Ahab's Return: or, The Last Voyage

by Jeffrey Ford

  The day was cold but clear, and it was past noon when Madi and I took off on foot in the direction of the Five Points. We’d decided against a hansom in case the speed of it were to make us miss Ahab passing in the street.

  As we walked along, I asked my companion, “What’s your assessment of the captain?”

  “He’s changed from when he was my captain, and I’m not sure it’s for the better. I’m telling you, Harrow, I can’t get caught up in the tragedy of Ahab. I have a purpose that drives me. Beyond today, I won’t be wasting time looking for him. I’ll strike out on my own. Every day that passes without me avenging those murders is a mark against me in my own mind.”

  “You and Ahab are such men of conviction. The right and the good are somewhat more flexible in my estimation.”

  “You’re a white man with money and a job,” said Madi.

  “I’m going to try to keep it that way,” I said.

  “That’s city wisdom,” he said.

  “Did you bring much of your history with you when you went aboard ship to become a harpooneer?”

  “I was very young and wanted the world. I spent years at sea with rarely as much as a week or two between voyages. My second captain, an American named Belliard, out of Philadelphia aboard the Widow, helped me obtain my protection papers to keep me out of the hands of the Fugitive Slave Act thugs and British impressment. He appreciated my aim and power with the harpoon.”

  “What do you remember of Africa?” I asked.

  “I only dimly recall my mother and father. My homeland and Islam. All that was washed out of me by the rolling sea. I’ve been on a voyage to another world, suffered solid months of stillness at the equator, and been lashed by furious typhoons. At night, I have fleeting glimpses of my father’s handiwork, the jewels and metals he shaped like a sprinkling of gold dust in my dreams. That and a story my grandfather told me when I was a child of the fabulous libraries of Timbuktu.”

  Madi fell into silence. We turned from James Street onto Chatham and headed north. In less than twenty minutes, we were standing in front of the house that bore the address Mavis had provided. It was a beautiful structure and although I’d passed it by many times, I’d never before noticed its opulence. There were tall columns surrounding the domed entrance. The path leading to the door wound around and among barren mimosa trees. The steps to the porch were inlaid with tile in green, blue, and white.

  I knocked on the front door and took a step back. It opened promptly and a tall, well-built fellow with a bald head and a diamond earring answered. He was dressed in formal attire. I assumed he was the butler. I smiled, but he didn’t. It was obvious from his gaze that he wasn’t happy to see Madi standing on that porch.

  “If you would please let your employer know that Mavis sent us,” I said.

  He stared at me like he was trying to knock me over with his thoughts. I simply nodded and continued to smile. Eventually, he said, “Step inside, and I’ll summon the lady.” We moved toward the door, but the butler said, “Not him,” and pointed at Madi.

  “He’s my esteemed colleague. It’s very important that he attend this meeting.”

  The butler shook his head. I looked over my shoulder at my companion and he looked at me as if to say, This is one of those situations you’re supposed to be helping me with. When I looked back, a woman had joined the man in the morning coat. She appeared to be of my vintage, no longer a blushing maiden but by no means a shriveled shrew. She wore a dress with a design of blue flowers and a disarming smile below a pair of blue eyes; her dark hair was pulled back into a chignon.

  “Yes, gentlemen?” she said.

  “Mavis sent us. I’m George Harrow, writer for the Gorgon’s Mirror, and this is my colleague, Madi.”

  “I’m Arabella Dromen,” she said and inclined her head slightly. I did my best to return a bow. The whole thing was ridiculous, but I didn’t care. Arabella Dromen had caught my fancy. “Show them both in, Otis,” she said.

  She led us through that remarkable house decorated with colorful carpets of Eastern design, beneath glittering chandeliers, past polished mahogany reflecting silver fixtures. As we proceeded down a long hallway hung with paintings, she spoke about how she’d first encountered Mavis at the port on South Street. “There was an indigent fellow who’d gone round the bend, brandishing a knife and threatening the stevedores and passersby. In three lightning motions, that remarkable girl subdued him, disarmed him, and stuck the knife into the left cheek of his posterior as a reminder of why going crazy had been a bad idea.”

  We came to a set of large doors and Otis, the consummate fart catcher that he was, moved quickly ahead to open them. Inside, the circular walls were lined with books. There were steps to the right and left that led to a second level. In the round at the room’s center was a table and four chairs. Beyond that there was an enormous aquarium, the first I’d ever seen in a home. I was startled by the sight of it and its school of pale-violet fish moving with a single purpose.

  “Have a seat, gentlemen,” said Miss or Mrs. Dromen. I saw no ring on her finger so I assumed the former. She pulled out a chair and sat down as well. Once we were settled, she told Otis, “You may leave and on the way out dim the gas lamps to a more conspiratorial shade.” He did as he was told and we sat in the gloaming.

  “I’d hired Mavis, not too long ago, to accompany me to the market as my bodyguard. We had a lovely outing. On that journey, I asked her about her other employment, to see if she wanted to work solely for me. She thanked me but begged off, telling me she was partial to an old fellow she worked for who ran a penny press magazine full of the untrue and outré. To change the subject of her employment, she told me that she was hunting for information about a Mr. Malbaster.

  “Now, as it so happened, I knew two things about Malbaster and I told them both to her. The first was easy enough for her to remember, but the second is more complicated with dates and personages of the past and goes back nearly forty years. My father, Edwag Dromen, was a sea captain, and he rented his ship, the Cipher, and his services at the helm to the late John Jacob Astor in the years around 1816 and thereafter. You know of whom I speak?”

  Madi and I both nodded.

  “My father, before he passed away, told me that he would sail through the Mediterranean to Anamur, a castle port on the coast of Turkey, and there would take on tons of opium. Usually, he then sailed to China and sold it illegally. It was through this method that Astor’s already incredible wealth from the fur trade tripled. He carried on the illicit opium trading to China for a number of years. Eventually, when the risks became too great, Astor dropped it and delivered only to London and turned his attention to real estate. Still, my father told me of a warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen that held a king’s ransom of opium.”

  “How have I never heard this?” I said.

  She continued, “Astor hid it there with plans of someday introducing it on a large scale to city residents. By my father’s estimate there had to have been ten tons of it. Small globes of the tar packed fifty apiece in wooden chests stacked to the ceiling. When the old Midas died in ’48, no one had thought about it in years except, of course, my father, who launched an investigation to find it. He never did, but he suspected that the man you are looking for, Mr. Malbaster, did.”

  “Did your father know him?” asked Madi.

  “I don’t know how well. But he certainly knew of him and he told me he thought the pale gentleman was using the drug to raise an army. He’s in league with powerful nativists in the city. They pay him a fortune to harass and kill.”

  I’d seen these groups—anti-immigrant, antiblack—at work over the years. I’d stopped and listened to their rhetoric on street corners and had even, under orders, written about them in an uncomplimentary manner. That was Garrick’s doing. His whole life he’d been a staunch defender of immigrants’ rights. Why? I have no idea.

  “We’ve heard he possesses magic,” said Madi.

  “I’ve heard that,” she said.
“What it means, I don’t know.”

  “And what was the other thing you told Mavis?” I asked.

  “Oh, she didn’t tell you? I’ve determined by having glimpsed him there briefly once, and having Otis check for me on subsequent nights, that Malbaster eats dinner every other evening in the French restaurant Amberine at the Crystal Palace. He’ll be there tomorrow night.”

  I was a little stunned by this revelation tossed off so nonchalantly. Malbaster was, if we played our cards right, all ours. We could ambush him somewhere along the route to the restaurant, inside the restaurant, on his way home. The Pale King Toad was within our grasp. I didn’t bother considering what the hell we’d do with him once we’d caught him. Between Madi and Ahab, he had a meager chance of escaping with his life. The question for me was whether I wanted to be involved in what would surely be murder.

  “And so, you offer this information to us free of charge? Surely there is something you hope to gain from this exchange,” I said.

  “Very perceptive, Mr. Harrow. I like a man who knows how the world works.”

  I was glad we were sitting in the dim room as I could feel myself blush, a condition I’d not experienced in years.

  “What I want,” said Arabella Dromen, “is that when you locate the warehouse with the tons of opium, I want a hundred pounds of it for my own use.”

  “I remember the drug,” said Madi. “The British ship a lot of it to China. I signed on to a few clipper ship larks that voyaged to the Yellow Sea. The old men smoked it in the back rooms of the port at Shanghai. But I’ve never taken it. What does it do?”

  She reached across the table and covered his hand with her own. “It allows you to see the hidden beauty of the world.”

  I watched Madi swallow hard and felt a twinge of jealousy at his receiving her touch, no matter how delicate it was.

  So many things went through my mind, the first being that I’d encountered abusers of the poppy before but she didn’t have any of the telltale signs: the sallow complexion, half-mast eyelids, and weary affect. She must have read the expression on my face and said, “I use it in my research only.”

  I should have asked first about her research, but instead, just like that, I promised her a hundred pounds of opium if we were to discover the trove, and Madi agreed.

  13

  A half hour after we made our deal with Arabella, we emerged from that dim encounter into the brightness of the afternoon sun. Our eyes were sensitive to the light, as if we’d just come from a grog shop or church, and we squinted for a block and a half before we could see clearly again.

  “That last thing she spoke of before the bald one showed us out . . . ,” said Madi. “Her work? The writing of a continuous story of a daydream woman, based on Miss Dromen’s hallucinations?” He laughed. “Seems lunacy.”

  I nodded, though still enchanted by her. “What was the name of her book?”

  “One Hundred Nights of Nothing,” he said. “I remember once being in a village just outside Fort Jesus on Mombasa Island. A Swahili craftsman had carved, in a pale wood, a figure of a man with his head disappearing into his hindquarters.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Outlandish measures are necessary for some to look within.”

  “Still, she’s lovely,” I said.

  “I will see her again. I can feel it,” said Madi.

  I was somewhat put out by his revelation, but we had business to attend to in finding Ahab. Although Miss Dromen was quite fine, I wasn’t about to challenge my “colleague” to a duel over an opium-smoking spinster we’d just met. She did touch his hand, though, and I stewed about that in silence until we reached the outskirts of Mulberry Bend Park.

  Although the day was bright, like other recent days, it was freezing. The park was nearly empty—a few stragglers heading home to their hovels in the Points, a group of young girls with sticks and beribboned hoops trying to play the Game of Graces in the daunting wind. The trees were now completely barren as opposed to when Ahab and I had traversed the plot just days earlier. Winter had settled over Manhattan and I realized it wouldn’t be long before our efforts would be hampered by snow.

  We strolled to the middle of the park and spun upon our heels, but there was no sign of the captain or Usual Peters. I told Madi about the underground opium den Ahab and I had discovered by following one of the local besotted ne’er-do-wells.

  “We found Ishmael, paralytic on the poppy tar, down there last we’d visited,” I said. “Trust me, his head was well in his ass.”

  “I hope never to see him again,” said my companion.

  We decided against venturing belowground into the dark without our weapons and Ahab along in case of a brawl. Madi suggested we return to my home to wait for him but that we journey by a route that took us past the docks. He wanted to make a daylight investigation of the old cotton warehouse where we’d encountered the manticore. I agreed as my bravery was at its peak in sunlight.

  By the time we arrived at the place, the sun had sunk low and the shadows were lengthening. I figured we had an hour till sundown. Inside was damp and freezing cold, and a rime coated the timbers. The floor groaned and the wind whistled through holes in the walls and roof as we made our way by the grainy light.

  “Why are we here?” I said.

  “I want to see if they left anything behind, or if they might even still be here.”

  “Let it be said, I hope they’re not.”

  Madi wasn’t satisfied with touring only the bottom floor of the place and insisted we ascend to the second floor, which had in certain spots holes large enough to fall through.

  Suddenly Madi pointed and said, “Look up here. There’s light.”

  At the far end of the second floor hallway was the glow of a lantern. We carefully made our way to it. What we found were two boys sitting with their backs to the wall.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked them.

  “We’re waiting for you, mister,” they said.

  I looked to Madi and when he returned my glance I noticed his eyes widening in alarm. Before he made a sound, I spun around to see what he’d seen. Stumbling into the pool of lantern light came a crooked figure in a black suit and a black string tie. He was bloodless, and his hair was so dry and light it looked like sand. It was the eyes, though, that made me want to run; dull gray orbs unbroken by iris or pupil.

  The pallor of his skin was disturbing and his chin and brows seemed to come to sharp points. His limbs didn’t appear to fit him, as if broken many times and healed fewer. He came at us like an old woman falling down the stairs, and we stood and watched, entranced by the inherent wrongness of his being.

  The next I knew, he punched me in the jaw with a fist that felt to be all bone. As I fell backward, I saw Madi take a sharpened elbow to the side of the head. A moment later, we were both on the floor and the creaking ill-built skeleton of a man was leaning down to choke me. I brought my boot up and kicked him under the chin. He made no noise, and the sound of my heel hitting his chest was like someone beating on a drum. A cloud of dust issued from his open mouth and I saw all three of his teeth. He staggered backward, which gave me enough time to get clear.

  Madi was rising to his feet and the strange man, who by this time I realized was Malbaster’s assassin, turned and teetered haltingly back toward us to grab my companion by the neck. The bony hand was strong, and it squeezed Madi’s throat. I stepped forward, without thinking, and planted a hard left in his right eye. The goddamned bones, it was as if I was punching a bag of nails. My knuckles were bleeding. Madi sprang free and swept the fellow’s legs out from under him with a well-placed kick. Once that wreck of a man was down, the two of us fled.

  Behind us we heard the two boys yelling, “Get them, Bartleby. Get up!”

  I noticed as we hustled around the treacherous openings in the floor that the sun had nearly set. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the incongruous Bartleby shuffling after us. “He’s coming,” I yelled to M
adi. And when I said that, looking back over my shoulder, I saw him stumble into one of the holes in the floor and heard a distant thud from below. “Hold on,” I said. “He’s fallen through.” In the distance, the children were still screaming for Bartleby. “Have at them,” one called. And the younger, in a sweet voice, cried, “Break their bones!”

  We went back to the opening and looked down the twenty feet to the first floor. The shadows had grown too deep by then and we were unable to see anything.

  “That was Malbaster’s deadly assassin?” said Madi. “Somewhat less than deadly.”

  “Thank God,” I said.

  We took the steps down to the first floor and headed for the door. Passing the spot where the broken body should have been, we discovered an old white rag lying on the floor. Madi stood next to me, staring at the rag.

  “What happened to him?” he asked.

  Something lurched out of the shadows around us, and an arm swiped down and cut the back of my hand with a razor blade. It was Bartleby shuffling forward with an awkward gait, one shoulder appearing to be dislocated. Still, he grunted as he limped toward me, waving that razor. My best defense was to put my arms up in front of me and yell.

  My attacker wasn’t paying any attention to Madi, so singular was his desire to cut me. The harpooneer caught up to him and punched him in the side of the head with the power of a hammer blow. I saw Madi shaking the pain out of his hand from having smashed it into the rock-hard head of the assassin. The blow loosened his grip on the straight razor and it clattered to the floor. My instinct was to run, but I reached into the shadows to find the weapon. Bartleby was listing to one side after Madi’s punch, but he never fell and was starting toward me once more.

  My foot hit the razor and it skittered across the floor to Madi, who retrieved it and brought it in an arcing motion away from himself and across the throat of our attacker. A five-inch gash opened in Bartleby’s neck and his head flopped back. A fierce, steady stream of air issued from the opening followed by plumes of fine dust. As Bartleby sank to the floor, Madi threw the razor away and we ran. From above came the calls of the boys peering through the opening in the ceiling. “Get them, Bartleby,” they chanted in their sweet high voices.