Cinders to Satin. Fern MichaelsЧитать онлайн книгу.
with your own pockets. You tell me now, or I don’t go one step further.”
Owen glanced around in desperation. His quick eye caught a glimpse of a blue uniform down on the next corner. He didn’t need the police poking into his business; he paid enough in graft as it was. And what if one of his rivals saw one of his girls giving him trouble? “You’ll just do what the girls tell you, and I get a piece of your wages. Er . . . for room and board and, of course, my protection.”
Callie didn’t miss the desperate look in Owen’s eyes as he looked up and down the street, and she was becoming more suspicious by the minute. “What kind of house do you have? Is it anything like that whorehouse at the end of Bayard Street back in Dublin?” She purposely made her voice loud.
Owen was sweating under his collar, keeping a quick eye on the policeman strolling up the street, swinging his billy club. “Now where would a little thing like you ever learn about whorehouses? For shame!” Then an idea hit him, one that had worked before with reluctant employees. “Turn around, cousin, look to the end of the street to that blue uniform swaggering up the block. D’ya know who that is? Well, I’ll tell ya. T’is the law, a copper, a blue jacket, a policeman. Understand? I don’t plan on standing out here freezing. Either you come with me now or I’ll turn you over to him. Remember how fine things were over to Tompkinsville? He knows a right fine place for girls the likes of you who don’t want to work. A place that’ll make Tompkinsville seem like paradise. Then how’ll you send money to your mum?”
Owen saw doubt creep into Callie’s eyes. He’d scared her just the way he had scared all the rest when they’d given him trouble. But there was something behind her rebellious blue stare that made him think she’d cut his heart out if given the chance. This one was going to give him headaches, he knew it.
Without a word, Callie picked up her pokes and followed Owen across the thoroughfare to 16 Cortlandt Street, a four-story tenement. She climbed the nine steps of the front stoop and waited while he jingled the assortment of keys on his ring and unlocked the front door. Perhaps she was wrong. Owen Gallagher must be a well-to-do businessman if he possessed the keys to the front door! To the entire house! In Dublin, six or seven families might live in a house much smaller than this. Inside the house, Callie was assailed by the stench of cooked cabbage and dirt. The hallway was dark and narrow, the stairs leading to the floors above worn and rickety and much in need of repair. The floor needed a good sweeping and scrubbing, and there was a lingering odor of old cigar smoke and something that reminded her of urine.
She was ushered into a room at the front, which Owen called a parlor. It was meagerly furnished with a dilapidated sofa, a chair, and several small tables. Callie sniffed and sneezed from its close atmosphere and the balls of dust that hid in the corners.
“You wait here and I’ll be right back,” Owen grumbled. “Now sit!”
Owen returned to the front hall and ran up the flight of dark, narrow stairs to the next floor. He rapped smartly on one of the six panel doors that led off the center hall. “Go ’way!” came a muffled complaint.
“Madge, get your tail out of that bed and come to the door. We’ve got a problem.”
A frowzy woman of questionable age with ponderous breasts struggled up from her sagging mattress. She loved her bed and spent every spare minute in it. It was a joke that once Madge got a man in the bellied-out hollow of that mattress he’d yell for mercy. She pushed back long kinky hair from her face to which the ravages of last night’s lip rouge and powder still clung. She opened the door, leaning against the jamb, looking out at Owen. “Why is it ‘we’ have a problem when you get yourself into a mess and ‘I’ have a problem when the money doesn’t come in fast enough?”
“Never mind, never mind.” Owen pushed his way into the heavily curtained room that did not allow even a glimmer of light from the window. “Fer God’s sake, why do ya keep this room so dark?”
“‘Cause I like it that way! Now what’s your problem? O’Shaughnessy refuse to deliver the liquor till you’ve paid your bill?”
“Nah! I’ve got a cousin downstairs—”
“A cousin now, is it? Well, don’t ever count me as one of your family, you snake.” Madge scratched her rump; the narrow gray straps of her chemise fell off her fleshy shoulder. “You said yesterday you’d be bringing in a girl to replace Trisha, rest her soul. I said it before and I say it again, that business with Trisha was your fault, Gallagher. If you’d been a little more careful and a bit more generous, she could’ve had the job done at the usual place instead of with the butcher you set her to.”
“That’s water under the bridge.” Owen scowled, pulling open one of the drapes, wishing he hadn’t when he turned to face Madge again. All traces of prettiness were lost to the aging harlot, lost to sin and liquor. But she ran a decent house and kept the girls in line and paid off the law and anyone else who nosed around more than was good for them. Madge was all right. “Fer Jesus sake, put some clothes on!”
Madge took the order as a compliment. “Why, Owen sweet, I didn’t think anything could rouse you. Whatever you say,” she said, pulling on a beribboned scarlet wrapper over her chemise.
“The problem is,” Owen asserted, “she’s just over from Ireland, and they cut her hair out to Tompkinsville. Almost as short as my own, blast their souls. She looks more a lad than me own brother. She can’t be more than thirteen, and she’s so little and skinny the wind would blow her over. On top of that, she’s a tongue that would make the devil himself wish for sainthood. That’s the straight of it, and I don’t know what to do with her.”
“Send her back. I don’t want no part of a kid. If you’re smart, you won’t have nothin’ to do with her either. I’m in this business for money, not to wet-nurse some kid.”
“You ain’t too smart, are ye, Madge? This kid ain’t got nobody here in America but me. Only me. Who’s she gonna run to? Besides, you know yourself, there’s those men who have a taste for little girls. She’d even be appealing to them what have a hankering for boys. There’s money in her, Madge, I can smell it. And since this is my house and my business, I don’t want no lip from you. You’ll do as I say.”
Madge arched her thin, pencilled brows. “And who says so, Mr. Gallagher? There’s plenty of pimps who’d want me to run their houses for them and keep the girls in line, and don’t you forget it!”
Owen knew this to be true and tried a different tack. “Ain’t you ever had the urge to be a mother? She’ll steal your heart, this one will. Be nice to her, Madge, take her under your wing and teach her the business.”
“Steal my heart? What heart? And if she’s kin to you, that’s not all she’ll be stealing. If you’ve got any more bright ideas, save them. You’re a slick weasel, is what you are, Owen Gallagher. Why I put up with the likes of you is more than I know.”
Owen dreaded the look he saw on Madge’s face. Looks like that always emptied his purse. Later he would worry about dealing with Madge; right now he had a little investment down in the parlor that, if handled the right way, would make him a rich man. “I have business up on Broadway that needs my attention,” he said, “so I’ll leave the girl up to you. Her name is Callie. Don’t let her mouth worry you none.”
“How hard can it be to deal with a kid?” Madge snorted, missing the way Owen’s eyes rolled. “Go on and see to your business, and I’ll handle things here. But I’m warning you, Gallagher, I’ll try her for two days, that’s all. I’ve got better things to do with my time. After that, if she doesn’t work out, you get her out of here and off my hands. Agreed?”
Owen Gallagher would have agreed to selling his soul at that moment. He nodded briskly and slid through the open doorway like the snake he was.
Madge sighed lustily. She did everything lustily. She wondered if she should take the time for a quick wash and decided against it. She’d better see to the kid. She’d try a bit of the mothering Gallagher suggested.
Callie