Faye had dark pouches under her eyes, but was in good spirits otherwise. “What a break, the two of you showing up. Got a cig, Maxie? No? Rats! I thought I’d be cooped up in that sewer ‘til the hearing on Friday.”
“You owe Belle seven simoleons for this show.”
Faye seemed oblivious to this remark. Strolling up Sixth Avenue, he steered the two women, one on each arm.
“I’ll squeeze it out of one of you,” Belle swore. She made a joke of it, but she wasn’t letting them off the hook so easy. Didn’t she sweat blood for seven dollars?
Faye leaned over and whispered into his ear. “Lookit who got stung!”
Was it so obvious? His face turned scarlet, and for once he couldn’t find a quick comeback.
Then she let go and started skipping down the street, heads turning as she flounced past. Breathless at the next corner, she twirled around a lamppost and bowed. “I know a cozy spot,” she informed them when they caught up.
Linking her arm through Max’s, she led the way to a basement rathskeller on Fourteenth Street. A mouse skittered through the sawdust on the floor, but otherwise the Raven made a good impression. Clean glasses hung upside down over the bar, and the brass rail was polished to perfection. Faye produced a five-dollar bill from a secret hiding place.
“Usually, the screws won’t go through your drawers,” she advised Belle.
“You don’t want to go making a good impression all at once,” Max said, wishing she’d button her lip for once.
“Tell him. Was it my fault?” she appealed to Belle. “I was already out on the sidewalk scot-free. They’re not supposed to drag you back into the store like that.”
“He was a louse,” Belle commiserated. “But I think my shoplifting career is over.” She couldn’t help being fond of Faye, but she didn’t trust her either. She made drinking in the middle of the day seem like a lark.
Faye gave her an evil smile. “Reformed already, cookie? There’s a costume-jewelry sale at Macy’s, I heard.”
“Leave her alone, Faye,” Max interceded.
“Oh, don’t bother her, Max. Look at what she just went through,” Belle said. Under the table she rubbed her shoe against his ankle. She knew she should be wary of Max too, but she wasn’t in the mood, not while she could still savor his energy rushing through her.
Her touch made him so hard so fast, there was nothing to do but surrender. “Yeah, you’re right. One more round?”
“Only one,” Faye declared. “I’ve got to pick up Leon.”
“Oh, shit: Leon! Who’s taking care of him?” Max blurted.
“Mrs. Darling, don’t worry. She’s a wonder. Leon loves her. God, I must look horrid. It was just crawling in there!”
She rested her head on Belle’s shoulder and let her friend pet her.
Together they walked Faye over to Sullivan Street and waited for her to bring the baby downstairs. Mrs. Darling lived practically next door to his sister in a two-story frame house whose windows, set barely higher than Max’s head, suggested pre-Civil War origins. Traces of colorless paint clung to its batten-board siding. The angle of the roofiine implied a sinking foundation, but the windowpanes were in place, the front door opened and closed, and a thin line of smoke rose from the chimneypot.
Leon had a woozy look on his face, but Faye held both of his hands over his head until he managed a few shaky steps on the sidewalk. Max picked his nephew up and searched his face. His skin was splotched red and white. Did the kid have a fever? He kissed the boy’s forehead. Warm, but not burning hot. Holding Leon at arm’s length, he examined the child’s face. For the hundredth time, Max wondered who Leon’s father was, but he’d stopped asking long ago. His sister was right, it wasn’t anybody else’s business.
“Look at those chipmunk cheeks!” Faye declared, taking the boy and passing him to Belle.
“I think he’s hot,” Max said. “Check his temperature when you get home.”
“Unca Max. Come back,” Leon suggested, ducking his head, then popping up again and laughing, showing off his glistening gums.
“Are you hot, chubs?” Faye asked, screwing her face up at the boy until he gave her a wobbly smile.
Max seized his nephew again, bouncing the kid onto his shoulders. There were no two ways around it. Danny Swarms might come and go, but Leon was his nephew forever. Who else was going to look out for the kid, come hell or high water? That was the real dope, and it made him as nervous as that dancing chicken in Chinatown.
“Leon, Leon,” Faye said, inciting the boy. “Say it, you know, un….”
In his piping voice, Leon obliged. “Un … hand me, you cad.”
“Like in the plays!” Belle said, clapping.
“Sings scales, too,” Max added. “Leon can do anything, right, Leon?”
When his sister disappeared up the stairs, he took Belle’s hand. “I’ll get to the bank tomorrow, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. Otherwise, I’ll strangle you,” she promised. He went to kiss her right there on the sidewalk, but she pushed him away. “Not here, not now,” she said, gripping his wrists.
chapter twenty-seven
Max was already waiting when the doors to the Buildings Department swung open on Monday morning. Behind him a horde of lawyers, financiers, cockroach landlords, and more august property owners surged into the offices, bearing him along on the tide. Working his way through the marbled corridor, he slipped into the Deeds Office, a high-ceilinged chamber whose great record books were packed vertically on deep shelves against opposing walls. In these volumes were hidden the true mysteries of New York City, the hieroglyphics of ownership and easements, the obscure financial acts of faith and deception that told the stories of great fortunes and of lives passed in subdivided rooms.
He had decided to avoid Joseph T. Candle at all costs. Why let a Tammany hack get wind of his investigation? Nick Biddle swam in that water, but Max was developing a different way of doing things. On one wall hung a map revealing the city’s sinew and bone. All Manhattan was broken into numbered blocks in this plan. On it he found the 141 Varick and 22 Spring blocks. He hauled a record book off the wall and turned its venerable pages—sheets covered with minute handwriting above, below, and around certain lots, and in the margins around individual blocks.
A small map was folded into the property book containing the Varick Street address. With care, he turned back its stiff folds. Broken down into numbered lots, the plan displayed every building site on the block. And there it was, 141 Varick, a bland rectangle on an ink-stained sheet of paper. To his surprise, the deed did belong to Clarence Moriarity. The same Moriarity “what got the goiter,” he supposed. The structure, originally a single-family dwelling, had gone up in 1857. Owners included Cornelius Schenevus, who sold it to Benjamin Sloan on September 12, 1862, who turned it over to Andrew Lavender on August 7, 1874. An O’Fallon, a Greenberg, and a Hirshenfang also played landlord in the ensuing decades. Finally, the hulk had fallen to Clarence Moriarity, who had held it tight for the last dozen years.
Max had been hoping to find simple connections—documents that would, for instance, make Mrs. Edwards’s hidden interest plain. But if she didn’t own any of the buildings—and he couldn’t link Miss Van Siclen or Mrs. Warner or any of the Midnight Band’s faithful to the property—he was lost. Was Mrs. Edwards a mere factotum? Did the Midnight Band have little or nothing to do with the tenements?
Disappointed, Max pulled down another heavy volume and tracked down 22 Spring Street. To his irritation, Michael Corchoran did in fact hold the deed to that fantastic warren. He pressed his nose close to the yellow sheet of paper, squinting to make out every odd notation, scribbling down the moniker of every owner ever attached to the rookery, but Mrs. Edwards’s name was nowhere to be found.
Stymied, he fell into a hard municipal chair. He cursed himself for not bringing more of the Midnight Band’s listings with him. Now he would have to comb the streets and interrogate more tenants, and he’d have to r
eturn to the Buildings Department with more locations of more ramshackle holdings.
He’d been hoping to spring the case on Parnell and, with the editor’s backing, work up a sprawling series on the Edwards empire. His instincts told him that the tale was hidden in the addresses, but until he could make the numbers speak, he had nothing at all. On his way out, he paused and stared at the real-estate map, the underlying skeleton of the shifting city: rigid, quantified, mute. Gritting his teeth, he wove through the real-estate bazaar, dodging agents, padrones, contractors, and wizards of the unsecured loan until he finally burst out into the street.
Outside in the warm sunlight, he fished in his pocket and came up with twenty-seven cents. He already knew where his purse had gone. By his calculations, Famous O’Leary had filched twenty-two dollars from him. He could only imagine what a fabulous sum it had seemed to Famous. What would he do with it? Max wanted to wring the street arab’s neck, but he couldn’t help smiling when he imagined Famous stuffing himself with hot chestnuts and ice cream. Maybe he was blowing his friends to clams and fried potatoes and hauling overflowing growlers to Grove Street Park. No doubt he was having the time of his life.
He had twenty-seven cents in his pocket and a debt to Belle that couldn’t wait. His best bet would be to go to the bank, grab lunch at Logan’s, and forget that Mrs. Edwards and her wretched list had ever existed. Instead of worrying about his slashed pocket, he incited his imagination with visions of Belle, her delicate mouth, her brave and unashamed eyes. Her dark hair, dark skin, dark nipples, the silken thrill, so sweet and obliterating. Let Famous run wild. Let all the foundations in Manhattan sink. Let all the basements flood. Let all the deeds in the municipal archives burn in holy hell.
Armed with fresh cash, he’d take Belle to a musical show at Koster and Bial’s, or if she wanted something more high-class he could scare up tickets to Daly’s. Afterward, they could take a car uptown to the Metropole. The three-sided bistro was loaded with Broadway types, dancers, song-pluggers, fire-eaters, and talent scouts, and he’d heard a rumor that Maude Adams showed up around midnight sometimes, all wound up after her show.
The El whisked him to Madison Square in no time. Out in the center of the traffic, a broad-shouldered button gravely motioned to the converging streams of traffic from Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street. Carriages with plush interiors rolled by. Black-lacquered victorias flashed nickel-and-gilt harnesses. Like proud hussars, mounted police rode down Broadway, their stallions’ hooves ringing on the paving stone.
High up on Madison Square Garden’s campanile, St. Gauden’s copper-sheathed Diana, balanced on her toe, drew her bow. Once the province of nannies and children, Madison Square Park now filled with clubmen and tourists from the great hotels. The buff brick-and-terra-cotta Madison Square Garden building had been a great success when it opened in 1890, hosting the annual horse show and a string of mediocre melodramas. However, Anthony Comstock had raised questions about the Diana’s shocking nudity and its effect on public morals, despite the fact that the statue stood a full eight stories above the street. Heeding Comstock’s warnings, mothers had withdrawn their small children from beneath the goddess’s corrupting form, giving free rein to the sportsmen who gathered with their binoculars below.
In a light-hearted mood, Max approached the Madison Square Bank. For some reason, a dense crowd was blocking his way. He wondered if someone was having a heart attack or if a horse had spooked and trampled pedestrians. Up ahead, people started shoving one another. The jittery mob seemed to be muttering under its breath. Far from the bank’s entrance, and unable to see above the sea of hats, Max started asking around.
“Oh, its bad business up there,” a gray-faced businessman said. “You didn’t hear?”
“No, what?”
“They shut the doors.”
Still the man’s point didn’t register. What was he talking about? One of the stores? Why would that cause such a frenzy?
“Who? Who closed?”
“What’re you, daffy? The bank. There’s a run.”
“The Madison Square Bank?”
“No, the Royal Bank of Persia. Sure, the Madison Square Bank. Do you see any others?”
His money, all the money he had in the world, lay behind the bank’s coffered doors. In blind reflex, he tried to push his way closer, as if by getting nearer to his deposit he might magically free it from dissolution. The crowd quickly hurled him back. A man climbed on a mailbox, another shinnied up a lamppost.
“There he is! He’s coming out!”
Now Max didn’t have to push forward. From behind, a crush of bodies slammed into him, and he lurched forward. His hat flew off, but the mob imprisoned his arms. Depositors bellowed at the top of their lungs. Just out of reach, his derby toppled down and disappeared, crushed under stamping feet. He flinched.
“Thieving sonofabitch! Where’s my money!”
“You filthy crook. We want our money!”
“High-hat bastard!”
The whole mass took up the chant. “We want our money! We want our money!”
Max twisted around to scan his neighbors. A red-faced man with veins bulging in his neck, a scrawny biddy, a pale clerk, a young woman clutching a bunch of carrots—they all joined in the incantation. “We want our money! We want our money!”
In a panic he saw his four hundred dollars vaporizing, too. When would he ever accumulate that much again? Four hundred dollars. Always in the back of his mind, it had cushioned every blow. So what if he hadn’t earned it? It was his anyway. Now he was exposed raw to the elements again. Did the paper owe him for space? A few dollars, anyway. What about that last touch Swarms had put on him? In the chaos he couldn’t remember how much Danny had plucked him for.
A queer spasm ran through the crowd. Helpless, Max fell back, barely righting himself before falling bodies smashed him onto the sidewalk. Then he looked up. On a chestnut whose eyes bulged with terror, a mounted button galloped through the panic-stricken mob. Max heard the sickening thwack of wood on bone, grunts of pain, the cop’s curses, the report of hooves on stone. Knocked flat by the retreating crowd, he scrambled to his knees in time to see the great chestnut rear up above him. Instinctively, he fell to the ground, rolled and scrambled away on all fours.
The horse’s hooves rang on the pavement, barely missing his skull. Out of control, it was rearing again. On his hands and knees he scuttled through a maze of legs, an animal fear driving him. His pants tore at the knee. Shards of stone ripped his palms. His mind turned solid, an unthinking ball of dread. He didn’t want to die. Like soldiers in a battle, an entire line of depositors fell back before the raging beast. Staggering to his feet, Max whirled around, trying to find an escape route.
Behind the flailing cop, three more mounted buttons were charging the crowd. From the north another cavalry squad bore down. Stepping high, shying, the horses looked ready to bolt. Savage expressions on their faces, the police smacked their long nightsticks against the flanks of their mounts. Warming up, Max thought. Desperate, he turned west where ranks of foot patrolmen marched shoulder to shoulder right at him. A woman went down, flat on her face. A man in a sack suit lunged toward a massive bay, as if to grab its reins, but the mounted cop bent over and swatted him once in the center of his skull. The man wobbled, touched his bleeding head, and stumbled back.
Max took off toward the marching platoons, waving, shouting over and over. “Reporter! From the Heraldl Reporter! From the Hera/dl”
When he reached the line, it parted for him. He couldn’t believe his luck. Then as an afterthought, from behind, a cop clubbed him on the back of his neck. Instantly, a blinding headache blossomed up from the root of his brain, but he pushed on, still calling out for safe passage. Behind the lines he paused, gathering his wits. His head throbbed and he had to spread his legs to get his balance.
From a safe distance the rout looked like a series of small skirmishes. The smack of nightstick on flesh and bone had a muted, distant quality.
To his woozy eye the clashes became animated tableaus, flashes of color and gesture and speed. Then a hatless man, his loose-woven shirt torn at the collar, trotted past, his eyes white with terror. In a lazy motion, a foot patrolman wound up and caught the laborer flush in the windpipe. Clutching his throat, the man gagged and fell to his knees. Three buttons leaped on him then, flailing away from every angle. Crumpled on the sidewalk, covering his head, the man coughed up blood and bits of his front teeth.
“You want summa the same?” an agitated cop proposed, pointing the business end of his nightstick at Max’s skull.
“Reporter. The Herald? he croaked.
Drawing back, he watched the rout, the police squeezing the mob, nudging it this way and that, breaking it up into smaller and smaller pieces, tossing rioters, seemingly at random, into Black Marias.
Blocks from the action, on West 21st Street, he hunted down escapees.
“They came out of nowhere, beat us all to hell,” one limping man claimed.
“It’s not like we’re a bunch of pinks. We had deposits in here,” another gasping victim complained.
“Did you see the police strike people?”
“You got eyes in your head?”
“They’ll be lucky they don’t kill nobody,” an indignant woman cried out.
Working his way back toward the Madison Square Bank, he found Captain Robinson, the commander, sitting calmly on his mount, surveying the littered landscape before him. A broad-shouldered, tall man, he was made more magnificent by his perch on his gorgeous black stallion.
“He looks ready for Saratoga,” Max said, stroking the animal’s glistening flank. “Max Greengrass, the Herald.”
“Forget about it, Jack.”
“I just need a few words. Was your operation a success?”
“Yeah, a complete success,” he replied laconically. Gazing down at Max, the captain spit a healthy gob of tobacco-laced phlegm right over the reporter’s head. With a sharp yank of the reins, he guided his horse onto the sidewalk.
The Midnight Band of Mercy Page 27