Even worse was a stretch where there were no lights, and hundreds of threads hung down to graze her face like cobwebs. She had ridden through Hell Gate several times this summer: she knew it was all chicken wire and plaster and colored gelatin lights.
Still, it terrified her. It reminded her of the monstrous storage tank in Little Hell—the constant fear of flames or explosions, the vast darkness of the vacant lot surrounding the tank, and rumors of the scores of bodies buried there. Like Bricktown, which bordered Riverview. Until a few years ago, Ikie had told her, plumes of black smoke rose into the sky from kilns, each as big as a house. The kilns had burned night and day: if the wind shifted, fairy floss would melt in your hand.
Here in the tunnel the air smelled cold and chalky, the way she imagined a cave would smell. Large white balloons with skull faces bumped against unwary heads in the boats ahead of her. Spotlights flickered on and off like lightning. Front and back, the nearest boats seemed a safe distance from her own, forty feet or more. Far enough that courting couples could grab a few minutes alone in the dark. Far enough for her to carry out her plan, such as it was.
She stared into the tunnel nervously. She’d seen a drowned cat here once, as bloated as one of the misshapen fetuses they kept in jars at the freak show. From behind her came the unmistakable sound of a slap, followed by muffled sobs. Her boat drifted on, pulled by the current along a curving stretch with no other boats in sight.
Pin remembered this part of the tunnel—the first time she’d come here, she’d nearly jumped out of her skin. But now she knew what to expect. She held her breath and waited for the boom of a thunder sheet, followed by the blinding white flare of a flash pot. In the split second that followed, she jumped from the boat.
She landed on the narrow ledge that ran alongside the canal. Her foot slipped on the slimy surface, but she caught herself before she tumbled into the black water. As the thunder faded into ripples of nervous laughter, she scrambled behind a pile of fake stalagmites.
She had only ten minutes before her empty boat shot out of the tunnel, into the stagnant pool that served as a holding area. Horace would yell at Moe to demand why there was an empty boat, and Moe would tell him it was Pin’s. If Horace caught her, he’d slam her against the wall, the way he’d done Mugsy when he tried to steal one of the skeletons. She ducked as the next boat drifted past, the couples inside kissing so passionately they never noticed her. As they receded into shadow, she glanced around.
What she was looking for? A corpse? But someone would have seen a body in the water and called the cops hours ago. Maybe the girl had climbed out of her boat and, like Pin, found her way onto the ledge and gotten lost in the dark. She could have hit her head. Or fallen asleep, though that seemed unlikely with all this racket. Maybe the man hadn’t noticed she was gone till he got out at the end of the ride. Maybe he’d hurried off to get help.
Pin rubbed her arms, chilled. The ledge was just wide enough for someone to walk along when it was necessary to change an electrical bulb or adjust one of the spook-house figures. Underfoot, the concrete surface was slick and uneven. She took a step and slipped, banging her knee so hard it brought tears to her eyes.
She hauled herself back up until she was half standing, half crouched, and began to walk crabwise with her back to the canal, hands splayed across the moist wall. She tried not to gag: the air smelled strongly of mildew and sulfur from the flash pot. She moved quickly, ready to duck when the next boat approached. Every flare of the flash pots revealed walls black with mold. She stepped among trash on the ledge—cigar stubs, a Coca-Cola bottle, hair ribbons.
From behind her she heard voices. Another boat. There was nothing here to hide behind, so she bellied onto the ledge, grimacing when her hand touched something moist and soft. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the violent play of light and shadow. She could pick out shapes on the other side of the canal, wax mannequins slumped over fake boulders like drunks in a saloon.
“They had a long night,” remarked the man in the boat below her, and the woman beside him laughed.
A few inches from where Pin lay, something scurried. The woman in the boat gasped. “What was that!”
Pin held her breath. “Nothing, sweetheart,” the man murmured. “Don’t you worry…”
Pin heard the rustle of fabric, a sudden intake of breath. The boat floated on, and she crept forward.
Two more boats passed. Each time she crouched, unseen by their passengers. She wondered if they mistook her for one of the waxworks.
Crimson light streaked the water’s surface as the tunnel began to curve. Another flash pot flared, revealing a row of large, flaccid skeleton balloons suspended from the arched ceiling. The canal blazed into a river of fire and plunged back into darkness. The recorded howls and shrieks grew louder.
Pin gnawed her lip. She’d neared the end of the tunnel, where the actor playing Satan attacked each boat as it went by. It would be difficult if not impossible to creep past him unseen.
And her empty boat might already have left Hell Gate. Even if she got out unscathed, she’d still have to deal with Horace. She crouched as low as she could, trying to figure out what to do next. Return the way she came, and take her chances with Moe?
She looked over her shoulder at the seemingly endless dark passage, the dim outlines of rocks and stalagmites and stalactites, shapeless white forms dangling from hooks in the ceiling. Fake or not, the sight filled her with dread. She decided to continue.
As she turned, another flash pot exploded, illuminating something on the ledge a few yards ahead of her. A skull balloon that drooped over the edge, just inches above the water. From behind her came the sound of laughter as the next boat approached.
“Stop it, Walter!”
“You started it, honey!”
“I mean it! Make him quit, Rudy!”
Pin squatted as the boat floated by. When it slid out of sight, she straightened. The flash pot blazed again, brighter than before. She took a step toward the skull balloon and looked down.
It wasn’t a balloon but a large doll, one of the fancier prizes from the shooting gallery: a toy the size of the triumphant girl who’d tote it home.
This doll had a stained yellow bow caught in its matted curls. It didn’t wear a dress, only a shimmy, discolored with ruddy blotches. The blotches extended to its neck, like a port-wine stain. Its eyes bulged, its lashes like spiders. An ugly toy, the ugliest doll she’d ever seen.
Only she knew it wasn’t a doll. It was a girl, a dead girl, staring up at Pin with eyes that had burst like grapes. She smelled like pee but also of something Pin couldn’t quite place, lemons and a vaguely medicinal odor.
Pin gazed at her, unable to move. Finally she stretched out her hand and let her fingertips graze the girl’s cheek, then the bedraggled yellow hair ribbon. Slowly the head turned, mouth lolling open so she could see a blackened tongue and gums, a glistening sliver like a shard of glass in the back of her throat.
Pin snatched her hand back, the ribbon tight between her fingers. She watched in horror as the body began to move, sliding slowly across the ledge until with a soft splash it fell into the water and floated, facedown, drawn inexorably by the current through the tunnel.
Chapter 27
FOR A FEW seconds she thought she’d be sick. She dropped onto her hands and knees, waited till the spasm passed before forcing herself to turn her head.
The girl’s corpse had floated to the opposite side of the canal, where a board protruded into the water. The body butted up against it and remained there, partially submerged. It would be easy to miss, just as easy to do what Pin had done—mistake it for a lost doll or one of the flash pots.
She started at the slap of water on a wooden hull. Flattening herself against the ledge, she watched an empty boat slowly round the corner. Only when it floated to within a few feet of her did Pin realize that both its passengers were in the front. A grunting man lay on top of a woman, flat on her back, her long skirt and pett
icoat pulled up so high they covered her face.
Pin shoved the filthy hair ribbon into her pocket, pushed herself to a sitting position, lowered her legs over the ledge, and, when the boat had almost passed, dropped into the back. The boat rocked as she pulled herself beneath the plank bench, heart pounding.
Faint stirring in front, murmurs, then silence. The rhythmic grunts started up again as the boat approached the turn where Satan waited, the boat’s occupants oblivious to the explosions of flash pots around them.
“Ho-ho-ho!”
Pin heard a muffled yelp from the front of the boat as a rubber-tipped pitchfork found its mark. By the time the boat shot back out into a dazzle of electrical lights, the man and woman sat side by side, the crushed silk flowers on her hat the only sign that anything illicit had occurred. As they spoke to each other, Pin edged out from beneath the bench, trying to locate Horace so she could avoid him.
She was in luck. Instead of Horace, she saw a lanky figure in overalls, cigarette clamped between his teeth—Johnny Iacono. He was in high school, a few years older than Pin. He usually worked the Thousand Islands but filled in at Hell Gate a couple of nights a week when he needed extra cash. Sometimes he’d buy cigarettes for Mugsy and the other boys, and once he gave Pin a nickel, when she was broke and had gone all day without eating.
She kept out of sight until she felt the thud of his boat hook as it snagged her vessel and pulled it alongside the wooden walkway. The man in front disembarked first and leaned in to help out his lady friend. As they sauntered off, Pin jumped from the boat.
“Pin! What the hell you doing?” Johnny pushed off the empty boat and stared at her. “That better not have been you sent that empty boat through a while ago.”
Pin stumbled toward him. “Listen, you gotta listen to me. Someone’s dead in there.” Grabbing his arm, she pointed into the tunnel. “A kid, a girl. I saw her this afternoon—”
Johnny shook her arm from his. “What the hell you talking about?”
“What I said! There’s a girl in there. I don’t know if she’s drowned or what. But she’s dead.”
Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I got work to do.” He looked past her as the next boat emerged into the light. “You better get the hell out of here before Horace sees you.”
“I swear to God, I’m telling the truth. You can kill me if I’m lying.”
“Jesus, why the hell would I kill you? You’re nuts! Get outta here.”
Johnny shoved her aside and headed for the next boat.
“Damn it, Johnny, look—”
She dug into her pocket for the soiled yellow hair ribbon. “This is hers. I saw her go into the tunnel this afternoon, but she didn’t come out. She’s in the water right before you get to Satan, right-hand side as you’re heading this way—she got snagged on something. Swear to Jesus, Johnny, just go look!”
Johnny continued to stare at her. Finally, he looked at the tunnel.
“All right,” he said, and pitched his cigarette into the water. “You cover for me, I’ll go inside and see what’s what. But if you’re lying, I won’t need to kill you, ’cause Horace will.” He tossed her the boat hook. “Don’t let anyone fall in. I’ll be right back.”
She spent the next few minutes grabbing each boat and holding it steady as customers disembarked. More than a few of the women were flushed, their clothes rumpled. Several of the men grinned and winked at Pin behind the women’s backs.
“Here, ma’am, be careful,” she warned, taking hold of an older lady’s hand to help her onto the walkway where her husband waited. The woman took her husband’s arm.
“Thank you, young man,” she said.
Pin peered anxiously into the tunnel, looking for Johnny. When someone tapped her shoulder, she jumped, then turned to see Johnny, his face white as milk.
“You’re right. There’s someone dead in there. I don’t know how you knew about it. I don’t want to know. I told Horace—all I can say is you better not be here when he comes round.”
He snatched the boat hook from her and slapped a magazine into her hand. “Larry left this at the booth for you. You need to stop reading detective stories.”
She glanced at the next boat floating toward them. “Isn’t Horace going to shut it down?”
“Horace wouldn’t shut this fucking thing down if it was on fire. He says he’ll go see for himself in a couple minutes. Now scram before he comes looking for you.”
Chapter 28
NO ONE HAD seen him as he hurried from the amusement park and hopped onto the streetcar, found a seat by the window, and rode to Uptown, hat on his lap. Reflexively he checked his pockets. One held his card case and wallet; the other, the girl’s balled-up dress, a bottle of Sydenham’s laudanum syrup, and a tin of lemon drops. When the streetcar reached its terminus, he walked several blocks and caught another one headed in the opposite direction. He hopped off a few blocks from the hospital and walked the rest of the way home.
He never took the same route twice. He’d learned that four years earlier, back at Coney Island, and a few months after that in Revere with Deirdre Monahan. The only way to reach Wonderland Amusement Park was by the Narrow Gauge from Boston, unless you had an automobile, or walked, or paid an outrageous sum for a taxi. So he’d taken the Narrow Gauge. Packed as the train car had been, he’d still worried about being recognized.
And he had been. As he rode the train back into Boston that evening, he saw the same young woman he’d inadvertently locked eyes with on the Narrow Gauge that morning, a strong-featured girl with an insolent black gaze and a pealing laugh that was loosed every time her male companion opened his mouth. Another Irish girl, they were always loud and bold. On the return trip from Wonderland she was alone, her color high and hair tousled by the sea wind. He wondered if she and her boyfriend had fought, or if she was a prostitute. She stared at him brazenly enough.
He moved to the back of the crowded train, desperate not to be seen. She followed him. Definitely a whore. He removed his boater and held it in front of his face, turning his back to her, but he could sense her gaze through the crush of passengers. When he climbed down at the station, she stood on the platform, waiting for him.
“Hello.” Smiling, she reached for his sleeve. He saw the heart-shaped mark on her neck where she’d been kissed hard, and the purplish cloud of a bruise. “I saw you at Wonderland by the roller coaster—want some company?”
He pushed past her, still clutching his boater to his face. The next day, he caught the train back to New York City. In February he headed south to Charleston, and this past April returned to New York to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago. With each move, a trunk accompanied him, along with a large suitcase. The trunk was stored in the luggage car; the suitcase he insisted on having in his sleeping compartment, where he paid to have both berths. He always tipped the porters well for the extra trouble. He had attended Dale Carnegie’s class at the YMCA in Harlem and been impressed by bits of wisdom: always repeat a person’s name, always tip generously.
Riverview Amusement Park wouldn’t open until mid-May, which gave him plenty of time to get settled in Chicago. In the last few years, amusement parks had sprung up across the country, along with nickelodeons and movie theaters and vaudeville houses. The amusement parks had the advantage of great crowds and countless children. He’d been dazzled to the point of nausea the first time he’d visited Luna Park in Coney Island. A summer day with tens of thousands of visitors eating hot dogs and lobster rolls and buttered corn, swimming in the ocean, screaming on the roller coasters—even fucking, in the dark rides.
But he learned to navigate Luna Park and its boardwalk rival, Dreamland, and then later Wonderland outside Boston, and finally Riverview. He’d been amazed to see that they all had the same rides—Hell Gate, the Witching Waves, the Blue Streak coaster, the Derby Racer.
Carousels of course were a dime a dozen, as were the Infant Incubators. They were very impressive, though the little t
hings looked a bit like grubs. When the German who’d invented the incubators couldn’t find hospitals that would pay to house and staff his miraculous machines, he’d taken them to Coney Island, then Wonderland and Riverview. A German doctor hadn’t invented the Hell Gate attraction, but he wondered if the engineer who’d designed the dark ride at Dreamland had designed those at Wonderland and Riverview.
Now, the wind off the Lagoon brought little comfort as he walked: his clothes were soaked with sweat. He slipped a hand into his pocket to stroke the dress there. His heart stirred, knowing what was ahead, and recalling this afternoon’s events.
“What’s your name,” he’d asked as their boat neared the Hell Gate chute.
“I already told you. Maria,” she replied, her tone sullen, and moved from his lap to the bench. He could tell she was growing uneasy, but he knew that, within minutes, the tunnel’s terrors would override any mistrust she had of him.
A few more steps and he reached his building. He opened the door and hastened down the hallway, then upstairs. Once in his room, he bolted the door, set down his hat, withdrew the dress from his pocket and placed it on the table, and finally removed his jacket and folded it neatly over a chair. On the wall behind him hung a summer duster, another seersucker jacket, several hats. His shaving things sat on a window ledge: straight razor and brush, a pair of scissors, and a bottle of Lilac Vegetal eau de cologne. He always kept the drapes drawn; he lit the gas lamp, its hiss the only sound other than the occasional putt-putt of an automobile in the street.
He crossed the dim room to the closet, digging in his pocket for the key, and opened it.
There was no light inside, but he didn’t need one. The doll stood on the floor, gazing straight ahead. Her socket head and jointed limbs were made of molded bisque, as was the top half of her torso. A wig of dark hair—real human hair—was attached to her bisque scalp, and her blue sleep-glass eyes closed whenever he lay her down on a flat surface.
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