Henry Fields, owner and proprietor of the Fields Theater in the Bowery, lazed against the brick wall of a tenement building while chewing a tobacco wad and occasionally hawking up the surplus into the gutter. To passersby, some of whom greeted him with a nod or a word or a smile, he was at ease and unconcerned, at peace with the world about him. But the more attentive observer would have noticed that while Fields looked everywhere at everything, straying his eye down the length of the street and up to the clouds and meteors in the sky, he saw one object alone. No, Mr. Henry Fields was not at ease. He was not in one of his casual or idle moods. His mind was not wandering. Henry Fields had fastened all his attention on one particular door on the other side of this particular street, and he waited for this door to open.
And when it finally opened, he saw that Ms. Christina emerged first, followed by Ms. Abbott. He saw the latter walk her out, halt at the entryway, and then turn back indoors. His alert and canny eye alone saw Ms. Abbott from the window of her saloon, watching Ms. Christina swerve away and finally disappear into the teeming crowd. And he saw that when Christina had merged with the crowd and was lost to sight down the broad avenue, another woman pushed forward into the crowd after Christina, a woman now slowing down and now jogging along at a quick pace. He spit the remainder of his chew in the gutter and then cut off down a sidestreet in a westerly direction, to head them off.
A few blocks down, Fields spotted the second again, and watched her. She was still in pursuit of Ms. Christina, though now moving along more cautiously, every other minute glancing back over down the street, as though she expected at any moment for a large hand to fall on her shoulder, and for a booming voice to call out, with authority: “Lady, I am detaining you.” This second woman – of course – was Lydia, or, as she was known to Henry Fields, “Ms. Lydia.” She had no doubt consulted with Ms. Abbott, as he’d recommended, and that lady had either given her warning (and directed Lydia to follow Christina at a distance, waiting for her chance), or simply wanted to avoid any ‘unpleasantness’ in her place of work, and to rid herself of both women without causing a scene. Knowing Jane Abbott, Fields knew her to be the kind of woman not only anxious to avoid a ‘scene’, but the kind who has long before washed her hands clean of any responsibility. If her clients or her boarders wanted to act up, kill each other, or steal, well, that wasn’t her business. Her business was to ensure that they paid her when they agreed to pay her. And Christina, like most of her shady and less respectable boarders, paid on time. If Lydia had told Jane Abbott anything, it would have stayed between Lydia and Jane and the vicious streets. And, thought Fields, that’s what Jane must have told her: “This is between you, Christina, and the street. I wash my hands of this.”
But though Fields was a deeply curious man, and was able to size up a person or situation pretty quickly, he thought little about what Jane Abbott had been revolving through her mind, or what were her reasons for distancing herself from the two other women – the real matter at hand was why Lydia was chasing such a dangerous woman, why she was following Christina. He was baffled, and – well, he was only human – the mystery fascinated him. Would there be a murder? A scuffle? A pickpocketing? A quarrel? Whenever Christina was involved with another woman, or whenever another woman was involved with Christina, one could be certain of a confrontation.
And this woman claimed she’d been robbed – pinched, mugged, cornered, perhaps – of something ‘valuable.’ Her clothes were well-to-do, and in disarray, and her face bruised and sleepless. That she’d declined to call enforcement, a night watchman or anyone else, for help, was curious, and seemed to suggest that she herself could have been implicated in some illegal or less-than-proper act. These were some of the thoughts that came to his mind as he loafed and leaned across the street from Mose & Lize’s saloon, the small part of his back against a brick wall, a big plug of chewing tobacco in his mouth, thinking, watching, and waiting.
Past the disreputable bars and bordellos between Bleecker St. at Martin and Greene, down the old decaying 18th century mansions from the Bowery to 6th Avenue, and up Sixth Avenue to the lower 50s – crisscrossing around & taking dozens of unnecessary detours – to the spot of Midtown just south of today’s Central Park, Christina’s route to the piggery district just west of Midtown seemed to Lydia and Henry Fields nothing short of erratic. But at last she stopped.
The building she stopped at was a wooden, unstable structure, perhaps a boarding house. The sort of language that wafted down from its upper stories sounded like English, but could have been any speech under the sun. The sound of a baby sobbing reached Lydia’s ears, and then Henry Fields heard a catfight beginning in some remote and unseen corner. At the front door, Christina turned around and glanced backward, and stared so long down the length of the street that Lydia, concealed a block away, hidden behind a stone quoin and shaded beneath a low canvas awning, felt her skin creep.
When Lydia was certain that Christina was inside, she came out of her hiding place and squeezed her way down the narrow lane, toward the old building. Then she felt a hand touch her shoulder, and wheeled around, terror-struck and chilled to the bones. Her veins warmed and her blood began to flow again when she saw the honest face of Henry Fields looking back at her. He steered her off to one of the nearby buildings for a conference. “Can’t be done,” he said. Lydia gave him a questioning look, and then turned her face toward the end of the street.
“Apologies for the shock, Ms. Lydia, but this won’t work. She comes out in an hour, or two hours, and then,” he pulled up his coarse cotton shirt, revealing an ancient and timeworn pistol, flecked over with rust, “then we’ll nab her together. We’ll sit here and wait.”
Over the roofs of the neighboring houses, a black smoke began to arise from the factories and slaughterhouses. Two blocks down, in the central part of Midtown, she heard the sounds and caught the smells of the city. Twenty feet away, two gigantic hogs rummaged through the gutters, pawing their hooves through the debris, searching for food. But aside from those hogs, this street was strangely, uncannily lifeless. Not a soul was in sight.
“I’m grateful – more than I thought I could ever be – that…you’re here, that you’re present with me. I know you have a kind, disinterested, and unselfish heart.” Mr. Fields straightened his back and nodded, looking sagely and vigilantly off toward the boarding house, where the tabby cats were still screeching and scratching each other heroically. Fields heard the smash of a glass bottle and a thunderous oath. Then all was peaceful again.
“But Mr. Fields,” Lydia continued, “I must go on alone. Do not wait for me.” She began to pull away from him. “I must go into that building. I simply cannot wait.”
“This is most unwise, Ms. Lydia. I shouldn’t be a man if I saw you go in that door alone." He paused in thought. "I’ll conduct you to the door, and after that you’ll go it alone. That’s my oath.”
Lydia wavered. “I can allow you that. You give me your word you'll go no farther?”
“My word and my bond, that we link arms 'til we get the door. After that you can hazard what you may. I’ll wait at the landing.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
“If it gets warm, don’t feel no scruples about hollering. I’ll have my gun cocked and at the ready. Call down from above, call down loud enough to wake the dead old dame across the street, call down until the whole bugeaten building keels over – I’m there instantly, pronto, toot sweet.”
“Who says ‘toot sweet’?”
“Well, I believe the French say it. They say ‘toot sweet’ stead of ‘at once.’”
“Of course they do. They’re French.”
“Oh no – all the French know American and could be American if they wanted. They just stick to the Frenchie tongue out of pure perversity. I once met a Frenchman in a bar who I perceived was welching on me. I said to him, ‘You're shuffling the tits off that queen, you bet I'm watching you. You pay, Jacques, or this knife’s in your craw.’ (Apologies, Ms. Lydia.) I said, ‘You pay what you owe or you cut out ‘toot sweet.’ I spoke his tongue so he'd know where I was going. But then he cut back a step with one wide sneering grin over his face and said ‘Qu’est-ce que vous dites?’ as though he wasn't following where I was going. He told me to talk American to him so he'd get it. Well I did talk American to him then, and you bet he was out of there running hell-for-leather before anyone pulled out a gun. It’s my general view that all your Gallic types have American, but they just like their French better.” He smiled, then went on rambling. “Sheer perversity, I say. That’s a French trait predominantly. I’d have chased this fellow from hell to breakfast if I didn’t think he’d get a kick out of it. See, your American cheats because he’s hard-up or a hard-case. Your Frenchman cheats ‘cause he’d get a nice story out of it in the end. That’s how I see it.” Fields stopped and looked around. They were at the door. “Hold, Lydia. I hear voices. Listen.”
High, high above, on the fourth floor, they heard two voices, both women. A strange spell had fallen across the building, and even Fields began to feel solemn and nervous. He signaled to Lydia to move up, and then sat down quietly on the stoop, cocking his gun and resting it on his knees. He fingered his belt, and stared out the door into the street.
Two minutes later, Lydia was before the door. She listened, and looked through the crack. And what she saw within astonished and horrified her.