“Duties? You think I should put bread on the table and keep a roof over that crazy bitch’s head?” I answered his verbal question aloud while my mind answered his mental one. Wars change you.
Father Dempsey licked his lips and put his hands together in front of him. “It would be nice if the two of you…reconciled, but I understand if you wish to live separately for a time.”
“If I don’t have to take her back, then what are you talking about?”
He gave me a level stare. “Your wife has become emotional of late. She wept during my sermon this Sunday.”
Yeah, that was Moira. She’d spit in your eye for winning at stud but find the piety to cry in church.
“During her recent confession—”
I cut him off, embarrassed. “Wait, you’re not going to—”
“She’s granted me permission to share, Donovan. During confession, she admitted to certain base urges. Moira is concerned that she may submit to these carnal thoughts at any time.”
“Are you saying—”
“I am saying you need to take care of your wife!”
I’ll tell you, I ain’t one to be pushed around by a man of the cloth. Hell, I’ve almost decked several. The padre, though, had me stymied. I silently gaped as he proceeded to charge down a path I never wanted to see a priest go. The other conversation—that one in my head—was gone.
“Your wife has urges, man. It is your husbandly—nay, your Christian—duty to answer them. A lustful woman is a loose cannon and I won’t have it in my parish.” His face had turned red, though I wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or righteous dudgeon. He didn’t say anything after that, just puffed there in his coat and scarf, waiting for me to answer.
“How can you ask me to crawl onto that bitch and rut after what she did?” I snarled.
If it wasn’t wrath before, it certainly was now. “You foulmouthed cretin! No wonder she kicked you out!” He stomped to the stairs. “I’ll be letting all of my colleagues know what transpired here. You won’t be getting communion anywhere till it’s done.”
“It’s done or she’s done?”
The door slammed in answer. I didn’t even bother to stomp down and lock it. Instead, I went to my cheap sideboard and fished out a bottle of single malt Bushmills.
German-Irish guy drinks himself into a stupor. Yeah, it’s a goddamn cliché. But you haven’t met Moira.
Chapter Three
The letter was there waiting for me when I got up. It was hard to tell if it was early or late because the sky was that puke-nasty gray color, just like the slag-choked streams in a mining town. The message had come by private courier, as evidenced by the fact it had been haphazardly crammed under my door. It was bent in the middle and covered in grease. Service had not improved when the government was disbanded, though saying so aloud would make me a radical. The little errand boys the private firms hired wore irritating red jackets and always wanted a tip. I missed the old postmen, the ones with sedate blue jackets and no expectations of gratuity.
The return address was a well-known bookie, which threw me. Then I remembered that Carelli had a reciprocal agreement with some heavy hitters in that racket, so it all kinda made sense. The scumbag bosses liked to ooze their tentacles into every possible nook and cranny, dominating or at least participating in all the illicit activity in every borough, what the Magnates called “horizontal integration.” Carelli was no different. There were even rumors that he had ties to a robber baron, which wouldn’t be the first time the Moneyed Great rubbed shoulders with the Moneyed Gross.
It was a letter for the Cleary family in a feminine script. There were a few mentions of prayer and some pointed remarks to specific family members, strong evidence that it was from the genuine Bridget, though without a writing sample I couldn’t be sure.
It should have been good news, since it meant she was alive, only it wasn’t.
She was apparently in a new life that her folks wouldn’t approve of but was honorable and safe. What’s more, she was fairly blunt that her heritage was not exactly an asset, so a parting of ways would be beneficial to both parties.
I glanced at the return address again. Since when did country micks give a damn if their daughter counted beans for a gambling den? Prostitution or worse, a theatrical career, might embarrass them, but accounting? There wasn’t a faster way to the top in the Big City, especially for those who know how to work a Babbage. J.P. Morgan employed a thousand digit-apes to crouch over analyticals and track the grand workings of the Magnocracy’s money. In the lawless Magnocracy, accountants were more powerful than attorneys.
Generally speaking, it doesn’t pay to ruminate on this stuff. Sure, I’m pretty well read for an Irish-German boy who joined the army, but that don’t make me Aristotle. If I learned anything wearing the blue, it’s that sometimes you do your job and keep your head down.
As it happened, this wasn’t one of those times, though I badly wanted it to be.
I was gonna forward Bridget’s missive to Dublin and thence to whatever dusty lane the Clearys haunt when I got a shock. The Clearys themselves appeared in my office, all the way from the Old Country. Well, it wasn’t all the Clearys, just four of them—Ma Cleary, her brother Jack, and two stout cousins to protect them on their mission. I was given to understand that one was named Tommy and the other was Jack as well. The older Jack went by Uncle Jack to avoid confusion. In any case, it didn’t really matter since the young’uns were only there to lend a bit of brawn. They warmed themselves by my stove and thanked me for some tarts I’d managed to scrounge up.
It was a good thing they were island-micks, because my place ain’t very impressive. To such wild creatures, though, sandy tarts from a tin and mass-imported tea were blue-ribbon fare.
“So what brought you across the Pond?” I asked.
Uncle Jack tried to talk but Ma Cleary cut him off. “How kin y’ask, Mr. Schist? We’ve come for our Bridget. Now where d’y’have her?”
I smiled and put down my tea. “I haven’t located her yet, per se. Though I do have a letter from her.”
The matron sat tall in her chair, her eyes wide with shocked disapproval. “We didn’t pay you to find a letter, Mr. Schist.”
I held the letter up but she made no motion to take it.
“It’s no matter,” Uncle Jack chimed in cheerfully. “I’m sure she’ll turn up. She can’t have gone far. We’ll just let everyone know we’re looking for her. Someone’ll see her. I’m sure folks’ll help us once they know our story.”
It was a good thing it was winter, because in the summer my open jaw might have attracted flies.
Ma Cleary narrowed her eyes at me, ignoring Jack’s naïve statement. “You find our Bridget, Mr. Schist, or I’ll take back the advance.”
I put the letter on my desk and tapped it thoughtfully.
“She’s a good girl, our Bridget. There’s never been a Cleary on gibbet or gaol, not in all the centuries they’ve bin countin’.”
“There was Connor back in twenty-six,” Jack reminded her in a whisper.
She didn’t blink. “A Kerry, if you’ll recall. Cleary only by marriage and a bad apple all around. Hardly worth mentioning.” She didn’t lower her voice for my sake.
Uncle Jack made a face that plainly said this was unfair to the Kerrys, which led me to believe he was closer to that family than Ma Cleary liked.
Before he could register any further complaint, the old matron powered on like a dynamo. Once she got going, I suspected, she was very hard to stop.
“Not a single Cleary girl has ever been involved in anything unt’ward. She’s a good girl, our Bridget. She takes after her great-aunt Sara, who married a Kenneally and went off to Cork to be a midwife. Not at all like that Kerry lad.”
Uncle Jack leaned back and got comfortable, which made me susp
ect he was preparing to weather a monologue.
Someone had to stop her.
I had, over the years, heard enough of the Old Country feuds. My family often complained bitterly about Cromwell as if he were a neighbor, not an invader some two centuries dead. Micks fresh off the boat got long memories. The American-bred ones turn their back on it all and hand themselves over to the mad-pumping modernity of the city in hopes of forgetting the skeletons buried back home. You must understand where I was coming from, impatient city boy that I am, when I cut off their recitation of the Cleary Chronicles.
“I don’t doubt Bridget’s fidelity,” I said sharply and resolutely. “But I’m afraid she’s not coming home. She has…moved on.”
Ma Cleary’s face froze mid-sentence, her mouth gaping so I could see all the fine white teeth she had kept through good country living.
Jack leaned forward. “Begyerpardon?”
I cleared my throat. “I have a letter here, from your Bridget. It seems she has…made a new life for herself.”
The mention of the letter emboldened the Irishwoman. She sat bolt upright in her chair and shook her head firmly. “Nah. It can’t be her. It’s a forgery. Some man has captured her and fooled you. I told Uncle Jack we should have come sooner and looked ourselves.”
I didn’t bother to remind her that the five boroughs alone had over four million people sweating and toiling and dying in them, not counting the wretched miles of sprawl that roll outward like oily waves in a puddle. Even if they had walked all day through it, you still couldn’t tell a country mick how big it was. It just wasn’t in their ken, like trying to explain stars and planets to a coney in the field.
The best answer for all involved was to pitch the letter at them, collect my fee and knock them out in the street. I managed one of the three anyway.
Ma Cleary read it and handed it to Jack. She didn’t sit upright anymore. She didn’t look at me or recite the proud lineage of the Cleary Clan back to Brian Boru. Instead, her narrow face turned to the floor and looked suddenly old.
Jack had to go to the window for light. He put on his reading glasses and narrowed his eyes till they had all but vanished beneath his pale brow.
“That’s her writing,” he whispered. His hands started to tremble.
The two young Cleary bucks got up and took the letter one at a time and pretended to read it.
“I know this must come as a shock to you,” I began. “But this is probably a good thing. She’s made a new life for herself.”
Ma Cleary covered her mouth with her hand. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. She started to cry. I was paralyzed. Any minute now, the creature might erupt into keening.
Before that could happen, Uncle Jack surprised all of us by swearing. It wasn’t just any swearing, either, it was that deep nasty verbose swearing that one expects from sailors and miners.
The two young men went sheet-white and I realized that Uncle Jack was the sort of man who was just as ferocious as Ma Cleary but usually kept it bottled up.
“Come now!” he barked at the distraught woman who had, thankfully, been shocked out of her tears. “That little Judas-tart isn’t worth another tick.”
“But, Jack!” She fumbled with something beneath her faded blue shawl.
“But nothing! Think it through, woman. She’s probably run off with a dago or a darky…or worse, a Lutheran!”
Ma Cleary’s sorrow changed to horror with the crisp alacrity of a railway sign. “She wouldn’t.” Her bony fingers emerged from her shawl clutching a string of dark rosaries. Though she didn’t utter a word, I could practically hear her mental chant as she rubbed them. Hail Mary, full of grace…
“She probably has!” Jack roared, shaking his fist. “Probably whored it up with some rich Yankee bastard and is now too good to think a’the likes a’them that raised her!”
“Oh, Bridget!” Ma Cleary bawled.
Jack gave her a contemptuous glare. “We’re going,” he announced. The young men went and helped Ma Cleary to her feet with surprising compassion. She stooped to pick up the letter they had dropped.
“There’s the small matter of my, erm, fee,” I reminded them awkwardly.
Uncle Jack turned. “Here,” he said with disgust, handing me some cash. “I consider it well spent,” he confided loudly. “Thank God this trip isn’t entirely a waste—we’ve tickets to ride a dirigible to Rushford Lake tomorrow.”
“Uh.” I suppressed a grin with effort. I always figured that micks weren’t allowed up in those things. The thought of these four yokels riding clouds beside the wealthy was delicious. I was half tempted to buy a ticket myself. God knows I needed a laugh about now.
“There’s Clearys in Batavia and Alexander,” one of the young ones added, as if I had any clue where those backwaters were.
“He’s always wanted to ride an airship,” Ma Cleary said hoarsely as they went through the door.
The excitement of the dirigible ride washed away the men’s depression for a moment.
“The Sparrow Skyline,” Younger Jack told me with a smile.
“Na, na—it’s the Starling Skyline…day-cruises all over New York,” the other corrected.
They glared at each other over Ma Cleary’s sniffling head.
“Um, maybe I should get an address for your relatives in Alexandria, so I can let you know if there’s a development.”
“That’s Alexander,” one told me as they helped their matron down the stairs.
“And Batavia,” the other added before the door shut.
I watched Uncle Jack through the murk-frosted panes of my window. He was already in the street, billycock on his head, briskly walking. He would soon outpace the trio. I hoped he didn’t get lost.
The story should have ended here. Little girl went off, met someone, left her family. Their name died in the New World but their blood lived on in new ways and new people, people that Ol’ Erin could never imagine in her cold northern waters. It was evolution. It was life. I shouldn’t care.
Yet I did.
I sat at my desk and I thought of my own ma. Then I realized that in their haste to retreat, the Clearys had left me their only portrait of young, pretty Bridget. Uncle Jack wouldn’t have wanted it, but Ma Cleary probably did.
I took it out and laid it on my desk. It was faded and had white fold-cracks in it, as if the image itself were breaking apart like her family. She was smiling that giddy smile all young girls have the first time they sit for a portrait. They smiled like that because they were out in the exciting world, and they smiled like that because photographers loved them for their smooth skin, shining eyes and pert mouths.
She looked a little like Moira when I met her. She had been a young, fresh creature from Eire when she married a man only a little older in years but so much older in soul.
I turned the portrait over and clenched my jaw like I’d just tasted something bitter.
Moira.
I was twenty blocks away. I avoided all the circles of people she knew, but her shade hung in this place as heavy as cobwebs.
Moira.
Ma Cleary deserved a helluva lot more than a curt missive and a faceless goodbye. The old woman’s weeping seemed to echo through the cold room.
Moira.
I sat like a stone. In my mind, I was reaching for the bottle in my desk. I could hear Ma Cleary weeping, and my own ma, and then Moira…only when Moira wept, it inevitably turned to screams. Then it was time to run. I had learned to flee the scene when the tears started, just as I had learned to belly drop when I heard the telltale crank of a Gatling.
A good soldier knows to duck before the first shot.
The bottle was still in my drawer, tugging at me.
Moira.
What had our last fight been about? It was hard to remember.
A girl. It was always about another girl. I’d been out all night, gone to some terrible places…and I came home smelling like a cathouse. Moira had been drinking. She’d managed to scrounge enough for an extra can of peaches that week so she could make me a pie. When I didn’t show up, she threw it at the wall.
I came in and found peach-bits and pie crust on the brand-new wallpaper.
“What the hell…?”
“Whereyabin, Shisht?” She always called me by my last name when she was drunk, even though she couldn’t pronounce it, not when she had the whiskey in her.
“On a case,” I told her. “It got hairy.”
“I’ll bet.” She leaned in the doorway of our bedroom, leering at me with watery eyes. Had she been crying?
I stared at the pie as I took off my collar. “So what the hell happened?” It was damn hot in here.
“I made a pie.”
“I see that.”
“Then I threw it at the wall.”
I turned to face her. “You wanna tell me why?”
“I imagined it was your face.”
My temples began to throb. “How much did you have to drink, Moira?” It was a pointless question, but I asked it anyway.
“You were out all night,” she said, lowering her head. “I got bored and lonely…” She arched one of her legs up the wall. The flesh was milk-white.
I felt a stirring. Suddenly, the wallpaper didn’t matter so much.
We started toward each other. I reached for her, she reached for me…and that was when the attack began. It took me a while to realize what was going on. I retreated, not because of my soldier’s instincts, but because of my Moira instincts.
Bedlam. Things were flying at my head. The words were disjointed. It took me a moment to comprehend that she’d slipped into Irish. A word stood out. Cumhrán.
I tried to remember what it meant. “Are you talking about perfume?” I asked.
Cruel Numbers Page 3
