Gilded Needles (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) - Plot & Excerpts
Although she thereby forwent much rewarding custom, she also, in effect, protected herself against arrest. To convict a fence, the state of New York must prove that the receiver of stolen property had knowledge that the goods had been illegally appropriated. But this was so difficult a task for the law that the police rarely undertook to gather evidence except upon the most notorious, the most indiscreet, and the most successful fences of the city. Lena’s very financial mediocrity protected her from persecution. She had won the trust of female criminals by her scrupulous dealings and by frequent acts of charity. She was known to have advanced money to women who were incapacitated by bodily injury, to have sent baskets of food to the Tombs on the arm of her daughter Louisa, and even to have constructed a special dress for a woman who was intent on stealing whole bolts of silk from H. B. Claflin and Company. Lena rarely smiled, she rarely had a kind word, but her careful upright respectful dealings with these women—many of whom were used to gross mistreatment and abuse at the hands of men—was a far more welcome thing than smiles and kind words which might, after all, be only feigned.
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