For the Love of Mike (25 page)

“A good holiday? He doesn’t even give us one day off over the eight days of Chanukah,” Sadie muttered to me. “He gives us Christmas Day off and what good is that to Jewish families?”

Mr. Mostel went up to his office and then returned. “Sam—I got to pop out for a while,” he called down the length of the room. “If the sample hands come in before I get back, tell them the designs are in the top drawer on the right. Got it? They can start work straightaway.”

He’s certainly laying it on thick, I thought. If I were the spy, I might begin to smell a rat.

“New designs. As if we care,” Sadie muttered to me. “A collar is a collar is a collar.”

We hadn’t been working long when the door opened again and Ben Mostel came in. With his top hat and silver-tipped cane he looked like a peacock in a henhouse.

“Morning, girls. You’re all looking very lovely today,” he said, picking out some of the younger, prettier girls to grace with his smile. A general titter followed him down the room.

“Your dad’s not here, Mr. Ben,” Sam called as Ben passed us in the direction of Mostel’s office.

“No matter. I just wanted to leave something for him,” Ben said.

I was on my feet instantly. “I need to go to the washroom, Sam,” I said. “It’s really urgent. Can I go?”

“Okay, I’ll give you permission this once,” he said. “Only don’t make a habit of it.”

“How come she gets permission when I don’t?” Sadie asked.

“Because she ain’t running in and out all day like some I could mention, including you,” Sam said. He jerked his head to me. “Go on then, if you’re going.”

I sprinted through the door like a girl who has to go in a hurry. I even opened the washroom door, went in, and closed it behind me, just in case Sam was still watching me. Then I opened it a crack, checked around it, and was up the stairs like a shot. The door to Mostel’s office was open and Ben was so busy looking in one of the drawers in his father’s desk that he didn’t hear me coming.

“Did you find what you are looking for?” I asked.

He spun around with a guilty look on his face.

“Your father has worked hard to give you all the benefits he never had,” I went on, “and this is how you repay him?”

“Who the hell are you, and how did you know?”

“I’ve been watching you, Ben Mostel,” I said. I was enjoying this moment, confident that I could run down the flight of steps ahead of him and was within shouting distance of a roomful of girls. “What do you think your father would say if he knew you were betraying him to Lowenstein?”

Without warning he came around the desk and while I was still thinking I might have to defend myself after all, he closed the door.

“What do you want?” he hissed at me. “Is it money? Is that it? All right then, how much?” He reached for his wallet.

I was no longer feeling quite as brave as I had been, but I decided I was still within shouting distance.

“Since all the money you have comes from your father and he is paying me in this Lowenstein business, I don’t require to be paid twice over,” I said.

Ben looked puzzled and horrified. “My father is paying you to follow me? He must have heard about me and Letitia then. You can tell him he doesn’t have to worry—it’s nothing serious. Just a bit of fun, you know.”

He was talking very fast, his eyes darting nervously like a schoolboy caught at the cookie jar.

“What do you mean, it’s not serious—betraying your father to his rival?”

“Betraying?” He laughed uneasily. “Oh, come on, that’s a bit strong, wouldn’t you say? I only took the girl to supper a few times. I take hundreds of women to supper.”

“Only this girl’s name was Lowenstein. But taking Letitia Lowenstein to supper wasn’t what I was talking about, and you know it. I’m talking about the other matter—your father’s designs. You were looking in the wrong drawer, by the way.”

“Designs—what designs? I don’t follow you.”

“Isn’t that what you came here for, the moment your father left his office? Had he kept them locked away at home?”

He laughed again, a little more easily now. “I’m afraid I don’t see what my father’s designs have to do with me and Letitia.”

“Oh, so you weren’t just about to copy them and slip them to Mr. Lowenstein?”

“Why on earth would I want to do that? My old man might be dashed annoying, but I’m not out to ruin him.” He stared at me and I saw the worry grow on his face. “Is that what he believes—that I’m out to betray him? I know he thinks poorly of me, because I’m rather a duffer where money is concerned, but surely he must know—I mean, you must set him straight, miss—uh.” He was looking at me like a scared schoolboy again.

“So you’re telling me that you didn’t come here to sneak a look at your father’s new designs then?”

“I had no idea he had come up with new designs. I’m not at all interested in the fashion industry, much to his disappointment.”

“Then what were you doing in his desk?” I couldn’t help asking.

He blushed scarlet. “If you really must know, he keeps his checkbook in that drawer. I thought I might—uh—borrow one of his checks.”

If Ben Mostel was acting then he had better apply for the lead role in Ryan O’Hare’s next play. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?” He tried a winning smile.

“Not if you replace it immediately.”

“Oh, very well, although there will be a certain restauranteur who may not be happy if I don’t pay the bill after dinner tonight.”

He gave a sheepish smile, half opened the drawer, then looked up at me thoughtfully.

“You say you are working for my father, but I’ve seen you before, among the girls on the shop floor.” Not quite as inane a young man as his father had thought. “So it seems to me that you might not want the fact that you are working secretly for my father to be revealed.”

“Most astute of you. So you are suggesting that we have a bargain—I say nothing about your helping yourself to your father’s checks if you say nothing about my not really being a seamstress?”

“Exactly.”

We looked at each other for a long while in silence. “Very well,” I said. “However, if your father ever comments on anything missing from his desk, I shall feel obliged to tell him what I witnessed.”

“And if any of the girls comment that you are behaving strangely, I shall be obliged to set them straight.”

“I never behave strangely,” I said with the ghost of a smile.

“So sneaking up to the boss’s office isn’t strange behavior?”

“I am supposed to be in the washroom, which is where I am going when you are ready to leave.”

“Don’t trust me in here alone, huh?”

“Your father tells me you give him a lot of grief.”

“My father is a stingy old man who keeps me permanently short of cash. How is a fellow to enjoy life if he has no money?”

“It must be hard to have to go without champagne every now and then, or not to be able to see every new show that opens,” I said sweetly, but he caught my sarcasm and blushed again. “So tell me—how did Letitia Lowenstein come by that very attractive, unique locket I saw around her neck?” I knew this was really taking a chance. If Ben had acquired Katherine’s locket, it might have been taken from her dead body. This inane, overgrown schoolboy act might conceal a clever killer for all I knew.

This time he flushed almost beetroot red. “So that’s what you were getting at all the time! I guess you already know, don’t you?”

“I might do, but I’d like to hear your version.”

He winced. “Did my father find out and send you to get an admission of my guilt?”

“He may have. So how did you meet Katherine?”

“Who?”

“The girl who owned that locket.” I inched toward the door, feeling more secure when my hand wrapped around the doorknob behind me. “But surely you knew that, didn’t you? Did you meet her here, at the factory?”

“I’ve no idea who you are talking about. You know where I found the locket—at the bottom of my father’s drawer in his desk here. I wanted some cash to buy Letitia a present and I thought to myself, what does he need a pretty little thing like this for, so I pocketed it—as I think you knew all along, didn’t you?”

“Oh yes,” I stammered. “I knew that all along.”

Twenty-five

I
don’t remember how I came down that flight of stairs again. I sat on the W.C. letting the cold bring me back to my senses. Mr. Mostel after all—that genial man playing the worried father and betrayed employer so well. Had he paid someone to remove Katherine or had she been lured up to his office and dispatched right here? Until now I had dismissed the notion that I was dealing with a highly dangerous man.

“You took long enough, didn’t you,” Seedy Sam commented as I returned to my seat.

“Sorry, but I’m not feeling too well today,” I said, giving the phrase enough meaning to make him refrain from further questions.

At lunchtime I decided that my ill health was a good excuse for staying put and keeping an eye on the place.

“Aren’t you coming to eat?” Sadie asked me.

“No, thanks. I’ve got a piece of bread and cheese in my bag if I feel like eating anything at all,” I said.

“Do you want me to bring you something back from the café?” Sadie asked.

“I think it was their food that did it in the first place,” I said. “That stew yesterday.”

“It was bad. I couldn’t finish mine,” she said. “I didn’t even want to look at it. But I could bring you some noodle soup and a roll. It’s very nourishing.”

“Thanks, Sadie. You’re a pal, but I think I’ll survive,” I said. “You better get going or you’ll be at the back of the queue.”

She left. It was completely quiet in the sewing room. Even Seedy Sam had gone to have his lunch with the cutters and pressers downstairs. I nibbled nervously on my bread and cheese. I hadn’t had to lie about that one—I really did feel sick. Katherine’s locket in Mostel’s drawer. One day she disappeared and never came back. And if Mostel got wind that I was snooping, or was involved in starting a strike, then the same thing could happen to me. “Get out while you still can,” a voice whispered in my head.

I looked up as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The half hour for lunch wouldn’t be over for fifteen more minutes and girls were not usually in a hurry to return. Sadie came into the room. She had flushed cheeks from the cold wind.

“Horrible food again. Be happy you didn’t order anything. I came back early—couldn’t stand the smell,” she said. “Now I need to go to the washroom myself.”

She went through the inner door without even pausing to take her shawl off. I heard the washroom door close, then another sound that had me up on my feet—it was the creak of floorboards. Sadie was going up the stairs to Mostel’s office. I gave her a head start and then I crept up the stairs after her. Mr. Mostel’s office door was closed. Cautiously I inched it open. The office was empty. I crept through into the back room beyond which the sample hands occupied when they were at work. Empty apart from bolts of cloth and a couple of forlorn dummies.

Could those creaking floorboards have been the product of my overactive imagination? I could have sworn I heard feet going up the stairs. But she couldn’t just have vanished. She must have heard me following her and be hiding, waiting for me to go downstairs again before she looked for the designs. I checked the drawer to see if she had maybe taken them already and was sitting somewhere, copying them furiously. But the folder still lay unopened in Mostel’s drawer.

I felt the back of my neck prickle. Where was she? I spent futile minutes turning over bolts of cloth to see if she was behind or under any of them. I was about to go downstairs again when I noticed a door I had overlooked. Mostel’s door had always been open as I had come up the stairs, concealing another door to the left of the little landing. This door was not properly shut. I pushed it open and found another short flight of stairs. I crept up it. It was dark and seemed to be leading to some kind of attic storage space. Bolts of cloth were stacked high on either side. It smelled musty. What on earth could Sadie want up here, unless she was doing what Mostel had dreaded and quietly helping herself to a few yards of trim?

Then I heard a girl’s voice whisper, “Wait. I think I hear something.”

And the whispered answer, “It’s okay. They’re all at lunch still.”

I went up the final steps, around the bolts of cloth, and stood staring at two frightened faces.

“Molly,” Sadie stammered. “What are you doing up here?”

“More to the point, what are you doing?” I asked, “and who is this?”

I stared at the other girl. She looked somehow familiar. She was staring back at me, frightened, poised for flight, and yet at the same time defiant.

“Don’t tell on us, please, Molly,” Sadie begged. “She had nowhere else to go. If they find her they’ll kill her.”

I came closer, trying to make out her features in the poor light.

“It’s all right, Sadie. I should go anyway. It’s not right for you to take risks for me,” said a very haughty English voice.

“Katherine?” I said.

She started in horror. “Who are you? I never saw you in my life before. How do you know me?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, “but for now let me just assure you that I am a friend. I’m on your side.”

“Did you tell her, Sadie?” Katherine asked.

“Of course she didn’t tell me, but don’t worry, you can trust me. What on earth possessed you to hide out here, of all places?”

“We couldn’t think of anywhere else. This room is hardly ever used, so we thought I’d be safe enough.”

“But so close to Mostel. What if he’d discovered you up here?”

“He’d have been annoyed, of course.”

“Annoyed. Wasn’t he the one trying to have you killed?”

They looked at me as if I was speaking Chinese.

“Mr. Mostel? He’s really an old sweetie,” Katherine said.

“Then who?”

“Why, her husband and his horrible friends, of course,” Sadie said. “She came to me one night in a terrible state and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to hide her but here. I smuggled her in early next morning and I’ve been bringing her food.”

“So that’s why you’ve been leaving the café early, and going to the washroom so frequently.”

She nodded.

“You’ve been taking a terrible risk.”

“I know,” Katherine said, “that’s why I should go now, while I have the chance.”

“Where will you go?” Sadie asked.

“I’ve no idea.”

“I’ve an idea,” I said. “My name is Molly and believe it or not, I’ve been trying to find out what happened to you. I’ve just thought of a perfect place for you to hide out. Go to Nine Patchin Place, behind Jefferson Market in Greenwich Village. Two women live there. Their names are Sid and Gus—don’t ask. Tell them you are Katherine and Molly says they should hide you until she gets home. I’ll explain everything later.”

“Are you sure?” She was still regarding me suspiciously. “Why should you put yourself out for me?”

“I said I’ll explain everything later, but for now you have to trust me, Katherine. And nobody would think of looking for you as far away as Greenwich Village, would they?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then wrap yourself up in a shawl and get out of here while you can.”

We were just about to bundle her down the stairs when the sound of voices rose from below. The girls were back from lunch.

“We’ll have to wait until after work,” I said. “Sadie and I will work out how we can distract Sam while we get you out of here somehow.”

“Don’t put yourself at risk for me,” Katherine said.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied breezily. “Come on, Sadie. Let’s get back down there before Sam docks us half our pay.”

We rushed down the stairs.

“So where have you two been?” he demanded.

“Washroom again,” I said. “We’re both sick from the stinking stew we ate yesterday. We’re not eating at that café ever again.”

Sam just grunted.

“It’s like an icehouse in here,” one of the girls commented as a group of them came back into the room. “Can’t you turn up those stoves any higher?”

“If I do, they’ll burst,” Sam said. “If only you try working hard enough you’ll create your own heat.”

“Very funny,” the girl muttered.

Machines started clattering again. The afternoon dragged on. Girls clapped their hands together and stamped their feet to bring back the circulation. Sam walked up and down the lines of girls.

“What kind of work are you doing here?” he demanded, stopping beside a machine in the far row. “Those are supposed to be straight lines, not zigzags. Only a blind person would want to buy that garment.”

“Maybe I could keep my lines straighter if my hands weren’t so cold,” the girl he was speaking to said. “The wind comes in through the cracks around this crummy window. I’m so cold I’m one big shiver. I can’t take it no more.”

“Fine by me,” Sam said. “You don’t have to take it. Get your things and go. You’re out.”

“Wait a second.” Gina, the tall Italian girl, rose to her feet. She was almost the same size as Sam and she glared at him, eye to eye. “You can’t fire her because you don’t heat this lousy place well enough for us to do our work.”

“I just did,” Sam said. “You want to join her—fine by me too.”

“This place is too cold for anyone to work properly,” Gina said. “It’s a disgrace. Look at it. Nobody ever sweeps the floors. Nobody cleans the W.C. No light, no heat. We’re treated no better than animals.”

Sam was still lounging against the window ledge with a lazy grin on his face. “Like I said, anyone who don’t like it can hit the road, anytime.”

“Fine,” Gina said. “We take you up on your kind offer.” She looked around the room. “You said it wasn’t a good time to strike now. How much worse does it have to get? Look at our hands. We all got chillblains from the cold. Come on, girls. What are we waiting for? Let’s show them.” Several girls had risen to their feet. “You can tell Mr. Mostel he better treat us nice if he wants his new designs in the stores anytime soon,” Gina said loudly, “cos we’re walking out. Let’s go, everyone.”

Some girls jumped up, cheering, others lagged, looking at each other with scared faces, but in the end they were all on their feet, nobody wanting to be the last out of the door. I had no alternative but to rise to my feet with the rest of the girls. As they all surged forward to grab their bags and scarves from the hooks along the back wall, Sam pushed past and stood in the doorway.

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” he bellowed in a threatening voice.

“You can’t stop us, Sam,” someone shouted back.

“You wanna bet?” He leaped through the doorway and slammed the door shut. We heard the sound of bolts being shot. “You ain’t going nowhere till I get the boss,” he called through the door. “You’re going to sit there and stew.”

Then we heard the sound of his heavy boots running down stairs.

Girls began to whimper.

“Oh,
Mein Gott
, we’re in trouble now.”

“He’s gonna get the boss.”

“He’s gonna bring the police.”

“We’ll all be fired.”

“My papa will throw me out if I lose my job!”

The wail rose in different languages, most of which I couldn’t understand, but understood anyway.

“They can’t keep us in here against our will,” Sadie said, pushing through the crush of girls at the door. “It’s against the law. Let’s see if we can break down that door.”

“You heard the bolts. We can’t break through bolts,” someone said.

A great mass of girls pressed around the door.

“I want to get out. I hate being locked in,” one little girl screamed from the middle of the crowd. She forced her way to the door and pounded on it. “Let me out! Let me out!”

“They locked her in jail when she was a kid in Russia, then they shot her parents,” someone explained. “No wonder she’s scared.”

“Henny, calm down.” Gina grabbed at her, but Henny fought her off like a wild thing.

“Leave me be. I have to get out—”

There was a crash and the oil stove toppled to the floor. With a whoosh flame raced along the spilled oil, eating up the lint and scraps of fabric in its path. Panicked girls tried to get away, screaming as the flames reached them. A skirt blazed up and screams rose with it. Other girls batted out the flames with their shawls.

“Somebody get water,” someone was shouting and girls were already racing for the washroom. I was one of them, but there was nothing in there in which to carry water, except for an old tin mug.