The Angel of Darkness

by Caleb Carr

  “And if it were enough money to ensure that you never had to return to Hudson Street again?” the Doctor asked.

  Kat’s face went blank. “How could that be? If I cross the Dusters, even just one tiny bit, there won’t be a place in this city I can hide.”

  The Doctor shrugged. “Are you so attached to life in this city? Perhaps you have family in some other part of the country?”

  “And I assure you, we wouldn’t be asking you to do anything dangerous,” Lucius said.

  “Everything’s dangerous, when you’re dealing with that bunch,” Kat answered quickly. Then she eyed the Doctor again. “I got an aunt. Lives in San Francisco—she’s an opera singer.”

  “Really?” the Doctor said enthusiastically. “They have a most promising company. Is she a soprano? A mezzo?”

  “An opera singer, is what she is,” Kat answered, not knowing what in the world the Doctor was talking about, and looking it. “She sent me a letter once, after my papa died, saying she could get me work as a singer, too. I can sing—Stevie’s heard me.”

  Kat turned to me, expecting some support. I just nodded hard and said, “Oh, yeah, she can sing, all right,” even though I’d never thought that much of her voice. But I got a tin ear, and always have had; so I can’t say, maybe she could sing.

  “Well, then,” the Doctor said, “one ticket to San Francisco—by rail or by sea, whichever you choose—and, say, a few hundred dollars to—acclimate yourself.” I’d never seen Kat’s eyes grow so big. “All in exchange for—” The Doctor suddenly stopped and turned to Lucius in confusion. “Detective Sergeant, what the devil is all that in exchange for?”

  Lucius turned to Kat again, maintaining his smile. “A garment with buttons,” was all he said.

  Kat stared at him, her mouth hanging open. “A garment? You mean, like clothes?”

  “Clothes might do,” Lucius answered. “An outer garment would be best, though. Something she would be sure to wear in her own house, as well as at the Dusters’. And on the street, too, if possible. A coat or jacket of some kind would really be ideal.”

  “I get it,” Marcus said, slapping his forehead. “Of course!”

  Kat looked at the pair of them like they were even crazier than she’d first thought. “A coat or jacket,” she said.

  “With buttons,” Lucius answered, nodding.

  “With buttons,” Kat said, nodding along. “Any particular kind of buttons?”

  “Large ones would be best. The larger the better.”

  “And flat, if possible,” Marcus added.

  “Yes,” Lucius agreed. “Exactly.”

  Kat stared at them for a few seconds, then opened her mouth to speak. Unable to find words right away, she turned to me, then back to them; and the blue eyes narrowed as her mouth curled into a slight smile. “Let me see if I’m gettin’ this. You want me to lift one of Libby Hatch’s jackets or coats. One with big, flat buttons. And for that, you’ll give me a ticket to San Francisco and a few hundred bucks to set myself up?”

  “That,” the Doctor said, himself looking a bit uneasily at the Isaacsons, “is apparently what we are offering.”

  Kat turned to me again. “They serious, Stevie?”

  “Generally,” I answered with a smile. The thought of Kat leaving town didn’t set me up much, that was true; but the idea of her getting away from Ding Dong, the Dusters, and all that went with that life outweighed any other consideration. “Come on, Kat,” I urged. “Lifting a coat? You could do it in your sleep.”

  She slapped my leg hard. “Ain’t no reason to tell the world that, Stevie Taggert,” she scolded quietly. Then she looked back to the others and stood up. “All right, boys—uh, gentlemen. You got yourselves a deal. It may take me a day or two—”

  “The sooner the better,” Dr. Kreizler answered, standing and extending a hand. “But a day or two should be fine.”

  Kat shook his hand, much less skittishly this time, then smiled wide. “Well!” she said. “I’d best get about it, then!” Turning to me, she took on a bit of a coy air, playacting like she had in the kitchen. “Stevie—will you—” She stopped, realizing she didn’t know the words.

  “Show you out,” I finished for her. “Yeah, sure.”

  The Doctor pulled out a few dollars and handed them to me. “See her to a hansom on the corner, Stevie.” He bowed to Kat. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Devlin. And I look forward to the successful conclusion of our business together.” He glanced at Lucius once more. “Whatever that business may turn out to be …”

  I took Kat’s arm, and we headed out of the house.

  Once on the sidewalk and moving toward Second Avenue, she began to jump around like a four-year-old. “Stevie!” she near screamed. “I’m goin’ to California! Can you believe it? Can you imagine it? Me, in San Francisco!”

  “You really got an aunt’s an opera singer?” I asked, as she came close to strangling me by throwing her arms around my neck.

  “Well, practically,” Kat answered. “She works in the opera house, anyways. And she’ll be a singer someday, she told me.”

  “Unh-hunh,” I said, not completely convinced. “She ain’t no floozy, is she, Kat?”

  “No, she ain’t no floozy, thank you, Stevie,” Kat answered. “And I ain’t gonna be either—not no more! My life’s gonna change, Stevie, change—and alls I gotta do is steal a jacket from Libby Hatch! Steal a jacket from a woman what has trouble keepin’ her clothes on, from all I can tell!”

  We’d reached the corner—directly across the avenue from the New York Lying-in Hospital, I noted—and as I hailed a hansom, Kat’s face screwed up one more time. “Whatta you suppose they want such a thing for, Stevie? The Doctor and them two fellas? They’s strange birds, those two, for cops.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, suddenly realizing that in fact I didn’t know. “But I’m gonna go find out.” I turned to her as she opened the little door of the hansom. “You’ll be okay, Kat? I mean, about Ding Dong and all?”

  “Him?” she answered. “He’ll be lucky if he even sees me before I pull this off. Let him have his little twelve-year-olds—I’m goin’ to California!”

  “You’d better write to your aunt first,” I advised. “Make sure she’s still there, and that it’s all okay.”

  “I already thought of that,” Kat answered, stepping off the curb. “I’m gonna do it tonight.” She paused before boarding the hansom to give me a hug. “Thanks, Stevie,” she whispered into my ear. “You’re a friend, and that’s the truth.” Pulling back, she glanced at the Doctor’s house once more. “And you was right about your boss—he’s a decent soul, sure enough. Though he looks like one of the Devil’s own, that I will say!”

  I wanted badly to kiss her, but she hopped into the cab, waving the few dollars I’d passed along to her up at the driver. “Hudson Street, cabbie—and take your blasted time, I wanna enjoy the ride!”

  The cabbie cracked his whip, Kat gave me a little wave, and then she turned around to take in the avenue. She looked for all the world like she owned the city—and that made me smile.

  I turned and ran back to the house as the cab disappeared, wanting to know what in the world the detective sergeants had been talking about.

  CHAPTER 20

  Coming back into the house, I almost ran headlong into Dr. Kreizler, who was standing outside his small examination room holding the paregoric bottle what I’d left in the kitchen. He launched into a bit of a lecture about my taking it on myself to dispense narcotics: it seemed that paregoric was an opiate, which explained why it was so effective on both colicky babies and the desperate Kat. I told him I had no idea it was so strong, being as anybody could buy it just about anywhere. He answered that he understood why I’d been driven to make use of it, given Kat’s condition (which he, like the detective sergeants, had quickly detected); still, he didn’t want me taking any more medicines out of the examination room without his permission, as he didn’t much like the thought that he�
��d have to start locking stuff up.

  This deserved but no less unpleasant lecture was cut short by the sound of the doorbell. Its two tones, produced by a small electricity-driven hammer striking a pair of long pipes in the vestibule, were particularly loud, given as we were so close, and they startled both myself and the Doctor. He sealed up the paregoric bottle tight, then put it into his examination room and said only, “I hope we understand each other, Stevie.” I assured him that we did, and then he headed for the vestibule.

  Before he’d even opened the front door, I could hear Miss Howard’s protesting voice coming through its thick wood. She was answered by a couple of low, mumbling words from Mr. Moore, and then Miss Howard broke into protests again. When the Doctor opened the front door, she dashed through the vestibule and into the hall, looking flushed and annoyed but smiling a bit despite herself.

  “Stop it, John, the job’s done. You don’t have to go on,” Mr. Moore came loping in, giving Miss Howard a lusty look what seemed to be only half serious. “I don’t care,” he said. “Two hours in that hole, I’m going to make you pay—”

  The Doctor looked at them both in bewilderment. “It’s a bit late for spring fever, Moore. What the devil are you up to?”

  “You don’t have a sedative, do you, Doctor?” Miss Howard said. “Apparently John decided this morning that if he behaved like a disgusting pig while we were at the Hall of Records he might be released from his assignment. He’s been at me all morning—”

  “Oh, I haven’t even started,” Mr. Moore said, making a move at Miss Howard. “You don’t know what disgusting is yet, Sara…”

  “Moore,” the Doctor said, grabbing his friend lightly by the collar, “I should have thought such idiocy beneath even you. Kindly pull yourself together. We’ve had important developments, and now that you’re here, we can all go down to Number 808 and review them together.”

  “All right,” Mr. Moore said, his eyes fixed on Miss Howard. “I can wait.”

  She just turned and looked into the big mirror that hung in the front hall, securing her hair more tightly at the back of her head as she did. “I’m afraid I really will have to shoot you one day, John. Do you still have the diagram?”

  “Yes, yes,” Mr. Moore answered, finally dropping the act and standing up straight. He produced a folded piece of paper from inside his jacket. “Two hours, Kreizler, in that musty old tomb—did you know they used to keep prisoners there during the Revolution? And all we come away with is a blasted pencil sketch. Still—I suppose it might’ve taken us two days.”

  “Then you found something,” the Doctor said, ignoring Mr. Moore’s whining. “Records?”

  “Only a copy of the permit,” Mr. Moore answered. “The plans themselves have—quite mysteriously, of course—disappeared.”

  The Doctor looked from Mr. Moore to me, his satisfaction and excitement obvious. “Well—interesting developments on all fronts!” He rushed over to the staircase, calling up, “Detective Sergeants! Cyrus! Downtown!” Then he turned to me. “Stevie, will you tend to Gwendolyn and then follow along behind us? We’ll walk down Broadway to Number 808, so that the detective sergeants and I can tell these two about your discoveries of this morning.”

  “Okay,” I said, moving to the door to follow the order. “But I want to hear why the detective sergeants want that jacket!”

  Miss Howard looked confused. “Jacket?”

  The detective sergeants and Cyrus had reached the bottom of the stairs. “Back to Number 808, I take it?” Marcus asked.

  “Indeed,” the Doctor said. “And quickly.”

  They all began to file out as I went to the calash, Mr. Moore bringing up the rear at a slow pace. “I don’t suppose it’s lunchtime yet,” I heard him mumble pathetically. “God, I never would’ve believed that detective work could give you such an appetite. It’s no damned wonder so many cops are fat…”

  I gave Gwendolyn a lighter-than-usual brushing down and stowed the harness and gear without bothering to clean it all, telling myself I’d tend to the job later. Then it was back outside, making sure the carriage house was securely locked, and on down Seventeenth Street toward Broadway, scanning the crowds of Monday-morning workers and shoppers for my friends. I finally caught up to them as they crossed Fourteenth Street from Union Square. My timing was a little slow, though: the Doctor and the detective sergeants had finished telling Kat’s story a couple of blocks earlier, and I’d just missed Miss Howard’s summary of what she and Mr. Moore had found downtown. She, however, very decently fell out of the pack to give me a quick repetition.

  Some two years previous, Elspeth Hunter and her husband, Micah, had indeed applied for and received a permit to do some fairly extensive work on their house, most of it in the basement. But being as the actual records concerning the construction were missing and the copy of the permit didn’t go beyond generalities, that was all that we could determine (and lucky to have that much, too). But Miss Howard had sat Mr. Moore down after they learned this and forced him to remember everything he could about said basement, which he’d actually been encouraged by Nurse Hunter to search. Miss Howard figured there had to be some kind of a clue in the area somewhere, so she’d sketched and noted its dimensions and everything that Mr. Moore could remember it containing. Nothing about the place had jumped out at them so far, but it was possible they were overlooking or misinterpreting something what the detective sergeants might think was important.

  We’d reached Number 808 Broadway before Lucius began to explain what he wanted with Elspeth Hunter’s (or Libby Hatch’s) jacket with the big buttons, and the Doctor decided that we should wait until we got upstairs to grill him about it. Lucius wasn’t what you’d call a flamboyant or vain type of person, but like his brother’d said that night we fetched them from the Cunard pier, he did enjoy his occasional moment of intellectual grandstanding; and as we rode up in the elevator, the big smile on his face made it plain that he was pleased with the fact that none of us (except for Marcus, of course) had figured out what his plan was. For all that I was curious, I kind of admired Marcus for not spilling the beans and for giving his kid brother a moment to shine: it was an unusual outward demonstration that, underneath it all, the brothers really were deeply attached to each other, as they would’ve had to’ve been, to have survived their years of struggling together up through the ranks of the police force.

  We got upstairs, and through the front windows of the office I could see that the clouds beyond the Hudson to the west were thickening, loading up with what looked like might turn into real rain. Everybody grabbed a seat, and Lucius stood by the big chalkboard, picking up a nib of chalk and shaking it around in his closed hand just the way the Doctor liked to do: Lucius had the greatest admiration for Dr. Kreizler, in a kind of boyish way that sometimes made him seem to want to emulate the man in small ways as well as big.

  Repeating, for Mr. Moore and Miss Howard’s benefit, his belief that what we now required above all was proof that Nurse Hunter had the Linares baby and had actually attacked the señora in the Park, Lucius proceeded to explain why so simple a garment as a jacket with buttons could provide such proof. The bit about the buttons, once I’d heard it, was pretty obvious, and I felt a little like kicking myself for not having thought of it: the detective sergeants had been able to get a good set of fingerprints off of the piece of lead pipe they’d found by the Egyptian obelisk, and they needed a set of Nurse Hunter’s for comparison. They hadn’t wanted to actually steal anything from her house, being as she seemed like the type that would notice if even the smallest trinket was missing. And given that the Hunter house had turned out to be under Goo Goo Knox’s personal protection, it seemed a lucky thing they’d made the choice they had; but we still needed something that they could lift prints from for comparison. An article of clothing with buttons would suit best, as there weren’t likely to be any prints on the fasteners save her own; and big, flat buttons would be spacious enough to provide complete images of multiple fing
ertips.

  That left the question of why Lucius wanted a jacket or a coat, something that Nurse Hunter was likely to wear at home and outside. This question in turn brought us into what was, for the rest of our group, a mysterious new world: hair identification. It seemed that forensic science had progressed to the point where a microscope could be used to determine if a given hair was human or animal and, if it was human, whether it had come from a particular person—provided a sample of the particular person’s hair was available for comparison. Now, the little hat what the Doctor’d spotted at the base of the Egyptian obelisk had contained what Lucius was sure were a few of Ana Linares’s hairs: baby hair was, it seemed, the easiest kind to identify, being, in Lucius’s words, “short in length, rudimentary in character, and possessed of extremely fine pigmentation.” So what we needed now was another sample of Ana’s hair—one taken directly from an article of Nurse Hunter’s clothing—what could be put into the detective sergeant’s “comparison microscope,” a kind of double-barreled job that would let him study the two samples side by side and make an exact match.

  But why, we all wanted to know, had Lucius decided on a jacket or a coat as the best garment to try to collect such a sample from? Didn’t it make more sense to try to grab a shirt, or maybe something even a little more intimate? The detective sergeant’s answer was clever and worthy of the man. We already knew that Nurse Hunter had taken the baby out, bold as brass, in public; figuring that no one was ever going to nail her for the kidnapping (being as she had no interest in a ransom), she probably enjoyed every chance she got to make the world think that she was capable of having a happy, healthy child of her own. Shirts, skirts, undergarments—all those she wore inside at the Dusters’ and God-only-knew where else. And as we now knew that she wasn’t exactly put off by close physical contact with a variety of types, those garments would likely contain a large number of hair samples what’d take a lot of time to sort out. And time was pressing us harder: if her experiences at the Lying-in Hospital were any measure, it wouldn’t be long before Nurse Hunter’s proven inability to give infants effective care began to show itself. At that point even a baby like Ana Linares was likely to become a lot more cranky than usual, a condition what would only deteriorate. If Nurse Hunter held the kid responsible for the failure of their relationship (as Dr. Kreizler believed she had in the past and would again), it was only a matter of time before little Ana, too, started having unexplained episodes of labored breathing, the final one of which would result in her death.