by Peter Quinn
Bedford had the feeling that fate had turned against him, that no matter what he invested in or didn’t invest in, it would be the wrong decision. He went home most nights. The war had interrupted Sarah’s periodic visits to England, but a steady stream of traffic came the other way. Usually there were two or three British guests in the house, most of them self-styled poets or philosophers who always seemed to find the house too stuffy or the streets too dirty or the help too forward and familiar. At dinner they prattled on about the war. Bedford barely listened, and Sarah grew angry at his inattentiveness. Some evenings they put on theatricals in the parlor, elaborate productions that required weeks of rehearsals. Bedford would stay for a few minutes, then go to his room. He didn’t despise Sarah, but he understood that his desire for her had been flamed by her inaccessibility. Like success, wealth, a fine home, his own firm, Sarah had dangled at the end of the branch, far out of reach. But eventually it had all fallen into his lap, and Sarah with it. She was more calculating than her uncle; Bedford had always understood that and didn’t resent it. If she had fallen into his lap, it was because she had climbed into the tree and taken aim at where he sat below. He could provide her with the things she wanted and had no other way of obtaining. But he had come to find her tedious. In this, too, she surpassed her uncle. Her conversation always dwelt on the arts, aesthetics, the realm of the beautiful and the true, and in it was the implication that Bedford spent his days in the basest of activities.
Morrissey’s was a place to go instead of home. Bedford couldn’t remember precisely when he began to make a nightly visit. He came for several weeks just to watch Halsey, who never matched his performance of that first evening. Gradually Bedford learned the game. Once in a while, he placed a bet. The first time that he waged heavily, he held his own. Across the next few weeks he continued to stay even, losing one night, winning the next, never straying too far in either direction. Faro absorbed more and more of his attention. At the office, he played faro in his head. On an evening in early June, he won close to $3,500. In August, he and Halsey traveled on the Rip Van Winkle to Albany and hired a coach to take them to Saratoga. They spent a week at the place Morrissey ran there in the summer, and both of them were stung by the size of their losses. On the night boat back down the Hudson, Bedford couldn’t sleep. He sat on the deck and smoked cheroots. The sky was starless. The paddle wheel slapped steadily, softly, on the water, a happy sound. Bedford felt a surge of hope. He wouldn’t despair. Look at the twists that fate had taken in the past fifteen years. He lived under a lucky star, which although locked for a moment behind the night clouds was up there somewhere, shining. Something would come along at the right moment, the way it had done that day on Spruce Street when he saw the advertisement for Stark and Evans outside the Tribune offices. He fell asleep on deck. In the morning he woke up with a painful stiff neck. His clothes were soaked with morning dew and the river mist. When the boat pulled into the berth on the North River, the city was barely visible through the cloud of heat and dirt and coal dust that enveloped it.
A crowd at the end of the pier waved the boat off. The engines went into reverse and turned the water into foam. There was a small knot of policemen hauling something out of the water. Bedford stood at the railing. At the end of the policemen’s rope was a body so bloated that it had burst the seams of its clothing, which hung on it like so many rags. A deckhand stood next to Bedford. He said, “Never fails, we get one of these almost every time. If they gotta kill ’emselves, I wish they’d do everyone a favor and jump into the Hell Gate, where they wouldn’t interfere none with the river traffic.”
Back in the office, Bedford pored over the books. His own finances and those of the firm were sinking even faster. He began going to Morrissey’s every night. His luck had to change. Instead, he piled loss on top of loss. Halsey did the same, and soon their names were linked. The Faro Twins. Broadway’s biggest losers. It was Halsey who started swiping bearer bonds from some of the brokers he represented on the Curb and fencing them with somebody he knew uptown. Bedford resisted as long as he could. He kept waiting on luck. Finally he asked Halsey for the name and address.
He had been to Capshaw’s several times now. He had the feeling that Halsey had spilled his guts out to him, which meant that Capshaw knew all about their indebtedness to Morrissey. That afternoon Capshaw had pointed out a man walking up and down on the other side of the street from his house.
“I think it’s a copper,” said Capshaw. “Maybe he followed ya.”
“A Metropolitan? Impossible,” said Bedford.
The man was walking in a driving rain, his hat pulled down so that his face was obscured.
“Then maybe he’s someone’s henchman come to make sure you’ll be getting what ya need to satisfy his boss. Either case you better leave me something I can give ’em if they come knockin’ and askin’ questions.”
“Something to give them?”
Capshaw slid one palm across the other. “Oil upon the troubled waters. Gelt.”
Capshaw sent him out the back door to avoid whoever it was keeping guard in the front. There were only a few rows of houses in back of Capshaw’s. East of Lexington Avenue, except for scattered settlements of squatters, empty fields ran down to the river. He climbed to the top of the fence and looked around to see if there was someone keeping watch there as well. It seemed clear. He swung his legs over the fence, but his right boot got caught and he tumbled into the mud. Capshaw was going to try to blackmail him. He had dug a deeper hole for himself. He lay there for a minute to get his breath. If the Hindoos were right, if life were truly a cycle, this must be the lowest point of the wheel. He could fall no farther. He picked himself up. There was a message from Halsey waiting for him when he got home. They had to meet at the Trump this evening. It was urgent, the note said.
Bedford stood. He pulled his trousers back up and buttoned his fly. To hell with Halsey. He had to find the money to repair his business and to pay off Morrissey. Then one way or another he would have to deal with Capshaw. He pulled the chain that hung down from the water tank. He listened to the water course down the pipe into the bowl beneath.
Here was wealth.
Water that flowed through the Croton system from upstate to the distributing reservoir at Forty-second Street, water from the mere turn of a tap or the tug of a chain, water at ten dollars a month flowing down tubes to sweep away the body’s waste and dirt, water to drink, to wash with, to let the children splash in. Water: a result of New York’s wealth and a cause of it. Wealth created by the mingling of the waters when Clinton’s canal united Lake Erie and the Hudson, the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, the harvest of a virgin continent flowing west. Water to carry barges filled with coal, driving down its price, affordable coal for factories and for homes, the source of a new and better heat, coal to make water into steam, driving new engines and new machines, generating new industries and new ways of transport, coal gas to light homes, to banish the shadowy light of candles and whale oil. Water on every side. East River, North River, the Harbor, the Sound. Water brought down in frozen blocks from Saranac and Champlain, cut and sold, delivered to homes for the preservation of food, shipped as far south as Cuba. Water to skate on in the winter, to sit by in the summer. Water: the great divide between the haves and the have-nots, the washed and the great unwashed, the primeval source of life, the spawning pond of the bourgeoisie.
He understood wealth because he had been born without it: The rich didn’t stay rich because of some inner quality, of some God-infused nobility. They had their hand on the chain. They controlled the flow of whatever it was the people needed or thought they needed or were persuaded they needed.
Wealth wasn’t a question of blood. It was a question of water. He put the Tribune on the washstand next to the toilet. His eyes fell to the bottom of the page. There was a sharp advance in gold this morning on the news from Charleston and Vicksburg. If defeat came, if it came by summer, whoever had bought gold low would have his ha
nd on the chain. A defeated North would cry for it, Cooke and his cabal sent packing, federal bonds and greenbacks as worthless as fish wrappings.
It would be a gamble. The greatest game of faro ever: winning a personal fortune by betting everything he had that the Union would be a loser.
He grasped the chain and pulled it down.
No, the gambling was over. Here was the dictate of fate, a voice as clear as the water sounding through the pipe: Buy gold—all you can get your hands on.
MAY 15, 1863
There are two large sections to society: those with more dinners than appetite, those with more appetite than dinners.
—Nicolas Chamfort
I
HE STROKED HER HEAD, mussed and smoothed the hair, dug deeper, down her back, elasticity of skin, hard muscle, steady hum of pleasure, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop. The vibration rippled across lap and legs down into his crotch. Suddenly she turned and looked at him.
Cat’s eyes.
Dunne stopped. The cat shifted about on his lap, clawed at the woolen nubs of his trousers. Unblinking eyes, as emotionless as a whore’s. Why was it that he noticed their eyes? Others didn’t. Took their pleasure, in and out, and it was enough. Not that he hadn’t, but why wasn’t it enough? The cat muzzled Dunne’s hand. He raked his fingers through fur the color of weak tea, brown, red, golden tint of gaslight. He moved his hand in long, slow strokes. The tautness in her body flowed away as the weight of her body sank into his lap.
Across the lobby of the New England Hotel sat two military officers, one reading the Tribune, the other puffing a cigar and staring at the passing whores. A red-haired girl, her hair piled atop her head beneath a hat the shape of a butterfly, noticed him watching. She tapped on the window, pulled back the lapels of her jacket, exposing the top of her well-formed breasts, ran her tongue over her painted lips, and made a stroking motion with her hand, up and down, up and down. Without a word to his companion, the officer stood and went out the door. In an instant, he returned, whispered something to the face behind the paper, and stuck the cigar back into his mouth. He strode across the lobby and, like a locomotive pulling into a station, left a fulsome wake of smoke as he went up the stairs. A moment later the whore followed.
The cat rolled onto her side, stretched, put a paw across her eyes. Dunne scratched beneath her chin. She seemed to smile.
Down the same stairs the officer had just gone up came Jack Mulcahey, the minstrel performer, arm in arm with his cocoa-colored mistress, Eliza, a Cuban or a nigger depending on whom you talked to. They walked toward the bar, Mulcahey with that slight exaggeration to his step, up on the heel, down on the toe, a strut he carried with him on and off the stage. Behind them was Squirt, the nigger kid with freckles and kink the color of brick, who always stuck close to Mulcahey, usually seeing to it that the star of Brownlee’s Minstrel Parade, “The Nonpareil of Ethiopian Impersonation,” made it to the theatre on time. Dunne had heard it said that Squirt was Eliza and Mulcahey’s son, but if he were, he had none of his mother’s fine looks. More likely he was the result of a Five Points’ amalgamation, a few minutes’ worth of in and out on the floor of some dive.
Mulcahey stopped at the entrance to the bar, a few feet from Dunne. “You go ahead,” he said to Squirt in a loud, theatrical voice.
“Come on, Jack,” Squirt said. “You can stop later. We ain’t got much time.”
Eliza took her arm out of Mulcahey’s. “You should leave now,” she said. “It’s already late.”
“Among my many talents is that of telling what hour it is. There is enough time to allow a moment of refreshment.”
Eliza said nothing. She walked out the door.
Dunne moved his hand down the cat’s chin and neck into the tufted fur of her belly. She stiffened, clutched his hand between her paws, and sunk her teeth into his knuckle. He pulled away with such force that his elbow banged loudly against the wall.
The cat jumped to the floor, darted through the legs of several passersby, and disappeared into the bar.
Mulcahey laughed. “Your first encounter with Cassandra, I take it?”
Dunne knew Mulcahey from passing him in the lobby. No names, just a nod.
“Our house feline has taught you two valuable lessons. First, before you touch a woman, always get to know her. Second, if you touch her where she doesn’t want to be touched, be prepared to pay the price.”
“Oh, Jack,” Squirt said, “quit your gabbing and come on.”
“Go ye and prepare a place for me,” Mulcahey said. He turned to Dunne. “And you, my friend, come with me. I’ll give you a proper introduction to Cassandra and show you how to touch her without losing a finger.”
Dunne sucked the wound on his knuckle. Cassandra had drawn blood. “Got an engagement to keep,” he said. “Some other time.”
The crowd in the barroom had caught sight of Mulcahey and called for him to come in. He put his hat and gloves in the chair where Dunne had been sitting and entered with a flourish, jumping to his right, sliding to his left, going up on the heels, then on the toes, and singing in a deep baritone:
Oh, boys, carry me long; carry me till I die!
Carry me down to de buryin’ groun’.
Massa, don’t you cry!
Cassandra was on the bar. She meowed when Jack sang. He picked her up, cradled her in his arms, put his face in hers, rubbed his cheek on hers, the whiskers brushing across his nose. He scratched chin, neck, belly. She lay limp and content in his arms. He held up his unwounded hand for Dunne to see and shouted, “Come on! I’ll show you how it’s done! You’ll never be bitten by the feminine animal again!”
Dunne shook his head. The whore in the butterfly hat came past him and grabbed the arm of a woman who stood by the door, a short, thickset whore in a black cape whom Dunne hadn’t noticed.
“Oh, those military men!” the whore in the butterfly hat said, her voice distinctly Irish. “Give me one every time. Come quicker than a gnat can blink!”
“God’s gift to the trade!” said the other whore. “So ready to shoot and no time to reload.” They went out into the street, their laughter echoing behind. Dunne followed them as far as Canal. Thought about stopping at Tomoline’s for a shave, eighteen barbers amid acres of marble and glass, open twenty-four hours. Always seemed to be busy. He decided not to dawdle. The scene with Mulcahey had left him uneasy. A Dandy Dan commandment: Avoid boardinghouses and any establishment that caters to clerks and salesmen. Such places are the antechamber to the penitentiary. Either the landlady will rat you out or some nosing jake will sell you out. Stick to hotels, preferably the theatrical kind. But even in a theatrical hotel, people got to know you, started wondering, questioning, prying in a cordial kind of way.
The whores Dunne had followed out of the hotel each picked up a soldier on the corner of Canal. Dunne walked to Broadway. In the middle of the traffic, only a few yards away, was the swaying bulk of a Broadway stagecoach. When it drew close, he darted out, pirouetted around the mounds of fresh horse droppings, grabbed the vertical iron bar on the rear, and swung himself up. Inside, the seats were taken by the usual complement of flour-faced clerks in ill-fitting coats, just now setting out for some distant northern quarter of the city. Once they married, this is what they did, migrated to the barren outlands, where a house could be bought for what it cost to rent a single room in or near a respectable part of the city. A few read the paper, squinting in the lantern light at the columns of figures on the back pages. Most stared at their ink-stained hands, as smeared as any ditchdigger’s, and shuffled their feet in the mud-colored straw spread across the floor. None looked up at Dunne or took any notice of the sidewalks outside, noisy with the hubbub of theatregoers and the patrons of minstrel shows. They might as well be traveling across the emptiness of the western territories, Dunne thought, and yet he envied the destination they had, a warm, familiar place where they would be welcome and secure, wives to look after them, no worry that the Metropolitans would soon
be banging on the door.
As the coach approached Houston, the fare collector made his rounds. Dunne jumped off before he had to pay his half dime. Always a pleasure to avoid further enriching the owners of the coach and horsecar franchises. He walked east, past Mulberry and the headquarters of the Metropolitans, a purpose to his step. There was no more time to waste. Little sense in moving again to another hotel. He would put all his energy into finding what it was Waldo Capshaw was really up to, and short of approaching Morrissey himself, there was only one man to talk to, one endless source of stories, rumors, news, facts, and fables, one ceaseless chronicler of the sins and passions of the metropolis: One-Eyed Jack Cassidy.
“Cassidy is to talk,” Dandy Dan used to say, “what Niagara is to water.”
Cassidy and Dandy Dan had grown up together. “FIGS” is what they called themselves: First Irish in Greenwich Street. Their families lived above the same stable, picked their food from the same refuse heaps, the children watching out for one another. As youngsters Jack and Dan were inseparable, but where Dandy Dan went on to make his way in the world through quiet and studious attention to the details of his work, One-Eyed Jack had no occupation except talk.
Originally Cassidy had been dubbed by those who knew him Rat-a-tat Jack, his mouth going all the time like one of those floorboard castanets the minstrels continually banged. He became One-Eyed Jack in the summer of ’57, the time of the Battle of Paradise Square. Everybody knew it was coming. Dandy Dan warned Dunne to stay away, but there was no way he could. On July 4th, the Paddy gangs did what they had long threatened to do. With Brickabat Bob Sweeney at the head of the Dead Rabbits and Savage Sam Foley at the head of the Plug Uglies, they descended on the headquarters of the Bowery Boys and the Atlantic Guards and wrecked the places. Forgetting for the moment whatever bad blood there was between the Rabbits and the Pluggies, Sweeney proclaimed a final victory over the “shit-scum Yankees” and concluded his speech, “May Bill ‘the Butcher’ Poole rot in hell forever!”