She hated the unbending tone of her own voice. Didn’t she sound exactly like her mother?
He groped for a small exaggeration. “I was almost killed, today …”
His words finally broke through to her. “What? How … oh, that’s awful. How do you feel? I could get you something.”
“No, not at all … It turned out to be a nice item. Might be page one.”
His attempt to make light of the attack fell flat.
She bristled. “Is that all you care about? You were almost murdered, and you’re babbling about page this and page that?”
He hated to keep apologizing to her. What could she possibly know? How could she understand that his life-and-death struggle was with words? “Sorry, it’s an occupational disease. What do you mean about Martin’s good works?”
“It was all mixed up. The Reverend Weems seems to believe that insurance companies are altruistic institutions and that by selling policies Martin was a sort of missionary. I suppose the family put the words in his mouth.”
“What sort of insurance was Martin selling? I mean, his clientele could barely afford to feed themselves.”
“That’s what I always wondered. It had something to do with burial costs, I think. He told me that the poorest of the poor would do anything to keep out of the Potter’s Field. Isn’t that awful? I mean, to take advantage of people’s fears and pocket their last pennies? I think that’s why he was so repelled.”
“There must be more than pennies in it.”
He was so persistent, she could have strangled him. Yet he could be useful, couldn’t he? Didn’t their respective interests dovetail? He wanted to dig up his grubby story; she wanted to attend the execution of the monster who had taken Martin away from her. Was it true that one could hear the neck crack if the crowd stayed quiet? She could make plates of the condemned man climbing the scaffold; the executioner’s expression; the crowd’s reaction, face by gleeful face. What sort of woman had these thoughts? How could she ever reveal her savage side to a man?
She collected herself. “Oh, evidently. Mr. Mourtone thought the whole thing up. That’s how he became president of the company to begin with. Martin always said it was too boring to explain, but his father found a way to increase profits quite a bit by selling this sort of policy.”
It was all he could do to keep his mind on the discussion. If he could just reach out and stroke her cheek….
“What is there to smile about?”
“Nothing, nothing….” He flushed, but chattered on. “What exactly did Weems say about Martin’s charity?”
“That was what kept bothering me. Why did they have to make a point of lying about how much Martin liked what he was doing or that it was some kind of noble calling, when Martin always told me the exact opposite?”
“They were selling—”
She cut him off. “That’s exactly what it felt like. An advertising campaign. Not a funeral at all. He claimed Martin helped out at some sort of church mission.”
“You knew about that?”
“Martin had a good heart, but it didn’t include settlement houses. The eulogy wasn’t about Martin. Not really.”
“There are ghostwriters for these preachers. I once knew a reporter who picked up some extra coin every weekend.”
“How charming.” She opened her door for him to leave.
In some obscure way he’d offended her again, but for the life of him he couldn’t put his finger on it. She might manipulate him to satisfy her morbid curiosity about Martin, she might even think of him as a friend in a bloodless sort of way. But the idea of a Hebrew lover was probably beyond her. Why was he banging his head against a stone wall? The city was swarming with gorgeous birds who would appreciate him. He was doing her favor after favor, and she was still condescending to him. No, it was more complicated than that. Out in Staten Island she’d been so different, simple and responsive. In the city she became all manners.
But how fair was he being to her? Mourtone wasn’t even dust yet. Why shouldn’t she protect herself? Didn’t she have reason to be irritated with him? He’d left her high and dry at the funeral. Still, in his prickly heart of hearts, he resented her dismissive tone. He longed for her, but he wanted to retaliate too.
He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, making himself go as blank as the sweep of plaster above him, but he couldn’t blind his mind’s eye. He thought of her full mouth, her delicate throat, her body freed from whalebone and laces. He dreamed the shock of her lips. He ached for her.
He had to get out of the house.
His nose in the Police Gazette, Officer Schreiber was lounging in Mrs. Jabonne’s vestibule.
“How’s tricks, Maxie?” Schreiber brightened, tossing the pink pages aside.
“Moonlighting, huh?”
“When you got six kids, you’ll need the extra chink, too.”
Max knew the setup. “Well, keep the pantata out of this one.”
Schreiber folded the Gazette and yawned. “What, are you kidding? The captain put me in the way of this thing. Watch out. Minnie’s in a lousy mood.”
With its stuffed silk pillows, its gilded mirrors and electric lamps, Mrs. Jabonne’s could have been mistaken for an upper-middle-class drawing room. The clientele included a jowly man in a new sack suit, a hayseed with a wispy fringe of a beard, and a pale man whose popping eyes suggested a thyroid condition.
Mrs. Jabonne’s girls clustered on straight-backed chairs that faced the expectant clients. A tall woman in a filmy peignoir crossed her legs and dangled a gold shoe from her toe. Next to her, a mab in a highly modified Mother Hubbard caught Max’s eye. A barely pubescent Italian with unmarked smooth skin had pinned a giant blue bow in her hair. The effect was unfortunate. All desire drained out of him.
A salmon-colored derby on the back of his head, a song plugger pounded on the upright piano. The women whispered in each other’s ears, casting contemptuous looks at the night’s pickings. The sack suit tried a smile, but it faded fast enough. Legs pumping, a cigar mashed in his mouth, the piano player sang in a good-natured growl.
Where’d you get that hat?
Where’d you get that tile?
Isn’t it a dandy one?
And just the latest style.
How’d you like to have one
Just the same as that?
When I go out
The boys all shout
“Where’d you get that hat?”
Minnie Jabonne wandered through the room, pecking one customer on the forehead, issuing sub-rosa orders to the working girls, kneading the plugger’s shoulders. Despite some extra pounds, she swung her hips like a woman used to being admired.
“Max, where’ve you been hiding?” She took his arm and led him to her bottles. “How ‘bout a sour?” Before he could answer, she stood on tiptoes and whispered in his ear. “Mum about your newspaper. My customers, they get nerves.”
“Sure, Minnie. Got any rye?”
Then his eye fell on a woman in the corner who appeared to be hiding. For a moment his heart stopped. Could it be? An Irish girl with an appealing open face and straw-colored hair, she looked just like his first girlfriend, Nora. But it was impossible. Nora would be years older than this slip of a girl.
“What’s your name,” he asked, just to hear her voice.
“C’mon, Maggie, show yourself to the gentleman,” Minnie said.
“Margaret,” she replied, turning in a full circle to show off her trim body.
Her diffident, familiar voice shook him. In the bedroom, whose amenities included a bed, a table, and a light globe, the illusion persisted. She had small breasts, one larger than the other, and hips wider than he’d expected. So much like Nora’s. He tried not to be too coarse. In the end, he was carried away more by the memory of desire than passion itself.
The tiny apartment he and Nora had shared for two months. The sweet, unbearable secrecy. What else did he recall? Mad walks along the East River. Breakfasts at the greasy Suffolk
Street cafe. Day-old bread, eggs cooked in bacon grease, plum blossoms in a beer botde. Quick, moody Nora with her washed-out blue eyes. He used to lie on his back beneath the yellow shower of her hair.
A drunken teamster lurched out of a corner bar. Iron wheels rattled over paving stones. A dank mist blew in off the river. The heehawing of the last drink, the weary strains of the last tune leaked out into the streets.
Max hunched forward into the wind. His throat felt raw. Without breaking stride, he coughed up the evening’s joys and spit them out onto the sidewalk. Booze. Smoke. Digestive juices. Fickle passion. Already forgotten. Up close, the girl had looked nothing like Nora, but the illusion had persisted long enough for memory to hollow him out. He was twenty-five now, a quarter of a century old. His heart clenched at the number. What was time? A substance? An idea? A force? Speed itself? He could sense nothing but its utter indifference. Under the sheets in his own bed, dry-mouthed and dizzy, he felt himself hurtling into the darkness. When he reached out across the bed, he shaped Gretta out of empty air.
chapter nineteen
On his way to work Max picked up the Herald from a newsboy, and there it was, second column, upper left. With Bennett urging him on, Parnell had really gone to town. Scooting through the dark brigade of commuters, Max leaned against a peeling sign that demanded BUY FELS NAPHTHA. Though he barely recognized the figure at the center of the article, he smiled in satisfaction at the paper’s baroque exaggerations. Bennett must have had a hand in crafting the prose.
HERALD REPORTER ASSAULTED
Cruel Attack by Junkard
Suspect Still at Large
Herald Man Puts Up Game Fight
An unprovoked attack on a Herald reporter took place yesterday in broad daylight on Irving Place just north of East Fourteenth Street. Max Greengrass related to the paper’s management that a junk wagon cornered him on the sidewalk, and the driver attempted to spear him with a weapon known in low circles as the Junkman’s Needle. Quite a tussle ensued, giving the doughty Greengrass ample opportunity to display his fistic talents.
A former lightweight boxer with numerous notches in his belt, Greengrass managed to disarm his much larger attacker and pummel him into submission. Recondite scholars of the manly art still recall Greengrass’s lightning handiwork, which he put on display more than once in exhibitions at Harry Hill’s boxing emporium.
Max was laughing so hard, he had to lean against a wall. He had taken pains to point out how brief and disastrous his pugilistic career had been and how easy it was to deflate a slow-moving gasbag like the rag-and-bone man. Unfortunately, his real record wouldn’t have redounded to the Heralds greater glory. He read on.
The Heralds publisher, William Bennett, Jr., said, “We consider this cowardly attack an assault on freedom of speech itself. The Herald'will not be intimidated or silenced, and we hope that Police Superintendent Byrnes will use every resource at his command to apprehend this vicious criminal.”
Greengrass was at a loss to explain the incident. “There have been no threats against my person until now, but I’m certainly going to be on my guard in the future.”
The piece went on to quote Byrnes, then the outraged Bennett a second time. Max couldn’t have asked for more. At least his assailants—he assumed the junkard had been acting on someone else’s authority—would hear that he was under the police superintendent’s wing. If nothing else, the illusion of Byrnes’s omnipotence would provide some protection. He was also enough of a newsman to believe that placing his name in print had a mystical effect. The Heralds typeface was his shield. Double-minded, he nursed this delusion to the hilt, never forgetting that it was pure self-deception. Every knot of street arabs stopped his heart; every rag-and-bone wagon closed his throat. But a countercurrent ran through him too. Damn the bastards if they thought he’d show an ounce of fear.
He took in the rest of the news on the ride downtown.
President Cleveland’s doctor was putting him on a diet of mutton and beef and exhorting him to cease his daily exercises. Mayor Gilroy asserted that New York was wealthier than ever because it owed less than ever before. Credit was growing ever tighter, putting Wall Street in a sour mood.
The Reverend Weems had given a sensational sermon entitled “Rulers of Tomorrow?” in which he claimed that brothels were causing a plague of illegitimacy. “While white slaves often turn to abortion, many of these crude procedures fail. Others are rightly afraid of the barbaric methods available to them and carry to term. The issue of these desperate creatures are the citizens of the future. Considering that we each receive at birth our national character and intellect, and our physical attributes as well, I fear for our city. The legions of pinheads and epileptics are growing day by day. Open your eyes. The day will come when all the saving societies of all the churches will be as nothing before the tide.”
The Herald'had already called the Reverend Weems “morbidly obsessed with lurid subjects.” The World speculated that the minister had a taste for smut himself. But as an ally of the Reverend Parkhurst, who claimed that his crusade against sporting resorts was a way of exposing police corruption, Weems had a respectable following. He also sold newspapers.
Max smiled. Evidently the good minister had not studied the economic advantages of operating a parlor house with steady business. Sim Addem had once laid out the figures for him. A Tenderloin landlord could realize over $40,000 a year from a single brothel, a considerable sum despite the protection fee—fifty dollars a day—that went into Captain Clubber Williams’s pocket. The will to evict the ancient evil wilted before such fine returns.
Climbing the stairs to the newsroom, he ran smack into the departing Biddle. “Sleeping one off, Greengrass?”
“That obvious?”
“We’ve got a date in court, remember?” The reporter tapped Max on the head with his cane and smiled. “You’ve never seen Willy in action, have you?”
“Willy?”
“Howe and Hummel took the case. You didn’t know that?”
“Not for sure, but I did see Hummel talking to Edwards at the courthouse. … I feel like a third wheel, actually. Parnell wants me to tag along with you and do color.”
“Fine! You can sit on your hands and watch the show.”
“This case isn’t exactly Howe and Hummel’s meat, is it?”
“Not only that. They’re appearing pro bono. Who knows? It won’t be too arduous. They usually break early for lunch.”
Max wondered whether he had made a grave error in treating Biddle that first time. Now the old roue expected him to fork over every time they met. Still, he’d be able to confront Howe at the courthouse and ask him how he had manufactured one corpse and retrieved another out of thin air. Not to speak of his possible connections to enemies of the free press.
Despite his age, Biddle wove in and out of the sidewalk traffic at a mad pace. Max scurried to keep up. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, reform ladies aren’t their usual clientele, are they?”
Biddle stopped in his tracks and gave Max the once-over. “Don’t make assumptions. Little Abie may have figured out a way to make charity pay.” A violent cough seized Biddle, who produced a stained handkerchief to wipe his mouth. “I’ll catch the white lung soon … We’ll keep a close eye on them.”
“They’ll both appear?”
“I understand Willy will do the opening and closing statements, but Abie will cross-examine. Working from their strengths, you see?”
“It seems like a small case to spend so many resources on.”
“It does, it does,” Biddle reflected.
At least Howe couldn’t dodge him any more. Why had he sent Max to the brewery to begin with? To intimidate him? No doubt the lawyer would claim ignorance about misleading him, and bafflement as to who in the world might want to do Max harm; but as a reporter he wanted to hear Howe’s denials with his own ears.
Max had only seen William H. Howe in his office. In the courtroom, the attorney cut a much grander
figure, his leonine head, his inflamed complexion, his piercing eyes, his copious gray walrus mustache, his lightly carried girth all suggesting an opera star more than a lawyer. Mrs. Edwards sat quietly, folded hands resting on the defense table. Seated behind her, gripping the rail that separated them, the subservient Miss Van Siclen stared straight ahead.
Also close by, a pair of scrubbed children, a boy in a brass-buttoned sailor suit and a girl in a high-waisted dress, swung their legs. Bored, the boy called out “Momma,” but Howe flashed an avuncular smile and quieted him down. For some reason Max had assumed Mrs. Edwards was a childless widow. Perhaps her husband was looking on in the crowded chamber. That she might be sharing quarters with Miss Van Siclen and Mrs. Warner suddenly seemed less likely.
In deference to the court, and perhaps to harmonize with his austere client, Howe wore a rich brown suit and only a few diamonds on his chubby fingers. As the jury pool filed in, he kept up a light patter with the judge, the court officers, the gallery, creating a warm response from every corner of the chamber.
A rickety but sharp-tongued jurist, the Honorable Harry Thompson, presided.
Max amused himself by trying to guess each juror’s vocation. One might be a mechanic, another a city bureaucrat, a third a commercial clerk. He wondered if Howe would dismiss a dark Syrian in a threadbare suit, or the plump Jew. One man’s long, narrow Scandinavian face had a hangman’s aspect. Did all the fashionable talk about national character affect the lawyer’s thinking? Did he prefer one race to another to sit in judgment? Or did he focus on which ones had the best suits of clothes, which displayed the mannerisms of religious zealotry, which had ties to Tammany?
Howe’s pacing focused all eyes on him, and Max felt a rising sense of anticipation. Once the jury box had been filled, the lawyer wandered over to the defense table and picked up a newspaper. With elaborate care, he rolled it up so that no one could read its headlines, or even tell which daily he held in his hand. The courtroom fell silent as he slapped the paper over and over against his leg.
The Midnight Band of Mercy Page 18