Westside Lights, page 10
Koszler released the crowd’s attention. The band stayed quiet. The dancers looked at each other. Their brows were sweaty. Their eyes were alert. Many of them looked at me.
“Distract them,” I whispered to Stuy.
“How?”
“Shout something. Throw something. Get up onstage and play the piano. I don’t care—just get their attention so I can get up those stairs.”
For an interminable moment, the wheels turned inside his head. Then he got an idea. In a voice trained for the cheap seats, he bellowed: “I am alive!”
Every eye turned to him. I pressed my back against the stage. He shouted again, louder this time.
“I am alive!”
The crowd stepped back to gawk as he barged his way to the front of the room, stomping heels and spilling cocktails, and shouting all the while. For the first time all day, I did not feel seen.
“Think you know Marka Watson?” Stuy said. He lurched up onstage and bellowed in Koszler’s face, bathing the cop in his spit. Koszler smiled blandly and let him proceed. “You don’t know the first damn thing about her! She was the greatest writer to grace Manhattan since Washington Irving, but she only put a tenth of her talent down on the page. Marka’s true art was the put-down, the comeback, the smirk—she was the finest smirker that ever lived.”
I headed for the stairs. I had to fight to keep from running.
“And she was a friend. Supported my work from the beginning. I’m the artist I am today—the man I am today—because of her.”
There was an unsteady pause as the crowd tried to decide if what they’d just seen was funny or pathetic or simply insane. Koszler answered for them. The man I’d known on the Lower West would have smashed his forehead into Stuy’s leering mouth. The 1923 vintage did something I thought cops weren’t capable of: he made it a joke.
“And just who are you?”
Laughter rippled through the crowd. Stuy wheeled around to face them, grinning like it had all been a practiced bit.
“Stuyvesant Wells,” he said. “And while I’m here, I’d like to remind the assemblage that my new show, Ready, Willing, & Mable, opens at the Belasco next week and, my my, I just happen to have a pair of passes right here. Would you do us the honor, lieutenant?”
Koszler took the tickets with a flourish. Stuy bowed. The people applauded. Those two should have gone on tour—they could certainly work a crowd.
I padded up the steps. They’d been carpeted, thank god, so my feet didn’t echo, but the ancient metal whined under my weight. At the second landing I saw Koszler with his arm around Stuy, leading him to the bar. Marvin Howell was staring at me. He touched the wrist of Cornelia Prime and pointed my way. I pressed on.
The carpet stopped at the top of the stairs. I thundered across the iron platform and shoved open the office door. Ugly was at his desk, working by the light of a small Device, counting cash. In the bright white light, the long scar that ran down the side of his face looked freshly cut. I swept my arm across the desk and sent the money fluttering to the floor. He threw up his hands, not angry so much as extremely annoyed.
“And who’s cleaning that up?” he said.
“Marka was here last night, asking about Diana’s Fire—”
“She asked nothing, she was yelling—”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Same thing I’ll tell you. There’s nothing off about that liquor. I swear by it. It’s all I drink.”
He pulled a pint of the stuff from his desk drawer and drank a long sip. He covered his mouth to obscure a burp. He looked like he’d been left to rot in the sun.
“You don’t look good,” I said.
“You look worse. Drink?”
I shook my head. My forehead throbbed. I’d have done anything for a glass of cold water, but I doubted I’d find something so exotic here.
“Where’s it come from?” I said.
“The Roeblings.”
“They make it?”
“They don’t make anything. They buy it from a gang called the Mudfoots. River pirates. You’d like them. They’re the kind of lunatics the Westside doesn’t make anymore.”
“I’m sure they’re charming. If their liquor were toxic—”
“It’s not.”
“But if it were, and Marka were planning to write about it, would the Mudfoots kill her for that?”
“The way Oliver Lee tells it, the Mudfoots would kill for a lot less.”
“Delightful. Where can I find them?”
“I don’t know. Lee’s the one who works with them. I just pour the drinks.”
This was taking too long. I kept thinking I heard steps outside, but no matter how many times I flinched, the door stayed shut.
“You’re in a hell of a fix,” he said.
“Don’t. Don’t try to sympathize, warn me, help me.”
“If you won’t take help from your friends—”
I smacked my hands together. The skin stung.
“You’re my friend? Lucky me. So’s Oliver Lee. So’s Ida Greene. I’ve got so many friends I’m choking on them, but none bothered to help this morning when I was trapped in a cage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Good for you.”
I paced, trying to find the question whose answer would tell me where to go next. Heavy carpet muffled my footsteps. Ugly leaned back in his chair.
“Why drink Roebling booze? Doesn’t Ida Greene give you red gin for free?”
“That woman doesn’t give anything away. I used to get a discount, but not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“We no longer see eye to eye. That woman used to be fun, you know? When I met her, she was an arson specialist. Had this black gunk she cooked up, burned like the devil, started fires no one could snuff out. Now, pah. Acts like she’s too good for a little greed, a little violence, a little crime. Treats me like a stain. She hates the Casino, hates me running it. She’s poisoned Van Alen against me—I can’t even get in to see him anymore. I think she’d kill me if she could.”
“I saw her last night at the docks, checking ships and taking notes. What was she doing there?”
“Nobody tells me anything. But she’s not your friend, Gilda.”
“She’s always done right by me.”
Laughing gently, he shoved a thin scrap of paper across his desk: a note written in the soft lead of a Bishop’s Blue Streak, signed by Ida Greene.
“G. Carr escaped Long Pier. NYPD coming ashore. They will ask unpleasant questions. Cooperate fully. The girl must be found.”
I was used to people wanting me dead. It surprised me how sharply I was stung by Mrs. Greene’s betrayal.
“Well,” I said, “perhaps I’m not burdened with as many friends as I thought.”
“If I could help you, I would, but Greene is looking for an excuse to crucify me and—”
“Please. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to inconvenience yourself on my behalf. Just tell me where I can find the Mudfoots and—”
I stopped speaking. I stopped breathing, too. There were footsteps on the catwalk. This time, there was no doubt they were real.
“Is there another way out?”
“A fire escape, but it’s mostly rust.”
Rust I did not fear. I darted around his desk and got my hand on the lever that opened the bank of grimy windows. The door opened. I pulled on the window. It groaned open, almost far enough to squeeze through. I was trying to climb out when a hand fell on my shoulder. It was Oliver Lee, with Cornelia Prime and Marvin Howell in the doorway. Koszler was not there.
“Please, Miss Carr,” said Lee. “If you go out there, we’ll only have to drag you back. Neither of us need abide any further indignity.”
I scrambled into the corner, pressing myself between the wall and a filing cabinet. Something glinted on the top of it—a letter opener. I grabbed it and held it out straight.
“This thing isn’t sharp,” I said, “but I’m very angry. Another step and you’ll get it in the eye.”
Lee threw up his hands and turned to Cornelia Prime.
“This is what I’ve been telling you,” he said. “She is impossible.”
“Be human,” she said. “She’s scared.”
“Shall I fetch the cop?” said Howell.
“Those were Mrs. Greene’s instructions,” said Prime. She looked like she hated to say it. I hated it, too.
With a disappointed shake of his head, Howell left to find justice. La Rocca perched his cigar in his mouth and reached for a book. Only Prime looked at me with any feeling, and so I spoke to her.
“Do you really believe I killed them? That I hacked my friends and lover to pieces with, what? An ax? A sword? Do I look like I have the strength for such a crime?”
“My opinion isn’t what matters. The police want to speak to you, and Mrs. Greene insists we cooperate.”
“That cop wants me dead.”
“He didn’t mention anything along those lines.”
“Please.” I was begging now. Perhaps I should have been embarrassed, but I simply didn’t care. I would have done anything to get out of that room. “Give me a chance. Let me run.”
Prime looked to La Rocca, to Lee. They shook their heads. I set the letter opener down.
“Then let me confess.”
For the first time in too long, my enemies looked surprised.
“Excuse me?” said Lee.
“Were you at Eighth Avenue?”
“I didn’t have the pleasure, no.”
“Koszler and the Fourth Precinct stood in a line, rifles braced against their shoulders, firing indiscriminately into a pack of guardsmen and young soldiers. Children, really. Their bodies clogged the gutters. He will do worse to me. Let me surrender to you or I’ll hurl myself out that window. The NYPD will be without their suspect. The cops will tear Spring Square apart looking for another scapegoat. The District will die.”
Their smiles wilted. Prime nodded, looking relieved to have an opportunity to be merciful.
“It’s a reasonable request.” No one disagreed.
I snatched a sheet of stationery off La Rocca’s desk and snapped my fingers.
“Come on! Someone give me something to write with!”
With a theatrical sigh, Oliver Lee reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew a pencil that was sky blue and as sharp as death. I plucked it from his grasp. I kept my eyes on Cornelia Prime, whose cheeks were reddening, and who was very carefully twisting a ring so that its stone faced the inside of her hand.
“Bishop’s Blue Streak,” I said. “I hear they’re the best.”
“Shut up and write. If you’re not done before—”
Prime smacked her open hand across his cheek. The stone sliced a perfect gash down Lee’s cheek. He clapped his hand over it, his mouth gaping, his eyes wide.
“Bitch!” he shouted, rather predictably.
“Where did you get it?”
“Get what?”
“If I step out of the room during our morning meetings, do you take the chance to rummage through my desk drawer? Or do you sneak into St. Abban’s after we lock up and steal at your leisure?”
“Are you talking about the pencil?”
He looked to La Rocca, to me, waiting for one of us to acknowledge how ridiculous this situation had become. Neither of us gave him anything.
“I thought we were in the middle of apprehending a murderer, but if we’re really stopping to talk about office supplies, I’ll state this plainly: I did not steal that damn thing off your desk.”
“Then where did you get it? Don’t try to pretend you have taste enough to order your own.”
“I don’t know. Where do pencils come from? You need one, you pick it up. What could be simpler?”
I twisted the object in question until the light caught on its monogram.
“It says C. P.,” I said.
Prime’s neck flexed. A fine trickle of blood ran down Lee’s cheek, staining his collar beyond repair. When he spoke, he no longer sounded like he thought this was funny.
“That could stand for anything.”
“Only it doesn’t,” I said. “It stands for Cornelia Prime. A woman who’s worked her whole life for a half-decent job. A woman for whom a little piece of wood with her initials on it means absolutely everything.”
If I’d been trying to calm them down, it would have been a terribly unhelpful thing to say. But that was not my goal.
Lee started to respond. Prime slammed her hand down on La Rocca’s desk.
“You Roebling bastards, you Eastside bastards, you men are all the same. Cross the fence like conquering heroes, ready to make your own little empire, only you forget that we were already here. So you take and you take and you take and you have no idea that someday we will start to take back.”
Her breath came in dry, heaving gasps. I took a step toward the door. Only La Rocca noticed what I was doing. He said nothing, and I took another step.
“It’s just a pencil,” said Lee.
“Maybe for you.”
I reached the far side of the room. Lee and Prime were still snarling at each other. Neither looked my way. My little ruse had worked. I could have smiled if I weren’t so shocked.
And then I reached for the door. Just before my hand touched the knob, it swung away. My escape had come a moment too late. Koszler filled the door. The look of genial authority he’d put on for the crowd downstairs was gone. In its place was pure, acid hate.
I’d expected him to have something to say to me, some little speech he’d been rehearsing, or even a simple hello. Instead, he swung his cane. It caught me on the side of the head, sending a shock wave through my skull that rattled every part of my body. Red bled across my vision; all I could see was pain.
Back in the office, someone muttered, “Holy hell.” I couldn’t tell if it was Prime or Lee.
If I’d fallen, I think he’d have killed me, but I stayed on my feet. Swinging the cane left him off balance, so when I threw myself into his chest, he fell hard. His head slapped into the wood; a horrid groan escaped his lips. I landed on hands and knees, and planted a foot on his face as I scrambled away.
I was nearly clear when he got the crook of his cane around my ankle. He pulled hard, and my hands went out from under me. Now it was my turn to smack my face on the ground. I rolled onto my back and found him standing above me, his hand so tight on the cane that his knuckles looked like bare bone.
“You stabbed me in the back,” he said.
“You earned it.”
“Eight months in the hospital before I could even sit up. Doc said I’d never walk again. He didn’t know how badly I wanted a piece of you.”
“Those were children you killed, Emil. Honest to god—”
The sentence would go unfinished, I’m sorry to say, for that was when my beating began.
He focused on my back. Shoulders, spine, waist, hips, then back up to the top. Parts of me splintered. Parts of me broke. The individual blows melted together, until it was hard to tell when he was hitting me and when he wasn’t. It was an unbroken high note of pain.
After the second blow, my vision narrowed. I drifted away from myself. It seemed to be someone else who struggled, kicked, crawled, screamed. None of it mattered. The band played louder, and no one in the office came to help.
At last, Koszler paused for breath, and I snapped back into myself. I tasted blood. I felt like I had a knife in my spine. I rolled over and got a look at him. His fat seemed to have melted away, and he was the same devil I’d known in ’21.
“That’s just the start. Wait’ll I have you at the station. Wait’ll you’re in a cell.”
He was still stupid, too. He’d been so focused on my beating that he didn’t notice the weapon in my hand.
I put everything I had behind it. It sank deep into his thigh. A cheaper pencil would have broken, but despite the soft lead, Bishop made their Blue Streaks to last. I was aiming for his manhood. I’d have settled for a vein. I’m not really sure what part of him I caught, but it bit deep into his leg. He crumpled like gold leaf.
I hurtled down the catwalk, limping wildly. I did not even glance at the stairs. Koszler would be on his feet in a second or two, and he’d be faster than me, and he’d beat my head next time, and he wouldn’t stop until my skull was crushed and blood oozed thick from my mouth. I was running for the hatch at the catwalk’s end.
It bore no warning labels, no threatening red Xs, no skull and crossbones. It was labeled “Incinerator,” and that spelled danger enough. But Koszler had gotten up and he was calling to me—“Nowhere to hide, detective, nowhere to hide!”—and anything was better than him.
I yanked open the chute. The corner of the opening cut my side as I slipped in. My feet dangled, feeling nothing, and I began to wonder if I was making a huge mistake. Then I saw Koszler tear the pencil out of his thigh and I let go.
Eight
For a long time, I fell.
That’s not to say that I was plummeting through some ceaseless void. I was clattering down a rusted old chute that was scarcely wider than my shoulders, whose every bent edge seemed to be reaching out for its chunk of Gilda Carr.
If it had been a straight shot down, I’d have fallen to a well-earned death. Thankfully, after what felt like a mile but which was probably more like twenty feet, there was a kink in the line.
My feet slammed into it, sending spikes of pain straight up my tortured spine. I had a mind to catch my breath, but before I could inhale, I felt the chute slipping out beneath me. The metal groaned, and I felt myself sliding into the vast space between the factory walls.
I said something along the lines of “Oh hell oh hell oh hell” and shot out my hands to hold myself against the tube. Now instead of falling I was simply sliding, but the next section of the line continued drifting away. My legs pumped senselessly, touching nothing, and all the blood left my head and charged into my pulsing, overworked hands. If that weren’t inconvenient enough, I still had to contend with Koszler, who chose that moment to whisper down the chute.
