The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  The Fashion Plates were always crossing the Broadway border to the east, and the Marginals and the Pearl Buttons were forever sticking their noses into dock business. These professionals were perfectly capable of batting the brains out of a transgressing street arab and tossing him into the river. So even if Cham-peen and his acolytes were causing the mayhem on Waverly Place and in Grove Street Park, why were there so many catricides in the 19th Precinct where yet another gang, the all-powerful Gophers, held sway?

  He could stake out a location where cats were really swarming, but which one? He couldn’t walk down a single street any more without noticing the calicos, the midnight blacks, the yellow and brown toms, the occasional escaped Persian or Siamese licking themselves, eating hard-won scraps, stretching languidly in the sun, hissing on stoops, curling into the shadows. They congregated behind restaurants, around ashcans, under pushcarts, in alleys, at construction sites where there was always a fresh supply of rodents. When they yowled at night in their peculiarly painful congress, who could go back to sleep?

  “How do I know you guys aren’t choking the kitties for fun?”

  A dark look passed over Cham-peen’s flat mug. “Wha’d we get for that, mister? Waste our time? Them things’ll scratch you blind.”

  Max saw the kid’s point. It wasn’t that Cham-peen was above doing away with a few animals, but what was in it for him, for the gang? They had serious business to attend to every day: where to steal a scrap of food, what to crawl under if it started raining. Killing a cat wasn’t worth one red cent. It was a luxury.

  By eight, The White Stag was roaring. Standing outside, Max heard a piano and violin grope through a ballad, a few voices joining in the verse:

  Sweetheart, I have grown so lonely

  Living thus away from you.

  He wouldn’t have minded wetting his whistle and singing along, but instead he circled the few blocks surrounding Grove Street Park. Arc lights blazed on the Ladies’ Mile, but not on these back streets. For a while he sat on a bench, just outside a pool of gaslight. The neighborhood was alive in the night, mothers calling their children, babies wailing, doors slamming, carriage wheels rattling, the crisp sounds of hooves on cobblestones. The air was redolent of boiled cabbage, burning garlic, frying fish, and fatty chops.

  The swarms of children struck Max. The youngest were practically naked, and, as far as he could tell, no one was watching them. One small boy in nothing but a nightshirt urinated happily at the curb. A tiny girl chewed a corncob at the mouth of a tenement. On the spiderweb of fire escapes, kids raced up and down like circus performers, fearless, sinuous as monkeys. All around him they squealed, hopped over sidewalk cracks and, whooping, raced in and out of a dark stable.

  “Stay away from Blackie, he kick your guts out,” the stablehand, who was finishing a skinny cigar, warned them.

  Max waited a few minutes and then sidled up to the man, who was trying to revive his black stogie. Max offered him a fresh match. “I’m doing a story for the Herald,” he explained. “What’s your name?”

  “Buri. John Buri. They got a dead pig. Nobody take it away,” the Italian said right off. “They make chickens back there, too. Nobody come.”

  “That’s City Hall for you.”

  “They say to me take away, but why? I am horse man, not pig.”

  “You ever have trouble with the kids around here?”

  “Kids? I call them rat pest. They hide in here, in the hay, then I chase, and they set fire. They think maybe they make a big joke. Me, the horse, we could get kill.”

  Evidently, by pointing the finger at John Buri, Cham-peen had been pursuing a personal vendetta. The sly little bastard.

  “You ever see them killing cats?”

  “No cat. Rat, yes. They play a game.”

  Max didn’t want to know the rules.

  For two days he patrolled the area, staying out later and later, getting more and more exhausted. He developed a route that looped from Waverly Place to Grove Street Park and then around to The White Stag.

  He chatted every night with John Buri, hoping the man might have seen something while lounging outside his stable doors. But it was no use.

  Finally, on Friday night he decided to change course, heading up Broadway toward the 19th precinct, past the extravagantly illuminated theatres, the glittering hotel restaurants, the cafes and concert saloons, merging himself into the current of businessmen, gawking tourists, peddlers, sidewalk knife sharpeners, organ grinders, and tight-waisted, befeathered women who flew across the sidewalks like silk birds. The omnibuses and carriages clattered over cobblestones, red-faced hacks shouted comments about certain blind drivers, barefoot flower girls cried out, the music from small orchestras poured out of the better cafes. Wheels scraping, barrels banging on carts, and every five minutes a Sixth Avenue Forney steam engine roaring a mere two stories above—the din was impossible. He loved it all, loved it helplessly.

  He rode the rapids of human beings without thinking, just to feel alive.

  Before the window of the Gilsey House restaurant he stopped to admire a lyre of beef tongues framed by sugar cupids, covered with white sauce and decorated with truffles. Foiegras molded into apples and tinted with what appeared to be bits of spinach completed the display. He thought of grabbing a quick drink at the stately Gilsey House bar—Danny and his actor friends frequented the establishment—but then changed his mind.

  Now he was ready to take on the Tenderloin’s side streets. He headed west and then edged a few blocks uptown. On West 28th a pair of brightly rouged professionals sauntered toward him, but he gave them a wide berth.

  “Want somethin sweet, honey?” one of them called out.

  On the second floor of one house, a window flew open and a pudgy woman leaned out, exposing her breasts and hooting. Lines of jostling, flush-faced men blocked the sidewalk in front of several buildings. Out-of-tune pianos jangled against one another. Finally, Max took to the center of the street to escape. A couple of blocks north, things quieted down a bit.

  Then he saw the hat, a wide flat-brimmed hat with a veil that seemed to float in the soft gaslight.

  Dressed in a black silk dress with fashionable leg-o’-mutton sleeves, the woman under the hat possessed an aristocratic bearing. On her arm she carried a large basket. Max sensed something about her. She looked so out of place navigating the brothel traffic, she kept pausing and gazing around—was it furtively?—so he followed her at a discreet distance. At the corner of West 30th Street, she paused, grasped an iron railing, and then half-disappeared down some basement steps. Holding his breath, he picked up his pace, darting across the still street, approaching within a few feet. Only half the woman’s body was visible now, but Max saw her flat-brimmed hat tilt down as a large white handkerchief flashed and disappeared.

  Now he stepped close enough to watch her work. Several scrawny alley cats rubbed up against her ankles as she scattered bits offish around her. The three overflowing ashcans on the basement landing had already attracted some of them. With a swift gesture, she snapped open the lid of her long basket and extracted the handkerchief, after which she bent down and quickly covered a striped victim’s face. In her grasp the animal fought desperately, clawing, writhing, its muffled cries muted by the cloth pressed down over its mouth. Her jaw set, the woman held the struggling animal fast.

  Slowly, the cat’s efforts to cling to life faded. Every twist and turn of its body looked like the ghost of the last. Its claws waved weakly. Its tail drooped, just a bit of loose rope now. Suddenly, she snapped the cat’s head back and cracked its spine. Lips pursed, she held the torn up for a moment as a few weak spasms rolled through its body. A beatific expression passed over her face as the animal went limp in her grasp.

  In a matter of seconds she deposited the torn in her hamper. All around her, the other animals ate in deep concentration, devouring the fish she kept raining down on them. Then she snatched a second victim, engulfing its head in her ample handkerchief and holding
it away from her bodice. A black sable, the animal looked as plush as could be.

  This one fought back harder than the last, somehow tearing the handkerchief off its small face, flailing and howling for its life. The woman’s mouth turned grim as she repeated her routine. Seizing the animal by the scruff of its neck, she held its head fast a second time and covered it with her smothering cloth. Almost in the same motion she cracked the cat’s neck with an audible popping sound. Max was close enough to smell a powerful chemical gust.

  Standing on the sidewalk above her, Max’s mind raced. Should he try to stop her? In truth, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

  In a swift movement, the dark-clad matron tossed the second dead cat into her long, padded basket. Apparently satisfied, she climbed back to the sidewalk.

  Before she could see him, Max hid in the adjacent basement stairwell. It was almost impossible to hold himself back now; he wanted to leap out and confront her, but he controlled himself as she arranged the limp cats on the sidewalk.

  Emerging from a nearby brownstone, a clean-shaven sportsman in evening dress gave the woman a quick look, then turned on his heel.

  Max approached her. “Excuse me,” he said softly, eyeing her empty basket.

  She turned toward him, an imperious expression on her face. A light web of wrinkles marked her sharp features. “Can’t you tell I’m working?”

  Now Max saw a badge affixed to her breast, but he couldn’t read the legend stamped on it. “Sorry. What does your badge say?”

  “I am Mrs. Warner, and we are the Midnight Band of Mercy. There are a number of us ladies out doing these acts of kindness.” Her diction, her bearing, her tone all suggested the high-minded reformer.

  Max could make no sense of her answer, but he knew he might never catch one of these angels in the act again. “Ah. So you’re a philanthropic organization?”

  “Exactly. We are directed to this work by our president, Mrs. Edwards. Our mailing address is at 1397 Broadway if you wish to contribute.”

  Eyeing Mrs. Warner to see if she objected, he quickly jotted down the address. She seemed not to notice or care, so he kept his pad in full view. “Why might you be working in this district?”

  “Just look around you. This area is full of unwanted cats, sick cats, and it is our mission to protect them. I’ve been up and down this area, from Fourteenth Street to Thirty-Fourth, already once this night, and I’m not in the least tired,” she offered proudly.

  Mrs. Warner’s remarks belied reality. He sensed in the woman a profound strangeness, an alien quality he couldn’t define. The thought that she had comrades in arms, if it were true, was even more disturbing.

  “Do you get a salary?”

  “Oh, no. We receive no pay. We do our work for pure love. How do we keep our work going? Oh, our expenses are light.”

  In the police courts, Max had seen more than one babbling vagrant sent off to Bellevue, so he searched this woman’s face, her gestures, her clothes for signs of mental disturbance. Unfortunately, her appearance and demeanor argued for sanity.

  Just to keep her talking, he asked, “Don’t you think you might spend your time better by visiting the poor and the sick?”

  “No, I don’t. There are other persons to look after the sick and starving people, but no one else to help the poor cats.”

  Evidently, she saw no contradiction between ministering to one’s charges and murdering them. “Do you kill every cat you find?”

  “As many as possible. What business is it of yours? Are they your cats? If so, why don’t you keep them in your house? They have no business being out on the street after eight at night.”

  “Aren’t you killing some people’s pets? Some that are well-fed?”

  She became indignant. “Then why are they running wild at all hours? And as for your starving families, there are other societies for them. Join one. We minister to the cats.”

  “We weren’t talking about other people, we were talking about what you’re doing.”

  “It’s nature’s way. Since the monkey climbed down from the trees.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Modern philosophy? Progressive thinking? You’ve heard of them?”

  Now he was truly lost. He couldn’t make any sense out of her argument. Before he could interrogate her further, the woman whirled and stalked away.

  He pursued her down the sidewalk. When he caught up to her, he touched her elbow. “One more question?”

  She shook him off, her basket striking Max’s side with surprising force.

  “Where do you meet? And when?”

  “Do I snoop into your private business?” She glared at him the way, he imagined, she stared down one of her servants. “Shoo, fly!”

  Watching her disappear, he couldn’t shake his revulsion, or his fascination. What sort of human being was this Mrs. Warner? She killed with efficiency, with casual aplomb and yet reasoned with fury. Her strange way of thinking disturbed him as much as her actions.

  He hoped that 1397 Broadway didn’t exist and that the Midnight Band was Mrs. Warner’s own fevered invention. Imagine dozens of Mrs. Warners, all suffering from the same delusion. On the other hand, if the Midnight Band had an address, a charter and officers, his story would carry much more weight than yet another account of a solitary crank on the loose.

  The Broadway address turned out to be a bookshop. Mr. Wiggins, the manager, a man with limp hair and a complexion that had never seen the sun, seemed irritated to see a customer so early. Before Max could get a word in edgewise, he said, “If you’re looking for a copy of Trilby, go someplace else. We’ve got a standing order for thirty of the damn things, but we can’t seem to get our hands on a single one. It’s easier to find a Trilby contest than the book. What do you think of that?”

  Max knew about Trilby, of course, though he’d never read that popular tale of Oriental intrigue. He preferred newspapers and hadn’t read a book since he left the City College in his first semester. To his taste, a good newspaper was more alive and believable than any tripe by that bore Howells.

  He’d seen Trilby hats popping up everywhere, though. “Contests?”

  “Trilby contests. Know what’s the latest? Who has the perfect Trilby feet. The girls stand behind curtains and take off their shoes.”

  “That’s fresh. Listen, there’s a group, it’s called the Midnight Band of Mercy—”

  “You’re not after the book?”

  “No, the Midnight Band—”

  “Oh, certainly. They keep a mailbox here. They’re some kind of charitable organization, they told me. Their members selected the cat business.”

  “How long have they had this box?”

  “Oh, at least a year.”

  So it was true. The Midnight Band wasn’t a figment of Mrs. Warner’s imagination. He was both grateful for the story and sickened to find out that other Mrs. Warners were roaming the streets. Sickened, but also in a state of wonder. What would drive someone like Mrs. Warner to go out on the hunt at night without regard for her own safety? Who had taught her to smother cats, then snap their necks with such efficiency? What lay behind her impulse? A perverse pleasure? An obscure hatred?

  “Do they get much mail?”

  “Oh, now and then. A few envelopes.”

  “And they post letters back?”

  “What’re you, a cop or something?”

  “Sorry. Max Greengrass. New York Herald.” He showed his card.

  “Okay. Yeah. They’ve got quite a correspondence going.”

  “And how many ladies do you think are in the organization?”

  “Well, I’ve seen a few. And they are ladies. They can recite the Bible, chapter and verse. They’re not like these Trilby fanatics.”

  “Would you have names and addresses?”

  “I’m not an informer, Mr. Greengrass. I sell books.”

  “Well, who picks up the mail? What’s her name?”

  The book
seller gave him a stony look.

  At least he had enough material to prove the Midnight Band was a real organization, but Max wasn’t sure he could communicate how Mrs. Warner’s rampage had affected him. The Midnight Band’s followers needed drive, nerve, and even a perverse courage to carry out their mission. Not only that; Mrs. Warner seemed to be proud of her vocation, and to enjoy it as well.

  He felt giddy. Parnell would have to give him ten, maybe a dozen column-inches.

  chapter six

  In the end, he managed to work all the key facts into his article, but he worried that he hadn’t adequately captured the sensation of discovering Mrs. Warner in the act. How to communicate her mixture of cool efficiency and otherworldly fervor? Finally, he decided that describing the moment’s utter strangeness was outside the scope of his article. How could he explain what he didn’t understand? Mrs. Warner apparendy believed in her credo—killing defenseless animals to save them—but he couldn’t grasp her reasoning or her passion.

  The subhead told a compelling tale to The Herald’s, faithful. Better still, Parnell had allowed Max’s indignation full play up top.

  EPIDEMIC OF CAT KILLINGS

  Women of the Midnight Band

  Permit No Cessation of the

  Feline Carnage

  An organization calling itself The Midnight Band of Mercy has taken responsibility for the slaughter of cats on Waverly Place and in the 19th Precinct. A Herald reporter has personally witnessed one of the groups assassins committing indiscriminate acts of murder on cats of all types and classes. It was a most extraordinary and disturbing sight. Worse still, the Midnight Band’s crusaders vow to continue their terrible campaign, which they consider their moral duty.

  It went on, a full eleven inches, listing every fact and key quote. How could they keep him off the staff now? Parnell was definitely warming toward him. Hadn’t he ordered Carlson to clear Max a desk and give him a decent typewriter?