Metropolis (38 page)

It was that heavy odor that had somehow seemed to lift her into the air. And so it was that, despite being quite literally pinned on her back, Beatrice felt she flew. She swooped by faces and ideas that were only half born. She saw colors flash and heard free-floating words. Her breath came clear and deep. It might have been a day or a minute later when Amy Zhang returned and plucked out the needles, one by one. Beatrice’s flesh seemed to grip some of them tightly, as if it wanted to keep them, and when it finally gave up it ached slightly, resenting the loss.

“Can I see one of those?” asked Beatrice. She hadn’t gotten a look when they went in, laid out on her back the way she was, eyes closed tight.

The girl held out a flat dish full of extraordinary pins, long and slender, some with elaborate glass or metal beads for their heads.

“Now, this is important,” said Amy Zhang. “You must come back again in two days. Don’t wait any longer, if you want it to work.”

Beatrice felt good and calm all that day and the following, but the morning after, just a few hours before she planned to return to Chinatown, a barrage of emergency reports began to come in from the gang. Piker had gotten himself arrested for brawling. Not only that, but when they searched his coat they found a freshly severed human ear wrapped in a pocket handkerchief. This was the kind of proof sometimes taken by contract killers to demonstrate they’d done their job, a job equally outrageous to Beatrice as to the police, for contract killing was not part of the Whyo scheme. It was not subtle. Things were getting out of hand, and she feared this might be the end.

No victim had been identified, but Piker was being held on suspicion of murder. Getting in a bar fight with such a thing in his possession was the sort of idiocy that Johnny would have kept in check if only he hadn’t been lying in bed, staring wide-eyed at the wall. Beatrice took some solace in the fact that Piker was remarkably good at disposal—the cops were very unlikely to find the rest of his victim—but it was infuriating that he was doing that sort of job and ridiculous that he hadn’t just ditched the evidence out the police wagon’s window. Now they were all going to suffer, for a murder investigation surrounding a Whyo could potentially bring anyone associated with Piker under scrutiny, including Johnny. It was precisely the kind of thing they had gone out of their way to avoid with Harris.

Beatrice spent most of the day dealing with the situation herself: She sent a couple of boys over to the Tombs to stand around the coffee cart that parked out front and listen to the cops gossip. They returned with a precise description of the evidence, at which point she had Fiona canvass the membership for a Whyo with wiry black ear hair and a simian lobe. They found one, and after an interview with Johnny, who was suddenly enjoying himself, she noticed, the man made the sacrifice: his left outer ear. Johnny did the honors with an oyster knife, the same weapon Piker had used. It fairly sickened Beanie to see how it cheered Johnny up. On the other hand, it had been her idea. They cauterized the wound with an iron to stop the blood and to make it harder to match the edges, and the next day they sent the martyr around to the station house, where he reported the attack but declined to press charges.

It was a brilliant bit of work, a victory really. Piker was released and the entire inquiry dropped. People in the Five Points went back to laughing that anyone had thought a bumbler like Piker Ryan could manage a murder—he was just a brawler, after all. But all Beatrice could think, as she rushed back to Dr. Zhang’s late that afternoon, was that it had all taken too long. The acupuncturist’s shop was going to be closed. She had botched the treatment. She was right—they were closed. But they were there. They lived upstairs, and Amy Zhang had been watching for her.

“I’m sorry it’s so late. I got into some trouble today.”

“I’m glad you came.” Amy Zhang gave her a cup of revolting tea from the cauldron in the corner, and this time there were even more needles than before. The flight felt different, too: uncontrolled and dangerous. They sent her home with a jar containing more of the awful-tasting brew. That night, just as Amy had predicted, she began to feel twinges. In the morning, when she rose from bed, she knew she was bleeding heavily. It wasn’t that much worse than the pain of the usual month, but she was overwhelmed and sad and stayed in bed feigning a fever all day, trying not to let Johnny know that she’d been crying.

Now that it was too late to change her mind, she began to imagine what kind of a creature the baby would have been. There wasn’t any reason it had to turn into a Johnny Dolan, handsome but bad. It might even have been a girl, she thought. She might have found some way to raise it properly, away from Whyos and Why Nots. Not likely, though. And when she thought of all that could befall a girl in the Five Points, of all the things that had been taken from her in her nearly twenty years, she collapsed facedown into her pillow. It was better this way. The following day, she went to see Fiona and told her what she had done. Fiona nodded and laid a hand on her shoulder. What was there to say?

Beatrice probably wouldn’t have returned for the third visit if Amy hadn’t so accurately predicted what she felt. “You’ll think it’s over, but you’ll be tired, sick, crying, not well. You have to come the third time, for balance, or you won’t get over it.” So she went back one last time, with Fiona along to watch Dr. Zhang stick her. She didn’t fly this time, but by the end she did feel a slight rising within her.

Over the week that followed, she felt a little more normal. And for better or worse, Johnny was up and around, too. It seemed the Piker-ear affair had been the tonic he needed to break his melancholy. He was still floating an oily layer of gin on top of his first cup of coffee in the morning, and he couldn’t be bothered even to let her tell him about the accounts, but his ascots flowed dashingly from his open collar again and his famously shiny hair had its old gleam, though his childhood cowlicks had reasserted themselves.

There was a time not so long before when Beatrice would have slipped docilely back into their old routine, not dared to tell him what she thought, but now she touched the numb spot beneath her chin, fingered the slight knot on the bridge of her nose, thought about the chunky period that had contained his child. She’d been running his show single-handedly for more than two months, long enough to know how things were done and care that they were done properly. She was on top of the money, bringing it in, counting it, distributing it. She didn’t want him to take back control, but her far more pressing concern in the short term was that he’d somehow reveal how out of the loop he really was, make himself an inadvertent fool, lose standing with the boys. She needed him as a front man, the same way his mother had, but he didn’t grant her quite the respect he had his mother.

One evening, before he went out, she told him she wanted to talk. He rolled his eyes and poured himself some cold coffee with a splash of whiskey.

“You’re drinking too much, Johnny. The eleven o’clock boilermakers are getting out of hand. You’re out of touch. You can’t just go out and party with the gang if you don’t know who’s done what and how much they’ve brought in or not. You need to go over the accounts first. We need to come up with something larger, some scheme, to keep them working together.”

“Don’t tell me how to run the Whyos, eh, Beanie? Just fuck off.”

“I don’t care about your shiny buttons and your posturing. If you want to stay the boss, you have to act like the boss. And you’re a pathetic excuse for a boss at the moment.”

“Listen to me,” he said. He picked up his cane and thrust its carved-ivory snake head in her direction. Then he threw it, but she dodged, and it glanced off the table a yard to her right and clattered on the floor. He grabbed another cane from the stand, and she was afraid for a moment, but she needn’t have been. He slammed the door behind him.

When he was gone, she returned to the kitchen and began to pack a basket of food. Colleen and her Aunt Penelope had written her off entirely when they realized how she was living, but not Liam. They sometimes met for an ale for a half hour at a certain pub on Friday evenings, and Beatrice would give him a parcel of such luxuries as he might have purchased on his way home on payday if only he’d made three dollars more a week and never spent a dime of his earnings on whiskey. It was usually ham or butter or oranges and a nice cheese or a piece of chocolate, and sometimes several bottles of Inca soda or ginger ale for the kids. But it couldn’t be too lavish, or Colleen would put it together and reject the gifts.

The worst thing about this life of hers since she became First Girl was the way it had cut her off from her family and friends, not just the O’Gamhnas but Frank Harris and even Fiona. She’d been able to have a sort of double life before, and she hadn’t realized how ideal it was.

Now, in exchange for all that, she’d gotten Johnny—some prize.

32.

THE MONKEY-HEADED CANES

W
ell, if it isn’t the Jimster,” said a voice from across the barroom. “Haven’t seen much of you lately.”

“Morning, Luther.” Jimmy looked back down at his beer, not interested in talking. It was the first time he’d ever called Undertoe by his given name, and Undertoe noticed it, found it disrespectful. Jimmy was wearing a bowler hat, as if he thought he was a big man now. Undertoe reached out and knocked it off his head.

“That’s still
Mister Undertoe
to you.”

“Fuck you, Undertaker,” said Jimmy before stooping to recover his hat. He’d like to have punched him in the head, but he’d recently been indoctrinated in the Whyo theory of stealth, had learned how seeming not tough could enable one to get away with murder. Jimmy had done well in his trial period. He’d yet to formally enter the gang and he still didn’t know the complexities of the language, but he was very close to being made a full member. All he needed was some job, some heist, to prove himself. Probably, he thought, he shouldn’t have called him
Luther.
The last thing he needed at this point was a conflict with Undertoe.

Undertoe had never managed to torch that tent in Brooklyn over the summer. The new security chief seemed to be always around, and there were any number of watchmen. The venue had been too intimate, the time not opportune, but that had left him only hungrier. Now he had his eye on something grander, Barnum’s new Hippodrome. He wasn’t asked to head up the effort this time around, what with having been at Sing Sing, but he’d gotten a job working the crowds, apprehending pickpockets and keeping the peace. It was the perfect position, as it allowed him total access to the facility.

“You’ve been doing all right for yourself, I guess, Jimmy.”

The Jimster put his hat on and stood up to go.

“Oh, don’t be a sorehead. You’re an old pal, can’t you take a joke? Because I’m glad I saw you. Been hoping to. Wondering if you’d care to join forces on a little project. Two-man job, split fifty-fifty, not like the old days. Going to be a beaut.”

Jimmy was thinking,
Not for a million dollars,
but what he said was “Maybe. Buy me a gin.”

Johnny and Fiona were both interested in Undertoe, he knew, so he listened. It was pretty obviously a setup, and on top of that he doubted that Barnum had really contracted for another torch job, the way Undertoe said. It was going to look awfully suspicious to the insurers, the third of his properties to burn in a decade. That night, Jimmy told Fiona what he’d heard, and Fiona thought it was precisely the right opportunity. If Jimmy could get on this job and double-cross the Undertaker, it would go quite a distance to clearing Harris, which would resolve one of the Whyos’ ongoing liabilities. And Beanie would like it.

Now Fiona decided she had to talk to Beatrice alone. Maybe this job was the way to get both women’s projects taken care of: protect Harris and bring Jimmy in. Johnny had started going out again lately, so Fiona spent the morning lurking around the stairwell of the Dolan building waiting for him to leave. On the basement level of the Dolan place, there was a bottle-collecting operation for Owney Geoghegan’s. The rest of the floors, except for the roof, were all empty warehouse space, so no one used it but Johnny and Beanie now. When Johnny came down at last, hair slicked back, a purple ascot blazing at his throat, wielding one of his signature canes—a bald-eagle design made of ivory and alabaster—Fiona let him think that she’d just arrived to visit Beanie and happened to cross his path. He waved her up, and Fiona quickly climbed the five flights. As she opened the door onto the snow-scattered rooftop, a bell rang automatically in the kitchen, where Beatrice was sitting over the account books. She quickly closed them and slid them into a concealed cabinet. She hoped it wasn’t Johnny coming back. Then she heard Fiona’s voice and relaxed.

“So,” said Fiona, “he’s out for a while?”

Beatrice shrugged, and they went into the large parlor, where Beatrice opened the door of the cast-iron stove and tossed in a log, and they sat down to talk. Fiona told Beatrice of Undertoe’s plan. Then she explained her own idea. Beatrice squinted into the fire, thinking about what would be entailed by making the Jimster a full Whyo. There was a reason they hadn’t brought Jimmy all the way in yet. She wondered if she was ready to train him. She thought she was.

“It’ll be good for Harris, Beanie.”

“Forget Harris. It’s Johnny we have to think about. But I like the Hippodrome idea—it pretty much lets Undertoe undermine himself, so we don’t have to. Maybe Johnny’ll go for it, because it’s not a hit.”

The Hippodrome. Offering every delight from horse racing to opera, from dinner theater to menageries, from cabinets of curiosities to the strange abominations—some pickled, some still walking—for which Barnum was above all famous. It had opened just two weeks before and quickly become the most popular destination in town. Everyone went there,
everyone.
Pierreponts and Livingstons and Astors in ascots and velvet coats, shopkeepers with their aprons still on beneath their coats, charwomen in skirts they’d brushed and brushed but that still smelled of soot. Bakers’ wives and printers’ apprentices wandered the galleries alongside urchins and newsboys just learning how to live on nearly nothing in New York. These were the boys who would grow up into Jimsters, Piker Ryans, Dandy Johnnys, Undertoes.

Undertoe, yes—he was there, too, on the job. He paced the floor with eyes peeled, making sure the souvenirs stayed out of urchins’ pockets and no one caused any trouble, but he also kept tabs on Barnum himself—he coveted a nod hello from the great impresario, who had once again allowed Undertoe to be hired onto his security staff. It would have been puzzling if there weren’t so much history between them. Indeed, it was puzzling still, for Undertoe was the greatest threat to security there was. As he walked the halls and stalls, his gaze was caught by lamp fixtures and sawdust bags for spreading on the floor. He had to remind himself to spare a glance from time to time for the throngs of people who were there to see the outrageous animals, the wax figures, the elaborately laid-out vitrines. He was passing through the large hall known as the Grand Emporium and doing just that when he happened to notice the Jimster, walking in step with Dandy Johnny, followed by both their girls. He ducked briefly behind a column to let them pass and smiled to see that his boy was on the job.

Visitors had to cross the Great Emporium to reach the theater or the upper floors. The place was a maze of stalls stocked with costly exotic and imitation-exotic items, as well as miniature replicas of the various wonders and horrors on view elsewhere in the Hippodrome, all overhung by banners proclaiming attractions above. Beatrice, Johnny, Fiona and the Jimster were on their way to the theater, where a minstrel show was soon to begin—their outing was turning out to be part work and part enjoyment, as how could it not be in such a place? They wouldn’t have paused in the Emporium at all had Johnny’s eye not been drawn to a corner stall with a remarkable display of canes and umbrellas. There were walking sticks with compasses set in their handles, umbrellas that unscrewed to reveal bayonets, a cane that was also a light rifle and several that had been fashioned from single pieces of scrimshaw. There were any number of canes with wooden heads of Indians or alabaster busts of famous men or gleaming brass and silver beasts as handles.

“Oh,” said Dandy Johnny, and he began to fondle the canes and to pluck appealing models from the buckets to feel their heft. “Look at that one,” he said, pointing to a pale George Washington, but it was a little short for Johnny, and he passed it to the Jimster to try for size. Then he pulled out an ebony-stemmed number with a large silver knob that was worked into a monkey’s head. And a vicious-looking monkey it was, too, the way it bared its teeth and squinted its eyes. It was heavy enough that it would do for a weapon, handsome enough to satisfy his taste. He tossed it from one hand to the other and back; it was perfectly balanced.

“How much for this one here?” he asked.

When they took their seats in the theater, Johnny was sporting the monkey head and the Jimster the Washington. Johnny had sprung for both of them. He often gave a new Whyo something as a sign of his approval, and he’d decided that morning that the Jimster was solid. He was in. He’d complete the initiation later on that night, when the ladies weren’t around. It was a delicate matter, involving dominance and submission and a first introduction to certain secret codes. Beatrice would take the vocal training over from there. In the theater, Johnny put his arm around Jimmy and smiled. It had been too long since they’d brought a new boy in. He adjusted his trousers and stowed the cane beneath his seat. Then the curtain rose and the show began. The crowd roared.

Out in the Emporium, another group had wandered over to the cane stall, having seen the playbill and made up their minds to skip the show: a bearded young Irishman in the company of a woman and a black couple with a toddler daughter.

“John-Henry,” said Harris when they came to the cane and umbrella stall, “take a look at these. Do you think they’re too outlandish for Mr. Noe? He dropped his walking stick while he was crossing the street last week, and it was run over by an omnibus.”

Sarah Blacksall and Lila continued after Liza, who zigzagged from one booth to the next, looking at the thousand and one strange things for sale.

“I don’t know,” John-Henry said, looking at a cane with a brass cobra flaring its hood and red ruby eyes. “I think he’d like some of them, not all of them.”

The whole atmosphere of the place brought Harris back to the job he’d done at Barnum’s American Museum, but he tried not to think about that. He picked up a bronze elephant head on a mahogany stem, but it wasn’t very comfortable in the hand, what with the ears. There was a bear that looked like a dog, a rabbit that was far too ladylike. Then he saw the laughing monkey, its head a large, silver knob, its expression almost gleeful, its eyes radiating mirth, its lips pulled back into a tooth-flashing grin. But it was the elegant proportions of the silver head atop the slim black stick that made it so suitable as a gentleman’s accoutrement. He tossed it from hand to hand—the balance was perfect.

“How much for this monkey-headed cane, sir?”

They walked on. They saw the sea lion, which was housed, awkwardly enough, in a two-foot-deep pool on the fourth floor. It barked and waved its ragged flipper for fish. There was a bear that performed tricks gloomily, chained to its bars. Harris thought of Sedric, trapped in the blaze. There was a new tiger, pacing hard. Harris remembered Raj’s grooved floor, his leap, his execution. The American Museum hadn’t been a wonderful place, even before the fire, he realized, and this one was worse, because grander: It made even more of a spectacle of a greater number of creatures. But Liza was excited by the animals, laughing, shrieking, hiding under her mother’s skirt, and for her sake they continued on to see the camels, the elephants and, along the way, a row of a dozen jars containing fetuses of two-headed pigs. Eventually, they reached the Hall of Living Dioramas, where, behind metal rails and velvet ropes, were two small stages, side by side. On the first, a family of three blue-black Negroes, pure Africans it seemed, squatted half naked in the dust beside the false front of a thatched hut. The walls were painted to suggest a jungle clearing. The Africans wore mangy grass skirts, and their faces were painted with colorful streaks and lines. The woman’s breasts were bare. The girl had a cough so constant and unproductive it was clearly tubercular. There was no private space in the diorama, and after Harris and the Henleys had been watching for a minute or two, the girl stood up and went to the corner, where she squatted over a chamber pot in full view of the spectators, though she turned to face the rear wall. Her parents sat listlessly on the floor. Had they freely chosen or been tricked into this job? Did they know they didn’t have to do this? This was the 1870s, after all—blacks were not slaves, nor had they been in New York for half a century. Next door, a group of Indians squatted in their own microcosm, dressed in feathers and beaded leather. Their set included a teepee and a background painting of a western landscape in which a cavalry troop was galloping over a rise, rifles shouldered, presumably preparing to release these wretched savages from their misery. Behind Harris, a small boy called out in a loud, high voice: “Look, Injuns, Pop! I’d sure like to shoot ’em dead!”

They didn’t leave right away, but sooner than they’d planned. Nothing they saw in the wake of those sad dioramas managed to take their fancy. Back on the street, Harris took his leave of Sarah and the Henleys and made his way to the ferry. He spent the short ride across outside on the deck, thinking about whether John-Henry and Lila were trying to set him up with Sarah Blacksall. He ought to be flattered, perhaps. He admired her greatly. But he wasn’t interested.

Mr. Noe seemed touched by the gift and captivated by the monkey head, and he invited Harris into the big house, where they sat in front of the fire in the small parlor and drank wine and coffee alternately, till it was dinnertime and the cook served them one of her excellent chicken pies. Harris compared Mr. Noe’s warmth to the distrust his own father had shown him, and he marveled that he had made out so well. He was lucky to have such a friend, who had embraced him like no man, neither father nor uncle, ever had. But he was struggling with a question that seemed increasingly urgent the more settled he became: whether he should contact his father. He’d written a second, more candid letter to Koch, confessing a few of his exaggerations, though not all. He had considered asking Koch to keep his correspondence a secret, but knowing how unreasonable that would sound he hadn’t done it. He’d told Koch he was going to write his father soon. Now he couldn’t stop thinking about what that letter might say. It was going to be infinitely harder to write than the ones to Koch. Now he asked Mr. Noe what he thought a father would want to hear.

“Just to hear from you at all would be a gift. Maybe don’t say too much. And Harris—”