POE MUST DIE (11 page)

He awoke lying flat on his back and gazing up at a tall, thin woman with a small, round head and black hair parted in the middle. She wore all black and no rouge on her unsmiling face and she clutched a bible to her bosomless chest. She was Miles Standish’s wife.

“I shall read over you, Mr. Poe, for the word of the Lord has power—”

Poe sat up. “The painting. It was alive.”

“I shall read over you, Mr. Poe.” She opened the bible.

Behind Poe, Miles Standish’s voice was again calm and sure.

“Nonsense from a quill pusher who survives by lecturing on the metaphysical. Conclusions springing from whiskey. Sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Mrs. Standish read from the Book of Revelations and Poe, clutching the billiard table, raised himself to his knees. “It
was
alive.”

He was on his feet, breathing heavily through his mouth. “It was alive.”

Miles Standish stared down at the backs of his own hands. “I believe in being blunt, sir. You are a drunkard, a man with a known mystical turn of mind. You reek of alcohol—”

Poe sniffed the air, touched his clothes.
He did reek of
whiskey.
His shirt and coat were wet with it. A half-empty bottle and a glass stood on the side of the billiard table.
Was he losing his mind?

A Negro servant held out Poe’s cloak, hat, walking stick. “I suggest you consult a physician,” said Standish. “I know of several. Perhaps Dr. Paracelsus would consent to—”

Poe shoved his left arm at Miles Standish, causing the lawyer to lean away. “Demons stretched out their hands for me and I say to you, this is blood,
my blood!”

Poe showed his slashed left palm.

Both of Standish’s eyebrows crept slowly up his forehead. “I would agree. And do try not to break any more cue sticks. They are handmade and expensive. His eyes went to the floor and Poe followed his gaze. A broken, bloodstained cue stick lay on the gray carpet.

A silent, stunned Poe left the billiard room with the sound of Mrs. Standish’s bible reading following him into the hall and out into the cold. He heard Miles Standish say that all arrangements for the ransom would be made, but Poe paid no attention. He clenched his left fist to stop the bleeding and he wondered how much longer he would be able to function before his mind snapped and he joined his brother and sister in that world of permanent horror known only to the hopelessly insane.

EIGHT

J
ONATHAN SLASHED
Tom Lowery’s throat so that when the burly grave robber opened his mouth to scream, no sound came out. Lowery, fighting to free himself from a drugged sleep, willed himself to sit up, to rise from the straw mattress and destroy the man who had done this terrible thing to him. But his powerful body would no longer obey him.

Lowery’s eyes were wide with horror and blood gushed from severed arteries under both ears as he watched Jonathan use the scalpel on his naked body with terrifying efficiency. When the pain became excrutiating, Lowery passed out and never knew that he, like Sylvester Pier, was both the victim of Jonathan’s revenge as well as an offering to Asmodeus, king of demons.

NINE

I
N A NARROW
, windswept alley between two rundown wooden buildings, several children crawled on their hands and knees in mud. None of the children spoke. Each crawled silently and slowly through the dark brown ooze. Figg, standing beside Titus Bootham, said, “Odd sort of game, that. Tots frolickin’ in mud on a day what’s cold as this.”

The English journalist said, “They are not frolicking, my friend. They are trying to eat.”

“Eat mud?” Figg’s frown, as usual, made him appear ferocious.

“No, not actually eat it. They are searching through the mud for dead animals. Rats, cats, birds, dogs, anything. When they find what they are looking for, the children will take these rotting carcasses to meat dealers, who use the carcasses to feed pigs. The pigs, in turn, will be slaughtered for pork, a large part of the American diet. Not my diet, let me assure you. The children earn a few pennies for this deadly work. What one earns by eating pork I dare not say.”

“Ain’t there no other way for them to eat?”

Some collect
chips
from the street. Dried manure. Pays four pennies to the bucket. Some become prostitutes; they sell their little bodies. More than some, sad to say. Others become thieves, beggars, the peddlers of paper flowers, dried apples, two-a-penny matches. Ten thousand homeless children roaming the streets of New York and I assure you, not all of them are acolytes in church.”

Figg and Bootham were across the street from Phineas Taylor Barnum’s American Museum, a mammoth five-story marble building on the corner of lower Broadway and Ann Street. At eleven o’clock in the morning, traffic in the area was extremely heavy. Never in Figg’s life had he seen such a crush of people, horses and anything that moved on wheels, foot, hoof all in one place, at one time. Stagecoaches, painted, with glorious names embossed on each side; wagons and handcarts piled high with merchandise; private carriages with uniformed drivers; an unending stream of cabs; high-stepping horses with breath turning to steam in the cold.
Noises.
Drivers cursing and snapping their whips in the air like so many pistol shots; iron horseshoes striking cobblestones where snow had melted or been worn away; men, women, children talking, shouting and no one pausing for breath; bells jingling on the reins of horse-drawn sleighs.
People.
Young, pink-faced messenger boys darting through crowds and risking their lives in traffic; tall men in tall hats, capes, long coats, greased side whiskers and thick beards, their mouths filled with cigars or tobacco juice; women in for and silks, their hands warmed by muffs; a parade of women in a rainbow of bonnets, plumed hats, with lace and diamonds at their throats and each woman stepping daintily into ankle deep mud, lifting a skirt to show leather boots which buttoned on the side.

The sight and sound of it all was splendid and frightening. Nothing in London—not Piccadilly and Oxford Circuses, not the Strand or Oxford Street—could compare to what Figg was seeing on the Broadway of New York.

The number of shops was unending and the buildings, mostly wooden and none over five stories tall, seemed to draw people by the thousands.

Power, energy, riches. This was New York and Figg was intimidated by such a city. But he saw other things, too. There were gutters packed with garbage and trash and there were side streets jammed with empty barrels, boxes and battered buckets filled with coal ashes. There were ugly pigs roaming the streets, brown pigs with long thin legs and sickening black blotches on their backs. They rooted noisily in the trash and garbage, oblivious to blocking the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to either push through them or walk around them into ankle deep mud.

Titus Bootham, wrapped in a shaggy coat of black bear for, was a short, gentle, fifty-five-year-old with the lined face of an old woman who had endured much without knowing why. He was awed by Figg. Awed, impressed, pleased to be in his company. Like all Englishmen, Bootham saw boxing as being an exact metaphor for all of life, the chance for a man to show maximum courage and doggedness, the chance to give and receive pain, persisting in this ideal like the British bulldog who hung on once he laid his teeth into a thing. The prize ring was John Bull, Englishman, at his finest and for Bootham, the opportunity to associate himself with Pierce James Figg was equal to drinking ale with the Prince of Wales.

Bootham said, “Twenty odd years ago it was. You and Hazlitt at Hinckley Downs. Magnificent it was. Fifty-two rounds in the sun until you picked him up and slammed him down on the boards. I was never so excited in my life. What became of Hazlitt?”

“Still in the game.”

“You’re joking. He must be over sixty.”

“That he is. Still catchin’ punches with his face, he is. Blind in one eye and the other none too good. But he can’t do anythin’ else. What time does Mr. Barnum open his establishment?”

“Around noon I believe. I saw Tom Spring and Jack Langan fight for the heavyweight championship. Eighteen and twenty-four, I believe. Seventy-seven rounds. Spring won. Thirty thousand people from all over England saw that one. God, what a thrill it was! Whatever happened to Spring?”

“Him and Langan fought again. Six months later, I think. Spring did a right neat job on Langan. Bloodied him from noon to Sunday, but Spring’s hands, they got botched and he never fought no more. He’s now an innkeeper, he is. Langan opened a hotel in Liverpool. He died two years ago. What’s Mr. P. T. Barnum got in his museum that’s so special?”

“Six hundred thousand different attractions, some of them pure humbug and hokum, some quite interesting. Americans are rather prudish and they believe theater and such entertainments to be the devil’s work and a sure road to hell. Master Barnum is a sly one. He shrewdly calls his emporium a museum, pretending to offer education for the family instead of time wasting amusement and entertainment. Thus, the public feels virtuous when they pay twenty-five cents admission to watch dancing girls or some cross-eyed Italian balance a bayonetted rifle on his long nose. And is it true that you are descended from
the
James Figg?”

From the respect in Titus Bootham’s voice, Figg would have thought the question was—are you related to Moses? Figg looked at him and nodded. He thought Titus Bootham would swoon with delight. “Direct descendant,” said Figg. “Me great-great-grandfather. All of us Figgs took to the trade.”

The
James Figg. In 1719 he became the first recorded heavyweight boxing champion in England’s history and from that date, boxing as the world was to know it, began. Father of boxing and first to openly promote the teaching of the sport. Master swordsman, expert fencer and even more skilled in the use of the cudgel. Patronized by nobles and bluebloods.
The
James Figg. William Hogarth gladly painted his portrait and designed his calling card. Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope were just two of the important men and women who sought his friendship and now Titus Bootham was standing beside his great-great-grandson, a man of note in his own right. Even in February cold, the excitement caused Titus Bootham to perspire.

Bootham said, “When you see Mr. Dickens, please convey my gratitude at singling me out to be of service to you. The pleasure and the honor is indeed mine.”

“Not yours entirely.”

“Ah yes, there is Mr. Poe.” Bootham sighed. “A most peculiar man. He views existence as does a man without sight. All darkness.”

Figg said, “Come to think of it, he weren’t seein’ much when I met him.”

Titus Bootham adjusted a scarf to protect the bottom half of his face against the cold. “One wonders at the sort of mind which conceives his particular prose, though let me add he
has
earned a reputation in literary circles. This has not made him one of our Yankee millionaires, of which we do have a few. Mr. Poe can be a nasty little piece of baggage, especially when in his cups. Did Mr. Dickens tell you that Mr. Poe once asked employment of him?”

“No.”

“Happened when Mr. Dickens began his London newspaper a couple of years ago. Mr. Poe wrote and asked to be made the American correspondent. He never got the job. Have no idea why, actually.”

Figg eyed Mr. Barnum’s American Museum. Oh it was a sight, it was. The outside of the marble building was a collection of color and oddities that would make a dead man sit up and take notice. Around each of the building’s top four stories were oval oil paintings of beasts, birds and much stranger animals, a few of them springing from Mr. Barnum’s imagination. Two dozen flags flew from the rooftop and snapped in the cold February wind, with a monstrous American red, white and blue towering over all. Other flags flew from a third story balcony, where uniformed musicians began to fit themselves into chairs. There were posters and banners on the ground floor and Figg had to admit that merely to gaze upon Mr. Barnum’s handiwork was to view a wonder. The building was a mass of colors. To Figg, it looked as though drunken gypsies had been given paint and cloth and told to indulge themselves beyond all reason and at Mr. Barnum’s expense. The boxer had toured Britain with many a carnival and knew the importance of pulling in a crowd as skillfully as possible. Mr. Barnum seemed to be the man who could do it.

And here is where Figg would find those actors involved with Jonathan.

Here is where he would begin his revenge on those who had killed his wife and son.

“What think you of Mr. Barnum’s painted box?” asked Titus Bootham.

“Trips you up, it does. Makes you stop. That is what a man in his position must do. Has himself a little band, I notice.”

“If you call thirty to forty musicians little, yes. But wait until you hear them. Mr. Figg, I assure you that no more horrendous sound has ever reached your ears. Barnum has deliberately hired the worst musicians money can buy. Deliberately, I say.”

“American custom?”

“American greed. A crowd always gathers to listen and when this awful music comes down upon them, many seek refuge inside the museum, at an entrance fee of course.”

Figg nodded. “Right smart. Yes sir, right smart.”

“Mr. Figg?”