The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  Faye whooped and wriggled in distress as one layer of underthings after another fell over her head. An evil grin on his face, the Professor held the Giant Crank in both hands, keeping Faye’s head aimed at the floorboards. Clad in black tights, her legs wriggled. A titter ran through the assembly.

  Max squirmed in his seat, gritted his teeth, crossing and recrossing his legs.

  Circling his pupil, the Professor pulled out his Giant Paddle, an instrument shaped like a human hand. Foot-long fingers whooshed through the air as the pedagogue practiced his stroke.

  “Ooooeeee!” his sister cried. Max knew it was an all an act, but he winced anyway. Could this be her star turn? The surprise Danny kept talking about? Maybe they’d both been in the business so long they couldn’t distinguish between success and humiliation.

  The Professor sauntered to the lip of the stage and consulted the audience, “Do you think she learned her lesson?”

  The balcony shouted advice. “She’s too thick!” “Teach her a good one!”

  A more refined man in the orchestra chimed in. “She don’t know her As from her elbow!” This witticism almost brought the house down.

  Her fellow students mobbed Faye, trying to protect her. Naturally, Max understood that it was all play-acting, he assumed the Giant Paddle was pasteboard and that Faye was smirking under her frilly shroud, but he wanted to vault onto the stage to rescue her anyway. He felt so embarrassed and sad for her, he almost bolted from the theatre.

  He wanted to drop that twenty on her, though. Anyway, backstage, her mortification would all seem like a joke. Just another turn for another dollar. Faye wasn’t exacdy a shrinking violet.

  A working girl in the fourth row leaped to her feet. “Spank her pants off!”

  A rhythmic chanting and clapping took hold. “Spank! Spank! Spank!”

  The frenzy for punishment rose. Feet stamped. Men who had been slumping in their seats, beaten by a day’s work or a day’s unemployment, came back to life. They whistled and howled for amusement, for punishment, for a little of both.

  The Giant Paddle struck Faye’s bottom, and she let loose an ear-splitting howl.

  The girls twittered, but the Professor cranked the Spanking Machine one more time. Then Faye started slipping from her chair. When she went flying, Max held his breath. Like the rest of the audience, he didn’t know whether vaulting into the air was part of the act or a dangerous mistake.

  But it was all planned. Hitting the stage on her toes, Faye executed two neat cartwheels, then bounced to her feet. A violin sawed in the pit. A piano struck a chord. The cracked orchestra hesitated, groping its way through the introduction. The stage went dark except for a simple spotlight. In its glare Faye threw her shoulders back, cocked her head and swayed. Her simple movements setded the muttering crowd.

  When her voice rang out, a solid, rueful alto, Max felt all his all love for her rushing back. It wasn’t her voice, rich and deep as it was, but her inflections, warm, wry, and world-weary all at once, that mesmerized him. Fayefaye, with all her whims and phony excuses, never lied when she sang a tune.

  One night my sweetheart came to woo

  When I was left and lonely.

  He looked so kind and handsome too,

  I lov'd him and him only.

  The village chime told supper time.

  What could I do, dear misses?

  For as I live, I’d naught to give

  But bread and cheese and kisses.

  By the time she rounded into the closing verses, Simon’s Avenue B Theatre, that Temple of Amusement, had fallen into a reverent silence. Faye’s dark-timbred voice, so direct and plain it was almost unbearable, rose to fill the hall. Just an anonymous groundling, Max felt oddly close to her as she swayed in the cone of light. It was easy to love Faye at a distance.

  Next morning we exchang’d our vows;

  I prize his golden present

  Which seems like magic to disclose,

  But ‘tis in fact like heaven

  His cheerful smiles each care beguiles.

  Believe me, dearest misses,

  ‘Tis bliss to share with him our fare

  Though bread and cheese and kisses.

  Suddenly the stage lights burst on and one of the schoolgirls pulled a tiny American flag from her cleavage. A drum roll sounded. The next leggy scholar produced a larger flag, and the next a striped banner greater still. The Professor slapped a tall hat on his head, donned a stars-and-stripes cutaway, and grabbed a baton. High-stepping, the chorines fell in behind him and burst into a patriotic air.

  Oh, see the boys in blue;

  Their hearts are good and true.

  After Faye’s intimate performance, the brassy march jarred in Max’s ear. It came on too fast, and made little sense, but the audience didn’t seem to mind. They clapped, whistled, and stomped their feet to the booming drum.

  He had to get backstage. In the wings he almost ran over Leon, who was crawling in his nightdress through the stage dust. Before Max could grab him, Zapinsky scooped the boy up and tossed him in the air. Close-up, the comic’s putty nose covered half his face.

  “Harry, give him here,” Faye demanded. As soon as she started rocking the boy in her arms, he showed his gums in a wet smile.

  Max sneaked up behind her and pulled her ear. Her back to him, she said, “Maxie, you showed up.”

  “Great turn, sis. I don’t know about the spanking part, though.”

  “Listen to this. Show Uncle Max, honeybunch.” She sang a soft scale. In a wispy voice, Leon hit the notes one after the other. “Isn’t that something? I swear he knows middle C.”

  “Fantastic.” You never knew. This kid could turn into something. “Anywhere we can talk?”

  “Sure, I don’t got another show for a while.”

  “How many left?”

  “Just four.” Nodding toward Leon, she said, “Mrs. Darling was full up.”

  She led him through the backstage labyrinth, past the bullpen dressing rooms, one for the male acts, one for the female, and into a quiet corner. When they were finally alone, Max slipped Faye the bill.

  “You’re on a streak?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. I wasn’t kidding. You really put that song across.”

  She pecked his cheek. He would have been happy to follow her home and sit on her bed all night. Now that the booze was wearing off, he felt the heebie-jeebies rushing back. Shooting the breeze with Faye would keep the dry-mouthed nightmares at bay. He wanted to tell her how he was going crazy down at the paper, with Parnell blowing smoke up his skirt one minute and pretending he didn’t exist the next. He wanted to ask her about Gretta, too. Faye was shrewd about the female animal. Did he have a snowball’s chance in hell with the woman?

  Instead, he blurted, “Hey, remember that shimmer Martin? Danny took him to see you that night?”

  “I don’t know. Leon, stop already. Look at him,” she said, showing Max the child’s sniffling face. “How can you say no to that?”

  Max took the boy in his arms and brushed his face with his mustache.

  “Unca Max! Tickley.”

  “Sniff his head,” Faye said.

  “Smells fresh.” The boy wriggled in his grasp. How could such a small bag of flesh and bones turn into a full-grown human being? He felt a twinge of melancholy. Would Danny really look out for the kid? He couldn’t count on it. Like it or not, Leon was his nephew and more. “Martin Mourtone. Very well-dressed, tall guy. Kind of pretty. Lots of cash.”

  “Oh, him. He came over to Sullivan Street one day. Out of the blue.”

  “Your flat? What for?”

  “Don’t have a coronary. He was just in the neighborhood,” she said blandly. “It wasn’t that, so wipe that look off your face.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he liked the show, he was thinking of producing. That routine.”

  “A philanthropist, I get it.” Imagining Mourtone sniffing around his sister, he began to form a different pictur
e of the fey swell. “I had a few with him, and he was giving me a load of malarkey about starting some new rag.”

  “Yeah, I guess he wants to hire both of us.” She rolled her eyes to indicate how much she believed Martin Mourtone’s promises. “Danny says he’s loaded.”

  “What else did Martin say? Was he visiting anybody else in the neighborhood?”

  “What’s the big deal? I told you.”

  “Did he say anything about Gretta?”

  “You mean the picture queen? Not when he was talking to me, he didn’t. Danny said you were mooning over her.”

  Irritated, he blurted the thing out. “Mourtone’s dead. He just died.” Then he caught himself. If he told Faye much of anything, in twenty-four hours every booking agent and song-and-dance man in the Rialto would be repeating the story. He might as well sell it to Fox at the Police Gazette.

  “That’s awful. How could he die? Just like that? Ucchhh. That spooks me.”

  “People do it every day. I hear it’s easy. How long was he up in the flat?”

  “Ten minutes. Less. I had to drop the baby off. He was so young. He had nice eyes.”

  “Yeah, well. Lemme go. I need my beauty sleep.” He pecked her on the cheek. She smelled of powder and cheap perfume and milk, faindy sour.

  chapter seventeen

  Standing at the newsstand on Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth on Monday morning, Max devoured his article whole, then reread it slowly for mistakes. Nothing too bad, just a dropped comma and a broken capital T. Parnell had left his copy largely intact, and the headline man had displayed a glorious lack of restraint. He shook the change in his pocket. He was still in the game.

  Glowing inwardly, he held the paper at arm’s length and took in the head again. Then, uneasy, he began to rethink it. Wasn’t it misleading? Didn’t it mix up Mrs. Edwards’s contentions and his own? Didn’t it sound as if the Herald believed her claims?

  POORER CLASSES STARVE CATS

  Mrs. Edwards Charges Intentional Brutality

  Says Pets Better Off Dead

  The subhead clarified who was claiming that the poor were inhumane, but readers still might be misled by the upper-case headline. The contradiction made him squirm.

  Mrs. Edwards, the purported leader of the Midnight Band of Mercy, was arraigned Friday in Harlem Police Court. After closely questioning the prisoner, the magistrate, Chaim Bernstein, released her on the recognizance of Mr. Maple, her lawyer, until such day as she stands trial for chloroforming cats in Harlem, Chelsea, and Greenwich Village.

  In an interview after her court appearance, Mrs. Edwards contended that the poorer classes had a tendency to keep half-fed animals as pets, only to allow them to die in droves. She cited particular addresses, courtyards, and even basements into which she has crawled in order to put her prey out of their alleged misery.

  It was a distincdy unsettling experience to listen to Mrs. Edwards crow about her campaign of feline carnage. She asserted, apparently with pride, that she had done away with over three thousand cats in her ghoulish career.

  Parnell had swallowed the angle whole, and for good reason. The piece was bound to elicit a tidal wave of outrage from the Heralds faithful. Some readers wept over stories about hamsters with weak kidneys. How would they react to Mrs. Edwards’s massacres? How much longer could Parnell keep him down?

  When he took his place on the space-raters’ bench, Parnell motioned to him immediately. Max did his best to keep a straight face as he ambled past the other space men who had been waiting for hours before he arrived.

  “Someone wants to make your acquaintance,” Parnell said dryly.

  To Max’s delight, the city editor led him to the Managing Editor’s glassed-in office where two men, leaning back in their chairs, were chatting away. Managing Editor Garvey, a man with a thin pink face and ginger-colored muttonchops, turned to Max as if he actually recognized him.

  “Greengrass?”

  “In the flesh,” Parnell agreed.

  “Mr. Bennett wanted to take a look at you.”

  Max had never laid eyes on James Gordon Bennett, Jr. The son of the Heralds original publisher lived principally in Paris, often sailing the Mediterranean in his steam yacht. Max did know that, long ago, Bennett, Jr., known for his disdain for propriety, had been exiled from New York society for having urinated into his fiancee’s marble fireplace in mixed company. Society had never forgiven him.

  “Not much to look at,” Max managed. Before he could stop himself, he touched his swollen eye.

  The bony-faced publisher tweaked the upturned tip of his Hussar’s mustache. “So you’re the cat man?” Bennett let go a full-throated laugh. “Nice work, Greengrass. The leads are a little spongy, though.”

  His face flushing, Max wondered whether he had been praised or chastised. Bennett had been reading his articles, perhaps in some Parisian cafe; Bennett had noticed him. On the other hand, what did “spongy leads” mean?

  He had to make the most of his audience, though. “I do human beings, too, Mr. Bennett.”

  “Well, we may have something for you. Wait. I want you to take a look at this. Come on over here.” The publisher led Garvey and Max out of the office to his high corner desk. From this perch above Ann Street and Broadway, he could see all the way down Park Row.

  “Listen, Greengrass.” Bennett picked up a few sheets of paper and scanned the type. “Here it is. ‘We may have seen the last kick of the Tammany anaconda.’ What do you think?'”

  Immediately Max noted—to himself—that snakes didn’t kick in the natural world. What was he supposed to say? On the one hand, Bennett might have written the line. If Max criticized it, he’d never escape the spacers’ bench. On the other hand, if he didn’t point out the metaphor’s weakness, he might end up a space man the rest of his life. “It’s fine, but shouldn’t it be ‘squirm’ or something like that?”

  “As I said,” Garvey commented softly.

  Disregarding his editor, Bennett glared at the sheet once more. “The hell with it! I like kicking anacondas. That’s the idea! Set the whole thing in fourteen-point, Garvey, and lead with it too.”

  Max’s heart sank. When Bennett wrote his occasional editorials, he always demanded larger type so the public would know who had composed them. Max stood frozen, a pale smile on his lips. He’d gambled and lost.

  Noticing his reporter’s pained expression, Bennett clapped him on the shoulder. “Our cat man! So you think you can do two-legged beasts too?”

  Max squared his shoulders. “Without a doubt. They swim in the same water, don’t they?”

  “That they do,” Bennett muttered, his chilly blue eyes staring off into space. Then he whirled around to Garvey and cackled. “I hear that cowboy nabbed another feature man from the World.”

  “Hearst? The sidewalk’s getting thin between those two,” Garvey cracked.

  “What do you think? He’s bleeding greenbacks, I hear.”

  The managing editor twined his fingers over his stomach. “The banks aren’t giving transfusions, either. The Journal goes belly-up in two, three months, tops.”

  Max had no interest in William Randolph Hearst and his raid on Pulitzer’s stars; he lived far below that firmament. Garvey and Bennett no longer seemed to recognize his existence. “Back to work,” he muttered.

  Garvey waved an indifferent hand.

  Had he made another misstep? All morning he sat on the hard bench. Not a single story came his way. Was he already paying for pointing out that anacondas lacked extremities? Yet Bennett had still seemed friendly enough. With nothing else to do, Max chewed over the publisher’s every word, his tone, his gestures. Who could tell? Bennett might have fired him already. All Parnell had to do was let him rot with the rest of the space men until he finally got the message.

  His mouth went dry. An internal itch seized him. He couldn’t sit still. If he was going to squeeze one more drop of juice out of the Midnight Band story, he’d have to find the membership secretary Mrs. Edwards had ment
ioned, Miss Van Siclen. He didn’t have much hope that this other biddy would offer fresh revelations, but he was curious about the women who, according to Mrs. Edwards, had been inspired to join up recently. What qualities did a fresh recruit need? Who were these new acolytes? What motivated them? If the Midnight Band had rejected them, that was a story in itself.

  The book dealer wasn’t happy to see him. Max had to follow the jumpy man around the store as he shelved new volumes. “Just tell me if you’ve heard of Van Siclen. Does she pick up the mail?”

  “The purpose of a postal box, Mr. Greengrass, is to maintain a level of discretion. That is the service I’m selling, and I won’t violate it.”

  “How’s business?”

  “The book business is in its death throes, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “After they throw their money away on shows, they take a boat to Coney and burn the rest on some cheap distraction. Ouija boards, velocipedes, gramophones, dirty postcards, penny arcades. Publishing will be dead in a year.

  “Maybe you need a boost.” He unbuttoned his purse and pulled out a fresh greenback.

  The dealer stopped fussing over his shelves. “Do you know what our profit margin is? Some fool cooks up a few pasteboard diamonds and makes a thousand percent. We’re working on two or three.”

  Max worked another bill out of its leather nest. “Miss Van Siclen? She picks up the mail?”

  The shopkeeper found a way around his moral objections.

  The Midnight Band’s secretary lived on Irving Place.

  A spiked iron fence ran around Van Siclen’s brick house. Its mansard roof had shed some tiles, and the chimneypot tilted at a precarious angle. The bay window, its frame peeling, was shrouded by threadbare curtains.

  In truth, he was just going through the motions. The residence looked less than promising. Still, he tapped the Gorgon-headed brass knocker several times. He shuffled his feet, forcing himself to wait, but the house appeared dead to the world. Veiled, the windows revealed no signs of activity, but finally he noticed a handwritten note directing tradesmen to the back. He trotted down the stairs and followed a graveled walkway that ran to a stable in the back. Sensing Max’s approach, a horse snorted and stamped behind the barn doors.