The Gods of Gotham

by Lyndsay Faye

  It would be a lie to say that I enjoyed hearing it. Or that I didn’t think it worth worrying over. But I couldn’t call myself the smallest bit surprised.

  “And I wonder if you know, Mr. Wilde, just how very far a man can be ruined without being killed. You’ll understand what I mean one day.”

  “I will,” I said. “And I’ll get better and better at this. The policing. I’ll take to it like a bird to air. You’ll see that I will, as I’m not going anyplace.”

  I made my exit.

  The gardens below were strung with glowing orbs of all sizes—hectic fireflies in the bushes and the paper lanterns in the trees and above all the rest, just beginning to flicker, a dusting of powdery stars in the infinite distance. People moving through the shadows laughing, waving fans before faces, spilling drops of champagne on the grass. For some reason, I liked the thought that the three sorts of light touched everyone alike, from the stars to the candles to the lightning bugs. Everyone fading as the daylight gave up the ghost, marked only by silvery edges and the flare of lucifers meeting thin cigars.

  My dream of being a ferryman on the waters of the Hudson, I realized just then, had always been a dream about being somewhere else. Having a little spread on Staten Island or in Brooklyn, doing work that lets a man be out of doors, possess and keep up his own rusting and saltwater-pocked means of livelihood, that’s the sort of thing a barkeep is required to dream about. Property, daylight, countryside. I’d dreamed of that summer when I’d been twelve years old and suddenly happy on the water with the salt in my hair because I’d so often been terribly unhappy since. No other reason. It’s like a pretty picture tacked on the wall of a windowless tenement room. Just a reminder that other lives are different, that maybe you felt peaceable once and could do so again. A tune you write to whistle the daily aches away.

  And I’d been lazy about my mine. Picked a vision I supposed might fit my shape and never bothered to try it on properly. Because I hadn’t chosen New York. People come here, keep coming, thousands upon thousands, miserable crowds thick enough that some feel frightened they’ll bury us, but no one realizes that they’re the fortunate ones. The emigrants decide where they belong. Not what they’ll become or if they’ll succeed, of course, but simply where they are. Geography and will twined into one forward motion.

  Telling Silkie Marsh that I wasn’t going anyplace felt good. As if, for the first time, I’d deliberately chosen something that wasn’t simply drifting with the fairest tide. I’d planted my flag in the ground. And that choice might get me killed sooner or later, if she had anything to say about it, but the stake and the land were mine.

  So I tugged the mask off. It didn’t fit quite right anymore, had been fraying at one edge ever since the riot, and I’ve never been good with a needle. I dropped it at the exit of Niblo’s as I left the manicured lawns and the silhouettes of city dwellers and the countless spheres of light.

  I found George Washington Matsell at his office at the Tombs. Hunched over his stack of parchment, scribbling flash words and their meanings as the bluish sky through the window behind him dulled to black.

  He didn’t look hangdog over the riot, or even very tired. That almost annoyed me. I could feel collapse vibrating hard and relentless behind my eyelids, having run myself so ragged. But then I grasped that he was writing the lexicon to understand better. Remembered that the chief had already passed through a score of riots, and watched half of lower Manhattan burn down to a sad set of statistics not two months back, when he’d been a justice and the police hadn’t existed.

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing here,” he said without bothering to look at me, “when I wanted you here in August?”

  “Today’s September. The first, I think,” I said absently, marveling. “You’re right, I never noticed.”

  “Then maybe you noticed that my mood isn’t very good. Did you notice that I’ve over thirty men in lockdown, and eight copper stars at the New York Hospital? Or that the Five Points is one giant sea of broken window glass? I wonder if you’ll notice when I sack you in a moment, no matter who your brother happens to be.”

  “It’s over, Chief. We’re through with this business. I’ve fixed it.”

  Chief Matsell glanced up in considerable surprise. He traced his jowls with his fingertips, arms snug over his enormous blue waistcoat, taking my measure. Searching my face like the front page of a newspaper. Then he read me, and he smiled.

  “You worked it all out, back to front?”

  “Everything.”

  “And you found the culprit?”

  “Two and a half. There were two and a half culprits.”

  He blinked, grizzled brows twisting like caterpillars. “Twenty-one victims in all, yes? No recent bad news?”

  “Right.”

  “How many arrests?”

  “None.”

  “Mr. Wilde,” he said, leaning forward and lacing his fat fingers together over his lexicon, “you’re generally better at talking. I suggest you regain your eloquence. Now.”

  So I told him everything.

  Well, most things. Parts I couldn’t look in the eye myself just yet, and those ones I left out. Mercy having saved her own life, wet and still and blue on the floor of her bedchamber. Dr. Palsgrave feeling so ashamed he’d put a corpse in a trash bin that he could scarce speak without his heart faltering.

  How loose I’d tied those knots. How very, very poorly I’d fastened the reverend to a chair.

  When I came to the end, the chief sat back. Put the gentle feathered end of his quill against his lower lip. Thought it over for a while.

  “You are certain that Dr. Peter Palsgrave knew nothing of Madam Marsh’s hastening deaths?”

  “I’d stake my life on it. It would have violated everything he stands for.”

  “Then frankly, I don’t feel any necessity of subjecting him to charges of what is in essence grave robbery when there were never any graves in the first place,” he said slowly.

  “Hear, hear,” I agreed.

  “Thomas Underhill made a full confession before he hanged himself, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all you have for me? A story?”

  I removed the little journal from my frock coat and set it on the desk. “The diary of the St. Patrick’s victim, Marcas. The reverend kept possession of it, God knows why. It was in his study.” Next I pulled the piece of paper with Reverend Thomas Underhill written shakily on it out of my waistcoat pocket. “What’s better, Father Sheehy identified him as the only man to bring a large bundle into the cathedral that night, and the only man he failed to observe leaving. The sack, which held the drugged child, was no longer inside St. Patrick’s when Sheehy discovered the body. It explains the lack of break-in. It all fits.”

  “That’s what put you onto the reverend? His carrying a bundle with him to the school meeting?”

  “No, the other way around. I didn’t know he had a sack, but I knew there was a meeting and I knew there was no break-in.”

  A near-smile floated around Chief Matsell’s lips. “That all just … occurred to you at random.”

  “No,” I sighed wearily. “I used butcher paper.”

  “Butcher paper.”

  Nodding, I let my head drop onto one closed fist. I didn’t know when last I’d eaten, and the edges of my eyelids burned with fatigue.

  “So, as far as we are concerned, the doctor is not worth touching and the reverend is beyond our justice. You say we can’t convict Silkie Marsh of any crime.”

  “Not honestly. She needs very careful watching. We’ll catch her out sooner or later, and she’ll find herself at the end of a rope.”

  “I agree with you. I do imagine, however, that you’ve confronted her?”

  “Three hundred and fifty dollars’ worth.”

  I’d not have thought it possible, but George Washington Matsell’s lungs hitched a bit. It was a nice thing to see. It was good to think that my taking an enormous bribe actually
startled a man who generally couldn’t be alarmed by a charging bull.

  “Are you handing it over?” he asked dryly, next.

  “I can spare fifty for the Party if you must, but the rest is for one of the victims.”

  “Ah. I will accept fifty, for an unnamed police charity, and you will donate the remainder to … what victim? Bird Daly, I take it?”

  “A victim,” I said steadily.

  The chief chewed on that for a minute. Made up his mind.

  “I’d like to offer you something, Mr. Wilde,” he said, standing up. “Copper stars, supposedly so that they do not grow arrogant or corrupt, must be rehired every year. I don’t like this policy and I never did. It negates the very idea of expertise, and as for stopping corruption— But here is what I propose. So long as I am chief of police, you are a copper star. We’ll set you up solving crimes, you see, rather than preventing them. If you want a title, I’ll come up with one. I’m very apt with words. And you’ve done a fine job at surprising me.”

  I know the sudden small glow wasn’t sensible. It should never have satisfied me so deep that I could keep that job. Maybe it was just a novel sensation, being good at something entirely new.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “That’s settled, then.”

  “I’ve a single condition.”

  The chief turned away from the window he’d been contemplating, silvery brows quirked in annoyance. Clearly, I was pushing.

  “I only meant to say that you ought to keep Val too,” I offered more humbly.

  “Mr. Wilde, I will get your measure one of these days,” sniffed Chief Matsell, sitting back down and lifting his quill. Still looking downright bustled. “You are a genius with butcher paper, apparently, and then of a sudden you are thick as lumber. Your brother—provided he doesn’t get himself croaked, or elected to public office—will doubtless be a copper star captain until the day he dies.”

  “I’m grateful you think so, then.”

  “Mr. Wilde,” the chief said, “get out of my office. You look ready to faint in it, and I don’t want the trouble of stepping over you.”

  On my way out of that great fortress of stone, I encountered a strange fellow, walking furtive and fluid like a crab, with thick Dutch boots, without a chin, with wild tinsel hair, and rushing up to me the minute we’d spied each other.

  “I must inform you of the evidence delivered by a Miss Maddy Sample, Mr. Wilde. We see the light of dawn at last!” Mr. Piest whispered, clutching my arm in his dry claw.

  “It’s morning already,” I answered gratefully, as the moon outside began to rise. “Supply me with some bread and coffee and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  And yes, it was morning in my head. All was going better than I could ever have expected. I owed so much of my success to Mr. Piest that I’d have been a turncoat not to stop and deliver the story. Just two problems plagued my mind as I finished filling in the blanks for my colleague over steaming tin cups and a heaping plate of beef and stewed cabbage.

  What will happen? I thought. Not to me. That much seemed settled. But there was a pair of girls I didn’t like to let down, one very much younger than the other. Both fates undetermined. Both lives marred and mended and marred again.

  And the worst betrayal of all just then was, I didn’t strictly know whether either one of them was alive or dead.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The tide of emigration which now sets so strongly towards our shores, cannot be turned back. We must receive the poor, the ignorant, and the oppressed from other lands, and it would be better to consider them as coming filled with the energy of hope for happier days, and more useful labors, than they found at home. No one, I presume, seriously believes they come with bad intentions.

  • The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York, January 1845 •

  A very uncomfortable mix of pricklish sensations haunted me as I arrived back home. First, the fact that I didn’t have two bodies, and couldn’t check whether Mercy was nursed fully back to health at the same time; and second, the thought that maybe no one would be there. That maybe Silkie Marsh could whisper instructions to blackbirds and send them flying up to nameless assassins in Harlem. Ravens croaking out “Kill Bird Daly” and then lazily winging back to the city.

  When I opened my front door, though, the coiled-up feeling melted. There was Valentine, sitting at the bread-kneading table with Mrs. Boehm. He’d gotten a pitcher of gin, and two tumblers were out, alongside my landlady’s supply of precious chocolate, a plate of pastries much finer than she usually bakes, and a deck of playing cards. The entire room smelled of butter. Mrs. Boehm herself was flushed to her sparse hairline, grinning so wide that she might have knocked the gin pitcher off the table. She’d clearly just laid down a hand, and I could see it upside down. A full house.

  “No argument is possible,” she was saying, clapping her hands once. “You are a … tell me again, please. What word is it, for a man who so badly loses at all cards?”

  “A flat,” Val answered. “And proud to lose to so square a republican as yourself, though not as proud as I am to teach you the lingo. Timothy Wilde, copper star! You look like death passed you over, thinking he’d already done his job. You’ve lost your mask as well, but that looks pretty flash.”

  “It’s wonderful to see you both,” I said. “I need to ask Bird a question.”

  “She is probably not yet sleeping.” Mrs. Boehm poured an ounce more gin into Valentine’s glass and then sipped at her own with German delicacy. “If you are quick.”

  Bird wasn’t yet sleeping, though she’d curled up on the trundle pulled out from Mrs. Boehm’s bed. The simply stitched curtains were pulled back from the window. As I walked quietly in, Bird’s square little chin jutted eagerly up in my direction.

  “You’re all right,” she said. “I knew you would be. Mr. V said that you were nowhere you couldn’t gammon your way back again.”

  “I wasn’t. Bird, can I ask you something?”

  Bird sat up readily, tucking her knees cross-legged beneath the counterpane.

  “When you said all that time ago that I’d kissed the girl in that picture I’d drawn,” I questioned softly, “what did you mean? You seemed troubled over it, and you know Mercy Underhill. You must have met her, where you used to live.”

  “Oh,” Bird whispered. “Yes.”

  She thought about the question for a bit too long. Long enough for me to notice that she supposed I’d not like her answer. But I waited her out, for it was plaguing me.

  “Well, I didn’t think her quite right, you see. She was doing … the same thing, exactly the same as me, but she could come and go as she pleased and I couldn’t, so when you’d her picture, I supposed …” Bird trailed off, puzzling worriedly. “I thought she must have been your mistress, if you’d her picture. But I don’t understand her. Who’d ever want to just for, if … and if they could get out again, why—”

  “No, hush,” I said as she grew panicky. “Thank you for telling me. It’s not easy to understand, but I do want you to know … she wished your lives better. You savvy, I think?”

  “I see that,” Bird murmured, nodding. “Everyone else loved her. Just not me. But if you ask me to really like Miss Underhill, and not pretend, I’ll do it.”

  “No, I’d never ask that.” I squeezed her shoulder once. “She has enough people who love her. No one is ever going to decide that sort of thing for you again.”

  I arrived back downstairs in time to see Valentine slipping out my front door. So I went after him. Having already criminally missed going after my brother once, I didn’t mean to do it again anytime soon. When Val heard the door shut, he glanced back, his boot on the lowest of our three steps to the street. Not wary, exactly. But cautious. Tugging my hat off tiredly, I raised an eyebrow at my brother—the one on the more expressive side of my face.

  “It’s all over,” I said. “I solved it.”

  “Bully.” Val fished a cigar end out of his
pocket and tucked it in the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Aces,” Valentine answered, winking.

  “You don’t want to know what happened?”

  “I’ll get it from Matsell tomorrow. He tells a better story.”

  “You’re a prick,” I marveled.

  “If you’re keen to have me recollect any more of this in the morning, I’d not waste words now,” my brother suggested, checking his pocket watch. “Anyway, I’m off to a clandestine Party meeting. I have to ogle over a score of Irishmen and decide who’s fit to guard future ballot boxes. Waste no more of my time, Tim.”

  “Regarding this afternoon,” I persisted, leaning back against the side of the house. “Your escorting Bird and Mrs. Boehm back here. That was bene enough. You did me a good turn. But staying with them the whole time, until I returned, not knowing what I was about?”

  “Mmm?” he said, already looking back and forth and over and under for a hack. Walking backward into Elizabeth Street, not paying me any attention. Just exactly the way he always acts.

  It’s infuriating.

  “Thank you,” I called out.

  Valentine shrugged, standing in the middle of the road. The bags beneath his eyes lightened an ounce or two as he glanced back at me. “It wasn’t much.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at the Liberty’s Blood. Try not to take so much morphine you’re half croaked by the time I arrive, all right?”

  Valentine caught the sort of grimace he gets when he’s laughing. It passed, though, and the gleaming-bone wolf’s smile appeared in its place.

  “Sounds dead flash. Try not to be such a comprehensive cow’s teat in the meantime, will you, my Tim?”

  “That seems pretty fair,” I answered sincerely.

  I never went back to the Pine Street Church, or to the Underhill residence.

  Mr. Piest, whom I’d confided in very closely over our shared meal, “discovered” the body in the garden shed half an hour after I’d told him of it. Since I’d given him the key and all. The Reverend Underhill had obviously been strangled to death, but there were no witnesses. Nor clues. Nor suspects. It was a sad crime, obviously a murder.