Kevin Carney had been taking McGlory’s nickel since he was twelve years old. He was a small, wiry man, the product of generations of near starvation in Ireland and the fight for survival in the new world’s tenements. His usefulness to McGlory was his ability to glide unnoticed through alleyways and into crowds where his acute hearing and gift for repeating word for word whatever he heard made him an invaluable gatherer of knowledge. Bits and pieces of this and that. Who was doing what. Where a man was hiding. Who was taking down his pants and spilling more than his seed. Carney gathered it all up and brought it to McGlory, who paid him what it was worth and sometimes threw in a little extra.
“I was standing across from Saint Anselm’s a couple of weeks ago.”
“Why? Why were you at Saint Anselm’s?” You had to interrupt Carney to get at the nuggets of information or he’d blabber on without pausing for breath until you were ready to clobber him. He heard, remembered, and parroted back everything.
“There’s an alleyway there we like.”
McGlory didn’t have to ask who else had been with him because ever since his first days as an abandoned child on the streets, Kevin Carney had eaten and slept with dogs, as wild as they and just as desperate. People said it was his uncannily developed sense of hearing that made him a valuable member of the pack and protected him. Whatever the truth of the stories told about him, Kevin was never without a dog or two at his heels.
“I heard someone coming out of the church.” Kevin always heard before he saw. “He was carrying something over his shoulder. I saw it when he passed under a street light. Something wrapped in burlap that smelled like blood. He was leaving a trail anyone could have followed.” A scent trail was what he meant.
“Where did this man carrying the bundle over his shoulder go, Kevin?” You had to be very specific, very literal in your questioning.
“To Colonial Park. Straight to the park. He set the bundle down on the ground, then opened the gate. He used a pick, not a key.”
“How do you know that?”
“I could hear it, couldn’t I? A piece of metal that he worked back and forth until it made a click and the lock opened. A key doesn’t make that sound.”
“What did he do when he got the gate open?”
“He picked up the bundle and carried it inside.”
“And what did you do?”
“Waited in the bushes. He didn’t know me and Blossom were there.” Kevin and his dog of the moment.
“What happened after the man came out of the park?”
“We let him go. He still smelled like blood, but not as much as before.” Kevin’s long nose twitched, as though he were sorting through the smells in the air he breathed. “We went along the path. The scent got stronger the closer we got to her. She was a pretty girl, all curly black hair and deep blue eyes. I closed her eyes. It didn’t seem right to leave her staring at nothing like that. There’s a streetlight right there where he put her. We could see everything.”
“Was she still wrapped up?”
“Tight as you please. In burlap. It would have scratched her skin if she’d still been alive.”
“You unrolled it?”
“How else would I know what the man did to her?” Kevin’s thin face seemed to lengthen as a deep sadness crept over his features. No matter that he’d lived his entire life in the midst of death, he never ceased grieving. “Her throat was sliced all the way across and very deep. He cut her open from the neck down, and scooped out everything inside. I rolled her up again after we looked. She had beautiful white skin in the moonlight. Like those flowers in Central Park that bloom at night.”
“Did he say anything, Kevin? Did you hear him mutter or whisper when he was carrying the body or laying it down?”
“Not a word. Not a sound. And we never saw his face. He had something wrapped around it, a scarf maybe. But we got his scent through the blood. He has a strong scent.”
“Why didn’t you follow him?”
“We had to keep watch, Mr. McGlory, until somebody could find her.” Kevin’s dogs didn’t eat human flesh, at least not while they were with Kevin. But other nighttime scavengers did. “A footman came out of one of the houses as the sun was coming up. Walking a little dog. He had a key to the park. We hid in the bushes until he’d found her. The dog he was walking smelled us, but didn’t bark. He knew better.”
“And then you left.”
“We did. We knew she’d be safe. We waited at the end of the block for a while. We saw the police come, the morgue wagon, newspaper reporters.”
“Anyone else?”
“A priest. Mr. Hayes’s friend and his lady.” McGlory had never mentioned their names, so although Carney knew it was Geoffrey Hunter and Prudence MacKenzie he’d seen, he didn’t identify them in any but the most oblique way. McGlory would know who he meant.
“Can you pick up the man’s scent again?”
Kevin shook his head regretfully. “Not unless he lays down a new trail, Mr. McGlory. It’s easier at night, but it needs to start out fresh.” He was almost sure Blossom could sort the man’s body scent from the heavy cologne he’d doused himself with and the blood that overlay them both, but he wasn’t positive enough to promise anything. If you once gave your word to McGlory, he expected you to keep it.
“One more thing, Kevin. Why didn’t you tell me about this before now? Why did you sit on it for so long?”
Kevin shrugged. He had one weakness he didn’t want anyone finding out about because a chink in your armor meant death when you lived rough.
He occasionally didn’t know where he was; the spells could last for minutes, hours, even days. The streets around him became shrouded in a thick fog that made movement difficult and memory disappear. He slept a lot when the fog rolled in, and when he woke up it took a while to shake it off. Sometimes it was weeks before he remembered where he’d been or what he’d done during the spell. It was like the blackouts that plagued drinking men, but Kevin never touched alcohol. The drink made his arms and legs thrash uncontrollably and his eyes roll back in his head. Eating helped the spells, but he didn’t always have enough money to feed both himself and his dog. The dog came first.
This time it had been two weeks before he remembered that the dream of the man carrying the rug hadn’t been a dream at all. He’d come straight to Mr. McGlory as soon as the word went out into the streets that the owner of Armory Hall was interested in the Irish girl’s killing. It sounded as though he expected another death. Kevin hoped not. Coppers swung their billy clubs at people like him when they were angry, and nothing made them madder than when people blamed them for not keeping the city safe. As if anyone could.
McGlory handed him a roll of bills. Carney stuffed it into a pants pocket without counting the amount. McGlory never bargained.
“It’s going to freeze again tonight,” McGlory said. He knew about Kevin’s problem, of course. Many of the people living on the street suffered spells where they didn’t know who or where they were. The spells got worse and then they died. “You’ll sleep inside for a change, Kevin. You and the dog both. You can lay a blanket on the floor of the storeroom. I’ll give the order.”
“We’re all right in the alleyway,” Kevin said. Neither he nor his animal felt entirely at ease inside a room with a narrow door between them and safety.
“No more argument,” McGlory insisted. He had few soft spots in his character, but he had one for Kevin. As did almost everyone who troubled to get to know him. “You can go back to Saint Anselm’s tomorrow or the next day.” He thought Kevin looked close to collapsing. He’d probably die before spring, but at least McGlory could help him stay alive for a little while longer. “Keep your ears open when you get there, Kevin. Wait for the man with the rug to come again. It may take a while. I need to know what his name is, where he lives. You’ll have to follow him. Stay far enough behind so he doesn’t hear your footsteps.”
Kevin could follow a deer stepping lightly through the spring grass of Centr
al Park. The sound of a man’s feet slapping against pavement was no challenge at all. It was an insult to tell him to be careful; he wouldn’t have taken it from anyone but Billy McGlory.
Outside Armory Hall a large red dog of indeterminate but shaggy breed rose to her feet. She followed Kevin Carney inside and down a long, dark hallway to the rear of the building where the kitchens were. Scraps had been laid out on a table for her human and in a bowl on the floor for her. Blossom could smell the bills in her human’s pocket and knew they meant food that didn’t have to be scavenged.
Tomorrow or the next day, Kevin told her, after they’d eaten and slept, they’d go back to the alleyway. They’d lie in wait. Or maybe they’d hunt.
It didn’t matter to the red dog as long as the two of them were together.
CHAPTER 10
Stepping out is what you did when your gentleman caller became a regular, though most of the time Mick McGuire didn’t come for Ellen Tierney at the house. It wouldn’t do for a policeman to be seen going into the Nolan mansion off Fifth Avenue, even if it was via the areaway steps or the stable yard, and Mick was seldom out of uniform. He liked the military feel of the long, dark blue single breasted frock coat, the domed felt covered helmet, and the shiny eight pointed star badge. He’d paid three hundred dollars for his patrolman’s job and was extorting as much as the traffic would bear to acquire the fourteen hundred dollars it cost to buy a promotion to the rank of sergeant.
New York City was a wonderful place for an Irishman to be a copper. With one hand twirling a billy club and the other held out for bribes, a man could stroll his beat and feel like a man. Half the city seemed to be Irish, though it was mostly still the half that lived in the tenements and the luckier ones trying to claw their way up through the ranks of Tammany Hall.
Ellen was a fine girl, a beautiful girl with masses of red gold hair tucked up so tightly under her white maid’s cap that not a single wisp escaped when she was working. But Mick had run his huge fingers through the curly strands that glowed in lamplight like a fiery sunset. They twisted and twirled themselves tightly around his policeman’s perpetually bruised knuckles. He’d had his way with her more times than either of them could count. She’d nearly cried her beautiful blue eyes out when he’d hammered his way through her virginity, but then he’d wiped away the tears and stroked her into a bliss she’d never dreamed existed. After that she was as eager as he to repeat the experience. The only privacy they had was in the room he rented from a respectable Irish widow who tolerated no nonsense from her boarders and searched their lodgings every day after they’d left for work.
It wasn’t so much that Mrs. Ansbro trusted Mick the man as that she allowed herself to be seduced by the beautiful uniform, the shiny star, and the air of authority with which he walked his beat. His presence meant that every neighborhood crook with half a grain of sense avoided her boarding house like the plague. A tenant could forget to lock his door in the morning and return home in the evening to find all of his belongings exactly as he had left them. So when Patrolman McGuire escorted a young lady into Mrs. Ansbro’s front parlor as she was setting out on her afternoon errands, she refused to entertain suspicions about her private protector. Which made it dead easy for Mick to guide Ellen up the stairs and into his immaculate room where the sheets were clean, the floor swept, and the chamber pot emptied.
“When we’re married,” Ellen whispered, not noticing the stiffening of Mick’s muscular arm. “When we’re married …” She sighed with the joy of it, the warmth of belonging to someone, the full belly feeling of security that the sight of his uniform always gave her. They wouldn’t be limited to her one afternoon a week off and the hours she stole when the family was out and the housekeeper in a generous mood. They could be together every night, wrapped in each other’s arms between supper and dawn, waking every now and then to the delights of carnal knowledge made lawful by the sacrament of matrimony.
Marriage wasn’t in Mick McGuire’s plan for his future. Not now, and not for years to come. Marriage inevitably meant children, and Mick had handled enough squalling infants who smelled of piss and shit and sour milk to last him a lifetime. He usually remembered to pull out and spill his seed on Ellen’s lovely belly. When she protested that the Church would not approve, he assured her that not only did the Church give its blessing to such a sensible precaution, it encouraged it. She was ignorant and naive enough to believe him. When we’re married froze the blood in his veins and set his mind racing for a way out of the box whose lid he could sense closing down on him.
“I’m being transferred,” he told her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ll be working in another part of the city. Longer hours, too. But it’s a way of getting on, of making my way up the ladder, don’t you know.”
Ellen tried to grope her way through what Mick was saying. Her heart thudded painfully and she felt a terrible soreness in the depths of her stomach, as though she’d eaten a cream tart that had turned. “But you’ll keep your room here at Mrs. Ansbro’s, won’t you?” she asked.
“For the time being, yes. And maybe I won’t have to move at all. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
Which sounded to Ellen a lot more like a warning than a promise.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mick,” she murmured, running her fingertips across his broad chest and thick mat of black hair.
“Well, you won’t have to, will you?” he said, thinking all the while that the sooner he packed his things and got out of Mrs. Ansbro’s boarding house the better. He’d leave a letter behind, with just enough of a grain of truth in the lies to make it believable. He had to map out a plan though, before he broke Ellen Tierney’s heart; Mick McGuire never did anything without a plan. So he wrapped his arms around her and crooned the tune his mother sang to lull the babies to sleep back in the old country until he felt Ellen’s breathing grow slow and deep and even.
He was thinking furiously.
*
Ellen Tierney knew you couldn’t go to Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin without risking hell for all eternity. But tomorrow was the fifth anniversary of her mother’s death; she’d promised herself she’d light a candle and receive the Host in memory of the woman who’d wept bitter tears when she lost her youngest daughter to America.
There was no help for it. She’d have to ask Mrs. Flynn for permission to go to Saint Anselm’s again tonight after the servants’ early supper. She’d hoped she didn’t get the same priest as last time. The bright red hair made her too easily remembered and she didn’t think she could stand the embarrassment if he recognized her. Father Brennan was the kind of priest who asked questions.
She had another errand she couldn’t put off any longer, and there’d be just enough time to get it done, go to confession, and run back to the Nolan mansion without arousing Mrs. Flynn’s suspicions. She’d have to time it all carefully, but Ellen was used to juggling several jobs at once. It was one of the things that made her a good housemaid.
The only real shortcoming Ellen had was that she wasn’t a fancy seamstress; she’d only ever been able to manage a decent hem or the occasional darn when she set her mind to it, and even then the stitches weren’t always straight and even. Her mind tended to wander, and when it did, her needle went off in odd directions, too, which was why she had to make a quick detour on her way to Saint Anselm’s. She could hardly breathe, the bodice and waist on her good uniform had gotten that tight, and Mrs. Flynn had a keen eye. All those tucks and darts required to make a smooth fit over the corset. It wasn’t the kind of sewing she could manage on her own, but it wouldn’t do for anything to be noticed before she was ready to make her grand exit from the Nolan household as a woman about to be married.
She already had a bottom drawer half full of discarded bed linens and table napkins, even a lace curtain worn thin where the sun shone through a window. Mrs. Nolan and Miss Alice were generous with what they didn’t want anymore.
Mrs. Flynn said it was because they were Irish too, though born in America and into money. Which just proved it could be done, that all of the dreams Ellen had had on the boat coming over could become reality, present situation notwithstanding. She might not ever live in a fine mansion, but Ellen would have her respectable husband, her own house, and a family of fine sons and daughters to show off to the rest of the neighborhood at Sunday Mass every week. And that reminded her. Her back and belly didn’t ache, but it was two months now and there was still no bleeding. She needed to count the days again.
“Are you sure there’s not something you ought to be telling me, Ellen?” Mrs. Flynn was in a good mood this afternoon. Her household accounts had balanced the first time she totted them up, and she’d managed to keep within the amount Mrs. Nolan allotted her each week.
“Why is that, Mrs. Flynn?”
“The singing. You’ve been humming and purring away to yourself like Mrs. Nolan’s old black cat. I’d swear it was him making that great noise he does when he’s having his belly rubbed. Is it to do with Mr. McGuire?”
“You won’t be angry?”
“How will I know unless you tell me what it is?”
“He’s being transferred to a different and larger precinct. Promoted, I call it. He was keeping the secret until he was sure it would happen. For fear of jinxing it, you know. He hasn’t proposed yet, not in a formal kind of way, but if there’s more money coming in, I think he will.”
“I don’t have to ask if you’ll accept. I can tell by your face and that awful noise coming out of you. I pity the children who have to listen to the lullabies you’ll croak at them.”
“I will accept, Mrs. Flynn. I’d be a fool not to.”
“So you would, girl. You don’t want to stay someone’s maid all your days when you could be a policeman’s wife.”
“You won’t say anything to anyone yet?”
“Not until you tell me. For fear of jinxing it.” Mrs. Flynn smiled to show she was joking.
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 10