The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  But when he heard a door opening, sheer terror drove him on. In a blur, he dropped the ledgers in his hands, kicked out more window glass, stuck a leg out into empty space, gripped the cold metal, slid down, and tumbled head over heels before finding his feet. His legs churning, he rode a rapids of adrenaline. An ancient thrill took hold of him—he was an animal fleeing for his life.

  Bounding, he caught up to Famous. Together they raced through an ornamental garden, then scrambled over a fence. A beaten dirt yard. Crawling mounds of refuse. A chained hound started barking his brains out. A voice shouted “Blackie, shut yer pie hole!”

  They were trapped. A great, choking muscle, his heart scuttled up his throat. A window shot open. Famous pounded fence boards with his pointy fists. Before he knew what he was doing, Max was clawing at the old planks until he found one that was rotten as an old tooth. It gave in his hands and they squeezed through.

  He could have whooped for joy. Shifting course, Famous faded into an alley. His legs growing heavier and heavier, Max struggled to keep up. Staggering, he knocked over an ash barrel, fell, tore his pants, but scrambled to his feet. Famous didn’t look back. Then at the alley’s mouth he stood stock-still. Max almost bowled the boy over. Smoothing his fantastic outfit, Famous poked his head out onto Fourteenth Street.

  chapter twenty-four

  Bending over, Max let his head fall between his knees. When he stood up again, the earth rushed away. Giddy, he balanced himself against a moist wall.

  “Act like you ain’t done nothin’,” Famous instructed, brushing himself off and blending into the sidewalk traffic. Max bit his tongue. What choice did he have? They walked briskly for several blocks. Famous came to a dead stop in front of a drygoods store. He’s like a dog on point, Max thought in wonder. Was he sniffing the air for the police?

  Max gave himself over to the boy’s instincts. “Are we okay?”

  His shoulders slumping, Famous seemed to relax. At least he started scratching again. “Gimme the rest.”

  “How about that beefsteak?”

  “I can get my own hash. Gimme the coin.”

  Then it dawned on Max. He couldn’t take Famous to a horse stall the way the boy looked, much less a restaurant. He’d have to get him a fresh suit of clothes. Half rag, Famous’s shirt hung open halfway to his navel. Of an indeterminate color, it might have been a curtain or a skirt in an earlier incarnation. His voluminous gabardine pants had been cut down a few inches below the knee. A knotted cord held them up. As colorless as his shirt, his hair lay limp on his narrow skull.

  Famous fidgeted, hiking the adult-sized pants halfway to his chest.

  “How about some new duds, too? Just for the favor you did me?” Max offered.

  “Nah, I’ll keep these. Gimme my money.”

  “No clothes, no steak, kiddo. I’m gonna blow you to a fancy spread.” As he spoke, he gazed up and down Fourteenth, searching for a likely shop.

  At the corner, but closing fast, Mrs. Edwards advanced before a trio of hulking buttons. Had she recognized him?

  “Drop the eggs, Famous,” Max warned.

  Famous dashed away down the sidewalk before Max could take a step. Only half a block away, Mrs. Edwards and her police escort were charging in his direction. He had to hotfoot it. Backing up, he stumbled into a sidewalk knife sharpener, upsetting the man’s grinding wheel. The vendor unleashed a torrent of curses. Ignoring him, Max whirled, scanning the street for Famous, but the boy had disappeared into the roiling crowd. His blood pounding in his head, he skittered around a pushcart piled with peanuts and gumdrops and a peddler hawking pocket watches. A high-wheeled baby buggy cut him off, but he danced around it, then broke into a run.

  On the next corner he darted into a storefront. Children screeched and scattered. A counterman waved a spoon. On a mirror behind the soda fountain ran the legend EAT HORTON’S ICE CREAM. Peering through the candy-store window, Max watched as his pursuers changed direction and bolted downtown.

  In the middle of the block he launched himself into the stream of wagons and carriages, picking his way to the uptown side. At the curb his boots sank into a stew of soft cabbage, rotten eggs, potatoes, chicken bones, pigs’ knuckles, and horseshit.

  Cursing to himself, he scraped off the muck as best he could.

  If the kid didn’t want his beefsteak, the hell with him. Why lay out another nickel? Maybe he could grab a bite himself and take a look at the Midnight Band’s ledger, still secure under his belt.

  Over on West Fifteenth and Ninth there was a hash house that wasn’t too bad. Schneider’s. He just had to remind Oscar to cut away the fat. He wouldn’t mind wetting his whistle either.

  In succession, a boy selling toothpicks, a girl peddling cigars, and another kid selling pocketbook straps accosted him. An army of black-clad customers snaked in and out of the shops. A boy in a flat cap bounced on a cellar door.

  Lacy white hats relieved the eye. A woman in a botde-green satin dress hustled past him. Tight at the hips, the garment rippled in the sun. A pair of Italian children played violins, but no one paid much attention. A better attraction, a glassy-eyed monkey, hopped to an organ grinder’s tune. Threading his way through the tangle of bodies, Max reached the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street.

  A crowd had gathered in front of a plumbing-supply house. A businessman craned his neck. A girl hopped up and down to get a better look. Two lady shoppers stopped dead in their tracks and were drawn in, as if by some invisible gravity. The small mob tightened around its hidden pearl. Max suspected a novel act was being born. Street performers mesmerized him. Why not take a quick look? He edged his way in to catch the show.

  Famous O’Leary lay there, passed out on the cobblestones.

  A middle-aged lady clucked her tongue. “One too many, I’ll bet.”

  Another added her disapproval. “They drink like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Shut up, you animals! Look at the poor thing!” a woman in a black shawl snapped as she bent and poked the prostrate street arab.

  “Watch out, honey, they bite!” a suit puller shouted from his storefront. Derisive laughter bubbled through the knot of onlookers.

  “I know him,” Max called out.

  “He’s yours? You should be ashamed of yourself,” the Good Samaritan scolded.

  “Excuse me, I just inherited him,” Max shot back, lifting the frail Famous with both arms. The boy was light as a feather. What was he made of? Air?

  Slack, his legs draped over Max’s left arm, his narrow head pressed against the reporter’s chest, the kid didn’t stir. His face was gray, his body skin and bones. Mrs. DeVogt’s boarding house was only two blocks away. Praying Belle was home, he headed uptown. She’d know what to do or where to take the boy.

  All of a sudden Famous buried a pointy fist in his neck. In disbelief, Max hung on to him, but, by bucking and kicking his legs wildly, Famous slithered free.

  “Hey, you’re sick. Calm down.”

  When the kid hit the pavement, the imitation Faberge eggs slid down his pants leg. Hollow wood, they wobbled along the ground. “You won’t get much for those,” Max laughed.

  In a rush Famous scooped up his booty. “Who asked you? How ‘bout coughing up, huh? Forget the steak and gimme a buck.”

  “What was all that back there?”

  Famous gave him a haughty look. “Stop gettin’ in my way, is all.”

  Then it dawned on Max. The old faint-and-cry routine. He’d interrupted Famous’s act before its climax. A street arab with practiced fingers could skin a half dozen sympathetic citizens while they petted and stroked him. It was long past time to unload Famous O’Leary. Give him some coin and get rid of him.

  He groped inside his jacket for his purse, but all he found was a slit pocket. All that cash! In a panic he dug deeper, but there was nothing inside the lining but bits of lint.

  Max spun around, a sickening sensation flooding through him. All that scratch! Famous too. Vanished into thin air. The lit
tle sonofabitch had buzzed him good and proper. How much had he lost? Over twenty dollars.

  Max raced down the street to get a look around the corner, but a van and a horsecar blocked his view. Placidly, a woman examined a pushcart cabbage. A lush in a slouch hat veered off the sidewalk and plopped down onto the curb.

  Max was mad enough to snap Famous’ skinny neck, but the sly little dip had already melted into the traffic.

  He had exactly one dollar and twenty-three cents in pocket change left. What was the point of even searching for the damned sneak thief? If Famous O’Leary wanted to disappear, there was no hope. He could be laying up in any nook or cranny. On a hay barge. In a sewer pipe. What was Max supposed to do, report the little sonofabitch to the police? Your Honor, I was just breaking and entering when my partner in crime went and pinched my purse.

  At least he had a few dollars stashed in his dresser, as well as that most effective palliative, his deposit at the Madison Square Bank. Not to speak of the Midnight Band’s ledger.

  For safety’s sake, he cut uptown to Fifteenth Street. Finally he took out the leather-covered book. Sitting on a brownstone stoop, he nipped through it. Instead of names, he found pages and pages of numbers arranged in neatly ruled columns. In his scattered state, it took a moment for him to understand what he was staring at. At the top of the first page, penciled in the left corner in a haphazard way, was the legend “Our Properties.” At the top of each column ran street names: Houston, Varick, Clinton, Cherry, Fulton, Clarke, Dominick, Canal, Grand, King, Sullivan, Bleecker, Greenwich, Christopher, Charlton, Clarkson, Spring, Broome, Hudson, Desbrosses, Watts, and others spread out across the Eighth and Ninth Wards. Below each name, the lines of numbers represented separate addresses. Fifteen buildings on Houston, a dozen on Vandam, another nine on Sullivan.

  As he turned the pages, he did the mental arithmetic. The Midnight Band’s holdings were breathtaking, over four hundred buildings in all. Did the group’s leader, Mrs. Edwards, control the far-flung properties, just as she ran the Midnight Band itself? Recalling the faded Irving Place manse, its missing shingles and flaking walls, he had to laugh. Some nunnery. More like a real estate corporation in mufti.

  Stuck loosely inside the back cover were several newspaper articles. Max recognized the Trii’s typeface. He scanned one quickly. The first quoted Yale biologist Samuel Garner, on “disharmonious unions.” In a guest lecture at New York University, Professor Garner explained that the internal organs of each race were adapted to their relative frames. He pointed out that a union between “a tall Scot and a stubby Italian” would produce children with “large frames and inadequate viscera.” Similarly, mixing large-jawed and small-jawed species led to “irregular dentition.” The other pieces also quoted leading scientists.

  On the ledger’s back pages, someone had recorded another list of more obscure numbers. 202H-M1432; 11S-M1764; 141K-P19863. He didn’t have time to puzzle them out. When he raised his eyes, Mrs. Edwards was marching down Fifteenth Street, a phalanx of buttons in her wake. Tipping his hat over his eyes, he slipped into a nearby alley. Refuse lapped at his ankles. He could barely keep from choking. He’d blundered into one of the city’s leading pissoirs. As soon as his pursuers trotted past, he burst out of the alley and headed east again. After racing downtown along Sixth Avenue, he veered toward Washington Square Park, wandering past fine Federal houses that had been broken up into flats. Only on the north end of the park had the Coopers and Rhinelanders held on in their marble-trimmed red-brick mansions.

  The sun broke out, streaming through the budding shade trees. Beds of daffodils had already started blooming. Italian immigrants strolled along the paths, mixing with students, merchants, laborers, and a smattering of older Negroes left behind after most blacks had migrated to the West Thirties and San Juan Hill. Flocks of children flew across the pavement. A piercing hunger seized him. The aroma of roasted chestnuts made him feel faint. In his right pants pocket he still clutched a few coins. He sat on a bench near Garibaldi’s statue and devoured the treats.

  He flipped through the Midnight Band’s ledger again. He couldn’t stop wondering who had amassed so much property. Mrs. Edwards? One of her followers? Some unseen magnate?

  Still ravenous, he bought two ears of corn. The delicate vendor, a girl of about ten, might have been Famous O’Leary’s sister. Dabbed on her cheeks were two unlikely moons of rouge.

  Sated, he hauled himself to his feet and headed south toward Thompson Street. On the steps of the Judson Memorial Church, a black minister stood gazing out at the park.

  Inspiration seized him. Who knew? You just had to keep talking to people. As the clergyman descended the steps, Max cut across his path.

  “Excuse me, may I ask you a question?”

  A tall man with pure white hair, the minister regarded Max suspiciously. “What might that be?”

  Max noted the man’s New York accent. Native-born. That was good. “I’m a reporter from the Herald. You may have seen the article about the Negro who was found.”

  “Refresh my memory. We get so much attention from your paper,” the minister said with unmistakable sarcasm.

  “Decapitated behind a brewery? That one?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. All you report about Negroes is who slashed whom in Minetta Alley. Why don’t you go peddle your scandal in the barbershops?”

  Brushing past Max, the clergyman stalked away. Still, he had given Max an idea. Barbershops. Why not? He recalled one near the corner of Thompson and Bleecker. Several men were playing cards inside the establishment. One light-skinned black had reddish hair and freckles. Another wore a silk jockey’s cap. The third looked older, bleary and beat-up. One by one they eyed Max with slow-eyed resentment.

  “Watcha wan’?” the barber asked. A wiry man with an alert expression, he looked Max over.

  “I need a quick trim.”

  “Right there.” He aimed a pair of scissors at a broken-down chair. The card game resumed.

  Max sensed that the shop didn’t do too many haircuts. “Not too much off the sides.”

  Clipping away, the barber made small talk. “Not too many respectable peoples comes down the Village no more.”

  “You said a mouthful,” the redhead called out. Max couldn’t place his accent.

  “Oh, yeah, we have some nice families here in the old days. Families with six, seven servants and that was nothin’,” the older man put in.

  “Didn’t I work for the Conklins? And the Van Dykes?” the barber replied.

  “You take a little policy?” Max probed. He didn’t really want to place a bet, but he needed to gain the barber’s confidence.

  “Depend.”

  “How about the gig?” Three numbers—the simplest combination.

  “Awright. How much?” the barber asked.

  “Fifty cents.”

  “Give me 227.” He always played his birthday.

  “Ernie, you takin’ that down?” The redhead took out a pencil and pad. The tense atmosphere eased. “You wan buy one of them dream books, mister?”

  “Nah, leave that to the women. I can pick my own numbers.”

  “Yeah, jus’ pick ‘em outta the air. The numbers don’t know nothin’.”

  Max let the scissors clip away for a while. “Listen, fellas, I’m from the Herald, you know that paper?”

  The scissors froze.

  “You the police? Cap’n Frank take care of me,” the barber said. Max could hear the catch in his voice.

  “No, I’m just working on a story. Did you hear about it? Colored fella was found all cut up in a barrel?”

  “Ain’t heard nothin’ ’bout that.”

  “Ain’t heard nothin’.”

  “Nope.”

  The scissors came to life.

  “Okay, I just thought you might have heard some scuttlebutt on the street.”

  “Don’t know that one.”

  Up until that moment, Max hadn’t looked in the mirror. Now he saw the skinnin
g he’d taken in all its glory. “Hey, wait. You’re mowing it all off.”

  “Wha’ever you say, mister,” the barber said, straight-faced. “Hair oil?”

  “No, thanks,” he said, controlling himself. “That’s enough. Here.”

  The barber took the coins and dropped them into a cigar box. “Suit youself.”

  Just for the hell of it, he felt them out one more time. “So, anybody know anything?”

  The mute trio just shook their heads.

  He was halfway down the block when the freckled card player caught up with him. “Mister.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That man’s wife, I know her. That’s all I do know. She lives around here.” Again Max picked up the trace of an accent. What was it exactly?

  “What’s her name?”

  “I have a sick baby. How about giving me a hand?”

  “Every joker’s got his hand out.” Max dug into his pocket and came up with a pair of dimes. “That’s all I can do.”

  The redhead shrugged and took the change. “Marianne Granger. She’s at 207 on this block. In the back.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Don’t put it in your paper.”

  “Just for the record.”

  The redhead hesitated. “Wally. Wally Moskowitz. Yeah, I know. My father, he’s from Warsaw.”

  A Polish Negro. Maybe a half-Jew to boot. Parnell would think he’d made it up, but there were more like Wally than people realized. The black-and-tans weren’t doing a roaring business in Little Africa for nothing. Life, that polyglot stew, kept simmering. Yale professors sitting up on their tuffets, the Reverend Weems decrying fresh-minted imbeciles—nobody could stop it.

  Hell, considering that his father had crept into Vienna from far-flung Galicia, and his mother was a native-born Austrian, he was practically a mongrel himself.

  Maybe it was the warming May day, or maybe it was the fluttering white wash hanging on the line, but Mrs. Granger’s courtyard didn’t look too bad. Two skinny girls were jumping rope. A young mutt circled them, barking. Someone had pushed the refuse into a neat pile against the rough plank wall. Of course, there was only one privy for the whole building, but it looked like a two-seater. In the pitch-black hallway, Max bumped into something warm and soft.