The Gods Of Gotham (53 page)

Madam Marsh drew her fingertips down her neck and flung me a smile that reminded me of a fresh-honed razor blade.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m not going to hush you, though how you could suppose I’d ever dream of such a cruel thing is quite
beyond my ken. I am going to do something else, though, because you are a thief, and thieves are the lowest form of filth.”

“What’s that?”

“I intend to
ruin
you.”

It would be a lie to say that I enjoyed hearing it. Or that I didn’t think it worth worrying over. But I couldn’t call myself the smallest bit surprised.

“And I wonder if you know, Mr. Wilde, just how very far a man can be ruined without being killed. You’ll understand what I mean one day.”

“I will,” I said. “And I’ll get better and better at this. The policing. I’ll take to it like a bird to air. You’ll see that I will, as I’m not going anyplace.”

I made my exit.

The gardens below were strung with glowing orbs of all sizes—hectic fireflies in the bushes and the paper lanterns in the trees and above all the rest, just beginning to flicker, a dusting of powdery stars in the infinite distance. People moving through the shadows laughing, waving fans before faces, spilling drops of champagne on the grass. For some reason, I liked the thought that the three sorts of light touched everyone alike, from the stars to the candles to the lightning bugs. Everyone fading as the daylight gave up the ghost, marked only by silvery edges and the flare of lucifers meeting thin cigars.

My dream of being a ferryman on the waters of the Hudson, I realized just then, had always been a dream about being somewhere
else.
Having a little spread on Staten Island or in Brooklyn, doing work that lets a man be out of doors, possess and keep up his own rusting and saltwater-pocked means of livelihood, that’s the sort of thing a barkeep is required to dream about. Property, daylight, countryside. I’d dreamed of that summer when I’d been twelve years old and suddenly happy on the water with the salt in my hair because
I’d so often been terribly unhappy since. No other reason. It’s like a pretty picture tacked on the wall of a windowless tenement room. Just a reminder that other lives are different, that maybe you felt peaceable once and could do so again. A tune you write to whistle the daily aches away.

And I’d been lazy about my mine. Picked a vision I supposed might fit my shape and never bothered to try it on properly. Because I hadn’t
chosen
New York. People come here, keep coming, thousands upon thousands, miserable crowds thick enough that some feel frightened they’ll bury us, but no one realizes that they’re the fortunate ones. The emigrants decide where they belong. Not what they’ll become or if they’ll succeed, of course, but simply
where
they are. Geography and will twined into one forward motion.

Telling Silkie Marsh that I wasn’t going anyplace felt good. As if, for the first time, I’d deliberately chosen something that wasn’t simply drifting with the fairest tide. I’d planted my flag in the ground. And that choice might get me killed sooner or later, if she had anything to say about it, but the stake and the land were
mine.

So I tugged the mask off. It didn’t fit quite right anymore, had been fraying at one edge ever since the riot, and I’ve never been good with a needle. I dropped it at the exit of Niblo’s as I left the manicured lawns and the silhouettes of city dwellers and the countless spheres of light.

I found George Washington Matsell
at his office at the Tombs. Hunched over his stack of parchment, scribbling flash words and their meanings as the bluish sky through the window behind him dulled to black.

He didn’t look hangdog over the riot, or even very tired. That almost annoyed me. I could feel collapse vibrating hard and
relentless behind my eyelids, having run myself so ragged. But then I grasped that he was writing the lexicon to understand better. Remembered that the chief had already passed through a score of riots, and watched half of lower Manhattan burn down to a sad set of statistics not two months back, when he’d been a justice and the police hadn’t existed.

“What in hell do you think you’re doing here,” he said without bothering to look at me, “when I wanted you here in August?”

“Today’s September. The first, I think,” I said absently, marveling. “You’re right, I never noticed.”

“Then maybe you noticed that my mood isn’t very good. Did you notice that I’ve over thirty men in lockdown, and eight copper stars at the New York Hospital? Or that the Five Points is one giant sea of broken window glass? I wonder if you’ll notice when I sack you in a moment, no matter who your brother happens to be.”

“It’s over, Chief. We’re through with this business. I’ve fixed it.”

Chief Matsell glanced up in considerable surprise. He traced his jowls with his fingertips, arms snug over his enormous blue waistcoat, taking my measure. Searching my face like the front page of a newspaper. Then he read me, and he smiled.

“You worked it all out, back to front?”

“Everything.”

“And you found the culprit?”

“Two and a half. There were two and a half culprits.”

He blinked, grizzled brows twisting like caterpillars. “Twenty-one victims in all, yes? No recent bad news?”

“Right.”

“How many arrests?”

“None.”

“Mr. Wilde,” he said, leaning forward and lacing his fat fingers together over his lexicon, “you’re generally better at talking. I suggest you regain your eloquence. Now.”

So I told him everything.

Well, most things. Parts I couldn’t look in the eye myself just yet, and those ones I left out. Mercy having saved her own life, wet and still and blue on the floor of her bedchamber. Dr. Palsgrave feeling so ashamed he’d put a corpse in a trash bin that he could scarce speak without his heart faltering.

How loose I’d tied those knots. How very, very poorly I’d fastened the reverend to a chair.

When I came to the end, the chief sat back. Put the gentle feathered end of his quill against his lower lip. Thought it over for a while.

“You are certain that Dr. Peter Palsgrave knew nothing of Madam Marsh’s hastening deaths?”

“I’d stake my life on it. It would have violated everything he stands for.”

“Then frankly, I don’t feel any necessity of subjecting him to charges of what is in essence grave robbery when there were never any graves in the first place,” he said slowly.

“Hear, hear,” I agreed.

“Thomas Underhill made a full confession before he hanged himself, you say?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all you have for me? A story?”

I removed the little journal from my frock coat and set it on the desk. “The diary of the St. Patrick’s victim, Marcas. The reverend kept possession of it, God knows why. It was in his study.” Next I pulled the piece of paper with
Reverend Thomas Underhill
written shakily on it out of my waistcoat pocket. “What’s better, Father Sheehy identified him as the only man to bring a large bundle into the cathedral that night, and the only man he failed to observe leaving. The sack, which held the drugged child, was no longer inside St. Patrick’s when Sheehy discovered the body. It explains the lack of break-in. It all fits.”

“That’s what put you onto the reverend? His carrying a bundle with him to the school meeting?”

“No, the other way around. I didn’t know he had a sack, but I knew there was a meeting and I knew there was no break-in.”

A near-smile floated around Chief Matsell’s lips. “That all just … occurred to you at random.”

“No,” I sighed wearily. “I used butcher paper.”

“Butcher paper.”

Nodding, I let my head drop onto one closed fist. I didn’t know when last I’d eaten, and the edges of my eyelids burned with fatigue.

“So, as far as we are concerned, the doctor is not worth touching and the reverend is beyond our justice. You say we can’t convict Silkie Marsh of any crime.”

“Not honestly. She needs very careful watching. We’ll catch her out sooner or later, and she’ll find herself at the end of a rope.”

“I agree with you. I do imagine, however, that you’ve confronted her?”

“Three hundred and fifty dollars’ worth.”

I’d not have thought it possible, but George Washington Matsell’s lungs hitched a bit. It was a nice thing to see. It was good to think that my taking an enormous bribe actually startled a man who generally couldn’t be alarmed by a charging bull.

“Are you handing it over?” he asked dryly, next.

“I can spare fifty for the Party if you must, but the rest is for one of the victims.”

“Ah. I will accept fifty, for an unnamed police charity, and you will donate the remainder to … what victim? Bird Daly, I take it?”

“A victim,” I said steadily.

The chief chewed on that for a minute. Made up his mind.

“I’d like to offer you something, Mr. Wilde,” he said, standing up. “Copper stars, supposedly so that they do not grow arrogant or
corrupt, must be rehired every year. I don’t like this policy and I never did. It negates the very idea of expertise, and as for stopping corruption— But here is what I propose. So long as I am chief of police, you are a copper star. We’ll set you up solving crimes, you see, rather than preventing them. If you want a title, I’ll come up with one. I’m very apt with words. And you’ve done a fine job at surprising me.”

I know the sudden small glow wasn’t sensible. It should never have satisfied me so deep that I could keep that job. Maybe it was just a novel sensation, being good at something entirely new.

“Thank you,” I said.

“That’s settled, then.”

“I’ve a single condition.”

The chief turned away from the window he’d been contemplating, silvery brows quirked in annoyance. Clearly, I was pushing.

“I only meant to say that you ought to keep Val too,” I offered more humbly.

“Mr. Wilde, I will get your measure one of these days,” sniffed Chief Matsell, sitting back down and lifting his quill. Still looking downright bustled. “You are a genius with butcher paper, apparently, and then of a sudden you are thick as lumber. Your brother—provided he doesn’t get himself croaked, or elected to public office—will doubtless be a copper star captain until the day he dies.”

“I’m grateful you think so, then.”

“Mr. Wilde,” the chief said, “get out of my office. You look ready to faint in it, and I don’t want the trouble of stepping over you.”

On my way out of that great fortress of stone, I encountered a strange fellow, walking furtive and fluid like a crab, with thick Dutch boots, without a chin, with wild tinsel hair, and rushing up to me the minute we’d spied each other.

“I must inform you of the evidence delivered by a Miss Maddy
Sample, Mr. Wilde. We see the light of dawn at last!” Mr. Piest whispered, clutching my arm in his dry claw.

“It’s morning already,” I answered gratefully, as the moon outside began to rise. “Supply me with some bread and coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.”

And yes, it was morning in my head. All was going better than I could ever have expected. I owed so much of my success to Mr. Piest that I’d have been a turncoat not to stop and deliver the story. Just two problems plagued my mind as I finished filling in the blanks for my colleague over steaming tin cups and a heaping plate of beef and stewed cabbage.

What will happen?
I thought. Not to me. That much seemed settled. But there was a pair of girls I didn’t like to let down, one very much younger than the other. Both fates undetermined. Both lives marred and mended and marred again.

And the worst betrayal of all just then was, I didn’t strictly know whether either one of them was alive or dead.