Seven for a Secret (7 page)

“I’d suppose kidnap victims are normally spirited away without bothering over a trial, if possible,” I ventured. “But no sane person would dream of setting sail in this weather.”

Julius nodded. “Varker and Coles have a side business in wine distribution. They’ve a dockside shop in Corlears Hook, equipped with plenty of bottles in the front and a cell in the back. They hold people there when a ship isn’t ready to hand.”

“And that’s
legal
?” I demanded.

A host of simmering looks met my eyes.

“Next time I say something stupid, cuff me in the ear,” I requested of Julius. “What’s first on our agenda?”

“Lucy needs a hiding place. This house isn’t safe,” Julius answered.

“But I’m going with you,” she said with a deadly look in her eyes.

“That would be an insane risk,” I objected.

“He’s right.” George Higgins dug his nails into his palm. “There could be violence. And so we really ought to be
leaving.
Where’s best for Lucy to wait?”

“The station house, for my money,” I said, rising.

“No!” she cried, aghast. “No, not the Tombs. After sending Meg for the Committee, I came there for
you.
They’ll—”

“Not that station house.” I exchanged a look with Julius. “I’ve a suggestion. No offense meant, but you said
legal
help. Think of the copper stars as your hired bruisers. If a fight breaks out and we get the worst of it, you men throw down gloves—but if not, it’s cleaner to leave any milling to the star police. Tell me I’m wrong.”

A seething sort of trouble percolated in Mr. Higgins’s eyes, but Reverend Brown set a hand on his shoulder. “If we’re wanted, we’ll fall in,” the clergyman agreed.

“Aces. Mr. Piest, how are you at pugilism?”

“Ah,” he said doubtfully. “Well. Very
willing
to employ fisticuffs in a good cause, Mr. Wilde, in fact none more willing, but—”

“There’s a kinchin at risk here, and the kidnappers are armed, and visiting the Hook is its own set of risks. Mr. Piest, we’re fetching one more copper star.” I offered my hand to Mrs. Adams, who took it without looking at me. She’d gone quiet as a stone.

“Then we three will go at once to the wine shop and keep guard.” George Higgins leapt up, pulling on his gloves. “If something should happen before you arrive, Mr. Wilde, I warn you—we’ll do whatever we must.”

“I certainly hope so. We’ll meet you there in force and storm the gates. Mrs. Adams, we’re taking a hack to the Ward Eight station house.”

“And why Ward Eight?” Higgins queried pointedly.

“Because Mrs. Adams doesn’t trust copper stars, and you don’t trust copper stars, and I need another copper star who’s flash on the muscle and runs a loyal station house. That means the captain of Ward Eight. Think of him as my brother instead of as police if you like,” I suggested as we all converged on the door and the tempest beyond. “Or as a Republic of Texas–sized version of me, whatever you please. Just so long as we get your family back, Mrs. Adams, I don’t mind if you think of Valentine as a trained grizzly.”

“And anyway, that wouldn’t be too far off the bull’s-eye,” Julius muttered amiably as we shut the door behind us.

•   •   •

Hacks were scarce
in the violence of the storm. But so were pedestrians, and within ten minutes I was seated in a drafty cab with Mr. Piest and Mrs. Adams. Our hacksman must have driven close to blind despite his lamps, for the snowfall formed an arctic curtain of bitter lace. More than one bone-snapping bump sent Mrs. Adams’s hand clutching for the strap handle.

But she said nothing. And comfort unasked for is often comfort unwanted. So we listened to the whistling gusts until the driver reined his horse, cab wheels skidding dangerously and the half-frozen creature whimpering with nerves. Prince Street was drowning in white. After paying the driver his two bits with a few pennies extra to wait for us, I could scarce find the neat brick station house’s door.

Inside, the fireplace crackled hotly behind the hinged pine countertop with the quill and inkstand where my brother was meant to be presiding. Granted, according to my pocket watch, his shift had just ended. We’d passed nine o’clock at night by then. But the station felt oddly abandoned, for the roundsmen were freezing their eyebrows off trudging in circles and their captain was nowhere to be seen.

I gestured at the bench. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll just check the office.”

Mr. Piest commenced a slipshod but kindly meant tale of the formation of the copper stars to the hollowed-out Mrs. Adams as I set off. Halfway down the hall, I paused. A muffled scraping noise met my ears. Then a chirping birdlike giggle. I threw open the office door.

My brother Valentine was seated in a wide oak desk chair. So was a ravishing girl of about twenty. Plump everywhere that mattered, red-gold hair falling about her bare shoulders, with her back to Val’s chest and her left arm crooked up around his neck. Laughing as if the fact of his palm cupped inside the swell of her canary-yellow corset was more amusing than anything else she could think of.

Maybe she was right, and she couldn’t. But I didn’t have time to talk it over.

“Jesus Christ, Val,” I growled. “In the
station house
?”

“Timothy!” Val waved a friendly cigar at me with his free hand. Not bothering to desist from any activities being performed by the other. “Tim, meet Miss Kelly Quirk. Kelly, this is my brother—as plumb a pin basket as they come.”

After those few seconds, I understood the following pieces of truly disturbing news.

First, from the languor of his towering frame and the constricted pupils within the vivid green circles of his eyes, my brother had just indulged in the usual evening recreation: sipping enough morphine tonic to float a barge down the Hudson. Second, from
plumb pin basket—
which loosely translates from flash into
good little brother—
the upswing of an absolutely soaring state of loose-limbed euphoria was gaining momentum. I can force sobriety on the man during the downward spiral, but not before. That would require divine intervention, and God doesn’t indulge me on that particular front. Last, he’d been scraping his fingertips through his dark blond hair, sending the tip of his widow’s peak up in a boyish scruff, which meant that a hefty dose of ether had also been involved.

Ether makes Val tactile. Before he starts seeing things, that is.

Of the six substances Valentine combines with morphine that I’ve documented, ether is trickiest to navigate. I loathe the stuff. Literally anything could happen to him—from loss of consciousness to winning an impromptu boxing match to deciding that wearing clothing is a hypocritical act. If I’d been anxious before over our mission, now a spoiled lemon had magically appeared in my gut.

“Miss Quirk here was nabbed on suspicion of stargazing.” The near-scarlike bags beneath Val’s eyes quivered with amusement. “She’s explaining why she’s no bat, and I think she’s got a nacky argument. Where’s the whoring if it’s for free sport and not a little hard cole clinking in the pocket?”

Kelly Quirk nodded sagely, then emitted a happy squeal that presumably had something to do with my brother’s whalebone-obscured right hand. I wasn’t eager to dwell on the subject.

“You.
Out.
” I jerked my thumb at the door. “Charges are dropped. Congratulations.”

Her mouth curved into a tiny pout. “I want to
stay.
I
like
him. What’s wrong with your brother, Valentine? He’s not a molley, is he?”

I’d a pretty tart reply on my lips as to which one of us could be accused of amatory tendencies toward men with any validity. But I swallowed it in the nick of time.

“Can’t I stay?” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. “I like you too, you know.”

“Christ almighty,” I groaned. “
Get out
, or the vagrancy charges are reinstated. I’m sorry. Have a pleasant night.”

Frowning prettily, she retrieved her long-sleeved jacket bodice and flounced her way through the door. Sticking her tongue out at me for good measure.

“What in hell, Tim?” Val crossed his boots on his desk and tugged his ivy-patterned waistcoat down. “That’s sound police work I was—”

“What did I do to deserve you?” I demanded of no one in particular. “I need you. I need you
now.
And here you are, useless as a dead clam. So I ask again, what in holy hell did I do to deserve you?”

“Probably nothing,” he owned generously as the cigar end landed in the side of his mouth. “That’s a wet streak of luck, my Tim, and no mistake.”

Mr. Piest’s clanging crowbar footsteps sounded behind me in the corridor. “Mr. Wilde? A young female just passed us by who seemed—”

“She’s on her way out,” I hissed. “And we are in serious trouble.”

“What sort of trouble? Good evening, Captain Wilde.”

When Valentine clapped eyes on Mr. Piest, his expression shifted from annoyance to confusion. To my dismay, it was the cast his face takes when he’s so marinated in chemicals that he’s seeing dragons and sphinxes roaming the streets, and is reluctant either to mention or to scrutinize them. Why the look should be directed at a shriveled roundsman was beyond my study, however. Particularly when they were already acquainted.

“What species is it?” Val queried, glancing in my direction.

My jaw came up, newly furious.

“My guess would be barnacle,” he added thoughtfully.

Searching for the choicest words, I was about to tell my brother just what species of morphine-soused prick he was when Piest started laughing.

“Captain Wilde, it is an enormous honor to see you again.
The
Valentine Wilde—undisputed hero of the Broad Street fire, defender of the Irish, tireless advocate for the copper stars, and the pride of Ward Eight. Don’t chastise yourself over not recalling me. Since the star police formed, I work from time to time with your very talented brother here. Shake my hand, sir, shake my hand.”

Valentine’s bemusement slid into a half smile as he pulled his feet off the table and complied. “You’re the old Dutch toast who found the final piece of the kinchin murderer puzzle last August. I remember now. By Jesus, but your face gave me a turn.”

“Good God. You might be a bit more delicate with a mate of mine,” I exclaimed.

“This doesn’t need delicacy. It needs an oyster knife, or possibly a nutcracker. But if he’s O.K. by you, then he’s O.K. by me.”

“Remarkable!” Mr. Piest exulted. “Simply first-class, Captain Wilde. ‘O.K.,’ you say, which I presume to be letters of the alphabet? What can they mean?”

“It’s just flash,” I snapped. “It’s short for
oll korrect
.”

“
All correct?
” Mr. Piest repeated, looking happy as if he’d stumbled upon a warehouse packed to brimming with fenced goods. “Wouldn’t that be
A.C.
?”

“It can
spell
,” my brother rejoiced in a whisper, equally delighted.

Mr. Piest made a far lower bow than ever ought to be directed at my disgraceful sibling. Then they stared at each other, grinning in childlike joy.

“Are you through now?” I wondered in desperation.

“So, you need me,” Val recalled. “Are you going to tell me about it, Timmy, or are you going to stand there like a lamppost?”

I passed a moment gnawing on my own tongue. My brother calls me
Timmy
to infuriate me. He does so because it works. Every single time. Crossing my arms in a physical effort to subdue the smolder in my breast, I reviewed my options. The main point seemed to be whether or not a morphine-drunk Valentine was more valuable than an absent Valentine.

Unfortunately, the answer was yes. Even a half-crazed Val is better than no Val at all. It’s one of the most intolerable things about my barely tolerable elder brother.

“Can you walk?” I demanded.

He scowled. “Of course I can.”

“Can you think more or less clearly?”

“Presently, I think you’re a milky little sow’s tit.”

“Can you fight?”

“Christ have mercy. Will you listen to the puppy? I can always fight.”

“Will you come with me?”

“I’ll mull it over.”

I seized his arm and dragged him into the hallway. When he could see the otherworldly Mrs. Adams, who sat frozen in grief on the bench against the wall, her almond-shaped grey eyes pinned to the floor and her chaos of curls glittering with half-melted snow, I pointed.

“Will you come with me to do a favor for
her
?”

Valentine scratched lazily at the nape of his neck. Ruminating, no doubt. Or debating whether or not she was a wood nymph. Who in his right mind could say? Then he slapped me on the back so hard that my teeth clacked together.

“You should have tried that argument first, young Tim,” he advised over his shoulder, winking. “Would have saved yourself ten minutes. Let me get my coat.”

five

They are called slave-traders, and their occupation is to kidnap every colored stranger they can lay their hands on.

—E. S. ABDY,
JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE AND TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, FROM APRIL 1833 TO OCTOBER 1834

V
alentine employed the
shrillest whistle
I’ve ever heard to summon a roundsman. That copper star received strict orders to guard the woman in the office, and to bring her coffee and hot chestnuts to boot. Our poor hacksman, meanwhile, shivered pathetically as we three star police climbed back into his vehicle. Lurching forward with a grinding, sliding motion that smacked Mr. Piest’s head against the door, we rode in haste toward Corlears Hook. There had been ample room for three to sit abreast in Mrs. Adams’s company. But with Valentine’s sprawling bulk to accommodate—not to mention his weighted walking stick—Mr. Piest wedged his feet together while I in the center performed my gamest impersonation of a tinned sprat.

“This falls shy of ideal rattle weather,” my brother observed, meaning
hackney cab
by
rattle
. “The sleighs will be out by morning. Now tell me what we’re about.”

“We’re lioning a pair of slave catchers,” I answered.

“Slave catchers,” Val repeated slowly. My brother is extremely fastidious about food, and he used the same timbre of voice he would have spent on
turned
fish.
“Right. When a human parasite crawls into my fair state and tells me the laws of his backwater swamp are trump and that I’d best flash my ivories and bend a knee about it, I’m itchy to lion him too. But why are we lioning these
particular
blackbirders, in a snowstorm?”

“Mrs. Adams—did you notice anything about her?”

“That she’s colored? I do own eyes, thank you.”

“These slave catchers figured her family for some ripe valuables. But they operate out of Corlears Hook. And one has a pistol. And so I need you.”

“We’re actually interfering with a catch?”

“A shamelessly illegal catch, yes.”

Valentine blew out a sharp gust of frustration through his teeth. The collar of his blue velvet greatcoat is tastefully lined with short fur, and the ether was compelling him to run his knuckles across it repeatedly, as if he were petting a cat. The gesture took on a worried sharpness.

“What?” I prompted.

“Nix.”

“No, what is it?”

“I’m just grateful you waited until I was off duty to spring this scrapp on me. That’s several shades more discreet than you generally are, and it was keen of you to take care about it.”

“I didn’t,” I said, baffled. “I took this hack straight to your door.”

Valentine winced, and then he laughed heartily, expressions which on him go perennially hand in glove.

“That sounds more like you,” he admitted, wiping the pained look off his face with one hand as he tried to angle himself meaningfully in my direction. His largest success was at knocking my knees with the pearl-topped cane. “Listen to me, bright young copper star: we aren’t abolitionists.”

I stared at him, the severe jostling of the cab the only reason I didn’t let my mouth hang open. Mr. Piest glanced at my brother in near-equal shock.

“You’re pro-slavery?” I demanded.

“Slavery is a putrid blot on the mazzard of this country that’s going to bring all hell and fiery brimstone down to raze the land. Sooner rather than later.”

“So you’re anti-slavery?”

“Any freeborn American possessing eyes and ears and a half ounce of brains is anti-slavery. Yes, you despicably rude insect.”

“Then what—”

“I said we aren’t abolitionists. We’re Democrats.”

I sensed Mr. Piest relax against the seat, apparently satisfied. For my part, I was ready to wrestle my brother into the snow.

“First of all, never speak for me. Ever again,” I suggested. “Second, bugger your buggering Party and all the buggering thugs you call pals. Third, why are we talking about the Party?”

“Because the copper stars are largely Democrat run and Democrat populated,” Mr. Piest put in. “God knows most Whigs loathe us, and the American Republican Party is all but washed up. Though it hadn’t occurred to me, I do take your meaning, Captain.”

I didn’t. But I was determined to work it out. And quickly too, for my brother was shooting me optimistic looks. As if I might possibly have been born with the intellect of a catfish, but he held tenuous hopes.

Then the obvious dawned—bright and painfully clear.

“The Irish,” I conceded. “Your voting majority. Every Irishman is a Democrat, and the Irish compete with the blacks. Fine. Why not gain some black voters to make up the difference?”

This time it was my turn to be stared at as if I were some monstrosity from Barnum’s American Museum.

“Timothy Wilde, I will slap the stupid out of you if it is the last thing I ever do,” Valentine vowed. “Blacks can’t
vote
.”

“Of course they can,” I said, frowning.

“They’re held to a property requirement. Whites can vote, if citizens. Blacks can vote if citizens who also own a minimum of two hundred and fifty dollars in property.”

My head listed back against the cab interior in considerable disgust. I live on fourteen dollars a week—four dollars more than the roundsmen—because Matsell seems to think the denser of the two Wildes something special. So if I counted up all my earthly goods, the sum of them would maybe total forty-five dollars. Maybe. That’s including my half of the fifty dollars in silver that Piest and I had left hidden in my office.

And I am richer by far than almost every colored person I have ever met.

“Can any of them vote?” I wondered bleakly.

“Maybe two hundred or so of around ten thousand. And they sure as hell is warm don’t vote Democrat. The Liberty Party, now
there
are some abolitionists.”

“The whole process is a repulsive circus. I’m far more of an abolitionist than a Democrat.”

“Well, that’s bully, Tim. But I’m a Democrat,” Valentine snapped, glassy green eyes flashing. “That means the repulsive circus is why you’ve a roof over your head and bread on the table and it has been ever since you were a younger and very slightly smaller half-witted idealist, so forgive me my loyalties to the freak show. It kept you alive. That was the
point.
God forbid you be grateful, I owed you worlds over. But if you’re an abolitionist, you are mouse on the subject. Can you manage just
that
much for my sake? We are the fucking quietest abolitionists in the world. Do you savvy?”

Trying not to flinch—and failing—I nodded. Meanwhile cursing myself for not treading carefully with Val where mingled ether and morphine are concerned. Ether sometimes makes Valentine sentimental.

And this, it seemed, was my lucky night.

My brother fancies himself responsible for burning our house down with our parents inside it, when I was ten and he all of sixteen, by means of an accidental fire in our stable that took place near our supply of kerosene. I discovered this fairly salient point last August. But God forbid either of us mentions it. And in front of a third party, no less, who was studying his fingernails and doubtless comprehending next to nothing. I deeply wanted to say
It was an accident,
and I wanted to say
I’m still an abolitionist but I’m also an idiot,
and I was even suddenly tempted to say for the first time
I realize now how ferociously you fought for me despite the fact you’re a comprehensive bastard.
I didn’t, though.

The things my brother and I don’t say could pave over the Atlantic Ocean.

“This is the Hook,” Val announced abruptly with a final unconscious brush of his fingers over his collar. “Every man look to his coattails. They come up on you like river rats in this stretch of town.”

I don’t often visit the Corlears Hook portion of the East River docks anyhow, but the storm had rendered it unrecognizable. We stood where Walnut and Cherry intersect, facing the slips of the waterfront two blocks distant. The sluggish East River swells, the cloud-piercing masts. But the snow had erased us, actors and stage alike. It was everywhere, even coating my eyelashes. It banked against the sailors’ bawdyhouses, gifting them with chaste white doorways and dazzlingly pure caps for their sagging rooftops. Ordinarily, Corlears Hook is barely walkable for the Irish streaming off the docks into the waiting menagerie of rouge-smeared ladybirds. But that night, save for one unfortunate bat stumbling along with a tattered shawl atop her head, all was quiet save for the wind. Peaceful and weirdly lovely. Even the passing mab looked like a Madonna, the rank rag covering her hair shining with a virginal halo of ice.

Within twelve hours, it would all be sooty as Jean-Baptiste’s jacket elbows. But for now, the city had been wiped ruthlessly clean.

When we’d crossed Cherry, our companions came into view. The three men stood stamping their boots, eyeing a shop that fronted Walnut Street. Sallow gaslight trickled through its curtains, sullying the clean midair snow.

“Anything peery, Julius?” I asked.

“No one in and no one out,” Julius returned. “How d’you do, Captain Wilde.”

“Julius Carpenter,” Val marveled. Adding for my hearing, “Is he actually here, or is he somewhere else and only looks like he’s here?”

“He’s here,” I sighed.

“But whyso?”

“Vigilance Committee. They know what lay to make, so we’re their men this evening. Does that sound agreeable?”

Despite the conversation in the hack, I wasn’t much worried over the question. Val has always liked Julius Carpenter, and after the fire, that liking took on the solidity of a debt. But Julius is also the only man alive who’s ever beaten my brother at three consecutive poker games, and ether makes Val capricious.

I’m not overfond of ether where Val is concerned.

“Thank Christ,” Valentine said dryly. “And here I thought Tim was in charge. That’s a ponderous weight off my mind.”

A smile crept onto Julius’s face.

“I take it the direct route is the safest, George?” Reverend Brown questioned.

“Personally, I don’t see any point in subterfuge or elaborate scheming.” It was an arsenic-laced tone. George Higgins was a man, I thought, with blood on his mind. “Julius? I’d sooner trust your judgment than mine any day of the week.”

“We knock on the door, the copper stars introduce themselves, we leave with Jonas and Delia, devil take the hindmost,” Julius proclaimed.

“Well, if a thing’s to be done, best to be started at it.”

So saying, Valentine sailed across the intersection, kicking through the snow as if he were on Jamaica Beach in mid-May. I scrambled after him, the others following. When he reached the door, Val pounded thrice with the stick that was ten times more a weapon than an aid to afternoon walks. Looking of a sudden to be pretty fond of our project, passing his tongue over his lips like a wolf smelling rent flesh.

That worried me. Almost everything about Val worries me.

“Why don’t I do the talking? Just at the start,” I hastened to add.

With a flourish that would have been much more effectively sarcastic if he hadn’t been neck deep in narcotics, Val stepped to the side. The door opened, a tall but lanky creature in its frame.

“Who’s this?” he snarled. “What’s it all about?”

I pushed inside with Piest. When the scoundrel cursed and moved to bar our way, Val’s fist landed
bang
in the door’s center like a battering ram and the shop entrance became much more definitively
open.
Julius, Higgins, and Brown filed within, leaving the gatekeeper spluttering like a rasher of bacon hitting the pan.

“Just who in hellfire do you think you—”

“Star police,” I answered.

Valentine stepped inside last of all and shut the door. He then latched it, spreading his stance in his finest dead rabbit style and beginning to toss the head of his cane from palm to palm like a metronome. Most of Val’s intimidation techniques irritate the living spit out of me. But that one is plenty chilling, so I approved.

“We won’t take up much of your time,” I said, glancing about the room. Stacks of pine crates, presumably full of wine bottles. Planked and sawdusted floor. Soot-spewing lamps mounted to the walls, a desk with two clay cups and a half-full wine bottle on it, a pair of chairs, and not a comfort else. “Long Luke, I take it?”