Absence of Mercy

by S. M. Goodwin

  “Don’t make me shove your knuckles up your arse.”

  Ryan grinned. “McCarty didn’t say what condition you needed to be in.”

  The other two men took a step closer, and Hy knew he couldn’t take them as quickly as Lightner had. He lacked a cane and fancy skills, and they were ready for him.

  “I need to leave a message for somebody before I go.”

  “Nah, boyo, that won’t be necessary.” Once again Ryan’s baton moved too quickly for Hy to dodge, and this time Lightner wasn’t there to stop the blow.

  The last thing he heard as he dropped into darkness was ugly laughter.

  CHAPTER 30

  Jasper and Cates stood back to back between the coach and the mob spilling out of the saloon. Jasper had tucked Mrs. Dunbarton’s pistol into his overcoat pocket, hoping to keep firearms out of the situation.

  A man wearing what looked to be a freshly slaughtered animal carcass tied around his shoulders swaggered up to them.

  “Walked into a war, ye have,” he said in an almost unintelligible accent. His pupils flared when his eyes landed on Jasper’s ruby signet ring.

  “Let the carriage pass, and you can have my wallet, money, and watch.” For once there was no stuttering.

  But his adversary laughed at him, even without the stammer. He turned to his crowd of twenty or thirty men, who seemed to be springing up from the cobbles around him.

  “Ja hair that, fellahs? Man says oi can have what’s already moine.”

  His appreciative audience roared.

  Jasper’s antagonist took a step forward, and Cates’s hand moved in a blur, a pistol aimed at the other man’s head. At this range, Cates couldn’t miss. “I have only two bullets,” the soldier-cum-butler said in his precise English accent. “But all I need to kill you is one.”

  “Moi men’ll rip yeh ta poices—and however’s in that coach as well.” He leered. “Woimen, I’ll wayger. I—”

  A blood-curdling scream came from down the street, cutting off whatever he was about to say. It wasn’t the scream of one person but hundreds. And they were all charging toward them.

  Men who’d been spectating and laughing only seconds before turned and surged like a single organism to meet the threat.

  Jasper took advantage of his antagonist’s inattention to deliver a punch to the man’s throat, sending him to the ground gasping and writhing.

  “Go!” Jasper yelled at the wild-eyed groom still seated on the box.

  The groom snapped the reins. “Haw!” The coach’s heavy frame gave a loud screech of protest at such abuse but sprang forward.

  A few of the gang members had lingered rather than engage in the brawling. One grabbed Cates’s arms from behind and held him while his mate commenced to deliver a pounding.

  Jasper strode toward them, spinning his stick and seizing it in the middle before swinging. The weighted handle cracked against the base of the man’s skull, and he grunted, releasing Cates and staggering around to face Jasper.

  “You bloody bastard!” He stumbled drunkenly, clutching the back of his head with one hand.

  Now liberated, Cates threw an uppercut that connected solidly beneath his aggressor’s chin, the punch snapping his head back so hard Jasper was surprised it didn’t fly off his neck. As it was, blood—and perhaps a piece of tongue—spewed from his mouth as he fell back into two spectators. All three tangled and collapsed into a writhing pile of arms and legs.

  Jasper’s opponent had regained his footing but was weaving and blinking. The man was a member of the “charge your opponent head on, no matter what the circumstances” school of thought and came at Jasper with a guttural roar.

  It was too easy.

  Jasper executed a low kick to the shin with the instep of his boot. While his aggressor was howling and hopping on one leg, Jasper brought his stick around in a latéral croisé and caught him beneath the ear with the heavy silver handle, putting him down.

  He turned to the butler. “Come on!”

  Cates didn’t appear to hear him; he stared at the mob of men clashing only feet away, blood lust in his eyes.

  “Cates!”

  But Cates ran straight at the two warring gangs.

  “Good God,” Jasper murmured, as Cates was swallowed up by the throng of bloody, flailing, knife-wielding men.

  Jasper turned and headed toward the street the carriage had disappeared down.

  Behind him, somebody noticed his retreat. “Stop, you!”

  “Not bloody likely,” he muttered, running down an eerily empty street, vaguely aware of eyes watching from darkened windows that stared like lifeless eye sockets on both sides of the street. The citizenry must have been warned, because gone were the usual corner gatherings, stray children, and impromptu stalls selling anything from boot repairs to live hens.

  There were streetlamps, but only one in every four or five worked. The cobbles beneath his feet rolled and pitched, as if they’d been the victim of a thousand frost heaves.

  Behind him, the boots kept pace.

  An odd triangular-shaped building up ahead caught his attention—he knew this place; the building wasn’t far from Horgan’s, so the street ahead must be Bowery.

  Jasper’s lungs were on fire and he sounded like an overheating locomotive when he slid around the corner, the heels of his boots slipping on something slimy. He caught hold of the nearest—unlighted—lamppost to stop himself, staring at the Boschian image that met his eyes: hundreds of men fighting against the flickering, hellish background of a building on fire.

  Voices shouted behind him, drawn by the violence like hounds to blood.

  Jasper sprinted across Bowery and toward the narrow alley, not stopping until he reached the door with the number fourteen scratched into the age-blackened wood: Horgan’s. Without much hope, he pounded on it.

  “He went this way!” a man yelled from the street.

  Nowhere to hide, Jasper turned and waved them closer with his stick. “Come on, then—b-both of you.”

  The first man dropped into a crouch, the ax in his hand flicking as nervously as a cat’s tail.

  The second man—small and wiry—hung back.

  The ax wielder stopped a few feet away. “If ye give it up nice and—”

  Jasper executed a figure fouetté—aiming low so that he didn’t injure himself or fall on his arse—and the roundhouse kick caught his opponent by surprise. A sickening crack filled the air as Jasper’s boot connected with man’s bent knee; he fell to the filthy cobbles, screaming. Jasper took a step toward the second thug, who turned tail and ran. A noise came from his left, and he turned just as Horgan’s door flew open, whacking him hard on the shoulder.

  “Bloody hell!” He staggered and caught himself on the rough brick wall to keep from falling.

  A pair of hands grabbed one of his arms and yanked him into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 31

  Hy awoke with a gasp and a yell, an incompatible action that turned into coughing as cold water ran down his head.

  “Best get up,” Ryan’s voice ordered. “He’s waitin’.”

  McCarty.

  Hy wiped the fetid water from his face with his coat sleeve before lurching to his feet.

  “You look as pretty as a picture, Law.” Ryan opened the door and shoved Hy inside.

  Hy stumbled but caught himself, looking up into the small, mean eyes of Devlin McCarty.

  The last time he’d seen McCarty was four years ago, back when Hy was a new detective and McCarty was just another henchman working for the last boss—a man who’d not kept a close enough eye on his underlings and had paid with his life for his mistake.

  McCarty grinned, as if they were long-lost mates rather than two men who’d once vied for the same woman’s affection. A woman who’d chosen McCarty.

  “You’re a bit ragged looking, even for a po-leese detective. I guess the pay is shite.” McCarty chuckled and gestured to the chair in front of his desk, which currently held his booted feet, a large crystal
ashtray, a bottle, and two glasses. “Drink?” He picked up the bottle of Kilbeggan.

  “Aye, why not.” Hy wondered if it would be his last.

  “You can go, Ryan,” McCarty said, not sparing a glance for the other man as he leaned forward with Hy’s glass.

  Ryan scowled at Hy with open hate; Hy winked and lifted his glass in a toast.

  “You’ve an enemy there, Hy,” McCarty said when the door slammed shut.

  Hy sipped his drink.

  “Taste of home, eh?” McCarty asked, even though neither of them had ever come within a thousand miles of the Emerald Isle. “How’s it like, workin’ with an English lord?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “He’s a good detective.”

  “But rides a high horse, eh?”

  “Not really.”

  McCarty’s face tightened at Hy’s too-abrupt answers. “Enjoy your wee vacation in the Tombs? I came to see you, you know—but you were beyond noticin’ by the time I got there.” He barked a laugh. “McElhenny told tales of you down at t’pub—how he enjoyed makin’ you grateful for his piss.”

  If McCarty was hoping to rile him up, he was barking up the wrong tree. After staring death in the face for eight weeks—which had felt like eight hundred—a bit of ribbing about how he’d drunk piss was nothing.

  “Ryan said you wanted to see me.”

  McCarty’s eyes narrowed, and Hy knew the other man didn’t like having the subject changed unless he was doing the changing.

  “I saw Niamh not long ago.”

  Hy hated the way his heart stuttered at the sound of her name.

  “She don’t look so good these days—not as pretty anymore.” McCarty’s thick lips curled into a smile, his eyes sly. “Workin’ off South Street by the Hansen Pier, if you’ve a wish to visit her. She offered herself for free—just for old time’s sake.” His expression of disgust said what his reply had been.

  Hy supposed he should feel vengeful satisfaction to know the girl had paid for choosing McCarty over him, but all he felt was sickened.

  “Ryan said you wanted to see me,” Hy said again, aware he was courting danger but unable to stop himself. Not an unusual occurrence.

  But McCarty—as changeable as a weathercock—just laughed. “Aye, that’s true enough. I brought you here to tell you that youse two—you and Lord Lummy—need to put your attention to findin’ Haslem. He’s yer killer.”

  That’s what Hy believed too, but—stubborn contrarian bastard that he was—he’d be damned if he admitted that to McCarty.

  Instead he said, “What makes you think Lightner takes orders from me?” Hy figured Lightner was the sort to dig in like a wood tick if anyone interfered with his investigation. Hy had a feeling the Englishman didn’t like being told what to do; he could appreciate that.

  “I reckon you could be convincin’ if you had a reason. Can you come up with a reason yourself, Hy? Or do you need me to give you one?” McCarty swirled the expensive liquid in his glass, and something Hy wasn’t expecting—indecision—flickered in his eyes. “It’s time somebody told the duke’s son that neither White Street nor Park Row calls the shots in the Points.”

  “All right, I’ll warn him off,” he lied. “Is that it?”

  “I think you know it’s the least of it, boyo. I’ll be needin’ those papers.”

  Hy stilled. “What papers?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Hy?”

  Hy wanted to say yes so badly that his tongue bled from biting it. “I ain’t lyin’; I don’t know anything about any papers.” That was true. Sort of.

  The faint flicker of McCarty’s eyes told Hy the other man didn’t know what papers he’d been ordered to collect, and that fact—being excluded—was making him furious.

  “Mack! Jake!” he yelled.

  The two bruisers must have been waiting outside the door.

  “Now,” McCarty said, swinging his feet off the desk and dropping them to the wooden floor with a loud thump. “Let’s see if I can help you remember which papers.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth Horgan’s hands fumbled with the three hasps.

  “Let me,” Jasper said, after she’d dropped the padlock the second time.

  Jasper closed and locked all three locks. They were in a big kitchen, with dirty crockery piled next to a washbasin and flies buzzing around an overflowing slop bucket.

  Elizabeth Horgan looked nothing like the woman he’d seen only yesterday. Her hair was unbound and unbrushed, a wild inky-black corona around her pale face. Her eyes had tiny specks for pupils, and her eyelids were heavy. A fresh-looking bruise darkened her right cheek, and her breath—her very pores—exuded the sickly sweet smell of heaven.

  “What happened?” he asked, his heart pumping more furiously than when he’d been running.

  She wore only a midnight-blue dressing gown, loosely tied. The silken flaps parted with her every movement, exposing a pale strip of skin that ran from the valley between her breasts and over a smooth expanse of stomach to the black curls covering her sex.

  Jasper wrenched his gaze up.

  “They’ve broken the front windows and are looting,” she said, her voice utterly lacking inflection. “But I have a place.” She caught his hand with a clumsy swipe and yanked him along with surprising strength.

  Only now did Jasper realize the sound of smashing and yelling was not coming from the alley but from the brothel’s saloon. She pulled him to a corridor that led in two directions. To the right was the sound of breaking glass and raised male voices; she turned left. Dead ahead was a section of wood paneling, open just a crack, a dull red light emanating from within.

  “We’re safe here,” she said, releasing him and pushing the makeshift door wider. Voices came from the direction they’d just come. “Quick!” She pulled him inside.

  Jasper put out a hand to stop her from slamming the panel shut, instead pulling it closed softly. It was a heavy slab of wood, like the door to the alley.

  He made short work of three more padlocks. “The lamp,” he whispered as the sound of boots and voices drew closer. “Put out the light.” He pointed to the gap beneath the door, and she stumbled to the single lamp and turned the key, plunging the room into darkness, but not before Jasper saw the low mattress, the lacquered, inlaid tray, the opium lamp, and the pipe.

  The wave of hunger that hit him almost drove him to his knees. Even when the light was off, the image was still branded into his mind’s eye.

  A slender hand fumbled against his chest, the fingers curling around the lapels of his coat and pulling him closer. She laid her head against his shoulder. “Your heart is pounding,” she whispered.

  It was; Jasper could hear it thundering in his ears. He didn’t know if it was the danger of the last few minutes or the danger in this room.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “White Street had a warrant for the mayor’s arrest. But when Captain Walling from the Met went to serve it, a riot broke out right on the steps of City Hall. Somebody said Tallmadge called on the Seventh Regiment to put down the fighting. But the gangs—” She shivered. “Once they started …”

  Yes, Jasper knew: blood lust.

  A shout came from beyond the door. “There’s a door here—I know it.” Somebody began banging the wall, first with fists and next with their bodies, flinging themselves at it with the single-mindedness of grunion assaulting a beach.

  “Open up, or I’ll set the bloody door on fire! You’ll roast in there like crabs in your shells.”

  “That’s the door to Mamble’s—that empty furniture place next door,” a new voice yelled. “Ain’t nobody answerin’ ’cause there ain’t nobody there, ya pillock. Come on—they’re drinkin’ all the best stuff. There ain’t gonna be nothin’ left.”

  The door shook with more pounding.

  “I’m leavin’,” the second voice declared.

  “Oi, wait up, you sot! McCarty said to bring the top shelf back to ’im. I’ll not be the o
ne havin’ to tell—” The voices disappeared into the distant hum. Elizabeth Horgan’s body went limp, and she sagged against him.

  Jasper held her with one arm, slid his free arm beneath her thighs, and lifted her, holding her cradled against his chest. She weighed nothing.

  “Miss Horgan,” he whispered into her fragrant hair, which was inches from his face, a few long tendrils tickling his nose. “Miss Horgan.”

  She groaned and shifted in his arms, her breasts pressing against his chest as she snuggled against him.

  Jasper ignored his body’s predictable response; the last thing a person wanted after smoking opium was sexual congress. Miss Horgan was more interested in using him as a mattress than bedding him just now.

  Her soft, even breathing told him she’d fallen into a stupor. Jasper took a step in the direction of the pallet he’d seen on the floor, hoping like hell there was nothing left on that bloody tray.

  * * *

  Jasper knew the moment she was no longer sleeping. He also knew she didn’t want him to know she was awake, because she kept silent, her breathing measured. Her euphoria would have begun to wear off, and she’d know the sorts of questions he would ask.

  “Where is M-Mary?”

  She shifted on the thin mattress. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t think it’s b-been more than a c-couple hours.”

  “Are they still out there?”

  “I heard singing the last time I p-put my ear to the door. When did they b-break in?”

  “Just before I let you in. It was the sound of shattering glass that brought me out of the room.” She paused and then said, “I suppose you’re curious as to what I was doing in here.”

  Jasper’s lips twisted into a bitter, hungry smile he was grateful she couldn’t see. “No, I’m n-not curious. Are you the only one here?”

  “I sent all the others away as soon as things began to go bad. Ryan was here earlier, looking for Mary—to arrest her. Mary didn’t kill Finch.”

  “But she knows who d-did,” Jasper guessed.

  “Yes.”