The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  “Somebody was holding Danny up,” Max put in.

  Max and Belle exchanged significant glances, but Danny didn’t bite. Instead, he arranged and rearranged his wispy red hair, but his shiny scalp still showed through. “How’d ‘Ida’ go over?” he asked eagerly.

  “Great, Danny. You should see him, Mrs. DeVogt. He dances like a wind-up toy,” Max explained, miffed that Swarms hadn’t breathed a word about Faye. She was the natural, for crissakes. In fact, he knew why Danny hadn’t mentioned her. The contrast between their respective talents was all too painful.

  Swarms kept flogging Izzy Ballin’s song. “We printed a thousand copies. That’s where the real mazuma is, in publishing. If I had the dough to pay a dozen pluggers and the padrones like the big boys do, then we’d have something.”

  “The padrones? What do they have to do with it?” Max asked.

  Danny looked agog. “Who tells the guinea with the squeezebox and the monkey what to play? The chimp?”

  “Oh, you’re exaggerating,” Gretta said. “They play what you ask them to.”

  “Doesn’t Danny know his business?” Belle shot back. “Thepadrones own them in the old country, and they own them here, too.”

  Max tried to cut off any further polemics. “That’s why I hear the same damn tune all over town sometimes? On the ferry too?”

  Danny went on serenely. “Sure, it’s all sewed up. People start humming a tune, they don’t even know why. Before you know it, they’re running out and buying the sheet music.”

  “Tell them, Danny. He has a new partner,” Belle announced.

  Now Swarms came clean. “And she can put over one helluva a song, too. Makes me look like an amateur. You oughta hear the lungs on this girl.”

  “He’s telling the truth for once,” Max conceded. If Belle hadn’t wormed it out of Swarms, though, would he have said a word?

  “Oh, be quiet, you two! It’s Faye, Max’s sister. She sings … it gives you goose bumps,” Belle explained.

  “Yeah, well. Pastor booked us again.” Danny tried to sound casual, but his wide smile betrayed him.

  “Look at him, he’s in seventh heaven,” Max said. True, Swarms’s voice was a little thin, and his steps none too fresh, but he was a pro. You had to admire him. “Nice job, kiddo.”

  “Thanks, bud.”

  Max basked in his friend’s reflected glory, but he couldn’t repress a twinge of annoyance. If Swarms was doing so well, why had he put the touch on him before breakfast? Was the five-spot going straight to Sim Addem? Or to that curb broker who had all the inside dope?

  After coffee, Danny spread out the Wednesday edition on the breakfast table. “Which one’s yours, Maxie?”

  “Let me see the heads.” His eye fell on Biddle’s lead piece first.

  CAT KILLER CONVICTED

  Light Fine; Jury Sympathetic

  Her Remarkable Tenderloin Odyssey

  The Rev. Weems a Character Witness

  William H. Howe, the Nestor of the Criminal Bar, effected a narrow escape for a deeply distressed client yesterday. Mrs. Edwards, on trial for illegally executing five cats, obviously improved her chances considerably when she employed Mr. Howe. It was clear from the outset that Mrs. Edwards had violated municipal ordinances, but by the end of the proceedings the jury was requesting leniency for Mr. Howe’s client, who revealed some remarkable secrets during her testimony.

  Max couldn’t believe this puffery. Was Biddle a reporter or a press agent for Howe and Hummel? “That one’s not my doing! What a joke! She was convicted and Biddle’s turned it into an advert for the lawyers.”

  He almost said, I’d hate to see what Howe has on Biddle. Instead, he gritted his teeth and read on.

  Mrs. Edwards, of 212 West Thirty-Second Street, was tried in the Court of Special Sessions on the charge of “unlawfully, unjustifiably and willfully killing five dumb animals—to wit, cats.” She was found guilty and fined $2 for each cat murder.

  Swarms snatched the paper back from him. “What’s the scoop? Ooh, listen to this. With all due respect, Mrs. DeVogt. ‘On her errands of mercy, Mrs. Edwards noticed numerous houses of ill-fame doing roaring business. She testified that cat nests proliferated around these establishments and felt it was her duty to inform the Reverend Weems, who is also her cousin, of their locations.’”

  Mrs. DeVogt took up the challenge. “Oh, what do you know? It used to be much worse. On Broome Street, they used to stand in the windows in chemises and show their boobies. Who is Biddle?”

  Max didn’t have the heart to tell her that that particular time-honored practice was still in fashion. “Just a reporter.”

  “Well, Mr. Howe must have done something for Mr. Biddle or your publisher.”

  “They can’t get anything by you, Mrs. DeVogt,” Max said.

  “That’s because they’re trying to get the same things by us all over again.”

  “Exactly. They’re giving us circuses to take our minds off how they’re stealing,” Belle put in.

  “Emma Goldman has spoken,” Swarms said, waving his fork. “Oh, this must be yours! ‘Weems Charges Brothel Boom.’ Is that you, Max? ‘Has Created Map of Vice,'That’s a hot one!”

  “I’d poke out your eyes, Danny, but we’re in polite company. Everyone knows I don’t write the headlines.”

  “You see, he does love me,” Swarms retorted. “Ahh, did the reverend say this? ‘Most of our poor city’s deviants are conceived in these brothels.’ How does he know unless he has personal experience?”

  “They say it, I write it down.”

  “Maybe they’ll give you a better thing to write about next time,” Belle offered in his defense. She kicked him playfully under the table. Pain had never felt so sweet.

  “You’re red as a beet, Greengrass,” Swarms observed.

  Max threw a murderous glance at his friend, who whistled a few taunting notes.

  “I read that we should probably give up all wheat products,” Mrs. DeVogt remarked. “In a natural state we lived on nuts and fruit. Now we’re racing around on bicycles. I suppose you haven’t heard of bicycle kidney, Gretta?”

  “My kidneys are in perfect working order, Mrs. DeVogt.” Fresh color rose on her sculpted cheeks, in the hollow of her throat. One look at her and a prickly sensation, hot and cold at once, ran down Max’s spine. Her beauty was shocking.

  Without looking, he could sense Belle gazing at him. Shifting uneasily in his chair, he worked up a weak smile. “Well, the rest of you can lounge around, but I’ve got to get to the office.”

  “Run, run. The city can’t burn without you,” Swarms said.

  “I set all the fires, Danny.”

  Outside, he marched to the corner. If he lingered there, he might catch sight of Gretta and intercept her, although to what end he didn’t quite know. Just to stand close to her, to let his eyes run over her body, to feel that melting sensation. What harm was there in that? Belle didn’t own him. Why did he feel so guilty?

  Leaning against a building, he lit his morning cigar and puffed smoke rings. Mrs. DeVogt’s door remained sealed. Time froze. Edgy from the tobacco, he paced up and back, craning his neck, biting his lip.

  A rag crooked inside his elbow, a bootblack sat at a nearby stand. Two chairs stood empty on the raised platform. To distract himself, Max looked at his scuffed shoes and considered a quick once-over.

  FIRST CLASS SHINE

  5 Cents

  Oil Shine 10

  Pat Leather

  Pillow Shoes

  A good shine always lifted his spirits.

  Then Gretta emerged. He watched her take a few quick steps, swing onto her bicycle, and launch herself down West 16th Street. Pedaling smoothly, she headed straight toward him. The ribbons on her sailor hat fluttered.

  “Max, I’m glad I caught you,” she said, braking, her ankles peeking out from under her skirt. Rolling to a stop, she fixed her natty gray shirtwaist and cocked her hip, the balloon-tired bike tilted and hidden between her invisible
legs. He could feel those long, muscular legs holding the machine in place. “Do you have a minute?”

  No wonder so many sermons had been preached against the shrouded motions of thigh, calf, and ankle that went into a woman bicycling. No wonder lead weights were sewn into the hems of riding costumes.

  “Sure. Union Square?”

  As they walked, she eyed him sidelong. He was solid. Single-minded. He couldn’t have been more different than Martin. For him, a kiss would be a straightforward act of lips pressing lips, not the complicated, lingering affair Martin had made of it. How could she expect delicacy from a grasping Hebrew, her mother would ask, but she didn’t think that way. At the camera club she had met several Jews, and though every one of them had foreign mannerisms, even a distinct smell, one or two had fine, polished manners.

  A chilly wind blew down Fourteenth Street, swirling dust into the park. Gretta rearranged the strap around her neck, pushing the Kodak box camera into her lap. For a moment she stared off into space, absentmindedly biting her cuticles.

  “I thought you hated those things.”

  She patted the camera like an adored pet. “Well, that’s one of the things I wanted to tell you. I had a theory. If I carried one of these, and I dressed like the creatures who use them, nobody would see me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If I haul all my usual equipment around with me, and I set up the tripod and handle the plates, I always attract a mob. If they see a Kodak girl dressed like this, they think I’m harmless.” She didn’t want to get too technical, but the Kodak negatives would probably lack all detail. Still, to snap away, unencumbered, on the fly, held a seductive charm.

  “You’re an undercover Kodak girl?”

  “Exactly. Completely invisible. Shirtwaist and everything. The pictures I take won’t be worth a thing as far as their quality. This is what I wanted to tell you. What I’ve been doing is following Martin’s old route, at least the parts he told me about. I wanted to see what he went through.”

  Perform an act of cleansing, capture his ghost in her lens. How could she explain how she wanted to kill Martin’s afterimage? Plain prints might murder his memory and let her live again.

  “Did you see anything?” He wondered if her cool persistence hid an irreducible love for Mourtone.

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I should get the prints back from Rochester in a week or two. You can’t open these little things. You’ve got to mail the whole camera back. Would you come out to Staten Island again sometime? I’ll tell my mother to behave herself.”

  His throat tightened. As they crossed the trolley track circuit south of the park, he could barely keep from grinning like an ape.

  “Don’t put yourself out,” he mumbled. All she had to do was play her fingers lightly on his forearm, and he was lost. Belle’s appealing, open face flashed through his mind. He had felt so natural with her. And in no time she’d fallen in with Faye. Was he going to betray Belle so easily?

  Gretta took a skipping step and mounted her bicycle before his lips could shape another word.

  He forced himself to stop imagining her sheer skin, to stop thinking of the way her breasts would feel against his chest or how he would lose his mind when she arched her back and raised herself up to him. He forced himself to stop thinking of the tip of her tongue, her rich mouth, the complicated terrain of her kisses. He forced himself to stop thinking about waking and watching her rise from the bed naked, watching her lift her hair to expose the nape of her neck, watching her slip into a silk robe. He forced himself—and failed.

  He could barely walk. Taking to the doorway of a cast-iron loft building, he lit a cigar and blew masses of smoke, praying his aching hard-on would subside. Was there anything more pathetic than the corkscrew walk of a man with an erection? He was attracted to Belle, and he felt so free and easy with her, but she didn’t destroy him like this. No woman but Gretta ever had. She turned the backs of his knees to water.

  He had to drive her out of his mind. Puffing away, he tried to think about work. Fourteen Irving Place wasn’t that far away. Why not take another look at Van Siclen’s rundown mansion? He was fascinated by the Midnight Band’s living arrangements. Did Mrs. Edwards reside there with her acolytes? Was the Irving Place house a sort of nunnery? Did the women practice purifying rituals peculiar to their sect? Were they unrepentant? Were they about to embark on a fresh spree of catricides?

  The case cried out for a post-mortem, especially since Nick Biddle’s article had turned the whole thing into another Howe and Hummel carnival, draining all the strangeness out of the Midnight Band’s crusade. Why let Biddle have the last word? It was Max’s story, Max’s right to say when it had ended.

  He took up a station across from 14 Irving Place, just under the bay window of Stanford White’s sprawling digs, but the Midnight Band’s headquarters remained sealed. Not a soul stirred. An hour passed. He wandered around the block and found a new surveillance post under a shady elm. Still there was no activity.

  What if they were all out?

  Curious, he hopped up the stairs of No. 14 and pounded on the door. Nothing. He leaned over and caught a glimpse of the shrouded parlor. The horsehair sofa stood empty. Not a single lamp had been lit. He rapped again, checked the upper floors for signs of life, but the house remained mute. His heart racing, he took the gravel path around to the back. Again he pounded, but the building might as well have been abandoned.

  Then again, Mrs. Edwards might be lying down with a cold compress on her head and a pistol in her hand. Who could predict what she might do to protect herself now?

  He knew exactly where Miss Van Siclen kept the membership book. Wouldn’t he love to get his hands on that? What other refined ladies had signed on to the campaign? Let William H. Howe corner vice; Max would plumb the depths of the virtue business. The last time he had stood in Miss Van Siclen’s parlor, she had consulted the volume right before his eyes.

  Then he noticed the window next to the back door. Cracked open a foot and a half or so, it made a tempting target. If he didn’t make a decision quickly, some neighbor might see him prowling around. His fear of being caught warred with his fear of the Midnight Band story drying up. If it died, how much life was left for him at the Herald?

  Looking around, he pressed his body close to the building and stuck his arm through the opening. If he could find the handle, the hook, the latch, he could let himself in. His hand groped blindly, then he found the iron bar. Gripping it was awkward, and using only his wrist, he couldn’t move it an inch. How much longer could he stand there? Flop sweats drenched his shirt. A hard lump rose in his throat. Could anybody see what he was doing? He was going to get caught for sure.

  He had to give up. He was no housebreaker.

  Dejected, he wandered a block uptown. Behind Gramercy Park’s locked wrought-iron fence, Famous O’Leary stood on a bench, surveying his domain. A bronze water-nymph gazed back at the boy. That Famous had defeated the padlock and the spiked barrier didn’t surprise Max in the least. If anything, the street arab looked scrawnier, paler. The way he kept scratching himself suggested a case of lice, too. Before he approached, Max looked over his shoulder. It was a reflex by now. Was there another gang of miscreants hiding in the bushes? Behind that dustbin? But Famous appeared to be alone.

  “Famous, how’s tricks?”

  Eyes darting up and back, the boy tensed for flight. “I didn’t do nothin.”

  “It’s me, Max. The reporter. Remember, I gave you some money?”

  Famous squinted. Were his eyes bad too? “Oh, yeah.”

  “Want to make some more?”

  “Fifty cents?”

  Famous had the gall of a real estate speculator. Max knew he would lose the street arab’s respect if he knuckled under too soon. “Twenty-five.”

  “Nah.”

  “And a hot meal. You like beefsteak?”

  “Sure, who don’t? Forty.”

  “Thirty-five and supper.”

&
nbsp; “Got a quarter now?”

  “Climb over.”

  Famous scaled the fence, easily avoiding the spikes. Extending his hand, Max dropped a dime into the street rat’s palm.

  “The rest after the job.”

  Gazing at the cracked window, Famous said “Nothin’ to it.”

  He snaked through the opening as if he had no spine. In a moment, he opened the back door.

  Together they climbed a dark stairway and padded into the living quarters.

  Max had never broken into a building in his life. Dread mixed with exhilaration as he penetrated the shrouded dining room and made his way into the parlor. The crowded room pressed in on him. There were shelves of painted china, Meissen porcelain, commemorative plates, and imitation Faberge eggs. Famous stuck a few eggs in his pants pockets. An overstuffed chair pressed against the horsehair sofa, the latter rubbing against a scarlet divan. Lace antimacassars draped the furniture. Hooked rugs covered every inch of floor space. Muddy landscapes filled the walls. The room gave him a headache.

  He knew where Miss Van Siclen kept the membership book. The exact drawer. He groped for the bound volume, but he came up with two books instead, ledgers of some sort. Then he heard voices. He had no time to scan their pages. Where was the conversation coming from? Outside? Downstairs? In the next room? His stomach seized up in a single hard cramp. Famous rushed to the front window.

  “Bulls out there,” he whispered.

  Scraping sounds penetrated the parlor.

  “And downstairs, too,” Max said in horror. He slipped one of the ledgers into his pants and tightened his belt. The others wouldn’t fit. He stood frozen, gripping the other volumes, trying to compose a plausible explanation for his presence. He didn’t see Famous lift the brass floor lamp, but he heard the glass shattering. Without wasting a shred of attention on Max’s plight, the boy was making his escape, shinnying down a drainpipe. Above the gravel path that ran alongside the house, Famous, skinny arms flapping, let go. Max was certain he couldn’t follow. To get through the window he’d have to break out more glass. He was twice Famous’s weight. Would the flimsy pipe give way? Then he’d have to jump. Famous had sailed down like a flying squirrel, but Max might break his neck.