The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

“Care to tell me why the Chief Investigator of a private detective agency, with field offices in every city worth the name, and foreign outposts in London, Paris, and Berlin, is personally sleuthing for one missing young lady?”

“I wondered when you’d show, Mike. Your plainclothes boys were pretending not to watch me exiting Hammerstein’s stage door.”

“I train them to dislike surprises.”

Captain “Honest Mike” Coligney commanded the New York Police Department’s Tenderloin station house. His precinct included much of the Theater District and the hotel and boardinghouse neighborhoods where actors lived. Bell had worked closely with him years ago on the Gangster case, but operating on the same side of the law at sharply different angles made them competitors as much as allies. The policeman danced an elaborate ballet with the politicians who bossed New York City. The private detective was beholden to none. Coligney had six thousand cops backing him up, Bell had the Van Dorn Agency’s ironclad guarantee: “We never give up! Never!”

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” said Coligney. “Where you been?”

“Out west.”

“What brought you back?”

Bell gave him a copy of Anna’s picture. Now that the captain had the police “involved,” as Pape had put it, he intended to recruit extra eyes.

“Sweet-looking kid,” Coligney said. “A hopeful actress explains why your sidekick Archie Abbott is hanging out in the theatricals’ saloons. The blue-blooded Mr. Archibald Abbott IV having been a thespian before you brought him into the agency.”

Bell remained reticent.

The captain probed drily, “It might even explain why Harry Warren’s Gang Squad is knocking on rooming house doors, though I’m not sure how far detectives disguised as gangsters will get with rooming house landladies. But it still doesn’t explain why you are gumshoeing personally—is the lassie’s father a big wheel?”

“Not a Rockefeller or Judge Congdon, but big enough. Truth is, I had a couple of light days and felt sorry for the poor devil. He’s self-important and self-admiring—the richest man in the Brass City—but Anna is his only child, and it became clear to me that he loves her dearly.”

“Any luck?”

“Not a lot. I found a stage manager who sort of remembers hearing her read for a role. Archie found a callboy who told her ‘no parts.’ Harry found a landlady who thought she’d been looking for a room, three or four weeks ago. That would fit the time she left home, but if the name she gave was hers, she changed it for the stage.”

“So did Lillian Russell.”

“This one’s become ‘Anna Waterbury.’”

“Homesick.”

Bell and Abbott had made the rounds of dance and music schools, and the cheap eateries patronized by young actors starting out and older ones on the way down, and Bell was now finishing up low-cost laundries in the theater neighborhood. They had shown Anna’s photograph to landladies, young actors and actresses, and stage door tenders; a few thought they recognized her. In a tiny dressing room crammed with chorus girls at the Broadway Music Hall, Bell had found one who recognized her picture and recalled the name Anna Waterbury. So he was reasonably sure she was in New York, but still had no clue where.

“Hospitals?” asked Coligney.

“No Papes, no Waterburys.”

“Morgue?”

“Any unidentified young women I should know about?” Bell replied, doubting there were. He was neither especially concerned about young Anna’s safety nor surprised he hadn’t located her yet. New York was a huge city, and there were thousands of jobs for actresses in the vaudeville and dramatic theaters, in musicals and burlesque, and the road shows they spawned.

“None as of an hour ago,” said Coligney. “Good to see you again, Isaac. Congratulations, by the way. I heard you finally persuaded Marion Morgan to marry you.”

“Thank you. If there’s a luckier man on the planet, I haven’t met him.”

“Lord knows what she sees in you.”

“She’s funny that way,” Bell grinned back, and they shook hands good-bye.

“Say hello to Joe Van Dorn.”

“Can I tell him you’ll lend a hand?”

The captain nodded. “I’ll pin up Anna’s picture and have my sergeants mention her at roll call.”

Two days later, running out of options and growing concerned, Isaac Bell mounted the front steps of a brick mansion on a dimly lighted cross street in the Tenderloin. The doorman stood six-four and weighed two-fifty. “Good evening, sir. It seems years since we’ve had the honor.”