The Gods of Gotham Page 14

  “Let’s say,” my brother proposed, “that you stay away from the ladies, all of them and all hours, and instead find your own sort and go up the back stairs to bed as a habit. You’re a molley then. Am I right?”

  I nodded, mute. The argument was unassailable.

  “But then on the other hand, let’s say you’re friends with a molley—fine young Democrat, by the way, he lives here—and the molley likes you and very much wants to do you a French favor as a lark from time to time. You take my meaning, yes?”

  I did. As well as another generous sip of spirits, while I recalled the long-ago night when I’d first seen that particular act, as a whore seated on a box crate in an alleyway earned her supper with her mouth.

  “And then let’s say you let him go to his knees every so often, and both parties are kittled as pie and no harm done. Where’s the sodomy in that?”

  I shook my head very hard, back and forth, thinking I could maybe fling some interesting but irrelevant thoughts about my kin out through my ears and instead focus on the relevant thoughts. The ones I was apparently now paid to mull over.

  “There are nineteen dead kinchin, Val. Plus the one we already looked at.”

  My brother’s face darkened. “What?”

  “Don’t make me say it again.”

  In a very uncharacteristic display of understanding, Val leaned over to listen. I spilled. I spilled very nearly everything, including the tale of the ghostly gore-soaked apparition who’d collided with my knees, how she’d warned us of Liam’s death, and explained that Bird Daly had led Matsell, Piest, and me to the terrible trove just below the ground. I left only one part out, which was that Bird yet lived with me. I simply didn’t know how to explain that fact to my brother. Meanwhile, we were both eager enough to appear deaf to each other. Valentine didn’t quite seem to grasp why Silkie’s brothel was so important, for instance, not even after the sheer number of bodies was taken into account.

  “There’s a dozen brothels on every block, and identical, and anyone could have laid hands on the squeakers,” he said testily. The drugs were making him irritable, not to mention featherbrained as a whore with a guaranteed bed. “Those dead kids couldn’t possibly all have come from one place. Anyway, Silkie’s are older. And why should she stifle her own source of coin? It’s not sensible to think her involved.”

  “Bird came from there,” I repeated. “And Liam, the kinchin with the cross butchered into him. You recollect him, yes? The slaughtered kid you wanted me to identify today? So I identified him and found a score of others. Are you deflecting the point away from that monstrous woman because you bedded her, or because you’re keen to have my fist in your jaw?”

  “Because she’s a Party asset. You don’t even know her, so why call her monstrous?”

  I pulled at my own hair. “For employing kinchin as mabs?”

  “What are you on about? They’re none below fifteen, after all. How old were you when you first turned a moll’s dress green in a meadow, Timmy? Or have you yet?”

  “Sixteen. Bird Daly is ten years old. Can you tell the difference? Please say that you can.”

  Val thought that one over. Pensive, he rubbed his nails against the arc in his plentiful hairline on the right-hand side. It didn’t help, so he clasped his fingers together and arrested his knee with them.

  “That’s considerably too young,” he owned. “You’re sure she hails from Silkie’s?”

  “Are you stupid or just morphine-drunk?”

  “Fooled,” he snapped. “Silkie always savvies when I’m coming, after all.”

  “No doubt. Do you want to know why I’m angry?”

  “Not too keenly. You’ve been angry with me since eighteen twenty-eight—”

  “I am angry with you,” I hissed, “because we should be questioning this woman right now and instead I’m arguing with you over the principles of sodomy and whether ten is too early to turn stargazer.”

  My brother stood up and drained his glass. I did the same, feeling the thickly sweet slide of the unholy concoction all the way to my gut. A malicious grin broke over Valentine’s face. Somehow it turned a man with sandbags scored beneath his eyes into a boy in short pants.

  “What a copper star you make, Timothy.” Rubbing salt into cuts as he always did. “Such enthusiasm. I told you, didn’t I? I did. Much better than my roundsmen; they haven’t unearthed a thing all day. Let’s to Silkie’s. I’ll even get you a tumble if you’d like one. On the house.”

  It’s a hard job to describe Silkie Marsh when you’re looking right at her. The effect is all wrong. So instead I’ll say how she looked in one of the massive Venetian mirrors in her front saloon. Surrounded by gilded walnut furniture lined in royal purple velvet, illuminated by a crystal chandelier that sparkled like glancing views of the inside of a diamond.

  She wore a simple but perfect black satin gown the way the playhouse courtesans do, which led me to believe that she’d used to ply her trade in the third tier of the Bowery Theatre. Plenty of rouge, artfully blended. The scent of violets hovered around her like a patch of spring. She stood with her white fingers draped over the treble end of a rosewood piano, a champagne glass in her other hand. Looking right at her, you’d think her beautiful. But looking at her reflection, you see that she isn’t. Not the way Mercy is, with two or three flawless imperfections. Silkie Marsh had midsummer blonde hair, piled loosely atop her head, and very delicate features. All of them even and feminine and fragile, soft in a way Mercy’s aren’t, with a mouth like a kiss blown through the air. But seen in the mirror, she looked like the theory of beauty and not beauty at all. Hazel eyes careless and blue in their centers, mouth smiling at nothing, making a perpetual wearied effort to look pleasing. Without giving any lasting pleasure.

  And in the mirror, you can see that she’s missing human empathy entirely. That little string tying people to strangers and acquaintances was cut clean through. I recalled Bird’s face going white.

  She’s here, isn’t she? She found me.

  “I’m not certain that I should be flattered you’re here unexpectedly, or very put out that you didn’t give me enough warning to clear my entire night’s schedule for you,” she said to my brother.

  I’d just force-fed Val about two pints of lukewarm coffee with brandy in it, compelled him to dunk his head under the stream of a Croton pump, and fixed his copper star to his embroidered vest after he’d buttoned his shirt. He still looked like the edge of a serrated knife, fingers twitching like a smashed spider. But apart from that, and even apart from having the body of a fireman and the darkly merry, apple-cheeked face of a street urchin, something about him was compelling to look at in Silkie Marsh’s front parlor. I wondered what it was.

  “Or didn’t you want me free to spend time with you?” she added coyly.

  Valentine looked the same as he always did, I decided. I’d just never been in the same room with someone who was in love with him. Simple.

  “It’s business brings us, and not pleasure, my darling old shoe,” Val replied cheerfully as she handed us both champagne glasses. “I’ve taken up police work alongside the firedogging, now there’s police work to be taken up. So has Tim here.”

  “I’m charmed to finally meet Val’s brother,” she said with a calculated smile. “He speaks so often of you.”

  That was too frightening for comment.

  “So I’m here to help,” Val continued. “Go on. Palaver with me. What can we do for you?”

  Silkie Marsh’s angelic head tilted. “Thank you, but I don’t understand.”

  “Your stargazers. One of them’s been hushed. And I’m here to help.”

  The pretty mouth parted, then wrenched in dismay. “Do you mean to tell me that—no, it’s too horrible. I’m not missing any of my sisters, but our page boy Liam has run away. Has he been found by someone?”

  “Aye, and when we find whoever it was that found him first, we’re going to have to string that fellow up by the neck, if you take my meaning
.”

  “Oh, God,” she gasped, hand clutching at Val’s arm. It was a poor, cold excuse to touch my brother, I thought. “We were so frightened for him, but we prayed he would come back.”

  “This … page boy of yours,” I said. “When did you miss him?”

  “It must have been at least a week ago.”

  And now I knew she was playing us. For it had been only twenty-four hours since I’d collided with Bird in Elizabeth Street, and that very morning I’d learned of Liam’s body, identified him, and made the journey to the burial ground in the late afternoon. Therefore Liam was alive and still residing at Silkie Marsh’s yesterday, for They’ll tear him to pieces is a phrase undoubtedly couched in the future tense. Bird Daly, I thought, was nothing short of a godsend. Bird Daly was a liar pointing like a compass arrow at the truth. As I was thinking, I heard the unmistakable crack of a lash hitting flesh.

  “Is someone being beaten in your establishment, Madam Marsh?” I questioned with steel in my tone.

  “Yes,” she said, flushing slightly for my benefit. “But I assure you that Mr. Spriggs paid extra in advance for the service. With your permission, Mr. Wilde, I’d like to cover the cost of Liam’s funeral. Everyone will be so devastated to learn of his death.”

  “That would be a nice gesture,” Val agreed, smiling. I stopped short of rolling my eyes only by the extremest effort of will.

  “Are you certain that none of your other … sisters … have gone missing?” I questioned next.

  “Why do you ask, Mr. Wilde?”

  “We’re concerned for other innocents in the neighborhood,” I answered simply.

  “People are in and out of here all day as if it were a firehouse,” she said with a resigned shrug of one shoulder, aimed square at Val. “But I missed no one at supper tonight, if that reassures you.”

  “In that case, might we take a look at your cellar, Madam Marsh?”

  “My cellar? Will three dollars cover a simple ceremony, Valentine?” She drew her hand out of a red velvet purse and placed a few dollars in my brother’s palm. Fingertips lingering. “Of course you can see my cellar. Whatever for?”

  “A whim of mine,” I answered as Val pocketed the bribe.

  We went down to the cellar with an oil lantern. And as I’d suspected, nothing was there. It was a pretty studied nothing, though. It was a square earthen-walled space, the air cool and well-ventilated for being underground, with a few boxes piled helter-skelter and an eerie dressmaker’s mannequin in the corner, stuck with pins that shivered in the light. Very clean. Too clean for a cellar—no cobwebs or roaches, and every cellar has roaches in the summer. If Liam had bled there and not in the barrel, as Bird’s dress had already told me, no trace remained.

  Then I snatched at the tail of an idea. A pretty spruce idea. A snakelike flit of excitement darted through me.

  “It’s good of you to pay for Liam’s funeral,” I said easily, turning around. “I wonder if all your sisters are as … generous as you. I’d sure like to meet one, if they are.”

  “There’s the spirit, Tim,” Val approved, pulling half a cigar from his pocket. “Tip yourself a bit of velvet.”

  “I’m happy to say that we’re all fairly generous of spirit in this house,” Silkie Marsh replied with a knowing smile. “Come, I’ll take you back upstairs. One or two of my girls are very lonely this evening.”

  I drained my champagne when we reached the parlor, and she poured the three of us more. Seating myself with my legs open in a masculine slouch, the way I’d seen my brother do thousands of times, I shot him a look from under my hat. He’d lit the cigar, and the smell of it crept like a spirit through the room.

  “Rose is free tonight, and would be happy to know you better, Mr. Wilde,” Silkie Marsh said, sitting perched on the arm of my brother’s chair.

  “I wonder …” I cleared my throat. “You see, I’m a bit … particular. I don’t like to be with … experienced girls. The ones who’ve had scores of others. I like to take my time, show a lass a thing or two, give her some fun. How old is Rose?”

  Silkie Marsh blinked, running her fingers through my brother’s sweep of hair. “She is eighteen, Mr. Wilde. But Lily is fifteen, you could wait half an hour for her.”

  “That isn’t quite what I meant,” I said slyly.

  My brother flashed me a wink from behind Madam Marsh’s back. “My Tim over there is a bit of a devil,” he said. “There’s no harm in him, and he treats them square. Tender, even. But I’m afraid that it’s unopened buds for my brother—once the rose has bloomed, you’ve lost his interest.”

  It’s a difficult job, forcing back a shudder. But I managed. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to slap my brother for saying something so foul, or wring his hand for catching on so quick.

  “Oh,” Madam Marsh said softly. “Well, I’m afraid we don’t really cater to that sort of thing.”

  “That’s a shame,” Valentine sighed, “because while Tim over there is kept busy … well, I’d need a way to pass my time, wouldn’t I?”

  Evil, evil, wicked man, I thought, standing up and applauding in my head.

  Silkie Marsh’s face softened. “There is a girl here who helps me mend and sew, come to think of it.”

  “Grand! You know what he really likes, though? When he’s with a little miss, there’s nothing Tim there loves better than to have a boy kinchin around as well. Show the squeaker the ropes, as it were, let him join in the game. Your Liam is out of the picture, and God rest him, but if you’ve … oh, I don’t know … a stable lad or something, that would be rapture for Timothy Wilde yonder.” He passed her back the three dollar bills.

  I smiled seasickly at my horrible, depraved, ridiculously clever brother and held my tongue.

  “And here I thought that there was no man in New York more wonderfully debauched than your sibling here,” Silkie Marsh said to me with a fond laugh, leaning back into his arm a little.

  “You were absolutely right,” I assured her dryly. “I just like to show the kinchin a good time.”

  Assuring us that these requests would be no inconvenience, Silkie Marsh rose and rang a pair of bells. Their stable boy, meanwhile, had odd habits, she told me. Strange ways. But he was a good boy, and they loved him anyway. She knew I wouldn’t mind his eccentricities.

  Two children came down the stairs a few minutes later. One was a girl of eleven or twelve with her brown hair done up like Bird’s had been, plump and sleepy-faced, wearing a similarly rich nightdress, blessedly free of blood. The other was the identical bird-boned Irish boy I’d warned against stealing molasses before the fire destroyed Nick’s Oyster Cellar, likewise wearing a nightdress, and lip rouge to boot. My jaw sank at the sight of him, and the air in my lungs went scorching of a sudden. Both were obviously under the quieting effects of a recent dose of laudanum.

  “Wake up, darlings. Neill, Sophia, this gentleman would like to be kind to you.”

  “That he would,” Valentine agreed, pushing to his feet. I rose as well. “Is there anything upstairs that you’d like to take with you?”

  Sophia, terrified, said nothing. Neill, in the unerring way sharp kinchin have, recognized me in spite of the grey strip of cloth and the brimmed hat. So he shook his head, his fingers flinching like the claws of tiny sparrows.

  “Do you have shoes?” I added.

  Another blank scared look, another negative.

  “What on earth do you mean?” cried Madam Marsh. “They live here!”

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  “Do you know, dear old hen,” remarked Val, “that stargazing is illegal? I didn’t either. I was just an unschooled fire rabbit hard after a tumble. But they told us it’s against the law. Tough to credit, isn’t it? So these two are leaving now.”

  Silkie Marsh’s rose-blossom features flew in several opposing directions, a flower savaged by a gale. Rage flickered past, then dull hurt as she gazed at my brother, then forced acceptance. I’m not a cruel man, generally, and I’m not pr
oud of myself for gloating. But it was gut-deep satisfying.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to take, then, Mr. Wilde? Valentine?” She smoothed a hand down her black satin bodice. It was a brilliant piece of theater, for the fury had disappeared.

  Val snapped his fingers. “I’d near forgotten! We’ve a committee fund-raiser coming, Silkie, and I know you’re a very scrapper for the Party. I’ll have those three dollars back, with thanks for your pains. And a very good night to you, darling duck.”

  Silkie Marsh passed him the money. Exit Valentine, her eyes charring his wide back. I wanted to linger, ask again if other of her kinchin-mabs were missing. Ask if she thought she could cross me when I’d pegged her as false. But the instant I did, she’d learn that I knew of Bird. And that gave me pause, thinking on Bird’s trembling lips when she steadfastly refused to call Silkie Marsh by name.

  So instead I tipped my broad hat coldly and quit that vile house with all speed. I found myself standing on the pavement with two shoeless kinchin almost identically dressed, wearing a madman’s grim smile. My brother, his cigar hanging from the side of his mouth and his hands on his tapering hips, shook his head philosophically.

  “That dirty slamkin,” Val mused. “It almost disappoints me in the honesty of New York’s population. I practically kept her for a lady bird a few years back, you savvy. And right in front of my face the whole time … I was drunk, though. Well, Timothy. I have one question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “What, precisely,” Valentine desired to know, directing two stabbing finger points at each of the kinchin standing wide-eyed on the street in the wetly thickening August air, “are you going to do with those?”

  TEN

  Let every parent who wishes his children to be trained like human beings, improved in heart and enlarged in mind, beware how he ever allows a Jesuit to insinuate a single word into their ears.