The Midnight Band of Mercy Read online

  Skulking along the edge of Washington Square Park, and then down Sullivan Street, the boy entered the Italian section. Max kept pace a quarter of a block behind. A few Negroes, the remnants of the Little Africa neighborhood, were still hanging on, but now the men with the slouch hats and stogies and the dolorosas with the black shawls dominated the sidewalks. Fresh-cut macaroni hung from tenement windows, drying in the breeze. Apparently feeling safe, the kid sat down on a basement step to wolf down his last bit of potato skin.

  Max waited one more moment, watching the scrawny boy eat. He chewed furtively, but with a desperate urgency. Max could buy the guttersnipe a meal, but what good would it do? These kids were like wild dogs: if you petted them, they were liable to bite your hand off.

  “I got a penny for you,” he offered, standing a few feet away.

  “For what?” the boy asked warily, sensing a trick. Max could be one of those settlement-house workers, or from the church, or one of those hoisters who promised you a warm bed and then sent you out west to work on a farm like a slave. He’d heard it all from his older brother Jimmy. He didn’t go near nobody ‘til he was sure of him.

  “Back there, you saw the cats.” Max opened his hand and displayed the coin.

  “Give it here,” the guttersnipe replied, now up and circling Max. He had sky-blue eyes and a scattering of freckles high on his exposed cheekbones. Still, he looked like a tiny, shifty man. “C’mon, give it here.”

  “First tell me what you know.”

  “I don’t know nothin. Give it here.” Lithe and quick, he danced out of reach.

  “Nothing doing. Did you see who killed those cats? Who lined them up like that?”

  “I seen it. Gimme two.”

  Max dug in his pocket and pulled out another penny. “Okay, here.” He flipped one coin to the boy, who backhanded it with sudden grace. “And one more when you tell me what you saw.”

  Now the kid broke out in a smile so childlike and innocent-looking that Max was reminded that he was talking to an eight- or nine-year-old. “I seen a man with a great big sack.” Miming, the kid stretched his arms out to describe the bag. “And he was breakin’ their necks, and he looked like a ghost, and he was tall, real tall.”

  Up close, Max could see how narrow, how pigeon-boned the guttersnipe really was. A handful of craters, the remains of some old pox, marked his right cheek.

  “How tall?”

  “I dunno. When I seen him, he looked like a ghost.”

  “As big as me?”

  “Yeah. Bigger. He was a giant, but you could see right t’rew him, too.” The little bugger was having fun with him now. “Can I have the other one? I’m hungry, mister.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “They call me Famous.”

  “Seamus?”

  “Nah, ‘Famous.’ Famous O’Leary.”

  “Ah. Did you ever see this man before?”

  “Oh, yeah. He lives near the park. He’s got a million crappy cats in his house. I dunno. He could find nice ones.”

  “Which house is that?”

  “In the middle somewheres,” Famous replied.

  Max assumed Famous O’Leary was making it all up as fast as he could. Why was he wasting his time on this street rat? “And how old are you?”

  The kid shrugged. “Eleven or twelve.”

  Max knew it was hopeless. A twelve-year-old who looked eight, a full-grown street arab who didn’t know his own age. If he offered Famous O’Leary as his major source for the cat story, Stan Parnell would run him out of the newsroom. He could see the metro editor gazing down at him from his platform in complete disgust.

  Licked, he tossed the kid the second penny and turned his back. He’d have to go back and interview Mrs. Jabonne after all. She’d probably recognize him as a former customer. If she did, she’d have the upper hand, though he couldn’t quite explain why. And then what? He might end up with a few column-inches, or else nothing at all.

  Dragging himself back to Waverly Place, he knocked on the imposing woman’s door. It opened a crack, but he could barely make out the figure inside. “The lady ain’t here.”

  “Are you sure? I only need her for a minute. It’s business,” he added ambiguously.

  He cooled his heels on the top of the stoop for five more minutes, but to no avail. “She says to tell you she’s asleep,” the same languid voice informed him.

  A penetrating hunger seized him. If, instead of chasing after meaningless squibs, he lit out for West 16th Street, he could get back to his boarding house in time for breakfast. His current landlady, Mrs. DeVogt, was no Mrs. Cohen, who had the nerve to serve week-old tongue and beef like leather. Mrs. DeVogt laid it on like nobody’s business. Fresh butter and eggs and thick slices of ham. His sister’s boyfriend, Danny Swarms, whose room was down the hall from Max’s, had talked him into spending the extra dollar a week, and it was worth it.

  He slipped into his room, washed his face in the porcelain basin, changed into his second shirt, rinsed his mouth, and tended to his facial hair. With a straight razor and a sure hand, he rapidly scraped away at his cheeks, his squared-off chin, and his pale throat. Then he took out a small scissors and carefully clipped any errant hairs that might disturb the shape of his luxuriant black mustache. There were men his age who still hadn’t established one nearly as thick or graceful. Max liked to snip and shape, letting the hair curl just beneath the corners of his mouth until the whiskers fell in a rakish droop.

  He had a high, well-formed forehead, hazel eyes, a slightly beaked, slightly crooked nose twice broken in bare-knuckle exhibitions, and a thin but expressive mouth. Growing up, he had used his fast hands to good effect, but his formal pugilistic career consisted of only three fights, the last at Harry Hill’s where Vinnie Avenoso, a hungry Carmine Street lightweight, carved him up good and proper. Although he preferred wrapping his fist around a pencil now, he still followed the manly arts in the Police Gazette, whose pink pages chronicled the fortunes of The Nonpareil, the Boston Strong Boy, The Corkscrew Kid, and Little Chocolate in between classifieds for rubber goods and pinholed cards.

  He ran the edge of his thumb over his humped nose. Still, he wasn’t half-bad looking, he thought. He never lacked for female company, but he wasn’t ready to setde down. When he found the scratch to afford a decent flat, when he earned a steady paycheck, when his father started pressing clothes again, when Faye got on her feet, when he paid off his small gambling debts, then he could get serious with a woman. He dreamed of the shining moment when he would resolve every one of these nagging problems, a moment of brilliant stillness. Meanwhile, he didn’t have to answer to anybody.

  He wondered what the other boarders would think of his little cat tale. At the right moment, he’d drop the story into the conversation to see how they’d react.

  The breakfast room, a nook whose papered walls were crowded with small silhouettes in hand-tooled frames, could barely accommodate all the lodgers. The sideboard displayed blue and white crockery decorated with colonial themes, a slighdy bedraggled Japanese parasol hung in a corner, and the drapes featured a Turkish motif.

  At the head of the table, Mrs. DeVogt was lecturing her young charges, who were too conventional for her taste. She had lived through far more idealistic times, she loved to point out, during which Mrs. Woodhull had published her radical views on marriage—she didn’t approve of it—and Henry George had thundered against the vipers who oppressed the poor.

  She had participated in the Natural Dress movement, and she never tired of reminding her female boarders of the dangers of tight-laced corsets. As she spoke, she kept glancing at the young women, Gretta Sealy and Belle Rose, each of whom managed to maintain a respectful expression.

  “I know you girls don’t take me seriously, but believe me, I’ve seen some terrible cases. First of all, the birth canal narrows in reaction to the pressure of a tight lacing.” She paused for effect after pronouncing these risque words in mixed company, her black eyes mischievousl
y scanning her charges.

  Danny Swarms fingered his puffball of red hair and winked at Max, who did his best to hold back a laugh. Max wanted to steer the old lady away from her favorite subject, but it was definitely the wrong moment to bring up the catricides.

  Gretta maintained a smooth mask during this familiar lecture. Her brushed-back chestnut hair showed her high forehead to good advantage. She had a broad face, but her wide-set eyes, her straight English nose and full mouth were finely proportioned, giving the illusion of thinner, more fashionable features. When she fixed Max in her clinical blue-eyed gaze, she shook him to the root.

  She pushed back one gigot sleeve and leaned over her plate, the play of muscles in her forearm perfectly visible. Through the corner of his eye, he caught the swell of her chemise-cloaked breasts. The organdy’s silver underthreading imparted an elusive sheen that suited her. Smooth as her skin, he thought.

  Facing her across the table, he stretched his leg out, hoping to brush the tip of his shoe, however accidentally, across her ankle. He shifted to the edge of his chair, extended his leg further, imagining Gretta pressing back, staring straight through him. Finally, the tension became unbearable, and he straightened up.

  Then he caught Danny running his eyes up and down Gretta’s lush figure. Since Swarms was squiring his sister Faye around, Max felt justified in delivering a sharp kick to his friend’s ankle. Danny just smiled and shrugged.

  Gretta was barely aware of the two men. Instead, she was wondering how to light Mrs. Seymour Bethesda-Clarke. The woman’s face was asymmetrical, and it was hard to decide which was her better side. And when she didn’t get her sleep, Mrs. Bethesda-Clarke developed dark, baggy pouches under her eyes that were almost impossible to touch up. Mrs. Bertha Van Eggles, who ran the studio, depended on Gretta to make unpleasant blemishes disappear under her quick brush, but she thought the owner’s demands were becoming more and more unreasonable.

  Belle shot Max a furtive glance. Did she mean to encourage him? She had thick black hair fixed in a bun, warm brown eyes, a delicate nose, and a bud of a mouth. There was a trace of the steppe to her looks, the way her eyes narrowed to slits when she laughed. Barely over five feet tall, with a thin, graceful figure, she hardly looked like a visiting nurse, but she had lived and worked at the Rivington Street College Settlement House for a year. Now, roaming the tenements, she treated everything from nits to scarlet fever every day.

  Her room was just down the hall. It could all happen spontaneously, Max daydreamed. In the middle of the night they could bump into each other in the dark hall. He could feel how easy it would be to sweep her off the floor; he could feel the shock of her lips, her smooth face, her breasts, her thighs, encased in silky material, pressing against his legs. He smelled her perfume—or was it Gretta’s? Suddenly the breakfast table was saturated with the smell of roses.

  Mrs. DeVogt went on, her soft, round face glowing. “So when it’s time to have a child, if you’ve been tight-lacing you’ll go through the worst ago-ny imaginable.”

  “Mrs. DeVogt!” Belle admonished her. The old bohemian would say anything to shock them. She admired her landlady, but sometimes she went too far.

  Max tried to forget Belle’s body. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to stand up when breakfast ended. Under the table he rearranged himself, praying his pulsing hard-on would fade away. When could he mention the cat corpses arranged so neatly on the sidewalk? He waited for an opening.

  “Don’t laugh. I knew a woman who tight-laced herself to a nineteen-inch waist. She died a week later, and do you know what the doctor said?”

  Getting into the spirit, Danny asked, “What did he say, Mrs. DeVogt?”

  “He said she’d cut her own liver in half!”

  Max attacked his fatty steak, which he was having trouble keeping on the plate. Swallowing hard, he managed to offer a question. “With all due respect, Mrs. DeVogt, but is that possible?”

  A titter ran through the boarders. For all her radical ideas, Mrs. DeVogt sounded as ridiculous as the rest of the older generation.

  “Certainly! There was an autopsy. Not to speak of all the idiots these women bring into the world. The babies’ heads get squeezed like melons!”

  Gretta, who had been trying hard to keep a straight face, burst out laughing. “Mrs. DeVogt, now you’re exaggerating!”

  The landlady had little sense of humor on the tight-lacing controversy, however. Instead of responding, she hit the bell next to her and Eileen, the serving girl, took the dishes away.

  “And what did you type today, Mr. Greengrass?” she asked, turning to Max.

  Max hesitated. If he revealed the triviality of the story he was working on, he risked looking like a lightweight. On the other hand, if he got a strong reaction from the table, he might find out if he was on to something. “A story about cat murders, Mrs. DeVogt. Four cats, to be exact.”

  Gretta leaned towards him. “How awful!”

  “Some crank?” Danny asked, his interest piqued. “The public, they lap that up.”

  Belle’s eyes widened. “Why would anyone do such a disgusting thing?”

  “What do you know about it?” Mrs. DeVogt asked Max, apparently hooked as well.

  “You’ll have to look for it in the Herald? Max said, digging himself deeper into a hole.

  chapter three

  Danny rapped his walking stick on the steps. “Downtown?” “Sixth Precinct house.”

  “Ahh, too bad.” In his boater and tight blue suit, Swarms looked ready to step on stage.

  “I’ve got to keep on the case,” Max explained.

  Danny tapped his cane to some inner beat, a faraway look in his transparent blue eyes. “There’s a singing waiter I gotta look up anyway. Izzy Baffin. He’s been beating down my door with some new song. I’d like to publish it. Nice hook it’s got. ‘Ida, Ida … dadumdeedumdadadumdeedum….’ You know how many copies of ‘After the Ball’ Ditson’s in Boston ordered? Seventy-five thousand. One lousy hit, you’re made for life.”

  “You see Faye lately?” These days Danny knew more about his sister’s peregrinations than he did. Max held his breath in trepidation.

  “Oh, Jesus. I forgot to tell you! She got a new part.”

  Relief rippled through him. Faye was always telling him to stop expecting the worst. “What is it?”

  Danny stroked his weak chin. Talking out of the side of his mouth, the actor imparted a deep secret. “She’s playing a grasshopper.”

  “A what?”

  Danny flashed his sunny smile. “She’s makin’ good chink. What else you need to know?”

  “Is she—?” Max tilted his head back and sipped from an invisible bottle of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. In the past, he had known just how to deal with Faye’s boyfriends. He didn’t trust a single one. Now that Danny was dating Faye, though, hope, that subversive emotion, was undermining his natural suspicion.

  “C’mon. Faye’s a good kid. This job’ll set her right up.”

  “Right up where?”

  “Gotta hustle, kiddo.”

  At the Sixth Precinct house a woman, wild-haired and wobbly, was waving a heavy chair leg and shouting at Officer Schreiber. “He’s got the nerve,” she bellowed, gesturing toward a bald man with a gash high on his cheek. “He even brings her into the building to do his business with her.”

  “Lay off the hard stuff, why don’t you?” the man snarled.

  “Shut up, the both of yez, or I’ll cram this down your throats.” Schreiber showed them his meaty fist. The man fell to muttering under his breath, but the woman remained unrepentant.

  “He’s a yellow dog. That’s why he runs to her with his tail between his legs.” Unsatisfied with this jibe, she spit at the bald man for emphasis.

  Casually, Schreiber smacked the woman flush in the mouth with the back of his hand. She flew straight back, slamming into a wooden bench and falling into stunned silence. The bald man bowed his head, waiting for a blow that didn’t come. Schreiber just p
ointed to the other end of the bench with his nightstick, and the misguided husband scurried to follow the policeman’s suggestion.

  Schreiber turned to Max, a smile breaking out over his generous features. Max stole a peek at the woman, who was cupping the blood pouring from the corner of her mouth. She might have been holding her front teeth, for all he knew. Schreiber had really hauled off on her. But what could he say?

  When he started out at the Brooklyn Eagle, he might have questioned Schreiber’s tactics, but now he knew better. Anyway, he wasn’t some mincing good-government fanatic—some goo-goo—like the Reverend Parkhurst. Precinct houses were flophouse and jailhouse rolled into one. Who wouldn’t get fed up?

  “I thought you were knocking off,” Max said to the policeman.

  “Yeah. Listen, Maxie, I got something for you. Let’s get out of this shithole for a minute.”

  Once they hit the sidewalk, Max contributed his last decent cigar, Lillian Russell gracing the paper band. Schreiber slipped it into his pocket. “So I went back to Fitzgerald’s after I seen you, and guess who shows up? Morris from the 19th. You know him, don’t you?”

  “Sergeant Morris, right?”

  “That’s the one. Anyways, Morris says he ain’t seen nothing like it. A half dozen of’em was laid out two doors down from the station house on West 30th. Maybe it’s an epidemic. They got the cholera in Jersey City again,” he added. Max couldn’t follow this line of reasoning, but Schreiber went on serenely. “Morris says the 19th is crawling with strays. Maybe that has something to with it.”

  “You mean they may have a disease?”

  “Sure. Maybe they’re comin off the ships with some new kinda cat typhoid. The goo-goos will make hay with that one.” Schreiber let go a brown ball of phlegm. “A man gets the shits, they blame Tammany. If the sun forgot to go down, they’d blame Boss Croker.”

  In fact, Schreiber’s remarks were politically astute. The reformers had attacked Tammany ceaselessly over its slipshod sanitation efforts, which amounted to giving out contracts to Tammany cronies. Who knew? Politics was crazy. An epidemic among cats might affect the next election.