Mrs. Sherlock Holmes Page 8

  Grace took his case and, after questioning Walls, escorted him out and got to work. She quickly identified a suspect: Mr. Lane, a tall New York acquaintance of Walls who had been to his apartment and had seen his coins and jewels. Grace’s detective work painted Lane as a cosmopolitan young man of “good address and Tenderloin tastes.” Grace even found a witness putting him in the apartment house on the day of the robbery. With plenty of circumstantial evidence on her side, Grace went before the grand jury and got Lane indicted. Now, she just had to find him.

  Grace put fliers around the area of Walls’s apartment asking for information. Within hours, James Matthews, a Pullman car porter, offered up Lane in exchange for twenty-five dollars. He wanted the money in advance. Grace declined but offered Mr. Matthews double the sum if he helped bring about Lane’s capture. Matthews refused, so Grace had him subpoenaed to appear before the judge. But when Grace showed Matthews a photo of Lane in court, he calmly stated that he had never seen him before. They had to let him go.

  As Grace boiled in frustration, District Attorney Nott told her to report to Dooling so that a detective could be placed at her disposal. That Saturday afternoon, Grace asked Detective Cooney to go to Grand Central Station to meet Matthews when he came in off his car. Grace asked Cooney, very politely, if he might get Matthews to understand how utterly complicated she might make his life if he did not tell her Lane’s whereabouts.

  Within hours, Matthews said he would be very happy to help.

  The next day, Grace and the police detective found Lane posing as the keeper of a chop suey restaurant. The police raided the place and arrested Lane. He confessed that he had planned the heist of Walls’s jewels (just as Grace thought) and that a man named Demarco had assisted him. Within twelve hours, Lane pleaded guilty before the judge. He then gave up Demarco, who led Grace to the shops where the jewelry and coins were pawned, and they were confiscated from under dirty glass. Manuel Walls kissed Grace on the cheek when she returned to his apartment with his missing riches.

  “Of course, we do not bar clients with money,” Grace said to the reporters who then began to call her office. “Mr. Walls is a man of means, but my idea in establishing the firm was to demonstrate that a legal bureau for the aid of the poor could be operated at a scale of prices within their reach and to their great benefit, and I think this has been done. Starting out alone, I now have four lawyers working with me, and I will have to increase the force soon on account of the press of business.” She paused, wanting to get this next part right.

  “We offer St. Regis law at Mills Hotel prices,” said Grace, firmly, “and such other assistance as they may need in the redressing of wrongs at a cost within their means.” When a reporter asked about how she had solved the case so quickly after the police had given up, Grace did not couch her words.

  “To begin with, the police are no good,” Grace told the reporter. “They had all the facts to start on that I had and did nothing. Even after I had made out the case against Lane it was necessary for me to find him. The police wouldn’t help.” The coverage of the case of Manuel Walls, sophisticated young diplomat, opened up new opportunities for the People’s Law Firm. But even as more calls began to come in, it was still the “little cases” that remained the firm’s bread and butter.

  One such case involved Herman Romanik, a young man who recently arrived at Ellis Island from Russia. As the doctors checked him out, Herman held his breath, hoped for the best, and was rewarded with a clean bill of health and an entry into New York City. Full of hope and pride, the twenty-five-year-old Herman opened a tailor shop on Attorney Street and got to business. Through nights and into the mornings, Herman was always at the shop, mending and sewing and stitching. All the while, Herman dreamed of the day he could bring his childhood sweetheart, Lotta, over from Russia. His strong and clear image of her, full of affection, made him work all the harder.

  But this story was no fairy tale; this was New York. Herman feared what might happen to Lotta at Ellis Island. Her health was not great, and many were being turned away because of the new immigration laws. So Herman saved even more money and went back to Russia to accompany her back himself. As they stood in line at Ellis Island, they were both passed as fit by the medical examiner and the Board of Special Inquiry. Herman beamed as he marched his new wife to the flat above his store in the pushcart district for their honeymoon. His wife somehow looked even more beautiful in New York than in Russia. Within a few months, the word that the couple was expecting got out to Herman’s happy customers and friends, who were sure it was a son, they said, clapping each other on the back and smiling through unruly beards.

  But one day, without warning, the shop closed, and the young couple disappeared from sight. Herman was finally seen leaving the flat but then returned with two doctors, who quickly went upstairs. A week later, his new bride was taken away in a car to Bellevue, and the little tailor was left to live and work alone.

  “It is nothing,” the bewildered Herman said to his neighbors. “She is sick. Crazy in the head, but it goes away by and by. Sure it will go away soon as the baby come. The doctors they say so. Sure it will go. She hurts nobody yet.”

  A few days later, Herman went to Bellevue to call for his wife. He walked up and down the wide white halls, but still he could not find her. Someone looked at the paperwork and explained to Herman that his wife had entered Bellevue as a charity case. That meant that she had been transferred to the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane on Ward’s Island. They explained to Herman that because she was a public charge, she would be deported. Herman felt as if he had been shocked with electricity. He had not been able to read the English on the Bellevue entrance card he had signed and was totally ignorant of what he had done. Herman had signed away his wife’s freedom. And that of their unborn baby.

  Herman went to Ward’s Island and met with Dr. Dent, his wife’s new doctor. Dent listened and offered to sign a bond to pay for the care of his wife but only until the baby came; then Herman’s family would be deported. Herman refused. But the law was clear: “an alien who shall be found a public charge from causes existing prior to landing shall be deported, as hereinafter provided, to the country whence he came at any time within one year after arrival.”

  But Dr. Dent had no intention of waiting a year. He immediately notified the State Commission of Lunacy of the presence of Lotta in his institution. Dr. Dent asked that her pregnancy not be taken into consideration. She was an “alien” and insane and should be deported immediately. The commissioner general of Ellis Island, Robert Watchorn, was given the order from Washington, D.C., to deport Mrs. Lotta Romanik. Herman watched helplessly while his wife was put out on a steamer in the Hudson, due to sail at ten the following morning.

  She was seven months pregnant.

  Herman felt like his life was turning to sand and blowing away in the wind. A friend gave Herman a business card with Grace’s name on it. The card said that she could be “consulted and retained as attorney and counsellor at law in cases involving attendance upon the courts and otherwise, especially with a view to meeting the requirements of litigants of moderate means.”

  Grace listened to Herman’s story carefully. She knew of Dr. Dent, recalling the name from the newspaper story in which the reporter Nellie Bly falsified her own insanity to uncover the horrific conditions that existed for patients on Blackwell’s Island. According to Bly’s account, when the patients in the women’s asylum heard Dent down the hall, they whispered, “Here is the devil coming.”

  First, Grace set out to procure a writ of habeas corpus to delay the deportation order. She explained to Herman that this would force the court to summon his wife before a judge and provide evidence as to why they were sending her back to Russia. The writ, if successful, would at least get her off the boat for a few days and give them some time. The problem was that it was already early evening. The boat was set to sail in the morning. They were going to have to work fast.

  Rising from her chair,
Grace unhooked the phone. She connected to District Judge Adams, who owed her a favor. She got him to agree to issue the writ and went over to his residence just as it was getting dark. He signed it, but the Ellis Island ferry had already docked for the day. Herman had a sleepless night, but Grace told him not to worry. There was only a small distance of choppy water separating the writ from his wife. When Grace sent the document over to the commissioner of Ellis Island the next morning via her secretary, running as she sped off the ferry and onto the pier, there was only fifteen minutes left before Lotta was set to sail. Minutes later, Lotta ran into the embrace of her husband, who was just behind Grace’s envoy.

  Later that day, Herman placed his wife in the New York Infirmary for Women and Children on Bleecker Street at a cost of $4.25 a day. Herman’s plan, made with Grace’s help, was to keep his wife institutionalized until the birth of their baby to avoid having the state seize control of her. Her full case could be heard in federal court later, and they could explain the whole misunderstanding to a judge. Grace didn’t foresee any problems.

  But $29.75 a week was a lot of money for a tailor on Attorney Street. After a few weeks, Herman was dead broke, and the baby was still five or six weeks away. Lotta had also become more and more violent. The infirmary was getting worried about her behavior, so they looked through her records and made a phone call. The man on the other end invited the infirmary to transfer her over to his care. The infirmary agreed, and Dr. Dent hung up the phone and immediately began the paperwork to deport Lottie under the same law as before.

  Once Herman was told, he quickly called Grace. Surely, she could perform her legal magic once again. But she wasn’t in her office. Her secretary told Herman that Grace had gone to Halifax with her husband for a rest and vacation. At Ellis Island, the doctors examined Lotta again and said that she was epileptic, not insane, and had been even before arriving in America.

  Herman disagreed, saying that her condition was only because of her pregnancy. He begged them to show mercy. To deport her now would be dangerous and inhumane. The baby would be here in little over a month. Shaking their heads, the doctors disagreed, and Lotta was ordered to be deported. She was taken onto the steamer Kron Prinz, bound for Bremen.

  Grace was still on vacation and unreachable, but her assistants at the People’s Law Firm sprang into action. They knew that issuing a writ wouldn’t work again, so they racked their brains for an alternative. Finally, someone suggested a radical solution—one that, although not a victory, might provide a compromise. What if Herman could—at the government’s expense—also be deported so that he could stay with his wife? Grace’s workers petitioned the court but were denied. So they got on the phones. United Hebrew Charities agreed to buy Herman passage on the steamer, and the law firm added another twenty-five dollars. If the couple had to leave America, let them at least leave together. Grace’s assistants sent the order over to Ellis Island as quickly as they could. Immigration officials agreed to the concession, and the firm procured Henry’s ticket to Bremen. From there, they could track back to Liverpool, where Herman’s father and brother now lived.

  Back on Attorney Street, Herman was swiftly trying to pack up his important belongings, including two feather beds. He well remembered the hardness of the steamer steerage bunks and wanted his dear wife to be comfortable as the boat pitched about. But no one would let him on a streetcar with such a floppy, unwieldy burden, so Herman ran to the dock himself, with the two mattresses flopped over his back.

  When Herman made it to the dock, wheezing and sore and with only five minutes to spare, he was overjoyed to see his wife, Lotta. His mouth fell even further when he saw his baby son asleep in her arms. Early that morning, while Herman was scrambling with his beds, Lotta had given birth to a healthy baby boy. Herman couldn’t stop staring at him. Then he realized that this changed everything. His son was only three hours old, but he was an American citizen. Herman remembered that Grace’s lawyers had told him that it was unlawful to deport an American citizen. The law surely could not separate mother and child; Lady Liberty was not King Solomon. She didn’t have a sword.

  The steamer was held at dock while Grace’s assistants tried to find a federal judge to issue another writ of habeas corpus so that Lotta’s health had time to recover from childbirth. Clearly, circumstances had changed, but this was the easiest, best approach to stop the deportation. But it was noon, and all the judges in the city were away at their long lunches. The writ remained unsigned, and the ship sailed off to Germany with the new family, who left their new home and business behind.

  No one was separated, which was a mercy. But Grace’s lawyers couldn’t shake the cruel fact that Herman and his family had been forced out of the country even though they had a legal right to stay. When Grace finally returned from vacation, she heard the story and felt sick to her stomach. The government had gotten away with something she could have easily stopped; she knew the letter of the law of this particular case in and out. But she had missed her opportunity to help. Grace tried desperately to locate the Romaniks in Germany, but to no avail.

  Shaken by her experience with the little tailor, Grace seemed determined to make up for what she was sure was her fault. She immediately threw herself into more cases as she careened between her offices day and night. She became more aggressive, especially when it came to deportation. Antonio Vigiani was an Italian barber who established himself in New York and then sent for his brother’s family from Italy. But they were rejected at Ellis Island and deported. According to rule 11 of the immigration law, when someone was ordered deported, the person could appeal to Washington; the attorney fee for such an appeal was capped at ten dollars. But some unscrupulous lawyers took advantage of the importance of this appeal and charged higher fees.

  Caesar B. F. Barra was one such lawyer. Barra took Vigiani’s case and undertook to have the deportation verdict reversed, but, instead of charging $10, he asked for $150. Vigiani loved his brother, so he paid the fee. After the court ruled that Vigiani’s brother and family were to be deported anyway, Barra kept the money. Vigiani sought out the People’s Law Firm, spitting and flailing at this gross injustice. Grace went to Barra and showed him, in print, the $10 limit of the law.

  “Go ahead and crack your whip,” Barra said. “I will return nothing.”

  Grace went before a judge, cracked her whip, and got Mr. Barra disbarred.

  Grace couldn’t understand how an Italian lawyer could prey on his own countrymen. In fact, one of Grace’s busiest orbits was the newest branch of the People’s Law Firm in the heart of Little Italy. Though her practice there was not very old, Grace was quickly learning just how much the Italians had made this part of New York City their own. There were wooden stands with fruit spilling over. Sun-bleached palm crosses and tiny paintings of Christ in perfect gold ovals stood watch in nearly every window.

  As the summer began, Grace was hired by an Italian named Michael Pirolla to help procure a permit from the fire department. For years, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel celebration in East Harlem was among the city’s biggest religious events, running from Saturday to Monday night in the middle of July. One of its signature characteristics was the hundreds of flickering candles the local residents would string across their narrow streets to transform them into outdoor cathedrals. For years, this was accomplished using little wax candles in small glasses suspended on wires. The effect was magical, as the lights twinkled above the narrow, jagged canyons below. But setting up these lights was an arduous process, so the festival planners were hoping to switch to more modern acetylene carbide torches to light their festival instead.

  When Grace explained her client’s request, Fire Commissioner Hayes turned it down on the spot. There was already enough danger from the fireworks he knew the Italians had been secretly amassing for a year. Acetylene gas, though inexpensive and bright, was even more hazardous. There had just been an accident where a warehouse burned down to the street. Grace related the answer to Mr. Pirolla, who e
xpressed his displeasure. Grace agreed and was sympathetic. She said that, given the size and scope of the project, they just couldn’t do it without the blessing of Hayes. Grace advised that they respect his decision and try again next year.

  A few weeks later, as the festival was about to begin, Grace was visited by Michael Pirolla again. He shut the door behind him and had his hat in his hand. In a sheepish voice, he informed Grace that after the festival planners had heard Commissioner Hayes’s answer, someone had secretly done something. Grace pressed him, and Pirolla confessed that the planners had passed a resolution through the Board of Aldermen that would permit the acetylene lighting after all. They had gone over Hayes’s head.

  Grace went right to Hayes. She didn’t like being used. The fire commissioner glowered at her and asked her to find out who did this. Hayes gathered up some men and went down to the festival, which was in the final stages of setting up. Hayes saw the new acetylene lights, clear and bright, and ordered them brought down immediately. He could sense the anger of the workers as they glared at him and slowly unwound the lights.

  When the festival officially opened, booths and wagons were piled up tight against the street selling yellow wax candles that measured from six inches tall to six feet in diameter. Stray firecrackers jumped and snapped in bursts of light in the streets as children scattered under parents and horsecarts. From above, the procession, nearly five hundred Catholics strong, started to make its way through the cross-streets between 100th and 115th along First and Second Avenues. The mass of people was like some dense, moving serpent. People marched behind the banners of the Societies of Saint Antonio and of Mount Carmel. Many men and women were in their bare feet, holding the yellow candles, doing penance for their own unemployment. Frequently, the parade would stop, and men and women would run out from the crowd to pin paper money and jewelry to the banners. When the procession finally reached the Church of Our Lady at Mount Carmel, the banners, heavy with money, were donated to the church. The marchers carried their candles and left them on the altar. After one hour, the altar was so filled with waves of flickering light that the candles had to be carried to another room. The massive church on East 115th Street held Mass—in the chapel and the basement—nonstop from four in the morning until eleven at night. High Mass was celebrated at eleven o’clock.