by Peter Quinn
He met her on the way out. She seemed to believe it was a stroke of luck, and didn’t try to hide her surprise or delight. They talked on the steps till the other girls were gone. He walked her halfway home, and not knowing what else to do, gave a tip of his cap and said good-bye. He thought that seeing her once more would in some way help get his mind loose enough to think of other things. He was wrong. He spent the week with the same feeling as before, counting the days till he would be back in St. Stephen’s, both content and excited with her in view.
The next Sunday she didn’t pretend to be otherwise than pleased to see him again, and when they left the church, she led the way, in the opposite direction of where she lived, east, then north, up as far as the Central Park. Neither of them paid much attention to where they were.
They sat so close together on a bench that Dunne could smell the scent of the soap she used, fresh and flowery-like. A moment for saying what you feel if you was sure what it was and had the words.
“How long you been with the gas company?” The first time she asked a question like that. Nearby, a military band played a sprightly air.
“Too long.”
“Steady work, is it not?”
“Been thinkin’ of joinin’ the Army. Have some adventure.”
“And give up regular employment? Plenty of men in this city give whatever they got for a job like yours.”
The band stopped playing. They sat a few moments, without a word. He walked her home and took a quick leave. He skipped Mass the following week, but the thought of her was never far away. Had thought to see her yesterday, but Saturday the message came from Capshaw. It was a sharp reminder of what had drawn Margaret to his attention in the first place. He went up to see Capshaw that evening. Place was locked and quiet as a tomb. What game is the rat-nose playing now? Dunne wondered. Instead of going to St. Stephen’s on Sunday morning, he returned to Capshaw’s. A maid answered. Said Capshaw had left the morning before without a word as to where. Hadn’t come back that night. “Most unlike him,” she said.
Dunne had been sitting in the lobby of the New England all morning. What next? Wait another day for Capshaw and give him more time to spring a trap? He rolled and lit a cigarette, picked up the newspaper, skipped over columns of war news and opened to the inner page. His eyes fell on a column story on the lower right-hand side:
MURDER AT THE ELYSIAN FIELDS—
BLOODY EVIDENCE OF A FATAL ENCOUNTER
The inquest upon the body of an unknown man found murdered on Saturday, on the beach at the Elysian Fields, was commenced before Coroner F. W. Bonenstedt, at Hoboken, on Sunday forenoon. After the jury had been impanelled, they proceeded to the Fields, and there examined the evidence of a fatal encounter. A short distance before Sybil’s Cave, on the path beneath a leafy canopy, was found considerable blood spattered around, and indications of a deadly scuffle. There was a fresh mark upon a tree made with a blunt instrument, as though the person wielding it had missed his aim. Thence the body was dragged along, over rocks and ground, and, after the trousers had been removed, was hurled to the beach below. The back of the murdered man’s skull had been crushed with repeated blows, and there are, also, severe wounds on the temple and forehead. Except for a tattoo on the right hand, of an eagle inscribed with the letters “OSSB,” there were no distinguishing marks. As no person could give witness to the circumstances surrounding his death, and none could identify him, it was deemed probable he belonged to New York. Having inspected the scene of the crime, the jury adjourned its inquest until Monday. In the meantime the body will remain at the Coroner’s Office, for identification.
Must be thousands had that tattoo. OSSB. Old Stupid Sons of Bitches was what every Paddy knew it stood for. Order of the Star-Spangled Banner what the rat-noses claimed it did. Dunne had seen it on plenty of hands. Still, Capshaw being missing the same time this story appears—maybe nothing more than coincidence, but maybe something more. Could be Capshaw was done in over in the Elysian Fields. Be a long list of candidates with reasons for doing the job. Bedford would be one.
Or maybe that body on the beach wasn’t Capshaw’s at all. Maybe he merely dropped out of sight to spring his trap. Could be he’ll be heard from today.
Dunne put down the paper. He had waited this long. Give it another day, then pay a visit to the Bedford house. Unannounced.
II
BEDFORD FOUND THE STORY on the inside dexter page of the Tribune. It had been given no prominence. MURDER AT THE ELYSIAN FIELDS. He read it quickly until he reached the line “As no person could give witness to the circumstances surrounding his death, and none could identify him …” All he needed to know. He folded the paper and laid it on the floor.
Audley Ward sat at the other end of the table, absorbed in a book, the plate with the remains of his breakfast pushed aside. The maid appeared from the pantry. Bedford said, “No eggs today, Margaret, just coffee.” He cleared his throat. “By the way, Audley, I’ve decided to join Sarah in Long Branch.”
Ward looked up from his book. “Are you sure you’re in a condition to travel?”
“A few days away from the frenzy of the financial markets, I’ll be restored to new.”
“Must have been a terrible experience. Any mention in the papers?”
“No, and don’t expect there’ll be. Boating accidents aren’t sensational enough for our metropolitan sheets.”
“But for an engine to explode and gentlemen to be thrown into the sea and almost drowned, my God, if that isn’t worthy of reportage, what is?”
Bedford shrugged. “I’d think you’d be the last to be surprised by the poor judgment or bad taste of New York journalists.”
“Quite so.”
On Saturday night, home safe at last, Bedford had soaked for several hours in the tub. Exhausted, he had dozed off and awakened with a start to find Ward standing over him. “Charles,” Ward had said, “are you hurt? There’s blood on the stairs and I’m told you were in an accident. Shall I summon a physician? Have the police been notified?”
Bedford had sputtered something about accepting an invitation from an acquaintance to take a pleasure ride in his new steam-driven boat, a short jaunt around the harbor. They were returning to the pier when the engine suddenly exploded, hurling them into the water. Luckily, despite some superficial cuts and bruises, no one had been killed, and a passing ferry had plucked them from the harbor.
Ward shook his head. “The power of the steam engine is truly Mephistophelian. We regard it as our salvation, but it may well prove an instrument of damnation.”
After his bath, Bedford went directly to bed, lay down wet and naked on the sheets, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep that lasted into the late morning. When he awoke, he knew exactly what he would do. It would require no great preparation. Pack some clothes. Put the contents of the safe into a carpetbag. Travel light. No one must suspect.
“When are you leaving?” Ward asked.
“The noon boat. Have some business to attend to in the office, then I’ll be off. Expect you’ll make sure nobody runs off with the place while I’m gone.”
“Have no fear,” Ward said. “‘Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye; and where care lodges, sleep will never lie.’ Remember me to Sarah.” He went back to his reading.
Bedford gulped his coffee. He left the table, went into the library, opened the safe, removed the small wrapped stacks of greenbacks, and put them into a carpetbag. He walked quickly past the dining room. Ward’s lowery face was buried in his book. Bedford stood by the front door, glanced at himself in the mirror in its gilded cartouche, took a peach-colored tea rose from the vase beside it, and made a boutonniere. Andrew, the coachman, came in, his coat already stained with perspiration. A faint whiff of horse manure clung to-him. Bedford lifted his lapel to his’nose, smelled the rose.
“Your bags, sir?” Andrew said.
Bedford pointed to the leather traveling bag that the maid had set beside the door. “That you may take.�
� He put his hand on the carpetbag, which rested next to the vase of roses on the small Oriental-style table. “This I will carry myself.”
Bedford stepped back into the hallway. He remembered the day he had arrived with Sarah and Ward. Her amazement and delight. A house to wonder at. How happy they would be in this place. How content. How quickly they had come to feel it was inadequate, too narrow and contained, unworthy of their aspirations. He put on his hat, looked once again in the mirror, made a last adjustment to his cravat, and went out. The coach was at the curb. Andrew held the door open. Bedford climbed in, set the carpetbag in his lap, wrapped his arms around it.
As the coach pulled away, Bedford looked back and glimpsed the facade a last time. How easy, he thought, to be deceived. Like so much of New York, his house seemed to have been there forever, but it was merely a piece of the ceaseless cycle of build up and tear down, today a towering rectangle of brown granite, tomorrow a decaying ruin in which fifteen families of louse-ridden foreigners slept in warrens jigsawed out of the old space. The day after that, who could know? A pile of rubble carted away as landfill for the city’s ocean-eating shoreline, its place taken perhaps by some taller, grander building, the inhabitants deluding themselves into believing that the process of change had stopped until another wave of foreigners descended and the new structure, like its predecessor, ended its days as landfill.
In a moment, they turned onto the avenue. Bedford ran the morning’s schedule through his mind, everything to proceed as usual: Read the mail, see to the appointments, visit the Exchange, pay a call at Old Tom’s, same table as usual, same order, mutton chop, freshly baked bread, coffee with a shot of brandy in it. He had no taste for the new fashion in food, French sauces, sherbets, souffles, the rage for champagne. That drink most of all. Bubbles. Who needed such reminders of the money business?
Just above Union Square, the heavy flow of traffic was brought nearly to a halt by a crew of Paddy workmen demolishing the walls of a squat, sagging structure that might once have been a tavern on what was then the Bloomingdale Road. It was dwarfed by the surrounding structures, the old country road having been transformed into a bustling artery of city life. The workers swung their iron bars into the walls and sent bricks tumbling down into the street. A cloud of fine dust covered the workmen in white, making them seem like ghostly inhabitants the demolition had exposed to view.
Bedford sighed at the thought of all the possibilities he was leaving behind. The new building would undoubtedly be several stories taller than the old. Perhaps it would have one of the new vertical railroads to carry people to the higher elevations. Who knew where it would stop? More possibilities by the day. In London, the Metropolitan Railway was operating underground trains that avoided the tangled chaos of the streets. People traveled in style, heavy carpets on the floor, richly upholstered seats, paneled walls, lighting supplied by incandescent gas drawn from India-rubber bags mounted on the roof. Cost two and a half million pounds to build. The profits would eventually be at least a hundred times that. How long before New York had a Metropolitan Railway of its own?
Below Union Square, the traffic began to move again, but there was soon another bottleneck and the coach swung onto Houston Street, following a familiar detour down Allen, across Division, through Chatham Square to Pearl. When they reached Chatham Square, the traffic was thick again. They came to a halt. Bedford tapped the pane high on the wall in front of him. Andrew’s sweat-drenched face appeared.
“There’s terrible congestion today, sir. Work stoppages and the like, a lot of people addin’ to the normal delays.”
“I’ll walk the rest of the way,” Bedford said. He got out, carpetbag in hand.
“Fierce day for walkin’, sir, specially with a bag.”
“Do me good. Go to the boat and deposit the luggage. I’ll make my way directly there when I’m finished at the office.”
“Whatever suits you, sir.”
In front of a row of secondhand-clothing stores, clerks dragged out racks of jackets and pants. They unfolded canvas awnings to protect their merchandise from the sun. A squad of soldiers marched down Park Row in the direction of City Hall. Bedford remembered that General Zook’s funeral was today: A fallen hero of Gettysburg, Zook had helped defeat a gold boom. Now, in death, he was helping foul up the traffic.
The office was quiet. Bedford put the carpetbag beneath his desk and rested his feet on it. He reviewed his calendar. Only one appointment. A broker from Philadelphia who had requested a meeting by letter several weeks before. The missive had been florid and overblown, promising an opportunity for instant riches “unseen since the days when the Phrygian king could, by mere touch, turn coarse elements into gold.” When the broker was ushered in, he proved to be a match for his literary style. Ample of flesh, with a flowing mustache and a large pearl ring on his right middle finger, the visitor from Philadelphia spoke in a theatrical whisper, as if afraid someone might have his ear pressed to the wall. He began with an account of the recent cholera epidemic in his city and the ravages it had inflicted. His voice sank lower. The strangest phenomenon had occurred, he said. In one particularly dilapidated quarter, where the Paddies were all crammed together with their usual disregard for cleanliness or sobriety, a district where you would expect the cholera to thrive, there had been only a few cases, and those relatively mild. The medical authorities ascribed it to happenstance, a change in the wind. The Paddies attributed it to the Virgin and held a special service in her honor. But his interest aroused, the visitor said in a voice so small that Bedford had to lean forward to hear, he found both explanations inadequate and set out on his own to discover the true cause. He made a visit to the district and immediately noticed that it was dominated by gasworks, gigantic tubs of iron that commanded the eye and the contents of which demanded the attention of the nose. After several weeks of inquiry, he ascertained not only that the cholera had barely touched the neighborhood but that the incidence of dysentery and autumnal fever had approached zero. The broker sat back in his chair and paused, as if to let the facts he had related sink in.
Bedford suddenly had a deeper appreciation of the desperate nature of his own existence these past months. Sitting in front of him was a second-rate promoter in search of gullible investors. The thought that he had even bothered to respond to the man’s request for an appointment, that the letter alone hadn’t tipped him off to the confidence man behind it, made Bedford feel sad and a little depressed. How far he had fallen!
“You see, Mr. Bedford,” the stout visitor said, “I have stumbled on an investment opportunity of huge proportions. If you’ll forgive the pun, it’s been right there beneath my nose all the time!” He leaned in close to Bedford’s ear: “The salubrious properties of gas! Sir, it is as though the Sangreal itself has been dropped into my lap!” He stood and raised his hands to heaven, revealing two wet circles of perspiration in the armpits of his coat. He began to enumerate the blessings that would fall on those perspicacious enough to put capital behind his discovery.
Bedford sent the man off with the promise to give serious thought to his proposals. As soon as he was alone, Bedford deposited in the trash the ream of papers his visitor had left with him. He decided to forgo a last visit to the Exchange. He didn’t want his ponderous sadness to be their last memory of him: the hunched shoulders and dolorous face shared by all those defeated on the Street. He went directly to Old Tom’s and ordered his regular meal, but except for the brandied coffee, he left it untouched. The place was almost deserted.
Bedford paid his bill. The cashier was a young white man with a badly pocked face whom Bedford had never seen before. The cashier nodded toward the knot of colored waiters huddled in conversation in the corner. “Their nerves is all ajangle with the fuss over the draft. Was a drunken Paddy in here this morning screamin’ how the time had come to set the nigger in his place.” The cashier smiled as he spoke.
“The service was fine,” Bedford said. “Same as always.” He was unsure which
of the colored men had served him. They all wore the same solemn expression. Old men with sugar-sprinkled kink, it seemed they had always been this way, as ancient and serious this morning as the day he had his first meal there.
When he came out of the cool interior of Old Tom’s, the sun dazed him and made him feel faint. He grasped the carpetbag tightly and walked up to the corner of Vesey. By now the bag Andrew had put aboard ship was destined to sail alone to Long Branch. Bedford looked up at the clock in the steeple of St. Paul’s Church. A half hour before the boat to Albany sailed. Connections to all points west.
Tears welled up in his eyes. An overwhelming sense of finality took hold of him, and a tremor ran through his body. The city he had set out to conquer had taken back everything he had wrested from it: house, business, wife, reputation, the respect of his peers. All gone. For an instant he felt paralyzed with fear, and then he remembered that years ago, when still a boy, he had stood on this very corner with Stark, who had pointed out this was where the great John Jacob Astor had once lived. “Was a step up in the world for the young German immigrant,” Stark said. “But the dull Teuton and his plodding wife were not seduced by their progress. Though the surroundings were more substantial than they’d known before, they filled the rooms with foul-smelling furs and skins, boarded the windows against thieves, and relentlessly plowed their profits into real estate, money breeding money until it compounded into an imperial fortune!”
Bedford lifted his carpetbag, felt its weight. A good deal more than Astor had started with. His melancholy retreated a bit. Across the street, in the graveyard of St. Paul’s, a row of green and gold flowers drooped with the heat, their heads bowed toward Wall Street. They did not toil or sow, but fortunes had been built on such as them. He recalled more of Stark’s musings on the mysteries of man’s relationship to money, how Europe had once been dotted with tulip exchanges that housed a manic bidding for bulbs. “The bubble burst,” Stark had related, “but by then the wise had taken their profits and gone on to safer investments.”