If I seem either hostile or cynical in recalling this particular phase of our work, perhaps it’s because of a realization that came to me as we reached the end of that second week in June: that the only group of outcasts in the city that didn’t seem to have several privately funded and nobly titled societies dedicated to its care and reform was the very one that was currently in such grave danger—child prostitutes. As this lack became more and more apparent to me, I couldn’t help but think back to Jake Riis—a man lionized in New York’s philanthropic circles—and to his blind refusal to admit or report the facts of Giorgio Santorelli’s murder. Riis’s deliberate myopia was shared by every official I spoke to, a fact that caused me more irritation every time I encountered it. By the time I came lumbering into Number 808 Broadway late Monday afternoon I was so sick of the fatuous hypocrites who made up New York’s charitable community that I was spewing a steady stream of rather violent curses. Having thought our headquarters empty when I came in, I spun round in shock when I heard Sara’s voice:
“That’s lovely language, John. Though I must say it fairly well describes my mood at this point.” She was smoking a cigarette and staring alternately at the map of Manhattan and the chalkboard. “We’re on the wrong track,” she decided in disgust, throwing the stub of her cigarette out an open window.
I collapsed onto the divan with a moan. “You’re the one who wants to be a detective,” I said. “You ought to know that we could go on like this for months before we get a break.”
“We don’t have months,” Sara answered. “We have until Sunday.” She continued to stare and shake her head at the map and the board. “And it’s not just the monotony that’s giving me this feeling.” She cocked her head, trying to nail down whatever was flitting through her mind. “Has it occurred to you, John, that none of these organizations seems to know very much about the people they’re trying to help?”
I propped myself up on an elbow. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Sara answered. “They just don’t seem…knowledgeable. It doesn’t match.”
“Match what?”
“Him. Beecham. Look at what he does. He insinuates himself into these boys’ lives, and convinces them to trust him—and these are some fairly suspicious and skeptical children, mind you.”
I thought quickly of Joseph. “On the outside, maybe,” I said. “Inside they’re praying for a real friend.”
“All right,” Sara answered, conceding the point. “And Beecham goes through just the motions required to establish that friendship. As if he knows what they need. These charity people have none of that quality. I tell you, we’re on the wrong track.”
“Sara, be realistic,” I said, getting up and joining her. “What kind of door-to-door organization that deals with large numbers of people takes the time to find out that kind of personal informa—”
And then I froze. Really froze. The simple fact of the matter, I remembered in a numbing rush, was that there was one organization that did take the time to find out just the kind of personal information that Sara was describing. An organization whose headquarters I’d passed every day for the past week without ever making a connection—and an organization whose hundreds of employees were well known for traveling neighborhood rooftops.
“Hell’s bloody bells,” I mumbled.
“What?” Sara asked urgently, seeing that I was onto something. “John, what’ve you got?”
My eyes darted to the right side of the chalkboard, specifically to the names BENJAMIN AND SOFIA ZWEIG. “Of course…,” I whispered. “Eighteen ninety-two might be a little late—but he might have met them in ’90. Or he could’ve gone back during the revisions, the whole thing was so royally botched—”
“John, damn it, what are you talking about?”
I grabbed Sara’s hand. “What time is it?”
“Nearly six. Why?”
“Someone may still be there—come on!”
I pulled Sara toward the door without further explanation. She continued to bellow questions and protests, but I refuse to answer any of them as we descended to the street in the elevator and then dashed down Broadway to Eighth Street. Wheeling left, I led Sara to Number 135. Pulling at the door to a staircase that led up to the building’s second and third floors, I breathed a sigh of relief on finding that it was still open. I turned back to Sara to find her staring with a smile at a small brass plaque that was screwed to the façade of the building, just next to the doorway:
UNITED STATES BUREAU OF CENSUS
CHARLES H. MURRAY, SUPERINTENDENT
CHAPTER 39
* * *
We entered a world of files.
Both of the floors occupied by the Census Bureau were lined with wooden filing cabinets that ran right up to the ceiling and blocked every window. Mobile ladders ran on tracks around the walls of each floor’s four rooms, and a desk sat in the center of every chamber. Harsh electrical lights with metal shades were suspended from the ceilings, throwing their glare onto floors composed of bare wood. It was a place without feeling or personality of any kind—a worthy home, in short, for bare, inhuman statistics.
The first occupied desk that Sara and I found was on the third floor. At it sat a fairly young man who wore a banker’s visor and an inexpensive but particularly well-pressed suit, the jacket of which was slung over his plain, straight-backed chair. Cuff protectors covered the lower portions of the man’s white, starched shirtsleeves, protecting those portions of the garment as the thin, sallow hands protruding from them attacked a folder full of forms.
“Excuse me?” I said, approaching the desk slowly.
The man looked up sourly. “Official hours are over.”
“Of course,” I answered quickly, recognizing an incorrigible bureaucrat when I saw one. “Had this been official business, I would have come at a more appropriate hour.”
The man eyed me up and down, then glanced at Sara. “Well?”
“We’re with the press,” I answered. “The Times, actually. My name is Moore, and this is Miss Howard. I wonder if Mr. Murray is still in?”
“Mr. Murray never leaves the office before six-thirty.”
“Ah. Then he’s still here.”
“He may not want to see you,” the young man said. “The members of the press weren’t exactly helpful last time around.”
I considered the statement, then asked, “You mean in 1890?”
“Of course,” the man answered, as if every organization in the world operated on a ten-year schedule. “Even the Times made ridiculous allegations. After all, we can’t be responsible for every bribe and falsified report, can we?”
“Naturally not,” I said. “Mr. Murray would be—”
“Superintendent Porter, the national chief, actually had to resign in ’93,” the man went on, still glowering at me with an injured, accusing look. “Did you know that?”
“Actually,” I answered, “I’m a police reporter.”
The man removed his cuff protectors. “I only mention it,” he continued, eyes burning at the center of the shadow thrown on his face by the banker’s visor, “to show that the main problems were in Washington, not here. No one in this office had to resign, Mr. Moore.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, forbearance becoming an ever more difficult task, “but we’re in a bit of a hurry, so if you could just point me toward Mr. Murray…”
“I’m Charles Murray,” the man answered flatly.
Sara and I glanced at each other quickly, and then I let out a perhaps impolitic sigh, realizing what we were up against with this fellow. “I see. Well, Mr. Murray, I wonder if you might be able to check your employment records for the name of a man we’ve been trying to find.”
Murray eyed me from under his visor. “Identification?” I handed him some and he leveled it just a few inches from his face, as if he were checking a piece of counterfeit currency. “Hmm,” he noised. “I suppose it’s all right. Can’t be too careful, though. Anyone might come in here
and claim to be a newspaperman.” He handed it back to me, and then turned to Sara. “Miss Howard?”
Sara’s face went blank as she scrambled for an answer. “I’m afraid I have no credentials, Mr. Murray. I serve in a secretarial capacity.”
Murray didn’t look entirely satisfied with that, but he nodded once and turned back to me. “Well?”
“The man we’re looking for,” I said, “is called John Beecham.” The name brought no change at all in Murray’s impassive expression. “He’s just over six feet tall, with thinning hair and a bit of a facial tic.”
“A bit of one?” Murray said evenly. “If he’s got a bit of a facial tic, Mr. Moore, I wouldn’t like to see an entire one.”
Again I had that feeling that had swept into me in Adam Dury’s barn: the coursing, exultant burn that accompanied the twin realizations that we were on the trail and the trail was still warm. I gave Sara a quick glance, noting that her first experience of that feeling was proving as difficult to control as mine had been.
“Then you know Beecham?” I asked, my voice quavering a bit.
Murray nodded once. “Or rather I did know him.”
Cold disappointment poured over my hot sensation of triumph for an instant. “He doesn’t work for you?”
“He did,” Murray answered. “I dismissed him. Last December.”
Hope surged again. “Ah. And how long had he been here?”
“Is he in some sort of trouble?” Murray asked.
“No, no,” I said quickly, realizing that I hadn’t bothered, in my enthusiasm, to work out a plausible cover story for my questions. “I—that is, it’s his brother. He may be involved in a—a—land speculation scandal. I thought Mr. Beecham might be able to help us find him, or would at least care to make a statement.”
“Brother?” Murray queried. “He never mentioned a brother.” I was about to reply to this remark with another fabrication, when Murray went on: “Not that that’s any indication. Not a talkative man, John Beecham. I never knew much about him—certainly nothing about his private affairs. Always a very proper, respectable person. Which was why I found it remarkable…” Murray’s voice trailed off and he tapped a long, bony finger on his chair for a few seconds as he examined first me and then Sara again. Finally he stood up, went to one of the rolling ladders, and sent it down its track to the far end of the room with a sudden, hard shove. “He was hired in the spring of 1890,” Murray called, as he followed and then mounted the ladder. Pulling out one wooden drawer near the ceiling, he ran through it for a file. “Beecham applied for a job as an enumerator.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“An enumerator,” Murray answered, coming back down the ladder with a large envelope in one hand. “The men who do the actual counting and interviewing for the census. I hired nine hundred such men in June and July of 1890. Two weeks’ work, twenty-five dollars a week. Each man was required to fill out an application.” Opening the envelope, Murray pulled out a folded paper and handed it to me. “Beecham’s,” he said.
Trying to disguise my eagerness, I scanned the document as Murray summarized it: “He was quite qualified—just the sort of man we look for, actually. University education, unmarried, good references—all powerful recommendations.”
And so they would have been, I thought as I studied the document, had they been even remotely legitimate. The information before my eyes represented a litany of lies and an impressive set of forgeries; provided, of course, that there weren’t two John Beechams with chronic facial spasms roaming around the United States. (I wondered for a moment how high Alphonse Bertillon’s system of anthropometry would have put those odds.) Sara was looking over my shoulder at the application, and when I turned to her she nodded as if to acknowledge that she, too, had drawn the obvious conclusion from it: that in 1890, as before and after that year, Beecham was sharpening his talent for elaborate deception.
“You’ll see his address at the head of the form,” Murray continued. “At the time I dismissed him, he was still living in the same rooms.”
At the top of the sheet was written, in a hand that I recognized from the note we’d studied weeks earlier, “23 Bank Street”—near the center of Greenwich Village. “Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes, I see. Thank you.”
Looking somewhat perturbed by Sara’s and my continued interest in the application, Murray plucked the thing out of my hands and slipped it back into the large envelope. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Else?” I answered. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Murray.”
“Good evening, then,” he said, sitting back down and pulling on his cuff protectors.
Sara and I moved to the door. “Oh,” I said, doing my best to feign an afterthought. “You say you dismissed Beecham, Mr. Murray. Might I inquire why, if he was so well qualified?”
“I don’t trade in gossip, Mr. Moore,” Murray answered coldly. “Besides, your business is with his brother, is it not?”
I tried another tack: “I trust he didn’t do anything untoward while he was working in the Thirteenth Ward?”
Murray grunted once. “If he had, I hardly would have promoted him from enumerator to office clerk and kept him on for another five years—” Murray caught himself and jerked his head up. “Just a minute. How did you know he was assigned to the Thirteenth Ward?”
I smiled. “It’s of no consequence. Thank you, Mr. Murray, and good evening.”
Grabbing Sara by the wrist, I started back down the stairs quickly. I could hear Murray’s chair backing up, and then he appeared at the stairway door.
“Mr. Moore!” he called angrily. “Stop, sir! I demand to know how you knew that information! Mr. Moore, do you hear—”
But we were already out the door. I kept a firm grip on Sara’s wrist as we headed west, though it wasn’t necessary for me to pull her along—she was moving at a quick, exuberant pace, and by the time we reached Fifth Avenue she had started to laugh out loud. As we came to a halt and waited for a gap in the evening traffic on the avenue to appear, Sara suddenly threw her arms around my neck.
“John!” she said breathlessly. “He’s real, he’s here—my God, we know where he lives!”
I returned her embrace, though there was caution in my voice: “We know where he lived. It’s June now—he was dismissed in December. Six months without a job may have changed a lot of things—his ability to pay rent in a decent neighborhood, for one.”
“But he could’ve gotten another job,” Sara said, her jubilation fading a bit.
“Let’s hope so,” I answered, as the traffic in front of us thinned. “Come on.”
“But how?” Sara called as we stepped into the avenue. “How did you think of it? And what was all that about the Thirteenth Ward?”
As we kept marching farther west toward Bank Street, I explained my line of reasoning to Sara. The 1890 census, I’d remembered hearing from friends of mine who’d reported on it, had indeed been the cause of a great scandal in New York (and the nation generally) when it was conducted during the summer and fall of that year. The chief causes of said scandal had been, not surprisingly, the city’s political bosses, whose power stood to be affected by the results of the count and who had tried to influence every stage of the proceedings. Many of the nine hundred men who’d shown up at Charles Murray’s Eighth Street offices to apply for positions as enumerators in July of 1890 had been agents of either Tammany Hall or Boss Platt, and they had been instructed by their superiors to tailor their returns so as to ensure that congressional districts loyal to their respective political parties weren’t redrawn in a way that would cause them to lose power in state and national affairs. Sometimes this had meant inflating the count of a given district, a job that entailed manufacturing the vital statistics and backgrounds of nonexistent citizens. For enumerators, apparently, were far more than simple numbers men: their work entailed careful interviews with a cross section of their subjects, the purpose being to determine not only how many ci
tizens the nation had but also what sorts of lives they led. These interviews included personal questions that might, as one of my colleagues at the Times had put it in an article, “under other circumstances have seemed quite impertinent.” The flood of false information that had come into Superintendent Murray’s office from Democratic and Republican agents had been perforce imaginative and often impossible to distinguish from real returns. Such behavior hadn’t been confined to New York, as I say, though as usual New York had taken the trend to almost absurd extremes. As a result, the work of assembling the final report in Washington had been greatly delayed. The original overall head of the project (the Superintendent Porter whom Murray had mentioned) had resigned in 1893, and the census was completed by his successor, C. D. Wright—but there was really no way to tell, even then, how reliable the final product was.
Enumerators had received their assignments according to congressional districts, which in New York had been subdivided according to wards. My question to Murray about Beecham and the Thirteenth Ward had, I told Sara, been a guess: I knew that Benjamin and Sofia Zweig had lived in that ward, and I was going on the theory that Beecham had met them while working in the area, perhaps even while interviewing their family for the census. Fortunately, my guess had paid off, though we were still in the dark as to exactly why Murray had dismissed our man.