Page 39 of If Looks Could Kill
“Ha,” said Freyda. “I value my life, thanks. But I may be able to do something. Sit tight.”
“For how long?” asked Pearl.
“I’ll get back to you before a week is out,” replied the investigative reporter.
Pearl turned away, dissatisfied. A week for Cora was a lifetime of misery. But we’d already taken months to come this far. We would have to be patient and not lose heart.
A thought seemed to occur to Pearl. “Thanksgiving is in a week,” she told Freyda.
“Oh!” I said. “Freyda, you should stop by the Salvation Army base and have a piece of pie with us.” I laughed. “We’re feeding half the Bowery, or so they say.”
Freyda smiled. “Another time, maybe,” she said. “My family will be celebrating that night. Thanksgiving and Hanukkah fall on the same day this year.”
“What will you do?” I asked.
“Eat turkey,” she said with a wry face. “Light the menorah.”
“And be together,” Pearl added, almost wistfully.
Both Freyda and I turned to her in shared surprise. Pearl didn’t seem tonotice. I thought of my own dad, and even Aunt Lorraine, who ran herself ragged each year putting out a beautiful Thanksgiving spread. Give Aunt Lorraine her due—nothing the Salvation Army could serve up would touch the hem of her cooking. If cooking had hems. Never mind.
“In the old country, my family couldn’t observe Hanukkah,” Freyda said softly. “It was too dangerous. The tsar…” Her gaze drifted off, then she caught herself. “So, here, they make a great fuss over it. My mother will make latkes. My brothers will play the dreidel.”
“It sounds delightful,” I told her.
Pearl couldn’t bring herself to agree. Nor, however, could she find it in her to disagree.
Freyda rose to leave. “You’ll hear from me soon,” she said. “Like I said, around a week.”
“Happy Hanukkah,” I told her. “And thank you. We’re indebted to you.”
“What are you thanking me for?” she teased. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
Le Havre, FranceJack uponLa Bretagne(Saturday, November 24, 1888)
The steamshipLa Bretagneslips through the long jetties reaching their arms out into Le Havre bay toward the English Channel. They feel like pincers, like the long arms of a pair of tongs trying to pluck him out of the water before he makes good his escape.
La Bretagne’s mighty engines chug. Its twin black smokestacks belch puffs into the morning sky as the jetties recede from view. The ship plows into the rugged crests of the Channel, southward and westward toward the open ocean and the transatlantic voyage that will carry him home to New York, to the city that will absorb him into its beautiful anonymity. Only the seagulls cleaving through the coastal sky, circling for darting fish, now connect him to the shore. Even so, he can’t stop himself from feeling twitchy, scanning the coastline for a police boat surging over the waves toward him, blowing whistles and honking horns. It’s only his imagination. No such boat pursues him.
But he’s not alone.
Just a few days ago, he had posted his bail in London and boarded a train for Dover. There he booked a single night at a hotel and bought passage upona Channel-crossing vessel leaving the next morning. By then, he had spotted his silent companion. He’d seen him too many times to hope it was coincidence. By afternoon, he took shore in France and made his way to Boulogne to lie low. He rented a room for a few nights, thinking to find some peace, but his shadow found him. He slipped away once more, traveling this time to Le Havre, where he bought passage on the New York–boundLa Bretagne, but still his flight was discovered. In Le Havre, as in Boulogne, whenever he left his landlord’s home, there was the paunchy, yellow-mustached Englishman strolling a street corner, badly pretending to read a French newspaper.
The man is now on board the ship, the treacherous snake. He sits in a deck chair some twenty yards away, again feigning reading a paper, despite frigid November winds that rattle it illegible. Just a little message from the London police:Don’t go far. We’re watching you.
Ordinarily, embarking on a voyage, Jack would stand here at the ship’s railing, just as now, with the salty breeze ruffling his hair, feeling the old, familiar seafaring thrill. Another adventure, with sights, meals, and shows to look forward to, entertainments and conquests awaiting him in a distant land. Another market to exploit commercially. And in other, more private ways. He was born to travel. Never one for sitting still. After some time surveying the shrinking shoreline, usually he would find his stateroom and arrange his belongings to his liking, make his way to the dining room to see about a meal, and then locate the gentlemen’s lounge and find a worthy opponent at billiards.
But he can’t relax. Can’t settle down with a newspaper and a cigar. Can’t stomach the thought of food. Can’t look forward to the comfortable boredom of a week at sea. Not with a bloodhound at his heels aboard this very ship.
What exactly do they know?
And if they know it, why let him get away? A trifling charge, a perfunctory bail—and then setting a private detective upon his trail?
They know, or suspect, enough to follow him all the way across the sea. Surely he can shake off this blond dope. But what’s their game? He can’t see how it all adds up.
Once he reaches the old U.S. of A., he’ll be free. America won’t extradite him back to Britain on an indecency charge.
A murder charge, on the other hand… Five murder charges…
