Wicked City (13 page)

“I don't know how you can stand it.”

“I'll let you know when I come into my family fortune, Miss Harding. Now, where exactly was this Faust stall?”

“The city closed it two nights ago,” she said, as we weaved through the crowd, “but it ought to have been … right here.”

I looked around. We were standing under the awning of a haberdashery, with men inside haggling over the price of a beaver fur hat. The sidewalk was fairly deep here, which made it a reasonable location for a portable storefront. Just a few feet away, a vendor with a wheeled tin cart sold knishes under a tattered umbrella. Formally, vendors had to apply to the Board of Licensure, but in reality the rules governing their placement depended much more on the local beat cop, the neighborhood association, and the general popularity of their wares.

“I don't suppose the Faust cart had a license,” I said to Lily.

“I think there's a total of five formally registered with the city.”

“Of course. Do you have a quarter?” I asked.

Lily sighed and pulled out her change purse. “You can be quite the shameless beggar, Zeph.”

“Only when I'm around the shamelessly wealthy,” I said, and tossed her quarter in the air. “Just a moment.”

I walked over to the knish vendor fanning herself in the sweltering heat. “How much?” I asked.

“One for a dime, three for a quarter.”

I plopped down the quarter. “One of each,” I said. Her three flavors were potato, kasha, and onion. As she wrapped each one in a bit of wax paper I leaned forward casually.

“Do you sell here often?” I asked.

“For the past year,” she said, without looking up.

“So did you know the one who set up after you? At night?”

Now she paused, twisting the paper over the last knish. “I leave at sundown. I don't talk to nobody. Not to those damn blood sellers. Why do you care?”

“Those murders everyone's talking about,” I said, quietly. “I heard they happened here, that's all. I was wondering if you knew how they died.”

She frowned as she handed me the fragrant dumplings. “I told you, I keep my head down. You really want to mess with this, a
maidel
like you? I wouldn't. You know what I saw? I saw one of them dead with rosy cheeks. I saw him breathe his last like a true man.”

“He didn't pop?”

She shook her head, but refused to say anything more. “Take my advice, stay out of this one. You'll live longer and eat more knishes.”

I took a bite of the first: potato, fresh and salty and chewy with yeast and grease. “That would be a good thing,” I agreed.

I walked back to Lily, seemingly frozen in place several feet away. Two boys whistled at her from the back of a truck. Her shoulders went rigid, but she ignored them.

“I hate this place!” Lily said, her voice edging to shrillness.

“Endure,” I said. “Do you want the story or not? Here, have a knish.”

“A what?” Lily said, taking the greasy paper like it might bite.

“Try it,” I said. “Guaranteed to delight.”

I relayed my conversation with the woman while Lily took steady, dainty bites from her onion knish. She looked like she enjoyed it, but I pretended not to notice.

“We have
got
to get into the morgue!” she said, when I finished. “What in blazes is Walker trying to keep from us, anyway? If they didn't pop…” She frowned, opened her mouth, and then closed it without saying anything.

“What?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing. It's crazy.”

“So are these murders. Tell me.”

She sighed. “I had a thought … what if the vampires didn't pop because they didn't die as vampires? What if whatever was in the Faust turned them
human
?”

I stared. “It's impossible.”

“I know,” she said, but I was remembering what the knish vendor had said:
breathe his last like a true man
. What if something
could
cure vampirism? Even if only for a moment? Even if it were deadly? The power of such a serum would be incalculable.

Lily and I maintained a contemplative silence on the way to Broome Street. I didn't think it was a particularly far walk, but she insisted on a taxi with a sniff that indicated what she thought of people who had to walk everywhere. Before she hailed it, I dashed a block ahead, to check on Ysabel's Blood Bank. It was dark and shuttered, to my disappointment but not to my surprise. There was a sign on the door in Yiddish, English, and German, tersely explaining that the Bank would be closed for the next week. I sighed. I hoped Saul was okay.

The address on Broome Street did indeed correspond to the newly reopened Beast's Rum. Lily took one look at the laughing vampires spilling out the doorway and crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest.

“
That's
where you spent so much time this January?” she said. “I'm surprised you're still alive.”

“So am I. You won't go inside?”

“Those suckers would bite me to say hello!”

“Not even for the sake of a story?” I asked, just to tease her.

She shuddered. “There are limits, Zephyr Hollis.”

I patted her on her shoulder. “Wait here. If I look in danger of expiry, do not hesitate to call the appropriate authorities.”

Lily raised an uncertain eyebrow and I grinned before sauntering into the maw of the Beast's. I wasn't terribly nervous, but I did make sure to keep my knife in my pocket. My interactions at the Beast's Rum had never been particularly safe, but they had been manageable. The vampires at the door stopped their conversation to stare at me, but they let me through. I didn't bother to ask them any questions; if I could find Nicholas here, then he would do nicely. If not, the person most likely to have information would be behind the bar.

Inside was as dark as I remembered, though Faust's signature smell of cloying rot seemed to have impregnated the floorboards. At the time of my visits in January, the Beast's Rum had been a true blind pig, slinging illegal hooch to humans and vampires willing to dare the risks. The Faust had been an afterthought, a new taste brought in by Rinaldo's entrepreneurial gang. Now the Rum had been reborn as an entirely aboveboard establishment, serving licensed Faust to a strictly sucker clientele.

There were fewer than a dozen people inside, all male, having somber, low-voiced conversations. A few puffed slowly on cheap cigarettes while drinking a thick, dark beverage. I didn't recognize Nicholas or Charlie, the two Turn Boys of my personal acquaintance. Everyone here had been turned well into adulthood. Their eyes followed me as I walked in, but no one said anything. The Faust here seemed to have given them a strange lassitude, quite different from the caricatures of Faust-mad vampires so common in the papers. The bar looked mostly the same, except that the back room where I had tutored Nicholas had been replaced with a small performing stage. I had a hard time imagining a vampire cabaret in a dive like this, but this was New York City.

I walked to the bar and sat gingerly on one of the cracked leather stools. I recognized the bartender—a favorite of Nicholas and the Turn Boys. Bruno must have recognized me as well, because he nodded before turning to the sucker who had walked up beside me.

“What'll it be?” Bruno asked.

“Devil's Advocate.” The vampire plunked a half-dollar on the table. This struck me as a little steep, and I watched in fascination as Bruno pulled out a bottle of Faust and two smaller bags of blood. They didn't look like the standard-issue bags from charity Blood Banks, which probably meant the mob. Not Rinaldo's obviously, but perhaps someone else had quickly taken his place. Bruno poured blood from one bag in first, then layered in the Faust and topped it off with the other. A much fancier operation than what I had witnessed with Aileen back at that speakeasy Sunday night. A possible source for a killing taint?

“That's the last of the O,” Bruno said, sliding the glass across.

“The show still on for tonight?” the vampire said, taking a sip.

Bruno looked at the stage and shook his head. “I haven't heard,” he said. “Doubt it, though.”

Bruno leaned forward, his elbows resting against the edge of the bar, close enough for me to have a very good view of the almost scale-like scars that marked the right side of his face. Bruno was human, but none of the vampires here seemed to fault him for it.

“I don't think you'll like what I'm serving,” he said to me.

“I have a question,” I said.

“You did the last time you showed up in this joint.”

The twist of his mouth said clearly:
and look what happened then.
I tried to look confident and unthreatening, which mostly meant an uncertain smile.

“Did some vampires die here last night?”

“Could have.”

“Brave bunch you're serving this afternoon.”

He shrugged. “These bottles are from an old crate we ordered months ago. As safe as anything in the city, and anyway, times like these a man needs a drink.”

“Even when it kills him?”

“Everything kills you eventually.”

“The ones that died, did they pop?”

“You ask more questions than the cops. They just wanted the bottle.”

“Did they get it?”

He straightened. “Disappeared,” he said with the flicker of a smile. “Cops took away the bodies. Poor old Kevin.”

I realized that he had answered my question. No one would ever confuse poppers with bodies.

“What's the show?” I asked, nodding at the stage.

Bruno gave me a long look. “Dancing girls,” he said, finally. “But mostly people come for the singer.”

“And who's that?”

“Never comes on stage,” he said. “Just an angelic voice with a piano.”

He said this deliberately, but even without that cue I would have realized the significance of his description. Nicholas's father had turned him at the age of thirteen in order to preserve his perfect young boy's soprano. Nicholas had never fully recovered—even after the initial, lengthy period of madness after awakening. He was prone to strange mental attacks and in general seemed to lack a functioning conscience. I didn't know if the mayor truly realized how dangerous the request he had made of me would be. But like he said, I could take care of myself.

“I'll be back,” I said, and hurried outside. Lily was waiting across the street in front of a bakery.

“Well?” she said, when I approached her.

“Curiouser and curiouser.” I plucked her reporter's notebook from her hand and ripped out a page.

“Zephyr, what—”

“You have a pen?”

Lily handed it to me. I uncapped it, considered, and then wrote a few judicious words. Kept it simple, since I knew that my intended recipient wasn't terribly good with his letters.

NICK, CHARITY DO-GOOD WANTS TO TALK

Reasonably safe, I decided. If he was really singing in the Rum, he'd get the message. If not, no harm done. Nicholas might not be the most savory of my vampiric connections, but given that I'd saved his life this past January, I had reason to believe myself fairly safe from him. Even in his less stable moods.

I took the message inside and handed it to Bruno. “For the singer,” I said.

He slid it inside his pocket, which was all the acknowledgment I could ask for.

*   *   *

Lily took a cab back to her offices while I walked the few blocks home. I had promised to let her know if Nicholas got in touch, or if I learned anything more about the deaths that had taken place at the Beast's Rum. Lily wondered if the mayor's office (or, at the least, Judith Brandon) might not have something official to say about them soon. In which case she would want to be near the newspaper's phones.

For my part, though I had not seen my hateful officers since early yesterday, I had hardly forgotten their dedication to uncovering my crimes. As soon as Nicholas contacted me, I would send him to the mayor and make sure Beau Jimmy knew I had done so. I just hoped Nicholas didn't take too long—the mayor's dinner on Saturday was just three days away.

In the meantime, I didn't know if McConnell and Zuckerman's silence should worry or reassure me. Maybe they couldn't actually find any hard evidence of my connection with Judah? Maybe they'd only been trying to frighten me into incriminating myself? In that case, I might be able to dispense with the mayor's charade entirely. But how could I be sure? They still had my bicycle, but that seemed a small price to pay for never seeing their faces again.

Ludlow Street stank in the summer, and despite Mrs. Brodsky's best efforts, there wasn't much she could do about it. Less conscientious tenement owners and residents tossed their offal into the streets when the pipes proved intractable (often), and refuse when the garbage bins overflowed (daily). Among the dubious benefits of winter was that these presents did not smell. But in the high heat of summer, I pitied the children playing so blithely among pools of stagnant water and hunting for treasures in the piles of trash. I couldn't stop them. I'd learned that quickly enough. I'd learned to ignore them, though what that said about me I wasn't sure I wanted to know. A few summers ago I'd heard a rumor that a poor girl in a tenement on Orchard Street had been dared by some heartless friends into drinking the stagnant sewer water. She'd died in agony just a few days later. I shook my head: and here I was, worrying about
Faust
?

But I couldn't ignore a problem that I'd helped to create.

At first I thought some of the boys from the neighborhood were sitting on Mrs. Brodsky's immaculate steps, but as I came closer I recognized Kardal and Aileen. They were playing a board game, so engrossed that they didn't seem to have seen me at all. Kardal was at his most human, though still an unusual sight in this neighborhood: dark brown skin, finely embroidered clothes that looked like they belonged to another century, and perhaps another continent. Even Aileen looked a little wild. Her hair hung in lank strips, as though she hadn't washed or combed it for days. She wore a dress I'd most often seen her sleep in, though I supposed it met the basic requirements of modesty. Kardal moved a piece across the board—inlaid lapis lazuli and ivory, as far as I could tell, with pieces of jade. Aileen cursed good-naturedly. To my shock, Kardal smiled.