by Paddy Hirsch
Umar led them across the open, airy courtyard into a low building. They walked along a dark passageway into a large room, furnished with soft chairs. There were hangings on the walls, and several carpets scattered over a wooden floor. A polished dining table was set with an ornate candelabra and a large cutlery box made of pewter. There was a sweet scent in the air.
Umar pointed them towards the chairs. One of the women in gray shifts appeared with a tall, silver pot, and a collection of small glasses.
“Mint tea,” Umar said, as the woman poured. Kerry’s mouth was almost painfully dry. She waited until Umar had drained his own glass before she sipped the drink. It was strong and sweet, but refreshing.
Umar smiled at her. “You call this place Jericho. I call it Mimo. In my language, it means sanctuary. A safe place. You will be safe here.”
His voice was smooth and soft in her ears. Her tongue felt warm and thick in her mouth. There was a light pressure inside her skull, and she giggled at the thought of her brain growing, like a balloon expanding inside her head. Umar was talking, his voice low and easy, like a caress. She lay back in her chair and looked around. The other girls were lying back, too. Tanny was already asleep, her mouth slightly open. She was snoring. Kerry giggled again. And that was all.
* * *
She stared at Umar, crouched on the stool beside her bed. Her brain had divided into two. Half of it, or perhaps most of it, was stupefied. But a small part of her was still razor sharp. It told her the incense she had breathed the night before was some kind of drug, and the mint tea was likely doped as well. Umar had drunk the same tea and breathed the same air, so it was clear that he had developed some kind of tolerance, but to the women, who were only used to strong drink, and perhaps not even that, the drug was highly effective.
The clear, insistent voice in her head spoke on. It told her that Umar knew who she was, and had known from the outset, and that she should have realized it the moment he included Tanny in his invitation to supper the night before. Lew had told her that Umar appeared only interested in white women. Which meant that Tanny could be in trouble.
Umar went to the sconce opposite Kerry. It held a candle and a kind of wire box, designed so that a small dish could be set above the candle flame. Umar used a cloth to remove the dish, and tipped its smoldering contents on the floor. He stamped them out, then did the same with the other sconce. He left the door ajar and sat down on the stool.
“Where is Tanny?” She could barely whisper.
Umar grinned. “How wonderfully selfless of you. To think of your partner in subterfuge before yourself. Don’t worry. I am taking care of her. She is not what I typically look for when I seek out additions to my stable, but I have learned recently that one or two of my clients like an occasional dip in the dark pool. So she might be of use. Not least as a reminder to you.”
She said nothing.
Umar watched her. “I meant what I said last night. Do you remember? I said you are safe here. And you are. Even though you are a spy. Nothing will happen to you. But you must listen carefully to what I tell you now, and you must promise to do what I say. Do you?”
Kerry felt a huge weight on her chest, as though something was pressing her into the thin mattress.
“Your cousin’s men have surrounded the place,” Umar said. “No doubt they are waiting for some kind of a message or signal from you. No such signal will come, of course, and after a day, he will assume that you are a hostage, which is precisely what I want.”
“He won’t care.”
“You’re wrong. His pimp’s heart may be mostly turned to stone, but my spies tell me there is one spot, as soft as a silken cushion, that he retains for you. So you can imagine how pleased I was to see you at the gathering last night, dressed in your ridiculous disguise. You make a poor whore, Kerry. You should stick to dressing as a man.”
Her eyes were heavy. He grasped the door to the cell and swung it quickly back and forth several times, dragging what smoke there still was in the room into the black corridor outside.
He sat back again. “You are my insurance, Kerry. Owens and Flanagan are preparing to attack me, but you will keep them off balance.” He held up a finger. “Now I know that devious mind of yours is already scheming ways to escape or get word to your cousin, but I must warn you, if you make any such attempt, you will suffer for it.”
He bent and picked up the instrument that he had placed on the floor. She had thought they were tongs for putting coals on the fire, but up close she saw they were pincers, a huge V of black iron, with two brutal points like the fangs of a snake at each end.
“Do you know what this is?” His tone was light, conversational.
She shook her head.
“It’s an ancient tool, used for punishing adulterous women. It looks crude, but it is carefully designed.” He reversed the pincers, and pushed the fangs against his chest, above his heart. “These points are placed thus, above and below the offending woman’s breast. And then the pincer is closed.”
The iron made a scraping sound as the fangs slid together. “The points are not particularly sharp, as you see, but when enough pressure is applied, they penetrate the skin, and cut into the flesh around and behind the breast. Once the pincer is fully closed, the breast can be torn quite easily from the woman’s body.”
He turned the instrument in the air, as though inspecting it for the first time. “The breast-ripper causes a great deal of pain, of course. That is its purpose. But I have not determined whether women with heavier breasts find its application more painful than those that are less well-endowed.”
She said nothing. Her throat seemed to have closed tight.
His eyes glittered. “I can see the rage in your eyes, Kerry.”
She was boiling with it. Her mind felt as though it was on fire, screaming at her to hurl herself at him and tear his eyes out. But her body was slack and useless, still sodden with the drug. And then he spoke again, and the fire inside her turned into ice.
“I would not use this on you, of course. You are too valuable to me. But young Antoinette? Now, she has a fine set of heavers, has she not? I imagine she would suffer considerably if I punished her.”
He snapped the pincers together, clack, clack, clack.
“And I shall punish her, if you do not do exactly as you are told. Do you understand?”
Kerry nodded. She understood perfectly. Umar was evil, a man who trapped women and sold them, and who would not hesitate to tear their flesh from them, to further his ends and gratify himself. She believed every word he said. He was the Devil.
TWENTY
Justy sat shoulder to shoulder with Hardluck on the narrow driver’s seat of the carriage. He had surprised the driver by climbing on top of the cab, insisting he needed the air. He had lain awake until long past midnight, worrying. He had gone from the gathering to The Merchant’s to meet Chase Beaulieu, but Beaulieu had not come, and Justy had sat in the noisy coffee shop, wondering why Kerry had been talking to Umar, all dressed up like a doxy. His fears had pursued him all the way to his lodgings, like a bad smell, and kept him up until the small hours. Sleep had come, eventually, but the same unremembered dream had come with it, and he had woken with his sense of panic redoubled from the previous day.
Hardluck was still dressed in his white coat and breeches.
“Do you not have any other duds?” Justy asked.
“No, sir. This is all I ever wear. I’ve no need for other clothes.”
“What about when you clean the carriage, or muck out?”
Hardluck frowned. “I generally do so in my drawers, sir.”
Justy felt the anger lift in him, like hot water in a pot. “Well, you’ll be a free man by the end of the week. And then you’ll never have to wear a ridiculous rig like this again.”
The driver said nothing.
“You don’t seem very enthused by the prospect of freedom, if I may say.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Justy la
ughed. “I have to say, I fancied I’d get a rather different response.”
Hardluck pulled gently on the reins to steer the horses out of the way of a cart that two men were pulling up the street. He was hunched forward now, his back no longer straight, and his face had sagged. His cheeks were wet.
“Hardluck?”
The driver wiped his face with his sleeve. “Forgive me, sir. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful. I feared this might happen. I just hoped you might change your mind.”
“Change my mind? I would have thought you’d want to be set free.”
“To do what, sir?” His eyes were brimming again. “This is my life. It’s all I know, this carriage, these animals. Without them, I’m nothing.”
“That’s nonsense, man! You’re a human being, and freed of your chains you can be anything you want to be. You can live where you please; you can work as you please.”
“As I please?” The driver’s voice wobbled. “I’ve no skills beyond those of a carriage man, and I doubt Mister Riker will pay me for work that another of his slaves will do for nothing. Especially with things on his estate the way they are.”
“Riker? You’d really go back to that family?”
“Where else? I can’t stay here. I don’t know this city, and I’m not a young man. I don’t know how to make a start in a place like this.”
They had reached Trinity Church. The traffic was heavier now, with carts coming up from the docks, and carriages carrying people up from the big houses down by the Battery.
“Is Mister Riker’s estate having problems, then?” Justy asked.
“Sir?”
“Just now you said he’d be unlikely to employ you, things being what they are.”
The muscles in the driver’s arm tensed as he tugged on the reins to pull the horses around. “I mean the estate is suffering, sir. Mister Riker concentrated the land on sweet corn five years back, but we’ve had dry summers and hard winters the last three seasons, and a plague of ear worms that ate any corn that survived.”
“What did he used to grow?”
“All sorts. We had big orchards. Apples and peaches, but he cut the trees down. They took too many men to keep up, he said, and corn makes more money. If there is any corn to pick.”
“He still seems to live pretty well.”
“He sold off some of the land last year. And some of his people, too. There used to be forty of us, altogether. Now there’s only ten left.”
And Riker had other businesses. His bank, which no doubt would keep him afloat until his fortunes turned around.
They pulled up at the steps of the Hall. Gorton stood there, a strained look on his face.
Justy jumped down. “Everything all right?”
“Riverman reported a body in the water. Up by Rhinelander’s Quay.”
“Where’s Sergeant Vanderool?”
“Already down there. The riverman said he looked like one of the quality, so Old Hays told me to get you over there.”
“Get in.”
Gorton’s face was gray and sagging, and his eyes were sunk deep in dark hollows. He clung tight to a strap as Hardluck turned the carriage around.
“Long night?” Justy asked.
“Long enough, sir,” Gorton said.
“What did you learn about our friend Umar?”
“Precious little, sir. I spoke to a few of the folk at the gathering, but there’s not much to tell. They go every night to listen to him, and he says much the same thing, but that’s all.
“Does he ever ask for money?”
“No, sir.”
“Try to convert them?”
“No, sir. All he does is make his speeches, then he talks for a while, and then he disappears.”
“Did you follow him?”
“I tried.” Gorton looked down. “He slipped away. I tried to tail him, but he was too quick, and I don’t know that quarter too well. Sorry.”
Justy’s thoughts returned to Kerry. She must have taken it upon herself to find out who the girl was. He felt vaguely sick at the thought of her, with her reddened lips and tousled hair. He pushed the feeling away. Perhaps she had done better than Gorton, dressed in her disguise.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Well, I don’t know how else we can find out who that girl was unless someone inside that compound tells us. And I’m damned if I know how to get inside.”
Gorton smiled slightly. “I’ve been thinking about that. I was thinking I could join his crew.”
“You don’t think he’ll twig what you’re up to?”
“Perhaps. But I’ve been thinking on something he said when we were inside there, the other day. That you were lucky to have me with you.”
“So I am. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re white and Christian, and a member of the New York City Watch.”
“Well, he’s not likely to get one of his own kind into the Hall, is he? He might jump at the chance of having a man inside.”
“But what would be your incentive?”
Gorton bit his nails and examined them. “I don’t suppose it’s a secret I like a flutter, sir. No doubt it’s in my file.”
“That’s true. It is.”
“Well then. I could tell him I was strapped and needed the chink.”
Justy shook his head. “I don’t like it. It’s dangerous.”
“Not so dangerous as some situations I’ve been in, sir.”
Justy looked at Gorton’s haggard face, and the dark circles under his eyes. He looked as though he had aged ten years. “I promised you I would only prevail upon you for two or three days. And by the look of you, I’ve worn you thin enough already.”
The carriage pulled to a halt, and Gorton sat upright. “Don’t worry, sir. I know I look fagged, but a couple of hours’ couch and I’ll be right again. I can go up and have a poke around this afternoon. See what I can see. I’ll report back tomorrow morning, sir. If that’s rum with you.”
“Very well. But if you even get a sniff of anything tricky, get yourself out of there.”
“Will do, sir.”
They both got out, and Justy watched as Gorton walked away from the wharf. Something nagged at him, like a pill on a cotton sheet. The watchman seemed different. Not just tired, but unusually deferent. Gorton had called him “sir,” over and over, even though he was one of those old salts who, once out of the service, refused to bow to officers. Justy couldn’t remember him calling him “sir” before today. Marshal, occasionally. Or Chief. But not sir. Not once.
“Over here, Marshal.”
Sergeant Vanderool was standing on the end of a wooden pier, a gaff in his hand. The wind gusted and blew his thick hair up like a brush. Justy’s eyes streamed in the cold air. It was so clear he could pick out people on the New Jersey shore of the river. He imagined he could smell the farmsteads on the hook, the fermenting apples and the cow shit. He thought about Riker’s fields, the blighted corn chewed to a black mush by the pests.
“What do we have, Sergeant?”
“Nothing so far. I have a man looking under here.” Vanderool hammered the end of his gaff into the boards of the pier.
Justy nodded. The tide would have pulled the corpse into the dense thicket of pilings under the network of wooden boardwalks and piers that made up the North River waterfront. Finding a body down there was a difficult, dirty job. It was almost pitch dark under the piers, and the water was thick with sewage, fish guts, rubbish, and the dead and decomposing bodies of rats, cats, and dogs. The sighting of a human corpse was not unusual. Accidents often happened on the waterfront and drunkards frequently fell in and drowned. And, inevitably, the river was used as a dump by gangsters, on the rare occasion they went too far and killed someone.
“Got him!” a voice floated up through the gaps in the planks, directly beneath him. There was a splashing sound, and then a curse. “There’s no room down here, Sergeant. If we try to get him on board, he’ll tip us over. We’ll pu
t a spike in him and tow him out.”
“Go on, then.”
Another splash, and then the dory’s bright green bow nosed out from under the pier into the river. There were two men aboard. One pushed at the pilings with an oar; the other held tight to a pike pole that was shoved into the water. The boat rocked in the wind.
“Get out of the chop,” Vanderool ordered, and the oarsman pulled the boat around the end of the pier. Justy followed along above them as they slid down towards the shallow water of the slipway. How anyone had thought the body was clad in a gentleman’s clothes was beyond Justy. It looked like a wet sack, submerged by the pikeman, who was leaning on his pole, making sure the body was securely hooked and would not float away.
Vanderool climbed down into the boat as the pikeman pulled the body close and unhooked it. The corpse floated face down, and Justy saw a band of white collar between a dark coat and a head of wet hair. Perhaps the observer had not been mistaken after all.
“Turn him over,” Vanderool ordered, and the pikeman bent over the stern of the dory, bracing his knees on the gunwale as he reached into the water and grasped the corpse by the shoulders. He grunted, flexed his knees, and twisted the body hard, so that one of its arms flew up and slapped on the water as it rolled onto its back. The body was on the wrong side of the boat for Justy to see, but Vanderool lurched back, as though he had been struck. His face was white.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Justy said.
Vanderool clutched at the gunwale of the rowboat and sat down with a bump. “I saw him at the Planning Commission. Only yesterday.”
“Who is it?”
The boat turned slowly in the eddy. The dead man was missing a shoe. His breeches could have been dark blue or green or brown, but soaked in seawater, they appeared black. His waistcoat was pink, embroidered and obviously expensive. His hair was long, and it looked lighter now, in the sunlight, plastered across his pale forehead. His eyes were half-open, so that the whites showed. Water seeped out of blue nostrils and purple lips.