“I’m so sorry, Husband. Benjamin just had a little accident, that’s all. No one is singing. There’s no cause for concern, Dearest. Please go back to bed and I shall join you soon,” his mother murmured, her eyes on the faucets. She was Welsh and her voice sounded like fragments of song sung in snatches on the coast somewhere by the sea the boy sometimes imagined. Though he had never seen a beach or even the ocean except in his picture books.
“You don’t tell me what to bloody do, woman. You were singing! I heard you!” the boy’s father shouted louder, a croaking roar.
“I’m sorry, Dear. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” the mother repeated the words quietly, a whisper. Twisting the flannel violently in her bloodless hands.
“Yeah, right. Anyway, what do you mean, the boy’s had an accident? What kind of an accident? You don’t mean he’s fucking shit himself again? That’s not your meaning is it, woman?” the father demanded.
“No, Dear. It’s fine. You must be tired after your work today. I’m so sorry we disturbed your rest, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Tears came to her eyes and she hurriedly wiped them away.
“No? No? It stinks like fucking shit in here, it does. I told you to stop mothering the boy this way. You’re gonna make him bloody soft as a little sissy boy. Little mummy’s boy hanging from his mother’s apron strings. Don’t think for a single minute that I’m a dunce and I don’t know what’s going on in this house… He’s going to continue shitting himself if he doesn’t learn,” the father said. “We shall have to train him the same way you would train a stray mutt that kept shitting and pissing on the living room rug. Teach him.”
“Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there!” the boy whispered.
“Hush now, Benny, Darling,” the mother said.
“What did he just say to me?” the father said.
“Nothing, Dearest. It’s just a little poem we were practicing together.”
The boy closed his eyes and repeated the words. “Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there!”
The father moved like a thunderstorm across the bathroom. Grabbed at the child. His thick fingers pinching and pulling at the scruff of the boy’s hair at the nape of the neck, ripping him from the bathtub as though ripped from the womb and birthed into the world a second time. Shit out into the suburbs of Chelsea, London again.
The mother squeezing her hands to her face, a mask of fingers. The fingernails made many eyes like a spider and the boy couldn’t breathe. Wailing from the immense pain of his hair being yanked and torn from his scalp. The high-pitched shrieks of his child enraged the father further. He backhanded the small boy around the face. Once. Twice. Wrenched the child’s head up. The boy’s feet slipping and flailing, the condemned dropped through gallows, standing tiptoed on the bathroom’s slick tiled flooring, but the father pulled him up further, higher. The pain at the back of his scalp something suffocatingly awful, immeasurable. The mother tried to wrestle the boy from her husband’s grip. The boy’s vision going blood red. The suffocating stench of whiskey and something hot pouring from the father in electric waves. The child screamed, wrenched himself free, collapsing naked to the soaked floor. The mother fell into the bathtub. Water splashed over the father causing him to slip to his knees. He roared, a prehistoric noise that would haunt the boy all his life. Dragging the child then by arm and neck, naked, and wet, out of the bathroom, down the hallway, tumbling down the stairs of the affluent home. Wrenching him out of the front door and into the violently cold early morning air of the street outside.
The sky the color of bruised flesh. The cobblestones slippery like the tiles in the bathroom had been. The father forced the boy down into the road. A couple of street sweepers stood smoking, chatting across the street, glanced at each other and quickly walked away in the opposite direction.
“I am sergeant constable William Hughes of the Metropolitan Police and I would like to announce to the inhabitants of this street that my nine-year-old son has repeatedly, repeatedly, shit his fucking bed at night!” the father bellowed.
Lights in windows flashed on, illuminating black silhouettes behind net curtains. The father kicked a trash can clattering violently into the street. Tins and glass jars rolled clattering and old newspapers tumbled in the frigid breeze.
The boy shivering, naked, hugged himself into a small ball.
Many small fingers trickled over his skin and he brushed them away. The fingers continued moving intricately over his naked body. Incessant. Over his back, legs, arms, and stomach. Tickling. Scratching. Stroking. Caressing. Benjamin pinched one between his fingers, something that scurried behind his ear, screaming out when he glimpsed what it was. A little black thing with small ebony eyes and sticky delicate legs writhing inanely between his trembling fingertips. An ant. Ants! Ants scurrying all over his body. His father had forced him to kneel in an ants’ nest built at the side of the road. Burrowed down between the gritty gaps in the cobblestones, waiting for the beginning of summer to take a choking grasp of the street.
The boy attempted to stand up but each time he tried, his father forced him back down, scattering the ant’s mound, angering them further. They scurried over the boy’s small body nipping and biting like a disease carried on sticky little legs over his face and eyes, into his nostrils. His mouth. Down into his throat. His heart. Infesting him. Infecting him.
The boy from the newspaper photograph screamed. Ants crawled from his dead eyes and gaping mouth.
A black shape standing at the top of a large flight of stairs gesturing to Ben.
Gun shots exploding.
A child’s screams.
Ben.
The boy in the photograph.
Ben sat up choking for air, biting into a bedsheet clenched to his mouth. Li’s light coffee colored face the first thing he recognized when he snapped open his eyes. Opium hazed and baptizing. Plump lips pursed in a horrified curiosity. Dark almond eyes shimmering in the lamplight. She anchored him back into reality. Sanity. Sanitization. Safety.
“Are you alright, Ben? You were yelling out in your sleep again,” she said, rubbing his chest.
“Was I? I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes and taking the glass of water she offered him.
“Don’t be sorry and the glass is clean so don’t worry yourself about that.” She reached out a hand to his face and ran her fingers over the stubble there again. “Where did you travel to in your dreams tonight?”
He gulped at the water. Spluttered. Coughed. He shrugged at her. “The past.”
“Not a good past then?”
“No, not good. Not good at all. I don’t have anything good in my past. Nothing. You know that.”
She nodded at him like she understood and began cleaning away the pipe and the smoking set. Started humming softly, the lamplight catching on her skin like flakes of gold.
“Do you feel better for it? The smoke?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s wearing thin. Losing its effectiveness. If I go a few days without seeing you I become sick. Feverish. Almost as though I have influenza. Runny nose. The shakes. You always make me feel better though. In this room with you.” He got up and kissed her mouth. She tasted sweetly of incense. She pulled away. Stood up and pulled the kimono around herself.
“By the way, I saw a picture of your Chief in the newspaper today. What’s he like?”
“Disgusting, really. I avoid him as much as I can. As if the filth in the streets wasn’t enough, I have to take orders from it in my place of work,” Ben said, sitting up and resting his head against the wall.
“You don’t work directly underneath him? I thought you did.” She started cleaning away the opium and the smoking set. Speaking as she tidied.
“No, not really. There’s a whole hierarchy of empty shirts just like him.”
“Some people think he’s pretty crooked.”
“Who?” Ben asked, peering at her closely.
“How’s that?” she shrugged.
“Who do you know that thinks the Boston Police Chief is corrupt?”
“I don’t know. I just heard it, is all.” She shrugged again.
“Just heard? Around here? In China Town?”
“Yes, I’ve heard a few things about you, too, actually.”
“Really? That’s interesting. I’m curious. Enlighten me, would you?” Ben said, kicking down the blanket and swinging his legs out of the bed.
“Well, people say you’re working for the Irish in Southie. The mob. That you’re a bagman for The Chief.”
“That’s ridiculous. Utter fabrication. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear so easily, and do you even know what a bagman is, Li?”
“No, not exactly. But…”
“Well, there you are then. Now let’s talk about something else,” he said cutting her off.
“You don’t trust me enough me to tell me honestly.”
“I trust you with my life. But there are things about me that you shouldn’t know. Things you don’t want to know.”
“If you trusted me as much as you say, you’d open up to me completely. Sometimes I feel like you treat me like I’m your personal whore. You come here, fuck me, smoke my poppy and leave. You don’t tell me anything about your life or your work.” She waved the opium pipe in front of his eyes before cleaning it away with the other things.
“Li, I do have something very important to tell you.”
She paused a moment, stood frozen in the center of the room. The walnut smoking box still in her hands.
“What is it, you wish to tell me?” She held her breath.
“I have put in for a transfer, Li.”
“What’s your meaning?”
“I’ve asked to be moved to another police department. I’m not happy in Boston anymore. It’s making me unhappy. Sick. I want to go somewhere else.”
“I see. Where will you go?” she breathed out the words.
“I’ve asked to be moved to Los Angeles. The L.A.P.D need good men and the sunshine and dry air may do me some good. Los Angeles is a boom town now. Lot of great things happening out there. A lot of possibilities and opportunities since after the war.”
“I understand. So, you will leave here?” She placed the smoking set into a drawer, swallowed a lump in her throat and stood holding her hands tightly against her chest.
“Yes, I hope to, but I want you to come with me, Li. We can both start again, fresh. Be new people. Better people. If we don’t leave Boston, it’ll kill us both eventually. It sounds ridiculous, but I can feel it, somehow. Will you? Come with me? Start new? Start clean. Fresh.”
“Yes, Ben. That sounds just wonderful. Wonderful,” she said, not looking into his face.
“That’s the best news I’ve had in a long time, Li. You’ve made me the happiest man in Boston. I’ll sleep well tonight.” He smiled, the sensation felt strange across his face. Unnatural. He kissed her, walked over to the window, shaky, and hungover. Still feeling the effects of the opium. Pulled his slacks down from their hanger and turned them inside out and started examining the fabric, running his thumb and fingers along the seams. Satisfied finding nothing he shook them violently and pulled them on. Repeating the ritual with his shirt and jacket. Wiping beads of sweat from his brow with his forearm as he did so. Took out the scrap of newspaper from his pocket, unfolded it and examined it a moment, cringing, before refolding it and pushing it back into his breast pocket. He didn’t know why.
“Why are you always checking the insides of your clothing like that, Ben? I always wonder so.” Her eyes narrowed on him.
“Insects. They get into everything. Everything. They hide inside the seams of your clothing, you know?”
“There aren’t any bugs here, Ben. I hate them too, so I would know.”
“Insects are everywhere, Li. Everywhere. They’re here. They’re just hiding. Waiting until darkness. Crawling around in between the walls and underneath the floorboards. Ants. Cockroaches. Fucking disgusting things. Ants. Disgusting. Disgusting fucking things. Fucking. Underneath the floorboards. Underneath the floorboards. The floorboards.” He bit into his fingers and chewed at a hangnail.
“I’ve never met a man like you, Ben. Why do you hate bugs so much?” she giggled.
He glared at her. “I just fucking do. They’re filthy. They spread disease; you know? Don’t fucking laugh. It isn’t a laughing matter.”
“Diseases? What do you mean? What diseases?”
“Fucking disease! Sickness! Fucking disease, that’s what I mean. Now change the fucking subject, will you, Li? Change the subject, will you? Change the subject. Subject change, please.”
He started to hyperventilate, gasping. She went to him and held him in her arms like a child. Soothing him. Reminding him again momentarily of his mother.
“I’m sorry, Li. I’m sorry. I love you, Li. Please, leave with me for California.” He spat the words out like a scream from a drowning man.
She felt each wet syllable against the nape of her neck. Her flesh prickled and got goosebumps. She stared at the vanity, her reflection in the mirror. This man hanging from her. Pulling her down. Holding her too tightly. Suffocating her. Drowning her too.
He held her face tightly in his hands, looking fixed into her eyes, “I have to go now, I’m afraid. There’s something I need to do. Something that will help me, I think. I want to be better. I want to be better for you, Li. We’ll be happy in Los Angeles, I promise you. Just have to do this one thing and it’ll wipe everything clean. Wipe it all away. All clean and all better…”
“You promise to protect me from that Italian man?”
“Yes. Yes, I said I would do it for you.”
She kissed his smooth, clammy cheek, his cool forehead and held him until his breathing leveled out because she didn’t know what else to do. Pleased he was finally leaving. A frown creasing the space between her fine eyebrows, wondering if she was right or wrong about this man. She had needed him before. But the last few months she had come to realize she was riding on the back of a wounded tiger up a mountain, and now she didn’t know how to get off. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Didn’t know of any other way to escape someone so dangerous, so volatile. Her plan was the only one. She told herself she really had no choice. No choice at all. She had to protect her mother. Had to protect herself.
She grasped at the vivid memory of the raid when they first met, how she’d stood helplessly by and witnessed him beating the handcuffed man he’d found her with near to death for simply spitting at his feet. She remembered the way the man’s blood had splashed over the flesh of her naked legs. Hot. Scalding almost. She held the detective tighter. Too fearful to risk letting go. Knowing what she had done was the only way. The only way to be free of him. Riding on the back of a tiger. She could only escape once the tiger was preoccupied with other tigers and other wolves. She had to save herself. This man, she knew, was beyond saving. The detective wasn’t drowning. He was already at the bottom the ocean. And dragging her down into the darkness with him.
The moment he left, the door clicking shut, his footsteps fading out down the stairs, she dropped her head in her palsied hands, exhaled a deep sigh of relief and erupted into tears.
London, England
Friday, February 19th, 1926
William Hughes’ bastard uniform itched. Mouth dirt dry. Damned thirsty. He wanted a drink. Needed it. Hands shaking, he grabbed at his knees and squeezed. The morning grey flooding into the room through the open window like smoke. His skull throbbed like an open wound. The Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, Harewood, sat primly behind his oak desk all high and mighty. Little fucking toff sodomite. The Superintendent flushed in the face and goggle-eyed at Hughes as though reading his mind. The grandfather clock in the stuffy office chimed eight times. Hughes leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette with a hand that tremored visibly.
“William, I…” Harewood cringed.
“We aren’
t mates nor associates, Commissioner. Address me by my rank,” Hughes said, brushing flakes of ash from his navy-blue uniform trousers. Pinching at the creases.
“You act as though we weren’t at the Somme together.”
William chuckled between clenched teeth. “We weren’t. I was down in the blood, the muck and the filth and you were behind a shiny desk. Same as now. Same as it’ll always be.”
Harewood cleared his throat. “Very well, have it your own way, sergeant Hughes. You’re not making this any easier on yourself, are you?” He flushed crimson and pulled at the collar of his shirt.
“I don’t need to,” Hughes grinned. All teeth.
“You don’t need to?! Don’t be so ridiculous, man! You beat a boy to death! In the street! And there’s a witness for God’s sake. Get your bloody head out of the clouds.”
“There’s a witness is there? A witness. A whore, I’m assuming?”
“I said there’s a witness. A Katherine Jones. A married woman from South Wales or some such. Lives in that dreadful pit of a lodging house over on Flower and Dean Street. Known to a few of your fellow officers already. States she was a friend of the deceased. Says you attacked them both and molested her, Sergeant.”
“The words of a drunk whore are the words of a drunken whore,” Hughes shrugged and snubbed his cigarette out in a brass ashtray holding loose foreign coins on the desk. Harewood frowned, fingering his neatly trimmed moustache.
“Yes, a drunkard and a prostitute but an eyewitness all the same. She’s down in the drunkard’s cells now. One of the constables brought her in early this morning for Public Indecency.” He opened a desk drawer and brought out a pipe, thumbed tobacco inside, got it started and puffed on it. His face lined in disturbed thought. “There’ll have to be an investigation, of course. An inquiry, Hughes. It’ll be the bloody Royal Commission on The Met all over again. We’ll have mobs and crowds gathered outside the station and the newspapers will be all over this like ants to sugar. They’ll have a bloody field day. I can see it now, Metropolitan police sergeant murders bank clerk. A bank clerk, Hughes. Lord. A right ruddy mess you’ve brought down on us all. And I will refrain from even bloody mentioning the rumors circulating of the money you’re receiving from clubs and all the other establishments in Soho for your little so-called licensing fees. Oh yes, old boy, we’ve heard about those. The brothel on Greek Street, we know about that as well. Known for quite some time, I might add. A right little nest egg you must have hidden away, William.”
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