City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (21 page)

He stayed clear, walking down the middle of the road. Soon, though, he was pushed to the side by all the traffic: hansom cabs, and automobiles, and wagons, thick as midday. He was astonished, for the first time, to see how many people there were and how fast they were moving. Straddling each avenue were high steel girders, pylons holding up the trains that raced madly through the night, sometimes two at a time, in opposite directions, until they made the whole street shake. It was a frantic, crowded, nightmare world that he could not wait to join.

Still, he held back, unsure of himself. Just to get across the street required a mad dash, taken largely on faith, sprinting across the paving stones with as big a group of people as possible-hoping they would discourage or at least absorb the blow from the autos and wagons that kept careening toward them at top speed.

He began to cut up and down different streets almost at random, moving vaguely toward the north and west. He kept away from people still, skittish as a small dog. Once, when he stopped under one of the huge steel girders, a woman’s face peered out from the other side, covered with a white veil—scaring him almost as badly as the pig’s head in the harbor.

“Lookin’ for me?” she snapped, lifting the veil to reveal a rouged, gap-toothed grin, eyes painted into broad, black circles. He wasn’t sure what she meant but he kept walking, leaving her to call plaintively after him:

“It ain’t much, you know, but you can do me while you’re walkin’!”

His legs had begun to ache from the now unfamiliar resistance of the land when he came out on an avenue grander and cleaner than any he had seen so far. A mountain range of houses ran up and down the street: one solid mass of carved gables and spires and stained glass, trellises and wrought-iron balustrades and balconies and ballrooms, rising up to heaven.

He had never seen anything like this before, not even in the great cities on the Continent he had walked through: houses vaulted and large and solid as churches. Each one a formidable chocolate-brown or slate-gray color in the streetlight, forbidding iron fence out front, a fat policeman pacing back and forth every few feet along the immaculate sidewalk.

He could make out nothing inside: thick drapes and curtains were pulled forbiddingly across every window. He had to sprint across the road to get a better look—running like a madman, the way he had learned, head turning in every direction at once. The traffic was more ordered and elegant here, but swifter than ever, the sleek private carriages with matched teams bobbing in and out of the stream like dolphins. He dodged past them, finally put his head down and just flat out ran, until he stood tentatively on the spotless slate sidewalk, staring up at the precipices of the great houses.

A policeman started toward him at once, and he turned and began to walk down the avenue—already cognizant that you had to have a direction, a sense of purpose in this city. He walked with his head down, clutching importantly at the Book and his other meager possessions, sneaking glances at the great houses, as if he were looking for a certain address. He looked up, cautiously, wondering if the cop were still there—and it was then that he saw them: his destiny.

There were three of them: the parents, both plump as pigeons, and the little boy, wandering toward disaster. All of it laid out before him like some perfect Coney Island tableau:
The Negligent Family, or The Poor Boy’s Opportunity—

He never discovered why they were there, out for a Sunday stroll after midnight. He never found out why the coachman hadn’t brought them right up to their doorstep, or why they paid so little attention when the boy began to wander, or why the child was with them in the first place. All he knew was that the boy was walking right into traffic, and that this was his chance.

He began to run hard, lest he was too late—who knew what happened to those Ragged Dicks who missed their chances? The couple looked up at him as he flashed by: the man with a long, waxed moustache and carrying a silverknobbed walking stick, the woman in a fathomless purple cape. Ruddy, plump faces registering surprise, suspicion.

There was no time to explain. He ran past them, watching the whole scene unfold before him. The child was already in the street, paying no attention to the carts and the automobiles hurtling past him.
Could he be deaf—or a little slow, perhaps?
He tried to yell out to him but the words came out all garbled: “Walk—the car—no!”—not even sure what he
could
say that would alert the boy.

It didn’t matter—he was pretty sure that a shouted warning didn’t merit rising up. The child kept walking on out into traffic, in his Little Lord Fauntleroy get-up, all knee stockings and bows and puffy cap. Joseph bolted right out into the street after him, a cab narrowly swerving past, the horse screaming and bumping his shoulder. He stumbled, and nearly fell, but he kept his eye on the boy.

The child was out in the middle of the Street now, trapped between the streams of traffic pouring up- and downtown. It was only a matter of time before they converged on him, ran him down without even knowing, nearly invisible as the child was in his brown, fancy duds.

An open automobile swept past him, horn harooging impatiently, the hot, oily exhaust filling Joseph’s mouth and nose. They were coming too fast, and he felt as if he were drowning. The boy was just a couple feet ahead, standing perfectly still now, petrified. He had no idea how he would grab him and drag him back safely but he went for him anyway, scooping up the child in both arms and yelling exultantly in his face:

“Hey, boy! Hey, boy!”

He felt pity for the child when he saw his white, staring face, quivering under his grasp. He tucked him under his arm, turned to find the way back.

There was a terrible, heavy rumbling—a huge brewery wagon bearing down on them, racing its cargo downtown in time for the morning rush. He started forward, then stopped, the horses so close he could smell their sour breath. There was no turning back—a cab whipping its way uptown toward him—and so he closed his eyes and jumped recklessly ahead, aware that he had given himself too little space in front of the brewery wagon.

He made it, somehow. He opened his eys, and there they were, only a few feet from the curb. He pirouetted around a newspaper truck like a matador and fell toward the sidewalk, putting the boy down safe and secure on the pavement like a footballer sneaking his way across the goal line.

They were safe—the boy shaking and crying now. He got to his knees and put his arms around him, shaking himself—the boy’s chest throbbing against him like a frightened bird’s. This was
real,
he thought. He was an actual hero—a complete stranger, who had come all the way across the ocean in time to rescue the boy by blind chance—

He heard shouting, and people running toward them, and he stood up solemnly, ready to receive his reward and fighting down the glee that raced through him. He smiled faintly, gravely; one arm around the boy’s shoulders as the well-dressed, round-faced couple ran shrieking over to them. Pulling himself up, trying to look like a hero should, oblivious to the black harbor muck encrusted on his body.

The woman ignored him, of course, rushing to clutch her son to her bosom. That was as it should be—but to his surprise the father looked distinctly unprepared to discuss a reward, glowering and holding his silver-knobbed stick in the air until he saw the policeman hurrying toward him.

“Officer, this man has my son,” he said, in a surprisingly high and mellifluous voice, before Joseph could even quite decipher what the words meant.

“Aye, sir, I saw the whole t’ing,” the cop replied in a calming, reassuring voice—surprising Joseph even more when he looped the nightstick from his belt and hit him so hard on the back of his head that he fell face forward on the spotless sidewalk.

He tried to get out what had happened then, to explain the story of Ragged Dick, but his tongue would not form the words. He tried to rise, to push himself up—but the policeman only gazed down at him sympathetically and gave him another tremendous whack on his head.

“Ah, will you stay down now, there’s a good fella,” he said in the same calm and reassuring voice.

The trick to poisoning a horse was a good oatmeal cookie. Gyp had learned it from Monk, and Monk had learned it from no less than Yoshki Nigger, the King of the Horse Poisoners, who had learned from long practice and experience
that
they liked something sweet, something they didn’t get every day, and besides the oatmeal hid the taste of strychnine.

It was a fine horse he was going to poison now—a proud, handsome bay, with high white leggings. She all but pranced up Hester Street, hauling her cart of dresses and fine ladies’ things. She was something lustrous and new on a street full of the faded and the secondhand. Not yet stoop-shouldered and big-ribbed from a diet of spoiled lettuce and apples like all the other peddlers’ nags, not yet glazey-eyed and rheumatic, the way they all became eventually.

Gyp strolled after her, cradling the sack of cookies under his coat, running his hand unconsciously along the still throbbing wound just beneath his hat. He didn’t know from horses, but he was just glad it was a new one he was going to poison: all the better to make his point with the dress peddler. The little
pisher
walked protectively by his horse’s mouth now, keeping one hand on its bridle all the time, glancing behind himself every few feet. He was a careful man, Gyp could see—but he would have done better to be afraid.

It wasn’t hard to stay out of the peddler’s sight. His wagon was piled high with dresses and shirtwaists, skirts and petticoats. All dirt cheap, made by one family or another trying to work independently in their claustral apartments. The peddler had to sweat them, he knew, to undersell the department stores—and it was his living to sweat the peddler.

Gyp stayed back until he saw Sadie step out from the pushcarts along the curb. She looked at him, and he nodded, and she walked out in the street to the vendor and pointed at his dresses. The man began to stray from his horse at once, making excited little genuflections, peeling back the layers of lawn in his wagon for her to see.

“Yes, la-dy, how can I interest you? The finest dresses, just like in the store—at half the price!
Less
than half—”

Gyp the Blood stepped casually around the other side of the cart, pulling out the small linen sack of oatmeal cookies. He ran a hand soothingly along the animal’s long, chestnut neck—then pushed the bag up into its nose and teeth.

The horse snuffled at the sack of cookies, intrigued. Gyp held it there while he kept his eyes on Sadie and the dress seller. Her face was covered with paint, he saw to his displeasure. She was supposed to look like a Hester Street housewife, not the Bowery streetwalker she was. She was getting less and less confident about her looks—and not without reason, he thought. Soon she would not even be good enough for the Bowery.

Gyp had to admit she was a natural-born actress. As he watched, she widened her eyes coquettishly at the vendor, let her hands linger on the fine lingerie. She had coaxed out the two best dresses the peddler had, and now she shifted from foot to foot like a schoolgirl, and bit her knuckle.

“Maybe I should just take the both,” she wondered.

The little peddler was nearly beside himself at the prospect of selling his best lawn, before it got too folded and begrimed in the wagon.

“Look at this
dresske
—a piece of gold! It’s a
nebach
if such as you can’t have at least a taste of life, missus. I don’t know, but they say when she goes to face the Almighty a person must account for all the pleasures she never had—”

“Do you really think they enhance my figure?” she said, holding one of the dresses up against herself.

The peddler ogled her with eyes lascivious for the sale.

“Oh, la-dy.
Your
figure? In these it will be finer than silk and velvet!”

Gyp looked back to see how the bay was doing. The horse was still sniffing at the cookies, thick, elastic lips moving back and forth—but she was not eating. He lost his patience, and tried to thrust the bag right up into its mouth,
forcing
the horse to eat. Instead, it took a step backwards, swaying the cart, and the next thing he heard was a sharp click behind his right ear. He turned slowly around, not altogether surprised to find a cocked derringer inches from his face.

“My horse don’ wanna eat today,” the dress peddler told him, arm trembling a little to see what he had caught. “An’ I told you I don’ want no insurance.”

“So what’re you gonna do? Shoot me here in the street?”

Gyp stayed where he was, keeping the bag shoved up in the bay’s face. He was certain the man wouldn’t pull the trigger, at least so long as he didn’t move. Behind him Sadie stood waiting for his signal. All he had to do was nod and she would cause some distraction. He would have the ridiculous little gun out of the dress seller’s hand, and his knife at the man’s throat before he knew what hit him.

“Shoot him! Shoot him now!” a voice cried urgently.

“Sol, don’t do something so stupid—”

A little circle had opened around them in the packed street, the other pushcart vendors flocking round to see the diversion, kibitzing on the action. Best to just cut the horse, Gyp calculated, with this many witnesses. He fingered the knife handle in the right outside pocket of his vest. A nod to Sadie, then one quick thrust and he could just walk away.

“Shoot him
now!
Before the police come!”

A sleek, white cap was already cruising through the crowd toward their little clearing—one of the new, Reform police hats. Gyp let his grip on the knife relax. Now, he knew, everything would be all right.

“All right, what’re ye thieves up to in the temple?”

The short, squat cop pushed his way through to them, and immediately shoved down the peddler’s extended arm with its gun. Sadie had already faded back into the sidewalk crowd, but Gyp stayed where he was. He knew the cop, a corrupt old bull named Buckley. Even better, Buckley seemed to know the dress peddler.