The Banished Children of Eve (75 page)

It was nearly six o'clock when Mulcahey finally
left. He had made several attempts, but each time a new patron would hurry in with some extraordinary report or rumor of what the mobs were up to. It wasn't until one of the other men from Brownlee's arrived with an eyewitness account of the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue being pillaged and burned that Mulcahey remembered his intention of checking on Eliza and reassuring her that Squirt was safely hidden away.

Canal Street had little of the traffic it usually did at that hour, but the Bowery was filled with people, many already drunk, some bedecked in frocks, hats, and dresses obviously plundered from fancy shops. More than a few were bleeding from cuts sustained entering those premises through broken windows. But the wounds did nothing to dampen the festive mood. Outside the hotel, a reveler wearing a ratty woolen shirt and a brand-new derby stopped Mulcahey and asked to borrow a handkerchief. Mulcahey handed it to the man, who wrapped it around a gruesome-looking gash on his arm and went off singing in a lighthearted way.

Eliza was sitting on the edge of the bed when Mulcahey entered their room.

“Jack,” she said, “where's Squirt?”

“Safe as can be. Left him at Brownlee's just about an hour ago, when we was first informed there'd be no show tonight.” He sat by her on the bed. “All the theatres is shut, my love, which means we shall have to find a way to amuse ourselves.”

“There are mobs hunting and killing Negroes, and you left that boy
alone?
”

He took her hand, but she pulled it away and walked over to the door.

“How could you, Jack?”

“The boy is tucked in at Brownlee's for the night. Save for Squirt, it's empty. No one knows he's there but me.”

“How do you know? How can you be sure a pack of them won't come and search him out?”

“Was leave him there or bring him here. Seemed sensible enough he'd be safer hid away than walking the streets. Squirt agreed.” He walked over to her. “Let's not argue. There are
better ways to spend our time.”

“You could have stayed with him.”

“To what good?”

“Forget it.” She grabbed the doorknob. He seized her arm. “Leave go,” she said.

“You can't go out.”

“Remember, I'm a free colored person. You don't own me. I can go wherever I want, and I'm going to Squirt.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” Mulcahey said, “if it'll settle your mind, I'll go back and spend the night. Be more entertaining than listening to you. You know, Eliza, there are times you nag worse than a wife.”

“I wouldn't know, Jack. I've never been one.”

He put his hat on and left, slamming the door behind him. He stopped in at Tom Kingsland's on the way back, intending only a single drink, but it was approaching dark by the time he left. The shops and theatres along Broadway were shuttered and forlorn, but up ahead the St. Nicholas Hotel blazed with gaslight and activity. There was no sign of any disturbance. Turning into the alleyway beside Brownlee's, Mulcahey noticed light spilling through the open rear door. Beneath the stairs, figures huddled, their backs to him. They turned when they heard his footsteps. A body was stretched on the ground behind them, and though he couldn't make out any features, Mulcahey was sure it was Squirt.

A tall, square-shouldered figure came toward Mulcahey. He wore a waistcoat over a bricklayer's apron and approached cautiously, his right hand hidden behind his back.

“Lookin' for somethin' in particular?” he asked Mulcahey.

Mulcahey took a step back. “I've an appointment here.”

“It's closed for the evenin',” the man said. His hand came from behind his back. He held a wooden bung mallet. Behind him, two others reached down, lifted the body from the ground, and brought it into the square of light framed by the rear door. “This who you come to see?” one of them asked.

Blood was pouring out of Squirt's nose. His eyes were open but vacant and glazed. He showed no sign of
recognizing Mulcahey.

“I'm here to see the manager,” Mulcahey said.

“Try again another time,” the man with the mallet said. He and the others carried Squirt to the fence that divided the alleyway and lifted him up.

“Look,”! Mulcahey said, “there's Metropolitans all over the place, and I saw troopers across the street. They're everywhere. Drop this boy and get outta here quick as you can!”

The man with the mallet sat astride the fence. “Sounds to me like you want this nigger for yourself,” he said.

“Just don't want to see anyone get hurt unnecessarily.”

The man leaned over and shoved the mallet into Mulcahey's face. “Then scat!”

The man and his two companions pulled Squirt over the fence. Mulcahey waited a minute before he followed. He caught up with them as they dragged Squirt feetfirst toward Crosby Street. “You know,” he said, “it comes to me now that this boy is employed at Brownlee's. Bet they'd pay handsomely to get him back unharmed.”

The trio halted. The man holding Squirt's right leg said, “What's your stake in this nigger?”

“My stake is in Brownlee's. I'm set to be hired there and want to make sure they offer the best show there is.”

“Then do us all a service. Go practice your nigger-faced imitations somewhere you won't get in the way.”

Crosby Street was far livelier than Broadway, and a parade gathered behind Squirt's body as it was dragged along. Mulcahey stayed close. At the corner of Spring, the man with the mallet was handed a clothes wire. He told the others to drop Squirt's legs and stand aside. He bent over Squirt, undid his belt, tore his trousers off, and tied the cord around his genitals. He put the rope over his shoulder and dragged Squirt forward. Squirt moaned loudly. People poured out of houses and saloons to see what the rumpus was about. Mulcahey lost sight of Squirt but pushed and shoved until he saw the orange kink of Squirt's head.

“The boy's had enough!” Mulcahey cried, but no one paid
any attention. The parade stopped again. The crowd circled around Squirt. Mulcahey forced his way through. Squirt was directly at his feet. The boy seemed to have regained consciousness, his eyes flashing for an instant. He looked up and saw Mulcahey. A single word formed on his lips:
Jack.

There was a gale of laughter and cheers as a boy opened his fly and urinated on Squirt's legs. A woman rushed out of the circle with a broken bottle and stabbed Squirt in the face. The crowd surged ahead and swept Mulcahey aside. Some men hauled Squirt over to a lamppost, and the next thing Mulcahey saw was Squirt's small, naked body rising above the heads of the crowd. It hung there limply, even when a burning torch was held beneath the feet.

Mulcahey turned and ran and didn't stop until he reached Tom Kingsland's. He ordered his own bottle and sat alone in a booth. He had it half drunk when he remembered the glow he had seen around Squirt's head several months before. Been so long ago. It had never happened like this before, the delay between the appearance of the light and death's arrival, never been more than a day or so. For a few moments it brought him comfort to think that what had happened to Squirt was foreordained and couldn't have been altered by anyone, no matter what they did, but when the image of Squirt's face lying in the street came back to him, the memory of his own name on Squirt's lips, Mulcahey started to cry, and the rest of the bottle couldn't make him stop.

J
IMMY
D
UNNE
watched from the lobby of the New England Hotel as the dregs of the Five Points trickled down Bayard Street, the kind usually content to prey on one another, murdering for the sake of a drink or a bed or because the urge came upon them. One character in a wide Panama and a scarf about his neck walked down the middle of the street, a
hunting knife prominently displayed in his belt in the style of a frontiersman in a Bowery melodrama. Seemed to Dunne the very image of Piker Haggerty. But couldn't be, not unless the Tombs itself was giving up its dead. Piker had slit his own throat the night before he was scheduled to be hanged. He had confessed to killing a saloonkeeper in the course of a robbery. “The fish insulted me,” Piker had told the court. “Wouldn't have stabbed him otherwise.”

“You not only stabbed him, Mr. Haggerty,” the judge said. “You
slaughtered
him in the manner of a butcher in an abattoir.”

“I teach a man a lesson, he learns it for sure,” Piker replied.

Piker confessed to five other murders while he was awaiting execution. Rumor had it that the priest who heard his last confession was never the same. A great throng of celebrants gathered outside the Tombs in the hours before Piker was to be hanged, and there was a near riot when they were brought the news that he had taken his own life.

Piker's double spotted Dunne in the window of the hotel and motioned for him to come out. Dunne hesitated a moment, then went into the street.

“Piker?” Dunne said.

“None other.” Piker lifted his hat, revealing the pointed skull that had given him his nickname.

“I thought you was dead.”

“That's what you was supposed to think!” Piker smiled. He pulled open his scarf. Across his neck was a jagged, gruesome scar. “Did it with a sharpened spoon. Doctor was paid afore to pronounce me dead. Undertaker too. Whisked me out and stitched me good as new. Been lying low since, but seems the time has come to settle some accounts!” He retied his scarf.

Piker insisted that Dunne accompany him across the street for a drink, and they reminisced about the old days, when the Dead Rabbits held sway, and how John Morrissey had chosen Piker as a boy suited for a career in politics. Dunne kept an eye on the blade in Piker's belt, but death, though faked, seemed to have softened Piker somewhat. He said that once he took care of those who had betrayed him to the Metropolitans,
he would leave New York, head west, and start over.

When Piker departed, Dunne went back to the hotel bar and drank sarsaparilla. The windows stayed shuttered all day. Only residents of the hotel were admitted, and they came and went trading the wildest sort of rumors, Confederate ships in the harbor, the water supply poisoned, the railroads seized and Rebel troops riding them down from Canada. Only thing certain was that the situation was out of hand. Didn't have to search for some remembered advice from Dandy Dan to know it was a day to stay low, don't risk a cracked head or a stray bullet from some panic-stricken militiaman. The condition of the streets confirmed the decision Dunne had already reached: A visit to Bedford's could wait until tomorrow.

Dunne went to sleep in his room in the afternoon and didn't awake until it was dark. In the distance was the sound of gunfire, like the pop of fireworks. The hot, lifeless air was laced with the smell of smoke. He heard people going to the roof, and went upstairs to join them. To the east, along Roosevelt Street, several buildings were in flames, and it seemed the entire block might go up. Farther in that direction, on Water Street, there were more fires. South, on the New Bowery, a single building was burning out of control. North, scattered around the city, were what looked like large fires. Dunne saw Eliza, Mulcahey's mistress, there, but she stood apart, in a corner, and went below without a word to anyone.

“Thank God there's no wind,” the man next to Dunne said, “or the whole city would go up.” A short while later there was thunder and lightning and a great downpour that dampened the fires and drove everyone downstairs.

The next morning, Dunne set out to scout Bedford's. There were no streetcars or coaches running, and the air was still thick with the scent of wet smoke, but except for the occasional rumble of what could only be artillery, he encountered few indications of any disturbance. It wasn't until he neared Sixth Avenue that he saw bands of toughs peering into shops, and a block away from Bedford's he found the first signs of a riot, broken
bottles and bricks strewn around, two bodies stretched out and motionless—it was hard to tell if they were dead or just unconscious. A longshoreman in a thick woolen shirt, his baling hook hanging from his belt, went from house to house, peering beneath the stoops. He almost knocked into Dunne. “We routed 'em!” he said with glee. “They ran outta here like a pack of hares!”

A dozen or so people converged on Dunne. At their head was a stout woman with a flushed face. She smelled of fish and held a gutting knife in her hand. “The booly dogs left with their tails between their legs,” she said. “Some of 'em are hidin' hereabouts.”

“Maybe you'd like to help us look for 'em,” a boy said.

“Or maybe you'd like to make a donation to the cause,” the longshoreman said.

Dunne unbuttoned his jacket and, making the pretense of looking for money, pulled a small revolver out of his pocket. “Seems I don't have a penny on me,” he said. “Sorry, boys.” He walked straight ahead. They let him pass. Turning the corner onto Bedford's block, Dunne slowed his step. At the west end, several hundred people were milling about. Dunne stopped at the bottom of Bedford's stoop. The small knot of people he had encountered at the east end had quickly grown to a hundred. Both ends of the street were now blocked. He hesitated a moment. Maybe he should keep walking, try to blend in.

The curtain in the window by the door parted. In an instant, Margaret opened the door. “Oh, come in, come in,” she said. “I can't believe you're here. It's like the answer to a prayer!”

He went up the stairs. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him in. Standing right in front of him was the cook, a frying pan in one hand, a meat cleaver in the other. “Stay right there,” Miss Kerrigan said. “Don't come an inch farther.”

“It's the gas man,” Margaret said. “He's a friend.”

“If he's a friend, let him go summon the police.”