The Empire of Shadows (4 page)

They came at last to a grand old door in a red brick wall. Oaken lions' heads, now gray with weather, adorned each side just below where a large window might have been. The glass had been boarded over with crudely cut pine. Deeply carved panels, one with a crest of some kind were in the center of the door and though aged, seemed solid as a tree trunk. It was something salvaged from a fire or stolen long ago from a carpenter's shop or construction site.

Three raps on the old wood produced a long wait. The boy was about to knock again when there came a creaking and groaning of wood from within and the sound of bolts being drawn. The door opened just enough for the gaping muzzle of a shotgun to poke through.

“Put it up, Ma. It's me,” the larger of the two boys said. The shotgun didn't waver. Tupper saw a shadowed face over the shotgun.

“What's this then? 'Oose that with ya?”

“'e needs to get cleaned up, Ma.”

“So tell 'im to go to a bathhouse. This ain't no bloody hotel.”

The boy looked at Tupper with a dark squint and a cock of his head.

“Don't think he can—'e's the one what escaped,” the boy added. All illusions Tupper had of anonymity vanished. All the more urgent to change his appearance, if every urchin in the neighborhood knew he'd escaped.

“Man can pay. Gave us a dollar just to bring 'im 'ere.”

The shotgun wavered. “Show it to me, boy,” the woman said with gravelly interest in her voice.

The boy held out the money for her to see. There was a moment's hesitation, a wavering of the shotgun.

“I can pay more, ma'am,” Tupper said evenly in his best and most cultivated white man accents. He reached for his wallet. The shotgun came to bear on his chest like the needle on a compass.

“You don't want to be doin' nothin' foolish, Mister,” the woman said, sounding more like a growling dog than anything human. Jim took his hand out slowly.

“Just getting my wallet, is all. Relax,” he said, trying to sound like the prospect of being cut in half by the shotgun hadn't tied his guts in a knot.

“I says when it's time to relax, Mister. What you done? You do the job on somebody? That it? Looks like it from the looks of you. You some kind o' Indian or somethin'?”

Tupper looked steadily through the crack in the door, doing his best to look sincere.

“Haven't killed anybody. But the cops don't see it that way. The cops're wrong,” Jim said. “I'm Iroquois. Mohawk tribe, if you got to know,” he added. He told her his proposition before she had a chance to say anything more. The woman listened and slowly the shotgun lowered.

When at last the shotgun was put up and the grand old door opened on protesting hinges, Tupper was amazed by what he saw. The woman, as mountainous a mass of female flesh as he'd ever seen, filled the hallway from wall to wall, actually from box to box. The hallway was stacked high with boxes and packing crates of every description, leaving only a narrow passage between.

The woman, who said her name was Bess, had stopped pointing her shotgun at Jim, though she still gripped it in one bloated, freckled hand. It was a wicked, sawed-off affair, with the stock cut down so it fit the hand like an enormous pistol. She let the hammers down carefully, muzzle pointed at the floor.

“This way,” she muttered, maneuvering her bulk between the boxes.

Bess disappeared back into the blackness of the house, or whatever it was. He heard the boys bolt the door behind. There was so much packed into the place it was hard to say if it had been a house or not. The only light filtered in through a pair of tightly louvered windows in front, which left most of the place as black as pitch. One room they passed seemed to have nothing but furniture in it, seemingly stacked at random all the way to the ceiling—chairs, dressers, chests, steamer trunks, desks, armoires, vanities, commodes, china cabinets, and sideboards in every condition teetered in the gloom. They passed hogsheads stuffed with cavalry sabers, carbines, muskets, and bayonets, and bales of clothes and boxes of liniment, laudanum, and baking soda. Bess lumbered to the front stairs, saying, “Watch the third step. It's iffy.”

The staircase groaned under her weight. Tupper could feel the banister wobble under his hand. The third step had a hole in it big enough to put a foot through. Even on the rickety stairs items were stacked in a crazy kind of order. Tupper said nothing and asked nothing. Bess was probably fencing or warehousing for a gang. Maybe the gang was the bunch of kids, although he doubted that this was all theirs. He didn't know and he didn't care, so long as Bess stuck to her end of the bargain.

“In here,” Bess said over her massive, rounded shoulder. She led him into a bedroom, at least that's what Tupper figured it for, because it had a bed and a bit less clutter than the other rooms.

“Washbasin's over there,” Bess said, pointing to an alcove off to the right. “God, you stink,” she said as he passed by her. “No offense, mind.”

“Don't mind it,” Jim said. “It's the damn truth.”

“I'll find you some clothes, but let me see your money first,” Bess said stoutly, holding out one big hand. Tupper handed her a five-dollar gold piece.

“This much now, the rest later if you've got things that'll fit me,” Jim said. Bess hesitated, hefting the shotgun for a moment. She looked him up and down.

“Got plenty to fit you, Mister,” she said, rumbling off into the gloom as Tupper watched her broad back disappear. The house vibrated.

Tupper stripped down, wincing at the collection of bruises and scrapes he'd accumulated. He took the pistol out of his waistband and put it on the washstand close to hand. He sponged himself off, washing away the blood and dirt and horseshit. The lavender soap Bess had by the basin smelled better than anything he could remember. He started to feel human as he washed his hair.

The floor shook as Bess returned, a bundle of clothes in her arms and a large pair of scissors balanced on top. Finding Jim naked didn't seem to faze her in the least. He followed her lead and didn't make any attempt at modesty.

“These oughta do,” she said, throwing the pile on the bed. She stood there for a moment, hands on hips, looking him over with a studied gaze. “You don't clean up half bad fer a savage,” she allowed, her eyes lingering on his cock. “Wouldn't care for a bit o' sport would ya? Used to be a sportin' gal back a few years. Catered to the gentlemen who liked their ladies large,” she said with a grin that showed a broken tooth. “I'm a bit thinner now though,” she said, her tone one of apology.

Tupper stood before her feeling suddenly embarrassed. He turned away and forced what he hoped looked like a reluctant grin, saying, “Thank you,
gakógo,
” calling her a gluttonous beast, but making it sound like a compliment, “but my time's run out in this city. I must go; the sooner the better.”

Bess shrugged. “Better cut your hair and get on out then,” she said, picking up the scissors. Tupper thought she might have a mind to stab him for rejecting her, but she handed them over without a word.

He cut his hair short, letting it fall to the floor in shining black clumps. With each cut he felt diminished. His hair was his most visible link to his heritage, a tattered flag worn with the pride of a last warrior. A true warrior, Tupper reminded himself, did what was necessary.

The gluttonous beast watched from the doorway, more out of caution he might steal something than for any interest in him, he figured. He took his time, cutting until there wasn't more than a finger's breadth left. A different man stared back at him from the mirror. Tupper scowled at the reflection. He dressed, putting on everything she'd brought and finding that Bess had a pretty good eye for size, with the exception of the pants, which were a tad too short.

“Wouldn't recognize you,” Bess observed. “Got the rest of me money?”

Jim paid her as agreed. They were going back down the stairs when Jim asked, “Got ammunition for a thirty-two Smith & Wesson?”

Bess didn't miss a step. “You got money, I got cartridges. How many?”

“Box of fifty. How much?”

“Two bucks.” Bess rumbled with a curious look, but in a sudden burst of charity said, “But, for you, a buck. Been on the wrong side of the cops meself,” she said in a tone that was almost sympathetic, “which ain't quite the same as bein' on the wrong side o' the law, if you get my meanin'.”

She led him to a front room where a china cabinet was stacked with boxes of cartridges in every caliber from .22 to .45-75. They settled up on a box of .32s, which he stuffed in his pants pocket. They were about to go when Tupper spotted a large wooden ammunition box on the floor filled with knives and bayonets. He bent and pulled out a medium-size belt knife with a five-inch blade. As he did, something else caught his eye and he dug it out and held it up to the light.

It was a handmade weapon with a blade, a spike actually, made from a bayonet. It had been cut down and fitted with a bone handle, banded and capped with brass. The spike, maybe eight inches of blued steel, was perfect for hiding in a boot. There were two of them, relics of some soldier's handiwork.

“Two dollars gets you both, the knife and the bayonet I mean,” Bess said before he had a chance to ask. Tupper handed it over without a word. He didn't have much cash left. “You ain't takin' much chances, are ya, Mister?” Bess commented over her shoulder as they walked towards the back door. Tupper had looped the knife onto his belt, but still fingered the needlelike point of the spike as he followed her. “No I ain't, Bess,” he said in the dark.

A steam whistle shrieked against the vaulted glass ceiling of the Grand Central train shed. The tortured water writhed and sputtered as it screamed from the boiler of an idling engine. Tom Braddock watched as the cloud of steam drifted up toward the roof. Slowly it shifted and shrank, cut here and there by unseen currents of air eddying uneasily. Change was never easy, Braddock thought as he listened to the mournful echoes of the whistle. He glanced at Mike, aloof and slouching against a nearby railing. Not all change was for the better either.

Mary watched him from the corner of her eye. A cloud passed across her face. It was gone nearly as quickly as it appeared, but a crease in her brow seemed somehow deeper, a care line carved with a chisel of frowns. It wouldn't smooth away any more, this last year had seen to that.

“Where is that porter?” she said, craning back in the direction of Forty-second Street. Tom shrugged.

“Got time.” He mumbled. Mike said nothing. Even Rebecca seemed to keep her distance, letting her brother be for once. The girl flitted about Mary's feet, a bundle of gingham energy. She'd been talking about this trip for weeks, asking most every day how much longer it was till they'd leave. The questions had been unending.

“Where will we sleep on the train? Does the man who drives the train sleep, too? Will we see deers, do you think, Mommy? Can I go fishing with Daddy? How much longer till we leave, Mommy? I'd like to pet a deer, a baby deer. Do you think I could do that, pet a baby deer? I would like that so, so much. We won't see any bears when we go there, will we? Bears are bad, except baby bears, they're cute. I'm scared of bears. We won't see them, right? When are we leaving, huh Mommy, when?” Rebecca had pestered and pouted, but it never bothered Mary. The girl was hers, a perfect jewel of a girl, all honey curls and wide-eyed enthusiasm.

She danced at Mary's feet humming a tune of her own making. She skipped and swayed and twirled to the music in her head, all the while painting graceful little arcs and parabolas with her arms and hands, her fingers just so. She seemed to have been born with music in her. It filled her up so much it would spill out and be wasted if she didn't dance it away. Where or when didn't matter. It could be A. T. Stewart's Department Store or on a crowded el. When the music called she would dance. Everyone said she'd be a dancer someday, but everyone was wrong. She was a dancer already.

Mary had always been grateful for Rebecca, but never more so than the last few months. She pushed back the darkness and the worry that Mike seemed to manufacture with grinding repetition as he grew older. Rebecca didn't know that, didn't see herself as some sort of angel, driving away her brother's teenage demons. She was just being Rebecca and that was enough.

Even Mike, standing like a growling thunderhead, had to grin at his sister's antics. The glimmer of a smile lifted the sullen corner of his mouth when he thought Tom wasn't looking. He lowered his head, though, when Mary noticed, hiding behind the brim of his cap. It brought an exasperated sigh from Mary, and she was about to say something when Tom grunted, “There he is.”

The porter was finally coming. He pushed a cart piled high with their trunks, his head barely visible above. The cart and its load sailed across the terminal like an ocean liner, breasting the waves of people rushing about the station. A pug-nosed face peered over the trunks, its dull eyes looking straight ahead despite the crowd of people who seemed all on fire to dash across his path. A shock of red hair dangled from under a round brimmed cap, pushed back on his head at a jaunty angle.

“Found ye then, I did.” The porter lilted. “Such a boilin' mess I never did see. Everybody rushin' like ants whot got their hill stomped.”

Tom shrugged. He'd seen about every kind of crowd New York could muster. They rarely made an impression on him one way or another, unless it was a riot. “Not unusual for a Friday night in August, I guess,” he said, turning toward their train. “Well, let's go then. C'mere, my little ginger snap,” he said, holding his arms out to Rebecca. She stopped her dancing and charged at Tom, jumping into his arms with a whoop.

“Chu, chu, chu, chu—whooo, whooo!” she cried, doing her best train imitation. Tom hoisted her up so she sat in the crook of his arm. “Wha'dya say we go on vacation, eh?”

“Yeah!” Rebecca yelled in his ear. Tom winced, grinning all the while. “Right!” he said, shaking his head. “Off we go!”

Later, after their trunks had been stowed in the baggage car and the porter had shuffled off in search of another tip, the four of them settled into their compartment. It was cramped but elegant, with over-sprung seats in claret velour. They were “bouncy,” Rebecca exclaimed with delight, springing up and down almost nonstop. Tom pulled his watch from his vest pocket and flipped open the case. “Best settle down, 'Becca. We'll start moving soon,” he said. Just then a shadow darkened the door of their compartment.

“Uncle Chowder!” Rebecca shouted. With a running leap she jumped into his arms.

“Came to see ya off, especially you!” he said, giving Rebecca a big hug.

Everyone smiled except Tom. Though Chowder Kelly was as close a friend as Tom had, he knew him well enough to know that seeing them off on vacation was not why he'd come. Tom watched as Chowder made a fuss over Rebecca, kissed and squeezed his wife more lustily than was proper, and slapped Mike on the shoulder. A wary eye cast in Tom's direction was all that was needed. Mary caught it and gave Tom a dark frown as he stood.

“I'll just see Chowder to the platform. Back in two shakes.” When they were out of earshot, he scowled at Chowder and said, “So what's so goddamn important, aside from groping my wife's bum, you bastard.”

Chowder grinned. “And a lovely bum it is, too.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Tom said with something between a grin and a scowl. “What's going on?”

“Murderer escaped from a Black Maria a couple hours ago. Busted a guard's head. Got clean away.”

“What'd he do?”

“Stuck a knife in a construction foreman. Caught him last night.”

Tom started to question Chowder, asking what he knew about the man, where he came from, who he worked with, where he lived, whether he was married or had any other family in the city, where he drank, banked, and whored. He stopped himself after some minutes.

“What the…” he said, stopping himself in midsentence. “I'm on vacation, Chowder. You're a big, grown-up lad. You handle this. You weren't thinking I'd stay and help, were you? If you were, forget it!”

“Well, I was kinda…” Chowder started to say, then got serious as he watched the conductors swing their arms and pull up the steps to the cars.

“Listen, Tom, this is a big one. That foreman was a Tammany man, kept an eye on the construction trades for the big bosses at the Wigwam. The chief's fumin' an' every damn captain in town's got their boys on the jump. You goin' off on a trip now, well it don't look so good.”

The train jerked and bumped as the engine pulled up the slack in the couplings. It rumbled to life, wheels squealing.

“Byrnes ain't looking for me, is he?”

“Not yet,” Chowder allowed.

“I'm leaving,” Tom said. He knew the truth of what Chowder was telling him, but he'd put off far too many trips already, given far too many late nights to the job instead of to Mary. A part of him hated to go, hated leaving in the middle of a crisis. For an instant he hesitated, letting the thrill of a good case lure him, but only for an instant. He could picture Mary's face when he tried to explain.

“Have fun catching the bad guys,” he said with a tone that almost sounded like regret.

“O' course, Tommy. 'Course. Just figured you'd want to know, is all,” Chowder said, seeing how things were. “Get your ideas, see if we're thinking along the same lines. You know. Always a help to kick the ideas about.”

Tom grunted as Chowder stepped off onto the platform. “You're gonna have to kick 'em about with someone else, pal. I'm off to the north woods, where the likes o' you dare not tread. I'm gonna do my best to forget we ever had this little chat. Catch some fish, or whatever they do up there.” He gave Chowder a wave. “Good luck. See you in a couple o' weeks.”

Mike lounged, his cap pulled down over his eyes in studied boredom when Tom got back to the compartment. Windows in the next train over started to slide by, sometimes showing brief frozen images of riders napping, porters stowing bags, a woman in a large pink hat, a child's face pressing the glass. They began to dance away as their train picked up speed. Mary didn't ask about Chowder. It was enough that Tom had come back and not run off on police business as he had so many times before.

They burst from the monstrous train shed into the early evening sun. The orange ball cast long yellow heat waves through the compartment. Mary struggled with a window, at last getting the catches to release. She threw up the sash, with Tom's help, letting in a refreshing, warm blast of air into their little furnace.

The sun hovered over the roofs of the distant mansions on Fifth Avenue, setting mansard roofs, turrets, and cornices gleaming. To the east, the river glistened here and there through the canyons between the buildings. The city slid by, the grubby factories belching smoke, steaming breweries, rendering plants, row houses all trooped past their windows, growing more sparse and shabby the further they went. Uptown, the naked streets, many still unpaved, were laid out neat and square. Tall new brownstones stood like teeth in the barren jaws of the city.

Not far was desolation, treeless, shanty-littered no-man's lands where squatters grubbed for what the city cast off. The park was a green mirage in the distance. Tom watched it all pass, amazed as always at the wealth and the squalor of the place.

Mike studied his feet. Rebecca's nose bounced against the glass.

“It's good to get away from this place at least once in a while,” Tom said as he watched ragged people picking through an uptown dump. That was particularly true in the summer months, when disease often swept through the tenements in merciless and arbitrary waves. In a real hot spell the only people left were those with nowhere else to go. Undertakers were plentiful in the summer though. It was their busy season.

“Place isn't healthy,” he said to the window.

“Be good to get some fresh air,” Mary said. Though she stared out the windows, too, she didn't seem to see.

“They have baby deer where we're going,” Rebecca said to Tom. “There's no deer here anymore. Mommy said. No deer for-ages and ages.” She shook her curls and pushed out her lower lip in mock mourning. “They all went to the Ron-dacks, I guess.”

Tom smiled. “Sort of like us, right, 'Becca? Just like us.”

The train rolled north through the evening. The orange sun kissed the tops of the trees before sinking into New Jersey. After a while, stops were made. As they got up into the Hudson Valley, the stations became veiled in night. They often didn't know exactly what stop it was, only that it was not theirs. They were going to the end of the line.

Dinner was eaten to the rhythmic rumble and clack of the rails. Beds were unfolded. Sleep came on as the land passed by. Not everyone slept soundly. Albany arrived at 6:30
A.M
. They transferred to the Delaware-and-Hudson line for the trip to Saratoga.

Mary wasn't sure what time it was when the car rumbled to life. It was another two and a half hours till they had to switch trains again at Saratoga. Mary dozed on and off, not so much sleeping as doing a groggy imitation of it. Listening to Tom snore hadn't done anything for her rest in the hot, cramped compartment. She looked at Mike's sleeping form, thinking for the hundredth time that if this trip could help set things right there was no amount of sleep she wouldn't forsake.

The transfer to the Adirondack line at Saratoga was weary and tedious. A handful of shuffling, sleepy passengers boarded the short train for the sixty-three-mile trip to North Creek, although some were probably bound for other stops in between. North Creek was the last stop. The mountainous cost of carving a rail line through the Adirondacks and the economic reverses of seventy-six had put an end to the line. Still, it shortened the trip from Saratoga to hours, where in the past it had taken days.

Beyond North Creek there was nothing but endless miles of forests, mountains, and bad roads. The closest thing to paving was the spots that were “corduroyed” with logs laid crossways in the wet patches. Mary was bleary-eyed and blinking in the early morning sun. Tom carried Rebecca. She hung limp and sweaty-faced in his arms, her damp forehead resting on his shoulder. No amount of prodding could wake her. Mike brought up the rear.

Nobody slept but Rebecca on the ride north from Saratoga. She had curled up in a corner of their seat, her head on the pillow that she had insisted Mary bring for her. Tom, who had a window seat, tried to doze but found his eyes drawn to the world outside. A cool breeze blew in through the window. It was cool enough so that Mary asked him to shut it for fear Rebecca would catch a chill. He left it open an inch, enjoying the fragrant air after the heat of the city.

In the distance, they could see the smoke from the mills at Glens Falls, where the growth of centuries was sawed, chipped, pulped, and otherwise shaped to fit the hand of man. The smells grew sweeter north of there, and the towns smaller. At a little place called Riverside, a narrow suspension bridge swung across the rolling waters, looking as out of place as a Bowery B'hoy at a Sunday sermon.

The Hudson swept close by the tracks, and when they stopped the river's whispering voice could be heard. The water spoke its own language, laughing and roaring at stones in its way. When again they began to roll, the rumble and clack that had lulled them through the night seemed an annoyance as Tom strained to hear the voice of the Hudson.