The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  “Exactly. You have to live yourself, don’t you?”

  “When I was bringin’ up my own, didn’t I have to wet-nurse out, and that hurts a woman something terrible, givin’ suck on Fifth Avenue while she’s got to pay some other poor soul to feed her own. Oh, it’s a merry-go-round, I tell you. But Faye, she’s on time almost all the time, and when she ain’t, she’s a good girl, and I’m understanding.”

  “She misses her payments? How much are they?”

  “I never take more than $1.50. You know who’s in there? My sister Betty’s little Morris, she’s working for the Simpsons, a nice family. They sell the plate glass. And there’s Christine, my friend Gloria’s. I known Gloria years now, don’t you know? The lady downstairs from Russia, I got her David. I got the heart, that’s why they come to me. But when they stop paying, what am I supposed to do with my stock? I got rent, expenses. You don’t see me with my puss in the growler like these others. Faye, she’s got the insurance, and Betty too. So I rest easy with them.”

  He ambled over to the sink and turned on the tap. “Insurance?”

  “Oh, sure. That’s why I know she’s one of the better ones. Ten cents a week the company wants, but you have peace of mind when all’s said and done.”

  He kept the question casual. “It pays for everything, does it?”

  “Oh, sure, all the expenses. Naturally, it’s not what you want to put your mind on, but it’s practical. I seen plenty, it’s a sad thing, they go into the ground without a marker.”

  She was always up to something, Faye, always looking for the easy way out. How the hell could she stick Leon in a menagerie like that? Wait until Belle got a look at it. Now he was glad she’d gotten so tight with his sister. Maybe she could influence Faye, embarrass her into behaving herself. No, that wasn’t possible. When it came to making herself comfortable, Faye didn’t listen to anybody. And she had peculiar ideas about comfort too.

  She’d trot along, day after day, doing her impression of a normal person, and then blooey, she’d veer off the reservation. She was six months gone before she mentioned she was pregnant, and the way she dropped it into the conversation, as if she’d picked up an annoying hangnail, still got his goat. And who the hell was the father? That booking agent with the brilliantined hair? The swami mind reader from Rutgers Street? The Irish clog dancer with the suspiciously Jewish mug? The song plugger who only played in two keys? In the back of his mind he was always worried. What would she do next? All his life, Faye had been a lump in his throat.

  And what the hell was she doing buying insurance? What was that all about? Fayefaye, Fayefaye. Her name hammered in his head. Maybe it was the gust of cold river air, but his sinuses were swelling like bladders.

  He took the horsecar uptown, determined to cap his labors with a Blue Blazer, but at Seventeenth Street the vehicle began to crawl and by Eighteenth it rocked to a dead stop. A mouse darted out of the straw and ran right between his feet. A man with a watchman’s cap groaned and hauled himself down to the sidewalk. Two more passengers followed. Max heard the driver cursing, the whip’s hiss, but the car remained stock-still. Finally, surrendering, Max climbed down, too.

  The beast stamped and shied when he came close.

  “Sonofabitch threw a shoe,” the driver said.

  Jerry Thomas mixed the cocktail himself. “Still burning up the newspaper business?” the proprietor inquired. A man with slicked-back hair, a needle nose, and a well-known aversion to sunlight, Jerry had the look of a sickly mole.

  “Settin a few fires,” Max admitted. He took a sip. “You’re a genius, Jerry.”

  “That’s what they say,” Thomas admitted, showing his pointy teeth.

  A polished rail. A horseshoe-shaped bar reflecting droplets of light. The wood smooth and waxed under his palm. He was at home. The mixed drink placed strategically at his elbow, Max leaned over his notebook and began drawing a diagram of circles.

  He tagged the primary circle Holy Trinity. The next, The Midnight Band, overlapped the church in the person of Mrs. Edwards, cousin to the Reverend Weems. Martin’s sector, by virtue of his cat-lady fascination, his insurance sales territory, and his house of worship, impinged on both. Inside his sister Faye’s zone he placed the word “Martin” and a question mark. Who else would have sold her a policy? Harry Granger’s territory overlay Martin’s, but covered Minetta Lane and the other remnants of Little Africa still alive in Greenwich Village.

  Stephenson’s connected Martin and Harry Granger and Martin’s murderer. To represent this relationship, he penciled in a cigar-shaped area for the black-and-tan. Nestled inside of it he wrote “Ms killer.” Then he had an inspiration. Around these incestuous shapes he drew a ring in dashes, encompassing them all. This porous boundary he labeled Howe and Hummel. Hadn’t they represented Mourtone Sr. and Mrs. Edwards, as well as being on the Liquor Dealers Association’s permanent retainer? And wasn’t Stephenson a power among the saloon barons? Willy Howe had played the prestidigitator in Martin’s case as well. In its best tradition, the firm was on all sides of the affair. Just to be comprehensive, he sketched a floating bubble inside Howe and Hummel’s territory and tagged it Parnell.

  Didn’t Holy Trinity own Sullivan Street property? He dug out his list and there it was, 217 Sullivan, Mrs. Darling’s address. Dutifully, he inserted her domain.

  In the intersection of these shapes, he tried to conjure up Mourtone’s killer, but the tangle of lines blurred before his eyes. To understand why Martin ended up spattered on a tin wall, did he have to make sense of a pious Christian sect that gouged its tenants? To figure out why Harry Granger ended up with empty eye sockets, did he have to understand Mrs. Darling’s peregrinations?

  One thing was certain: Leon wouldn’t be returning to Mrs. Darling’s. Max was going to give Faye a piece of his mind as soon as he got ahold of her. And he’d find out every last detail about the damned insurance Mourtone had sold her. How much were the premiums? What was the payout? He could still feel Leon’s hot forehead in his palm, the boy’s thin skin and delicate skull, and his heart sank. It was all too obvious why his sister had bought into an insurance proposition. It made perfect, awful sense.

  His mouth dry, he tossed and turned and twisted himself into such original positions that his bedclothes ended up tangled around his ankles. A persistent itch climbed his left forearm, driving him mad. Sleep, that sweet oblivion, drifted just out of reach. Finally, he gave up and at the crack of dawn he hopped out of bed, poured some water into the enamel bowl, and splashed his face. Mrs. DeVogt’s was still shrouded in darkness as he picked his way down the stairs and into the thin light of day. The papers would be out. Fitzgerald and Ives would be open for business.

  He planned to spread the morning edition out on the bar, peel a hard-boiled egg, and take his sweet time before heading to work. He snagged the Herald from the newsie at Fourteenth and Sixth, tucked it under his arm, and sailed downtown. Despite his lack of sleep, he felt buoyant. His series would hit today, and he could envision the string of articles to come. The corporation would have to respond to the charges, the Reverend Weems would be forced to chime in, and the vestrymen, goo-goos to the core, would have to invent their own convoluted defenses. What a spectacle! Mayor Gilroy would be forced to make some mealy-mouthed statement, the Reverend Dr. Parkhurst would be drawn in, and Tammany would have to figure out whether it should make political hay or play dumb, as property was its life’s blood too. Real estate’s unseen arteries fed Fifth Avenue and Tammany braves alike. When he thought of that prig Colonel Fisk, he almost burst out laughing. The story was writing itself. The more he walked, and the more he thought about his coup, the more his self-regard grew.

  To prolong the delicious moment, he sipped his first beer, separated shell from egg, showered the delicacy with salt, and rearranged his rear end on the bar stool. Only then did he unfold the paper. The front page featured a story about a bank run in Cleveland and a murder in Chicago: a Mrs. Edson’s corpse had been found in a l
uxury hotel, along with a false beard. Not for the first time, the Herald observed that Chicago, that sprawling cowtown, so incongruously the site of a World’s Fair, was in truth a “criminal’s paradise.”

  In another article, the Reverend Dr. Parkhurst promised shocking revelations about Police Captain Devery and a bail bondsman Max knew well, Max Hochstim. In the main political feature, Tammany leader Richard Croker contended that rumors about his lavish racehorse farm in Ireland were grossly exaggerated. As for any new investigative committees coming down to the city, Croker said, “This is the best governed city in this country, and they won’t find a thing. What about Senator Fassett’s investigation four years ago? The whole thing was a fizzle.”

  Not a word about Holy Trinity and its miserable properties. He snapped through the pages, headlines flashing past. ANARCHIST PLOT IN BARCELONA. FEET KEY TO CHARACTER. RICH RESORTS SHY AWAY FROM WOODCOCK. MADISON SQUARE SURPLUS WIPED OUT.

  He lingered over the last one. Apparently, certain Madison Square Bank officials had been borrowing against “large blocks of worthless stock.” As the bank collapsed, these nameless executives had enriched themselves to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. It was remarkable how the bankers managed to remain anonymous while the Herald reported the names of every Orchard Street vampire and horseblanket thief.

  Had he torn through the paper too quickly? He turned every page and scanned every headline a second time. Not a peep about Colonel Fisk, his vestrymen, or the Reverend Weems. He tried to calm himself by recalling how he’d barely made his deadline—the piece was long, they could have held it until the next edition—but Garvey’s words kept coming back to him: You’re talking about some of the best people in the city, and you know how nasty they can be. He could see that tinpot dictator Fisk applying pressure, cajoling, making threats. On other hand, he had Parnell on his side, and, better still, Bennett, who wanted more than anything to nip at the Worlds heels. Why kill a story that would sell thousands of papers?

  chapter thirty-three

  A few reporters bent over their desks, the electric globes pale in the early light. The eternal cigar smoke wound around slow fans, falling in a soft, acrid pall. Max’s eye roamed over Graham, the spindly proofreader, chained to his desk since the days of Bennett, Senior. Over in Advertising, Stanley, a doughy father of seven, gazed blankly out at a rat’s nest of electric wires. The grisly Kingsley, a clerk in Classifieds since the fall of Tweed, squinted through his thick glasses at hand-scrawled personals. Max loved to read these miniature tales of unrequited love; he could recite some of the finest by heart.

  A businessman, 35, desires acquaintance healthy, sensible pretty blond Protestant under 20: view, marriage; kindly describe appearance, height, weight; mercenaries, gum-chewers or bicycling noodles not wanted.

  Broadway cable car, yesterday morning, ten fifteen—will lady wearing astrakhan jacket, who noticed gendeman who got off at Court House, honor him with her acquaintance?

  If magnificent stout lady who left the Broadway car at Hilton, Hughes & Co. yesterday will walk down Broadway Thursday at noon from 23rd Street, the stout gendeman with full beard who sat opposite will try to meet her.

  Parnell hadn’t yet arrived, so Max busied himself with organizing his papers and planning the day’s attack. His prime target was the Reverend Weems. The minister’s predictable denials and pleas of ignorance would make good copy. When he looked up, Parnell had materialized on his throne.

  Eternal, welded to his chair, the editor was already mowing through a stack of copy. Max hated to interrupt, but he had no choice.

  Mounting the steps, he stood at a respectful distance until Parnell could no longer ignore his presence. “Greengrass?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Stan, but I didn’t see the Holy Trinity piece.”

  His eyes watery, Parnell looked past him. In a soft voice, he said, “Just stick to it. We’ll see.”

  The phrase “we’ll see” chilled him to the bone. Hadn’t Bennett been calling for a whipping less than twenty-four hours ago? Still, he did his best to ignore the obvious implications. “I was thinking of interviewing our friend Weems today.”

  “Sure, sure. Makes sense.”

  Finally, he couldn’t help himself. “Bennett’s still on board with this one, isn’t he?”

  “Bennett’s sailing today,” Parnell replied gruffly. “Greek islands. Crete.”

  He was dumbstruck. Had Fisk forced Bennett’s hand overnight? The publisher’s flight left Max exposed, without his most powerful ally. Garvey would be in the saddle now. Bits of boiled egg and bile rose into the back of his throat. “Just like that? I mean, was he planning to go?”

  “He comes, he goes.” Parnell shrugged. Max understood the message in those bony shoulders. Bennett was a capricious storm. What could you do about nature?

  He read every one of Parnell’s signals, he heard every warning bell, but it was as if he’d lost his brakes. “I mean, if it doesn’t run today, the Worlds. get the beat, no two ways about it.”

  In truth this claim made little sense. The World'had no reason to investigate Holy Trinity, or to swarm over Health Department records. It was his work, his idea, and now it was coming to nothing. Hot and cold flashes swept through him, and in their wake a bitter disappointment.

  “That’s my problem, not yours.” Parnell fingered his copy pile, indicating that the audience had ended.

  “I risked my neck for this one, dammit!” The words burst out before he could call them back, and the pencil flew from his hand. Transfixed, Max watched it spin through the air. The stick of wood bounced once on Parnell’s desk, then struck the editor on the shoulder. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Parnell’s frigid look finally brought him to his senses. With a correct nod, Max withdrew to the newsroom floor, but his fury wouldn’t abate. Garvey had murdered his story. It was probably lying in bits on the composing room floor—or, worse still, it was suffocating under a mass of trivial items still stacked on the managing editor’s desk. He wanted to bolt, but that would be suicide. He had to make himself available, otherwise he’d slide right back to the end of the space-rater’s bench. Steaming, he wedged himself back behind his battered desk and carved out meaningless designs with his pen until the nib flattened under his fist.

  As the morning wore on, Parnell ignored him. Time turned thick until it froze and refused to pour. In a stupor he watched fan blades disturb the haze, new rivers of smoke streaming in fresh directions, braiding, giving birth to rushing tributaries. Hypnotized, he gazed at the churning substance until, dissolving, he became smoke itself.

  A familiar voice drifted toward him. Belatedly, he rushed to heed Parnell’s call.

  “What’re you, going deaf?” the editor snapped. “You look like hell in a handcart.”

  “Thanks.”

  “This shouldn’t tax your abilities too much. A woman on Duane Street has a bitch.”

  “Yeah?” The editor was exacting his punishment now. Canine tales were the province of the lowliest cub.

  “Don’t interrupt me. This bitch has a litter, nine it says here, and they’ve all got six toes.”

  That was twenty-four toes per dog. Despite himself, the line popped into his head. “We could run it under ‘Nine Dogs, Two Hundred Sixteen Toes.'”

  The editor responded with a rare smile. “Stick your head in the sink before you go out.”

  “Bad night. Do you mind if I interview Weems? I think there’s some meeting this evening.”

  “Why not?” Parnell put his hand on Max’s shoulder and shook him. “Just have a little patience, kiddo.”

  For a brief moment he basked in the editor’s chilly light, and his love for the shabby business revived. Biddle, Parnell, Stanley, Graham, Kingsley. They were all brothers in a six-toed world.

  It took him forty-five minutes to discover that the wonder dog’s litter consisted of one puppy with a vestigial claw, and that her owner, Mrs. Ianelli, had a hunger to see her name in the paper. Max obliged with
two inches of type. Although he longed to assault Parnell’s redoubt one more time, he chose the better part of valor and slunk out of the office. Out on Printing House Square, he rubbed the thin sticks of hope together. The editor had agreed to let him interview Weems, hadn’t he? Didn’t that mean the story was still alive? Just because Bennett was sailing to Crete didn’t mean he was giving up the reins to Garvey, did it?

  Holy Trinity’s neo-gothic spire rose above Lower Broadway’s brownstone and brick. Lacy and light, the church posed as a cathedral despite its diminutive proportions. Fashionable carriages lined the sidewalks on both sides of the avenue, and Max was surprised to see parishioners jostling their way through the elegant doors. He hadn’t realized that the Reverend Weems was so popular. For a Thursday evening lecture, the outpouring was astonishing. Then he noticed the discreet sign announcing the Reverend Dr. Parkhurst.

  Every Parkhurst appearance promised a whiff of scandal. The wily crusader had started by attacking the time-honored practice of police extortion, particularly the department’s protection of brothels and dives. When the newspapers ridiculed him, he hired private detectives to gather evidence of what was in plain sight: saloons doing rip-roaring business on Sundays, gamblers operating roulette wheels in wide-open storefronts, and madames paying off local pantatas on the first and fifteenth of every month.

  Like most newspapermen, Max regarded Parkhurst as a blue-nosed peeping torn, but he also had a certain grudging respect for the reformer. Police Superintendent Byrnes had set up Parkhurst’s chief detective, Charlie Gardner, and had him thrown in jail for extortion, but Parkhurst had fought back, gathering affidavit after affidavit testifying to a system of bribery that knit together patrolman, bagman, police captain, and Tammany ward heeler alike. Corruption was like the waves at Coney, Max believed, an irresistible tide; but however naive, the clergyman had guts.