The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  She quickly disabused him of this notion. “I took quite a few pictures out-of-doors on the street with him. I couldn’t have done them without him. He knew his way around all these queer places. Rutgers Street. Little alleys off Allen Street. How could a woman go down there and make plates by herself?”

  Now she heard herself building Martin up for no reason at all. Or was she making herself look more sympathetic by praising him? What was she saying? She’d hauled her equipment down to the Lower East Side several times without him. Words, slippery words, betrayed her all the time. She had such complicated things to say, yet she sounded so thick, she could tear her own tongue out.

  She started biting her cuticles, but she caught herself before she turned them into a bloody mess.

  Of course Martin hadn’t mentioned their marriage plans to his parents yet. Of course they wouldn’t have thought she was suitable, and they would have blocked Martin’s scheme anyway. Wasn’t that the truth? A middle-class girl who worked for a living? And from Staten Island? Martin never would have stood up to his mother. It had all been a dream. Or had it? Her thoughts were all bits and pieces.

  “No, of course not.” Now Max’s speculations veered in the opposite opinion. She had certainly been in love with Mourtone. If he were ever to gain her affection, he would have to appease this ghost. Yet how could he pursue Mourtone’s murderer after taking his father’s money to keep out of the affair? But hadn’t he taken money just to suppress mention of Stephenson’s? No one, neither Martin’s father nor William H. Howe, had tried to discourage him from finding out why the young man had been shot. Or was he telling himself fairy tales?

  He wondered who would answer the telephone at the number Howe had given him. He wondered if there would be anyone at all.

  Groping, he tried to keep the conversation going. “I wouldn’t have taken you for one of those Kodak girls.”

  Kodak had been placing ads in newspapers, magazines, and billboards for the past two years, promoting its new light, easy-to-use equipment. These advertisements featured dazzling girls in shirtwaists riding bicycles and taking pictures with abandon.

  For some reason, this innocuous comment was exactly the wrong thing to say.

  In a sarcastic voice he’d never heard before, Gretta recited her version oi the ad copy. “’It matters little whether the subject be religious or romantic or the spot sacred or very ordinary, the Kodak girl will be found around snap, snap, snapping away.’ I’d like to strangle them.” She struggled tc restrain her fury. She could put out the eyes of every insipid Kodak girl ir creation. Did any of them give the world one hard look?

  But why was she going on like this? How could Max understand what she was talking about? Why had she invited him to accompany her home? She must have been mad. Not that she didn’t like him well enough, compared to the rest of them. Belle with her self-righteous philosophy. That oily Danny Swarms. Even dotty Mrs. DeVogt got on her nerves.

  Max was startled by her outburst, but he supposed she was so upset about Mourtone that she didn’t know what she was saying. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…I know you love your profession.”

  “Oh, I apologize. You didn’t deserve….” Then she turned away and began to cry. After a moment, he put his hand on her shoulder, and she reached back and held it. Max was vulgar, she thought, but he had a kind streak, and she was so glad not to be alone. “I was running around all day like a madwoman. One minute Gertrude locked me in the darkroom, the next minute she needed me to light the better side of Miss Goelet. Miss Goelet doesn’t have a better side,” she added, laughing through her tears. “I forgot to eat, making deliveries. I couldn’t think. My mind felt like an iron ball. Thank you for coming.”

  She felt her weight fall back against his chest.

  He smelled her hair. “Please. Don’t thank me.”

  She took his handkerchief and blew her nose. “Martin was a completely harmless man.” What a terrible thing to say. Now she missed him. She missed the way the tip of his tongue probed the tip of his mustache. She missed his musical laugh. The feel of his unruly hair in her fingers. The way bis body trembled when they kissed. How could he be erased like that, as if he had never existed? Grief came in waves. She missed him bitterly.

  “Somebody thought he wasn’t so harmless.”

  “Do you think it was a simple robbery?”

  “Not really.” He almost said, Why would they go through so much trouble to make the body disappear? But he caught himself. Gretta didn’t know ret, and he wasn’t sure she ever needed to know. “But it’s possible.”

  “Are the police looking into it?”

  “They’ve got their best man on it.”

  She looked at his masculine face, a face with darting green-and-gold eyes, a crooked nose, and a clean, square chin, and she didn’t believe him.

  chapter eleven

  Gretta’s house turned out to be a charming, low-slung building. At regular intervals dormers lent variety to the roofline. Her family had moved in just before the outbreak of the Civil War. A five-sided conservatory had been added at a later date. Dense wisteria clung to the batten-board sides. Better yet, the garden sloped down to the water a mere fifty yards away. Still gathering herself before she had to face her mother, Gretta led him through carefully tended flowerbeds and down the lawn, which was punctuated by tall Japanese vases and heavy urns. Standing at the low seawall, Max could see the Narrows with crystal clarity.

  All he could hear was lapping water, the wind in the trees. No other buildings were visible. Gretta’s house might have been the only building on the entire island.

  Out in the middle of the harbor, a black-stacked steamer labored toward the North River docks. Gretta picked out a Norfolk schooner and a full-rigged Calcutta. “My uncle taught me. He used to hold me up and let me look through his telescope.”

  “What’s that heavy old boat?”

  “A whaler. Back from the Arctic.”

  A pair of Indian clubs lay on the embankment. Casually, she pickec them up and started tossing them and snatching them out of the air witl efficient grace. What a relief to let her body take over. Yet her senses fel strangely muted. A veil hung over the water.

  “You’re athletic, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m an athlete,” she replied. A body without a mind, picking Indiat clubs from the air.

  Her mouth set, her eyes focused in deep concentration, she flung the clubs higher and higher until she winced every time she caught one of the tumbling wooden pins. Far from showing off, she was alone, inflicting pain on herself just to see if she could feel it.

  “Incredible.”

  “Should I join the circus?” A body without a mind was disconnected from pain. She wished she could dive into the bay and swim like a seal, the water streaming off her back. Abruptly, she tossed the clubs up onto the lawn and turned back to him. “So what can you do, Max?”

  Without warning he flipped onto his hands and palm-walked all around her. A gale of laughter seized her, but she covered her mouth.

  Flushed, back on his feet, he said, “Used to do that for pennies when I was a kid.” He brushed himself off, caught her eye, then looked away. Had he done the wrong thing? Standing on his hands was easier than finding the proper words for sadness.

  Together, they laughed nervously, united in their discomfort.

  An excursion steamer, flags waving, chugged into view.

  Catching his breath, he said, “It’s beautiful here. Why would you ever leave?”

  “There isn’t much carriage trade here. Gertrude isn’t about to move her shop.”

  “You worked all day?”

  “I left after lunch and lay down in my room. I’d already taken off so many days. Mother has caught one sickness after another.” A note of irritation crept into her voice. “And my aunt is away with Uncle Lars. He’s a sea captain, and he takes her along.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Well, they’re very unusual actually. They met when my Uncle St
anley died on Lars’s ship.”

  “Her first husband?”

  She laughed softly. “Exactly. They were somewhere near Sumatra, evidently, and it took two months to get home. Uncle Stanley was stuck in his coffin all that time, but when Tillie got home, she was married again!”

  “Isn’t this a dark family secret?”

  “Oh, no. She brags about it. She always tells me she improved her quarters without paying an extra dime. They bring the most phenomenal things home… . Well, you’ll see. I hope you don’t think I’m awful, talking this way.”

  “Far from it.”

  “It’s just that if I keep thinking about Martin … I feel as if I’m going to fly apart.” That was another exaggeration. In her new, muffled world she was starving for breath.

  “Isn’t there anybody who might know something, a friend, somebody he worked with?”

  “Not really. He was always out on his own. He hated his job so much, I kept telling him to quit, but then his father would have been so disappointed.”

  “Was anybody in the company giving him a hard time?”

  “Oh, not that. It was just the nature of the work. He always said the company was the house and the policyholders were the marks. But he exaggerated, I suppose. I’m sure it wasn’t that dire.”

  “Did anybody ever threaten him?”

  “Why would they? The worst thing is … It seems … It’s so dreadful…. It feels as if someone killed him on a whim, for no reason at all.” She sighed. “We’d better go in. I have to make supper.” Halfway up the lawn, she paused. “Considering Martin’s family, their position, the police will be responsive, won’t they?”

  “That’s quite possible.”

  She gave him a hard look. “You know about the way these things work, you’ll hear about what happens behind the scenes, won’t you?”

  Instantly, he became wary. She expected far too much of him. “Not if they want to keep me in the dark.”

  “But you’ll pursue this for your newspaper, won’t you?”

  He squirmed. Why not confide in her … part way? How else could he become intimate with her quickly? Yet he had to delay, dispense half-truths.

  “I need another source, another witness before they’ll print anything.” Of course he couldn’t mention that Martin’s father would deny his son had ever set foot in Stephenson’s.

  “What about the police? Isn’t there a report?”

  “I didn’t want to go into this right away … I’m sorry.”

  “Please, Mr. Greengrass. Not knowing … nothing could be worse.”

  He gave her a hard look, but she didn’t flinch. “You’ll find this very frustrating, but everybody’s disappeared, the witnesses, the bartender, the Negro who was there. I couldn’t tell you everything this morning.”

  “Oh.” She could barely get the puff of air out.

  He explained as much as he dared, including the street arabs’ assault, but she still struggled to grasp what he was saying. There was no body? No witnesses? No story? She sensed he was still protecting her emotions by holding back certain details. How could she explain that her feelings were all tangled, and that she preferred bald facts?

  “What do you mean they’ve disappeared? Won’t the police find them?”

  He shrugged and looked away.

  A darker look of recognition passed over her face. “Are you saying the police might not investigate at all?”

  “No, no … it’s just that they’re in a bad spot without a … pardon me … without a corpse.”

  “Wouldn’t it be awful if nobody did anything? That seems … as bad as the murder.” If she never set foot in Manhattan again, would it disappear like a mirage? She would take pictures and ride her bike and smack tennis balls in her lovely Staten Island cocoon forever. To get away from Gertrude, Mrs. DeVogt, Danny Swarms, and that smug Belle Rose, who took too much delight in mentioning those Russian writers with impossible names. She despised these overeducated immigrants who seemed to sniff out her ignorance so easily, but she despised even more her own lazy indifference to learning.

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just going to be difficult.” Again he cursed himself for being compromised. His limp response to the murder was gaining him little credit in her eyes. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll light a fire under Superintendant Byrnes.”

  Suddenly, she looked immensely tired and sad. “I can’t … it’s inconceivable that he’s dead. Vanished. Except from our minds. What a queer way to exist.”

  “I wish I could say something….”

  She shuddered visibly, and he expected her to weep again. Instead, she sighed. “Time for me to get out the pots. Mother’s boiled dinner calls.”

  Lars and Tillie’s treasures crowded the modest sitting room’s walls. Japanese fans, Indonesian masks, a pair of tusks, and pictures of Tillie and Lars at sea. Bits of coral, sea sponges, and exotic shells were displayed on a long glass table. Gretta led him to the foot of the stairs and pointed at the huge bell hanging from a beam.

  “RING THE BELL, AND RING LIKE HELL!” read the legend painted across it.

  “The dinner bell?”

  “I don’t know where they got that,” Gretta said, with a muffled laugh. “My mother doesn’t approve.”

  Her dried-up mother didn’t seem to approve of much. Thin and sour-faced, she barely uttered a word. Although Gretta made small talk to cover the deafening silence, every clink of silverware against china made Max more and more uncomfortable. As soon as it was polite, he thanked Gretta and rose to leave.

  “Would you like a drink before you go? I want to show you something.”

  She led him into a glassed-in porch and poured some amaretto. “I’m sorry about mother. It isn’t you. She’s just alone so much, she’s getting impossible. Tillies the only one who can handle her.”

  Sinking down onto the horsehair sofa, he took a sip of the cloying drink. “Don’t worry. My father’s about as sociable as a mailbox,” he confided in turn.

  For once he had said the right thing to her. Her lovely, generous smile made him catch his breath. It would be so natural to reach up and draw her down onto his lap, to kiss her throat, her hair, feel the full shape of her body against his chest. His craving for her gave him the shakes.

  “We ought to introduce them. They could sit in a room and say nothing to each other. Would you wait here?”

  In a moment she returned with a large wooden box. An ornate script marked its lid: Grierson and Jones, Apothecaries. 11 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “Mother’s medicine chest.”

  “Mrs. DeVogt has her own supplies, too, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, that’s what gave me the idea. You said in your articles that the ladies were smothering cats, and that there was some sort of chemical involved?”

  She had been paying attention to his Midnight Band saga. “I thought you weren’t very interested in my cat ladies.”

  “I hate them, I wish they’d go away, but I couldn’t help thinking … and Martin was so interested in it.” She picked her way through slender bottles of eucalyptus, cocaine, and samplers of Lydia Pinkham’s tonic. “Here. This one is very strong.”

  She spilled a bit on her handkerchief and passed it to him. Immediately, the familiar, powerful odor wafted out. He barely had to sniff the cloth. “What is it?”

  “Chloroform. Just a little makes you dizzy. What do you think?”

  “I think you have a talent for investigations.”

  “Really?” For a moment her muted expression fell away, and she smiled. Reaching out, she touched his humped nose. “You broke it?”

  “This? Yeah. A little boxing when I was a kid. I was good at taking punishment.”

  She held him at arm’s length, not sure what to make of him. On an impulse, she kissed his cheek. “I couldn’t bear to have this awful thing happen … and then nothing. As if it hadn’t happened at all. You’ll keep looking into it?”

  Standing so close to her, her kiss still alive on his s
kin, he couldn’t find the right half-truth. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  chapter twelve

  On the ferry ride back to the city, he covered the tent in his trousers with a handy copy of the World. Visions of Gretta tormented him: she turned her back and let him unlace her corset eyelet by eyelet, until her freed breasts fell into his palms; an American odalisque, she reclined naked on a velvet divan; he went to her, shedding his clothes in a frenzy: hat, coat, vest, and socks. Wide-eyed and dreaming, he felt the shock of her kiss. He feared his erection would last all the way to the Battery.

  He tried to distract himself by turning the World’s blanket-sized pages, but nothing in the newspaper Pulitzer called his “great unfinished novel” could keep him from sinking back into Gretta’s arms. He could feel her rippling against him. So lush, so warm. He couldn’t stand it, but he couldn’t stop.

  When a bedraggled organ grinder and two children with violins approached him, he tossed them a few coins. Stretching on the hard bench, he took in the tinkly music, the swaying lanterns on the dark vessels nearby, the spangle of yellow lights downtown.

  Strangely enough, the organ grinder was cranking out the same tune Max had been hearing all over the city. Dum dada, dum dada, dum dad-dadum…. It was a catchy melody, but he wondered why the Italians had all taken it up at the same time. He’d have to ask Swarms.

  Max didn’t believe in romantic love. He had spent so many years arguing Faye out of her latest infatuation that he had honed his philosophy to a razor’s edge. Love was an illusion driven by lust, at least in the case of men. (He cringed at the thought that Faye might be swept up in the same tides of passion that drove him to Mrs. Jabonne’s creamy white girls.) Love was a convenient self-deception, a fig leaf that covered the drive for money, display, position. Love was nothing but self-regard. In fact, treacly writers who couldn’t fathom the freedom of isolation had given the solitary life a bad name. Love was a conspiracy of the weak against the strong, a boudoir Christianity, a haven for the effeminate, a silken prison.

  So what should he call his fascination with Gretta? Obsessive desire? Passion of a new order, physical hunger so intense it masqueraded as emotion? Was her character as mesmerizing as her beauty? She was an odd duck in a way, mourning one moment, tossing Indian clubs the next. She could be so direct, her soul seemed to be on the surface of her skin. Then she could be maddeningly obscure, her feelings veiled behind elaborate manners. Despite her prune-faced mother, she had been so gracious that he had almost relaxed at her Staten Island manse. Almost. How could he ever fit in at that house under a strict Protestant regime? He was sure he’d used the wrong fork twice. Yet he was even less at home in the Jewish ghetto, that hive of medieval chants and black gabardine suits.