The Midnight Band of Mercy

by Michael Blaine

  On his walk uptown, Max couldn’t help noticing every cat he passed. They lounged on stoops, slipped in between ashcans and under delivery wagons, they sunned themselves next to pushcarts and raced in between the children who flooded the sidewalks. A healthy striped tabby nosed at a horse, bloated and dead at the curb. Nearby, two barefoot girls rolled a hoop back and forth. But the cats he observed showed no signs of wasting away. On the contrary, they looked healthier than some of the hollow-eyed men who stood in clusters in front of lodging houses, in doorways and on the steps of open cellars, men who occasionally sidled up to Max and whispered, “Got some coin?”

  Were there more of these panhandlers now than last year? It seemed that way, but they were so quiet and furtive that it was hard to tell. And when you were hustling until your tongue fell out, like Max, the tramps became a damned nuisance.

  Sergeant Morris, it turned out, was more than happy to relate his tale. Max’s racing pencil could barely keep up with the policeman.

  A middle-aged man who had risen to his position after a long career, Morris had a mottled complexion and a spider’s web of exploded veins in his fleshy nose. “Right down the block, on the steps. Sammy, the doorman, this mornin’ on his way in to work, he found ‘em. Then there was the fairy from Proctor’s, he paints those drapes, the whatayoucallems….”

  “Scenery?”

  “Yeah, the sign painter. He found a bunch in front of his place on West 25th.” He looked down at his ledger. “In front of Fifty-One West Twenty-Fifth. Eight, he says. Then the janitor from next door walks in and says they’re stinkin’ up the street. Well, I says, what do I look like, the bleedin’ Health Department? If we catch the lunatic’s pullin’ this shit, he’ll get what’s comin’ to him. What’d a cat ever do to nobody?”

  “Did they look sick?”

  “How the hell do I know? Why don’t you get your damn newspaper to make a stink, ‘cause makin’ a stink’s the only thing’s gonna stop the crank pullin this shit.”

  “Somebody’s on a rampage, huh?”

  “We never had this many before. It’s a record for the precinct.”

  “You mean this isn’t the first time?”

  “Well, last June there was some, but we figured people was goin’ away for the summer, they was getting’ rid of their pets. Or maybe some of Schwab’s boys were having a picnic. But this is out of hand. The people are gettin’ nervous.”

  “What would Schwab have to do with it?” Was Morris talking about Schwab’s saloon on East First where those blowhard anarchists wasted their time? East First was nowhere near the 19th, and cops usually confined their thinking to the boundaries of their fiefdoms.

  Max, who had been surprised by Morris’s fury, watched as a sleek and well-fed black cat rubbed up against the sergeant’s leg. Leaning down, the cop gently stroked the animal’s head and was rewarded with a satisfied purr. “This one’s called Nig. He been with us since before I got to the 19th.”

  “Schwab the Red?” Max asked.

  A woman in a shapeless housedress interrupted them. Bits of straw stuck out of her lank hair. A swarm of bleary children clung to her hem and ran squealing around her. “C’n we stay the night again, Sergeant?”

  “Get here early, mind you,” Morris replied, patting a small boy absendy on the head. “Ahh, where’d they go if it weren’t for the station house? Anyway, this is how I figure it. The Reds don’t necessarily have to do the big job to nobody. What they want is to get everybody nervous all the time.

  They do all kinds of little things, maybe murdering a few cats, they get everybody lookin sideways. Then later, when they’re stronger, they start throwing the bombs. Like that crank they arrested who was threatening Mayor Gilroy.”

  Morris’s theory sounded about as far-fetched as Famous O’Leary’s tall, ghosdy catnapper.

  “What was the address of that scenery painter?”

  “He calls himself Cristofaro. John Cristofaro. They’re bringing guineas over to paint our pictures now.”

  The artist, who was under pressure to finish a turreted castle for the Offenbach opera at Proctor’s, said, “Can we talk and walk? I’m so far behind with the new flats, they might as well shoot me now.”

  A light drizzle began to fall.

  Cristofaro went on. “You’d think the city would show some consideration. We’re trying to live in this …” stalking along the sidewalk, he groped for a word. “Oh, I don’t know what to call it! You don’t find eight animals in a row like that unless somebody’s using poison.”

  “Lined up in a row?”

  “Yeah. Heads this way, tails that way.”

  “Did they look sick or healthy?”

  Cristofaro gave Max the fish-eye. “I didn’t have my stethoscope on me. This is the third time, too!”

  “The third time?”

  Falling harder, the rain splashed over the Proctor Theatre’s low tile roof. Before Max could pursue the cat matter further, Cristofaro hurried past the box office and disappeared into a side entrance. At least the artist had corroborated Morris’s report.

  Now he’d have to canvass Waverly Place.

  Starting from the middle of the block, he began working his way east, knocking on one door after another. At the third house, he found a distraught Mrs. Winston McCall, a woman whose treasured Angora had turned up in a mound of dead cats in Grove Street Park. He kept his excitement to himself, but clearly the phenomenon was spreading.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” said the widow, who, though restrained, was clearly in deep distress. “When a pet dies, one goes into mourning just as if a close relative had passed on.”

  “I do understand,” Max assured her. In fact, he couldn’t fathom how a person could mourn an animal. Maybe Mrs. McCall was a little touched. Still, he was moved by the quaver in her voice.

  “They ought to arrest the monster who is doing this!” she added with sudden ferocity. “They should hang him from a tree!” With that, Mrs. McCall slammed the door in Max’s face.

  Back at the office, he began fooling with leads.

  “Death is stalking the cats of the Tenderloin,” he wrote, and then he quoted Sergeant Morris and Cristofaro, the scene painter. He took this tack because Stan Parnell was partial to headlines involving the Tenderloin. If the metro editor thought the murders might have a salacious angle, all the better. Then he worked his way back to the massacres at Waverly Place and Grove Street Park, the latter confirmed by the local precinct, and closed with Mrs. McCall’s cry for vengeance. Best of all, he kept it to six grafs. No point in overreaching.

  He waited for the right moment to approach Parnell, who reigned from his platform—the “throne,” the reporters called it. Blocking Max’s way, William Walter Scott, the portly theatre critic, was monopolizing the city editor just because he was eminent enough to do so.

  Another stringer, Billy Webster, stood right behind Max, fingering his own story. “Look at Scottie up there. He’s licking the cream off his lips. He’s just like Croker. Every day he’s working for his pocket,” Billy added in a low whisper. “The producers, the press agents, they’re crawling all over him. You think he lives on what Bennett doles out?”

  Billy knew the score. Did Lily Langtry’s press agent want to see her name in the paper more often? Did Tony Pastor need a plug for his latest attraction, the English ventriloquist with the Cockney automaton? Who could help them more than William Walter Scott?

  With a little luck, a reporter could find himself perfectly situated.

  Finally, Scott hauled himself down from the throne and brushed by Max without a word. Max leaped onto the platform before anyone else could cut in and thrust his copy into Parnell’s hands.

  Parnell started scanning the copy. A rail-thin man of indeterminate age, he read without moving a muscle—until he found something he didn’t like. Then he jabbed his sharpened pencil straight into the page. Max felt every stab.

  Raising his colorless gaze, Parnell spoke. “Don’t ever mention an epidem
ic unless the Health Department says so.”

  “It was the cop who said—”

  Parnell cut him off. “Where’d he study medicine? The Health Department. Period.” Flinching, Max waited to be dismissed, his copy tossed into Parnell’s wastebasket. Instead, the editor offered him a lipless smile. “The whole city’s on hairsprings. They think there’s an anarchist under every mattress. The Herald ought to catch this crank in the act. Now, that would give circulation a shot in the arm.”

  Max plunged in. “I could stake out the locations.”

  Parnell didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. He simply raised his eyebrows. “Copy boy!” he shouted and Max, seeing his article sanctioned and sent off to the printers, experienced that ancient thrill. His words would see the light.

  chapter four

  At six the next morning, Max sat in City Hall Park reading and rereading his story. Bench-sitters were rubbing their eyes after a restless night on the boards. A man nearby was setting up shop for the day. His sign read “I CAN EAT ONE HUNDRED EGGS IN ONE HUNDRED MINUTES!” Ten-year-old girls, the hot corn vendors, were taking their stations. A sidewalk salesman was offering the latest craze, rubber masks fashioned to look like cartoonish New Yorkers—Bowery b’hoys, muttonchopped businessmen, dark-haired dagos, a mab with a red gob of a mouth. Newsboys filtered through the park, hawking the day’s papers freshly printed directly across the way on Newspaper Row. Above, the first light of day reflected off the World’s gilded dome.

  Max’s article had made page six, sandwiched in between accounts of an assault at the Hotel Viano and the Right Reverend Bishop Potter’s shocking stipulation that he be buried in a wicker coffin.

  DEATH STALKS MANHATTAN’S CATS

  Carnage in the Tenderloin

  Residents of Waverly Place Weary of

  Dodging the Silent Slain at Their Doors

  Piles of dead cats are turning up with remarkable regularity in widely separated sites around town. Sgt. Morris of the Tenderloin has been flooded with complaints of catricide in the 19th precinct. John Cristofaro, a Proctor’s scene painter who resides at Fifty-One West Twenty-Fifth Street, observed eight of the slain felines lined up in a row in front of his house.

  In the Sixth Precinct, Officer Schreiber reports that ten dead cats, at least two owned by Waverly Place residents, appeared on the sidewalk yesterday morning. Grove Street Park has also been the location of a great cat massacre.

  Yesterday morning, dead cats lay deep on the sidewalk before 176 Waverly Place, and when Mrs. Jabonne, who lives over that way, discovered the slaughter, she found her own beloved pet among the victims. A Waverly Place widow, Mrs. McCall, who also lost her feline friend, said, “They ought to arrest the monster who is doing this! They should hang him from a tree!”

  While it may be well that the halt, the lame, and the blind in the cat kingdom should be put out of their misery, some of the victims appeared to be in fine health. At any rate, citizens who live in the vicinity of these assassinations have deeply rooted objections to picking their way through the slain which lie stark and still before their doors at dawn.

  Satisfied, he marched west to the Rector Street stop on the El. It was only six-twenty. He had plenty of time to get back to Mrs. DeVogt’s and lay down his article as casually as possible on the breakfast table. He knew he had serious competition for Gretta’s attentions—she had been dating a swell named Martin Mourtone—but at the moment his confidence was surging.

  Max had first met Martin Mourtone when the toff picked Gretta up in his glassed landau. The chattering dandy had tried to convince him that he knew every blind pig and opium den in town.

  “Slummer-dummer,” Danny observed when the couple had departed.

  “Knows all about the tongs in Chinatown, no less,” Max had laughed. Police Superintendent Byrnes himself couldn’t decipher the latest tong warfare.

  Mourtone also turned up at the Hoffman House bar where Max delivered his weekly loan payment to Sim Addem. The Italian Renaissance Hoffman House, on Broadway between 24th and 25th Streets, acted as the inner sanctum, the unofficial Democratic Party headquarters, as well as the watering hole of well-off sportsmen, businessmen, and the theatre crowd. When he had an extra dollar or two, Max would meet Danny there to watch the dignitaries on display.

  Uninvited, Mourtone slid over and took a sip of his brandy while Max settled with Sim, who was building his pile to finance a run for alderman. After Max paid him, he allowed the young reporter to buy him a drink. Then he turned around and fit the small of his back into the bar. Max followed suit, and a moment later Mourtone did as well.

  “That’s what I call a painting,” the horse-headed Sim intoned, pointing to the Hoffman House’s prize possession, Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr. Displayed below a red velvet canopy, the painting’s vast, waxy surface featured a goat-faced satyr being pulled mischievously into the water by four nymphs. “Lookit the way he lit up her rear end,” Sim added with pride.

  “Very accomplished,” Mourtone put in, but Sim ignored him.

  Max felt giddy in the crush of well-heeled men in black silk and beaver toppers, his ears picking up scraps of conversation about Mayor Gilroy and Tammany’s tight-lipped Boss Croker, real estate, watered stock, and Lower East Side bomb throwers. Though he felt like an imposter now, he dreamed that one day he would be able to wander as a matter of course into the Hoffman House. The men pressed against the brass rail would be pleasantly surprised to see him, and the bartender would produce his favorite cocktail. So he didn’t mind running into Martin Mourtone. He imagined that Mourtone might mention to Gretta that he had seen Max there, and she would surmise, however erroneously, that he belonged in that charmed circle.

  Martin bought the next round, teasing a grunt of recognition out of Addem.

  “I was down at Suicide Hall the other night,” Mourtone confided.

  “McGurk’s?” Sim asked, incredulous. Of course Addem knewMcGurk and how he squeezed a nice dollar out of barrel fever. “You touched?”

  “He likes the atmosphere,” Max explained maliciously.

  Addem snorted and knocked back another drink, not even bothering to cover up his contempt. After Sim drained a whiskey and half a beer chaser, he began expounding on the goo-goos’ latest legislation. “So they order from on high, from their friggin thrones, that the age of consent is … Presto! Sixteen. Maybe ten was too young,” he added, referring to the previous law, “but wadda you goin’ to do about human nature? And do they think for one second about takin the bread out of the lady’s mouth?”

  “Reverend Weems gave that sermon last week.” Max noted.

  “Don’t worry, he gets his end wet.” Sim’s long jaw split in a grin.

  Mrs. Jabonne’s thirteen- and fourteen-year-old charges with their unmarked skin and air of innocence flashed through Max’s mind. The subject made him faintly uncomfortable.

  “I got other business, fellas,” Sim said, pushing himself away from the bar.

  “Another for my friend here,” Martin called out before Max could shove off too. “So what do you think of The Century?”

  “What?” Max was determined to down his fresh pilsner and make his getaway.

  “You know. Gilder’s magazine.”

  “Oh, that one. I can take it or leave it.” In fact, he rarely looked into The Century’s genteel pages. Its long sentences on cultural topics put him to sleep, and he didn’t see why they had to throw around French words when plain English would do, but he also worried that he was missing something. Martin was educated and probably worshipped the damn thing.

  To Max’s shock, Mourtone launched into a tirade. “Dead in the water, if you ask me. What city is Gilder living in? I’ve been thinking of starting a magazine that would put in everything Gilder leaves out. Plenty of photographs. Have you seen Gretta’s pictures?”

  “Her portraits?”

  “No, no. Her photos of the streets. Fantastic. The most objective eye you’ve ever seen. She’s not like Riis and the
rest of them. She’s something new.”

  “Really?” He felt envious, regretting that he hadn’t understood Gretta’s work better. Evidently her still features and smooth manners hid accomplishments he hadn’t fathomed.

  Max waited for the usual smutty innuendo, but Mourtone veered off in another direction. “Speed is what I’m looking for. You go out into that street and what do you see? Streetcars, cabs, wagons, elevated trains. Preachers. Cutthroats. Bond salesmen. Pushcarts with last week’s chickens. Chaos. Meanwhile, The Century’s blathering about Carthage.”

  Max couldn’t resist. “You could call it This Instant!”

  “That’s good, that’s good. You see, I need reporters like you.”

  “Your father’s in what?”

  “Insurance. Raising money won’t be a problem,” he added bluntly, before launching into another exposition. Max listened in wonder. How could he have been so wrong about the man? He had ideas, energy. He wasn’t some City College brain blowing smoke in Sachs’s Cafe. Why wouldn’t Gretta care for him?

  Still, Max’s natural skepticism asserted itself. “I’ll take half what they give Harding Davis.”

  “That shallow quiff? You’re worth twice as much!”

  “I always thought so.”

  “By the way, I saw your sister the other night.”

  Immediately, his stomach tightened. Where? What had she been up to this time? “Faye? How’d you meet her?”

  “I ran into Danny Swarms right here, and he dragged me over to Cremone Gardens. No offense, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. What a voice!”

  Christ. Faye in her mask of powder, stomping and bellowing away in front of a two-piece band. Munchie on violin and Crow on viola. They sawed fast and sometimes in tune.

  “She’s got a foghorn all right.” From the first time she stood up on the kitchen table, pressing her fat knees together, she had the voice. As her older brother, he’d wanted to knock her down as fast as possible, but the sound coming out of her, solid, ringing, stunned him like a blow between the eyes.