Ten Days in August (7 page)

That seemed to break the tension. Hank burst into laughter. “Right. Of course. Wouldn't want that.”

Nicky pushed on Hank's shoulders. “Help me up.”

Hank stood and then held his hands out and helped Nicky to his feet. This effectively put them facing each other again, the heels of Nicky's shoes bringing him up close to Hank's height. They were close enough to kiss again.

But now was not the time for that. Nicky briefly entertained the fantasy of letting go and kissing Hank and seeing where things went, but he had to suppress it. Instead, he took a step back.

“Can I call on you again?” Hank asked. “If not here, then perhaps at your home?”

Nicky hesitated. He had learned years before not to trust a police officer, but an inverted police officer was another matter. Unless he was lying about that, too. But, no, Nicky trusted his instincts, and Hank was definitely attracted to him, as more than just a font of information.

“All right.” Nicky grabbed a scrap of paper from a side table. “Do you have a pencil?”

Hank pulled one from his pocket. Unable to bend over to lean on the table, Nicky gestured for Hank to turn around and then used Hank's back to write out his address. He handed the paper to Hank. Hank looked it over.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “I appreciate that you trust me enough for this. I'll call on you tomorrow afternoon.”

“I'll be home.”

Hank nodded slowly and glanced at the door. He opened his mouth to speak, but then Julie ran by and shouted, “You're on, Paulina!”

“You have to leave,” Nicky told Hank.

“All right. Tomorrow?”

“Fine.”

Hank met Nicky's gaze again, and then nodded and left.

Day 3

Friday, August 7
Temperature: 101 °F

A
ccording to the thermometer in front of the Herald building, it was already seventy-eight degrees at six a.m. when Andrew left his apartment. It felt even hotter inside the car of the elevated train he rode downtown. Bodies pressed together, the smell of sweat pungent and sour, and everyone on the train looked as abjectly miserable as Andrew felt. He wondered if his suit might suffocate him before he even got to his desk.

The newspaper he grabbed between the train station and police headquarters contained Department of Public Works Commissioner Collis's decree that work hours be changed to prevent workers from keeling over during the hottest times of the day. Andrew knew of six people who had collapsed on the job the previous day, and not all of them survived once they reached the hospital.

Perhaps New York City had finally sunk into Hell as so many had predicted.

Commissioner Roosevelt stood outside his office when Andrew arrived to check in for the day. He stroked his mustache absently a few times before hopping and coming to life suddenly. “Ritchley. Meeting.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want the captain of the Eighteenth Precinct in my office by noon. We need to discuss the force necessary for William Jennings Bryan's visit on the twelfth.”

“I'll see to it.” Andrew considered just how much force would be necessary. Bryan was scheduled to make a campaign stop, giving a speech at Madison Square Garden that would be his formal acceptance of the nomination as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. Roosevelt had no fondness for Bryan and had made his displeasure about having to make policemen available to act as security for the event known loud and clear ever since Bryan had announced the speech.

“I'll be leaving for Oyster Bay in a few days. I intend to spend time with my family.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Now what is next on my schedule?”

Andrew deserved a raise. “Well, sir, you're supposed to do a ceremony in a few minutes commending the officer who killed a mad dog yesterday.” It was nasty business, this particular commendation, but Roosevelt had heard about it the day before and been enthralled. The officer embodied the masculine energy Roosevelt seemed to want the New York Police Department to emulate.

“Ah, yes,” said Roosevelt. “I look forward to that.”

And so, fifteen minutes later, Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt gave Officer Charles Haas a commendation for beating a dog suffering from heat sickness with a cane instead of just shooting it. Roosevelt gave the man a cane made to commemorate the occasion. Andrew was disgusted. But far be it from him to argue with Roosevelt about what constituted masculine heroism.

After that bit of pomp, Roosevelt retired to his office, so Andrew went back to his desk to try to catch up on the ever-growing pile of paper. A report from an officer in the Seventeenth Precinct sat in the pile: dead woman found on Third Street off the Bowery. The apparent cause of death was a knife wound to the chest.

Andrew's memory was hooked. He sifted through the coroner's reports he needed to sign off on. Nearly every person who had died in New York City the day before had passed out from some heat-related illness, but there was also the report Andrew wanted: woman with unknown identity dead of a knife wound to the chest. Except the woman was actually a man in a dress. And the man's torso was covered in shallow wounds.

Andrew ran to the telephone and asked the operator to put him through to the Seventeenth Precinct. When Andrew got to the dispatcher, he said, “I need Hank Brandt.”

A dead horse sat like a mound in the middle of East Fourth Street. Flies buzzed about its heavy body and the scent of flesh rotting permeated the air. Hank hurried past it, although it was the third such horse he'd seen since he'd left the precinct house. The smell was so putrid that if he saw one more dead animal in the middle of the street, he might vomit. As it was, he barely held on to his dignity in this heat.

Heat and death were everywhere. That was all this miserable week had brought him. He'd spent a significant portion of the morning at the home of a woman who was convinced her elderly husband had been poisoned, but it became clear quickly enough he'd simply expired in the heat. The hospitals had been swarmed with people flagging under the relentless, inescapable dread of August, and the morgues could not keep up with the demand.

Hank would be forever grateful to Andrew for pulling the one coroner's report out of the mess of others he'd surely had to sort through. Hank had worried briefly the dead man in the dress had been Nicky, but the body had been found before Hank had last seen Nicky. They couldn't have been the same man.

That report could easily have been lost because everyone was suffering under the heat. Stephens had said with some mixture of horror and detachment that children were dropping like flies in the tenements.

The heat would break, but the toll on the city once the dust cleared was unimaginable. Commissioner Roosevelt had compared it to a cholera outbreak in a meeting the day before.

Hank couldn't identify the sudden swooshing sound behind him, but then he realized someone had turned a hose on First Avenue. Children ran naked through the erupting water. Word had come through the precinct in the morning that the commissioner of public works had been instructed to “flush” the streets, but Hank wondered if this was merely a way for the city to help those suffering the worst effects of the horrific heat.

This had been going on for four straight days. How many more could they really take?

A few minutes later, Hank arrived at a nondescript building. The front door was wide open, as were all of the windows. Curtains from the third floor billowed out of the building as a gentle breeze moved through, but the breeze wasn't enough to do much more than furnish the citizens of New York with the memories of cooler days.

Hank pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped some of the sweat off the back of his neck and his mustache. Trying to look presentable was likely a futile enterprise, but he wanted to try. He then climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, his lungs burning as he did so. He had to pause at the top of the stairs to mop his face again and catch his breath.

He would have jumped into the East River right then if it weren't so far away.

Huffing a bit, Hank walked across the hall and knocked on the door to apartment 4B.

It took a moment, but eventually Nicky opened the door. No wig or makeup adorned him this time. He wore only a flimsy, floral-printed dressing gown, one that looked like it was probably made for a woman. The top parted in a long V down the front of his chest and a thin sash was knotted at his waist. It wasn't doing enough to block Hank's imagination.

“Hello, Inspector,” Nicky said, leaning on the doorframe.

He was beautiful. His hair was disheveled instead of carefully combed, which had the effect of making him look a little wild. His exposed chest was flat and strong and lightly dusted with hair. The opening of his dressing gown was like an arrow pointing toward the gentle rise below his belt. He wore no makeup now, no affectation. He was tall and thin with pouty lips and sparkling blue eyes. If Hank had ever seen a more beautiful man, he could not remember the occasion.

“And here you are, just as promised,” Nicky said.

It took Hank an embarrassingly long moment to speak. He was dumbstruck, speechless in the wake of Nicky's beauty. But he swallowed and said, “I need some more information.”

“So you said. But I don't know what further information I can provide.”

“A man was killed not two blocks from here yesterday.”

“A tragedy.” Nicky sauntered away from the door, so Hank followed him into the apartment and let the door close. Nicky added, “Men die here all the time.”

“This man wore a dress.”

That brought Nicky up short. “The hell you say.”

“The identity of the man remains unknown, but he was indeed found last night by an officer on patrol. The officer thought the man was a woman. The coroner unearthed the truth. This man also died of a knife wound to the chest, just like your friend Edward.” Hank took a deep breath. “It could have been you, Nicky. Do you appreciate the kind of danger you're in?”

Nicky's eyes went wide. “You think the crimes are related. It's the same killer.”

Hank nodded. “I can't prove it, but my instinct tells me this is a serial killer focused on the working boys of the Bowery. It seems unlikely a loved one will claim the man in the morgue. So many people are expiring from the heat he will likely get lost among the other deaths this week. But the way he died was similar to Edward and this other man who died a few weeks ago, and I believe the crimes are related. Which means you or any of your friends are at risk.”

Nicky grunted. “Well, what do you propose I do about it?”

Hank could practically see the fear radiating off Nicky now. Nicky wasn't being flippant, as Hank had suspected at first. He was terrified.

“I don't suppose my telling you not to go to work until I solve this is an option.”

Nicky balked. “Would you like to pay my rent, then?”

Hank looked around. Nicky's apartment was not the most glamorous of spaces—it was sparsely decorated and the walls and floors were scarred—but he seemed to have a reasonable amount of space and plenty of sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Do you live here alone?” Hank asked.

“Yes.”

“By virtue of the fact you do not do favors for the men who patronize Club Bulgaria, I think you are probably safer than others, but I would take nothing for granted.”

Nicky stood up straight and crossed his arms over his chest. “Never, darling.”

“Did everyone report to work today? Was anyone missing?”

“No one was missing that I know of.”

“So this victim might have been a fellow who worked at another resort. Or he was, er, independently employed.”

“Yes.” Nicky looked down. “I want to help, I do, but I have nothing left to say. I think perhaps you knew I could not share more with you than you already know. But then, you did not come here just for information, did you?”

Hank looked Nicky over, from his mussed hair to his bare chest to his graceful little toes. “Perhaps there was a bit of pretense to my wanting to see you.”

Nicky looked straight at Hank and said, “I tell Charlie to convey to men who come into Bulgaria that I am not for sale. You were not the first to see me on stage and ‘become enchanted' as Charlie described you.”

“I
was
enchanted.”

Nicky pressed his lips together. Then he said, “Occasionally my admirers come to that little room to greet me. When I first began dancing, I was still in the habit of letting men do as they wished to me. I no longer feel the obligation.”

“So you turn them away.”

“Who I allow in my home, in my bed, must be on my terms. For years, I survived because men paid me to do their bidding. Now I don't need their money. Now I dictate the rules.”

Hank respected Nicky's wishes, but he couldn't overlook an obvious fact. “I am currently in your home.”

Nicky's shoulders sagged. “Yes, well. It is not every day a handsome police inspector barges into your drawing room.”

Hank smiled at that. “You think me handsome.”

Nicky waved his hand dismissively. “Don't get a big head.”

Hank stepped closer to Nicky. “I don't believe I'm misreading this situation. You are as intrigued by me as I am by you.”

“Perhaps.”

“If circumstances were different, if we merely met on the street, would you have invited me to your home?”

“Probably not. You are dreadfully overbearing.”

“You can still say ‘no.' ”

Nicky took a step away from Hank and crossed his arms over his chest. “Perhaps it is time for some of that honesty you keep insisting on.” He pressed his lips together again for a long moment. “I found myself drawn to you last night. It has been quite some time since any man has done that for me. It was nice to know I haven't died inside.”

“You seem very much alive to me. And I intend to keep it that way.”

“But why?” Nicky began to pace. “Why this insistence on finding a killer who I'm sure all of New York thinks is doing God's work?”

Hank didn't have a ready answer beyond that he felt he was acting in the right. He closed his eyes for a moment, tried to put himself in Nicky's shoes. “I was once on an aimless path. This was shortly after my mother died. I was not much older than Edward at the time.” He'd been angry, frustrated, terrified. And lonely, so very lonely. “The first time I walked along the Bowery, I was barely a man. I got pulled into some dark place by a man I liked the look of. He wanted my money and I freely gave it for a few minutes of passion, so I wouldn't feel so alone anymore. I'd been fighting these feelings I had for years, you know. And I didn't think anyone felt how I did.”