Page 8 of If Looks Could Kill

We made our way along the darkening Bowery.

Just us two, plus a thousand rivers of humans melting in and out of shops, hurrying to slop joints, flop joints, and dives, or ambling into sickly-sweet-smelling opium dens that wafted their perfumes into the mélange of corned beef, garlic, chop suey, horse manure, and stale beer that meant suppertime on the Bowery.

The whole encounter at the Lion’s Den had left me feeling antsy and agitated. As if there had been some message from the girl in the window that I had failed to see.

Electric lights sprang to life at concert saloons. A dime museum ballyman implored us to stop and see Vonda the Snake Charmer and Giselle the Gorgon of Gotham. His sales pitches sounded uncomfortably similar to how we would always urge people to attend our Army jamborees.

“Bloodstained shirts found in the Bennetts’ closet!

And a billy club covered in blood!” bawled a newspaper boy at the corner where we waited to cross the street.

“Two flour mill workers blown to smithereens in Cleveland mill explosion! Ten others injured! London police baffled by Whitechapel horrors! New York tops baseball league standings, with Chicago and Detroit nipping at its heels!”

He was nine or ten, I would’ve guessed, with round cheeks red with cold and a shock of dark hair that could use a good scrubbing falling over one eye.

He wore knickers and a pair of flannel shirts, one over the other, without any coat to speak of.

Short-legged and barrel-chested, he looked for all the world like a miniature circus strongman.

“Brooklyn principal in the clink for whipping an innocent schoolkid black and blue!” continued the young salesman. “Get your Evening Edition for just one copper penny!”

He caught me watching him and favored me with a saucy wink, the little scoundrel.

I confess I was quite smitten, so I fumbled in my little pouch for a penny.

Pearl tutted disapprovingly. Frivolous reading.

That’s what Mrs. Jessop, our captain at base camp, calls newspapers.

Scarcely better than novels—penny dreadfuls, those tools of Satan.

Would Pearl rat on me to Mrs. Jessop? Probably.

“What’s your name, young man?” I asked the lad as I handed him my penny.

“Oscar,” he told me. “Who’s asking?”

“I’m Tabitha,” I told him, holding out my hand. “Pleased to meet you, Oscar.”

He shook my hand, then pocketed my penny. I had a feeling that if I’d had a bracelet on, he would’ve somehow pocketed that, too. On the Bowery, children of the streets are trained not so much in their ABCs as in light-fingered thievery.

“Tell me, Oscar,” I said, “do you go to school around here?”

He crowed with laughter, as if I’d made a hilarious joke. “Naw,” he gasped. “Why go to school when all they do there is whup you?”

Or so the headlines would suggest. I gave him my most stern, maternal face. “Most don’t,” I said. “A bright young man like you should be in school.”

“No, thanks.” He gestured broadly to his person and his pouch of newspapers. “As you can see, Miss Meddlesome, I’m a working man.”

If he didn’t strike me as so funny, I’d have tweaked him on the nose.

“All right, then, Mr. Working Man,” I retorted, “come to the Five Points Mission School in the evenings. We teach night classes there for working children. That way you can still do your work and learn your ‘reading, writing, and ’rithmetic.’?”

“Pass,” said the young scalawag. “But thanks.” Oscar studied my uniform, and his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Is this a setup? All this about school. You trying to religion me?”

I laughed. “Not today,” I told him, “but definitely tomorrow.”

He puzzled over this for a moment, then grinned. “You’ll have to find me first.”

He tipped his tweed cap toward me, the gallant little rogue, then moved on toward a group of pedestrians crossing the street. “Bloodstained shirts found in the Bennetts’ closet!” he bellowed. “And a billy club covered in blood!”

I turned back to see Pearl glowering at me with both arms crossed over her chest.

“What?” I demanded.

“?‘Not today,’?” she mimicked, “?‘but definitely tomorrow’?”

“It’s dinnertime,” I said. “Aren’t we off the clock yet?”

“?‘He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.’?”

Psalms as weapons? I ask you!

“Yet it says nothing,” I pointed out, “about whether or not he stops for dinner.”

“You think you’re so clever,” she said, “but all you are is flippant and disrespectful.”

That stung, but I wouldn’t let it go unanswered. “How am I disrespectful?” I said. “I’m just having fun. You’re the one who insists everything must be so strict and righteous and holy all the time. You suck the joy out of everything.”

Bright red spots formed on Pearl’s cheeks. “So I should be like you?” she said. “Spreading ‘joy’ with offensive jokes about the Lord pausing his saving work so he could sit down to food ?”

People were starting to gawk at us, two young Hallelujah Lasses sparring like cats on a street corner. “You can be any way you want to be,” I told her. “I’m not trying to offend.”

“Yet you make it look so easy.”

“Jesus ate,” I said.

Not my snappiest comeback.

She glared at me. If looks could kill, we’d both be corpses on the pavement.

“You’re ‘off the clock’ when it comes to saving that boy’s soul,” she went on. “But not when it comes to persuading him to go to school.”

“You’re an outrageous stick-in-the-mud,” I told her. “You judge everything I say.”

Pearl looked like her head was about to explode. “Oh, I’m the one who judges?”

“Absolutely,” I cried. “Precious lot of good it will do him for us to encourage him to read his Bible when he can’t even read at all.”

Pearl ignored this. “And spending money on frivolous, sensational newspapers…”

“Oh, please,” I said. “If my penny buys that urchin his dinner, I’m glad of it.”

“And if he gambles it away at craps?”

All those boys, shooting dice rather than buying themselves supper. I couldn’t understand it. They’d rather play their game together than eat.

“What he does with his penny, I can’t control,” I said. “But I bought the paper.”

“Not for charity,” she said. “You wanted to read the news.”

“So what if I did?”

“Evening, ladies.”

I wasn’t about to break my gaze first to see who it was.

Then my brain gave me a good kick in the shins, and I looked up in horror to see Mike, the barkeep we’d met last week at O’Flynn’s, regarding us with deep amusement.

Of course he was. There was the tavern, right across the street.

He tipped his cap, bowed, and with a musical “Top o’ the evening to you,” he continued on his way, leaving me writhing in mortification.

Not for a king’s ransom would I let Pearl catch me blushing. Or turning to watch Mike’s back and shoulders disappear around the corner.

The corner.

The street sign on the corner.

Spring Street.

I froze.

“What’s the matter now?” Pearl said, throwing up her hands. “Lovestruck by your Irish bartender?”

“Pearl,” I whispered.

“What?” She came grudgingly closer to hear me over the noise of traffic.

“That girl in the window,” I said. “She was the girl. On the street. A week ago.”

She scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“The one who couldn’t afford The War Cry. ” I knew I was right. “The one who needed directions to Spring Street.” I pointed to the sign.

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you sure? She didn’t look anything like—”

“Look past the rouge and kohl powder,” I said. “Picture her hair in pigtail braids. It’s her.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “If you’re right…”

“I know I’m right,” I said. “I’m good with faces.”

Pearl’s own face paled. “Then I gave her directions, all right,” she said bitterly. “Straight into the jaws of hell.”