“You don’t say?” Parnell responded after Max poured out his story. “Did you talk to Sanderson?”
Lawrence Sanderson, who reportedly feasted on gilt-edged tips, wrote the financial column. Max had never spoken to him, but now he threaded his way to the business section. An elegant, proper man, Sanderson looked more like a banker than a reporter. He had a long, aristocratic nose and a prissy little mouth. While Max spilled out the story of the Madison Square Bank fiasco, the columnist leaned back and made a tent of his long, tapered fingers.
“Yes, I understand there have been improprieties.”
“How so?”
Sanderson gave Max a long look, considering whether to share information with him. Grudgingly, he added, “Well, the D.A. has been whispering in my ear. You’ll have to wait for my column.”
“Oh, sure. Parnell asked me to write up the riot.”
“Yes, you go ahead and do that.”
Max bristled. Sensing Sanderson’s distaste for him, he stayed on a bit longer. “People were trampled. It was quite a scene.”
“I imagine.”
“Depositors. It was a real run.” With a pang of despair he recalled that his own money had evaporated too.
“These things happen.” Sanderson may as well have been talking about a distressed ant colony.
With the financial reporter’s chilly attitude in mind, Max wrote up a precise account of the police assault, quoting extensively from the most respectable shopkeepers, teachers, and housewives who had been terrorized by the mounted police. Then he slipped in the buttons’ attack on the defenseless laborer. In juxtaposition to these cries against injustice, he placed Captain Robinson’s claim of success. It made a pretty article, seven inches, page five maybe.
His losses weighed on him now. What was he down to? The five dollars he’d squirreled away in his dresser? When was he getting paid? On Friday? He wondered how long it would take Famous O’Leary to spend twenty-two dollars. It was a huge sum for a street arab who never wasted more than a few cents for a night in a lodging house. Had he gone back to his Hudson Street gang and thrown a party? Max wondered if he could ferret the little thief out near Grove Street Park. For a few coins Cham-peen or The Basher might finger Famous, and Max could get ahold of him and turn him upside down.
It was a satisfying thought. Street arabs stayed in their territories, too, simply for self-preservation. Why didn’t he take a look around the park, or see if anybody at the White Stag could help him. Then there was that stablehand, John Buri. To prevent his building from burning down, Buri had to keep track of every guttersnipe in the neighborhood.
Shame gnawed at him. Why had he put all the cash in one bank? Why hadn’t he kept more on hand? He knew quite well that he hadn’t earned the money, but it didn’t matter. While he had that pile behind him, he thought more of himself. All those dollars were dreams, security, inner peace. Now he’d fall back into a life of crumbs and column-inches. What was he supposed to say to Belle? That he couldn’t scare up her seven dollars? That the bank was to blame? That nameless forces had turned him into a deadbeat? He squirmed with humiliation.
He examined the tear in his pants. Now he knew why they always sold two pairs with the jacket. To go home and face Belle with a mouthful of feeble excuses was out of the question. Instead, he canvassed the secretaries until he found a needle and thread, and sewed up the tear with a bunch of fat stitches. Damn! It would have to do. It was time to scramble.
chapter twenty-eight
Grove Street Park was empty, except for a tramp who was nursing a bottle of blue ruin. Oblivious to the crash of the bank, Hudson Street sunned itself in the warm afternoon. Its humble shops stood open, its pushcarts offered vegetables, eggs, and flyblown meats, and its housewives toddled along with market baskets under their arms. Max stopped by the White Stag, but the bartender, who knew Cham-peen and Famous, said they’d made themselves scarce lately.
A thoughtful artist with the bar rag, he went on. “They nick their own bottle and get pie-eyed who knows where.”
“I was just over in Grove Street Park. Anyplace else they might be making trouble?”
“Well, there’s always the docks. Good thieving over there.”
Standing outside his Hudson Street stable, John Buri sucked on his inevitable skinny cigar. “No, no see ‘em nowhere. I break their neck they come here.”
“Are they still around the neighborhood?”
“Oh, sure. On Perry Street, they sleep in cellar.”
“Just around the corner?”
“Yeah, Perry. House have a broken window. They putta tape. Like this.” Buri demonstrated the angle of the repair. “They no come here no more. They ascare now.”
On Perry Street near the corner of Hudson, the three-story building displayed its wounded window. Behind a wrought-iron fence, several steps led down to a shuttered basement. Cautiously, Max peered down the stairs. Curled up on a bed of newspapers, Famous O’Leary was taking a snooze. Three empty gin bottles were lined up neatly on a nearby ledge.
It must have been some party.
Max’s blood surged. When he thought of the way he had groped through his jacket, so desperate to find his missing purse, his rage rushed back. Not to speak of the crooked bank that had really picked his pocket. His anger at the Madison Square Bank mixed with his fury at the boy—and shame about his intentions. Look at what he had been reduced to, creeping down basement stairs to pick a pocket himself. But the money was his, damn it. His. This time he’d get the better of the thieving little bastard.
Still, Famous was quicksilver itself. He’d already vanished into thin air more than once. If Max wanted to get his hands around the street arab’s neck, he had to attack hard and fast.
Skipping down the last two stairs, he flung himself on the boy. It was like landing on a pile of broken sticks.
Max met no resistance. Famous simply held firm in his fetus-like position, fighting back by keeping his chin down, his arms curled up, and his legs pressed against his bony chest. For a moment Max’s ire flared at this clever strategy. When was the kid going to strike out at him and bolt? Was he hiding the knife he used to slash pockets and purses? Max had to be wary. Utterly still, Famous was probably scheming like crazy. The consummate litde actor feigned fits for a living. Why not feign sleep? The boy lay under Max’s bulk without making a sound.
Experimenting, Max rose slightly to see if Famous would stir, but the bony kid refused to move a muscle. Max admired the boy’s discipline. Think of all the beautiful tricks he had acquired in a lifetime on the streets. Considering his performance at the Midnight Band’s headquarters, Famous could probably break into a warehouse, pry loose dock goods, or wriggle into a jewelry store with similar ease. All the gangs used these kids for their slender frames and fearlessness. If Famous avoided the white lung, starvation, fevers, beatings, poxes, and the police, he might eventually rise into the ranks of the Hudson Dusters, the Fashion Plates, or the Whyos. He had that sort of talent and nerve.
While Famous clung to his foxy strategy, Max wondered what to do with him. At the very least, he could grab the street arab by the scruff of his neck and march him over to the precinct house, barely a block away. Raising himself up another inch, he waited for Famous to make his play, but the boy stayed frozen, giving nothing away. Thoughtfully, Max pressed down on him again without getting the slightest reaction. No, it wasn’t possible. Still wary, he circled his arms underneath Famous and lifted him from the stone floor. If this was playing dead, it was the greatest act of all time.
In fact, rigor mortis had set in. His heart sinking, Max set Famous down again, crouched over the body, and tried to pry the limbs apart, but the scrawny arms and legs wouldn’t give. Rolling the corpse with his toe, Max exposed the other side of Famous’s face. A blue bruise high on his forehead and a crust of blood revealed why he had departed. Cradling the boy in his arms, Max lifted him and straightened up. Bird-boned Famous O’Leary rose into the air.
Shifting t
he dead body in his grasp and pressing its face against his chest, Max made sure to hide the child’s wound. Famous’s pointy knees poked his stomach. Stunned by the turn of events, the reporter wandered toward the precinct house, picking up a few stragglers along the way. Sensing some disaster, a small boy ran up, touched Famous’s bare, blackened foot, giggled and raced away.
“He sick?” a lady in a black shawl asked. She waved over another dolorosa, who was carrying a laundry basket.
Max nodded. The women swayed and clucked their tongues. The first boy raced back with his friends, who pulled at Famous’s stiff toes and then ducked away, giggling and whooping. Max must have growled because they retreated to a respectful distance. John Buri emerged from his stable. Working his cigar, he approached and took a look.
“He steal the fruit. Nobody catch him. I get doctor, eh?”
Broken words choking in his throat, Max just shook his head. Words seemed to be piling up down there, words covered with stickers and thorns. How could he cough them up? His throat felt paralyzed. Had he killed the boy himself when he jumped on him? He didn’t think so. The wound wasn’t fresh, and, after all, Famous had been picked clean.
Still, in horror, he saw himself pouncing on the curled-up body and ransacking the dead kid’s pockets, and he wondered how close he had come to murder. One blow against that thin skull might have been enough.
A ragged procession followed him: guttersnipes, the black-shawled housewife, her laundress friend. All they needed was a gilded Madonna on a raft, a cornet, and a drum. Across the street, Cham-peen and The Basher appeared, watching uneasily. Did they know? Did they have anything to do with it? Cham-peen dipped his foot into the street, thought better of it and returned to the opposite sidewalk. The Basher stepped in and out, too. For a while they shadowed the procession as it grew. More children joined, a curious shoemaker took a quick look, a round-faced greengrocer offered his assistance.
A gray veil seemed to hang between Max and the world around him. He blinked, but it wouldn’t go away. The kids’ chatter sounded muffled. Mouths made noises he couldn’t decipher. He walked so smoothly he might have been sailing. He felt altogether too calm.
“Found him dead?” the greengrocer asked.
That was it. The standard headline, FOUND DEAD had myriad uses. Suicides were always FOUND DEAD. Cataleptics and epileptics sometimes. Lovers could be FOUND DEAD UNDER QUESTIONABLE CIRCUMSTANCES. Aged husbands were FOUND DEAD IN BED. The destitute were FOUND DEAD IN SQUALOR, but even a loving parent could be FOUND DEAD IN AN ABANDONED COTTAGE. Famous’s chances of getting a headline were equal to FLEA FOUND DEAD.
His busted nutter hat clutched in his hands, Cham-peen suddenly materialized next to Max and walked along, gravely examining his old friend. The Basher brought along a hard-looking girl with ash-colored eyes.
“Oh, him,” she said.
“He got kilt?” Cham-peen inquired. “That’s lousy.”
Max nodded. Something about the street arab’s tone, cool yet laced with a dash of feeling, exonerated him in Max’s eyes. Adults might slaughter their friends, but not Cham-peen. A woman hanging out a second-story window waved her handkerchief. A rolling garbage scow slowed down to pay its respects. When Max turned toward the station house, the cortege followed. Droning, gossiping voices cloaked the procession in a shapeless dirge.
Max didn’t know the officers who lounged in front of the station house, but one of them, a stately veteran, leaned over to make out Max’s bundle. “Ahh, Jeez, I know this one. He’s a dock rat. Hey, Mike, c’mere, what’shisname?”
Max couldn’t let the boy go unnamed. Clearing his throat, he finally managed to croak, “O’Leary. Famous O’Leary.” beamus?
“No, Famous.”
“They love the big names, don’t they,” the cop said, lifting the boy’s hair from his forehead. Famous’s sky-blue eyes had grown a dull skin. “No bigger’n a cat, eh? Take him to the sergeant. He’ll show you the drill.”
Inside, several officers gathered around. One brought a blanket and wrapped the stiff body gently on his knee. Another took out a flask and passed it to Max. The booze warmed his parched throat.
Jimmy Ennis, a local beat cop, tapped him on the shoulder. “Lousy luck, hey, bud?”
“He was a pisser, I’ll tell you that,” Max said, his voice another man’s, his dread someone else’s.
“I guess he don’t got no parents?” the sergeant asked.
“None I knew of. I just used to see him around the neighborhood,” Max replied.
“Where’d you find him?’
“Perry Street. Down a stairwell. I thought he was asleep.” An idea for his story struck him. Max played with the wording in his head. It would have to be succinct, because Parnell would never give him more than a single graf.
“Goddamn shame,” Ennis, said, shaking his head and passing the flask.
“Every day it’s another one,” the cop said.
Dead guttersnipes washed up at the precinct doors all the time, yet the buttons’ tenderness was palpable. Most of them had children, Max knew, and the sight of Famous lying there filled them with the worst dread of all.
“Ahh, Gus, call the dead wagon for me, would ya’?” the sergeant cried out.
The idea had possibilities. Maybe he could sell it to Parnell, and with a little cajoling Donnie Walsh, the headline man, would do him a favor.
He caught a break. An ad for a miracle corn remover was cancelled. In its place the city editor slotted the single graf.
FOUND DEAD IN STAIRWELL
A West Side boy named Famous O’Leary, widely known for his clever thievery from the docks and the pushcarts of Hudson Street, was found dead yesterday at the bottom of a Perry Street stairwell. Admiring friends said that had he lived beyond his estimated twelve years of age, he could have had a career with the local Hudson Dusters or perhaps Tammany itself. “He was pinching my goods since I can’t remember when,” a local grocer reported.
Parnell appreciated an inside joke. Famous O’Leary’s death notice was the first Herald obit to tell the unvarnished truth. It wasn’t much—it was barren, in fact—but it would have to do in place of a stone.
chapter twenty-nine
Before dinner, Max cornered Danny in the parlor and shook three dollars out of him. “You’re bleeding me dry,” Swarms protested.
“Yeah, well, open your veins. You still owe me,” he snapped.
“Whoa, don’t lose your sense of humor, Jackie.” Swarms tapped out a nervous beat with his right foot. His filament-thin red hair stood up on end. At times Danny looked like a stranger to Max, and he wondered what he really knew about the actor who, according to Belle, was making noises about tying the knot with Faye.
“What’re you living in, a bubble? Madison Square went belly-up today.”
“No crap? You?”
“Every cent I’ve got. Used to have. Four hundred simoleons.” The fractured hours whirled in his mind. The mad crowd. The mounted police charge. How was it possible that greenbacks could sicken and die? A queasy sensation came over him. He might as well have taken a swan dive off the Singer Building.
“Oooeeee. That smarts. No wonder money’s so damn tight. I tried nine banks, did I tell you? Flit. Zilch.”
“You had to shut down?”
“Forget the publishing business. All’s I got now’s sheet music in a trunk.”
There was no way to dance around it. He was too washed out to try. “Listen, Danny. When do you and Faye get paid? The paper owes me for a dozen sticks, but I’m flat busted ‘til Friday.”
“Faye?” He bobbed his eyebrows. Max knew what that meant. If Faye found a haystack of money, she’d turn it into a bonfire.
“Yeah, I know. Well, you’ll see her before me. Tell her she owes Belle seven bucks. She’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Danny tugged his sleeve. “You did a good thing, kiddo, springing her so fast. I gave her a talking-to.”
It was perfect. Now they could both fail
to keep Faye in line. The beauty of it was that Swarms understood why she went off the rails and why she was worth it; he was half-cracked himself.
“So, a birdie’s been whispering in my ear. When’s the big date?”
He expected Danny to flinch, but Swarms handled the question smooth as silk. “We’re thinking pretty soon. Before we go on tour. Did I tell you Albee wants to change our name? Whadda you think of The Credenzas? Danny and Faye.”
“What’re you, some kinda furniture?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Tell your sister. She thinks it’s classy. Anyway, she says she won’t let nobody call her Faye Swarms. Sounds like a bunch of bees, she says. Four hundred? Ooofff.”
“Yeah. Listen, keep this Madison Square thing under your hat, right?”
A few minutes later, Mrs. DeVogt was passing the snap beans around the dinner table. Max had already piled pot roast and fried potatoes in a pyramid on his plate.
Imagine not being able to pay back a miserable seven dollars. Why had he confided in Danny, anyway? Going broke was like the French pox: a man ought to keep his trap shut about it. He rammed some stringy pot roast into his mouth. The dry, half-masticated meat went down in a lump.
“Excellent, delicious,” he declared, winking at Belle.
Staring off into space, she didn’t respond. He tried to conjure up the sun-shot chemise, the shape of her beneath the glowing cloth, but it was hard to square the serious-looking creature across the table with the woman who had stood before him, so defiant and unashamed in the light.
“Did you hear about the bank today, children?” Mrs. DeVogt asked.
Max froze. Hadn’t he sworn Danny to secrecy a heartbeat ago? He knew he should have kept his misfortune to himself.
All innocence, Swarms intervened. “Not a word, Mrs. DeVogt. We were rehearsing all day.”
Belle came to life. “My friend Maria was over there,” she said in an acid tone. “They just slammed the doors in her face. She lost her whole savings she broke her neck for, working.” She poured the Yiddish-inflected words out in a jumble.
The Midnight Band of Mercy Page 28