Westside Saints, page 25
“That’s it,” he said. “Just who the hell are you two?”
“The daughter of Anacostia Fall,” said Mary. “You took her money. You humiliated her. That was a stupid thing to do.”
Bully tried to step back. Mary pressed the saw closer. He froze.
“I just want to pull something out of the cabinet,” he said. Mary nodded, and followed him with the saw close to his neck. He opened the tall white cabinet doors and withdrew the bloody Gladstone bag. He dropped it on the counter. It rattled with stolen silver.
“You want money?” he said. “Take it.”
“That’s not why we’re here,” I said.
“Then what do I have to do to get you women to leave me alone?”
He said “women” the way I’d have expected, like it was the nastiest slur he could reach for. I didn’t like men who talk that way. I was finished with this one.
“There is nothing you can do,” I said, “but give us the notebook, give us the powder, and say the words that send us home.”
“And what do I get?” he said.
“An audience at the feet of Glen-Richard Van Alen, lord of the Westside. A chance to beg for your life.”
He tried to argue. Mary wasn’t having it. She darted the bone saw closer and, miracle of miracles, Bully Byrd shut up.
I turned to Helen, who stood guard over the body of her boy. Soon we would be gone, and she would be left alone to bury Barney and wait for the man who killed him to reappear. When Bully made his appearance in 1922, she would pretend she didn’t know what had happened, hoping to wring one last bundle out of him before he came back here. She hated him so much. To hide that, I thought, she must have talents I’d never imagined.
“You were going to smuggle him out in the hearse,” I said. “To where?”
“There are plenty cemeteries on Long Island,” said Helen. “I was gonna drop him and let him go. I’d keep the silver. I’d be free.”
“Free,” laughed Bully. “It’s no joy to be free of the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“Shut up, pig.”
“She calls me immoral. But burning the church, that was her idea. Checking the basement was her job. She lit the fuses while I did the sermon. And the powder? She mixed it, tripled the explosive dose without giving me fair warning. She hoped I’d die in the fire.”
“I could never be so lucky,” said Helen.
The wind picked up another screaming notch. The back door swung open, slamming into the wall and causing all of us to flinch. Bully laughed.
“I’m the most innocent person here, really,” said Bully. He stared down the saw at Mary, acknowledging her for the first time since he pulled down the bag. “You tell her what you did to our Ruth?”
“Shut up or I’ll cut your throat,” said Mary.
“Oh, go ahead.”
He smirked, and when she didn’t cut him, he knocked her arm away. She kept her grip on the saw. He backed her toward the door. I pressed the knife harder against Helen’s back, feeling terribly distant from where I wanted to be.
“What did she do?” said Helen, stepping away from Barney’s body for the first time.
“It was an accident,” said Mary.
“It was a goddamned massacre,” said Bully. “Swung an ax like it was a golf club, caught poor Ruthie right on the chin. Split her face like a coconut. Took our girl a whole day to die.”
“And last night you looked her in the eye!” said Helen. She tried to charge at Mary. I grabbed her with my free hand, trying to hold her back, but she slipped out of my grip. My knife cut her deeply, but she didn’t care. She ran down the long, grim galley. I ran, too.
Mary swiped at Bully with the saw. He grabbed her wrist and squeezed. The saw dropped from her hand. He dropped to his knees, trying to grab it. Mary kicked him in the face, and then Helen was on top of Mary, clawing at her, choking her. I raised the knife, trying to pretend I was ready to kill.
Helen slammed Mary back into the counter. Mary grabbed the closest heavy thing—an apothecary bottle filled with some unknown elixir—and brought it down on Helen’s head. The bottle didn’t break. Neither did her skull. But she reeled, half-conscious. I dropped the knife, grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her into the floor. She tried to sit up, and I stomped her face back into the tile. She stopped trying to move.
“Good god,” said Mary.
“I’m finished with this family,” I said.
The door to the backyard crashed shut. The silver was gone. So was Bully. So was my long knife. Through the filthy windows, we saw him struggling to hang on to the Gladstone. We pushed our way outside just as he abandoned the bag, littering the snow with coins from another time, and bolted across the yard faster than I thought possible. We followed, but the snow was deep and our legs were tired. He ran into the shed. We were almost at its doors when they exploded open, and Bully burst forth, riding bareback on what I suppose must have been the undertaker’s horse. It was a towering gray animal, frightened of the driving snow and terrified of the man on its back.
The horse snorted, a terrible choking sound, and Bully kicked its flanks until it got up to speed. It charged down the alley. We ran after. By the time we reached the sidewalk, he was gone.
“Goddamn it,” I shouted, stamping uselessly in the snow.
“Patience, patience. He’s a friendless, coatless man riding a stolen horse through a hellish storm. Where could he possibly run?”
“He’ll try to get off the island.”
“He can’t count on a ferry. It will have to be the bridge.”
For a moment, I wondered which one she meant, but then I remembered where I was—a city with only one bridge worth a damn. When we turned onto Mulberry, Virgil called, from the steps of Brass’s tenement: “Hullo!” We didn’t stop. We just ran, or tried to, and he ran alongside.
After that, we didn’t talk anymore. The storm had not slowed, and sunlight had done nothing to soften the snow, much less melt it. It was as tough a trip as our odyssey the night before, and the only thing that kept me moving was the knowledge that we had much less far to go.
We crossed Canal, hurling ourselves over snowbanks and raw ice, drawing stares from the few people foolish enough to be outside on this dismal morning. Another long block and we rounded the corner into Five Points. The doors of the ramshackle buildings that huddled around that famous slum were bolted shut, the streets emptier than they had ever been. Across the snow, we ran, we ran, we ran. This time I was in front, and this time I did not slow down.
As we neared the river, the wind blew fiercer than it had the night before, assaulting us with the stench of freezing salt water. At the edge of City Hall Park, Bully’s horse lay broken and abandoned, its breath steaming through the snow. We ran past the poor beast and saw the bridge, whose span rose into the white. Not even the first tower could be seen.
On the approach to the bridge, the trolley waited for passengers that would not come. Past it a policeman leaned on the edge of the promenade, black uniform stained with blood, with his head tilted back and his hand clutching his nose. At the sound of Virgil’s heavy footsteps, he lowered his head and recognized a brother officer.
“Where is he?” said Virgil.
“Ran east, sir, just bashed me in the face and ran.”
Mary and I didn’t break stride. We weren’t running anymore; we were dragging our bodies up that glorious bridge, which had never seemed so steep or so new. The wood was lighter than I had ever known it, the stone less worn.
“Stop,” shouted the policeman, his voice wet with blood. “In that wind, it’s suicide!”
We didn’t care. We were over the water now, where the gale came from every side, pelting us with snow and ice, threatening to hurl us into the river. We could not see the water, but I heard ice cracking against the boats like the snapping of faraway bones.
Manhattan was gone and Brooklyn impossibly far away. The whole world was white, screaming pain, but Mary was close by.
“Don’t stop,” she said, her arm wrapped tight around mine.
“I never would.”
The first tower rose out of the swirl like a ship cutting through the fog. Its stone was as solid as the earth, its cables hardly twitching in the wind. In the whole city, here was the one thing the storm could not touch. And here we found Bully Byrd.
He slumped against the stone, pressing his face into the tower in a feeble attempt to escape the wind. He whimpered like a dying rat.
We stood over him. He looked small. I liked him that way.
“Get up,” said Mary. “It’s done.”
I offered my hand—I’m not sure why, perhaps I’m kinder than I thought—and Bully took it. He squeezed tighter than he needed to. I was trying to wrench free when I remembered the knife.
It shone dully in the feeble light, clutched at his side in his red, gloveless hand. He swung it at me, a low, lazy haymaker, and Mary screamed, and I was too numb to get out of the way.
That long knife split my coat and split my dress, and would have split my side if it were still 1922. But this was the Gilded Age, when gaslight flickered and horseshoes echoed on cobblestones, and women were encased in whalebone or steel.
The knife bounced off my corset. Mary’s fist smashed into Bully’s wrist, and the blade fell from his hand, skipped off the promenade onto the trolley tracks, and then down to the invisible river.
“Damn,” said Bully. “That was my last ace.”
He smiled that cheeky smile, and I punched him in the mouth hard enough to make my knuckles rattle. It didn’t accomplish anything in particular, but I was too numb for it to hurt.
The bridge rumbled. Out of the frost, the trolley ground its way along the icy tracks, making for Brooklyn at something slower than a walking pace. Far to the east, we heard its twin attempting to make the reverse trip.
“That’s a lesson in patience,” said Bully. “If I’d hid on the trolley, I’d be free now.”
The promenade vibrated as Virgil Carr, late as ever, bounded up to the tower.
“Jesus goddamned Christ,” he shouted. “This snow!”
“You have a marvelous grasp of the obvious,” said Mary.
“I try. This the fellow?”
“Bulrush Byrd,” said Bully. “Pleased to meet you.”
“You’ve got blood on your face. Which one of them put it there?”
“I did,” I said.
“Classy work,” said Virgil. He wrenched Bully’s arms behind his back and applied the handcuffs, then marched the preacher down the bridge, his pistol nestled against Bully’s spine.
As we turned toward shore, the adrenaline seeped out. Mary slumped against me. Each step we took, we took together. We were nearly off the bridge when we saw a figure standing in the middle of the promenade, unbent by the snow. I assumed it was the cop. I think we all did. But it wasn’t—it was the forgotten man.
“Father,” said Enoch Byrd, standing in our way, dirtier than I believe he had ever been in his life. Where had he been for this last, long day, I wondered. What had he done to pass the storm? What had led him here, to this place? I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask. I lacked the strength, and anyway, this was not my moment.
Virgil shoved Bully toward him. Enoch, still looking at Bully like a wet-eyed boy who didn’t understand why his father treated him so rough, took Bully’s face in his hands. I thought he was going to speak, to unload a lifetime of misery and disappointment and betrayal. But perhaps he was cold, too. As the bridge rumbled with the weight of the trolley’s twin rolling down from Brooklyn, Enoch pulled Bully to him and sobbed.
I looked at Mary. For that moment the sight of her was free of the pain that had clouded the last week. For that moment, she was simply my mother—younger than she should have been, of course, but back in my life in a truly miraculous way. And then the moment ended as her eyes went wide. She had seen Enoch’s gun.
It was a small pistol, but dangerous enough. He pressed it against Bully’s neck.
“Son,” said Bully, hopeful, smiling again.
“I believed in you,” said Enoch. “You killed her.”
Enoch drew back the hammer, and he was about to fire when Bully smashed his forehead into his son’s nose, once, twice. That was all it took.
Enoch staggered backward and the pistol fell, onto the tracks, down to the river. Enoch sagged against the wall of the promenade, and then he fell too, landing squarely in front of the Manhattan-bound trolley.
Its engines were powerful enough to fight back the storm. No matter how strong Enoch’s faith, it could not stop that terrible machine. It ground over him, not pausing, not even shuddering, leaving something too broken to be called a man.
Nineteen
It took us hours to reach the Electric Church, during a walk as snow-blind and painful as the one the night before, but far more pleasant because Mary was beside me, because in the moments I could forget the horror of what had happened to Enoch, it almost felt like we had won.
As we walked, Virgil alternated between abusing Bully and making increasingly desperate attempts to impress Mary Fall. He failed to make an impression on either. Bully was catatonic, a walking corpse, and Mary had eyes for the future alone.
“I should like a little apartment,” she said, “something desperately small, even depressing, but every inch my own.”
“You could live with me,” I said. “As long as you want. I have the room.”
“Oh, Gilda, we’d kill each other within a week. And I’ll need a job. Women in your city can get jobs, can’t they?”
“If they’re lucky, pretty, or smart.”
“And I’m all three.”
“No chance of enticing you to join me at my work?”
“One tiny mystery nearly killed me. I don’t think I can stand much more. But don’t look so gloomy, Gilda dear! I may not be your mother, precisely, but I will always be your friend.”
Her voice was as warm and welcome as a coal fire. It wasn’t what I’d always wanted, but it was better than I could have hoped. And it would all be mine—assuming I survived.
We were crossing Broadway when something that had been troubling Mary finally bubbled up.
“You said you knew from experience,” she said, “you said you knew about killing.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Last fall I killed two people, a man and a woman.”
“Did they deserve it?”
“If anyone ever can. But that didn’t make it easier, and it didn’t make it right.”
“How did you move past it?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, you’re going to have to. We’ll both have to. We are too young and too pretty, Miss Carr, to let guilt weigh us down.”
Even through countless inches of snow, the Electric Church stank of burned wood and charred flesh. When we reached it, Virgil gave Bully a final shove toward the archway, which was half buried in the snow. I reached into his vest and pulled out the notebook and the snuffbox.
“Is there enough powder for the ritual?” I said.
“Should be enough for one more go.”
“You open the gate. We step through, and you come with.”
“What if I refuse?”
Mary took the pistol out of Virgil’s hand. She pointed it, straight and steady, at Bully’s heart.
“In that case,” said Bully, “we’ll need a fire.”
“There’s plenty of wood under the snow,” I said. “Dig.”
Virgil uncuffed him, and Bully knocked the snow away with his hands, scrambling to collect the shards of old pews before the driving wind buried them again. Mary kept the pistol trained on him the whole time. Virgil stared at her unashamedly, chuckling occasionally, waiting for someone to notice him. We both did our best not to. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“So what’s it all about?” he said. “I’m a patient man, I’ve tried not to press or pester. But you two act like you’re about to vanish for good, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out where.”
“He’ll light a fire,” said Mary. “He’ll talk. He’ll toss a handful of that powder and a gate will open that she and I will step through.”
“To where?”
“1922.”
“That must be the silliest thing I ever heard.” Mary shrugged, and Virgil settled back into his unwilling silence. After a few seconds, he broke it again. “Really, though . . . 1922?”
“1922.”
“You both came from there?”
“Gilda did. I didn’t.”
“But you’re going back there, to stay forever?”
“I am.”
He rapped a knuckle against his club, searching for the words that would make her stay. Finally, he hit on his best attempt.
“Now I’ll ask you,” he said, “what’s 1922 got that we can’t give you right here?”
“Everything.”
“Everything. A fella can hardly compete with that.” Another long pause. “Say—can I come too?”
“I don’t think the future could hold you.”
“Well! I’ve been rejected by women before—not often, but enough to recognize it—and I must say this is the firmest refusal I’ve ever heard. Go with my compliments. May you live to see the new millennium.”
He tipped his hat, bowing low enough to make her smile. I smiled, too. It was something Cherub would have done.
Bully tossed a final chunk of wood onto the snowbound base of the arch. He shaped the pile into a rough pyramid.
“You call that a fire?” said Virgil. He pushed Bully aside and finished preparing it himself. Boys. Whatever century, good god they are predictable. “There. That’ll burn like hell itself.”
Virgil lit the fire with as much masculine swagger as he could muster. Once it flickered to life, he leaned back on his heels and watched it pop and crackle.
“I spent my whole life selling suckers on life after death,” said Bully. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, to himself, or to his dead. “When I finally hit on a real miracle, things got too twisted up for me to use it. I could have made a million.”
