Wicked, Wicked Women by Gardner Fox - Chapter 10

1961 Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Historical Fiction

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Men like Mike Gannon and Black John Bennett made their living off the Erie Canal, forever battling one another for control of canal shipping.

Women like Moira Kennally—the wanton widow turned Madam -- and the Egyptian, owner of the notorious pleasure parlor, The Golden Tassel - made their living off men like Mike and Black John, offering their passionate embraces in return for the hard-earned dollars the canalers wrested from "The Big Ditch."

Together and apart they lived and loved in a mad search for power and pleasure during one of the most turbulent eras in the mainstream of American life.

You can download the whole story from the Fox Library.

CHAPTER TEN 

A single gas lamp burned in the dim room.

Outside, dusk layered the city of Buffalo in a dark haze. For hours Moira Creegan had been standing at the window, staring out over the rooftops. There was no life in her, though her heart still beat and her eyes still saw. 

Only yesterday, here in this room and down there on the cobblestones, she had been a living, breathing woman. There had been no thought of death in her then. She had been vital, alive. Those few moments when she had held Mike Gannon in her arms had seemed to be the start of a new, better life for her. 

Even when the paddy wagon had carted her off to the police station, to spend the night behind bars until Partridge, Heap and Taggart could sent a clerk down with bail money, she had not fully understood how her world was ending. Only this morning, when the newspapers had appeared. ... 

They lay scattered across the library table, mute testimony to the despair now freezing her veins. All day long she had gone without food, reading those accounts over and over again. Her incredulous eyes had tried to blot out the picture some zealous newspaper photographer had made of her being escorted into the jail yard with a patrolman hanging onto each arm. 

Moira Creegan, madame of a bawdy house on Canal Street, being taken from the police van to a jail cell. Mrs. Creegan is the proprietress of one of the most notorious houses on Canal Street, The Golden Tassel. 

The caption writers and the rewrite men had enjoyed a field day. She could quote the editorial accompanying the photograph from memory. 

The police bagged a big one yesterday after the riot along Big Ditch Street. Moira Creegan herself, with hair disarranged and her garments almost torn from her body, was drawn in by the police net. With her capture, the spirit of the battle royal was broken. Never before has any girl from The Golden Tassel, much less its notorious madame, been guilty of so flagrant a violation of the law. 

It is high time that public-minded citizens rally to the challenge these bold women pose. Rumor says that within The Golden Tassel is a still more vicious bordello called The Upstairs Club, where vice is sold on the grand scale— 

A sob broke from her lungs. She buried her face in her hands. All this was bad enough, but early this morning, Kathleen had arrived at the Lehigh Valley depot. She should have been there to meet her, but she was still in jail. 

Kathleen would have had plenty of time to read the papers. By now the mother would have no secrets from the daughter. Moira Creegan, brothel keeper. A woman who sells vice to the rich men of the city of Buffalo. A vicious, evil parasite who deserves only to be stamped out of existence. 

Her gaze ranged Canal Street. There were few gaslights this evening after the battle. Its combatants were scattered, nursing their wounds. The Egyptian was in the hospital, under arrest. Penny Drayman was in a cot not far away, also under arrest. She had not heard anything about Mike Gannon, though she supposed he had raised bail, too. 

Yesterday, she'd been ready to tell Mike that, if he'd have her, she would marry him. Now that the papers had come out, that was an impossibility. What man wants the fact that his wife had been a brothel keeper to be known to the world? 

She could not marry Mike—and she could not go to her daughter. 

No one wanted Moira Creegan. She was a pariah, an outcast. The Golden Tassel was no longer a home. Her girls were scattered, her clientele in hiding in their fine mansions, afraid for their reputations. Everything for which she had worked so hard and so long had been swept away in a few short hours. 

Somewhere a church bell bonged the time of services. 

Her hand fell away and let the curtain drop. She turned her eyes around the room, seeing the Belter sofa and the thick Turkish rugs, the console table and wall mirror, the crocheted antimacassars on the stuffed chairs and chair bolsters, Sinumbra lamps and glass-domed shell ornaments, as if for the last time. This had been her home, these few rooms here at The Golden Tassel. It seemed she knew no other. 

The rooms, like The Golden Tassel itself, would be taken away from her. No longer could she keep up her role of traveling businesswoman. No longer could she remain here, for Brandon Partridge had informed her that the city of Buffalo, aroused by the riot on Canal Street, was preparing to make laws to wipe away the brothels and the entertainment palaces. 

No one to have her, nowhere to go. Her life was ended. 

Like an already dead person, she moved for the last time across the parlor into her bedroom and through the bedroom to the washroom. In a standing cabinet she kept a few medicines. There was also a bottle of iodine for occasional cuts. 

She stood a long time staring at the bottle of iodine before lifting it out of the cabinet and unfastening its stopper. The pungent smell of the liquid touched her nostrils and she wondered if this kind of death would hurt. She hoped not. She had always hated pain. 

Swiftly she lifted the bottle to her lips. 

Kathleen was sobbing softly as the brougham rattled over the cobblestones. She sat huddled in a corner of the cab wiping at wet eyes while Mike Gannon stared uncomfortably out the window. 

“How could she?" she wailed. 

The Big Irishman shrugged uncomfortably. His left eye still throbbed with a dull ache where his cheekbone had stopped an ax handle in full swing. Under his blue serge suit his ribs were bandaged tightly. It hurt him to move, even to breathe, yet he had insisted that he come down here to Big Ditch Street with Kathleen. There was a need in him as poignant as there was in the girl. 

Yesterday afternoon, when he had opened his eyes to the sight of Moira Creegan bending tenderly above him, he'd understood that he'd come to the end of the trail. He saw the love for him shining in her eyes. The tip of his tongue was already asking her to marry him when those blue-coats had yanked them apart. 

What he'd had no time to do yesterday, he'd do today. 

"How could she think I'd be anything but grateful f—for everything she's done?” the girl asked. “Does s-she think I'm such a-an ungrateful hussy I'd turn my back on her n-now?" 

Mike cleared his throat. "Well now, acushla—your mother gets funny ideas sometimes. But I thought I'd better see you as soon as those newspapers came out. I didn't know what you might be thinking." 

She reached for his hand and held it, smiling tremulously. "I'm glad you came, Daddy Mike. I guess I needed somebody to open my eyes to what a wonderful mother I've got.” 

"Sure, you can tell her that yourself any second now," he said, peering out the window. "We're here at last.” 

He handed her down on the Canal Street cobblestones. Kathleen looked about her curiously at the shattered windows, the bits of broken bottles, the splintered pick and ax handles, the spots of dried blood that showed where the riot had raged so recently. She shivered. Mike put an arm protectingly about her shoulders, leading her up the stairs and into the cool quiet of The Golden Tassel. 

The emptiness of the big room struck at them both. Mike growled, "Looks like a mausoleum, fit only for the dead." 

Their shoes made faint echoes on the wide stairway. Then they were in the upper ball and moving toward the suite of rooms at the far end, the walls of which adjoined the smaller Mummy Case. The door of the parlor was ajar. 

Mike pushed it in. 

Kathleen ran ahead of him into the bedroom. Mike could hear the faint drumming of her feet on the carpeted floor. 

"Mother!” 

The stark horror in her young voice lifted Mike to a run. He came through the bedroom door to the sound of scuffling and sobbing in the bathroom. He leaped forward to discover Moira and Kathleen locked in a struggle for a small brown bottle. 

The hairs at the back of his neck lifted when he recognized what the bottle contained. "Glory be to God," he breathed, and reached out. 

At the touch of his hands, the fight went out of Moira Creegan. She fell back against the wall, staring at him, then at Kathleen "Why weren't you a few minutes later? Why? Why?" she moaned. 

Mike turned and hurled the bottle across the bedroom. It hit the far wall and shattered, blotching the wallpaper with brown stains. Then he swung on Moira, face black with fury. 

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Moira Kennally! What in the name of God's got into you? I'm thinking you don't deserve such a wonderful girl as Kathleen here. If you could have heard how proud she was of you—yes, and how angry that you'd think her ashamed of you—" 

Moira turned amazed eyes toward her daughter. Kathleen sobbed softly and fell into her arms. They clung, weeping, while Mike cleared his throat and looked at the wash basin, then studied the white ceiling and the bathtub fixtures. 

"Mother, do you think it matters to me if—"

"I was so afraid. And ashamed!” 

"You did what you did for me. You gave up everything you'd ever known to make sure I'd never have to do the things you had to do. You sent me to France. You fought to keep me when you could so easily have left me behind in Rome—or let Aunt Martha and Elvira take me back in that lawsuit!” 

"I never thought you'd—”

"Mother, I love you! When one person loves another it doesn't make any difference what they've been. Can't you understand that?" 

Mike growled, "The girl's right, damn it!" 

Moira looked at him and now he could see the love gleaming in her eyes as it had gleamed yesterday afternoon; an exultation leaped inside him. He took one step forward and put his arms around the woman he loved, and the girl he loved as a daughter. 

"Faith, mavourneen. I'm going to ask you once again—will you marry me?" 

“Yes, Mike—oh, yes. Yes!” 

Kathleen was laughing through the tears in her eyes. "Have you no manners, either of you?" 

They paid her no mind, and so the girl slipped out from between them, giving room Mike room to put arms around her mother and draw her in close to him. Then they were kissing, and Kathleen smiled and turned her back and moved through the bedroom into the parlor. 

"I'll wait here," she called. "No need for that,” Mike boomed triumphantly. 

He came walking toward her with his arm about her mother's waist. Moira was laughing, flushing faintly, leaning against him languidly. Then Mike put his other arm about Kathleen. Like that they moved out into the hall, walking side by side away from the past into their new future. 

END