Hell Gate

by Jeff Dawson

  Delgado shook his hand and introduced Finch. The man was drunk to the verge of slurring his words. Delgado sat him down in one of the rear chairs. He clearly needed Delgado’s assistance with some private matter he wished to discuss. To Finch’s embarrassment – and Delgado’s extreme irritation – he entered into a whispered conversation, from which Finch could merely discern Delgado’s protest that he ‘wasn’t in that line of work any more’.

  Poor Delgado, thought Finch. All he wanted to do was watch the fight. He was like a kid at Christmas. He tried to save his host by distracting White with a remark about the beauty of the building.

  ‘I say, you’re from England,’ White garbled. ‘New in town?’

  ‘Arrived today.’

  ‘Then, dearest fellow, you’ll have come in on the Baltic…’

  The third round was about to begin. This time it was Delgado who jumped in.

  ‘Really, Stanford, can’t you just let our guest enjoy the show?’

  Back in the ring, Johnson clearly had the measure of his opponent but wanted, or felt obliged, to put on a performance. He let Jeffords push him back on the ropes and took a defensive stance, gloves over face, forearms over ribs, letting the other man pummel away at his midriff, burning himself out in the process.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Stanford. Not here!’

  Finch spun round. To Delgado’s exasperation, White had rolled up his sleeve. On his lap was a leather wallet which he had opened to reveal a syringe and a vial of liquid.

  ‘Sorry, old friend. I thought, you know… us boys up here together.’

  ‘Damnit! What the hell in tarnation…?!’

  There was a spot of blood on White’s forearm, a strap around his bicep. It was too late. He slumped back into his own personal bliss.

  Finch’s medical instincts got the better of him. He checked his pupils, his pulse.

  ‘He’s in the equivalent of a heavily sedated state. Best thing is to just make him comfortable.’

  He loosened White’s bow tie, the upper studs of the shirt, and eased some room in the cummerbund. Delgado zipped up the syringe and vial in the leather wallet and stowed it in his own pocket.

  ‘Hopefully they’ll just think he’s drunk,’ he said.

  Delgado, clearly irked at having his evening’s enjoyment compromised, made up for lost ground by turning back and bellowing some boxing combinations – not that Johnson’s corner could hear, or would be remotely interested in following them.

  Meanwhile Johnson did his own thing and placed his left fist on Jefford’s forehead, keeping him at arm’s length, causing his adversary to swing away wildly. As he did so, Johnson whirled his right arm like a windmill, signalling that he had complete control, sending the crowd into rapture.

  Finch went back to scanning with his binoculars, keen for another look at the strange and exotic Teetonka. He panned along and found him again…

  Only this time, Teetonka was staring through binoculars right back at him.

  As their gazes locked, he felt a visceral chill.

  ‘Delgado, I think we should…’

  There was another knock at the door – an usher in a braided uniform, bearing an envelope, a crisp vellum. Delgado tipped the man, screening White as best he could, and he left.

  He opened it. There was a card inside. Finch stood over his shoulder while they read…

  Dear Gentlemen,

  It is with revulsion that I learn of the unfortunate incident today at the New Netherland Hotel. By way of consolation, it would be my pleasure to host your joint company at my establishment, the Bierkeller, following the conclusion of tonight’s entertainment. A driver is at your disposal.

  Yours sincerely,

  Manfred Muller

  The boxers came out for round four. They turned back to watch. There was a steely determination on Johnson’s face now, like he’d put on enough of a show.

  ‘Muller’s got some cojones, I’ll give him that,’ growled Delgado.

  Finch lit himself a Navy Cut.

  ‘We can’t possibly go along, can we?’

  ‘It’s a smart place, an after-hours club,’ said Delgado. ‘Over in Yorkville – actually not far from where the Slocum went down. There’s a new German quarter springing up there. Sort of like a place of pilgrimage. A lot of the bodies were never recovered… Right across from the Hell Gate.’

  ‘Hell Gate?’

  ‘Look out on the East River and it’s as calm as can be, like you could skim a stone to the opposite shore. But there’s a confluence of tides and currents swirling underneath – the Atlantic, Long Island Sound and the Harlem River all beatin’ the crap out of each other, like these fellas here… A great big whirlpool just waiting to suck the innocent down. I can think of no better metaphor for this crazy, goddamned city.’

  Johnson was straight into Jeffords now. It was like the first three rounds counted for nothing.

  ‘You think we should go then… to Muller’s club?’

  ‘I mean, why not?’ Delgado added. ‘Getting up close and personal with the opposition could score some prize intelligence.’

  He quoted Sun Tzu, The Art of War: ‘Know your enemy.’

  Finch shrugged. He was unsure.

  ‘And I’m betting you already got sanction from MO3 to go where the night takes you, right?’

  Finch didn’t need to answer.

  ‘Plus,’ he assured, ‘I got my guys shadowing us. We’ll be safe.’

  The crowd roared. Johnson was like lightning. Left-right, left-right, left-right… Jeffords wobbled, his legs buckled and he was on the canvas. The referee over-exaggeratedly waved the count down. But there was no getting up. The place went wild.

  Delgado clapped Finch on the back.

  ‘Things, my friend, have just taken an interesting turn.’

  As they got up to leave there was a faint moan – Stanford White.

  ‘Fuck ’im,’ said Delgado. ‘They’ll find him soon enough.’

  As they stepped round White, an arm reached up, caught Finch’s lapel and pulled him in close.

  ‘The occult,’ White groaned. ‘Beware the occult.’

  Delgado prised off his hand. He rolled his eyes.

  White slumped back.

  ‘Goodnight, Stanford.’

  Chapter 10

  They were met by the maître d’ who ushered them personally to a private booth near the dance floor.

  ‘You know, Mr Collins, I gotta hang out with you more often,’ Delgado jested.

  The band, a collection of black musicians in purple sequinned tail coats, played with fury and passion, the piano leading the brass through the quickstep of the fashionable new ragtime repertoire.

  ‘It’s all the rage,’ Delgado explained. ‘Comes out of New Orleans originally. Sheet music’s flying out of Tin Pan Alley. “Jass”, they’re calling it.’

  The Bierkeller was dark and smoky, illuminated by the dim red lamps on the cabaret tables. It was also crammed, not just with post-fight partygoers, but the cream, apparently, of the social scene, puffing furiously on cigars and chugging back flutes of champagne or with their noses in brandy bowls.

  There had been a box of Romeo y Julieta waiting for them on their table. Delgado clipped them both a pungent Corona, then lit up.

  ‘Gotta be some perks to running Cuba, right?’

  The taste was strong, the exhalation yielding big blue clouds. If you did so without sufficient thrust, Finch discovered, the smoke crawled up and made your eyes water.

  Delgado picked out a few of the ‘nobs’ and ‘swells’ for Finch’s delectation. Some Finch had heard of. There were others – Billy Murray, the singer, or Honus Wagner, the baseball player – over whom Delgado enthused, but their names meant nothing to him.

  ‘Okay, then try this guy for size,’ said Delgado.

  He singled from the sea of tuxedos and moustaches a man in his sixties being feted and glad-handed.

  ‘Clubber Williams.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘For
merly Inspector Alexander Williams of the NYPD. The “Tsar of the Tenderloin”, as some called him – and some still do. Made it his personal beat… a bit too personal.’

  ‘Why “Clubber”?’

  ‘You know what he said, when he was accused of using excessive force against perpetrators one time…?’

  He affected a preaching tone.

  ‘“There is more law at the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court…”’

  Finch laughed.

  ‘Name kinda stuck… Actually, he did some good, clamped right down on the gangs, the Gas House Gang in particular – mean bastards – but got rumbled in a corruption scandal, as they nearly always do…’

  He sighed to himself.

  ‘Temptation, she’s a lady who’s hard to resist.’

  There was a man with a beard leaning over Williams, simultaneously summoning a waitress for more drinks.

  ‘Who’s that bending his ear?’

  Delgado snorted a certain amount of disdain.

  ‘Name’s Trump – Frederick Trump. Bavarian by origin. Supposedly made all his dough in the Klondike Gold Rush. Or so he says. Others claim it was through the brothels he ran there. More money than sense. And I’m talking very little sense indeed.’

  Finch’s cigar went out. He relit it.

  ‘You see what we’re up against, Mr Collins. We got senior police officials here, members of the Mayor’s staff, influential dignitaries – all in the pocket of organized crime, no matter how much they may kid themselves that they’re not.’

  Delgado blew out a big fat smoke ring and watched it rise.

  ‘You see him,’ he nodded, discreetly. ‘Him too… and him over there, the one with the red hair… at the bar?’

  Finch nodded.

  ‘More famous names?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘My guys. NBI. There if we need ’em.’

  Finch understood. He drank it all in. The musicians, behind their stands, were working up a head of steam. Some women had dragged their reluctant menfolk onto the dance floor. None seemed versed in the art of dancing to this sort of music, instinctively clinging to their partners when the beat suggested they would be better off letting go.

  ‘And Stanford White. Is he part of this scene?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Delgado. ‘When he can stand. The man likes a party, all right. Likes to err on the side of decadence, shall we put it?’

  Delgado leaned in.

  ‘You know, at his house, it’s claimed, he has some kind of “love dungeon”. Has this red velvet swing suspended from the ceiling that his lady friends are pushed back and forth in… without their undergarments… All sorts of erotic “paraphernalia”, if you get the picture.’

  He elbowed Finch knowingly.

  ‘Mind you, I think he likes to start those rumours himself.’

  He waved at someone across the way, trying to attract attention.

  ‘What he said as we left…’ asked Finch. ‘What did he mean by “the occult”?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Delgado. ‘Lotta mumbo jumbo. For a smart fellow, he can be apt to spout nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, this guy’s the smartest… Off the scale – I mean, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Nikola Tesla smart. But he’s gonna self-destruct, I tell you. Heroin’s only one part of it. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if people like him are partaking of that shit then we got something on our hands, a drug that doesn’t discriminate… rich… poor. And taking down rich folks is a hell of a lot more difficult, let me tell you. Makes it a lot harder to wage war on it altogether.’

  A woman in an evening dress sashayed over. It was silver in colour but dark, like aged metal. She was bearing an ice bucket of champagne. Finch looked up and caught her eye. She was tall, slender, had deep blue eyes beneath well-defined brows and hair that was a shade short of full-on blonde. It was done up in a chignon with a peacock feather sprouting from it, her swan-like neck adorned with more silver. A cluster of diamonds hung from each ear. Below a slender nose was a Cupid’s bow of an upper lip, rouged to a deep blackcurrant red.

  She set the bucket down, her hands clad in elbow-length velvet gloves. The champagne came in a golden bottle, Cristal.

  ‘Compliments of Mr Muller,’ she said, with the slightest of German accents, though without conveying much expression.

  Finch knew her right away. She had been the woman in Muller’s box at Madison Square Garden, part of his entourage. Indeed, when he looked back over he could see Muller now in a booth on the far side. The man was raising a glass in their direction.

  ‘Tell Mr Muller we are both most appreciative and eager to make his acquaintance,’ said Delgado, trying to strike the balance between gratitude and professional scepticism.

  She gave the sense that she would convey the remark without saying so, then popped the cork and poured two glasses. Delgado lifted his to Muller in return in a perfunctory fashion. Muller nodded and turned back to his company.

  Finch, meanwhile, couldn’t tear his gaze from the woman and felt embarrassed when her eyes caught his.

  She said it pertinently.

  ‘Will that be all?’

  ‘Yes,’ he flustered. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The menu,’ she added. ‘Anything you want. It’s on the house.’

  Then she slunk away with Finch’s eyes glued to the light dusting of freckles on her shoulders before drifting south.

  Delgado chuckled and clapped him on the back.

  ‘See sumpin’ you like, buddy?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just… It’s been…’

  ‘A long day…? Or a long while…?’

  Finch smiled. They clinked glasses. Finch was not normally one for champagne. He felt it was a drink you ought to partake of without necessarily enjoying – oft served too warm, and usually at some occasion you’d rather not be at. But this, he could tell, was of excellent quality. Ironic, he thought, that Cristal should have been created for Alexander II, the old Russian Tsar – an assassinated Tsar – one blown up with a bomb.

  ‘You married, Mr Collins?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You ever been married?’

  ‘“No” to that too.’

  Delgado gave him a light mock punch to the shoulder.

  ‘Listen, I can tell by that puppy-dog look you were admiring the lady, not her dress. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This is the 1900s. Some of the best spies bat for the away team, if you get my drift.’

  ‘They also have a habit of being compromised, Mr Delgado.’

  ‘True.’

  The band leader introduced the next song, ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, by a new composer, Scott Joplin. The piano player cracked his knuckles and took a turn in the spotlight.

  ‘And you?’ asked Finch.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Married?’

  Delgado laughed again.

  ‘So my wife likes to remind me.’

  He nodded at the woman, disappearing now into the crowd.

  ‘Well, I guess you already figured…’

  ‘Muller’s girl?’

  ‘Yep. And strictly verboten… Name’s Katia. Beautiful, no doubt. But a real ice maiden. She and Muller been together now two, three years. There’s a fair bet she knows where all the bodies are buried.’

  Finch wrinkled his brow.

  ‘Figure of speech, Mr Collins. Though, in Muller’s case, probably a little more literal than for most.’

  The ivory-tinkler was whipping up a hell of a storm. He seemed to have an extra set of fingers. But he was cut off in his prime, drowned out by a sudden cheer that began at the back of the room and swelled forward.

  Heads were turning. There, at the entrance, stood Jack Johnson himself. The spotlight swung over. Even in his civilian clothes he cut an impressive figure. He was huge, broad… and, save for a piece of surgical plaster over his left eye, looked like he’d done nothing more energetic than ingest a late breakfast.

  He strode in like r
oyalty with an expensive-looking fur coat draped over his shoulder, a flash of gold on his fingers and teeth, and – Finch imagined for outrage as much as theatrics – a scantily clad white woman on each arm.

  ‘You know, I want to ask you something, Mr Delgado.’

  The NBI man was on his feet too, clapping away.

  He sat back down.

  ‘Please, Freddie…’

  ‘Okay, Freddie… The Germans… German–Americans. I’m curious. Ever since unification, since Bismarck, a huge part of their nationalist tendency, fostered by the Prussian elite, has been founded on the notion of a racial purity – “Aryanism” for want of a better word… You must have heard the expression.’

  ‘I have.’

  Finch waved an arm around, indicating all that was before them.

  ‘And yet here we are, at Muller’s behest, communing to laud a coloured fighter… and with a black orchestra over there keeping the party stoked. I don’t understand.’

  Delgado sighed.

  ‘You want me to get into racial politics? It’s complicated enough in these here United States without adding an international dimension. It’s only 40 years since we did away with slavery, Mr Collins – a blink of an eye. You got to remember that. The South’s still run by segregationists. You know, the Jim Crow Laws… They got the Klan on the loose, lynchin’ black folk from trees with impunity…’

  He sipped his drink.

  ‘And even here in the North… Yeah, we pat ourselves on the back for our supposed enlightened thinking, but we still self-partition, even if it’s not decreed by statute. You go to Harlem – Hell, you go to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Little Italy, Chinatown, Spanish Harlem – whole o’ damned New York’s compartmentalized… Split up into fiefdoms – negroes, guineas, chinks, spicks, micks, not my choice of words, just using the vernacular. It’s why the mobs are so strong, fostering the tensions, offering protection, encouraging a partisan loyalty.’

  Finch recalled his time in the Cape and its absurd racial codifications – of the blacks there who had been the biggest casualties of all in that strange white man’s war. He remembered the extraordinary bushmen he’d encountered who’d trekked across the desert. He thought of Mbutu, the Basuto, whose heroism matched that of any Tommy with a medal – not, he conceded, that he’d appreciated it at the time.