Ripper (24 page)

Had to get to NP. No news. Join me after you’ve had breakfast.

“Sure,” Carver repeated. “No harm done.”

“It’s
m-madness, Carver,” stammered a pale John Emeril on the subway platform. “Somehow, Tudd was found out and Roosevelt’s tossed him in jail!”

“Jail?” Carver’s jaw dropped.

Emeril tossed his hands up. “Thinks he’s part of some street gang! Wants to make an example of him!”

As Hawking had instructed, Carver had returned to New Pinkerton headquarters. Of course, he was supposed to say nothing about what they’d done. To avoid looking Emeril in the eye, he looked around, surprised how quickly things had changed. Many of the open areas were empty.

Emeril went on. “We’re losing people left and right. Jackson was one of the first to quit. He was loyal to Tudd, but others are worried that if he reveals our existence, we’ll all be arrested, too.”

“Everyone?” Carver said.

Emeril patted him on the shoulder. “Easy, there. I know Mr. Tudd. He won’t talk. He spent years building this place. He won’t give it up.”

Carver felt a lump in his throat. “Is… is Mr. Hawking here?”

Emeril pointed to a lonely corner where the old detective sat at a desk with a typewriter, speaking somberly to an agent. “He’s stepped in to keep things from devolving into total chaos. Technically, I’m in charge, but he’s giving all the orders. Frankly, I’m relieved to have him.”

Feeling too guilty to say another word to Emeril, Carver headed for Hawking.

“Don’t worry,” Emeril called after him. “Things will sort themselves out.”

Poking one key at a time, the hunched detective cursed with great inventiveness. “Damn this infernal contraption!” he muttered as Carver neared. “I’m not used to it.”

“Mr. Hawking, the place is…”

“Shedding deadweight,” Hawking said. “Did you know Tudd had
three
of those electric carriages ordered? Thank heavens I was able to cancel the other two.” He looked up from his work and scanned Carver’s face. “What is it?”

Carver lowered his voice to a whisper. “Mr. Tudd in jail. And I feel like I’ve destroyed the place.”

“Ridiculous. We’ve saved it, for the moment. And now you’re free to tell Roosevelt all about the letter and your father. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes, but…”

“Life isn’t about easy choices. Even those who seek to do good do damage. Learn to live with it, or you won’t survive the week.”

“Yes, sir,” Carver said. “Do you know where Mr. Tudd was keeping my father’s letter and the immigration sheet?”

Hawking shook his head. “Another mystery. Mr. Tudd, thinking himself clever, decided to hide them.”

“But Roosevelt thinks I’m his crazy nephew, or worse, a spy like Tudd!”

“Well, you are, aren’t you?”

“Without that letter…”

“The only way to convince him would be to bring him down here,” Hawking said. “Well, if that’s what you decide, I won’t stop you. I should warn the agents, though. Some of them, anyway.” He cackled, amused.

“I have to stop my father,” Carver said.

“Yes, yes. I detest repetition, but I’ll say it again: life isn’t about easy choices. What are your other options?”

“Look for the letter.”

“Start with Tudd’s office. We’ll be staying the night later, I’m sure, so I’ve had a bed set up for you there. What else?”

Carver racked his brain, but nothing came to him.

“Come on, boy! Use that soggy melon on top of your neck.”

“I don’t know!” Carver snapped back. “It was a long day.”

“Oh, the nights will get longer, even if winter nears. Trust me. Guilt is slowing you down. Get rid of it. Use the Pinkertons…”

“Follow leads,” Carver said. “27 Leonard Street.”

Hawking clapped slowly. “Yes. Speaking of, I had Emeril speak with the building owner by phone, a Mrs. Rowena Parker. She remembers Raphael Trone quite well. The woman’s a night owl but agreed to meet us tomorrow, at what she called the ‘unforgivable’ hour of ten a.m. Emeril planned to go with several agents. You and I will now accompany them, Detective Young.”

“Detective?”

“Oh yes,” Hawking said. “We can do that now, too.” He opened a drawer in the tiny desk, withdrew a leather billfold and tossed it to Carver. Inside was a gold badge with a number and his name. Carver’s eyes went wide.

“Utterly useless,” Hawking said. “Except to identify yourself to other agents, but I know how fond you are of shiny things. Good enough, Detective Young?”

Detective Young.

“Yes,” Carver said. Then he added, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Hawking grunted. He went back to his typing, pecking out a letter at a time. Carver eyed him a moment, realizing that despite his mentor’s thorny exterior, he was actually growing fond of the man.

HOURS OF
searching proved fruitless. Tudd’s office had thousands of files and papers. All he’d have to do to hide the letter forever would be to slip it into the middle of a particular stack. He did manage to locate the lock-picking device he’d taken earlier and this time kept it, with Hawking’s approval.

“Easier than making you a new set of keys,” his mentor mused.

Carver used it to enter the area devoted to handwriting analysis, but the space was even larger than Tudd’s office, even more filled with papers. With the document expert nowhere in sight, it was a dead end.

During lunch, Carver had his one success. He’d brought along the stun baton, thinking he might somehow fix it. Though he couldn’t make heads or tails of the thing and was too afraid of getting shocked to try to pry it apart, he did learn that the thick end
had a little latch, and a short space behind it that had an oddly familiar shape.

On a hunch, he put the lock pick in it, thinking it might open the thing safely. Instead, it slipped into place with a loud
click.
Seconds later, the baton hummed. Carver had no idea how or why, maybe it’d just jarred a loose wire, but the lock pick had somehow fixed the thing. Who knew what else it might do?

By nine o’clock, the place was all but empty. His mentor was asleep on a cot on the plaza, to make his eventual exit easier. Carver was left alone in the dark of Tudd’s office, surrounded by reminders of the man who’d betrayed him and the man he’d betrayed. At times, thinking of the badge in his pocket, he felt like he’d won something, at times he felt guilty, wondering what sort of cell the former agency head was sleeping in.

With the light off, Carver found he missed his asylum bed. The moans were unpleasant, but the total silence here was suffocating. Worse, the blackness kept shifting, first into something that looked like Tudd and then into the shape of a caped, top-hatted man. And to think, he’d once considered the darkness a friend.

Carver was exhausted. He dozed on and off, but each time he roused, his senses stretched into the void, hungry for something to see or listen to that wasn’t his agitated imagination. Even a vague vibration in the mattress beneath him made him snap his eyes open and ask, “What was that?”

It was no use. He was too wound up to sleep. Thinking he might as well turn on the light and look for the letter again, he rolled from the bed and let his feet feel the cool oilcloth that covered the floor.

The vibration came again.

It was faint, but real. He remembered his stupid mistake at Blackwell, but this was no psychiatric hospital. It was a secret base, supposedly empty. Stilling his breath, he made out a slight, regular hum. It was the fan, the giant machine that powered the elevator and the subway.

Was someone using the train?

Slipping on his clothes, he crept into the hall. Pale moonlight dribbled from the high skylights, allowing him to make out the platform, the railing and the elegant curve of the car. It was still there, then, but the hum was louder. The fan was definitely on, and it shouldn’t have been.

As he walked farther down the hall, Hawking’s bed came into view. Empty. Suddenly worried, he picked up speed, but by the time he reached the platform, the car was silently receding into the tunnel.

Where was his mentor going at this hour?

He lowered himself onto the tracks and headed into the round tunnel. Compared to the sewers, the clean brickwork and constant tug of air was very pleasant. Ahead, the light from the receding car grew dimmer. As he walked in the gloom, every yard he stubbed his toe or nearly tripped on one of the rails. By the time he reached the frescoed walls and goldfish fountain at the other end, the car was empty.

Carver sprinted to the elevator, but it wouldn’t respond to the call button. The air had gone still. The steady hum was gone. Hawking had turned off the fan. He didn’t want to be followed.

Carver had never had to turn it on directly before. The pipes above switched it on automatically, as did the lever in the subway. If he returned to the car to start it up, the door would seal him in for the return trip.

He was losing precious time. Hawking already had a sizable
head start on him. He headed across the hall and examined the huge fan. A hand lever was mounted on the top half of the shaft’s metal covering, but pulling and pushing it did nothing. He kept searching until he discovered a small bank of switches and metallic buttons. Of the largest two, a red one was depressed, and a green one sat above it. Thinking it the obvious choice, Carver pressed the green button.

After a click, the massive fan groaned into motion, pulling Carver’s hair toward it. Across the way, the elevator door opened. He’d done it.

Minutes later, he was out on Broadway, searching the length of the street for his mentor’s hobbling shape. He had to relax. He told himself Mr. Hawking knew what he was doing, but a sense of dread wouldn’t let him go. When he again wondered where the detective would go, an unsettling answer came to mind: 27 Leonard Street.

Could he be heading there to meet the “night owl” who remembered Raphael Trone? Tudd wanted to catch the killer himself. Had the old detective lied for similar reasons? No. If anything, he’d be trying to protect Carver, in case the killer was watching. But who would protect Hawking?

Ignoring the cold, Carver ran the six blocks up Broadway, turned and rushed up the block. A bright light from the apothecary’s second-floor windows told him he was right. Finding the door ajar, he pushed it open, causing a bell above the door frame to ring with an oddly cheerful sound.

“Hello?” he called. “Mr. Hawking? Sir?”

No response. He stepped along the aisles of tinctures and powders to the narrow staircase at the rear. The light was brighter above, and he trotted up the steps.

“Mr. Hawking?”

A door at the top of the stairs was open. Reaching the landing, he peered in. What he saw inside made him wonder if he’d ever woken up.

Hawking lay crumpled on the floor, like an old lion felled with a single shot. His head was twisted. A dark spot began on his forehead and extended past the hairline. Blood pooled near him, the edge of it just above his fingertips. It wasn’t all Hawking’s blood. Most belonged to the woman who lay lifeless on the center of an oval rug, the wounds around her neck and in her abdomen horrifically familiar.

Her expensive hat, once a delicate thing with ostrich feathers, had tumbled to the side, looking as if it had been crushed underfoot in a struggle. One of the huge feathers had come loose and floated in the blood.

Unlike at the Tombs, the colors weren’t burned into unreality by arc lamps. The woman’s wounds weren’t blurred by wind and storm. It didn’t look like a theater play.

“Help,” Carver said. It came out as barely a whisper.

He stumbled out, down the stairs, crashing into shelves. Tinctures fell and crashed; powders scattered.

“Help,” he said again, louder, but not nearly loud enough.

He fell into the door, nearly cracking the glass in it. He reached the street and sucked in the air. It filled every winding turn of his lungs with cold fire.

Now at last he had the breath he needed to scream, over and over again.

AS CARVER
stood in the middle of Leonard Street, screaming, disturbed sleepers called from open windows.

“What’s that racket?”

“Shut yer trap, street rat!”

A brawny woman, hair stuffed in a net, eyes half-open, hurled a milk bottle. Luckily her aim was so bad, the shattering glass came nowhere near him.

A policeman, compact, earnest, trotted down from the Tombs. When he saw the sweat on Carver’s brow, the anger on his face vanished.

“Are ye sick, boyo?” he asked in a thick brogue.

Carver pointed to the apothecary. “In there.”

“Closed, lad,” the roundsman said. “Why not come inside with me now?”

Carver shook his head, trying to tear the words free from his throat. “Upstairs. M-m-murder.”

The officer twisted his head as if he hadn’t heard correctly. He looked and saw the light from the upstairs room spilling out the door and onto the sidewalk. He drew his billy club, though Carver wondered if his gun would be a better choice.

“Stay here,” he said as he walked toward the door.

“What the devil’s it about, Mike?” the brawny woman called.

“Don’t know yet, Annie, but make sure this one doesn’t leave.”

She gave him a soldierly nod, then eyed Carver menacingly. “I only missed because I wanted to.”

Seconds later, the policeman flew out the front door, face white. The screech of his whistle sounded like the death cry of some giant bird. A hawk.

Hawking. Carver was crazy to leave him alone up there. If he wasn’t dead, he might be dying. Shivering, he took a few mechanical steps toward the store. “Mike” stopped whistling and blocked his path.

“My… father…,” Carver said. “Mr. Hawking needs my help.”

“I’ll see he gets it, but no one goes in there, boyo.”

“My father,” Carver said again.

“Yes, help’s on the way for your dad.”

“No, my
real
father… he did this.”

Real father. He used the words, but was that really the case? It was Hawking who’d done so much for him, who’d believed in him.