The Gods Of Gotham (37 page)

T
here isn’t, though
, I thought stubbornly as we sprinted.
Please. There can’t be. If there is, we’ll pay too dear for it, much too dear, each and every one of us. If a mad Irish devil is prowling these streets, every reasonable thought is about to be driven clean out of the public mind.

The scant few blocks north toward the dizzy roofline of St. Patrick’s Cathedral passed unreal, falsely familiar. Paper cutouts for a newsboy’s stage. The air came hot so near the ground, gritty and thick as we flew by a cloyingly stuffed sinkhole, and as I yearned for more speed, I wished I hadn’t yet solved the crime of the horse I had just stolen from the Elizabeth Street grocery.

We wheeled left at Prince Street, and there was St. Patrick’s, the
pale moonlit monument to the Catholic God before us. It was the only time of night in New York when the streets even approach quiet: the sheltered alleyway of lost time lying between three-thirty and four in the morning. Not anywhere near two a.m., drenched in gin and smelling of late-night chops and after-opera coffee and back-alley sex. Not yet approaching five a.m., horses streaming back into the streets and roosters crowing maniacally. Between play and work, when a mab just heading for bed following an all-night debauch might bump into a still sleep-blinded stonemason trudging to his work three miles from home. I turned to Neill, slowing.

“There isn’t a mad Irishman after Catholic kinchin,” I said, desperate to believe myself. “It’s only a sick rumor based on a worthless letter the
Herald
printed. They’ve already retracted it, Neill.”

Neill shook his head sadly at my ignorance, quivering blue veins visible against his white neck.

A small crowd milled before the triple doors of the cathedral. Mainly Irish. Some American. Most of them buzzing with something I’d seen before: the same sort of eager, frightened, childish looks the bystanders had worn watching half of downtown burn to the ground.

“I’ve said nay already,” Father Sheehy was stating, very deliberate. He held a pistol. Cocked and clearly loaded and obviously an old friend, pointed at the pavement, for the time being. “I’ll say it as many times as ye’d care to hear, for as long as you’re lackin’ for better employment!”

“And haven’t we a right to see what the devil’s work looks like?” a glowering old crone demanded. “When ’tis visited on our own
kin
, no less?”

“He’s no kin o’ yours, Mrs. MacKenna. Pray for his soul, and pray for our people, and pray for God’s wisdom, and go back to yer home.”

“And what
about
our homes?” demanded a black-bearded fellow
with keen blue eyes. Obviously a man with his thoughts on a future Democratic election, and just as obviously a father—I read rational fright in his face, and not for his own sake either. “What about our children? Our livelihoods, when this news comes to be spreadin’ like wildfire? Can we not look the enemy square i’ the face?”

Sheehy’s lips were set tight as the stonework at his back. “That lad were never the enemy, Mr. Healy, though I take yer meaning proper. You’ve your family’s best t’ look out for, and I know how rightly to do it, son. Walk away.”

“Back away from the door,” I called out, brushing my fingers over the copper star.

The by-now familiar first twitches of sneers sprung onto the faces of the bystanders at the sight of a copper star. On several, they grew into angrily bared teeth. But on others, the expression froze and then retreated. I didn’t follow why, though I was grateful enough it didn’t look as if a fight was on my hands. Father Sheehy’s eyes snapped in my direction and then back to his parishioners. He wasn’t strung any less taut, but I’d taken a bit of the weight.

“Ye heard Mr. Wilde, and none o’ you are fixed to fall foul of a copper star. Go back to your work and to your beds. Pray for the lad’s soul. Pray for the city.”

As I met Father Sheehy at the left-hand door, several strangers pointed at me discreetly and shook their heads. Opening the tall portal a fraction, the priest stood before it with a hollowed-out expression. I bent down to Neill.

“I’ll pay you to run quick as you can to the Tombs and find an officer,” I said. “He’s about to check in and then leave for the north edge of the city. His name is Mr. Piest. Jakob Piest. Can you find him?”

“Sure enough,” the lad answered, winging away again.

“How do they know me?” I murmured to Father Sheehy as he edged me inside.

“I don’t suppose ye know anything about a policeman battled three mad Irish forty rounds on behalf of a black carpenter,” he sighed. “That’s mere Irish legend, I suppose. Come, quickly.”

I turned to the priest, a bit shocked at minor civic fame. We stood just within the entrance for a moment, my eyes blinking as they focused, and I thought myself ready to be enraged by a gruesome picture I’d viewed too many times. But ready as well—truly, I was flush with newfound competence—to do some work.

Then a slinking animal fear drew a cold line down the center of my back.

I still didn’t see anything as yet. But there was a smell. A smell echoing the frozen copper penny sensation trickling from my neck to the ground. Something like an ironmonger’s workshop and something like a cut of flank steak and something like a school sink. It tasted of knives and of wet earth. Already horrified, I whirled the rest of the way around.

There was a little shadow nailed hands and feet to the central cathedral door with something dark pooled beneath it.

I choked out words likely never before said in a place of worship. It was profane, whatever it was. Staggering backward, my hand clutching at my mouth. It wasn’t my best showing for steady nerves. I’m glad of it. I’m glad even now. Father Sheehy winced, a shattered and wholly human expression, his eyes sliding from what I’d just seen back to me again as we quickly distanced ourselves from the unhallowed entrance.

“They’d a right to be askin’ after the lad. The neighbors, I mean, though they’d not desire to set eyes on this if they knew it fer what it is. But the word is out this half an hour now. I was too late. Whoever did that unholy work, may we find the creature with God’s own speed, left that door swung wide upon the street.”

I could only shake my head, my fingers over my lips so my heart wouldn’t fly out.

What I was looking at simply couldn’t be, but there it was, and two sane men staring into the gaping red jaws of lunacy. Neill hadn’t seen it for himself, I knew without asking. He’d been ivory-toned and papery, but steady. This death would’ve done far worse by him than mere news of a fresh murder.

“Then who discovered it first?”

“I couldn’t say that, the door bein’ open to the road, but I learned it from a beggar who sweeps the streets for coin on this block. She’s not fit t’ be seen, bless her. Lord knows who else has heard tell of it, for when I found her, she was screamin’ fit to raise the dead. I’ve closeted her in the music room with food and drink and a plentiful dose of laudanum. God help me.”

Find Piest,
I begged in Neill’s general direction as my eyes flinched shut and then forced open again.
I need one thing just now, and that is a better pair of eyes.

The yawning carved cross was really the least of my troubles. He was a slender young boy. Maybe eleven years old, by the looks of his face and the size of his very visible rib cage. Irish, obviously, the ruddy hair and speckled skin told me as much. Not a laborer when I forced myself to look at his hands. He’d been a kinchin-mab, I’d have staked my life on it, and there were traces of kohl at the edges of his eyes where either he or the murderer had failed to wipe it away completely.

But the rest of it … there was so much blood. So much blood, and the body so small. Soaking his torn clothes, pooling on the floor, dripping down the thick oak boards to which he was nailed hands and feet. Surrounding the body like a border were pale markings streaked messily onto the wood.

“What are the symbols painted with?” I asked hoarsely. “These, these—all these crosses. I count seven of them. Why? It’s different, that’s never happened before. And what was used? It looks like ordinary whitewash to me. Is it whitewash? It looks so.”

“To me as well.”

“It’s not dry, but it’s close enough. That might be helpful.”

“What d’ you mean?”

“How long does it take whitewash to dry?”

“Oh, I see. Yes, yes, of course, I should say not above ninety minutes, perhaps, when done tha’ thickly?”

I forced myself a step closer, my upper body curved like a question mark. I took a breath. The air was stifling, greasy as lamp oil. Incense mingled with the tang of sacrificial blood.

“Do you know him, Father?”

“Nay, never by sight. I tried. I can’t say who he is.”

We stared a while longer. Stupid with helplessness.

“This isn’t right,” I whispered, though what I meant by that escaped me.

A banging from the other side of the abominable door sent me haring out of my skin. Father Sheehy hissed something between his teeth in his own language and passed his fingertips over the glossy baldness of his pate, lurching toward the undefiled entrance at the left like a badly mastered puppet.

“I must see Mr. Timothy Wilde on a matter of civic emergency!” shrilled the voice of a lobster half-dipped into the bubbling pot.

My shoulders straightened. I’d never fought in anything resembling an army. Not a brigade, not even a gang of dead rabbits squalling over territory. But maybe that’s what it feels like when reinforcements arrive, I thought. Like you’re a man again. Simply because you aren’t the only one. Alone, I was a bent-over ex-barman glaring terrified at death. Two copper stars turned me back into one policeman.

“Neill,” I said over Father Sheehy’s shoulder into the blank, hushed air, “thank you. Now I need Dr. Peter Palsgrave. Quick as you can.”

When I’d delivered Neill the address and sent him away again,
and Mr. Piest had slipped through the opening with his lantern half dimmed, I stepped aside with Sheehy. My fellow copper star turned to have a look. Stood there, heart visibly stalling. Not paling, though. He turned bright as a fireman’s shirt, his lips curling back over his jagged teeth, and that was when I realized that he was as enraged by this whole bloody business as I was.

“First,” Mr. Piest said. “First. What to do now. What is
first
?”

“Shall we take him down?” the priest asked, voice purposely roughened so as not to sound cowed. “’Tis an offense to the Holy Church. To God Himself.”

“No. Wait for the doctor,” I replied. The words fought like hell to lodge in my craw.

“And Chief Matsell,” agreed Mr. Piest. “I sent him word at once.”

I nodded, turning back to Sheehy. “The front door in question was open, you said? But the cathedral surely was locked?”

“Yes, yes. I keep my keys in the rectory, ye’ve seen for yourself.”

“Has anything been broken? Windows, locks?”

“I can hardly say. It’s all been so quick, and I had to be guardin’ the entrance. Here are my keys, and they were right where I left them. Someone must have forced the door.”

“Have you not yet searched this entire sanctuary, then, Father?” Mr. Piest inquired, stepping back from a more careful look over the body.

“I—nay, apart from makin’ certain the fiend had gone. And shall I now, then?”

“Father Sheehy, take Mr. Piest through the building and keep a sharp eye open for anything out of place,” I suggested. “I’ll borrow your keys. I’m going to see if I can find out how our man got in.”

“Very good. The chief will waste no time in arriving,” my colleague added, his hand hovering near the priest’s elbow protectively. “Let us find something to show him when he does.”

I took the small lamp Sheehy had been using, and Mr. Piest drew back the shutters of his smoking bull’s-eye. We separated, moving fast but careful. I could hear Mr. Piest questioning Father Sheehy in a practiced monotone. Little questions designed as much to produce comfort as facts. What sort of night had he passed? A busy one, presiding at the cathedral over a joint Catholic and Protestant meeting debating proposals for a Catholic school. A dozen leading figures had been present. And dead set against him.

“You’re wantin’ the minutes of my meeting, when each and every one o’ them slandered me?” he demanded. “Shall I give ye the names? The men who don’t supposed a Catholic kinchin ought to be raised
Catholic
?”

What time had he retired? At midnight. Had St. Patrick’s ever been threatened before? Yes, scores of times, never amounting to more than flung stones and brickbats. I slipped along the wall with the scene out of hell itself at my back, trying not to imagine that the wretched boy could see me. Trying not to imagine what might have happened to this one
before
he had died. That set me to flushing, which I’d noticed recently sent sharp needling pinpricks through my scarred face beneath its thin layer of cloth. I lost the sense of Mr. Piest’s gentle questioning when the pair disappeared into the organ loft on the eastern side. And the moment their voices had faded, I heard it again in my head.

This isn’t right.

Then,
Of course it isn’t,
I thought furiously.

The side walls of St. Patrick’s are intercut with narrow strips of stained glass. At the rear, where the pinnacles rise, and small rooms house vestments and sacramental objects I can’t name, are three more doors. There was a cobalt suggestion that dawn would rise soon when I unlocked the right-hand door and stepped outside. A fever gleam to the sky’s edge, quickening the breath.

Kneeling, I peered at each of the locks in turn, not certain what
I was looking for. All of them were smooth, cool iron, and all of them pretty typical—ornate, a bit sour-smelling. A tidy sheen to the surface. That gleaming polish wasn’t scratched in the least. Picking a lock, I knew because Valentine had once considered it his duty to teach me how to pick locks, often leaves traces. I pulled the sharp edge of one of Father Sheehy’s keys over the surface and sure enough it left a mark. But that didn’t tell me much, after all. If a cold-blooded rabbit was skilled enough, and his pick small, it could be done without obvious signs.