The Banished Children of Eve (16 page)

Waldo Capshaw laughed the time he told Dunne the story, at least close to a laugh, a choking noise in the back of the throat, half cough, half laugh: “I got the whole block for a song, and old farmer Greene goes off thinkin' I'm a real live Father Christmas!”

Dunne imagined it was the old farmer who must be laughing now. The houses Capshaw built on the land he swindled enjoyed a direct view of the biggest hole in Christendom, half-built walls, a field of mud, all of it surrounded by a tumbledown wooden fence plastered with peeling broadsides for minstrel shows and remedies for the aches and pains of the female condition. Might as well be a cholera hospital for the good it had done him. Took the corner house for himself; the rest he couldn't sell and had to rent.

The shade went up, came down again, and shot skyward. Capshaw's face was pressed up against the glass. Had a nose as prominent as a bird's beak. He beckoned impatiently with his hand. His lips moved silently behind the glass. Dunne ignored him. He decided to walk and circle back, strolling like it was in the May sunshine. Get a little wetter, drip all over Capshaw's fine rugs and sit in one of his soft chairs without removing the soaking coat, letting the water seep out. Nobody worried about the condition of his furniture as much as Capshaw did. Let him see the hand go through the hair, as if combing the wetness out. Make sure it was all greased up with pomade, then rub it across the upholstery. The hair atop Capshaw's head would bristle like a cockatoo's crest. But he'd hold his tongue as long as they were talking business.

Back
in front of the house, Dunne went slowly up the stoop. He was sure this was some kind of test, letting him rot in the rain. But a test for what? How eager he was. Sure, let the Paddy almost drown, and every minute he stays out there proves how hungry he is for what Capshaw has to offer. Expects he'll walk in with drool on his chin.

“Come in, come in.” Capshaw opened the door but kept his body half behind it, shielding himself from the rain. Dunne pushed past him, shook like a dog, spraying water in every direction. Capshaw stood back.

“Can I take your coat?”

“Little good it'll do. I'm wet right through.”

“Couldn't be avoided. I had business to be done before we could talk.” Capshaw led the way into the parlor. “You can stand by the fire,” he said.

“I'm tired of standing. I'll just pull up a chair and sit awhile.”

“Suit yourself. Care for coffee or cocoa?”

“Nothing stronger?”

“You know the position I takes in regard to spirituous liquors.”

“I'm afraid I do.” A temperance man. See you in hell before he'd stand you to a drink.

“Damn rain,” Capshaw said. “It's the war that's causing it. It's a proven scientific fact. The smoke from the gunpowder been shot off rises into the atmosphere and forms into clouds that condense and cause the rain. They almost drowned in Europe the year after Waterloo. Rained steady for months before the air cleared and people got a peak at the sun. No telling how long it will take before things get back to normal in this country, at least as regards the weather.”

“Maybe
it ain't the smoke at all. Maybe it's the noise of all them rifles and cannons.” Dunne ran his hand through his hair until his fingers were streaked with grease. He rubbed them across the silk-flowered armrest of the chair. Two could play at this. Be glad to sit here until midnight and talk about the weather if that was Capshaw's game.

“Just wish it would stop, that's all. Bad enough tryin' to rent properties in this part of the city when the days is dry and bright, but with the mud and the floodin', people steer clear of here, and that ruin across the street don't help things. A bloody disgrace the way the whole area been allowed to deteriorate. The city fathers are afraid to do anything about it, afraid of what Dagger John will do.”

“Don't worry, Waldo. I hear old John has told the nuns to open a home for paupers with the syph right on the spot where he'd once planned to build his rectory. Soon the neighborhood will be crowded with them, and won't be so lonely up here no more.”

“I ain't lonely, Dunne, and though I might be vexed by the current state of things, ain't worried neither. In the long run, you can't lose money on real estate in this town, not if you stick with it. Reductions in price is always temporary, and if the upper class avoids the place, the lower class will find its way here. Won't buy, but they'll pay dearly in rent. Somebody will live here, don't matter if they opened a home for lepers across the street.”

Capshaw continued with his speech about the eternal value of real estate. Dunne settled into the chair. He pulled out a bag of tobacco, patted it. Damp but not wet. He reached into his pocket and got the square gold case with the rolling papers. A memento of the first job with Dandy Dan. Went in through the coal chute, down into the basement, came back upstairs, and let him in. Picked up the case on a table in one of the bedrooms. It was atop a book. Lit a locofoco to see what else there was to lift. The cover of the book caught Dunne's eye. Red velvet with the words
ARETINO'S POSTURES
embossed on the cover. Couldn't imagine what it was until he opened it. Jesus, never seen pictures like it, at least not back then. A drawing of a man with a big stiff member plowing into a woman with legs spread wide as a train tunnel. All sorts of pictures like that, so he lit another loco and the next thing Dandy Dan had him by the throat and shook him like a rag. “Don't you ever strike a light again,” he said. “Do and you're through, you hear. Damn stupid mistakes like this is what'll wind you up in jail.”

Dan never
missed a trick. Soon as the match was out, put the book in his coat. Thought Dunne didn't notice, but he did. Dan could be like that. Generous, sure. But not above keeping the best for himself. Never mentioned the gold case to him. Figured that made them even.

Dunne rolled a cigarette, tapped it on the case, struck a loco on the heel of his shoe, and lit it. Capshaw finished with his real estate talk. Spoken with such conviction it sounded to Dunne like preaching. Protestants: They loved their sermons.

Across the room, the glow from the fireplace flickered on the highly polished floor. The big standing clock in the corner ticked loudly. Leaning forward, Capshaw put his face so close he seemed about to whisper in Dunne's ear. Yet he spoke in a strong, clear voice. “Have any idea why I asked you here? What it is I want to discuss?”

Dunne turned slightly, so that Capshaw's beak was almost touching his, and exhaled right in his face. “Not real estate?”

“No.” Capshaw straightened up, coughing. He moved his hands like a fan, dispersing the smoke.

“And not the weather.”

“No.”

“I give up, unless there was no reason other than to watch me paddle around like a duck in that pond outside.”

“Couldn't be otherwise. Had a person here stayed longer than I thought he would. Didn't want no one else knowing he was here. Was particular about that. Said he'd be here at three, so I figured he'd be gone before you arrived. Turns out he spent more time with me than he planned. Left by the back door only a few minutes ago. Went over the fence through them empty lots toward Lexington Avenue.”

“This
a man or a cat?” The ash drooped on the end of the cigarette. Capshaw hurried into the hall and came back with a small copper urn. He put it in Dunne's lap. Dunne flicked the ash onto the rug.

“Oh, this was no cat, and not any ordinary man neither, no sir, this was a gentleman!”

“Don't sound like a gentleman to me, not if he's in the habit of slithering out back doors and shimmying over fences.”

A choking noise came from Capshaw's throat: a laugh. He cocked his head to the right, opened his eyes wide. With that big beak of his, he looked to Dunne a little like the parrot they kept on the bar in Harry Hill's. Feed him a cracker and he'd angle his head the same way. “Hang Abe Lincoln,” the parrot would say.

“That's because you're a Paddy and ain't had no real exposure to gentlemen. See ‘em in their big coaches and fancy clothes and thinks they belong to another order of creation. Well, let me inform you of somethin', ain't nobody better at back doors and quick escapes than gentlemen. Someday when you've time to, go down to William Street, right off Broad. Watch the gentlemen skulkin' in and out of the Coal Hole, them with their somber black suits and silk hats, tryin' not to be noticed, like a bishop enterin' and leavin' a goosing slum. What a sight! All of ‘em lookin' this way and that, then slippin' into a basement no bigger than the one McGloin uses to stage his cockfights. Only our Knickerbocker aristocrats ain't there to get goosed or to bet on chickens. No sir, they're there to bet on gold!”

The hair on top of Capshaw's head was flaxen, dry and straight as straw. Protestant hair. He pulled at it with his hand and it poked up from his skull. Harry Hill's parrot in the flesh.

“
Gentleman.
What the hell is the word supposed to mean?”

“Ain't got a clue.”

“Maybe I never had the proper schooling or made the right marriage, but I never bet on my country losing the war. Never made a penny on this war. Matter of fact, I'm a monthly subscriber to the Sanitary Commission, donate regular, never missed a pledge. But these gentlemen, them with all their patriotic talk, well, the minute the war starts going bad, they start putting their money in gold. Every battle the Union loses, up goes gold. If the Rebels take Washington, there'll be nothing in this world as worthless as government paper. So our gentlemen friends ain't taking any chances. But they're embarrassed by all this gold investing. Don't look good, them putting their money on a Rebel victory while they're sitting at patriotic dinners toasting the Union and victory! So they ban gold trading from the Exchange for ‘the duration of the hostilities,' then slip around the corner and trade gold in a room so dark they can barely make each other out. Go see for yourself, Dunne, ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness,' as the Good Book says, all rigged out in kid gloves and cravats from Brooks Brothers. And now that the war is going worse than ever, the pestilence has emerged into noonday. They're running a regular gold market in Gilpin's News Room, right up from the Exchange, charging a twenty-five-dollar membership fee. Most of ‘em use proxies, but everybody knows who's behind the game. Gentlemen, that's who! They're doing volume of over five million dollars a day.
A day!
The Union forever, and if not forever, then be sure you're in gold!”

“Your
visitor a goldbug?”

Capshaw's head was cocked so that only the right eye seemed aimed at Dunne. The eyebrow was lifted high, arched in anger. He didn't seem to have heard Dunne's question. He stood there and didn't say a thing. An odd bird. Dunne half expected to hear the parrot's voice:
Hang Abe Lincoln!

After a pause of several moments, Capshaw said, “No, he ain't, though he probably wishes he'd placed his bets on gold instead of with John Morrissey. A big loser at the faro table, that's what he's been, and now Morrissey is starting to turn the screws.”

“Why's he coming to you? Never heard it rumored you got any influence with Morrissey.”

“Morrissey's the lowest of the low. Got the morals of a rat and the manners to match. I wouldn't shake his hand or breathe the same air. He's a lyin', murderin', cheatin' son of Satan.”

Capshaw lowered
himself into the chair facing Dunne's. Sat ramrod straight, hands on knees. On the back of his right hand was the tattoo of an eagle, its talons near the knuckles, wings spread wide, in its beak a writhing serpent, around its head the initials OSSB. The mark of the secret brotherhood of oath-bound True Americans, the Know-Nothing Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, which was no secret at all, least of all to the Paddies battling it for control of the streets. Was Morrissey helped put them in their place. Made his name barging into their clubs and smashing up their meeting halls. A bear of a man, he broke their noses and ripped off their ears, and one famous day he stormed into the lion's den, the American Club on Water Street, and challenged Tom Hyer, the heavyweight champ, and Bill “the Butcher” Poole. They almost killed him. Morrissey's eye was hanging on his cheek and Poole was set to cut his throat when they decided to let him live as a lesson to all of Paddydom of what happens when you attack a True American. Only Morrissey wasn't cowed. As he limped out the door, he shouted, “Yankee sons of bitches, I'll be back!”

Back he came. Fought the True Americans for every polling place. Put out the word that ears and noses would be regarded as prized trophies, bring ‘em back as proof of what you done, Morrissey said, and he'd take care of you. The Tammany chiefs made him their number one brave. They saw that the Paddies had the votes, and if Dagger John owned their minds and souls, was Morrissey had their hearts, so the chiefs gave him anything he wanted, and he led the boyos of the Five Points against the True American gladiator of the Bowery. He always reminded his men that if they proved cowards in front of the Star-Spangled gangs, they would have him to deal with and he would give them a worse thumping than they would get at the hands of any American.

The even, anxious ticking of the clock echoed through the room. Dunne rolled another cigarette, running his tongue slowly along the glued edge of the brown paper. It had begun to sink in that the secret visitor and Morrissey were tied together with the reason for Capshaw's invitation. Key in hand, Capshaw approached the mystery and seemed ready to unlock it.

“You
trust me?” he asked.

The smoke caught in Dunne's throat. He coughed until his eyes grew wet and bleary.

“I'm like you, Dunne, the word
trust
makes me choke. Be in Sing Sing a long time ago if it didn't. But what exists between us ain't trust at all. It's the mutual knowledge that we're each looking out for our own good. Won't allow ourselves to be cheated. You bring me what you have and I pay what I think is right, maybe sometimes less than you expect, maybe sometimes more.”