Westside, page 13
“It could be very valuable to me.”
An ounce of leather, and I could extract myself from my obligation to Mrs. Copeland. I could give her what she asked for, and absolutely nothing more. No answers. No peace. But I would be released.
Instead, I poured another drink, and asked the question.
“How did my father die?”
“First you accuse me of killing Galen, and now this?”
“I didn’t say you killed him. I asked how he died. You were a . . . part of his life until the very end. Surely you have a theory.”
“I always assumed he threw himself into the river or under a train. His mind was diseased.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“Until . . .”
“Last night. I saw the shadows come alive. I saw . . . something kill the man who shot Fournier. What if they killed my father too?”
“Oh, girl, don’t be stupid. That’s just superstition.”
“It’s what I saw.”
“Then I’d be worried, because madness is hereditary. What do you remember about the day he died?”
“He was supposed to meet me at the Polo Grounds. Instead, he was on Forty-Eighth Street, going over an old crime scene.”
“That’s what he told you. That’s always what he told you. Going to have another look for Alice Pearl. He was with me, child. Always with me. He came here, about four in the afternoon. He stayed until seven. He drank from this bottle. Clubber Carr’s last drink. After he was gone, I could never find an occasion special enough to open it again. When I saw you, I knew it was time.”
She handed me the bottle of Boulton’s, half full and caked in dust. I swirled the liquor in the bottle, watching it slide down the thick brown glass, smelling it in the air and tasting it on my teeth. There were fingerprints around the neck. They could have been Virgil’s. Why not? I opened the bottle and inhaled as deeply as I could. Boulton’s Rye. It smelled like my father’s smile.
“That night, he talked of a breakthrough,” she said. “The empty city, the deadly night, Alice Pearl. He swore he’d unraveled it all, at last.”
“How?”
“There’s no point shouting. It was madman’s talk. The poor man was gutted. When he left, I knew I’d never see him again.”
“Then why didn’t you stop him?”
“Could anyone ever stop Clubber Carr from doing anything he wanted?”
“But what did he say?”
“I’ll tell you, dear, if you think it will help. And if you find my guns.”
I was about to answer when screams came from the tunnel, north of Barbarossa’s car. For a big woman, she moved like spilled mercury, pushing past me to fling open the door and shout for order. The noise stopped, save for one hurt voice, one moaning, silken, failing tenor.
“Up here,” said Barbarossa. “Get him up here!”
Thorne and two of the boys hoisted Cherub onto the bridge, blood in his eyes, a long, hideous cut down the side of his skull. His left leg dangled strangely, but he held his saber tight. He fell toward me, and I nearly buckled under his weight.
“Cherub, I’m sorry,” I murmured, not sure what I was apologizing for, but certain it would never be enough.
Barbarossa dragged us both back into her car and helped me lay him down. She did not seem to mind the blood. She slapped Cherub across the face. He didn’t stir. I wanted to help him, and I knew I could not. I wanted to scream, but I had no voice. It was like being trapped behind glass.
“Came in like that,” said Thorne, from the doorway. “His boys with him, in worse shape than he was. Tell ’em, kid, tell ’em what you told me.”
He stepped aside, and there was Roach. The stuffed cat dangled from his hand, and his face was pale beneath the blood.
“Three of us dead,” whispered the boy. “The rest scattered. Dead on Sixth Avenue. Dead in the street.”
Cherub moaned. Barbarossa splashed some rye on his face. He revived, and so did I. I pulled his hand to my chest, and there was a flicker of that smile. I should have let him walk me home.
“Gilda,” he said. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous at night?”
“What happened, chieftain?” said Barbarossa.
“An ambush. On our land. Half block south of the Borderline, those bastards in their rainbow silks.”
“Van Alen’s guardsmen.”
“They knocked us down like we was toy soldiers. Never knew bullets could fly so pretty. Like fireworks in the dark.”
“They had the guns?”
“And whips and chains and everything else. At the first pop of gunpowder, my best boys froze in their boots, our lines were broken, the rout was on.”
Cherub coughed, violently enough that his hurt leg slid off the cushion and crashed to the floor. He screamed like an animal caught in a bear trap, and I pulled him as close as I could.
“I was afraid . . . ,” I said, honest at last.
“Stop. I don’t want to hear anything about Gilda Carr being afraid.”
I chuckled, truly embarrassed, and we tried to remember how we talked to each other when we weren’t telling the truth.
“I just hate you seeing me looking so stupid,” he said.
“This is what happens when children play soldier.” I barked at Barbarossa: “Now how about some goddamned bandages?”
She gripped her lush curtain between both hands and ripped a swath long enough for me to wrap around Cherub’s ankle, which was either badly sprained or slightly broken. He moaned terribly, and I cinched the bandage tighter, and that, at last, shut him up.
“Put out the call, Thorne,” said Barbarossa. “I want every gang in the Lower West behind my banner. At dawn, we stride up Eighth Avenue to break that border down.”
“And the One-Eyed Cats,” said Cherub, trying to sit up, “will be leading the charge.”
“You can hardly walk,” I said, pushing him back down.
“Then I’ll crawl.”
“You’re a moron, Cherub Stevens, but I refuse to see you throw yourself away.”
“Three boys, Gilda. My boys. Dead for nothing. Blood demands blood.”
“How many men ambushed you?”
“A dozen, maybe.”
“Then this is no invasion. It’s a scouting expedition, or a provocation. Don’t give in.”
“You heard Cherub,” Barbarossa said. “Blood demands blood.”
She poured two more glasses of Boulton’s and pressed one into my hand. She smiled at me, and the panic in the room dissipated until it felt like we were just two women, alone in a boardroom, haggling over a deal. I drained the glass and savored the burn.
“Rushing into a war is a good way to lose,” I said. “Wait two days.”
“In two days, they’ll have pushed us into the river.”
“So fortify. Plan. Don’t attack.”
“When word gets out about this ambush, my boys will march north whether I tell them to or not. If I don’t organize them, they’ll be slaughtered.”
“One day, then.”
“Why?”
“So I can find your guns.”
This she liked quite a bit. She pulled back her shoulders and puffed out her great chest, and I feared she was going to sweep me into another hug.
“You’re that desperate to hear what I remember of your father’s ravings?”
“I just don’t want any more children to die. Twenty-four hours.”
“Clubber Carr could do it in twelve.”
“You may not have heard, but Clubber Carr is dead. Twenty-four.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll rally the troops, and you go sleuthing. Bring me word by midnight tomorrow, or don’t come at all.”
She offered a handshake. I turned away, and kissed Cherub on the forehead, and left before he could tell me I was being a fool. On the uptown platform, Thorne showed me to a door that led to the surface. He rubbed his head where I’d clubbed him and tried not to wince at the pain.
“If you’re smart,” he said, “you’ll stay home tomorrow.”
“Thankfully, no one’s ever accused me of being smart.”
The door slammed shut behind me. I took the steps to the surface two at a time, exited through a grate, and took a deep breath of humid, sticky, unadulterated Westside air. Pink streaked the sky, and bleary drunks spilled out of Merrill’s. I was exhausted, from the soles of my feet to the marrow in my bones, but I did not expect I’d be able to sleep.
Nine
I closed my front door, and a hunk of black metal crashed into the wall beside my head. In the kitchen crouched Hellida, panting like she had just won a gold medal. I picked up her missile—her treasured crepe pan, cast iron solid enough to take my head off if she’d had a less accurate arm.
“Where have you been?” she shouted.
“A penthouse, a speakeasy, the tunnels of the IRT.”
She lowered her voice to a growl.
“All night I waited for you, in the window by my door, staring out into the dark. I saw your death a thousand times. A cut throat. Slit wrists. Your body burned to a crisp or eaten by the night. I have done this enough in my life. I will not do it for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to wait up.”
“Bullshit. You take the bannister, okay. Your father’s office gone—fine, that is your life, not mine. The condiments go sour, I buy new ones. We don’t have the money, but I find it, because that is what I do. My coffeepot slips away while my back is turned? I say goodbye. I don’t ask questions. I’m not your mother. I’m not even your housekeeper. I’m just Hellida. I’m just here.”
She crossed the room and picked up her pan.
“Hellida . . .”
“Don’t be sorry. Just get into your kitchen and sit down at that filthy table. I’m making you breakfast, damn it.”
She lit the stove, and I emptied my bag across the table. In one corner, I stacked leather gloves: Copeland’s, Barbarossa’s, and Mary Fall’s. That part of my investigation was complete. The gun I put back in the bag. From now on, I would be asking big questions, or none at all.
Hellida added the flour without measuring, whisked the eggs without looking, and didn’t need to check to see the pan was ripping hot. She ladled the first serving of batter onto the skillet. It went straight through. The fire hissed out, and the batter flooded across the stove.
“Curse it!” said Hellida.
“What is it?”
“The pan—”
In the center of the pan, there was a perfect hole. The iron had been eaten away as if by acid. I know because she picked it up and showed it to me—only for a moment, because the pan was hot enough to blister her palm. She dropped it and fell to her knees, fist pounding the floor in pain.
I wet a rag and pressed it to her palm. I wouldn’t let her pull away.
“Here,” I said. “Under the faucet.”
“It’s fine. I’ve burned myself worse a thousand times. It’s the stupidity of it that stings. And that pan. I’ve had that pan for seventeen years, damn it. This is no way for it to die. Damn this city. Damn this neighborhood. And damn your business, Gilda, because that is what’s causing all this. You’ll kill this house. You’ll kill us both.”
“I didn’t—I never meant to make you worry.”
“They never do.”
“Is your hand all right?”
“Tolerable.”
“Then get your hat. I’m buying you breakfast.”
I stood her up. She leaned on the table, and she saw my display of gloves, and the pain fell away from her face.
“This is the glove?” she said, clutching the one recovered the night before.
“That’s the one.”
She wrapped me tight in the finest hug a girl could ever hope to receive.
“Then it’s over,” she said. “It’s over.”
Van Alen’s bazaar loomed over Seventh Avenue, the only building in the city that could compete with the Westside trees for stature and respectability. It was less than a decade old, but after the fence went up, it aged quickly. Its floors buckled; its columns tilted and were wreathed in vines; its perfect white surfaces became impossible to maintain. Those grand men who built this building, one of the city’s greatest wonders, were quick to throw it away. The Eastside abandoned Pennsylvania Station, and so we claimed it as our own.
Two of Van Alen’s gaudy, ragged guardsmen stood at the base of every column, and a faded banner stretched across the building’s face, promising “Safety and Bargains” in letters thirty feet high. Safety was a lie, and bargains didn’t impress us. We had come to eat.
The station had no doors, because the bazaar never closed. The temperature dropped as we crossed the threshold, and we smelled the rich odor of rotting vegetation, sweating people, and stalls of food. A few hundred shopped on either side of the long arcade that led in from Seventh Avenue. Where travelers had once bought socks, flowers, tie pins, dime novels, toothbrushes, and handkerchiefs, a few dozen vendors sold the freshest meat and veg in New York. As much as I loathed the Upper West, I had to be impressed by the bazaar, where the produce was so fine that even Eastsiders were jealous. The trains came in every day and unloaded the food that kept the Westside alive—every morsel courtesy of Glen-Richard Van Alen.
“This is civilization,” said Hellida. “This is life.”
“You’d rather live in the Upper West?”
“I’d rather live anywhere than that awful old house.”
“You love our house.”
“No. Just the girl in it. I’m proud of you, you know? It’s a silly thing to say about a daughter who isn’t yours, but I’m so proud of you for finishing this case.”
She reached out to wrap me up in another hug, but I turned away and tried to focus on something manageable.
“Where should we eat?” I said.
“It’s been an awful week, really. I’ve tried not to let on, but my skillet? My coffeepot? And that man, that man with the pistol. I haven’t been able to close my eyes without seeing it.”
“I know.”
“You’ll get rid of the gun now, of course. We can do it together—walk over to the river after breakfast and hurl it in. I feel so fine, I could throw it to New Jersey.”
She laughed, and I laughed, and I think she believed me. At a lunch counter just inside the arcade, we worked our way through a pitcher of boiling coffee as the chef turned a spit of pork over an open fire. We laughed at old jokes and made nasty comments about the people passing by and did a reasonably convincing imitation of two happy friends.
The fat dripped, hissed, and perfumed the air. The cook sliced a few generous slabs of meat, buried them under a pile of fried potatoes and blackened onions, and dropped the plates before us. We gorged. Fifteen minutes later, we slumped in our chairs.
“They do know how to eat up here,” I said.
“So why don’t we stay? Sell the house, or board it up, and come to live where people are happy.”
“I’m not going to waste what remains of my youth squatting in one of Van Alen’s hovels.”
“There’s no future below the Borderline. Here, they have food. They have the night-fires. They have men.”
“I can’t leave the house. It’s . . . not now. But what if you left without me?”
“Never.”
“I’d feel better with you out of the Westside altogether. We could get you a room on the Eastside, just for the week. Just for tonight.”
“Why? What happens tonight? You’re not going out again.”
“I may have to.”
“Why? Everything’s finished. You found the glove. You bring it to Mrs. Copeland this afternoon, take her money, and walk out the door.”
“There may be a few loose ends.”
I slid some change across the grease-pooled counter, and the cook pushed most of it back.
“Westside discount,” he said. “Residents only. Courtesy Van Alen.”
I grunted thanks, and Hellida followed me down the arcade.
“Why did you bring me here?” she said.
“To mourn a crepe pan.”
“What else?”
“I have to speak to Van Alen. The overseer should know how to find him.”
She stopped walking and lowered herself onto the nearest bench. She covered her eyes with one hand, and for the first time in her life, she looked old.
“You don’t care about my crepe pan,” she said. “You don’t care about Hellida.”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but there is a war coming.”
“Oh really, Gilda.”
“I just have to ask the man a few questions.”
“And he gives you answers, and you ask more questions. And those take you all over town, and you keep asking questions, and you keep asking, until you’re floating facedown in the sewer and . . . never mind.”
“Don’t you want to know how my father died?”
“I already know how. Look in the mirror, and you’ll know too.”
“He was a fool. I’m being careful.”
“No, flicka . . .” She laughed and shook her head. “I could threaten. I could tell you come with me now, or else. But I know how you choose.”
She walked away without looking back. I had no words to stop her.
I stepped to the side of the arcade and leaned on one of the grimy, perfect columns, breathing deeply until I was able to forget how I felt. The roast pork sat greasy on my stomach. I rejoined the crowd.
At the end of the arcade, a mammoth staircase swept down into the main waiting room—a bland name that did no justice to what was still the city’s grandest space. Fifteen stories above my head, the vaulted ceilings looked as distant as the sky, and the room was as large and glorious and cold as any cave beneath the earth. Ticket windows had been replaced by a fishmonger, cheese shop, and butcher; the dining room and luncheonette overtaken by breakfasting young people who had come to watch the crowd. The main floor was filled with pushcarts selling things the Eastside could never dream of. Over a thousand citizens were working, shopping, and eating on the floor of that great, useless hall, and they did so without fear.
Management worked out of what had once been the women’s waiting room, where ladies had come to avoid the leers of traveling salesmen on tall wooden benches that were almost like pews. The benches were gone now, replaced with a few dozen desks, where workers, mostly women, shifted paper, smoked, and yelled. At the room’s north end was a frosted door marked “Mrs. Greene.” It was locked, but not for long.
