Ripper (11 page)

“Wonderful!”

“What luck! And we could sure use some of that around here!”

“Cusack? Isn’t that Polish?” Jackson ventured.

“Norman,” Emeril corrected. “Still used in England, mostly Irish, French before that.” Explaining to Carver, he added, “Surnames are part of my studies.”

“That and everything else,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes.

Despite enjoying their company, Carver didn’t quite trust them anymore either. He nodded toward the door. “I’ve only got an hour or so before I have to head back to Blackwell. I’d like to try to find an address by then.”

They laughed so hard, he had to ask. “Is it
that
funny?”

“Yes,” Jackson said. “It’s not as though you can use the analytical engine. And even then…”

Remembering the huge device, Carver asked, “What
is
that? What’s it do?”

“Not much since Beckley can’t abide the noise.” Jackson chuckled. “He almost quit over it. Tudd knows the nuts and bolts. He’s the first to get one working.”

Emeril interrupted. “But to answer the question, it was invented by Charles Babbage, fellow who created the difference engine, a mechanical calculator. The analytical engine is more general purpose. Using data coded into punched cards, it can sort them and answer questions. Say you wanted a list of whoever’s related to the person currently living at 375 Park Avenue. Put the question on a punch card, start the engine, in an hour or so, it spits out the answer.”

Carver went wide-eyed. “Really? Could I use it to find my father?”

Jackson shook his head. “First, Beckley hates the thing. Second, it keeps breaking down. Third, the cards only cover the city’s current upper class. Your dad’s more likely working class, don’t you think? I suppose if you eliminate your other options and
beg,
Beckley might give in. Until then, it’s the old-fashioned method. Frankly, you’ll be lucky to have the directories stacked on a table by the time you have to leave.”

As it turned out, Jackson was wrong. Carver not only stacked all the city directories from 1889 on, he also flipped through four, listing addresses for anyone named Jay Cusack.

By the time he had to leave, he’d accumulated fifty-seven Jay Cusacks.
Fifty-seven.
Worse, halfway through the fifth book he realized he should’ve listed
all
the Cusacks, in case a family member knew how to reach him.

On his way out, he longingly eyed the analytical engine. As if
reading his mind, Beckley shook his head and proceeded to not only suggest ten more directories, but also to check the major newspaper archives, police reports and hospital records.

Daunted, Carver felt his shoulders slump as he left. Head buzzing with all the lists he’d have to go through, when he stepped out of the elevator onto Warren Street, he barely heard a familiar voice shriek his name.

“Carver!”

He looked up. A hansom cab was at the curb, a pretty girl leaning excitedly out the window. The smart new clothes were utterly unfamiliar, but the black hair and freckled face were unmistakable.

“Delia!” he shouted, trotting up.

“How wonderful!” she said. “I was just over at the New York Times Building. It’s the most
amazing
place! I saw the archives, the news desk,
everything
!”

Of course. The
Times
was on Park Row, part of Newspaper Row, just a few blocks away.

“Great!” Carver said.

“We’re heading home—West Franklin Street, number twenty-seven. Jerrik’s uncle rents them a lovely Queen Anne Victorian with a grand oak right outside my window. Haven’t had a chance yet, but it looks like an easy climb. What about you? Shopping Devlin’s for some new clothes, I hope?”

Right. Here was Delia dressed to the nines and he, still in his threadbare Ellis Orphanage clothes. Embarrassing as that was, he
couldn’t
tell her what he was doing. Not only had he just stepped out of a secret headquarters, but she was now the ward of
reporters.

“Just… heading home,” he said.

“So you found someone to adopt you! Was it that old detective?”

Yes, and I’m living in an insane asylum with him,
he wanted to say. Instead, he half-mumbled, “No, not him.”

“Oh…,” Delia said. She looked as if she didn’t believe him. “Who, then?”

“Someone—else,” Carver stammered.

“Do they have a name?” Delia asked patiently.

The awkward silence lasted until the woman sharing Delia’s cab leaned forward. It was Anne Ribe. He recognized her from Prospective Parents Night. Her eyes glowed with an intelligence that, even though they weren’t related, reminded Carver of Delia.

She extended a white-gloved hand. “The mysterious Carver Young! Delia’s told us so much about you… and yet so little.”

Really? That was a surprise. And Delia looked uncomfortable to hear it. Carver was taken aback but remembered to shake her hand. “Not that much to tell, really.”

“Can we give you a ride? I’m sure Delia would love to catch up.”

“No!” Carver said. His answer was loud enough to make Anne Ribe blink and twist her lips into a suspicious half smile. “Thank you, but I really should be walking.”

“Where?” Delia asked. She pushed closer and mouthed, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Carver mouthed back.

A fierceness took hold of her face.

“It’s not that simple,” Carver added.

“Seems simple enough,” she said, pulling herself back inside. She sat flat against the seat, leaving her barely visible.

“Well, nice meeting you!” Anne Ribe said. And the cab rolled off.

Carver watched it go, confused and distraught. Delia had always been a challenge, pushing him, but she’d also been part of his life forever. He thought of calling out, chasing the cab, telling her everything, but he couldn’t. He had an entirely new life to deal with now.

And fifty-seven Jay Cusacks. So far.

LIKE THE
ferry prow as it rose and collapsed on the choppy gray waters, seeing Delia had lifted Carver’s spirits just high enough to send them crashing down. Returning to the dreary island didn’t improve his mood, nor did seeing Simpson slam his head into the wall.
Thud, thud, thud.
Carver almost wanted to join him.

As he trudged up the long circular stairs, he hoped against hope that his mentor would ignore him so he could throw himself onto his new bed and collapse.

The typewriter was silent, but the pile of papers beside it had grown. Hawking was at the table, peering through a magnifying glass mounted on an adjustable stand. Intricate brass items had been strewn across an oily cloth. One was held in a vise, and the
retired detective was hard at work using his good left hand to polish it.

He didn’t bother looking up. “Your housework inspired me, boy.”

“What is that?” Carver asked.

“A gadget. Call me a hypocrite, but I’ve a fondness for trains. Not the silent type, the cranky old steam variety. This is a piece of old railway equipment, once used for uncoupling cars and switching tracks. Should still work on our elevated system. I find the mechanics fascinating. Almost relaxing.”

Hawking lifted his head, revealing his intense, steady eyes. “You look like you’ve had quite the day.”

Carver mumbled noncommittally.

Hawking tossed the cloth into the center of the table. “Shall we play at Holmes and have me guess?”

“I thought you didn’t like Holmes,” Carver said.

He propped his good arm on one knee. “No, but if I’m to talk to you, I have to speak whatever simplistic tongue you best understand. Could be worse, could be nursery rhymes.”

Pupils black as coal scrutinized Carver. He felt as if his mind were being prodded by a physical thing. “Shoulders slumped, face wan, expression twitchy. You’re far too sad to have failed completely. I’m guessing you had some success, but it didn’t mean what you thought it would.”

Being easily read only added to Carver’s discomfort. “Yes.”

Hawking scrunched his face, as if extending his gaze deeper into an unseen crystal ball. “You heard my message, made it to Ellis Island. The Counter helped you. You found a name.”

“Wow. How do you know all that?” Carver asked, surprised.

Hawking cackled. “You’re so easy to fool. There’s a phone in
the office here. I spoke with Tudd half an hour ago. What did you find in the athenaeum that depressed you?”

“Fifty-seven Jay Cusacks,” Carver explained. “And I’ve looked through only four directories.”

Hawking rubbed his chin. “I’d have hoped the Counter would have taught you something about numbers. Maybe you weren’t listening. Do you know how many people currently reside in this city?”

“Not exactly. A lot.”

“A million and a half, give or take. In one day,
one day,
you narrowed the field from a million and a half to less than a hundred, and you’re complaining? Have you always been the sort who sees the light at the end of the tunnel and thinks it an oncoming train? Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!”

Hawking set another brass piece in the vise. “Your dime novels show only the tiniest fraction of detective work, the brilliant crime, the tantalizing clues, the dramatic chase, the final battle atop a lofty peak with ocean waves crashing down below, and then… justice served! If they wrote about the real world, four-fifths of the story would consist of the hero sitting in a library for months and following false leads. But no one would pay a nickel for that, let alone a dime.”

He paused to look at the new piece, giving it the same scrutiny he’d just given Carver. “Thinking, reading, walking, riding, waiting. That’s most of it. There
are
chases, undercover work and… gun battles, but they are completely unromantic and few and far between. Still want to be a detective?”

“Yes,” Carver answered.

Hawking grinned. “But not as much as you did a week ago?”

Carver shrugged. “I don’t mind the work. I was just… surprised.”

“Wait until a month passes and your list grows longer rather than shorter.” He stopped to look at Carver again. “There’s something else, isn’t there? A girl?”

That was too much. How could he possibly know about Delia? “So there
was
someone following me?”

“Eh?” Hawking said. He shrugged. “Not that Tudd mentioned, though I wouldn’t put it past him. That much I actually did read on your face. Women are a difficult subject. I won’t be much help to you there, except perhaps to say if they’re guilty of something or not. And
everyone’s
guilty of something, so the answer’s always yes.”

But Carver had to talk to someone about Delia. He wasn’t sure about the New Pinkertons anymore, and that left Hawking. “It’s not that sort of thing. I ran into a friend from the orphanage. I wanted to tell her what was going on but couldn’t.”

Hawking nodded. “You were
embarrassed
to be living in a nuthouse, so you probably mumbled some sad, ill-conceived lie. A waste of good creativity. Say whatever you like about me, boy. It’s not as though I care what the damnable mass of humanity thinks.”

“It’s not just that. It’s the Pinkertons. I’m not allowed to tell anyone about them,” Carver said.

“Ah. Well, you don’t have to
lie
about it.
A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
That’s Blake. He also said,
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires,
but we’ll leave that for another day. As for the bauble-enchanted Tudd and the Pinkertons, tell her you’ve been asked not to discuss the work you’re doing for me. That sounds mysterious and romantic,
doesn’t it? Some women enjoy that sort of thing. If you prefer to gain her sympathies, tell her I beat you. Which I will, by the way, unless you head down to the kitchen and bring back some dinner.”

Somehow, Carver didn’t think that would impress Delia.

He turned and made his way to the kitchen.

IN THE
weeks that followed, the list reached nearly a hundred names. Carver’s days were filled with such mundane and tiring tasks that even the wonders of the secret headquarters grew dull. But, dutifully, doggedly, he made the trek from Blackwell to Manhattan, visiting address after address, finally grasping the true vastness of a city he thought he knew well.

Most addresses led to tenements, where he spoke to blind beggars and women ragpickers. One suggested Carver try Potter’s Field, where the nameless poor were buried with numbers instead of names. He visited families of six or seven living in two rooms, crowded around a table making artificial flowers to sell for food.

Two Cusacks were cigar makers; one a foreman in a necktie workshop; three were butchers, raising his
hopes, but none had sent a letter to Ellis Orphanage. A rare few Cusacks held more prestigious jobs—a banker, a lawyer. But whenever he traveled north among the upper-class homes, he was nearly arrested for loitering. His threadbare, increasingly ill-fitting clothes were now laundered in lye by the Octagon staff and gave off an unpleasant smell that marked him as poor. Worse, each visit to the athenaeum gave him two more Cusacks for each he’d scratched off. Beckley was no closer to even considering the use of the analytical engine, though he did see an agent oiling it once.

“Sounds about right,” Jackson or Emeril would say.

Tudd was too busy to even say that. Whenever Carver asked about the handwriting analysis, Tudd only shook his head.

At night the young detective in training was so tired, he could almost ignore Hawking’s trying lectures. He could not yet ignore the moaning patients.

The only vaguely exciting thing happened one evening when he returned to Blackwell early. As Carver entered the Octagon, he saw Hawking emerge from a slender door on one of the patients’ floors. The door fit so neatly into the wall, it was practically invisible when closed. Where on earth could it lead?

Spotting Carver, Hawking quickly closed it, then spat, “None of your concern.”

Curious as he was, Carver didn’t dare ask, but he kept the door in mind, imagining it held some mystery, one that might be easier to solve than his father’s identity—if he could ever work up the nerve to disobey his mentor.