Hell's Gate (37 page)

It was early morning and the temporary morgue was set to open in ten minutes. Mike walked past the lengthening line of searchers, bowler low over his eyes. He was about to use his badge to get in like he had before, when a hand shot out of the crowd and clutched at his sleeve. He whirled about, one hand on the butt of the Colt.

“Mike?”

It was Ginny. Mike felt as though he'd been hit in the gut and almost collapsed. The blood drained from his head like a waterfall, crashing to a pool of oblivion. “Is it you? Is it really you, Gin? I've looked for hours and hours. I thought you were dead.” Stumbling, he led Ginny away from the crowd and to a nearby oyster shop, all the while whispering. But he didn't hug her until they were inside, away from prying eyes.

“It's me, Mike,” Ginny said over and over, her head buried against his neck. Mike stroked her hair with trembling hands, hardly believing his own senses. “It's me,” she said again. “I'm sorry I broke my promise. I'll never leave you again. Never! I can't believe I found you. We're alive. My God, we're alive.”

Mike stepped back to look at her again. She had a nasty bruise on her head, running across the right side of her forehead, and blackening her eye. He put a gentle hand to it. “What happened? I saw that the rail you were at collapsed, then I got pushed over, too.”

Ginny told him all she knew, which was really very little. She'd gone over when the rail gave way and didn't remember more than that, except waking up in the bottom of a small boat. Two men in a rowboat had plucked her from the water and after she'd regained consciousness she'd been taken to Lebanon Hospital, but they'd released her after just a couple of hours, as they were overwhelmed with far worse cases than hers. Like Mike, she'd spent the hours after searching for him as well as Esther and the children.

“I saved the children,” Mike told her. “I carried them to shore, but I lost them in the crowd when I went back out to find you. You haven't seen them?”

“No, I even went to Esther's apartment, but nobody was there. Her husband is probably out looking like everyone else. Maybe they got returned to him and they're with their grandparents or something. Thank God they're safe though.” Ginny hugged Mike again as if to reassure herself that he was real. “I thought I'd never see you again.” Tears streaked her dirty cheeks. She kissed him as they waited for coffee. “What about the Bottler?”

“The Bottler's not accounted for.”

“I recognized him,” Ginny said. “Just before they surprised us, I saw him beside me, but couldn't remember who he was. I do now. He was with Johnny Suds that day at Miss Gertie's.”

“And that Carl; the guy they mentioned. You knew him?” Mike said.

“Not really. He was hanging around the Triangle factory, trying to sweet-talk me. I met him two days before you got shot.”

Mike absorbed this and didn't ask for more. Instead he said, “You need to go someplace safe. You can't be seen with me around here. They may be watching. That guy Carl is still alive and if the Bottler is too, you're in danger. Unless they can confirm that I'm dead and you too, they'll know they're still in trouble. I want you to go to my father's house. My God! My parents! I haven't telephoned them. They must be going crazy. You haven't seen them, have you?”

“No.”

“Okay. I'm going to telephone them. They'll expect you.” Ginny started to protest, but Mike stopped her. “You have to go, Gin. We barely got away with our lives before. I will not let that happen again.”

“I don't want to leave you, Mike. Not now, not ever again.”

“God, I don't want you to go either, but it seems like the only way to be sure you're safe, and I won't have it any other way.” He hugged her hard as their coffees arrived. Mike looked over her shoulder and saw the long line stretching from the morgue.

48

ANOTHER DAY PASSED, twenty-four hours of frozen faces and dwindling hopes. Hearses shuttled continuously to the Charities Pier, sometimes taking away four caskets at a time. Embalmers worked around the clock to handle the crisis. Mike slept on benches and doorsteps and ate only when he could no longer ignore his growling stomach. He had at last been forced to do what he'd dreaded deep in his bones. There were thirty bodies held at the city morgue proper, victims burned beyond recognition, bodies deemed too gruesome for public viewing. He met Tom there and they walked through like dead men, Mike still wearing the clothes he'd worn on the
Slocum,
his bandages dirty and tattered. He saw all thirty, saw what a blast furnace could do to a human body. He forced himself to look more closely, to examine the blackened flesh, the teeth for any clue. One was surely Jack McManus, but the body was burned so badly he could never be positive.

There was one he lingered over, a woman according to the coroner. It could have been Esther, but there wasn't enough left of her to be certain. He'd promised Ginny he'd keep up the search, but he'd seen Esther for only a few minutes and among all the many dead faces he'd already viewed, there was no way he could have been certain, even if he saw her. A part of him wished for it to be her if only to end her family's torment.

It was late that evening, around nine, when Mike decided to go through the dead at the Charities Pier again. He had heard there were another couple of bodies brought in while he was at the Bellevue morgue and he hoped one of them was the Bottler. Tom had returned to his station house a couple of hours before to send out a description of the Bottler to the other precincts, describing him as a dangerous fugitive. He also sent two cops to Carl Woertz's fleabag hotel, with orders to pick him up, too.

Again, Mike was admitted to the Charities Pier at the flash of his badge and began to shuffle down the dwindling aisles of dead. The same frozen faces swam before his eyes. He wondered if those faces would ever leave him. He feared that they'd always haunt his dreams, floating up from the depths of the river, or materializing through a veil of fire. He shuddered and forced himself to look harder. He'd spoken with Ginny after Tom had left, and assured her that he was still looking for Esther. He tried to persuade Mary that he was fine, which, of course, he was not. She told him to come home with Tom. He'd pick him up and she'd prepare him a good meal. Mike's stomach churned at the thought.

Tom arrived back at the Charities Pier while Mike shuffled past the remaining bodies. Primo was with him, and they hugged with reddened eyes to see each other again.

“I am so happy you are okay, you bastard. And your Ginny, too. You are a lucky Irishman, no?”

“I don't feel so lucky,” Mike said. He resolved at last to go, and turned toward the door. It was far off, at the end of the pier, but the bright lights inside cast enough brilliance to make it appear as bright as day. The Bottler was in that doorway, mixed with the crowd of searchers. Their eyes locked, and then he was gone.

Mike's feet splashed in the water on the pier's floor as he sprinted toward the door, men and women calling to him to slow down, have some respect, cops thinking he was about to leap into the river. Tom and Primo were left far behind, shouting for him to stop. Two cops wrestled him to the floor, rolling about until Tom and Primo managed to convince them of who he was, Mike pushing his badge in their faces, cursing in frustration. Precious minutes were lost, and Mike was soaked by the time they hit the street.

He stopped, looking north, then south, water raining off his hair, seeing nothing of the Bottler, only a long line of the hopeless, seeking to confirm what they already knew. A few reporters still buzzed like flies, harrying the weary, the childless, the motherless for quotes for tomorrow's headlines. Mike went to one who was closest to the door.

“Hey, you see a guy just leave here, seemed like he was in a hurry? Mustache? Heavy fella with hairy arms?”

“Sure,” the reporter said. “Went south a minute ago.”

Mike started to run, not knowing where exactly, but he was brought up short by the blast of a horn. It was Tom at the tiller of his Olds, now repaired and shining in the lamplight. He and Primo had run to get it without Mike even noticing.

Mike ran toward the Olds. “The Bottler, he's headed south, let's go!” He hopped up on the engine box behind the seat, shouting, “Go! Go!” and holding on to the seat rail as they picked up speed, the Olds moving slower than he hoped it would.

“It is good again, no?” Primo shouted over the chugging engine. Mike grabbed his head in both hands and kissed him on the cheek. They laughed into the wind. Mike pulled the Colt and chambered a round, barely managing to hold on as the Olds bucked over the cobbles.

“Where the hell is he?” Tom shouted. “Is he on foot or what?”

“Don't know. I only saw him inside for a second,” Mike answered. “A guy said he'd gone this way.” Tom drove on, looking for anything suspicious.

“There!” Mike cried a few moments later, pointing with the Colt. Up ahead, about two blocks, a horse-drawn ambulance rumbled at an unusually fast clip and a face appeared at the edge of the wagon body, peering back. The ambulance picked up speed, the horse whipped to a gallop. Tom pressed the speeder as far as it would go, Mike now kneeling on the engine box, holding on to their shoulders for support.

They'd already gone ten blocks down South Street, and Fourteenth Street went by a moment later, the ships and docks thickening as they went. There was little traffic and they were able to fly southward, closing the gap with each block they passed, weaving to avoid the occasional wagon, carriage or pedestrian. They passed Houston, Stanton, Rivington, and Delancey, narrowing the distance to less than a block. Mike extended the Colt, but Tom said, “Not yet. You won't get a good shot.”

“Fuck it.” Mike fired, the blasts ringing their ears, splinters flying off the back doors of the wagon. He emptied the Colt in one long burst of bullets, the hot casings flying into the night, tinkling off the cobbles. Before the last bullet flew, the wagon began to veer left then right and an instant later, a body slipped off one side and under the rear wheels, kicking the rear up as the wagon turned and spilling it forward, the horse screaming and flailing with its hooves, falling sideways. The wagon and horse crashed, sliding across the cobbles, the horse kicking, sparks flying from the hubs as they ground across the stone.

The Bottler was up an instant later from the overturned wagon, running toward the docks. Mike's Colt was empty. Primo and Tom both fired after him, but he ran on without slowing as Tom brought the Olds to a stop.

“Who the hell is that?” Mike said as they got out near the body. Tom ran over, holding his pistol on the unmoving form. “It's Carl Woertz, that pimp,” Tom said, and with a kick, added, “I think he's dead.”

Mike slipped another clip of ammunition into the Colt and started after the Bottler, who had disappeared among the densely packed shoreline—canal barges, schooners, steamers, fishing boats, oyster barges, dry docks, and piers forming an almost unbroken maze south to the tip of Manhattan. He saw a figure in the moonlight scurry across the deck of a low oyster boat, jumping across a narrow gap to another. Mike followed with Tom, while Primo covered the shoreline. Primo was still in no shape to be jumping and clamoring from ship to ship. Still, with gun drawn, he was able to block an escape back into the streets of the city. A patrolman, drawn by the shooting, joined Primo a moment later and after a brief conversation, they spread out, forming an even greater barrier.

Mike made the leap onto the oyster boat with Tom fast behind. They had lost sight of the Bottler and went forward warily, one covering the other as they leapt to the next boat. A dry dock was ahead and a fishing schooner was in it, looming above the other ships, well out of the water. As Mike leapt to the next boat, shots rang out from the edge of the dry dock, flashes of light momentarily illuminating the Bottler. The bullets whizzed by, close enough to drop him and Tom to the deck. When they got up, cautiously peering over the bulwark, the Bottler was gone.

“That was fucking close,” Tom said. “Nearly parted my goddamn hair.”

“Yeah,” Mike said, unconcerned. He was more worried about losing the Bottler in this maze of ships. He ran forward and, using a rope, swung across to the dry dock's edge, where he clung for a dangerous moment until he got his feet under him. He crouched low, looking under the hull of the schooner, the huge ship, towering above, was held there by massive blocks of oak. It was as black as coal under the ship and the creeping, wet hand of fear slid down Mike's spine as he held the Colt in shaking hands.

Tom joined him a moment later. “I ain't goin' in there,” he said sensibly. “And you ain't either. It's a dead end. Only way out is up onto the ship. Let's check the other side.”

They could hear the roar of a steam screw tug coming upriver against the tide as they rounded the other side of the dry dock and looked south. A floating grain elevator loomed next to a row of canal barges, full of grain from Buffalo and Syracuse, sent down the Erie Canal for shipment to Europe.

“There!” Tom said while the roar of the tug grew louder.

A flitting shadow moved across from one barge to the next. They jumped again to the deck of a barge, rolling as they fell. Another shot cracked the night and pinged against something metallic, but neither Tom nor Mike shot back. They positioned themselves behind the rear of a small cabin at the back of the barge.

“Hold on,” Mike whispered. “See that grain elevator?” It loomed maybe three or four stories high, a big, rectangular building on a barge. “He's got to jump to that or he's trapped.”

The roar of the tug receded upriver as Mike and Tom held their positions, guns ready. The barges began to rock, riding the swells of the tug, the river lapping and splashing against their hulls, pilings grinding, wood-on-wood, an eerie creaking and moaning of unseen origins went up.