Paradise Alley (40 page)

“What do you mean, bringing that in here?”

At first she would not believe it, even after Ruth had produced the jackal-headed cane. The story, the details of the crime were in every paper in the City by then. But Deirdre kept insisting that it must be a mistake, that her brother had been framed, or was keeping the loot for some friend. Until at last Ruth had produced the one other item from his stash, which had ended all the argument.

Deirdre had not so much as flinched to see the thing, she had to give her that. She had even wanted to turn him over to the law, right then and there. Insisting that if her brother had done such a thing, they must give him to the police like anyone else.

“Now, lamb, you don't want t'do that,” Tom had soothed her. His big hands on her shoulders—sending more spasms of envy through Ruth. “You don't want to do that, you'd never forgive yourself for it.”

In the end Tom had convinced her to let
him
take care of it, to find some way to send Johnny Dolan out of the City. Deirdre had finally agreed that it was the just thing—though even then she had burst into one last, tearful protest.

“Ah, it's not him, it's not him! It must be from seeing them all die like that, that's what did it. From having such companions!”

Her eyes searching Ruth's face, with an expression both beseeching and full of hatred.

It was Tom who had known how to arrange the rest of it, through his old friends from the Black Joke company, and on the floor at The Place of Blood. It was he who had set up everything, with Billy's help. All Ruth had had to do was to rebury Dolan's stash in the rock—and then to get him outside. Tom had offered to help her with that, too, but she had refused, knowing that this was the delicate part, and that it was for her to do alone.

“Are you sure you'll be all right?” he had asked her, again and again. But she had assured him that she would do it.

She had made herself wait for another three days, while Tom finished preparing things. Even though she could barely stand it, her nerves nearly as raw as Dolan's. Waiting for somebody to sell them both to the police. Watching Johnny Dolan pace endlessly around the shanty, drunk and raging, or simply sitting on the bed, opening and closing his fists, over and over again.

Then Tom had sent word up that everything was ready, and Billy had met her on the little outcropping overlooking Seneca Village, where, unbeknownst to him, she had watched him that winter. He held on to her there, once he had delivered his message, drawing her to him and making her look him in the face.

“You sure he don't know?” he had asked her.

“I'm sure at that,” Ruth told him evenly, sure of no such thing, but just glad that he cared enough to ask.

Billy looked over in the direction of Pigtown.

“You
sure?
I could just go there an' kill the man. I could.”

“
No,
” she told him. “I won't put that on your soul, or mine. He don't know a thing.”

“I'll follow ya, then. Anything goes wrong, you run to me, you hear?”

“Yes. Yes, I hear,” she had said, and held on to him tightly for another few moments.

Ruth had taken her one, grave risk then—staying away from the shanty for half that night. Not even telling Billy about it, knowing that he would not allow it. Yet it had to be done. She had roamed the streets, and the fields for hours, walking fast to try to keep off the cold—walking until she was half-exhausted, and knew that she looked it.

Only after midnight had she come back in, as quietly as possible. Acting as nervous and unsettled as she could manage, though in fact she found herself filled with a deep and inexplicable calm.

Dolan was on her at once.

“Where you been? Sellin' me to the leatherheads?”

He bounded off the bed and grabbed her by the throat before she could say a word. She hadn't counted on that.

“Got you,” he had breathed, his eyes, inches from her own, rheumy and yellow with rage and fever. “Before you could tell me your lies about where you been tonight. Got you, goddamnit, but I ought to snap your neck right now, you worthless, traitorous bitch.”

He had paused then, his powerful hands still wrapped around her throat. Ruth could only try looking him in the eye, unable to get so much as a sound out. Knowing that to strike out at him, to try to get away was useless. He was too strong, and he was as likely as not to kill her even if she did manage to break his grasp. It was too late even to scream or shout for Billy Dove, whom she knew was waiting close by, outside.

All she could do was keep staring into his eyes. Hoping to convey something, anything to him that might stay his hand.

It had worked. Dolan had relaxed his grip—the thumbs still digging into her throat, but letting up just enough for her to speak.

“Your . . . . brother.”

She choked it out, wheezing and gasping.

“What?”

He pulled his hands away from her neck altogether then, and flung her back into the corner of the shack, where she flopped with that same humiliating helplessness. But he was on her right away again, pulling her up, slapping her across the face.

“What?
What?
What did ya say about
my brother?
”

“That he's alive!”

She had just managed to get it out through her raw throat, over the edge of her lip already swollen and bleeding.

“You're a liar. You're mad!” he barked at her.

But she could see, even then, the look of vindication, even through the alcoholic sag of his face.
He still believed it.

“You're a lyin' bitch—”

“No, but he's alive!” she cried, talking as fast as she could. “I just been down to Deirdre's. She an' Tom's with ‘im now, down at Coenties Slip.”

His hands gripped her arms so hard she feared he would break them. But she forced herself to go on, taking one more breath and spinning out the whole tale now, figuring it would work or he would kill her, and one way or the other that would be all.

“Ya got to be careful. He's heard you're in a spot, an' he wants to help you get out of the City for a spell. That's why he come. Deirdre figures he'll take ya over to Hoboken, or maybe up to Providence.”

Dolan walked away and sat back down on the bed, looking bewildered now. Trying to think it through, she could see—but failing. Asking none of the obvious questions, about how his brother would know anything about him, or why he would help him with this.
Still wanting to believe.

“My
brother?
Here?”

“Aye, an' he wants to help ya, Johnny. As best he can—”

“So he
was
alive. The whole time he was alive. Those sons a bitches in the black gable—” He snorted and looked up, something almost like a smile on his face. “T'think, they put him up in the idiot's ward. I
knew
he was no idiot. An' now he's here, you can
see
he's nobody's fool.”

She watched him scramble about the shed, gathering up his few things. All but unable to believe he had bought the whole tale.
So far.

She had not been able to dissuade him from taking his stash with him—the jackal-headed cane, Old Man Noe's money, the cufflinks and watch. Or the other thing, which he shoved quickly into his pocket. Plenty to get them both hung, should a leatherhead stop them.

Yet he had left the cabinet of wonders where it stood, in the corner. She had noticed it there, and almost suggested that he take it, too, having to bite her tongue, for fear that would give the game away.
After all, he was just supposed to be going for a few days.
As it was, before they had left he had grown suddenly suspicious. Some vestige of his base, animal mistrust returning.

“If this is a trick. If you're sellin' me—” he said, putting one hand on her shoulder and squeezing so hard she feared that her collarbone would snap.

“No, Johnny,” she had stammered—just managing to think of something at the last moment. “If I was tryin' to sell ya, Johnny, why would I try to tell you not to bring the stash? Why wouldn't I want the evidence on ya?”

He hesitated for another, long moment—then pushed her out the door ahead of him.

“We'll see.”

When they reached the paved streets, and no squad of roundsmen fell upon them, he seemed to relax a little bit. They were lucky enough to wave down a hack, ambling along after dropping off a fare at a new Fifth Avenue mansion, and they took the long, slow drive down to the docks. Rolling past the brimming Bowery theatres, and through the Five Points, past the city hall, and the humming, throbbing newspaper presses under the ground. Working their way through the side streets by the river, choked with their express wagons, and the wobbling drunks from their taverns.

And all the while, she kept a look out the windows of the cab for Billy. Thinking that perhaps she had a glimpse of him from time to time—a dark figure in a high overcoat. Walking fast, the collar pulled up around his ears. She wasn't sure, it was a murky, moonless night, but she wanted to believe it was him, trailing behind them in the crowded streets.

They paid off the driver at Coenties Slip, and alighted from the cab by a crooked, reeking excrescence of a bar called The Yellow Man. There was a sullen fog just beginning to roll in off the East
River, and the place seemed very quiet for this time of night—something that almost made Dolan shy from it at the last moment.

“You sure he's here? You sure it's
him?
” he asked her, in a voice so uncharacteristically pathetic that she nearly felt sorry for him.

He peered through the deepening murk. The fog not so much a real fog, but an oilier, more tangible thing, a sort of merging of the dark and the smoke, and all the foul vapors drifting up off the river.

“Where is he?”

“He's comin',” she promised. “Oh, he's comin' to ya.”

They waited in the saloon, sipping whiskey at a back table. Dolan holding the glass in his hands, letting her have a drink from it from time to time. The awful liquor helping to steady her nerves. The only other patrons were a couple of seamen and a few drunks, standing against the bar. The barman staring at them with cold, sunken eyes.

There was noise and Dolan sat up, listening—though she noticed that his eyes were cloudier, and more unfocused than ever.

“Is it he then? Is that him?”

“No. No, not yet.”

He turned restlessly about in his chair.

“You wait an' see what we do together. There won' be a thing what can hold us, now that he's back.”

His words were beginning to slur.

“That's the truth.”

“D'ya think he'll hold it ag'in me, though?” he asked her, suddenly fearful. “That I went off like that, wit' him still alive?”

“No!” She tried not to be too emphatic—the whiskey affecting her, as well, though she had had no more than a mouthful. “How could he? It was t'same t'ing wit' you. They thought he was dead an' slid ‘im out, an' how's he supposed to get back to the livin'?”

“Aye, how could he get back? How could he even know I was alive?”

He said nothing for a long moment—then slowly, awkwardly, put out his hand across the table and patted hers. Ruth had to use every muscle in her body to keep from jerking it back from him.

“Don't think there won't be somethin' in it for you, too,” he mumbled, looking down at the table. “Don't t'ink we'll forget ya now, we'll send for you—an' for the cabinet!—soon's we're settled someplace.”

“You'll be needin' someone to do the duties of a wife.”

“Tha's right,” he nodded, missing the dryness of her voice. “Tha's right. You been a good girl, arrangin' all this. Ye'll get yer due for this, don't worry.”

His words sent a small, dreadful chill through her body. But then the door of the saloon swung open, and she pulled her hand back. Tom stood there, looking grim. He gave them a quick, furtive nod from the doorway and they followed him back outside into the dark—Dolan all but marveling that it was really coming true.

“So he's ‘ere! So he is. I knew I could always count on Tom. An' Deedee. She's a hard woman, but you can rely on her—”

Tom walked to the edge of the pier, signaling for them to wait back in the shadows of the bar. She let Dolan talk on, though it flayed her nerves.
Dangerous Johnny Dolan.
Wondering that this could be the same man she had met in that village, able to kill vicious dogs with his bare hands.

How had he ever been able to survive in such a place for so long? Full of nothing but the dead. And come out looking so strong and healthy still, when even the dogs had been half-starved—

“There he is!”

A dinghy appeared in the river, with a single man rowing it, a dark, indistinct figure in the fog, his overcoat pulled up nearly over his ears against the cold. A single lantern hung from the bow, and as they watched, the man locked his oars and covered, then uncovered the lantern with a cloth—two, three times.

“That's the signal!”

“Is ‘at him? Is it really him?”

She had never seen Johnny Dolan so eager, even half-drugged as he was. The man in the boat raised a gloved hand and gave a single, beckoning wave.

“Is ‘at him?” Dolan tried to squint into the night. “It looks taller—”

“No, that's just the man with the boat,” Tom said quickly. “Your brother's out in the harbor. Come now—we have to look lively!”

The boat dropped from sight below the wharf, and Tom walked him down toward it, bustling him along.

“Come on, now. It's time.”

He went at once, Ruth noted, without so much as a word or a backward look, which she remembered with both relief and a last, bitter
resentment. He walked eagerly out to the end of the pier with Tom, even with his legs wobbling, then the two of them vanished. The boat reappearing again, with three figures sitting in it this time. Tom in the bow, facing Dolan, and Billy behind him. Both of them rowing steadily out into the harbor while Johnny Dolan sat, docile as a child, in the middle.
Not looking back even then,
as the boat slowly, silently receded into the oily night.