The Fatal Flame (14 page)

McGlynn, though—McGlynn was like watching the Wall Street freaks scribble stock prices in the steamy pits they call trading floors. Transparently, immediately shocked. Silkie Marsh, for all she was evil embodied and sheathed in a sublimely cut dress, had him pegged dead to rights—brainless slips of the tongue seemed to me well within the pimp’s repertoire.

“Surprised?” I asked.

He swallowed a few times, took a deep breath.

“There’s nothing left. The place is rubble.”

McGlynn approached the bars. “It . . . it was only threats!” he cried. “Christ, I . . . I never expected it to go this far. She’d threatened us, threatened Mr. Symmes I mean to say, but never— I never thought . . .”

“And by
her
you mean?”

“Sally Woods, of course. She . . . My God,” he whispered, seemingly addled over the prospect of his buildings on fire. He paced, shoes nudging up against the pork ribs that had been tossed at him as if he were a mastiff.

“Can you tell me anything useful?”

He stopped. Seemed to grow bone-weary.

“Fuses were found, traces of energetic materials,” I prompted with less patience. “Any idea how someone might have placed them there?”

He shuddered. “How should I know?”

“Have you met Sally Woods personally?”

“Of course I have. She’s a nasty bluestocking with a passion for trouble.”

“The Nassau Street pantaloon manufactory property is likewise your responsibility,” I mused. “So you met her when Symmes was quashing the protests.”

“Sure. Then. Other times. Saw plenty of her, and when the boss finally managed to shake her loose, the letters started coming. He showed them to me. Uppity wench.”

“You think she’s dangerous.”

“I think she’s an unbalanced bitch.”

“Is she an incendiary, though?”

“Well, she must be, now, mustn’t she?” He glared at me, showing yellowed teeth framed in a humorless rictus of a smile. “Talk to the alderman—he’s the one who was sharing her sheets. If you ask me, Robert Symmes keeping the likes of Sally Woods as his mistress for all those months is about the most foolheaded decision in the entire history of New York, even if she’s a pretty little piece. But I don’t have to tell him as much, and neither do you. He’s paying for it dear enough now. Isn’t he?”

“What, a little sewing girl, eh? The very game I like—go away, boys, and let me talk to her—I spoke to her first, and by Jupiter, I’m the one to see it out!”

“No—not quite so rapid, if you please,” replied the one who had spoken second—“we’ll toss up, Harry, who shall have her!”

—NED BUNTLINE,
MYSTERIES AND MISERIES OF NEW YORK
, 1849

B
Y THE TIME
I’d trudged the stone’s throw back to Elizabeth Street and my cozy residence, with its front left shutter that rattles no matter how often I adjust the hinges and its relentless aroma of clove and butter, I felt about as witless as possible for a man with his skull still attached.

Physically speaking, Robert Symmes, with his dashing airs and careful blond moustache, would look very well indeed next to Sally Woods’s boldly drawn features—her shapely afterthought of a nose and her radiant chocolate eyes. So long as she was wearing female attire, that is.

Spiritually speaking, I might as well have imagined a snake bedding a beautiful winged Sphinx with lion haunches and Miss Woods’s arched brow and defiant gaze. So wrong that the mind made a balking, donkeyish halt. But human affection is a capricious affair.

Sally Woods detests Robert Symmes with a sweeping purity like a famine or a drought. And there is no deeper hatred than that engendered by someone you loved once, and were hurt by, and can love no longer,
I realized.

I’d never managed to hate Mercy Underhill, as the blame for not having her rests on me. On eyes that never saw she wanted men’s company and took it when possible. On ears that didn’t hear her when I discovered the fact and left her, frightened and mortified, in a rented room in Silkie Marsh’s ken. On a tongue that never mentioned
I love you
and instead phrased it, and I quote,
you aren’t stupid, the last fucking thing you are is stupid, you’ve watched me for years trailing after you, the way I look at you, it’s obvious to the entire goddamned world, you can’t stand there in front of me and claim not to have known it,
and somehow supposed that a civilized observation.

No, learning to hate Mercy when I’ve such plentiful practice hating myself would have proved a wash.

I’ve come close, though. Before she started writing me, before she admitted she’d allowed me to fashion her into an irresistible cipher. I’d done the lion’s share of that work, built a towering, ornately bejeweled pedestal when what was wanted was a goddamned
bed.
And she’d every right not to love me—I’d never asked her to. But knowing I’m to blame didn’t go far toward cheering me in those early days of her absence, staring at my ceiling in the thin grey hours. Imagining her laugh as a stranger drew his fingertips across her navel, crooking an arm and pulling her higher up onto his spread thighs.

That was generally the juncture when I’d send my fist into my headboard, where it wouldn’t reverberate through the wall.

The wind had picked up, scattering torn scraps of local ward flyers and the smell of horses and a few mild drops of rain, when I turned north onto Elizabeth Street. I was skirting by long habit the toxic fissure in civilization called the Five Points, so troubled I could scarce see my feet before me, when the door to the house next to Mrs. Boehm’s Fine Baked Goods flew open and a booming laugh barreled down the street.

A family of Germans live packed into the building next door like smoked oysters in a tin-lined can. Flooding the road with the sounds of drinking, brawling, and music-making, often simultaneously. We buy rye beer from them, and whenever the clan is either mourning or celebrating, they hire Elena Boehm to bake the identical white, almond-dusted “joy and sympathy” cake. They’re boisterous people, equal parts coarse and kind.

My landlady stood in their doorway, wide mouth cracked in an answering grin, on the arm of Herr Getzler, who either had consumed about a dozen mugs of ale or had managed to sunburn his nose on a mild spring day. He’s one of the better of the good-hearted if disorderly mob, with a round belly and a thick brown beard and a laugh like a tuba. He was regarding Mrs. Boehm as if she were a particularly tempting pastry display. That was typical.

He was also patting her hand where it rested on his forearm.

That was new.

“Oh,
tch
, and here it seems about to drench you,” he tutted in his pleasant guttural growl, holding a hand out to measure the rainfall. “One moment wait, I will get my coat.”

“Don’t be silly, I have to walk only five steps from here,” Elena said with a chuckle. “Look—an escort appears from the shadows. What luck. Good night, Josua.”

“Gute Nacht,”
he answered, sweeping her hand up for a kiss before waving curtly at me as he returned indoors.

Elena took my arm. She wore one of her better frocks, of a rich ivory cotton and a flatteringly worked pattern of layered flounces that made her too-thin waist nearly ample and her too-fair hair shine beneath the flecks of spring rain. It occurred to me that we both work such long hours I can count the number of times I’ve seen her outside the house without removing my boots. To me she’s a thin-lipped smile across a warm kitchen and a dough-smeared table, that or a carefree gasp in the dark of my room when my thumb glides lightly between her legs.

“Did you have a good time at the—”

“Why were you speaking English with Herr Getzler?” I questioned, apparently annoyed. Though I certainly shouldn’t have been. “You speak Bohemian and German fluently, and his English sounds like a rusted hacksaw.”

“Practice.” She angled a look at me with water-blue eyes. “Josua wishes to become man of business, not petty seller of small beer. Have for himself and his two sons a brewery. Considerable money he has saved for this future. When I see him, now that he wants title and property like a real American, we speak together English.”

We were at the door by then. My key slipped for the second time. Elena dropped my arm, setting her palms on the spots where I knew amiable hip bones jutted beneath the soft fabric, amused at my struggle. Her mirth didn’t render me any less peppery. An incendiary was keen to raze bits of the city, I’d practically signed on as Silkie Marsh’s new champion, and my brother had just torpedoed his own ward. It was hardly
my
fault that the lock needed oiling.

“The day Herr Getzler sounds like an American will be the day America transplants itself to Prussia,” I decreed uncharitably as I finally thrust open the door. Setting my hat on its peg blind, I lit the lamp that always rests on the three-legged table with a match from my waistcoat pocket. “And if you’re correcting his grammar, he should pay you.”

The oil flared to life and sent a glow spilling through the dark bakery. Elena smoothed her hands over her damp hair. “What’s a word of advice between friends?”

You aren’t friends with Josua Getzler,
I thought as a petty sting bit at the edge of my scar.
You trade him fresh eggs for good beer and open the windows when he’s singing Faust because you love the story and he has a fine tenor.

Lifting the hinged countertop, I carried the lamp in search of a much-needed whiskey. After pouring two generous splashes without thinking, I recalled I was irked at Mrs. Boehm and grew still more irked. “Bird asked after you.”

“My sweet girl. I miss her during the school year.”

“I was surprised you’d missed her deliberately. Though that was before I was surprised my brother announced he’s running for alderman.” I pulled a chair away from the worktable. “Oh, and before I was surprised Silkie Marsh arrived.”

Elena’s horrified intake of breath wasn’t a bit satisfying, and I cursed myself for being in a uselessly foul mood. Instead of taking the seat, I set the liquor down and stepped to where she leaned against the floured wood, her other fingertips tracing her prominent collarbone.

“It’s all right. Well, no it isn’t, but Madam Marsh— Bird is fine, they never spoke. She’s sore at me, but that’s nothing special. I sent her off with a friend.”

I failed to mention that Silkie Marsh had spied Bird all too clearly and correctly identified a fit crowbar to pry my ribs open. That would have added injury to insult, the way I saw matters, and anyhow I’d never let affairs come to such a pass.

“Which friend?” Elena asked hoarsely.

“Jim Playfair. She’s snug in bed by now and none the wiser.”

Elena’s eyes closed as the fingers at her throat curled in on themselves. I brushed my hands across her shoulders in apology. She sighed, stepping in closer. And my arms fit around her instantly, because I like her better than I do almost anyone, far better than I did myself just then.

“That awful woman, at your brother’s firehouse,” she said to the edge of my cravat. “What reason could she have?”

“She was troubled by incendiary threats against the buildings Alderman Symmes owns. Her brothel is one of them. I’m taking care of it.”

“Your brother, then. What will come of him running for office?”

“Nothing whatsoever to the good.”

“So seldom Bird leaves the orphanage.” The downy center part in her hair tickled along the underside of my jaw. “I should have been there.”

“You couldn’t have known, and there isn’t any harm done.”

“Still.”

A thought occurred. A belated thought, one that ought to have been obvious, and my grip tightened fractionally.

“You’d wanted to see Bird tonight, you’d said as much. Were you keen to avoid me at the fund-raiser?”

She raised her head without haste, though the sweep of her mouth had turned stormy. “No,” she declared. “I was making it easier for
you
to avoid
me
.”

Shifting my hands farther down her arms, I studied her from brow to narrow chin. “What sort of call would you have to say that?”

“You treat your friends well, do you not, Mr. Wilde?”

I twisted my lips. “I hope I do. I’m sorry about—”

“A good man you are, a man with principles,” she continued without minding me, her tone casual, as if she were asking me to pass her the morning copy of the
Herald.
“Important, you think it, to be a gentleman. Yes?”

“Yes. I never meant to—”

“You respect me, and you respect where we live.” Her spine where I’d slid one hand round her waist was fast petrifying. “You respect feelings. You respect
privacy.
So respectful, always, so careful to leave what you found where you found it, unchanged. Never taking away without permission. Never leaving a mark. I think,
this is Timothy
, very deeply he has been hurt, so has his family, this is a way he has. He takes care. And then I see you with this woman from London. The poet.”

She brought her hands up and linked them where the hairs were prickling along the back of my neck, her usually soft gaze piercing. “A very great surprise, her returning here, and I am curious. How could I not be curious? I have never seen her before, but I have read her
Light and Shade
stories until in my heart it is like I know her—I understand why you love her, and it is another sad story like all the many sad stories in the world, and I think, Timothy,
such care
he would take with Mercy Underhill if he saw her again. And then I am wrong.”

We were locked into each other by this point. Fused. Cruelly mimicking a dance or a prelude to lovemaking when what it felt like was a crossed pair of dueling swords.

Elena pressed her hip against mine, about as close as two people could be and remain clothed. “This woman Mercy, who is so troubled in her mind, you look at her, and then you look away because it is too much, and you do not want to take
any
care with her. Oh, no. You think you want to make her happy, but all of that is to convince her to
look at you
and never stop looking
.
With her you actually want to take a hook and sink it deep in her chest where she will feel you there and where she will bleed if she moves away from you.”

“Elena, please—”

“Try to deny it.”

My heart was pounding. I wanted to say,
That’s a lie.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because it was merciless and it was shameful.

But it was true.

“You do not like it, you do not like it
at all
, but it is so, and I know, I remember how I looked at Franz before he died,” she hissed. “I fell in love in Danzig in the slow summer, with a German merchant who had stopped at the port to buy a ship from my father. My father, he wanted to marry away my three older sisters, find them good matches, and half the time he could not see me at all. Forgot my name and called me
słoneczko,
‘little sunbeam.’ For a week Franz was there, negotiating. I was sixteen. He could do anything with his hands—comfort frightened horses, fix my clock that wouldn’t chime. When the ship he bought from my father sailed, I was on it. When he lost the ship in a storm on its way to Odessa, I had already married him. When we boarded the ship for New York, heavy I was with little Audie. We had fifty thaler, no relations in America, and whenever Franz looked at me, I wanted to dig my hands in his chest and feel his heart pumping.”