The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  His mother was clapping, and Faye was dancing closer and closer to the edge of the table, and he didn’t know whether to push her off or catch her before she fell.

  When Max woke up the next day with a paralyzing body hangover, he wondered what part of his newfound admiration for Mourtone had been composed of whiskey and what part hot air. Nothing compared to the intimacy that developed between two men on a drinking spree, and nothing felt worse than the headache the morning after. This one was like needles behind his eye.

  At breakfast, he took several slices of ham and some extra gravy for his potatoes. He also left some space on his plate for Mrs. DeVogt’s delicious scrambled eggs, which she flavored with onions and peppers.

  The landlady, with a worried expression on her face, asked, “What do you think of that bank in Omaha, Mr. Greengrass?”

  Max had no idea what she was talking about, but he took a flyer. “Another run?”

  “Yes. What do the people on the paper say?”

  “Just another farmer’s bank, Mrs. DeVogt. Once the silver mania dies down, everything will be back to normal.” Seeing an opening, he made his announcement. “I did get my little cat story into the paper today.”

  Perhaps the other boarders were distracted by their own affairs, but no one leaped to see Max’s work, which he had folded and placed next to his plate.

  “May I?” Belle asked finally, reaching for the Herald. In a glance, she took in the article. “Ach, terrible!” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the owners of these cats were responsible. And why not? Maybe they can’t feed them, with all the jobs drying up.”

  “Uh-oh,” Danny said, winking. “Blood-sucking businessmen, is it?”

  “You should listen to Belle,” Mrs. DeVogt chimed in. “Henry George is turning over in his grave.”

  Self-consciously, Belle fingered the fleshy beauty mark high on her cheek. Shifting her gaze, she caught Max staring at her. Her brown eyes held his gaze for a moment, brown eyes flecked with gold, and he could feel a swelling in his chest. He never thought her type would be interested in him. Belle believed in fighting scarlet fever and rapacious landlords, she believed in pure milk and clean sheets and socialism.

  Max didn’t believe in anything and was proud of it. Ideas blinded you. At the same time, he envied people who had names for themselves: Anarchists. Methodists. Zionists. Free-silver fanatics. Gold bugs. They could share delusions and church suppers. There was no name for what he was.

  The conversation wasn’t going in the direction Max had hoped. Belle was paying attention, but Gretta hadn’t evinced the slightest bit of interest. Instead, encased in a dreamy silence, she kept cutting her meat into bite-sized portions. He especially liked her broad, full mouth. Yet most of all, she gave off a sort of indefinable glow. Perhaps it was simply animal health, but Max thought it was something deeper. What had Mourtone been babbling about? Her “objective” pictures? What did that mean?

  Unable to contain himself, he asked her directly. “And what does Miss Sealy think?”

  She looked at Max blandly. “I think you ought to write about some less disagreeable subject.”

  Danny let go a barking laugh.

  “Sometimes the city can be very disagreeable,” he replied stiffly.

  “But you don’t have to rub our noses in it, do you?”

  “Well….” Max coughed to cover his humiliation.

  “Come on, he doesn’t have a choice,” Mrs. DeVogt said, rescuing him. “That’s his job. Will you be away long, Gretta?”

  “Just a few days. I haven’t seen my family in Staten Island for three weeks.”

  “I was on my way down to the ferry myself,” Danny said.

  “Oh, that’s all right, my friend Martin’s taking me.”

  A few minutes later the elegant Mourtone did arrive, his landau drawn by a pair of chestnuts with fashionably clipped manes. They shook their heads in the spirited way of fine horses. Ray Allen over at the Brooklyn Eagle had told Max the secret of this picturesque equine mannerism. Barbed bits.

  While Gretta prepared to leave, Max crawled up to his room, fell onto his bed, and stared at the ceiling. Why had he imagined that his small success, if it could be called that, would impress Gretta Sealy? She had mentioned tennis at her country club, and bicycling with friends around the countryside. She spent her days arranging backdrops and elegant bric-a-brac, chatting with society matrons about coming-out parties and charity balls.

  He didn’t have time to feel wounded, though. He would put it out of his mind. Hadn’t Stan Parnell given him an opening? Shouldn’t he be out there hustling? Yet a deep lassitude gripped him, pressing him into the mattress. His arms and legs felt weighted down as if they were underwater. Finally, he fell into a profound, paralyzed sleep. He was drowning, yet he couldn’t get his limbs to fight the weight of the water. Then he began to see, despite the darkness, sinking, flailing animals, cats drowning along with him. They drifted right past his face, their eyes wide with fright, their claws extended, their tails snaking back and forth. Then he became a clawing cat, writhing helplessly, unable to fight to the bright surface.

  When he finally woke up, his jaw aching, he found himself entangled in moist sheets.

  chapter five

  “Fayefaye.”

  Max’s sister sat up in bed. She was still lounging in her silk robe, red Chinese dragons warring on a field of blue. Smudged and faded, her penciled eyebrows looked as tired as her eyes. Rearranging her pillows, she patted the bed for him to sit down. “Cig?”

  Her flatmates, the dancers Judy and Joanne Connolly, were rattling pans on the coal stove. He looked out the window. Down below, behind a hash house, the cook was sitting on a stone step, a lapful of potatoes in his apron.

  “Just a used cigar.”

  “Ugh. Look over in the ashtray there. There’s a broken one I left.” Faye was dark, like their dumpling of a mother. Black-eyed and curly-haired and pretty enough, he supposed, but he didn’t think about that. She was his sister.

  He lit the butt for her. “So what’s with the grasshopper? It’s a part? Danny says you’re making out good.”

  “If Gordon meets the payroll, I’ll be the Queen of Sheba.” She picked tobacco from between her teeth and looked at him cross-eyed. “You busted too?”

  He pulled two bills from his purse but held them between his fingers, high over her head.

  Bouncing on the bed, she snatched the money from his hand and kissed him on the cheek. The sudden movement woke her baby, Leon, who sniffled, yawned, and started crying. “I’m a scene-stealer. You’ll see. Why don’t you come with Danny tomorrow night?”

  He had dropped by to give her the money, but to talk to her, too, about the cats and Gretta and the damned space-raters’ bench and a dozen other things, but the smell of her milk, and his nephew’s filmy stare, spooked him. “Who’s watching Leon now?”

  “Oh, I have a new woman. Mrs. Darling, she’s called. She’s a real professional. When I get home from work, he’s dead to the world.”

  “She’s probably sticking that Soothing Syrup in the bottle.”

  “Don’t start up, worrywart.”

  “I wasn’t saying a thing.”

  “You’re always saying something, even when you keep your trap shut. I can hear you thinking.” She planted a small fist on his back and laughed. “Daddy didn’t know that about you. He always thought you were a gangster.”

  “Ahh, what could he understand?”

  “Ach, you’re just like him. Watching me all the time.”

  “What’re you talking about? I’m dead to him, remember?”

  “I gave him better reasons.”

  “The time he went at you with his shoe? I had to pull him off you. Then right away he throws a tallis over his head and starts davening. You know what? That man’s afraid of his own shadow. I used to watch how he crept around, and I said to myself he’s more dead than alive. He never leaves the block. He has the same friends he had when he got off the boat.
I said to myself, do the opposite in everything, and you’ll be fine.”

  “You’re the opposite, all right. A little the same, though.”

  “So, you staying away from the stuff?”

  “You see! The next time Danny has to scrape you off the sidewalk, I’ll tell him to leave you there.” She stuck her tongue out. Nothing bothered Faye. No matter how shaky things got, she had a wisecrack.

  “You’re still carping about that? I was a kid. It was five years ago.”

  “That’s not what I hear.” She pecked him on the cheek. “Now go away so I can feed Hungry Man here.”

  “Let me see him first. Leon, say hi. Say hi, Leon.” The sallow-cheeked boy gave him a glassy stare. A pint-sized human being with a world of clouds in his head and Fayefaye for his mother. Jesus.

  Faye should have weaned the kid half a year ago, in his opinion. The boy was almost two. “Say hello, Leon.”

  Coming to his senses, Leon brightened. “Unca Max.”

  “Lookit that. He’s a genius.”

  Leon laughed and showed Max his gums. The kid had a purple, star-shaped birthmark near his hairline. He’d have to comb his hair over it. Love, fear, and melancholy pierced Max in a single bolt of emotion.

  Faye retrieved the child, tossed him over her shoulder, and started burping him. For the moment, he quieted down. “Go, go. Thanks for the loan. I’ll pay you double.”

  “So what’s the news with you and Danny?” All he knew was that Swarms, whom Faye had met backstage at the Coronet half a year ago, wasn’t Leon’s father and that sometimes, when he took Faye to their favorite lobster palace, he didn’t return to Mrs. DeVogt’s until the next morning. What they did together, Max purposely blurred in his mind’s eye. His sister and his best pal, it was too damned complicated.

  She twirled her curly black hair and made her Fritzie Labonza face, the one she had invented when she was ten. Sucked-in cheeks, tongue out, eyeballs almost disappeared under her lids. She could make him fall down laughing with that expression. “Don’t lie and say he doesn’t tell you everything. The two of you.”

  “On the subject of you, he’s a closed-mouthed S.O.B. What’re you, blackmailing him?”

  “The baby needs breakfast, do you mind? Kiss?” Drawing Leon to her, she threatened to expose a swollen breast.

  “Okay, I gotta go to work anyway. ‘Bye, little guy.” Danny might be in the picture for a while, but who was the kid’s uncle forever? What a mess. Still, the little guy was his flesh and blood. What could you do?

  Gazing intently at Max, Leon said, “Ba.”

  “Ba to you, bub.”

  She was strange, his sister. She refused to see how appalling her situation was. No, that wasn’t it: she didn’t notice there was a problem at all. What really maddened him was how cheerful she was. He’d come over determined to have a serious talk with her, but before long she’d tell him a blue joke she heard at Nigger Mike’s or sing a few lines from a new show, and soon raising a kid on the fly in a tenement flat with a pair of chorines who couldn’t come up with their share of the rent half the time seemed liked a good plan.

  On the other hand, she was still keeping Leon’s existence secret from the rest of the family, so she wasn’t all that free and easy. Lurking below the surface was the uncomfortable question: What was he going to do about it? Was he ready to cough up for the kid every week? Was he willing to give up faro banks and eye-openers at Fitzgerald and Ives? Not on your life. He’d never confused himself with the Reverend Dr. Parkhurst.

  He tapped down the stairs on his toes.

  Every door was open to catch some air from the stairwell. On the landing below he saw into an apartment identical to Faye’s, three rooms counting the kitchen. Several Italian women were jabbering away as they picked at a huge mound of walnuts, plucking the meat, separating the shells, pouring the cleaned nuts into jars. The youngest one, a daring girl of about twelve with a purple scarf tied over her head, waved to him. He touched two fingers to his forehead.

  Out on Sullivan Street, a vegetable wagon rolled to a stop. With a look of disdain, a wizened dolorosa poked an eggplant. A peddler with a cigar box tied around his neck was hawking pipe cleaners and broken candy. The sun poured down, washing the rust-red buildings. A senseless elation took hold of him. Another cracked day, another chance.

  He wasn’t about to give up on Mrs. Jabonne. She’d lost her pet, and eventually she’d want to talk. Once again he pounded on her door, and this time the mistress of the house opened up herself.

  “You?”

  Max quickly slipped his left foot over the doorstep. “All I need is one minute of your time, Mrs. Jabonne.”

  “One minute, tops. You’ve been around here, ain’t you?”

  “Maybe. Do you have any idea who’s doing the cats?”

  With a slicing motion of her hand, she cut him off. “Who else? They’re out all night, smoking, stealing who knows what, forcing litde girls.” Her disgusted expression made the moral high ground where she dwelt quite clear. “Where’s their mother and father?” she demanded.

  Max wasn’t interested in Mrs. Jabonne’s reform tendencies. “Where can I find them?”

  “Who?”

  “The kids, the ones you think—”

  “They’re up all night makin’ a racket on Hudson Street. They’re always sneaking into The White Stag and getting pie-eyed and makin’ their messes in the street. I know it’s them because I’ve seen ‘em. For fun they’ll swing a cat around by its tail and laugh their brains out.”

  “Did you see them kill yours, though?”

  “No,” she said reluctantly. “But they’ve got queer minds from living like they do. It’s just like ‘em to think it’s funny.”

  “Where can I find the ones you’re talking about?”

  “Go to The Stag around ten or eleven. You’ll catch ‘em, I’ll bet. Then you can wring their skinny necks ‘til they choke.”

  “You’re very kind. Thanks for the tip.”

  “You can’t go to the store without they’re putting their paws in your pocket.”

  He didn’t have to wait for nightfall. A band of local street arabs was lounging in Grove Street Park, and among them Max recognized Famous O’Leary. He didn’t share Mrs. Jabonne’s venomous attitude toward the boys, and Famous, with his birdcage of a chest and rounded shoulders, seemed more sinned against than sinner. Still, these guttersnipes, some of whom were aspiring to join the Hudson Dusters when they grew their first chin hairs, would mob a man with a dozen picking hands. They had their share of razors and knuckle-dusters, too.

  Before Max even reached the mob of small fry, Famous rushed him. “Got another penny? Got a nickel? C’mon, mister, you got loadsa coin, you know ya’ do. Help a little kid out, I got nowheres to sleep tonight.”

  In the middle distance, a boy with a broken-brimmed derby set rakishly on his head stared at Max without blinking. Unlike Famous, his face was flat, expressionless, all trace of the child worn away. A ruddy-faced companion was playing with a longshoreman’s hook, burying it over and over into the slats of a bench.

  “Who’s that?” Max asked, pointing to the flat-faced kid.

  “That’s the Cham-peen. C’mon, mister, what’s a penny to you? Don’t be a cheapskate.”

  “I got two cents for you if you can get the Cham-peen to talk to me.”

  Famous sauntered over to open negotiations. The first offer came back at a full nickel, but Max finally bought a consultation for three cents. There were six boys, including The Great Napoleon, a tubercular thin waif with rabbit’s teeth, and The Basher, master of the dockers hook, but Cham-peen stood out. Aside from his rakish hat, he was wearing a pair of cut-down gabardine pants held up with a rope and an enormous suit coat that fell to his knees.

  “There’s a guinea works in a stable,” Cham-peen confided, poker-faced. Max looked over Cham-peen’s shoulder, noting that the other street arabs could barely contain their laughter. “Over on Hudson. He’s the one. He smokes guine
a stinkers.”

  “He’s got a pile of horsecrap this high!” Famous put in.

  “What does he do with the cats?” Max asked skeptically.

  “He puts ‘em … in a big pot,” the sober leader replied. Max was impressed by the boy’s self-control, if not his powers of imagination.

  “So why are so many cats still on the street?”

  “They’s the leftovers.”

  Famous O’Leary hooted. The Great Napoleon threw himself on the sidewalk and flung his arms out. Two others followed in excited imitation. Famous took the opportunity to step on The Basher’s stomach, but the victim twisted O’Leary’s ankle and flung him down too.

  “You boys go uptown at all?”

  “Fourteen Street?”

  “Further.”

  “Nah, Fourteen’s the dead line. Enemy territory.”

  “Yeah, we t’row rocks at their heads,” Famous explained, brushing himself off and grinning.

  “The stable guy … he does this business every night?”

  “Nah, only when there’s a full moon,” Cham-peen theorized. Pressing themselves around their leader, the boys barked and howled.

  “All right, all right. I’m busting my sides. Does he go into The Stag?”

  “Yeah, he sucks it up ‘til he bust. Alia time.”

  “So, where’s he going to do the job next time?”

  “Where there’s cats, stupid,” Famous shouted. The Basher pounded Famous’s shoulder.

  “Watch your mouth, mister!” Max balled his fists in imitation of John L. The boys fell to shadow-boxing. Max slapped The Basher lightly in the stomach and gave The Great Napoleon a tap. They may have been mocking him, but maybe some day one of them might tell him the truth.

  In fact, he was starting to suspect them as much as Mrs. Jabonne did, but these street arabs didn’t venture out of their territory, and with good reason. Max couldn’t prove it, but he guessed that they did some work for the Hudson Dusters, possibly for the delivery wagon thief, Ding-Dong. Max had seen another Duster luminary, Rubber Shaw, being arraigned at police court on an assault charge. Jackie O’Neill from the World pointed out the way Shaw’s nose was running and confided that almost all the Dusters had a problem with the white powder.