Song of the Silent Harp (34 page)

“Not yet, but soon. I have to go in a bit early today. Price and I are to escort some ladies from one of those benevolent societies into Five Points later this morning.”

Tierney made a face, and Michael nodded in agreement. The thought was enough to dampen his cheerful spirits. Like every other policeman on the force, he dreaded the notorious Five Points slum with a vengeance.

“Why in the world would a bunch of rich old ladies want to venture into that place?” Tierney asked, starting for the door.

“Well, with some, of course, it's little more than curiosity,” Michael answered, following him out of the bedroom. “Others, I suppose, truly want to help, but mean to see where their money will be spent before making any sort of commitment.”

Tierney gave a small grunt of disgust. “I doubt they'll much like what they see.”

“Their intentions are more than likely the best,” Michael replied with a sigh,
going to the stove to put some water on for tea. “But they've no idea—none at all—what they're letting themselves in for.”

“I'll wager they won't be staying very long once they get a close look at the place. I'm going now, Da.”

Michael turned around, watching him shrug into his jacket. “Mind, don't be late again tonight. I'll pick up some pork on the way home and we'll have us a meal together for a change.”

“Right.” Halfway through the open door, Tierney stopped and turned back. “Say, Da, I've been wondering, have you given any thought to where you're going to put all those people once they get here? There's quite a bunch of them, after all.”

Michael stared at him, then gave a brief shrug and a lame smile. “Aye, I have given a great
deal
of thought to it, but so far I've not come up with any answer.”

“Ah, well, we'll work it out. The lads can bunk with me, and of course you and Nora will share a room—” He stopped, shot Michael a rakish grin. “Once you're married, that is.” Before Michael could add a word, he went on, his expression all innocence. “We'd better hope that Thomas Fitzgerald and his family get a situation soon—otherwise it could get a bit crowded around here.”

He waved, then bolted out the door, leaving Michael staring after him.

Michael carried his tea to the kitchen table and sank down onto a chair, looking around the room. The boy had a point, one that had already given him a sleepless night or two.

Where
was
he going to put all those people if they came? Especially Thomas and his little boy and lassies?

Tierney seemed willing enough to have Nora's lads share his room, though they'd be severely crowded in that wee hidey-hole. And Nora…

He found himself reluctant to think about Nora at the moment. More than likely she would not even consider marriage for some time. She had been widowed for only a few months, after all. And, even if they should happen to wed right away, for the sake of propriety if nothing else, he mustn't think she'd be ready for marital intimacy right off. Why, they didn't even know each other anymore. Anything more than a marriage in name only was highly unlikely for a long, long time. He did not know quite how he felt about that, nor was he willing to examine his feelings.

Meanwhile, he was still faced with the problem of providing housing for as many as seven additional lodgers in a three-room flat. The Irish in New York were used to bundling up together—Michael had seen as many as six or seven families in one room many a time. But he'd like to be able to give
them all a bit more than just a roof over their heads and a place to eat and sleep.

His heart began to race again, a common occurence these days. Worry, he supposed. Worry and nervousness and perhaps even a bit of fear. His life might well be about to change in a most significant way.

He raked both hands down his face, then propped his elbows on the table and rested his head atop his folded hands.

All I can do is trust You, Lord
—
trust and make the little I have available to the rest of them. I know You'll work it out for us, Lord, and work it out for the best, so help me to stop worrying and show a bit more faith in Your providence.

29

They shall carry to the distant land
A teardrop in the eye,
And some shall go uncomforted—
Their days an endless sigh.

E
THNA
C
ARBERY
(1866–1902)

T
he ladies under the protection of Michael Burke and Denny Price had made a good show up till now of containing their horror and controlling their shock. Michael knew from past experience, however, that their hard-won composure would not survive the next stop on their tour. He could only hope that one of them had brought along some smelling salts.

This was at least the fifth group of society women he had escorted through the gutters and garrets of Five Points. He supposed it had never occurred to a one of them that New York's finest might have a few other things to do besides conducting private tours through the most infamous slum in the city. Apparently, the thought had eluded Chief Matsell and Mayor Brady as well. Otherwise, this foolishness would have been stopped long ago.

The results of these silly excursions were always the same, never amounting to anything more than a few offended sensibilities. At least two would faint, and a fresh sense of hopelessness would convince the well-intentioned ladies that, indeed, they could do little for the poor wretches trapped in Five Points—unless, of course, they happened to be willing to invest the rest of their lives and a considerable chunk of their wealth into providing a whole new way of life for the entire populace. Those who knew the district best—its inhabitants, the police, and a few priests—would be quick to agree that only a dedicated team of strong hearts and even stronger backs could ever hope to make the slightest difference in this place.

Today's half dozen ladies had thus far seen only the fringes of the notorious slums, but already they had to stop and collect their nerves before going on. Watching them, Michael had to admit that this group seemed a bit different than most—more observant, less frivolous, and, he thought, genuinely devastated by the misery they encountered.

At the moment they stood clustered about Denny Price, who was doing his best to brace them a bit with some Irish charm and futile reassurances. Denny
was
a charmer, all right, handsome enough that the women could not resist him, and as clever as he was good-looking. This was one of those times, however, when Michael found his partner's charm somewhat thin and the women's smiling response to it a bit grating. Five Points never failed to have a negative effect on his disposition.

Leaning against a wooden fence, his grim gaze left the women long enough to scan the area where so many of his countrymen lived in unrelieved misery. Although the district was inhabited by refugees from other countries, the Irish comprised the bulk of its population. Indeed, it seemed the only place in New York City—other than the police force—where the Irish were entirely welcome.

The brightness of the morning did nothing to disguise the gloom of the slum. In fact, it seemed strange to Michael that the sun did actually shine on Five Points. Its deceptive, cheerful warmth could almost tempt the unaware into believing this was just another neighborhood, housing its share of good and bad residents going about the normal business of living.

Michael knew better. Five Points was an abomination, possibly the habitat of more vice and wretchedness than any other one place on earth. Even the sun's cleansing, nourishing rays must surely die the very moment they touched its contaminated soul.

It had not always been so. Standing on the site of a low, swampy pond, the area had been a fairly decent residential community until about 1820. But the landfill hadn't been properly packed, and gradually the buildings began to sink into the swamp, their doors tearing free of their hinges, their facades crumbling. The more respectable families moved on to better parts of the city, and the destitute Irish moved in. The entire district had long ago degenerated to a breeding ground of drunkenness, crime, and depravity.

Five Points was so named because of the five streets that emptied themselves into the center. The slum lay only a short walk from Broadway's center of wealth and elegance, another moment from City Hall. From where Michael now stood, he could look directly onto the small, triangular courtyard at the center of the point where the streets converged, a parklike place dubiously named “Paradise Square.” This was where the ladies in his
party had congregated, casting uncertain glances at their surroundings.

There was not a redeeming feature to Five Points, not one. A maze of dilapidated, rotting buildings with patched and broken windows, its commerce consisted of grog shops and brothels in abundance. The neighborhood was populated by brutal men with vicious eyes, squalid, dispirited women, and filthy, neglected children in rags whose mothers were often drunk right along with the fathers—though in many cases, of course, there
were
no fathers.

With no proper sewage or garbage disposal, the alleys teemed with offal and trash. Both the streets and the buildings constantly reeked from the stench of animal and human waste, kerosene stoves, and whiskey. Beneath the dank cellars and fetid garrets ran dozens of underground passages connecting blocks of houses on different streets, affording ideal getaway routes for the hardened criminals who drifted in and out of the district and certain death for anyone else foolish enough to enter.

The place was the terror of the police force and every decent citizen who was aware of its existence. Home for entire gangs of gun-fighting Irish, thieves, and murderers, it also housed rampant disease and utter hopelessness. Buried in ignorance, filth, pestilence, and poverty, Five Points was a pool of concentrated, unchecked evil. And at the heart of it all stood the predominant landmark of Five Points, the ugly, infamous building to which Michael and his partner were about to escort the unsuspecting ladies. The Old Brewery.

Lurking in the square, ringed on one side by “Murderer's Alley,” the old Coulter's Brewery building had long ago been converted into a multiple dwelling. It was a veritable monstrosity of a place—mustard-colored, sagging, hideous as a misshapen toad. It squatted in defiance of all decency and authority, the acknowledged headquarters of corruption and perversion for all to see.

Michael hated the very sight of the place. Every trek through its diseased passages brought on nightmares, and he knew tonight would be no exception. His stomach heaved at the thought of what waited inside, but the ladies would not consent to forego their exploration of this most disreputable of the slum's many dens of corruption.

Wanting only to have it over and done with, Michael sighed and detached himself from the fence, heading toward Price and the women. “Ladies, if you insist,” he said with a somewhat rude jerk of his head in the direction of the building.

Ignoring at least three sets of raised eyebrows, Michael parted their numbers
and started across the square. With himself in front and Price bringing up the rear, he resolutely marched them straight toward the Old Brewery.

If human misery and degradation could be measured, Michael thought, then certainly the weight of it within these walls would be enough to sink the city into the ocean. Over the years, any number of journalists and social chroniclers had attempted to depict the stark horror of conditions inside the Old Brewery. All had failed, for indeed there was a point at which raw evil could not be described, only—to the observer's peril—seen and felt.

Such was the iniquity running rampant throughout the Brewery's dark, winding passageways. Michael led the way with a lantern in hand, cautioning the ladies to have a care where they stepped. “The whole of the building is rickety and unsafe,” he warned, parting two drunks sprawled at the bottom of the steps.

A spur of annoyance nipped at him as they made their way up the tottering stairs and started down the hall. He found something almost obscene in these well-dressed, impeccably coiffed uptown ladies injecting their presence into the squalor and hopelessness of this place. What, exactly, did they think to see or hope to accomplish?

The boards creaked and groaned in protest as they moved along the hallway. Almost in unison the women lifted their skirts to keep their hemlines from touching the begrimed floor, all the while casting apprehensive glances into the darkness around them.

Great mounds of what appeared to be filthy rags lay in heaps against the wall, but as they passed by the rags would stir, then attempt to rise, revealing the pathetic forms of human beings, both Negro and white. In the dim glow of the lantern, dozens of half-naked children could be seen cowering or playing in the shadows.

Too cross by now to make any concession toward the ladies' delicate breeding, Michael could not resist pointing out a patched section of floor just ahead. “That place was dug up a while back,” he informed them, “after finding some of the boards sawed free. There were human bones underneath—the remains of two bodies.” He stood aside, waiting for the women to tiptoe around the area, their faces pale and taut as they minced away from the shabby repair job.

His sense of decency overcame his petulance, however, when he realized the sounds coming from a dark alcove just to their left were those of a couple taking their pleasure right there in the hallway—a common enough occurrence in this pit of immorality. With a deft pivot to the side, he
managed to divert the group's attention to himself by swinging the lantern and pretending to stumble as he hurried them past the alcove.

A few of the rooms were open to view, the doors either ajar or ripped from their hinges. They passed by one, slowing almost to a stop at the sight of three elderly women inside, all lying on a bed of filthy rags pushed into a corner. Each appeared to be feeble and emaciated. Across the room two other women, these younger, sat at a dilapidated table crowded with whiskey bottles and what looked to be the remains of several meals. Beneath the table three children, one but an infant, played with a dog.

Michael had been down these halls of horror far too many times to react to the cloying hands of the beggars that groped at them as they moved on. The ladies, however, made the mistake of digging into their handbags so often he was sure they would go home without a coin.

From every shadowed corner came the sounds of weeping or groaning, whether from sickness or desolation no one could say. By now most of the women had gone pale and begun to look somewhat ill, making Michael feel a bit ashamed of his earlier crankiness. They had, more than likely, never experienced anything near the squalor of Five Points before today.

He did not doubt their sincerity. The simple act of submitting to a tour through such a vile place indicated they at least had the sensitivity to think of others less fortunate than themselves. There was little enough human decency and Christian charity in this city; certainly he had no right to be faulting the few who displayed a measure of it.

Michael stepped out of the way, allowing the ladies to sidestep a drunk sprawled face down in the hall. Waiting for the women to pass, his attention was caught by one in particular, who appeared to be lagging a bit behind the others. A slender, straight-backed young woman, her rich chestnut hair was caught in a thick chignon that seemed to defy the frivolous bonnet perched on top of her head. She walked with a slight limp, scarcely noticeable, and her expression was not so much one of revulsion as compassion. Her attention seemed to have been caught by something just ahead, and he turned to look in the direction of her gaze.

Her eyes were fastened on a little girl who was huddled just outside a closed door. The young woman stopped when she reached the child, separating herself from the rest of the group who walked on, accompanied by Officer Price. Michael was about to urge the straggler on, but he hesitated when she stooped down to gaze into the child's face.

When she spoke, her voice was low, and, as he would have expected, unmistakably refined. But it was also a voice touched with genuine warmth
and concern.