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The Midnight Band of Mercy
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PRAISE FOR
The Midnight Band of Mercy
“As in Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, this period of history is seamlessly woven into the fabric of a compelling and well-crafted plot.” —Library Journal
“Max’s Jewish background, his ambiguity about his religion and the occasional ambiguity he encounters add … texture.” —Buffalo News
“Deftly told and compelling …. Succeeds on many levels … artfully and convincingly captures some eternal truths about American journalism.”
—Jerusalem Report
“A superb mystery.” —Mystery News
“Un-putdownable.” —Courier-Gazette
“A fascinating reading experience.” —Midwest Book Review
“The 19th-century local color makes a good mystery even more enjoyable.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A delight.” —Booklist
“Combines historical fiction with historical movements in order to create a fast-paced mystery novel.” —Reviewing the Evidence
“An engrossing thriller!” —Neal Bascomb, Higher and The Perfect Mile
“Like Time and Again, but with the gloves taken off.”
—Phillip Lopate, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan
“A corking good historical novel set in 1890s Gotham.”
—Mike Wallace, co-author of Gotham, a Putlitzer Prize Winner
Copyright © 2004 by Michael Blaine
All rights reserved.
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blaine, Michael.
The midnight band of mercy: a novel/Michael Blaine.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-56947-371-4 (alk. paper)
1. Minorities—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Poor—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Landlord
and tenant—Fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. Murder for hire—Fiction. 6.
Conspiracies—Fiction. 7. Journalists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.L3454M53 2004
813’.54—dc22 2004005793
Book interior designed by Kathleen Lake, Neuwirth and Associates
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Acknowledgments
Reader’s Guide
for anna tasha and rose
this city of words
author’s note
The events depicted here are based on a true story. The Midnight Band of Mercy operated in New York City during the early 1890s. Their highly contradictory statements to the New York Herald have never been reconciled, but the Midnight Band did have a tangential relationship to the period’s wider reform movement, and its leader did go on trial in an extensively reported case. Some of the figures drawn here were admired for their good works, others for their low crimes. The rest are my inventions, brought to life to explain the mystery behind the Midnight Band, as well as to live and breathe on their own.
Within a narrow range, the dates of certain events have been reshuffled for dramatic purposes. Otherwise, I have tried to create an accurate historical picture of New York City during the Panic of 1893.
—Michael Blaine
The ambiguity is the element in which the whole thing swims … so nocturnal, so bacchanal, so hugely hatted and feathered, yet apparently so innocent.
—Henry James
Says Dinny “Here’s my only chance
To gain myself a name
I’ll clean up the Hudson Dusters
And reach the Hall of Fame”
He lost his stick and cannon
And his shield they took away
It was then that he remembered
Every dog has got his day
—Hudson Duster Gang victory song
chapter one
APRIL II, 1893. 5:25 A.M.
Max Greengrass pushed himself away from the faro table. All night the layout, thirteen spades glued onto an enameled tablecloth, had mesmerized him, but now it was time to cash in. For once he was ahead, four dollars and thirty-seven cents to be precise. His lungs felt sticky with cigar smoke. He had to stretch his legs.
Out on Perry Street he could breathe again. He loved the last moments before the sun came up, the streetlamps going pale, the cool air blowing off the river, the solitude. Searching for one last fare, a fly cab prowled Bleecker Street. The hollow sound of hooves on paving stone echoed in the stillness. As he walked, the luminous gray light intensified, wrapping him in its subtle glow. He jingled the coins in his pocket. Life wasn’t half bad.
He’d slip a buck to his mother—his father had a religious allergy to work—and another to his sister Faye. He wished she would stay away from the Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, but she claimed various mysterious pains, especially after doing three shows a day, and he hated to go hard on her.
Barely watching where he was going, he had to skip sideways to avoid stepping on them. Four dead cats laid out in a perfect row in front of a dusty Waverly Place building. The unnatural order of the display teased his imagination. When Max picked up one of the creatures, its head rolled loose on its neck. With the tips of his fingers, he grasped the cat’s delicate skull. Manipulating it was easy, too easy.
He recoiled, his throat closing in disgust. Repelled, but fascinated, he placed the tabby back in the same position on the sidewalk. Then he stepped back and wondered. Why had the creatures been so carefully arranged? The cats’ tails had been configured just so, each lined up parallel to the next. Did they represent some dark hieroglyphic? Was he looking at a pattern, or the shape of his own hunger?
A space-rater at the New York Herald—he was paid by the column-inch—Max couldn’t afford to pass up any story, even the least likely. He had already scrambled for pennies at the Brooklyn Eagle, the Tribune, and the World, but the best stories, and a full-time position, had somehow eluded him. He couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t any one thing. At the Trib he’d gotten into it with an editor named Burgundy-Jones, a high-hat bastard if there ever was one. At the World he’d missed a few days on a bender. At the Eagle some toff from Columbia showed up out of the blue, and before Max knew it he was being eased out.
Max wasn’t reflective, but once i
n a while a terrible thought would creep into his mind: he was getting older. In February he’d turned twenty-five. What would he do if he never found a secure spot in the newspaper business? This fear would flash white across his mind, paralyzing him for a second, but then he would find fresh material, he would lose himself, and forget his terror completely.
The feline corpses at his feet intrigued him. Sitting on a nearby stoop, he gazed at the dead animals, trying to decide if he could squeeze two hundred words out of their demise.
A man with ginger-colored muttonchops emerged from the parlor house next door. At the top step, the sack-suited businessman straightened his tie and plunged onto the sidewalk, stepping blindly onto one of the furry victims. Staggering, he cursed under his breath and hopped to safety. His mouth pursed in disgust, he glanced down and muttered one more imprecation before marching off toward Sixth Avenue.
Max wondered if he should chase the sportsman. To flesh out an article, he would need quotes. He’d quit the faro bank with money in his pocket, he’d avoided the bow-bow wine—a raw brandy the management offered gratis—and now he had the price of something better at Fitzgerald and Ives around the corner. But he moved up the steps into the deeper shadows instead, watching and wondering.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Jabonne, in a brilliant black-and-red kimono, threw open her door and looked up and down the street. Shrugging, she set a dish of milk on the top step. Then she caught sight of the crime scene. Barefoot, she rushed outside, lifted a beribboned white cat into her arms, and let out a wail.
Max knew her. He had visited her establishment several times, but had left with mixed feelings. She ran a nice house with clean girls, but some of them were thirteen, fourteen at the most. She claimed they hadn’t had a dose yet. Such small bones, such pure, unblemished skin. Now he hesitated. Pressing himself into the shadows, he watched her hug the soft animal to her breast and take a few steps back. Then she thought better of it. Looking both ways down Waverly Place, she dropped her former pet back onto the sidewalk before anyone could catch her.
Max pushed off.
Inside Fitzgerald and Ives he bought the last round.
“You’re a white Jew, Maxie,” Officer Lynch said, lifting his stein. Unbuttoned at the throat, his voluminous blue coat featured a row of brass buttons.
Far from taking offense, Max appreciated his acquaintance’s backhanded compliment. Yanking up his shirt cuff, he displayed his white-skinned forearm. That got a laugh.
Max’s father could never have comprehended his love for a fresh beer in a decent saloon, or how easily he got along with the street cleaners, touts, shoulder hitters, hod carriers, ward heelers, and cops who graced a polished brass rail. Then again, who cared? Hadn’t the old man already chanted the prayer for the dead over him? Let him shuffle around the house all day in his felt slippers with his prayer shawl over his head, praying after the sun came up, praying after washing his hands, praying after every damned thing including lightning and thunder, and meanwhile forgetting to work for a dozen years.
What a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. The old man had a saying: What you want to do that for? What you want to go to a show, go to a dance, go to a lecture or a dime museum? His father was opposed to pleasure on principle. What was wrong with Fitzgerald and Ives, a run-of-the-mill joint with sawdust-covered floors and the usual chromos? Around noon, two nickel beers would buy a free lunch of cold cuts, salted cod and pickled fish of uncertain origins.
“You got something today?” Officer Schreiber asked, pointing at the pile of newspapers at the end of the bar.
Schreiber’s daughter Margaret played the violin. His son Carl had died of diphtheria. Max made it a point to remember these things. Without cops, where would he get half his stories? Schreiber’s tall helmet added to his considerable height. Max felt dwarfed next to the towering policeman.
Without realizing it, Max arched his back and rose up onto his toes. Then he slid a folded copy of The Herald down the burnished wood surface, in answer to Schreiber’s question.
“Lower left,” he directed. Stretching, he sipped his beer, then pushed his hat back on his head.
MEASURES FORMATES
Prof. Johnson Broward of Harvard has measured thousands of heads and has come to the conclusion that seventeen cubic inches separates the Anglo-Saxon cranium from its less developed peers. His scientific investigation led him to measure the skulls of Northern and Southern Europeans, as well as Poles, Russians, Slavs, and Negroes.
To ascertain cranial capacity, Prof. Broward filled his skulls with measures of white pepper seeds.
“The Slav’s forehead is low and sloping,” Mr. Broward told a Cooper Union audience last night, “and the back of the Southern Italian’s head is often sheared off, severely limiting cranial capacity,”
Mr. Broward admitted that professors tended to have high foreheads and ample domes. While not in the market for a wife at the moment, Prof. Broward said, “Heiresses, who after all are carrying the blood of superior stock, might do best if they got out their tape measures before mating.”
“Lookit Lynch, he’s got a head like a horse,” Schreiber responded. “Nice one, Max. Beats the shit out of smackin’ yeggs for a living.”
The metro editor, Stan Parnell, had cut the article from the bottom up, leaving only the first three grafs. At $7.50 for a full column, his squib had been worth exactly two dollars and seventy-nine cents. Still, the Herald'was better than the World. You could starve waiting for Pulitzer to cough up your carfare.
A sharp rap on the door caught their attention. Peering through the plate glass, the bartender recognized Mrs. Jabonne. “Hey, Schreiber, your litde twist is lookin’ for you.”
“Which one?” Schreiber cracked.
Mrs. Jabonne marched in, wearing a black skirt, an immaculate blouse with flashing pearl buttons, and a cape of deep purple.
“Hey, Minnie,” Schreiber said, barely looking up from his beer.
Taking a wide stance in the middle of the floor, Mrs. Jabonne replied: “They’re killing cats now. Up and down. They murdered my Sally. While you’re drinking yourselves blind, some crank’s getting his satisfaction.”
“Wadda we look like, the goddamned ASPCA?” Schreiber snapped.
Mrs. Jabonne didn’t back down. “I got four dead cats in front of my house. Ain’t there a law?”
“I’d say lay off the hop,” Schreiber answered, winking at his companions.
Max wondered. He might be able to make something out of it after all. So far, his longest Herald article involved a riot at a St. Marks Place wedding—the bride’s side had tried to charge the groom’s relations for drinks.
“I’ll take a look, and if I need you boys to keep the peace, I’ll call you,” Max offered.
“Who put you on the force?” Schreiber demanded.
Soon Max and Officer Schreiber were trooping after Mrs. Jabonne to view the great cat massacre. Out of the corner of his mouth, Schreiber half-whispered, “She’s loaded. They say she’s got property all over Brooklyn Heights.”
When they reached Mrs. Jabonne’s, a guttersnipe in overalls and a rag of a shirt was balancing himself on the iron fence. Max noticed the way the boy’s bare toes gripped the black rail like a monkey’s. How could they run around like that, even when it got ice-cold?
When he spied Officer Schreiber, the kid leaped off the fence and took several steps back, his eyes darting toward the closest alley. Maybe he was the one who had killed the creatures littering the sidewalk, or maybe he was looking for a handout to finger some other guttersnipe. The one thing Max liked, the thing he thought might sell the article to Parnell, was the way the four cats had been lined up, their evenly spaced tails telling some obscure story. Before the boy could get a word out, Schreiber flew at the scrawny kid, flailing with his nightstick. “You murdering little bastard,” he swore, aiming a full swing at the guttersnipe’s head. “I’ll fan ya’!”
“You idiot!” Mrs. Jabonne spit, grabbing at the towering cop.
On Printing House Square they curled up on sidewalk grates to catch the steam from the booming presses below. All winter he’d seen them in stairwells, passed out in mewling piles, bottles of blue ruin scattered round them.
Ruefully, Max watched his story disappear. Then he wondered if the little rat might pop up around the corner. Without another word he started running too, slipping in the ankle-deep horse muck along the curb, flailing, barely keeping his balance on the slick Belgian paving stones.
chapter two
Max scanned Greenwich Avenue, but the street was almost empty. A woman on the third floor of a rust-colored building rested her elbows on a pillow as she gazed out the window. In some invisible courtyard, a busker was singing a ballad. Max wished he were there, watching the girls dance in pairs under the waving wash. Wasn’t it too early for singing beggars, though? The whole city sang to him, even in his sleep.
The kid had vanished. Maybe it was just as well. A few dead cats. It wasn’t much of a story.
Then out of nowhere the boy materialized. He was sauntering down Greenwich Avenue, confident he’d outrun any danger. With a darting hand he picked off a baked potato, so swiftly the vendor, who had looked away for a split second, remained supremely unaware. Max didn’t want to startle the guttersnipe again. Instead, he cut across the street at a sharp angle and followed the barefoot child as he wandered east, then south through the waking streets.
Near the corner of Sheridan Square, a stringy-haired woman staggered out of a dive called Langdon’s, a tin growler full of beer gripped tightly in her hand. Dragging a yellow car, a pair of tram horses, their wrapped fetlocks stained with blood, strained past him.
The Midnight Band of Mercy