The House that Jack Built

chapter two

Chapter Two

This is the Malt

That lay in the house

That Jack Built

‘Mista Man! Mista Man!’ A middle-aged woman wearing a silken shawl over her chemise and petticoats ran up the alley behind Eutaw Street, calling to the beat cop. ‘Mista Man! Wait a minute, huh!’

Manny Levy stopped at the corner of Calvert Street and peered towards the sound of the call. Crap! That’s all he needed was for his supervisor to find out he was talking to one of the Gypsy women who read cards and did spiritualist shows for the marks. Some busybody from the neighborhood was sure to say he was consorting. For some reason, none of the Romani women would ever call him Officer Levy, or Manny. It was always Mr. Man.

‘Yes, Mrs. Zoli. What do you want?’

She stopped in front of him, breathing heavily from her dash down the alley. ‘Mista Man, there’s a woman in the alley.’

He looked towards Charles Street. He saw a group clustered about, all the women seemed to be clad in their chemises and petticoats with a shawl wrapped around them. ‘I see there are three or four women, Mrs. Zoli. What would you like me to do?’

‘No, Mista Man. Not those women. The woman in the alley.’

The cop was beginning to loose his patience. ‘I see four women, Mrs. Zoli. Which one?’

The woman grabbed the officer’s coattail in frustration and started pulling him into the alley. He heard her mumble ‘gardo’ under her breath. For some reason, when she said it, the Rom word for police sounded like she was swearing.

They reached the gaggle of women standing at the fence in the alleyway. Levy addressed them as a group. They were all named Zoli in this neighborhood, it seemed. He didn’t know if that meant they were actually related, if they were from the same tribe, or if it was just a stupid immigration officer in the harbor who gave up trying to spell their real names. ‘Good morning, Ladies. What seems to be the trouble?’

There was an outburst of cackling from the women, each going off in a mixture of Rom and English, none of which Levy understood. Finally, in desperation, the woman who had come to fetch him as he passed on the street grasped his shoulders and turned him around. ‘There, Mista Man. Look there.’

‘There’ was the corner of a yard where an outhouse had been set up. Nothing unusual there. Unless it was because these Rom like the door of their backhouses to face away from their own houses. ‘I see it, Mrs. Zoli’ He was beginning to let frustration creep into his voice. ‘What would you like me to do about it?’

The Gypsy woman had just about enough. She took him by the arm and walked him four steps across the alley. They stopped at the fence. She pointed down. ‘There, Mista Man. That is what we want you to do something about.’

There, tucked between the outhouse and the bushel baskets holding the week’s trash, was a woman’s body.

Levy looked from one woman to another. The women shook their heads. No, she wasn’t one of them, even though she was dressed in much the same manner.

He did what any good cop would do in just such a situation. He ran to the corner of Charles and Eutaw, blowing his whistle for all he was worth, then made a contacted his sergeant from the call box on the corner.

*****

‘You know, they’re going to catch you.’

Henry Linderman sat at his desk in the office his uncle had provided him. He really didn’t have any duties. But so long as he showed up a few hours a week, Uncle Max made sure he was paid a salary, just enough to keep his mother off his back.