The big one tried to talk but the sounds were gross. I tried not to flinch.
Thankfully, the little monkey cut in. “We don’t know anything. Really. We seen a dozen Bridgets work these streets since Tuesday. How’re we to remember this O’Leary girl?”
“It’s Cleary,” I corrected. “And I got a portrait.” I produced her likeness in the sickly yellow halo of the gaslight, holding it high so they could see it where they stood a few feet away. It was providence, I’m sure, ’cause I just happened to see the look on the big one’s face when he saw her picture.
“You bastards know her,” I growled. “Tell me where she is.” I watched them steel their faces. “You think Tammany Hall cares if I scrag you? It’s just two less collars for the bull pit.”
They exchanged one last look and talked.
You might be wondering why I took their rather expensive shoes in December and tossed them down the nearest alley. I wasn’t being cruel, just careful. No man walks barefoot through the factory ward unless he wants a major case of lockjaw. I figured that without shoes, there was no way they’d warn their boss I was coming.
You might also wonder why I’d believe them. I believed them when they said their boss was across the river because they had ferry-stubs in their pockets and grease on their coats, which all matched the description of their boss. It was well known where goons with grease on ’em worked. The Slags.
There were two ferries to Staten. I was billing this whole excursion to the Clearys, so I could have taken the nice one with benches and ushers who wore brass buttons and tassels. Problem was, my ma’s family was very much like the Clearys. I knew how much my fees were costing them. So I took the other ferry, the one they don’t tout to the tourists.
That ferry isn’t as commodious but is just as regular. It disembarked an hour or so after I left the dance hall. I waited until a dray rolled up, piled to the brim with rusty castoffs, snatching the attention of the darkies who worked the graveyard shift.
While they grunted and loaded the wrecked machine parts onto the barge, I slipped down the gangway and squatted behind a cracked boiler. The other advantage of taking the garbage ferry, as if the low price wasn’t enough, was that it was taking me right where I wanted to go—the heaps run by Carelli.
It wasn’t good news that Carelli or one of his lieutenants had sent toughs to quiet me, but it wasn’t bad news either. Carelli was sublegal at best—he dealt in questionable transactions, sure, but I’d never heard of him pimping girls. As I settled into my hiding place, I wondered if Carelli had expanded his ratlike empire into darker pursuits.
Some pretty unpleasant stuff was going through my head, so I was glad when I caught sight of the Carnegium. It floated in the Upper Bay like a giant glass-and-bronze lotus, a manmade Tír na nÓg for the Magnates and their courtesans to escape to when the smog or the reek of poor people got too heavy, which was pretty much all the time.
The cheery glow of the Carnegium bathed the side of the ferry in gold light, threatening to reveal my position to the crew. I ducked lower into the boiler and held my breath as we passed that shining glass Avalon.
Through a crack I noticed a strange shape, jagged and broken, rising up out of the trash. I shifted over and took a closer look. For some reason, the thought of hidden bodies welled up unpleasantly, as if I were looking at some recently dead murder victim instead of refuse.
It was hard to make out at first, but it was some kind of mesh cage, taller than a man. It was bent and tangled like an enormous net of twisted wire. The Carnegium’s lights showed that it was stricken black with ash. There were shallow pimples where paint had bubbled off and tumorous slag deposits that resembled lumps of melted wax.
It was, I suddenly realized, the burnt superstructure of a dirigible. I didn’t see any sign of the other parts—no gondola or engine or gas bags. It was one of the big dirigibles, the Cirrus-Class Luxury Liners that plied the cool upper currents over the Pond by way of Greenland, carrying the staid captains of the Magnocracy or the posh nobles of decadent Europe. The other pieces had no doubt been put on a different ferry.
I couldn’t help but think how my people had got here, riding steerage in a rusty old steamer, squatting in bilgewater and fending off rats. It’s a rotten world full of rotten people, and those on the dirigible were some of the rottenest, but I still felt bad for those bastards who got cremated when the hydrogen bags lit up. I hated and pitied them.
Past the Carnegium, our destination ruminated in darkness like a bank of the Styx. Where the Carnegium was the shining epitome of modern technology, the Slags were a sad graveyard of collapsed dreams made all the more poignant by the smoking ruin beside me. It was the dumping ground for all the machinery that got run-down or broke or just plain outdated, a place where the giant pistons and boilers came to rest beside piles of gap-toothed gears and rusted cable cars. The Slags were a dismal place, a morose forest of cast-off iron, an ever-present reminder that as bad as the Magnates treated their workers, they treated their machines worse.
Carelli’s office was an old derelict anchored in a slip so that its wheelhouse rose from out of the rubbish, a giant gleaming lighthouse in a sea of rust. It was probably midnight—it was too dark to read my pocket watch, so I had to guess—but the place was still humming like a bee’s nest in spring. It looked as though Carelli adhered to the No Time Wasted principle, one of the exalted methods of scientific management that the robber barons loved to talk about.
The Slags didn’t have any gas lines, so the work was illuminated by kerosene. Some big guys waited on the quay by a grease-spattered lantern. The light was weak—weak enough I could probably get by without being spotted.
I scrambled as far from the lamplight as I could before jumping ashore. There was a noise when I hit the landing, but the ice cracking along the quay covered it up.
It was a little surreal, walking through that machine graveyard on a cold night. The giant teeth of old diggers thrust out into the sky beside the humbled remains of cranes and locomotives. It was plain to see that important parts had been scrounged here and there by Carelli’s professional vultures. Cast-off pieces of mechanical viscera were strewn across my path where the salvage teams had casually torn the machinery apart.
Things got more orderly and settled as I approached the derelict and a driveway. A dray was parked by a corrugated steel shed. The pungent odor of manure hung in the air, so I smelled the horses before I heard their contented snuffling at feedbags. A single gangway led up to the deck of the ship-cum-office. It didn’t look guarded so I drew my derringer and padded up.
The lights were on behind ice-coated windows. I knelt low, hoping to overhear some important conversation. There was no conversation at all. I wondered if Carelli’s office kept to his No Time Wasted maxim or if that only applied to dockhands.
I pushed my derringer back into its hiding place and drew my pocketknife, looking for a spot to scrape some frost away. I was about to get started when I heard a terrible grinding noise and the door opened beside me.
Before I could reach for my piece, I heard the crisp click of a drawn hammer and saw the gaping mouth of a coachgun leveled at my eye. Without even thinking, I raised my hands in surrender.
Chapter Two
“Just looking for the boss, friend,” I stammered.
“Strange way to do it, friend,” my captor snapped. The shotgun motioned me to my feet.
As I stood, I saw that the barrel was clutched by four articulated brass fingers. I followed the fingers up to a nickel-plated forearm.
I swore, recognizing the workmanship. “I bet that metal piece of shit gets mighty cold.”
“Do I know you?” the voice asked from behind the gun.
“I hope you do. Let’s go inside and get warm. I know where you left your real arm, O’Shea.”
“Donovan?” The gun dropped aw
ay. “Schist, you rotten bastard! What are you doing here, skulking like a chicken thief?” He caught me in a one-armed bear hug with his mechano-limb, crushing the breath out of me.
“Freezing my toes off,” I told him.
He motioned me inside his converted cabin and shut the door again. There was a small Franklin beside the door. He threw in a few chunks of anthracite and hobbled behind a tiny desk with a kerosene lamp on it.
“Thought you were a burglar,” he told me as he sat down.
I sat on a creaky old stool across from him. “Get many burglars out here?”
He shrugged. “This ain’t exactly Central Park West.”
The war had not treated him kindly—his left arm had been hacked off in a field hospital following an ill-fated charge on a limey trench. A mutual friend had replaced it with a clockwork prosthesis.
“How’s the arm working out?” I asked him pointedly.
He grimaced. “It’s a beast in a chill. Feels like my socket’s ablaze.” He rotated it several times after he put the shotgun down.
“Strong though, eh?” My joints still ached from his hug.
The old vet gave me a grin and a nod. “Not near as deft as the real thing, a’course, but thrice as strong. I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to Verhalen, Donovan. If it weren’t for you and this hand, I’d still be a beggar on the streets. For a Dutchman, that Verhalen is mighty charitable.”
I smiled. “Nah, you’re testing his invention for him.”
“Then let’s raise a glass for prototypes.” He began rifling through his desk.
“That’s a fine excuse for drinking, though I’ve never known you to need one.”
He chuckled as he drew out a bottle of whiskey and poured us a round with his good hand. “How’d you know I worked in the Slags, anyway?” When I reached for a tumbler, he caught my wrist with his bronze gauntlet. “I don’t owe you money, do I?”
I laughed and shook my head.
He let go. “Good. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
I looked around at the messy office, then at his middle-class weeds. It was hard to tell how Carelli was treating him, so I wasn’t sure if I could leverage our war-buddy bond against loyalty to his boss.
“Actually, I was looking for a girl.”
He laughed. “Boy, are you looking in the wrong place.”
“It ain’t like that,” I assured him with a chuckle.
“Good, ’cause Moira would kill you.” His amused brown eyes glanced at my forehead just above my left eyebrow. “I don’t remember that one. Was it shrapnel?”
I touched my scar and winced at the mention of Moira, as if it still pained me. “No, not shrapnel. Not the kind you’re thinking of, anyway.”
O’Shea leaned back in his creaking chair and arched his eyebrow. “Postbellum, eh?”
“Most of mine are, actually.” I glanced at his arm again, my mind flashing back to Pennsylvania. Though he’d lost it during the Niagara Blitz, I’d seen plenty of missing arms where I fought. “I suspect you’ve gotten a few since then, too.”
“I have.” He looked suddenly cautious.
It wasn’t as if there was a great big gulf between work for Carelli and what I do. They were both jobs that required a certain widening of moral latitude, but I suspected that I got more sleep at night than O’Shea. In working for Carelli, my old comrade revealed that he had a brain where he lacked a conscience. There were kneecaps out there who hated him badly.
“I’m on a case. Sad case. A girl stopped writing her dear ol’ ma in the Old Country.”
O’Shea drank his whiskey and stared. It was suddenly as if the desk were No Man’s Land and we were in the trenches again, though this time on different sides.
“What of it? What does that have to do with my man Carelli?” He opened and shut his fingers with a metallic clack.
I shifted uncomfortably. “I ain’t accusing nobody. It’s just that…I’ve been asking about a girl and three of Carelli’s rowdies came at me, looking to teach me a lesson.”
Despite the conflict of interest between us, he managed a snort of amusement. “And you taught them one instead, eh?”
I nodded.
“I know the three you mean,” he said, looking into his glass. “Who’s the girl?”
I reached into my pocket and hesitated. “It’s her family’s only portrait.”
He waved his flesh-hand at me in irritation. I handed the picture to him. He stared at it for a moment. “So you’re the one asking about Bridget.”
“You know her?” I kept my eyes on him, but I mentally gauged the distance between his hand and the coachgun. This time, I’d have my piece out first, I was sure of it. The only question now was, would he use the gun or the mechano-hand? The uneasy image of a crushed windpipe or a broken jaw kept dripping into my mind. Drawing a pistol can be fast…but when your fist is a pistol, that’s faster.
He put the photograph down and pushed it back with a single digit. “Bridget Cleary. Used to work for Carelli.”
“Used to?” I tried not to look at the shotgun. Or his hand.
“She was really good with the books. Had a head for figures.” He pursed his lips. “Pretty, too. Not freckly-like at all. Good skin. Most guys didn’t even know she was a mick.”
“So what happened to her?”
He gave a shrug. “Moved on, I guess.”
“I don’t suppose her current employer called for a reference. Or perhaps she left a forwarding address?” It sounded dumb, I know. It ain’t like Carelli is the sort to give references.
“Couldn’t say.” He poured another drink and I relaxed a little. “You should stop asking about her.”
“The Clearys…”
“Give ’em their money back.” He tossed back the shot and closed his eyes in thought. “If I tell you something, can you keep it to your damned self?”
“Depends.”
“She’s fine, Donovan. She’s transplanted to new soil, if you take my drift. Tell her family to toast her at dinner, pray for her at night and move on. She’s not their concern anymore.”
“I can’t go back to her kin with that.”
“You should be glad to take anything back at all.”
“Are you in communication with her?”
He glowered.
“If I gave them a letter…”
O’Shea thought about it for a moment, putting the whiskey away without refilling my glass. “I could get a letter.”
“In her handwriting?”
“From her,” he said coldly.
“Just a missive to put her poor ol’ ma at ease.” I drew a business card and put it on his desk.
“Yeah.” Without moving, he watched me get up and go to the door.
“Good to see you again, O’Shea,” I told him, despite the cool farewell.
He grunted. As I opened the door to go, he cleared his throat. “Say hello to Moira for me, Schist.”
I stepped into the cold night without a backward glance. I would have preferred a shotgun blast to that goodbye.
Moira. Damned crazy Moira. Like Bridget, she was from the Old Country. Unlike Bridget, she had not been devoured by the Big City. When it came to devouring, Moira was never the devoured. She was always the devourer.
I tried not to think about her or the last time I’d seen her. It was hard, though. That bastard O’Shea had put her back in my mind, and Moira had this way of staying there once she was in, like a sparrow who comes in a window and gets trapped. A sparrow from hell.
“I hope that metal hand rips his prick off next time he takes a piss,” I said aloud. By then I was in the alleyway below my loft and in a roaring bad mood. The whiskey had done little to keep me warm, and the mercury was really dropping. Unfortunately, I was not alone.
“Hardly a Christian sentiment, and you were an altar boy once, Donovan.”
“Hell! Father Dempsey!” The chill was instantly replaced by white-hot embarrassment. I’d never expected the padre to be here. I was twenty blocks from the rotting tenements he haunted. It was out of his way, to say the least. I’d made sure of it.
“Funny you should mention perdition,” he said, teeth chattering. “Because right about now, those eternal fires don’t sound so bad.”
“Not sure you want to joke about that, Padre,” I grunted, unlocking the door. “Come in, I guess.”
I lived in a small loft over a bakery with an adjoining office that I had to pay rent for separate.
He thanked me and we trudged up the stairs to my rathole, stomping to put blood back in our toes. The heat was off but there was still an ambient warmth about the place—a perk of living so close to an industrial-sized oven. Of course, in summer it was no perk.
I lit a lamp and set the gas high so the place was bathed in sickly yellow light.
Dempsey looked admiringly around him. It was tidy, far tidier than my last place. Now that I didn’t have a violent housemate, I was displaying some of my favorite titles on a neat shelf. A learned man, the reverend naturally gravitated there.
“You won’t find the Good Book,” I warned him.
“Wasn’t expecting to,” he said. “Though I’m a little shocked to see Stuart Mill. And Tocqueville.” He shook his head. “If your employer saw you reading this…”
“I ain’t a Pinkerton anymore. I’m freelance now.”
He turned. “Does it pay well? Could you support a family like this?”
“I don’t have a family.”
The priest’s face was serene, as if he was reminding a stubborn child to do his chores. “Yes, you do, Donovan.”
“I hope you didn’t walk all the way over here to tell me that, Padre.”
“I came to remind you of your duties, Donovan.” His look seemed gentle, but his goddamn eyes were like tungsten weights dragging at me. I could practically see what the bastard was thinking. You were once considering the clergy…now look at you.
Cruel Numbers Page 2
