The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  “You were playin’ with matches in there, wasn’t you?” the captain roared.

  “That’s the bug.” MacNamara croaked. Then he doubled over, spitting blood and ash.

  “What? No! Max Greengrass. New York Herald” he muttered ritualistically. He looked around for his savior, the clay-pipe man. Vanished. “I was tied…”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re under arrest. Arson, first degree.”

  He tried his best to explain, but his tongue was thick in his mouth.

  “There’s a roast down there … remains … kids ” He wouldn’t say Leon aloud. He wouldn’t pronounce the sentence himself. “You’ve got to dig.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. We’ll dig all the way to China.”

  “You’re arresting me?”

  “Nah. Mallory!”

  The raw-boned recruit emerged from the crowd, his iron grasp shoving Max’s arms behind his back. Pain shot through his shoulder. “Jeez, you’re dislocating—” he protested.

  “I’ll dislocate your fucking head, mister,” Mallory muttered.

  Then he passed through the pain to the protected place inside his other mind. A novel idea drifted to the surface. He wanted to get arrested. “Great. Get me to Byrnes. Go ahead. He’s looking for me anyway. But there’s your pyro. Take him too. And for Godsakes, check out the basement.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” the captain growled, shaking him.

  A strangled sound was pouring out of him. The back of a hand seared his face, but he was down to the knuckle and bone of himself, and he couldn’t stop.

  “Stick a rag down his throat, why don’tcha?” the captain said in disgust.

  “It’s always the shitbags who get out alive,” Mallory spat.

  “You wanna see Byrnes? Quit your fucking howling.”

  “Yeah … he’ll vouch—” His voice shook.

  “What’s the game?”

  The stink of charred wood swirled around them. The smoke ran up his nose, congealed in his mouth. A skin of charcoal coated his tongue. “Nothing, I’m just going to call…” Grit trickled down his throat. A burst of coughs came up dry. His chest ached. “… call my paper from Byrnes’s office, and then I’m going … I’m going to tell him how you blind monkeys wasted your time manhandling me.”

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Max Greengrass. New York Herald. What’s yours?”

  “Never mind that,” the captain said warily.

  “Forget it. You know who owns that building?”

  “You’re the prophet. You tell me.”

  “Holy Trinity. This one here works for them.”

  MacNamara managed to cough out a few words. “Damn bug’s … lyin’ to save hisself.”

  Max shrugged. “And they’re going to collect their insurance, too.”

  “What’re you, daffy? You think a silk-hat church like that’s gonna act like a cockroach landlord?”

  “It’s not that kind of insurance. Listen, give us both a ride over to Mulberry Street … I’ll bet Byrnes knows this joker, and if I’m wrong I’ll write my own ticket to the Tombs.”

  Burning cinders drifted down. Oily smoke leaked from the smoldering warehouse. The bleeding brown trench. Nobody’s bundles, tossed into a hole. They came to him from a filmy dream. Mrs. Darling wouldn’t dare. Didn’t his sister say she was all paid up? But so what if Faye swore up and down; she probably owed plenty.

  His face smeared with soot, the captain didn’t seem to notice the quarter-sized burn high on his own forehead. Max’s nose ran.

  With the back of his hand, the captain rubbed his ash-grimed cheek. “You got a press card?”

  Max dug in his pocket. The cloth was moist and sticky in there. Finally, he produced the tattered document.

  “The marshal’s gonna wanna see this.”

  “Hey, I need—” he started to remonstrate, but then he took another look at the weary captain’s seamed face. “Yeah, sure. Tell him I’ll run it all down for him.”

  Before he mounted the fire wagon, he stuck his head in an overflowing bucket. Droplets of blood floated in the brown water.

  “Take both of’em like he says, Mallory.”

  If he could only break Darling’s door down, hunt through her rooms. “I need to stop—”

  “You’re stoppin nowheres,” the captain swore.

  chapter thirty-nine

  Down at Mulberry Street headquarters, Max cleaned up as best he could. A sympathetic sergeant scrounged up a bit of plaster for the tiny cuts under his eye. At a utility sink, he washed his face and the ring of soot that graced his neck. Wetting his fingers, he combed his hair back and fluffed up his mustache. He looked as if he’d gone a few dozen rounds with John L., but no worse.

  The police superintendent didn’t show up for hours. On the hard bench, Max faded in and out of existence. Finally, Byrnes rumbled past him and slammed the door. Max stared blankly at the walls. Creeping time would come to a close. In a minute or an hour or a day, he’d gain his audience.

  At long last the heavy door swung open.

  He had no nerves any more. In the past Byrnes had inspired fear, but now Max faced the great detective with nothing more than an inward shrug. He noticed the pallor under the police superintendent’s ruddy complexion, and the britde note in the cop’s voice.

  In a flat tone, Max laid out the details. In his other mind he tore through Darling’s flat, his fingers closed on her throat, and he shook her until she came apart.

  “You better have the show-and-tell, boyo. I can’t go around spouting off against people of that standing.”

  “Go dig up that basement. You’ll see.”

  “Ain’t you the fair-haired boy? You look like you went through a meatgrinder.”

  Byrnes glared his practiced glare, but Max barely noticed. A radical resignation gripped his soul. In a queer way, fatalism felt the same as confidence.

  “It’s a nice trick,” he explained in a voice not his own. “The mother’s desperate, the kid’s going to croak anyway. She takes the buyout, money in the hand, and our Mrs. Edwards says ‘Don’t worry. If anything happens, we’ll take care of the stone.'”

  Byrnes’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Only she don’t buy a stone, is what you’re telling me?”

  “They can insure the same kid five times, too, if they want to. You think one company knows what the other one’s doing?”

  “The agents are selling all over the tenements. Am I right?”

  “And the other vultures are speculating. The odds are in their favor. If they have to, they help them along.”

  Byrnes’s great mustache bobbed and quivered. “If we weren’t so damned civilized, we could simply toss ‘em in a pit with a bunch of sharpened sticks.”

  “Just pick up Edwards and Granger. You’ve already got MacNamara, right?” For the moment, he kept the Reverend Weems’s name to himself. The minister’s denials would put the icing on the cake. Then there was his speech. Max had a few questions about that, too.

  “Don’t go telling me my business,” Byrnes said sharply. “We’ve been on the trail for months, right, boyo?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it was a brilliant piece of police work.”

  What amazed him was that he didn’t care any more. His whole being had been poured into the newspaper business, but now he saw from this new, curious distance, that if he were pitched out onto the street tomorrow, he would still be living in the same skin. The sun would still pour down, good whiskey would still taste smooth, a lean steak would still make his mouth water, the hollows of a woman’s body would still make him ache. Freedom was curled up inside despair.

  Just let Leon live.

  “You can say this,” Byrnes quoted himself thoughtfully. “‘We have been investigating these brutes for some time, and we have finally caught them red-handed. I’ve held my position for many years, but this is the single most heinous crime I’ve ever witnessed. I hope never to see its like again.’ Got that?”

  “Every
word. I’ll need interviews—”

  “Not ‘til after we interrogate. We’ll see if you’re going off half-cocked, Greengrass.” A deep crease appeared between Byrnes’s small black eyes.

  Max noted all the mechanics of intimidation, the guttural tone, the jutting chin, the fists going white at the knuckles, but it seemed a dumb show. He could almost make out the smile flowering under the formidable mustache.

  He also noticed that Byrnes knew his name.

  “You’ll put in the word with Abie Hummel? If he follows through,” Max snapped a fingernail at his notes, “I’ll be out on my ass. This story will never see the light of day.”

  A naked gambit, but the only one at his disposal. Then again, he was learning that the game was played mostly on the surface.

  “Don’t get wise. Abie’s not such a bad fella. You seen his Saratoga column? He’ll give you some good tips if you get on his right side.”

  “Just talk to him, right? Keep him off my back.” He kept his voice flat, but Byrnes was his only hope. He prayed he was offering the superintendent enough in exchange.

  “Sure. But Abie’s his own man. You can’t ram nothing down his throat.”

  Byrne’s words didn’t inspire confidence, but they were all he was going to get. Resigned, he turned his mind to more pressing matters.

  Leon. A dank sweat trickled down his spine. One way or another, Belle would be home by now. A wave of fever swept through him. His elaborately constructed calm shook. Willing himself blank, he kept dread at bay.

  Reeling home from Mulberry Street a few minutes past eleven, he was surprised to see a light burning in Mrs. DeVogt’s parlor. Scraps of fog were blowing off the river, diffusing the lamplight. In the haze his own footsteps were muffled, his own breathing unnaturally loud. Out of sight, iron wheels ratded on stone. A foghorn blew an aching note that vibrated in his chest. At the foot of the steps he hesitated. Could he face another human being?

  Capes of mist saturated his thin coat. Reflexively, he put up his collar and climbed to the front door. Belle was sitting up, reading a fat Russian novel. Startled, she placed the book face-down on the arm of the sofa. Something called Anna Karenina. Judging by its size, it must have been a Count Tolstoy production. How she ever waded through these tomes was a mystery to him.

  “How’s tricks?” The line was all wrong. So was his leaky grin.

  “Your face!” Half-mooned scabs marked his cheeks and forehead. Her heart clenched. Some incompetent had applied a messy poultice under his right eye. She’d have to get her bag without waking the baby.

  He patted the skin absently. His back was slick with sweat. “Occupational hazard. What’re you doing up in the middle of the night?”

  “I finally got Leon to sleep.”

  Chills ran hot and cold down his spine, and he wondered if he was getting the grippe. He had assumed, denied, pushed it out of his mind. Or into his other mind, where he swathed fear in forgetfulness. The brown gash in the ground. Oilcloth and string. “Leon? He’s all right? I thought … I mean, I got it into my head … What’s he doing here?”

  He was in a dream world, she realized. His eyes, usually so full of light, had a dull sheen, and he seemed to be staring at some invisible place in the distance. “Faye is who-knows-where by now. Where else should I take him?”

  “He’s okay?” Electrified, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. Jesus Frigging Christ. The kid was in one piece. The swollen sensation in his chest surged up his throat, but he fought it back down. No reason for Belle to see him bawling.

  “His fever’s down.”

  “Mrs. Darling, she was taking care of him?”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t harm a hair on his head. Faye gave her a publicity picture. She signed it, too.” She reached out and touched the spray of cuts on his cheek. “Does that hurt?”

  “Only when I breathe. Can I see him?” AH he could think about was smelling the top of the boy’s head, counting his fingers and toes.

  “Wait. Later. You know what’s an infection? If it gets into your blood, you won’t like it.”

  When she returned, she arrayed her astringents on the rosewood end table.

  “Is this going to sting?” he asked, in mock horror.

  “If it doesn’t, you’re dead to the world,” she said, soaking a strip of linen with alcohol. With efficient strokes, she cleaned out the small wounds.

  Unfortunately, she had set his whole face on fire. “Yeow,” he murmured, gritting his teeth.

  Her knees brushed his leg. As she worked, she stood up to her full height of five feet two inches. Leaning over, she seemed unaware that her breasts were resting on his shoulder. “Now I’m going to wrap you up.”

  She produced a scissors and cut long strips of clean cloth, which she proceeded to fix over the burning cuts. Pain alternated with awakening desire. In his cottony state of mind, he felt something give way inside him. He looked over her armada of antiseptics. He felt her fingers busy pressing, pasting, and winding. Raising his eyes, he saw her deep concentration and the way the tip of her tongue poked from the corner of her mouth.

  “Are we friends again?”

  “Stay still. Somebody said we were enemies?”

  “Do you want to get married?” He wasn’t sure who was asking the question or where it came from, but it seemed to make sense.

  The snipping and patting ceased for a moment. “To who? John D. Rockefeller?” lo me.

  She stepped away, put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a searching look. “Did you ever hear of’ soldier’s heart’?”

  “No.”

  She placed a chaste kiss on his head. “You can ask me again sometime. When you’re not in shock.”

  Leon was sitting up at dawn, babbling to himself in his cradle. When Max slipped into the room, the boy laughed, then ducked his head, shy and amused. All of him appeared intact. His high forehead, his purple birthmark, his big ears, his funny upper lip. Max lifted him up and turned him high above his head. Leon squealed in delight. Lowering the boy to his shoulder, Max sniffed his hair; that fresh, indefinable smell of a new human being.

  “She’s coming back soon, kiddo. Don’t worry. How ‘bout this? Do re mi fa so la ti do?”

  The serious look passed from the child’s features. “Do re mi….”

  Tangled in her sheets, Belle rolled over and groaned.

  “See that? You woke her up.”

  “Lemme down, Unca Max.”

  With obvious pride, Leon toddled across the room, fast and steady. Wasn’t he a squealing bundle just a second ago? You could see the kid had gumption. What about the others? A chorus of bones. But the elation he felt after finding Leon alive and well, it was only human, wasn’t it?

  When Belle sat up, her curly hair shooting out in all directions, her sleepy features looked blurred. His heart stopped. Without her rice powder and lipstick, she looked painfully young. Yawning, she reached out for the kid. “Give him here. We’ll have to get him off the bottle soon.”

  “I’ll fix you a tray,” he said, scuttling downstairs to the kitchen.

  By the time he returned, she’d conquered her hair with tortoiseshell combs.

  “That’s so sweet,” she said, sipping her coffee and taking a bite of a fresh roll.

  “What’ll we do with him? We both have to go to work.”

  “Don’t worry. Mrs. DeVogt said she’d watch him while we’re gone.”

  “She can’t do that every day,” he said, suddenly filled with domestic anxiety. How long was Faye’s damn tour going to last? What did she expect him to do while she lollygagged all over the East Coast?

  “We’ll have to wire Faye. Can you do that from your office?” she asked, her brow furrowing with light lines.

  “Sure. The two of them aren’t running back home anytime soon, I’ll tell you that,” he said.

  “I know. She can send money, though. Once she gets paid.”

  When it came to coughing up, Faye was prone to convenient lapses of memory. Be
lle wasn’t just helping with the Leon fiasco, she was helping him manage his sister too. She fell into the role so naturally, he didn’t have to ask. What bliss. He’d never dreamed of sharing Faye’s disasters with anyone else. “You think you can find somebody we can trust?”

  “I know a woman on Carmine Street. If you’re not worried he’ll eat red sauce.”

  “He can kiss the Pope’s ring as far as I’m concerned. As long as he’s safe. This is gonna hamstring you, though. It’s not your responsibility.”

  “Shut up. It’s nothing.”

  “Ha! I’d like to see something?

  chapter forty

  At the rectory, the housekeeper, a tight-lipped woman with formidable hips, insisted that the Reverend Weems had left for the day.

  The vestibule was a tight fit. Max shuffled his feet, searching for a polite stance. “I can wait,” he said blandly.

  “He might not be back ‘til tomorrow,” the servant insisted, inserting her bulk into the sliver of space between them.

  “Ahh. Well, tell him that Max Greengrass from the Hera/dwants to give him a chance to tell his side of the story.”

  In the waning light, he found a stoop down the block from Weems’s residence. He could make his deadline without the minister’s remarks, he supposed, but he was greedy for the tortured rationalizations the clergyman was sure to offer. It was one thing to write up what he had witnessed in the cellar, but quite another for a man of the cloth to try to explain it away.

  Waiting made him jumpy. He got up, sat down, stretched his legs with a short walk, then returned to his post. Sitting still was almost impossible. When he wasn’t in motion, he couldn’t forget; and if he remembered, he would have to feel; and if he had to feel, he feared he would drown. Or unleash his formless rage. Playing the newsman kept the storm inside his skull at bay.

  Around twilight, the Reverend Weems emerged, gripping a carpetbag.