The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  The house’s rear looked shabbier still. A covered wooden staircase that ran all the way to the third story retained traces of paint but had otherwise turned that nameless shade of weatherbeaten clapboard. The whole rickety structure seemed to be separating from the brick. The shutters were sealed tight. At first he couldn’t find the entrance, but then he discovered steps leading to the basement. In the shadows below, he made out a half-open door.

  Before he took another step, he worried. If he was taken for a burglar, would James Gordon Bennett, Jr. protect him? A decent publisher wouldn’t hesitate, but Max had doubts about Bennett, especially after their earlier ambiguous exchange. Finally, sheer curiosity drove him forward. He rapped on the door and, when no response was forthcoming, stepped inside.

  The basement kitchen was long, low, and dark. A window admitted a dull light. Max thought he heard someone breathing, then the sound stopped short. Slowly, his eyes started adjusting to the light in the large cooking quarters. A clumsy table dominated the room, rough chairs pressed to it. From the ceiling hung dusty pots and pans. He made out the dumbwaiter that carried meals to the dining room above. The stink of rodent droppings, greasy cooking smells, astringent cleansers melted into the timeless aroma of sealed windows and close quarters.

  Hesitating, he took small steps into the gloomy interior. To the right of the back wall, an archway indicated an alcove of some sort, but he couldn’t see its interior. Grit scattered underfoot. Had the breathing resumed? He couldn’t tell. Perhaps it had been a hallucination. No, someone was there, maybe a cook rummaging in the darkness.

  Then he saw her. A mousy woman was stirring soup on a coal stove. A tight-sleeved dress peeked out from beneath her apron.

  “I’m looking for Miss Van Siclen.”

  “I am she.” She put down her wooden spoon and wiped her hands.

  “Our friend Mrs. Edwards suggested I look you up.” He held his breath, waiting to see if this convenient lie would fly.

  “Oh, you know Julia?”

  “I spoke to her at her arraignment.”

  She screwed up her pointy features. “What a horrible mix-up. The world hates an idealist.”

  “Yes, I agree. She told me your organization had attracted some new applicants?”

  “You might call them that. A very unfortunate lot. One took in wash. Another worked in some sort of asylum, but I suspected she was an inmate. Another one had boils… . We don’t take just anybody off the street, of course.”

  “Of course not. Mrs. Edwards said they were unsuitable. She said you would know more about them. We’re getting quite a bit of mail supporting your group, you know. Our readers are eager to learn more about your good works.”

  He offered his most innocent face.

  “Readers?”

  “I’m sorry, here’s my card. Max Greengrass. New York Herald!’ Now he took the plunge. If she had read a word of the Heralds coverage, he was doomed anyway. “My editor thinks your organization is a remarkable phenomenon. He wants to give you the opportunity to explain your philosophy”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That’s more in Julia’s line.” Her pinched features contracted. Was Edwards her superior? He sensed in her an ingrained compliance.

  “Well, I’ve already interviewed Mrs. Edwards. Perhaps I could just have a few words with you.”

  “Well, we could sit in the parlor,” she said uncertainly. “I don’t know what I could tell you….”

  She led him up a dim staircase and into an airless sitting room dominated by a horsehair sofa with carved feet. He had the impression of hulking furniture, crowded shelves, and clashing floral motifs. The wallpaper featured lilies; the pictures, tooled frames jammed together, offered lilacs and daffodils; the rugs were crowded with threadbare roses.

  “You’re very kind. I was wondering about the women who tried to join. They admire your work. I’d like to get their thoughts. Would you have their names and addresses?”

  “Perhaps… .” She opened a delicate mahogany writing desk, produced a leather-bound ledger, and studied it for a moment. Suddenly she snapped it shut. “I don’t think I wrote anything down. They made me so uncomfortable.”

  “Are you familiar with the Mourtone family?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Who are they? Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Just wondering. Can you describe any of these women for me? Where they came from, what they did?”

  “I’m so nervous now, Mr. Greengrass. I’m not certain we want all this publicity.” A key rattled in the lock. Alarmed, Miss Van Siclen started for the door. “That must be Julia now. She went for the veal.”

  “Is that Julia?” another woman’s voice called. Shuffling into the living room, clutching the neck of her loose dressing gown, Mrs. Warner stopped dead in her tracks. “Who let this man in?”

  Her hair loose, her features blurred by sleep, she appeared to have just risen from bed. She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing Max as if she were trying to recall who he was.

  “Yes. What are you doing here, Mr. Greengrass?” Mrs. Edwards’s voice was pure ice. Carrot tops peeked out of the bag she held to her tight bodice.

  Did they live together? According to the bookseller, the Irving Place address belonged to Miss Van Siclen. Yet Mrs. Warner had been napping in her nightie while Mrs. Edwards had been out gathering food for dinner. Were they communards, Utopians, an obscure sisterhood?

  “He said you invited him,” Miss Van Siclen offered querulously, wringing her hands.

  Max smiled benignly. “You mentioned new converts, Mrs. Edwards. I was curious about them.”

  “Would you mind leaving the premises?”

  “I was telling Miss Van Siclen that many of our readers are very much on your side. You could help your cause by giving me some more background. Do you ladies live together?”

  Edwards put her bags down and advanced on him. “Our domestic arrangements are none of your business, Mr. Greengrass. A decent publication wouldn’t conjecture about private matters.”

  “Conjecture? Certainly not. We always put the facts in the best possible light.”

  Implacable, Edwards led him down a narrow hallway. Before they reached the stairs leading up to the front door, he noticed a large room, rather barren, scattered with straight-back red chairs turned toward a lectern. Did they give lectures on the premises as well?

  “Please don’t call again.”

  Light with excitement, he wended his way toward Fourteenth Street. He’d stumbled onto a whole new aspect of the Midnight Band, and he hungered to know more. How many women lived at the Irving Place address? Was it some sort of headquarters? Did they indoctrinate new recruits there?

  Was Mrs. Edwards their leader and boss? What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on Miss Van Siclen’s record book.

  There was no cry of “Rrrrags! Bo-ones!” Instead, the wagon rolled by silendy, a floating ark of final things. Only at the last second did he catch sight of the driver, a mab with a gash of red for a mouth and the forearms of a stevedore. A woman running rags and bones? No, of course not. It was the same wise guy in a different faddish mask. The smear of a mouth leered. Then the wheels jumped the curb.

  Mesmerized, Max was slow to react. Had the gray nag gone batty? Had the driver lost control? He edged away, but the wagon followed him, pressing him to the stoops, cutting him off. Before he saw the weapon, he heard it whoosh through the air.

  The driver lumbered off his seat. In his hand, a stick barbed with a long nail whistled through the air. Max had seen this instrument a thousand times. The Junkman’s Needle. It picked, it probed, it examined, it speared.

  “Chickie, chickie,” the heavy man muttered, swishing his implement at the reporter’s throat. “Chickie, chickie.”

  He took a quick step toward the street, but the Needle singed his shoulder. Dancing away, he started in the direction of the wagon itself, thinking he could scuttle under the wheels and escape to the other side. A malevolent wand, the Needle sliced across his path.
Backing away, he almost fell flat across a refuse barrel. Regaining his balance, he grabbed the leaky container in both hands and hurled it at his assailant. A shower of ash poured over both of them.

  In the blinding grit, Max came in low and fast. Big men never frightened him. It was the light guys with their buzzsaw hands and quick footwork who could kill you. When Vinnie Avenoso cut him up at Harry Hill’s, he never saw where the punches were coming from. The junkman was a plodding target. Ducking, Max pounded him in the gut with both hands, sinking a hard left hook into his assailant’s underbelly. The heavy man sagged. Max planted and roundhoused one right into the junkman’s kidneys.

  With both hands he seized the Needle. Grappling, the two men fell to the sidewalk. Max held on for dear life, the junkard’s bulk threatening to crush him fiat. He heaved, pushed, and somehow slithered out from under the man’s flabby weight. Rolling across the pavement, he felt the Needle tear into his coat. Momentarily he was pinned. In desperation he shed his jacket and managed to gain his footing again. The time for niceties had long passed. Putting his head down, he bulled inside under the whistling stick and delivered a well-placed low blow. Doubling over in pain, the junkard loosened his grip. Surging up, Max seized the weapon and jerked it out of his tormenter’s hands.

  Gasping, Max staggered back, unsure what to do next. Could he stab a defenseless man? Could he herd the hulking bastard to the nearest precinct house? How? Hunched and bearlike, the junkman scurried back to the wagon.

  “I’ll take your eyes out, you sonofabitch,” Max swore.

  But somehow both men knew he wasn’t up to the killing game. The reins snapped. The tilted wagon rocked off the curb, built up speed, and clattered away. Without realizing it, Max had begun touching himself all over. He was still whole. Just barely. But the next junkard might do a better job. The next pack of street arabs might swarm him under for good. He had to protect himself, and his fists were a feeble solution.

  Then a strange idea gripped him. He’d have to get his own name in the papers.

  chapter eighteen

  Perched on the edge of his desk, Police Superintendent Byrnes held a book at arm’s length. He wore a salt-and-pepper suit and salmon gloves. “Last page,” he said, holding up a gloved index finger. Shifting on his feet, Max squinted to see the book’s spine. Dead Eye Dick in Coney Island by someone named Wheeler. Byrnes kept a vast library of dime novels and loved to talk about their clever heroes.

  Cooling his heels, he watched the police superintendent’s bobbing mustache, an enormous affair that curtained his entire mouth. Invisible lips formed invisible words beneath Byrnes’s twitching whiskers.

  Max had seen the famed policeman dozens of times, though he’d never before penetrated Mulberry Street’s inner sanctum. But, as he’d hoped, Bennett was outraged that a Herald man had been assaulted. Evidently Max’s recent audience with the publisher had helped: at least Bennett knew who he was now. As soon as Max had spilled his story to Parnell, the publisher began burning up the wire to Byrnes’s office.

  The superintendent especially liked visitors to see him perusing Julian Hawthorne’s potboilers. In these racy stories, a character named Chief Inspector Byrnes thrilled readers with his brilliance and bravery. With all due modesty, the real Inspector Byrnes always pointed out that Julian was the son of that other Hawthorne.

  Then there was Old Cap Collier, the potboiler master, who described in The Thugs of the Tenderloin how a fictional character named Chief Inspector Byrnes had kept the crooked lawyer Flash Jack out of New York. Collier was, of course, another Byrnes favorite.

  Every reporter in town knew the practical purpose of Byrnes s scholarship. Aside from basking in fiction’s free publicity, Byrnes also lifted stratagems from these imaginary detectives, and to the naive delight of his Wall Street patrons retold the invented cases, attributing to himself their dazzling insights. In fact, he strongly implied that the dime novelists fed off his actual experiences. How could second-rate scribblers imagine such intricate scenarios without help from the police inspector himself?

  Finally Byrnes deigned to look up. “You’re the reporter? What’s your name, boyo?”

  “Max Greengrass.”

  “Bennett’s all bent out of shape, eh? Well, go ahead. Give me the rundown.”

  Quickly, Max recounted the attack, and for evidence produced the Junkman’s Needle. Byrnes turned the implement over in his hands.

  “Screwed in. Nice job. But there’s ten thousand of these blasted things in town. What else?”

  “He was wearing one of those rubber masks. You’ve seen them?”

  “It’s a damn plague. What the hell’s the matter with people? Their own heads ain’t good enough for them? Which one?”

  “The streetwalker. The one with the yellow hair and the big red mouth? He was a heavy guy, about five-seven. Big forearms. Saggy gut on him.”

  Byrnes shifted in his chair like a man with a hidden itch. The inspector’s dark eyebrows worked furiously, but Max didn’t feel as intimidated as he’d expected. The papers had invented Byrnes the mastermind, the artist of the third degree. Max sensed something else, a small but vicious intelligence.

  “So who has it in for you, boyo?”

  Max had more than one theory, but he wasn’t about to go off half-cocked, especially to the superintendent. “Beats me.”

  “Who do you owe? C’mon. I can find out anyway.”

  “Just a few bucks to Sim Addem. That’s about it.”

  “Addem plays it straight. Ain’t him. Will Bennett play this on his front page?”

  Max was about to say the story might run on page five, but checked himself. Byrnes was testing the reporter’s pull before he surrendered a single gilded quotation. “If you give our readers the benefit of your thinking, there’s no doubt.”

  Byrnes made a show of examining the junkard’s weapon. “Say this for me, boyo, these exact words. ‘It is intolerable for a member of the press to be attacked in this unspeakable fashion. We will hold every rag-and-bone man in this city to account. But this is a complicated case. An extensive investigation will be necessary.’”

  “I’d think so.”

  Byrnes coughed into his fist. “Max was scribbling notes in his shorthand. “‘This isn’t Chicago. We don’t let cranks and anarchists run riot in our city. Reporters have a job to do, and we intend to offer them every protection in our power.'”

  Concealing his satisfaction, Max carefully took down the inspector’s every word. “Much appreciated.”

  “Well, between you, me, and the lampost, we don’t have the manpower to follow you around, you understand that? You have something in your pocket, boyo?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Protection, you greenhorn. There’s somebody’d like to take your head off, it looks like.”

  “Sure. I’ve still got my mitts.”

  “Your mitts! That’s rich. Put this in too. ‘The Police Superintendent advocates a new ordinance against selling false faces. A man shouldn’t be allowed to parade around the streets pretending he’s somebody else.’”

  “Sucking up to Byrnes, are you?” Stan Parnell cracked, running his bleary eyes over Max’s notes.

  “Did I lay it on too thick?”

  “Not necessarily. So, this character jumped you out of the blue?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t bother going for my money.”

  “Bennett’s in a twist. Takes it personally. Well, you can’t write the thing yourself. I’ll put it together. This one might have legs. Can you get yourself beat up again?”

  The thinnest of smiles played on Parnell’s lips. For the first time Max felt his editor’s chilly affection. Inspired, he replied, “I’ll do my damnedest.” “I’ll bet you will. Okay, this is what I need from you.” He submitted to the interview, all the while observing Parnell’s crisp, clinical approach.

  “By the way, Nick Biddies covering the Edwards trial, but Bennett wants you to work the crowd for color.”


  He was about to protest that he had developed the Midnight Band story and that Biddle would miss the nuances, but he bit his tongue. Nick Biddle always covered Howe’s trials.

  “Sure. I’ll talk to him.”

  How could Biddle do the trial justice? Max knew how the women walked and talked, the shape of their smothering baskets and the way they justified their crusade. He’d seen their haunts and listened to their rants. He wondered if he could talk the old reporter out of the assignment or buy him off with some good whiskey.

  He needed some air. It wasn’t until he had done a complete turn in City Hall Park that he remembered Martin’s funeral. It must have ended hours ago, he realized. What could he possibly say to Gretta? The truth ought to suffice. How could he have escaped the rush of events or his duty to the paper? She would have to understand.

  Before supper, while Mrs. DeVogt was busy in the kitchen, Gretta dragged him into her room. “Where were you? How could you leave me high and dry like that?”

  “I couldn’t help—”

  Her anger flashing, she cut him off. “I had to sit there by myself, listening to a bunch of platitudes and lies. It was disgusting!”

  He tried to explain himself. “I’m sorry, but I was covering-—”

  Lost in her own world, she didn’t hear him. “You should have heard Reverend Weems going on about Martin’s vocation. Why did they have to say how much he cared for his job, and babble about his good works?”

  “I was down at headquarters—”

  “Why should I ever believe you again?”

  She had good reason to lash out at him, she thought, but he looked so bereft, she wished she could take her words back. But he was also staring at her in that hungry way. What was she? A tasty piece of pork sausage? She wasn’t above reveling in her beauty, but she didn’t have a dime, or any prospects for that matter now that Martin was gone. Yet sometimes she wished she were as plain as a schoolmarm and free of the men who always buzzed about her.