by H. P. Wood
“Enjoy your exile,” Gibson calls after him.
“Enjoy your ascent,” Spencer replies. “Just don’t look down.”
• • •
On his way out, Spencer stops by Charlie’s bedroom. He reckons the least he can do is grab a few books to bring him in Newport. Just something to tide Charlie over while they wait out the plague madness in safety. That’ll be nice, actually, he thinks. A little sea air, a little golf, maybe a lobster or three.
Fumbling around in the near dark, Spencer’s eyes fall on the book body Charlie assembled in his bed. Spencer realizes—slowly and not very happily—that these aren’t just any books. Every title is one the brothers read together during that grim, Bradford-framed summer. Dracula, The Red Badge of Courage, The Time Machine. And nestled on the pillow, right where Charlie’s head should have laid, is the book they read the most: a dog-eared Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale of a spoiled rich boy who learns to stop being such a jackass.
“See?” Charlie had joked at the time. “There’s hope for you yet, Spence!”
“You’re not funny, Chaz,” he’d said back then. He tells the empty bed the same thing tonight. But this time, his voice catches in his throat.
• • •
As dawn arrives, Spencer stands before the locked front doors of the Gravesend branch of the People’s Bank of Brooklyn. The bank won’t open for several hours, which gives him time to think. Too much time. He walks away from the bank, then walks back, then away again. Finally, he crosses the street and sits under a tree in the middle of the traffic median. The grassy area divides northbound traffic on Ocean Parkway from south. It’s not a common place for a Brooklyn prince to sit, and vehicles slow to peep at Spencer as they pass. He ignores them. If he were paying attention, he’d notice that the heavy traffic is heading north, away from Coney. But Spencer has other concerns.
The leather satchel sits by his feet, and he eyes it resentfully. He removes the deposit slip from the front pocket and glares at it awhile. Then he shoves it back in the pocket and gives the satchel a sharp kick.
“Give him his books, Dad,” he says. “Why couldn’t you let him have his damn books?”
Spencer replays his visit to the brownstone in his head, over and over, but he reaches the same conclusion every time. He’s the only person who’d go looking for Charlie, the only person who’d bother overturning those bedclothes…and Charlie knew it. Which means, unavoidably, that the book body with its Kipling brain was a message from little brother to big. And that message sure as hell wasn’t Come hide in Newport. It wasn’t Honor our father either. Charlie left the books as a reminder of the long talks they’d had that summer. Of everything they’d wanted to do and be that Charlie now could not.
There’s hope for you yet, Spence.
Spencer reaches into the pocket of the satchel and removes the deposit slip again. He holds it up to the sun. “‘Captains Courageous,’” he recites, “‘whom Death could not daunt.’”
He rips the paper in half. Then he puts the pieces together and rips them in half again. And again, and again, into smaller and smaller pieces.
Spencer opens his hands and lets the breeze carry the deposit confetti into the air over Ocean Parkway.
Chapter 29
Pretty Girl
An overripe tomato splats against the side of the taxicab, and Nazan nearly jumps out of her skin. As the tomato’s guts ooze down the window, she curses herself for being so easily rattled. Maybe Mother was right—she’s just a girl, and she should stay home, keep well away from all the madness and misery on the streets. No, she thinks. No. That morning, Nazan had packed a bag, refusing to tell her mother why, and counted out her meager pocket money. She’d splurged on one of the city’s red-and-green-paneled taxis because she knew time was running out.
“Sorry, miss,” says the cabbie. “Town of Gravesend ain’t usually so disrespectable. Dunno why the natives are so restless today.”
Enraged citizens crowd the sidewalk, a phalanx of policemen on horseback only barely keeping them from spilling into the street. Nazan’s stomach flip-flops. “I know why. It’s the quarantine.”
“Sorry, miss, the what? Did you say—”
An old woman skirts past the police line and dives in front of the cab.
“Whoa! Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph!” The cabbie stomps the brakes, stopping so quickly that Nazan nearly slides off the seat.
She sits back, brushing herself off in time to see the old woman shake her fist at the cab, her apple-doll face twisted in rage.
“You maggots!” she screams. “Who do you maggots think you—”
A police baton smashes the woman’s head, and she drops to the street like laundry falling off a line. From atop his horse, the policeman waves the carriage on.
“You all right back there, miss? Terrible sorry about the quick stop—I didn’t muss your pretty dress, did I?”
“I’m fine,” Nazan asserts. Perhaps if she says this enough, it will become true.
Before long, the cabbie has to stop the horse at the end of a line of horse-drawn wagons, panel trucks, and black Ford Models A through R. Men in khaki uniforms approach each vehicle in turn, leaning in the windows to converse with the drivers. One by one, the vehicles are allowed to pass or, more often, directed to turn around and head back into Brooklyn.
“What’s all this, then?” the cabbie wonders.
Nazan knows. “The quarantine is starting.”
“Why would—oh, the Cough?”
She nods. “They’re cutting off traffic onto Coney Island.”
“But ain’t the Cough all around the town nowadays? What use is it to man or beast to tie off one hand from the other?”
Nazan shrugs. “You didn’t hear? Someone tried to give the Cough to Roosevelt. They say it was anarchists.”
The cabbie turns around to face the backseat. “Jaysus, not our Teddy! They didn’t do Teddy like they done McKinley?”
His distress is so genuine that Nazan reaches out to pat the cabbie on the arm. “He’s fine. But the paper said that some of his aides took ill last night. As has Philander Knox, the attorney general. And Assemblyman Butler, a few others I forget. Probably more by now.”
“God almighty, just last night this was?”
Nazan nods. “The papers are blaming Coney—Sodom by the Sea and so on.”
“Jaysus and all the saints…”
“Did you really not hear?”
The cabbie shakes his head. “I’m a workin’ man, miss. No time for papers. But why is a pretty thing such as yourself going toward such a place?”
“You sound like my mother. I have friends there—new friends, but still. And after today, you’ll be on one side or the other, and that will be it. Everyone has to choose.”
Her own choice had been easy. She wasn’t going to sit around in her parents’ tearoom, getting older every day—not while there was so much going on in the real world. So very much to learn, Rosalind had told her. Nazan knows it’s high time she finds out what that might be.
• • •
While the city seethes and rages, Archie enjoys a leisurely lunch under the chandeliers at Gage & Tollner, an extravagant restaurant in downtown Brooklyn. He holds court with an assortment of much younger swindlers and thieves. Archie has seen so many come and go, he no longer bothers to learn their names. All he needs to know is that someone is picking up the check, and it isn’t him. He amiably stuffs himself with Lobster Newburg while they explain their plan to make the most of the quarantine.
Theirs is a black-market scheme, running food and sundries to the soon-to-be-locked-down population of Coney Island. It’s an all-right plan, Archie thinks. It’s just so damn tedious.
“And you see, Mr. Archibald,” one of them says, “we understand that you’re in a position to travel back and forth across the quara
ntine easily. Is that…accurate?”
“I may have some friends in inappropriate places.”
“So what do you think? We’ll cut you in. Say, 20 percent.” Someone else at the table coughs pointedly. “Maybe 17.5?”
Archie wipes his mouth with another man’s napkin and tosses it on the table. “Let me see if I follow you boys. Your big idea is to sneak tins of beans and tubes of toothpaste over the quarantine line? Glorified grocery shopping? Is that really a job for grown men?”
The man shrugs. “People need toothpaste.”
“What you boys need is ambition.”
“Oh really?” one of the younger men challenges. “What’s your big idea then?”
“What is this, confidence-scheme kindergarten?” But he leans back in his chair, relishing the attention despite himself. “Okay, fine. Maybe lobster makes me expansive. Here’s lesson one: never have one big idea—have multiple ideas. You never know what’ll fall apart and what’ll take off. Next, you’re thinking too small. People need toothpaste. Sure, but nobody cares about toothpaste. They can get toothpaste from anybody. What do they really care about?”
None of the younger men has the answer.
“People are dying, boys. They’re dropping like fleas out there. People are afraid. What they want, therefore, is to not be dying. Otherwise known as living. Truly living, in the moment, for right now. Living like you do when the world is ending.”
“But,” one of the men says, “you can’t sell that.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Archie sighs. “It’s the only thing worth selling.”
He checks the time on his pocket watch and stands up. “I appreciate the offer—really, I do. But you can keep your 17.5 percent of the toothpaste market. Me, I have to see a man about a lion.”
• • •
There’s a crisp knock on the side of the taxi. A man with a bushy black mustache and a crisp khaki uniform leans in. He wears a wide-brimmed hat and a badge marked Pinkerton National Detective Agency. “What’s your reason to cross?”
“’Tis me employ and calling to do so,” the cabbie replies.
“Best rethink it,” the man says. “Unless you intend to live under the Ferris wheel for the foreseeable future.”
Nazan leans forward. “Sir, I’ve hired this gentleman to take me across—he needs only drop me off, and he’ll return immediately.”
The man shakes his head. “Sorry, miss. We’re letting about a minute’s worth of vehicles through, and then it’s over.”
“But, sir, I have to—”
The man has already stopped listening. “No hot dogs today, little girl. Off you go.” He smacks the cab door and points. “Turn around over there.”
The cabbie turns around. “Miss,” he says, not unkindly. “You’ve had yourself a nice adventure, but it’s time to go home.”
“No, you don’t—”
“Coney Island’s too rough a place for you on a good day, never mind with all this going on. You’re a just pretty young thing. You should be—”
Nazan’s eyes flash. “Yes, call me pretty one more time.”
A white vehicle behind them gives out an impatient ah-ooh-gah, insisting the hansom cab get out of the way. Men in khaki wave grumpily at the cabbie that he should pull forward.
“I’m sorry, darlin’.” The cabbie turns back around. “But I have a family too. I can’t be risking getting caught on the wrong side, especially not with some pretty little—”
Nazan snaps. “I don’t care what you think, you cowardly old Mick! I am not going anywhere!”
In moments, Nazan has been deposited on the corner, and the cab takes off in a huff. “Sorry…” she calls. “Oh well.”
She looks around. At what is now literally the end of the street, a platform has been hastily erected. Half a dozen burly men stand on the platform, gazing blankly at the crowd like resentful Unusuals in a freak show. Unusuals don’t wear Pinkerton uniforms, though, and they don’t have rifles slung over their shoulders. A hostile audience of Gravesenders stands on the street below them, staring up at this most unwelcome of performances.
One Pinkerton man, smaller and more officious than the goons surrounding him, stands in the center of the platform. He lifts a bullhorn to address the crowd. “CONEY ISLAND IS UNDER QUARANTINE,” he announces. “PUBLIC GATHERINGS ARE UNSAFE. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. CONEY ISLAND IS UNDER QUARANTINE…”
All around, people fume and mutter to one another, complaints swirling like an angry summer wind. Some fear being closed off from the fishing boats that work the waters of Long Island Sound. How shall we eat? Many have jobs on the Coney side, which they’ll now not be able to reach. How shall we live?
A sad-eyed old man standing near Nazan shakes his head. “This no America,” he says to no one in particular. “This no America mine.”
• • •
Archie takes a trolley from downtown to Gravesend but finds he can ride no farther. The quarantine is on, all the streets are blocked, and Coney is sealed off from Brooklyn. Unless, of course, you are in possession of some rather colorful information about one of the city contractors who maintains the Brooklyn sewer lines—a memorable tale involving the contractor, three belly dancers, and a bishop. In which case, Coney is perhaps not entirely sealed off.
Making his way through the festering near-riot that surrounds the blockade, Archie spots a young woman who looks familiar. He can’t quite place her—really, twenty-year-olds all look alike these days—but he knows that he knows her. With her small piece of luggage, she looks like she’s going on a weekend holiday, but her expression suggests she’s forgotten where exactly. She looks lost, like she needs a savior. Or a partner.
Archie sizes her up. She’s pretty if you’re not too picky. She’d most likely get prettier if somebody convincingly told her she could be. The Mediterranean features are a bit of a problem; the Brit was better—every door opens to a face like hers. But still. He supposes he can spin her complexion as “exotic.” Worked all right with Yeshi, all those years ago.
“Pardon me, miss,” he says to her. Archie turns on his Southern affectation full blast. “Do you and I know each other?”
The young lady turns, first startled then relieved. “You’re Archie! We met at Magruder’s a few days ago. I was with Rosalind when Bernard…you know.”
Archie smiles too widely. “Oh, of course! You’re Spencer Reynolds’s little friend.”
She offers her hand, but she frowns. Not her favorite description ever. “Nazan Celik.”
“Of course, forgive me for not recalling. So what brings you here to the end of the world, Miss Celik?”
“Trying to get to Magruder’s to…see everyone, I guess. To see if I can help? But I can’t seem to get past the quarantine.”
Archie scoffs. “The quarantine is not a problem. Did you ever hear the one about the contractor, the belly dancers, and the bishop? Trust me, I can get you past the quarantine.” He takes the carnation out of his lapel and hands it to her. “Question is, what can you do for me?”
Chapter 30
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
Rosalind groans and rolls out of bed. Between the disturbing visions of Enzo’s captivity haunting his dreams and the violent sawing and hammering sounds drifting down from Timur’s lab, more sleep is not an option. He goes to the water closet to draw a bath. As he passes the stairs to the lab, he shouts up, “Keep it down! It’s barely dawn!”
“Bah!” is the only reply. And more hammering.
Rosalind grunts. At least Timur’s experiments in chemistry and electricity, while smelly and life-threatening, had been largely silent.
After a bath that should have been relaxing but was somehow not at all so, Rosalind pulls on his silk robe and heads down to the Cabinet, his hair still wet. There’s something that needs to be done, and unpleasant as it is, Rosalind knows it simp
ly can’t be put off any longer.
He fishes around in a drawer underneath the flea circus display. “Where are you?” he mutters.
When Zeph rounds the corner in his cart, Rosalind turns around guiltily, hands behind his back.
“Good morning, Zeph.”
“Morning, Ros. It’s okay. I fed ’em earlier.”
Rosalind holds up the jar he’d been hiding. P-Ray’s fleas. “You fed them?”
“’Course I did.” Zeph scratches his left hand, polka-dotted with bites. “Ain’t an altogether enjoyable experience.”
“I was going to drown them in the sink!”
“What would ya do that for?”
“They’re fleas! The Committee wouldn’t have come here if it weren’t for them. The Cough itself wouldn’t even… Zeph, how can you feed them?”
“Now, Ros…” Zeph moves his cart forward so that he can pat Rosalind’s arm. “I think you’re getting yourself a little worked up here. Little man’s been keeping those fleas long before this all started. You’re right—there’s bugs in this town that owe us one hell of an apology. But it ain’t these little guys’ fault.”
“It’s all their fault.”
“No, no. Now, put ’em back in the drawer.”
“Zeph—”
“I won’t have our boy come home to find his pets all got murdered. Come on, now.”
“But, Zeph…” Rosalind meets his eyes. Zeph isn’t kidding. Rosalind sighs. He tosses the jar back in the drawer and slams it shut. “It’s madness is what it is.”
“Yeah, little man can always get himself more fleas. Still—”
“No,” Rosalind says sharply. “It’s madness to pretend they’re ever coming home.”
“Aw, hey. We’ll figure something out. As we speak, Timur’s upstairs working on something.”
“I know. I can barely hear myself think because of it. But what could he possibly build? They’re in a hospital. An island hospital you can’t leave…a prison?” Rosalind laughs a little crazily and then starts to cry. “A pris-pital.”