguard stopped to exchange a word or two with his friend. The girl waited, staring mutely ahead.

Now or never.

I took a deep breath, got a bit of a running start, and plowed into the girl from behind.

“Watch it!” she cried. She stumbled forward and dropped her gloves.

I ducked down to grab them, and so did she, and we made a pretty pair of awkward females bending over and bumping heads for the general amusement of those around us. She smelled heavily of perfume and face powder.

“What’s your name and where are you from?” I hissed into her ear.

She froze, one hand still outstretched toward a glove.

“Go away.”

I don’t know what tone I had expected from this tragic damsel in distress when I began to heroically rescue her, but it wasn’t exactly this. Inwardly, I scolded myself. As a conversation opener, my question left much to be desired.

“I’m the girl who gave you directions,” I whispered. “When you’d first arrived in town.”

The cigar man eyed me as if I were a cockroach he’d found in the bathtub.

“Dames!” his comrade declared. “Know what I mean?”

Cigar Man and his pal laughingly agreed that they understood each other well re: dames.

“I want to help you,” I whispered to the girl. “Get you home to your family.”

She dropped onto one knee and made as if to lace her boot. “You’ll get me in trouble.”

“This busybody bothering you?” No mistaking the menace in Cigar Man’s voice.

“Leave off, Joe, she’s a half-wit,” the girl said coolly, looking me straight in the eye. “Can’t help herself.”

This drew more laughter from the men.

She narrowed her gaze at me. “Beat it.”

“I mean it.” I tried one last time. “I have… people and funds and…”

She took her time tying her boot. “You want to help me? Disappear.”

I rose. “Sorry,” I said, loud enough for all three of them to hear. “I’m so clumsy.”

I turned away, burning with shame. Had I made her situation worse? Had I—we—concocted this scheme thinking we knew someone’s needs when we didn’t, and meddled where we oughtn’t have?

“Half-wit,” Cigar Man repeated. He passed by me with the girl all but clamped to his side.

A few paces beyond me, she stopped. “Give me a penny, Joe,” she told him.

“What for?”

“I want a penny,” she said. “For the half-wit.”

His cigar waggled between his teeth as he spoke. “You’re wasting my time.”

She thrust out her hand. “All I’m asking is a penny. You can put it on my tab.”

He rolled his eyes, muttering, but found a penny and slapped it into her palm.

She approached me. “Buy yourself a coffee,” she said loudly. “Get yourself some help.”

She seized my wrist, raised it, and placed the penny in my limp hand.

“Cora Something,” she whispered, not looking at me. “Something Connecticut. They’ll never take me back.”