The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  Recoiling, he couldn’t see what—or who—he had stepped on, but the dark mound was snoring. Cooking cabbage, burning garlic, and odors unidentifiable drenched the darkness. Covering his face with his handkerchief, he climbed higher, steeling himself.

  An iron in her hand, Marianne Granger opened the door. A husky woman in her thirties, pinpricks of sweat studded her forehead. Her shrewd eyes appraised him.

  “You need washin’?” she asked.

  “May I come in?”

  “M’mm …”

  Her apartment looked far better than Max had expected. In the center of a large, bright room stood an imposing brass bed. Over a coal-burning fireplace hung a pair of engravings. A tub full of wash, an ironing board, and a stack of folded linen crowded together against the far wall. Several children were playing quietly on the floor, and a white-haired granny rocked next to the window.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Granger, but I wanted to ask you about your husband.”

  “What? Why you askin’ me question? I already tell the police everything I know, which is I don’t know what happen or who he been fussin’ with.”

  Max was taken aback. As far as he’d been told, the police had no idea who the decapitated Negro was.

  “I’m a reporter for the Herald. Maybe I can help you with the cops.”

  “How you gonna help? They do as they please, and you can’t tell me nothin’ different.”

  “Well, what was your husband’s first name?”

  “Harry. And we was married at the African Zion Baptist church on the second of May, 1885. Put that in your paper.”

  “Would you tell me what the police said?”

  “I go down to the police lookin’ for Harry, and they shows me … he in a big drawer … they asks me if this be him, all broken up like that.” She turned her face away, suddenly sobbing softly.

  He waited. “It was a terrible thing to happen.”

  She patted her face with a rag. “Four kid, and he work so hard. Anythin’, everythin’, he do.”

  “Did they say they were investigating?”

  “What they gonna investigate, a nigger get kill?” Her weary eyes looked at him with contempt. Didn’t he know anything about the way of the world?

  “Wha’s a’matter, honey?” the granny asked.

  “Everything okay, Momma. You want more tea?”

  He looked toward the wrinkled old lady. How old was she? Seventy? A hundred? “No, ah’m fine.”

  “Did you get the officer’s name?”

  “Why? You think I ever see him again?”

  “Did you ever hear of Martin Mourtone?”

  “Mr. Martin? He a good man. They pay me full price, at least.”

  Jolted, Max struggled to keep a straight face. Mourtone and Harry Granger. They knew each other. Granger hadn’t been a random Stephenson’s barfly. Had Martin brought him along? Had Granger been killed because of what he knew, not just what he’d seen at Stephenson’s?

  “For what?”

  “For the gravestone.”

  “So your husband knew Martin?”

  “They work together. Harry find him colored peoples, you know, for the insurance. At ten cent, ain’t too many, Lord knows.”

  “Was your husband worried about the business? Was there anything wrong with it?”

  “Nah. Jes’ too few colored. He always say don’t put me in no Potter Field. You wanna be stuck in the ground like that, mister, no cross, no mark, no soul to comfort you?”

  “Wha’s a matter?” Granny drawled again.

  “Nothin, Momma. She hard of hearing. In South Carolina they sell me when I were only two, but she come up north later. She say she my mother.” Marianne Granger looked doubtfully at the woman in the rocking chair. “‘Course I can’t never be sure.”

  Slavery. The War. It sounded as distant as King Arthur, yet the subject was too coarse to discuss in polite society. What it meant to be a slave, Max couldn’t begin to fathom. What it meant to be torn apart by the Gatling gun was beyond his comprehension. A financial reporter once told him that after the carnage ended, one quarter of Tennessee’s budget went for artificial limbs. “Of course, that boom went bust a long time ago,” the business analyst had remarked ruefully.

  “So the company did pay for your husband’s gravestone?”

  “They pay full price. The carving man make that finger that point straight to heaven.”

  “I’m sorry. Where is Harry’s marker?”

  “African Methodist bury him.”

  “By the way, your husband couldn’t speak, could he?”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout? Harry, he talk to everybody.”

  “He wasn’t deaf and dumb?”

  Her voice grew shrill. “Who you talkin’ to? Harry, he can talk a blue streak. Talk to any man.”

  “You’d know best.”

  “Don listen to no lyin’ dogs. Harry work from the minute he wake up. He make a good livin’, too.”

  Stephenson’s rag, Joseph MacNamara, had lied from the start. Marianne Granger’s rage spoke the truth.

  Bone-tired, but unwilling to head home, Max threw himself down on a Washington Square Park bench. Why had he fallen for MacNamara’s lie? It just seemed to fit. In his tattered overalls, Harry Granger had looked like damaged goods. How many times had Max read in the papers that blacks were more prone to idiocy? But Harry Granger hadn’t faded away on his own. He’d been cut to pieces by somebody who believed he could speak only too well.

  Parnell wouldn’t give the story much space—he’d already featured the decapitated Negro once—but if the buttons coughed up Granger’s name, it was worth a squib. Max couldn’t get over it. Granger and Martin, partners. He traced the suggestive outline of it in his mind. What did they gain? For Harry Granger, a few finder’s fees meant a great deal; for Martin, the sheer novelty of having a Negro partner might have been the lure. Harry Granger gave him a contact inside the shrouded African world. What did the Negro tell him?

  Who had identified Granger’s remains? Which cop had interviewed Granger’s wife? Was the case still active? Or had Police Superintendent Byrnes killed it for good?

  chapter twenty-five

  Detective Stout was sharing a cigar with Max’s old friend, Officer Schreiber outside police headquarters.

  “The big man home?” Max asked.

  Schreiber looked at him with amusement. “Byrnes? He’s down at City Hall. Who mowed you, Maxie?”

  He ran his hand over his shorn head. “It’s the latest, boys.”

  “Hey, whatever gets the quim,” Stout put in.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. But while I’ve got you, Stout, can I ask you a few questions?”

  “No,” Stout deadpanned.

  “What do you mean?”

  Schreiber rubbed his thumb in his palm. Was this a new refinement? The buttons had never put a cash value on quotes before. “How come Byrnes’ll whisper in my ear for free?”

  “That’s Byrnes. I don’t give it away for two bits neither.”

  The three men exchanged expressionless looks. In the tense silence, Max tried to find his footing. Finally, he just started laughing. “C’mon, Stout. You always gave it up before.”

  Stout poked Schreiber. “I had him going, did you see that? He was pissin’ in his pants.”

  “Sometimes I worry about you, Maxie. You might fold under questioning,” Schreiber speculated.

  The button’s ambiguous joke gave them all a laugh. “No, what I wanted to know is when you identified Harry Granger.”

  Max observed Stout’s sunken features closely, but the detective covered any flicker of recognition. “Who’s that?”

  “That Negro they found in pieces.”

  “Which nigger?” Stout laughed.

  “Which pieces?” Schreiber inquired.

  “It was in the papers. Behind the brewery. He was dismembered.”

  Stout’s hedgerow eyebrows rose. “Yeah, I heard about it, but they got somebody else on the
case.”

  “Maybe nobody else. I’ve got to file the story. You think anybody in there wants to make a statement?”

  “You can make that shit up on your own, can’t you?”

  “Sure, but Byrnes likes to appear in the right light, doesn’t he?”

  Dropping the forced bonhomie, Stout looked Max up and down. “Wait here, sonny. I’ll go and see.”

  The detective disappeared through the tall side doors. Schreiber coughed into his fist. “He’s got his own troubles.”

  “Why does he take them out on me?”

  Schreiber’s face split into an expansive grin. “’Cause he hates you, Maxie. You didn’t know that?”

  The Police Department offered up a single sentence. “The remains of the Negro Harry Granger of 207 Thompson Street have been identified.” It was almost nothing, but now Max had corroboration. At the Herald office, he started toward his corner when he noticed something strange: Parnell was missing from the throne. In his place, a harried assistant editor was trying to keep up with the piles of copy building up on his desk. Parnell was like an office fixture. He never took a day off. Max wondered if the editor had fallen ill, but he didn’t have time to ask around. His deadline loomed.

  Unfortunately, he had to leave almost everything out. He couldn’t talk about Granger’s relationship with Martin Mourtone. He didn’t know enough about it, and he didn’t want it to get out. Nor did he want to mention the “paid-in-full gravestone.” In the end, he came up with two skinny grafs, dropped them off, and headed for the door. Then he saw Biddle leaning close over his copy, scrawling away.

  “Biddle, got a minute?”

  The reporter tossed his pen across the desk. “My young savior.”

  “Where’s Parnell?”

  “Ahh, that’s not for public consumption. However, as you are intimate with the principals, I’ll confide in you. Refreshments?”

  “I’m short, Nick. Your treat.” Few words had ever given him more satisfaction.

  “M’mm … well, my finances are a bit tight too….”

  Inadvertently, he’d cornered the old roue. “Your call.”

  Biddle’s call turned out to be the Plucked Hen, a basement dive on Nassau Street. The establishment featured barrels fitted out with rubber tubes. “They take a good deep breath,” Biddle explained, “and suck ‘til their eyes pop out.”

  “All you can drink?”

  Two disheveled men were sucking, without end.

  “That’s the attraction. Plus free snails.”

  One tube jockey fell to the floor in slow sections.

  “But I think we ought to take the conventional path,” Biddle went on.

  The flat beer had a strange, metallic taste. Max cursed Famous O’Leary for putting him at Biddle’s mercy. Without breathing, he drained half a glass. “What’s in this piss?”

  “Mystery ingredients. One day it’s a dash of mercury. Another day it’s a spot of shellac. That’s part of the fun, don’t you think?”

  Biddle offered an evil grin. Even when he was treating, he got the upper hand.

  “It ain’t Hoffman’s, huh? Where’s Parnell? I thought he lived in the office.”

  Biddle sipped thoughtfully. “It’s not that bad. I draw the line at turpentine.”

  “Parnell? Remember?”

  “Yes, it might surprise you to know that our Mr. Parnell has a wife and three little Parnells. You look astonished. It’s true he never leaves his post, or almost never, but he has a very respectable wife and goes to a very respectable church. Of course, that sort of life creates obligations.”

  A self-satisfied smile played on Biddle’s bloodless mouth. He had taken a wiser path leading to no obligations whatsoever.

  “So?”

  “How much do you think Abie Hummel’s subpoenas cost? Take a guess, a wild guess.”

  “Parnell?”

  “He got off his desk long enough to climb onto something else, I suppose. And the innocent woman had no choice but to seek legal counsel. Actually, our Parnell’s in a nasty spot. A summons like that could break him.”

  “How much? A thousand? Two?”

  Biddle jabbed a thumb heavenward.

  “Four?”

  “On average, Abe will settle for between five and ten. Usually, though, he’s dealing with clients who can afford it, so I think he’ll be lenient with our leader. Abie has a heart.”

  “You think they got his name from Weems?”

  “Possibly. What you have to realize, my young friend, is that since that trial, H&H have every sportsman and every married man of means in this city in a panic. Is there a single man who hasn’t visited a resort now and then? Now these same sports are sitting there thinking, they have a map, they know my name. Think of it. Only one man ever stood up to them.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Barrymore. You know what he said to Abie? He said ‘Give it to the papers! All of it! It will just add to my reputation.'Johnny’s a visionary, if you ask me.”

  “What did Hummel do?”

  “He burned that summons on the spot. And then he negotiated a new theatrical contract for Johnny that beat the band.”

  “So he blackmailed Barrymore, then he kept him as a client?”

  “That’s the kind of man Abe Hummel is,” Biddle said, beaming.

  A tingling sensation ran up Max’s spine. Was it the Plucked Hen’s mystery brew? Or the realization that Howe and Hummel reigned over a shadow world beyond ouija boards and table knocking?

  “Hey, Nick. I’ve got to check some real-estate stuff. What’s the name of that hack at the Buildings Department?”

  Biddle put a skeletal hand over his eyes and groped through the darkness. “Candle? Joseph T Candle. A human slug if there ever was one.”

  “What does he cost?”

  “Two or three dollars is enough to inspire him.”

  Max put his hand out. “You can spare it.”

  Biddle sighed, peeled off a few bills and gazed at them with nostalgia. “You mind if I search you first?”

  Max snatched the greenbacks. “For the greater glory.”

  Nick lifted his glass. “To the Herald!’

  “The Herald? Max agreed. He shot to his feet, but a queer gravity took hold. The Plucked Hen turned on its axis, the bar shifted at a forty-five-degree angle, tables and chairs orbiting merry-go-round about his head. Listing left and then right, he stumbled up the steps into the braying city.

  Slowly shaking off the Plucked Hen’s needled brew, he set out to examine the Midnight Band’s empire. One-Forty-One Varick Street, a two-story frame house with an outdoor staircase and a swaybacked roof, held a cobbler’s and an abandoned saddler shop. A few shards of glass graced the first-floor windows. Stepping over a fetid puddle, he climbed the steps to the apartment. A white dumpling of a face peered out at him.

  “My husband’s out. Can’t let nobody in,” the woman grumbled, cracking the hooked door. A bleary eye gazed at him.

  “That’s all right. I just want some information. I’m from the Herald!’

  “Sho’ what?” Her thick speech hinted at a fresh growler.

  “I just want to know who you pay your rent to.”

  “Who wants to know?” she repeated.

  “The Herald. The paper wants to know. Here’s my card.” He slipped the scrap of cardboard through the opening.

  “We pay Moriarity. Now scat. Go, go.”

  “Not Mrs. Edwards? Or Miss Van Siclen?”

  “Moriarity what got the goiter. Thirty-five dollars he sucks out of this palace. Put that in your paper, mister.”

  With that, she slammed the door shut. He knocked again, but she just glared at him through the wavy window glass.

  Weaving his way uptown, he examined the next Varick Street address on the list. Tilting out of plumb, a three-story frame building seemed to be sinking before his eyes. Its muddy yard was composed of fermenting vegetable matter and mounds of human waste. Max decided against crossing it. He consulted the led
ger and found some other nearby residences in the Midnight Band portfolio.

  One, at 22 Spring Street, turned out to be a remarkable rookery. A chamberpot festival was in full swing, several tenants in succession pouring excrement from the higher floors. Stinging liquids rained down. Soft missiles struck the sidewalk and stuck there, quickly devoured by the effluvial sea that ran over the curb all the way to the front steps. An outdoor staircase dripped with children. They swung from railings, skittered up and down unpainted steps, shouted, issued threats, sang scraps of song, leaped and fell into the muck below. A knot of men huddled before the tenement’s black mouth of a doorway.

  Max went straight for them. “Say, Mac, who owns this temple?”

  A beetle-browed resident looked Max up and down. “Who wants to know?”

  “Max Greengrass, Herald!’ He stood toe to toe with the man, refusing to blink.

  “He ain’t no reporter. He’s an agent,” a man with a cherry-red birthmark on his cheek sneered.

  This made no sense, but more accusations percolated up from the assembly. Max balled his fists.

  “Nah, he’s the fucking landlord.”

  “You kidding? His lordship don’t wanna dirty his socks.”

  “Here’s my card,” Max said, extracting his paper totem and waving it in the air.

  “Less see it,” the birthmark-stained resident said.

  Max doubted any of them could read, but he let them pass it around. The official-looking typeface had a magical effect. The men drew their chins back. From under a coat, a brown glass jug appeared, the fat-necked bottle passing from mouth to mouth.

  “We pay through the nose, I’ll tell you that. T’ree or four onna bed. How d’you like that stink?” The dark-browed man flattened his nostrils and sniffed the air.

  Gravelly laughter mixed with hoots and shouts. The fun was starting again. Max didn’t hesitate when the jug materialized in his hands. He threw his head back and sucked down the burning juice. “I showed you mine, now what’s your names?”