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By Root 1888 0

Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, and others. Some, like the All Night Mission, chose to make their continuous accessibility the focus of speeches and leaflets delivered by their roaming agents in the ghettos; others, such as the Bowery Mission, were simply regional in their approach. A few, like the Horse Aid Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, didn’t concern themselves with human beings at all. (When I came across the names of those organizations, I couldn’t help but think back to Japheth Dury’s torture and mutilation of animals: it seemed to me that organizations that offered such close contact with helpless beasts, although they made no use of rooftop visitations, might still appeal to our man’s sadistic nature. Interviews with their officers, however, produced no results.) Then there were the seemingly infinite number and variety of orphanages, all of which employed roving zealots who were constantly on the lookout for abandoned waifs. Each of these institutions had to be checked especially carefully, given the predilection for such places that John Beecham had exhibited in Chicago.

It was the kind of work that quickly absorbed hours and then days, without producing any profound sense of satisfaction or reassurance that we were doing everything possible to stave off another killing. How many archly sanctimonious churchmen and churchwomen, not to mention their civilian counterparts, did Sara, the Isaacsons, and I have to interview, and for how many tedious hours? It would be impossible to say, nor would there be much point to revealing the numbers even if I knew them—for we learned nothing. All through the following week, each of us forced ourselves again and again through a similar procedure: we’d go to the offices or headquarters of some charitable service, where the simple question of whether a John Beecham, or anyone of similar appearance and manner, had ever worked there would be answered by long, pious statements about the organization’s laudable employees and goals. Only then would the files be checked and a firmly negative reply given, at which the unlucky member of our team might finally escape the place.

If I seem either hostile or cynical in recalling this particular phase of our work, perhaps it’s because of a realization that came to me as we reached the end of that second week in June: that the only group of outcasts in the city that didn’t seem to have several privately funded and nobly titled societies dedicated to its care and reform was the very one that was currently in such grave danger—child prostitutes. As this lack became more and more apparent to me, I couldn’t help but think back to Jake Riis—a man lionized in New York’s philanthropic circles—and to his blind refusal to admit or report the facts of Giorgio Santorelli’s murder. Riis’s deliberate myopia was shared by every official I spoke to, a fact that caused me more irritation every time I encountered it. By the time I came lumbering into Number 808 Broadway late Monday afternoon I was so sick of the fatuous hypocrites who made up New York’s charitable community that I was spewing a steady stream of rather violent curses. Having thought our headquarters empty when I came in, I spun round in shock when I heard Sara’s voice:

“That’s lovely language, John. Though I must say it fairly well describes my mood at this point.” She was smoking a cigarette and staring alternately at the map of Manhattan and the chalkboard. “We’re on the wrong track,” she decided in disgust, throwing the stub of her cigarette out an open window.

I collapsed onto the divan with a moan. “You’re the one who wants to be a detective,” I said. “You ought to know that we could go on like this for months before we get a break.”

“We don’t have months,” Sara answered. “We have until Sunday.” She continued to stare and shake her head at the map and the board. “And it’s not just the monotony that’s giving me this feeling.” She cocked her head, trying to nail down whatever was flitting through her mind. “Has it occurred to you, John, that none of