A Storm in the Blood

by Jon Stephen Fink

  Yourka whisked himself around the corner and through a back alley. His safecracking skills wouldn’t be much use to Karl on this action. As a lookout, however, Yourka was about to earn highest marks. He carried his warning about the lone policeman around the back of Exchange Buildings, through the dusty yard, and into Karl’s flat. The living room looked deserted. He walked into the silence, past the table with its abandoned cups of tea, and stopped in the little hallway. He caught the sound of feet shuffling above him. Into the thick darkness on the staircase he whispered Karl’s name. Then Nina’s.

  More shuffling on the stairs, then Karl answered him. “Yourka?”

  “I saw a policeman,” Yourka said.

  “Up here.”

  AS HE HEADED TOWARD BISHOPSGATE on the lookout for reinforcements, PC Piper calmed his twitching nerves with the thought that there was no shame in a probationer leaving a possible crime in progress to fetch help. On the contrary, it demonstrated clear thinking and initiative. And in Piper’s case, on that December night, luck. Inside five minutes, his path crossed the beat of two constables, Walter Choate and Thomas Woodhams. He was especially glad to see Choate, a strong, broad-chested six-footer—a Goliath to Piper, who arrived with close experience of East End types. Before Piper stammered out a word, Choate asked, “What’s turning, lad?”

  “Disturbance round Cutler Street. Back of 119 Houndsditch.”

  “Cutler’s Arms, you mean?” Woodhams asked him.

  Piper shook his head, caught his breath, helpless to offer anything more.

  “Show me,” said Choate. Something besides his calm grip spread calmness around him. You could see the boy he used to be still alive in his face, his round, open forehead, and in the innocence, unpurged by crimes and the aftermath of crimes he’d seen, that softened his light eyes. The handlebar mustache, groomed and thick, the wisps of sandy hair, had the look of obvious disguises, tokens of manhood that somehow failed to mask his boyish soul.

  Mr. Weil stood waiting for them at Harris’s jewelry shop. Piper let him give the other policemen a full account of the strange noises, and when he’d finished the short history, he said to PC Choate, “I went back two minutes ago. It’s still with the noises.”

  PC Piper frowned at Mr. Weil. “Didn’t I ask you to keep your eye on the shop?”

  “Half a minute I was inside.”

  “Did you see anybody come out?” Choate asked him.

  “Nobody come out. He’s inside. Making noise.”

  “We would have seen ’em,” Choate assured Piper. “Tom, put yourself over there.” Like a field marshal, he pointed out a position at the entrance to the cul-de-sac.

  “They’re foreigners,” Piper remembered to mention.

  “Are they, now? Noisy buggers. You don’t know what it might be,” Choate said, then, more heavily, “It’s these days, ain’t it. Diabolical.”

  IF RIVKA HAD HEARD what Choate said in the street below, she would have agreed. She, for one, could testify to the presence in the room of the devil. Not Satan himself, maybe, but junior demons sweating menace into the air. First Karl, then Max, rattled Yourka with questions he couldn’t answer: Only one policeman? Is he coming back? What brought him snooping around here? Or who did?

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know!”

  “Oh,” said Max, sarcastically accepting the answer. With no sarcasm, he shook his pistol at Yourka.

  Who got the message: “Good, yes! Now I’m an informer?”

  “Oh. That’s interesting,” Max said. “Informer. I didn’t say the word. You did, Yourka.”

  “Look out for coppers and inform on you at the same time! You’re too clever for me, Max. You figured it out. I surrender,” Yourka said, with a snort of contempt laced with disgust.

  Max leaned back on the edge of the brass bed as though he had all night to prove his case. He ignored Yourka, spoke directly to Karl. “It’s perfect. He gets paid twice—first by them, then by us.”

  “Nobody’s paid me once yet. When I get money I send half of everything to Russia,” Yourka shouted. “What do you do with yours, Max?”

  “I’ve got two kids and a wife! What’ve you got?”

  “My clothes…and Liesma!”

  Rivka rasped at them, “Stop fighting! What are you doing?”

  Max turned on her ferociously. “I’m asking you the same. I don’t know you so good. You aren’t Liesma. Somebody who fucks one of us, that’s who you are. Maybe you’ve fucked us all now—Rivka, is that what you did? Fuck us with the police?”

  Absolutely silent, Karl watched them go at each other, no idea how to stop them. In truth, he hardly heard what they were saying; they bickered because they were scared, filling the silence until he spoke, with an answer to the only question that mattered: Do they stay or go? “Be quiet,” he said. “Let me think.”

  Max lay back on the bed. He used a corner of the plaid duvet to wipe the muzzle and grip of his Browning, then he released the clip. Thin light from the gas jet was enough for a look down the barrel and a close check of the mechanism. His thumb snapped the cartridges from the clip onto the bed. Lips moving as he counted, sure pressure on each round, Max reloaded then slid the clip home inside the gun’s square handle.

  “They will come back,” Karl said. “We’ll get out.”

  Yourka lifted the curtain edge and watched through the window, his first duty. “Can’t see anything. Nobody in the street.”

  Concentration drove out the smoothness of Karl’s face, hardened it. Nina said to him, “Somebody has to go down and tell Jacob.”

  “I will,” Rivka volunteered.

  “No. I will,” Max said.

  “Wait.” Karl stood with Yourka, looked down from the window. “It might be all right.” On this side, a cautious flit; on that side, the prize. It is retreat or desertion? “We could go out the back way and get Jacob. Let Rivka come here tomorrow.” Karl said to her, “Tell us if it’s still safe.”

  A proposal from Yourka. “Send her outside now and see if it’s safe. If we can get on with it…”

  “What should we tell Jacob?” Nina said.

  Karl listened to the cold, concealing night. “They don’t know how many we are.”

  “Or there might be twenty of them at the end of the street right now,” Max said.

  “If they want to come in,” Karl said, “you know they will.”

  Rivka had felt this same vibration in her bones before, on the Talsen road. The galloping danger of hooves stamped into the earth, each dull beat reaching into her through the soles of her feet. Here in this bedroom dread collected like humidity, absorbed all the breathable air; the heat of it raked her skin, even if the room was chilly enough for each breath to betray its fever in a puff of fog.

  A few strands of hair drooped across Karl’s forehead, twigs from a bough. He neatened them and said to Rivka, “Do you hear anything?”

  Conversation in the alleyway down below. A woman’s voice. A door across the way clicked open, quietly shut. The pictures combined in Rivka’s mind; she saw figures moving with serious purpose, toward this flat, against them. She looked Karl straight in his eyes to ask him, without uttering a word: Do I hold still? When do I run?

  PC PIPER GATHERED REINFORCEMENTS on his trot back to Bishopsgate, a sergeant and two plainclothes constables. On duty and off, Sergeant Robert Bentley carried himself with the flair of a leading man. Nothing as frivolous as the stage, though, would ever blur his picture of the world or his place in it. His feet were planted on the side of order, a high vantage point that gave him an unobstructed view of human weakness—the material weaknesses of victims, the moral weakness of criminals. As a result, his attitude was unjoking and his manner with the public and junior officers alike cordially steamrollered trivial distractions.

  Mr. Weil led Robert Bentley directly to the downstairs room closest to the source of the hammering noises. Bird-watchers in a forest hide would settle in as soundlessly, as engrossed in observation. Thump. Thump.
The steady beat went on. Thump. Thump-scrape. The sergeant kept his voice low, gesturing that he’d heard enough. “What time did it start?”

  “My sister informed me since seven o’clock.”

  “Tonight.”

  “Not the morning, in the night, yes.”

  Miss Weil’s voice rattled down the stairs. “Is that you, Max? Don’t scare me.”

  “Ssh! Ssh! Keep quiet!” He shuffled past Robert Bentley to answer his sister in a whisper loud enough to carry up a flight of stairs. “I’ve got the police! He’s down here listening!”

  And the muffled thumps behind the wall stopped dead.

  The police ranks on the street grew to eight with the arrival of two more sergeants, William Bryant and Charles “Daddy” Tucker. The blue engine of state authority, seven strong in this place tonight, occupied both corners of Houndsditch and Cutler Street, the turning into Exchange Buildings, the jewelry shop entrance, every likely path of escape. Cut off without a chance or doubt. Look at Charles Tucker’s face and you saw the authority of a protector, fixed as granite. Everyone’s Daddy—not by seniority but by steady, abiding temper and City of London Police folklore, famous among plainclothes and uniformed officers—Daddy Tucker was the one who watched out.

  Charles Tucker cast a glance down the cul-de-sac. “Not sure Mr. Piper is best placed where he is.”

  Sergeant Bryant took the point. “Trip over his own bootlaces.”

  “Hey-ho. Hear what Bob’s got to say.”

  On his way back from Mr. Weil’s, Sergeant Robert Bentley entertained exactly the same thought. Piper could stand guard at the jewelry shop, close to the other constables, and bring PC Choate to join the experienced hands. You could always count on him to discourage troublemakers. With William Bryant at his back, Walter Choate and Daddy Tucker within hailing distance, Sergeant Bentley knocked on the door to No. 11. Karl inched it open.

  Twenty-four

  BUSINESS-BRISK, the officer asked him, “Have you been working or knocking about inside?”

  Out of sight on the steep staircase, Rivka huddled with the others. Crouched on the landing behind Max, she saw Karl standing in the gap of the half-open door. Rivka wondered what kind of heat lay throbbing inside his silence.

  “Don’t you understand English?”

  Karl’s empty stare communicated nothing.

  In case somebody inside might hear, Robert Bentley raised his voice a little. “Have you got anybody in the house who can?”

  Karl filled his stare with a desire to understand.

  “Fetch them down, will you?”

  The door inched shut again, not solidly; the tongue of its mortise lock didn’t click into its niche. Robert Bentley sniffed, tossed the others a sidelong glance that said the time for playing silly buggers was up. “Open the door or we’re going to smash it in!” With his fingers splayed against the door, it opened with a nudge.

  Through the doorless doorway, in the living room on his right, he saw traces of a home life. Genuine as sin. A good fire burned in the fireplace; scraps of an evening meal littered the table; the furniture looked worn but homey. Tilting his head to look farther into that vacant room, Sergeant Bentley saw traces of a different sort of life: the pressure gauge next to coils of rubber tubing on the floor, next to the welder’s blowpipe.

  One pace behind him, William Bryant spotted the man on the stairs, or at least the bottom half of his long, unbuttoned overcoat; from the waist up, Karl was a mute figure swallowed by the dark. “Wondered where you’d got to,” the bobby said.

  Robert Bentley challenged the man: “Is anybody working here?”

  The figure on the stairs answered, “No.”

  “Anyone in the back?”

  “No.”

  “Can I look in the back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you show us the way?”

  Karl held still. “In there.”

  At Robert Bentley’s first step into the living room, the back door blasted open. Out of the rattling shock, a dust-covered man burst toward him. Jacob’s long strides closed the distance and the Pistol came down on his enemy. Arm straight and stiff, he held the Dreyse automatic shoulder-high, squeezed off two shots, then a quick three more. On the stairs, Karl unslung his Mauser and let loose a spread of rounds at the crumpling policemen.

  Gunfire drummed at Robert Bentley and William Bryant from two directions. Their reflexes were spasmodic and useless. With naked hands, Sergeant Bryant moved to fend off the Dreyse’s muzzle flash, as if he were batting away a swarm of wasps. Too many, too fast and vicious for him to escape. In front of him, Sergeant Bentley made a better target.

  The roar of each gunshot buffeted the air. Rivka felt the thunderclaps explode in her ears, the blind bullets’ concussion; she tasted burned cloth. Somewhere in the cloud of noise, she howled, hoarse, rhythmic screams, the kind you’d hear pour from the mouths of women giving birth. But she screamed for God to carry her out of the slaughterhouse.

  Robert Bentley shouted, too, in shock and pain. The first bullet split his shoulder and twisted him square onto Jacob. The Pistol fired again. His second bullet plowed deep into the sergeant’s neck. Drop! Drop! Jacob willed him to the floor with emotion no different from his feeling ten minutes before when he was hammering through the toilet wall. What I want is on the other side of this. The seep of blood wet Robert Bentley’s collar, then spread inside his tunic, down his chest, as he fell backward.

  Which left William Bryant still standing. Bullets lashed into his arm and chest. Their rushing force flattened him against the doorjamb, where he dragged breath back into his empty lungs, lurched to escape, and fell face-first across Robert Bentley’s sprawled body. His attackers didn’t let him go; he didn’t move faster than they did. It was chance that got him, staggering, wounded, out of No. 11, dazed chance that pitched William Bryant toward Cutler Street and salvation.

  The liquid in Robert Bentley’s mouth tasted of seawater. Bloody fool. Fight fair and I can beat you without a gun. Oh, Father, what I’ve seen. This body’s no bloody use to them. The men what killed me they’re alive and no use. Do this to them. Somebody. Daddy or God. Point me to the skies. I’ll get myself out of this. Gone half eleven when. Because he wasn’t inside nobody heard the revolver click. Ain’t it, Bill? If he’d used the last of his strength to open his eyes, the dying sergeant would have caught sight of plainclothesman Woodhams scurrying down the cul-de-sac to his rescue, and heard the snap of Thomas Woodhams’s thighbone when a bullet from Karl’s Mauser blew it to splinters.

  A long sprint from the door, Daddy Tucker watched the same gun and the arm aiming it reach through the doorway. He was half-crouched, ready to rush the murderer, PC Strongman beside him, when another gunman sloped into the street from No. 11. Jacob walked toward the two policemen, raised his gun without a tremor, and shot twice. The bullet that struck Daddy Tucker in the hip twirled him into the wall; the wound in his heart dropped him. “We’re no danger to you!” Arthur Strongman said with an electrified stare. He bent down to drag Daddy Tucker out of the killer’s range, his eyes still fixed on Jacob, who bore down on him, firing into the dark, clearing the way with bullets, crushing them with his ecstasy. Under the streetlamp, before he fled back, the Pistol stopped and gave the constable a silent answer. Look at me. You can’t stop this. I’m your terror.

  Daddy Tucker died on the pavement of Cutler Street, propped against a wall. Two boys, Harry and Solomon Jacobs, knelt close to him. The last sensation he knew was Solomon’s hand shaking his shoulder. So Daddy Tucker’s last thought was of that comfort, A good stranger’s Christian mercy.

  “What is it outside?” Rivka clutched the sleeve of Nina’s dress.

  Rebuke flashed across Nina’s face. “Stay here, then. You can’t make it?”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Run. When he says.”

  Karl waved them downstairs. Nina’s nimble plunge down to him showed Rivka how quick she had to be. Already by the door, Yourka slipp
ed out behind Karl. “Go!” Max yelled at Rivka. His urgency hit her like a slap on a horse’s flank. She took two stairs in a jump, lost a shoe, fell against the banister.

  “Bastard cunt!” Max shouted behind her. His curse wasn’t at Rivka. The clear doorway stood blocked now by Walter Choate, big enough to fill it top to bottom and side to side. He tackled Karl and stopped him getting away. Max’s boot heel clipped Rivka’s chin as he bounded over her to hurl himself into the fight to free Karl from the policeman’s grip.

  In their wrestling dance, they fought close enough for one to smell the steam of the others’ breath. Walter Choate grabbed hold of Karl’s wrist, forced the Mauser’s barrel off him, and Karl fired once, again, again, again. Four loud eruptions froze Rivka to the stairs and a shallow arc of wounds riveted Constable Choate’s left side—his thigh, his calf, his foot—but he refused to drop. Then Jacob was on him. Precise as a craftsman, he punched two bullets into Walter Choate’s spine—but he refused to let go, leaking strength, melting into the pavement, dragging Karl down with him. Jacob jabbed the constable’s face with the butt of his revolver. Max shot at him, a single blast that found flesh but missed its target.

  Karl’s body bucked forward and, with a moan, he crumpled on top of Walter Choate. Mad-eyed, listening hard to follow the sound of running footfalls in Cutler Street, Yourka added his fists to the downpour pummeling the half-conscious policeman, who lay deaf and sinking into his small corner of oblivion. “Let go, you shit!” Jacob screamed in English at Walter Choate. “Your fucking hand! Let go!”

  As if balancing on a high ledge, her back flattened against the green shutters, Rivka edged around the entwined dying men. At the far end of the narrow carriageway, Nina waved at her, frantic, angry—hurry! don’t stop!—but Nina’s summons was blotted out by the blankness paralyzing Max. He read his own desolate fright in the mirror of Rivka’s face. At first, she thought he was offering his hand to give her courage and take the same from her. Then she saw the gun in it, the obscenity of its muzzle leveled at her stomach.