Westside Saints, page 13
“I’ll need you to get me across,” I said, following at her elbow.
“Did you misplace your papers?”
“I’m in order. My companion is not. Can we use one of your tunnels?”
“Fine. But if Storrs Roebling doesn’t kill you, I’d like you to tell me everything you learn.”
I nodded, and we took our places at the sides of the Portuguese woman, who was now laboring on her hands and knees. Mary bent over her, pressing hard onto her lower back, while the midwife wet a towel for her neck.
“There is one more thing,” I said, as softly as I could. The Portuguese woman glared at me, and I wished I had the power to sink into the floor.
“What?” hissed Mrs. Greene.
“There’s a few dozen people freezing to death in the quarantine ward at St. Vincent’s. You owe them food and coal.”
“I’ll see that they get it—now be quiet.”
When the contraction ended, Mary stepped back, stretching out her muscles but not making a sound of complaint. Mrs. Greene took her place, one woman’s hands replacing another’s. When we left, the mother was screaming again.
Ida Greene’s Twelfth Street passage was a narrow crawl space wedged between Broadway and the thundering BRT. It was cramped, badly lit, and wet with melted snow. I had brought a skinny package wrapped in newspaper, and keeping it out of the muck made the trip an ordeal. Mary chattered the entire time.
“It just seems a waste, crossing over to the Eastside if we’re not going to visit the Hall of Records as well,” she said. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“These things always connect.”
“That’s a stupid thing to say.”
I did not disagree. But I also wasn’t wrong, and she didn’t turn back. My hand splashed into a puddle of black slush. We crawled the rest of the way in silence.
It had been gray, dark, and threatening snow when we went into the tunnel. When we emerged from its terminus, a Van Alen–owned lamp shop, snow fell like powdered sugar on Broadway’s glittering sidewalks. The lights were blinding and the noise, as always, was more than I could comfortably bear. Motionless, blaring automobiles filled the narrow strip of asphalt between the sidewalk and the fence, stuck in the kind of traffic jam we are never subjected to on the Westside. Pedestrians weaved around them freely, cursing, shouting, and shivering from the cold.
The spectacle hit Mary like a hammer to the forehead. I was two doors down before I realized she hadn’t followed me. She stood frozen before the lamp shop, speechless and pale, stunned by modernity’s gaudy face.
“Tourists,” I muttered, and took her by the hand.
Eastside crowds are notoriously sluggish, and the snow made them worse. Three months prior, they would have greeted the gentle dusting with holiday cheer, but we were in the pit of winter now, and the mood on the avenue was frantic and depressed as people fought to get home.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mary.
“You don’t know what you’ve seen.”
“I don’t. I don’t, of course, but I know . . . nothing like this.”
We were halfway across Tenth Street when Mary stopped and cackled at the gutter.
“What?” I said.
“They clear the sidewalks here. No snow. No trash.”
“No corpses, either.”
“It puts your Westside to shame.”
A horn blared. I jerked her out of the crosswalk before she was squashed. The driver bellowed a few choice oaths, and I returned fire so forcefully that Mary almost looked impressed.
“What are those machines all over the street?” she said.
“Autos. Horseless carriages.”
“Are they a recent invention?”
“Hardly. They’re more common all the time.”
We slogged south, block by block, passing stationery stores and dress shops, chophouses and oyster rooms, pawnshops, a billiard hall, three newsstands, a speakeasy disguised as a doctor’s office, and a doctor’s office that was filthier than any saloon. Mary stopped at every one, marveling at the cheap baubles that were the great achievement of our age, so impressed with it all that she couldn’t see how deeply I did not care.
At Waverly, where the herd fought for admittance to the subway, a nickelodeon barker begged Mary to come inside.
“One minute to showtime, ma’am, which means you’re in under the wire! The season’s finest motion picture, ‘Sally Out West,’ and I’ve got two seats left, fine seats, perfect for a pair of young women with ten cents to spare.”
“Out of the way,” I said, but Mary was transfixed.
“Motion picture?” she said.
“Not just a motion picture, the motion picture: seventeen minutes of giddy joy from Sally Feeney, comic sensation of our age, only a nickel, only a nickel, but hurry up, would ya, because picture’s about to roll.”
“We don’t have seventeen minutes,” I said, “and I don’t have a nickel. Let’s go—quick quick.”
“Maybe next time,” apologized Mary. I dragged her south, her eyes fixed on the blinding colors of the theater marquee. For all my admonishment, I failed to convince her to pick up speed.
“Is the Eastside always so startling?” she asked while gawking at a wigmaker’s dummies.
“It hits me like a toothache: one I’d thought I’d shaken and forgotten how much I hate.”
“You’re a terrible grouch, and if you hate the Eastside I think that’s the finest recommendation there is.”
“That’s because you literally don’t know anything.”
“Hmph.”
The snow picked up. We were nearly at our destination. Mary stopped again—not to peer into a barbershop or cobbler’s, but to look at me with a curiosity whose ferocity was almost frightening.
“Why does this all seem so new?” she said.
I knew what she was driving at, and I did not want to let her get there.
“Most of it is new, and it won’t last a week,” I said. I tried to press on, but she held my wrist tight.
“Before my memory was taken from me, I must have seen thousands of autos, watched hundreds of motion pictures. None of this should surprise. But it’s struck me like a girl’s first taste of liquor. Why do I feel I’ve never seen any of this before? Where have I been?”
On a quiet side street in the Upper West, under an elm, in the yard of a Methodist church. The Fall family vault, where some ancient endowment ensured that no weed may grow on New York’s holiest ground.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps you don’t get out much.”
It stopped her questions, but it didn’t make her happy. We walked the rest of the way at a nice clip, all the wonder that had animated Mary’s face wiped clean.
In a whitewashed cast-iron palace at the corner of Third Street, the Roebling Company looked down on the stem. A small door marked “ROEBLING” opened onto a lobby with an elevator. An old man in a tidy uniform sat behind a gold desk. He informed us that the Roeblings occupied floors five through seven. We signed his book, and he waved us on to the elevator.
“What name did you use?” asked Mary.
“Sally Feeney.”
“I’m Fairy Mall.”
I couldn’t help it. I giggled, and she looked at me like I’d sprouted polka dots.
“I didn’t think you knew how to laugh,” she said.
“I didn’t know—really, I never had any idea—that you were funny.”
“Keep watching. You’ll learn a lot.”
The elevator was old but spotless, every brass fitting shining bright. The operator, a middle-aged woman who looked like she was built out of railroad iron, guided it up with a touch so gentle that it made Mary say “Oh!” Another unexpected surprise.
We stepped off the elevator and were greeted by a massive gold-plated r. Beneath it, a frail young man with hair as wet and rounded as a scoop of ice cream eyed us like we were a stain. After our trip through the tunnel, we might as well have been. The plate on his desk read “Sullivan.” Pinned to his breast was a little slip of paper that said “71.” He set down his glass of water and said, “We don’t get many women here.”
“It’s a matter of lost property,” I said. “An employee of yours was—”
Mary ripped the long package from my hands and slapped it on Sullivan’s desk.
“This is the property of Storrs Roebling,” she said. “We shall return it to him personally, or we shall give it to you in the neck.”
“Hand it over and I’ll make out a receipt,” he said, not looking at Mary.
Mary tore open the package, revealing a sparkling silver arrowhead. She pointed it at Sullivan’s throat.
“Oh,” he said. “Perhaps you should speak to the floor manager.”
There was a little noise at his waist—a snap popping open, I realized a moment later—and the soft tap of something heavy brushing against polished wood. He’d drawn a pistol. I believe it was a semiautomatic, although I am happily no expert in these matters. It looked large enough to blow a hole through an elephant, however, and it was pointed at Mary’s gut. With his other hand he lowered the arrow until it pointed at the floor.
“I thought you said there were no guns here,” said Mary.
“Just west of the stem. Here, they are an essential accessory.”
“You’ll come with me,” said Sullivan.
“You are absolutely right.”
Sullivan shrugged toward the door behind him. I opened it, and Mary stepped inside. He followed us into a long room of clerks scribbling numbers at little desks with little lamps. There were windows along the western wall, but the shades were drawn tight. At the back of the room, a smoked glass bubble protruded from the wood.
Our feet were silent on the white carpet. I tilted my head toward Mary, feeling that even my softest whisper was louder than the room could bear.
“What happened to sweet-talking our way in?” I said.
“Sometimes it’s better to do something loud.”
Someday, I would give Mary a talk about the importance of patience. It would go brilliantly, I’m sure.
The clerks wore their ratings on their jackets: 77, 74, 79, and one terrified 62. Their suits were spotless and well-trimmed, cut to accommodate the blue steel pistols that dangled from every waist. I had not seen so many guns since the year before, when I emptied a boatload into the Hudson River, and the sight of all that gleaming death made me shiver.
“Mr. Sullivan,” said Mary, in her calmest Sunday school voice. “It’s quite difficult to follow you when you’re behind us with that gun.”
“Back wall,” he hissed, “then we’ll talk.”
We stopped before the smoked glass bubble, where a hairline crack in the paneling marked a hidden door. I leaned close to the glass, trying to catch a glimpse of who might be inside, and was rewarded only with a twisted view of my own ridiculous face.
Sullivan tapped his pistol on the door, and it popped open. Mary stepped through. Sullivan went after, and before I could follow, the door slammed in my face. I reached for the knob, but there was none. I banged on the wood. No answer came.
“Mary,” I said. “Mary?”
The clerk nearest, a grease-slick man with a 68 rating, sneered. Others snuck glances before returning, as quick as they could, to their work. Panic snaked through me like wildfire. My feet felt heavy, my mind sluggish. I was surprised by how scared I could feel.
I decided it was time they felt a little fear, too.
I grabbed the back of 68’s chair and spun him around to face me.
“What the hell, woman?” he said, straining to return to his desk.
“How do you get in that room?”
“You don’t.”
He pushed me, hard enough that I stumbled, and got back to work. I leaned over him and caught a stultifying glimpse of the long ledger he was reviewing, line by line, whose every minute character was inscribed in Enoch’s sunset blue ink. I snatched his inkpot and screwed the cap on tight.
“That’s my ink,” he said.
“Shut up,” I told him, and I took his lamp, too.
I pulled it from the outlet and threw it across the room in one smooth motion. It may have been the most graceful thing I’d ever done.
The smoked glass wall fell slowly, like a sheet of ice cracking off a mountainside. The scratching of pens stopped. The only sound was the relentless ticking of the great clock at the end of the room.
Behind the destroyed glass, Mary stood between Sullivan and an ancient man in a slim-fitting black suit who leaned on a silver cane. His skin was like week-old oatmeal, scaly and soft, and an ashy moustache drooped across his mouth. Sullivan looked like he yearned for death, but the other two smiled cheerfully.
“Miss Carr,” said Mary, “meet Jerome. I was just telling him we needed to speak to his boss.”
“Welcome to the Roebling Company, Miss Carr,” said Jerome.
He prodded the last remaining shard of window with his cane. It landed on the carpet with a soft thump that was as loud as a starter pistol. The clerks got back to work.
Ten
The elevator swept us silently to Roebling’s seventh-floor citadel. There was no operator. Jerome handled the machine himself.
“I guess subtlety’s gone out the window,” said Mary, pleased with herself. “Or through it.”
“I was simply following your lead.”
She shrugged, a far-too-satisfied smile on her face.
Jerome dipped his fingers into his jacket and handed us each a paperclip.
“Thank you,” said Mary, making it sound like a question.
“Our flagship product,” he said. “The Roebling Paperclip, developed by Mr. Roebling’s father some thirty years ago. It is virtually indestructible. Imagine that: an empire founded on a twisted bit of wire. Now please indulge my curiosity: Where did you get that silver arrow?”
“One of your men shot it at my head,” I said.
“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. A misunderstanding, I’m sure.”
Mary flicked Jerome’s lapel. A shudder went through the old man, like a tree shaking off its last dying leaves. He smiled, and I fancied I could see his skull. He was one of the most polite criminals I had ever met, but something about him made me feel like ice water had just been poured down my back. As we passed the sixth floor, I realized I was standing as far from him as the little compartment allowed.
“You’re missing your number,” said Mary.
“Timekeepers don’t wear their ratings on their chest.”
“But you do have one?”
“Oh yes. Everyone has a rating. Ours are confidential.”
“Even from you?”
“Even from us. The executives believe an air of mystery heightens the timekeeper’s effect.”
“And what is that supposed to be?”
“To remind the men that every second counts.”
I gripped the brass rail to still my quivering hand. It seemed impossible that Mary was standing there, leaning against the wall of the elevator, tapping her foot on the crimson rug. Just a few minutes before, she had left my sight, and the terror of that moment had not ebbed. I had been a fool to let her come here, I realized, to involve her with any of this. I should have followed my first instinct and confined her to the library, to the town house, to bed. Some treasures were too precious to be let into the world.
“But you sell more than just paperclips,” I found myself saying, as a way of forcing myself past the fear of losing her again.
“Ours is a diverse business, yes,” he said.
“Bootleg liquor?”
“We see no reason to let a law as misguided as the Volstead Act stop working men from taking a drink.”
“Heroin?” said Mary.
“A phenomenally popular recreational narcotic.”
“A plague,” I said.
“There are some who see it that way, yes, but I remember a time when it was available in every drugstore for twenty-five cents a bag, prescribed for everything from toothaches to children’s coughs to women’s ailments. Modern prudishness about drug use does not stop it from being a useful product.”
“What about murder?” I said, nodding at the arrow that Mary clutched tight to her chest. Jerome shrugged, and the elevator glided to a stop. The trip had not put me at ease.
We walked down the hallway, which was as dim and silent as a crypt. He followed close behind. His stride was awkward, as though his legs were tortured by arthritis or some old injury, but he let no pain show on his face.
“Your conception of business is typical of a woman,” he said, putting a healthy sneer into the word, “or a child.”
“Is it?” I said, speaking quickly before Mary could say something rash. “Please enlighten me.”
“The product is not important. What matters is that there is a need, and that we can make a profit by filling it. The Roebling Company offers many services that ignorant people consider illegal or immoral. What you might call murder, racketeering, bribery, fraud, or theft, we understand to be capitalism in its purest form.”
“What about blackmail?”
“It’s one of our fastest-growing departments.”
He smiled broad enough for me to see every yellow tooth in his head. I couldn’t tell if his pride stemmed from the company or from putting two women in their place, but I knew it made me want to run.
At the end of the hallway, Jerome stopped before a door whose smoked glass was inscribed “ROEBLING.” I put my hand on the doorknob, but Jerome touched my wrist with a grip so clammy that I simply could not move.
“May I ask what you want of Mr. Roebling?” he said.
“He tried to kill us,” I said.
“We want to know why,” said Mary.
“Hmm. It is a fair question to ask,” said Jerome, trying his best to look grandfatherly. “But I beg of you, for your own sake, please do not waste his time. People stronger than you have been killed for less.”
