Part 1 (2/2)
Near the end of Delancey Street, the smells of sea and fresh water, along with the stench of refuse that those who lived near the waterfront simply dumped off the edge of Manhattan every day, mingled to produce the distinctive aroma of that tidal pool we call the East River. A large structure soon slanted up before us: the ramp approach to the nascent Williamsburg Bridge. Without pausing, and much to my dismay, Stevie crashed onto the boarded roadway, the horse's hooves and carriage wheels clattering far more loudly against wood than they had against stone.
An elaborate maze of steel supports below the roadway bore us dozens of feet up into the night air. As I wondered what our destination could possibly be-for the towers of the bridge were nothing like completed, and the structure's opening was years away-I began to make out what looked like the walls of a large Chinese temple suddenly looming ahead. Composed of huge granite blocks and crowned by two squat watchtowers, each of which was ringed by a delicate steel walkway, this peculiar edifice was the Manhattan-side anchor of the bridge, the structure that would eventually hold one set of ends of the enormous steel suspension cables that would support the central span. In a way, though, my impression of it as a temple was not far off the mark: like the Brooklyn Bridge, whose Gothic arches I could see silhouetted against the night sky to the south, this new roadway over the East River was a place where many workers' lives had been sacrificed to the faith of Engineering, which in the past fifteen years had produced towering marvels all over Manhattan. What I did not know was that the blood sacrifice that had been made atop the western anchor of the Williamsburg Bridge on that particular night was of a very different nature.
Near the entrance to the watchtowers atop the anchor, standing under the flimsy light of a few electric bulbs and bearing portable lanterns, were several patrolmen whose small bra.s.s insignia marked them as coming from the Thirteenth Precinct (we had pa.s.sed the station house moments before on Delancey Street). With them was a sergeant from the Fifteenth, a fact that immediately struck me as odd-in two years of covering the criminal beat for the Times, Times, not to mention a childhood in New York, I'd learned that each of the city's police precincts guarded its terrain jealously. (Indeed, at mid-century the various police factions had openly warred with each other.) For the Thirteenth to have summoned a man from the Fifteenth indicated that something significant was going on. not to mention a childhood in New York, I'd learned that each of the city's police precincts guarded its terrain jealously. (Indeed, at mid-century the various police factions had openly warred with each other.) For the Thirteenth to have summoned a man from the Fifteenth indicated that something significant was going on.
Stevie finally reined the gelding up near this group of blue greatcoats, then leapt from his seat and took the hard-breathing horse by the bit, leading him to the side of the roadway near an enormous pile of construction materials and tools. The boy eyed the cops with familiar distrust. The sergeant from the Fifteenth Precinct, a tall Irishman whose pasty face was notable only because he did not sport the broad mustache so common to his profession, stepped forward and studied Stevie with a threatening smile.
”That's little Stevie Taggert, ain't it?” he said, speaking with a p.r.o.nounced brogue. ”You don't suppose the commissioner's called me all this way to box your ears for ya, do ya, Stevie, ya little s.h.i.+t?”
I stepped down from the carriage and approached Stevie, who shot the sergeant a sullen glance. ”Pay no mind, Stevie,” I said, as sympathetically as possible. ”Stupidity goes with the leather helmet.” The boy smiled a bit. ”But I wouldn't mind your telling me what I'm doing here.”
Stevie nodded to the northern watchtower, then pulled a battered cigarette out of his pocket. ”Up there. The doctor says you're to go up.”
I started for the doorway in the granite wall, but Stevie stayed by the horse. ”You're not coming?”
The boy shuddered and turned away, lighting the cigarette. ”I seen it once. And if I never see such again I'll be done right. When you're ready to get back home, Mr. Moore, I'll be right here. Doctor's instructions.”
I felt increased apprehension as I turned and headed for the doorway, where I was stopped by the arm of the police sergeant. ”And who might you be, with the young Stevepipe driving you around past all respectable hours? This is a crime scene, y'know.” I gave the man my name and occupation, at which he grinned and showed me an impressive gold tooth. ”Ah, a gentleman of the press-and the Times, Times, no less! Well, Mr. Moore, I've just arrived myself. Urgent call, apparently no other man they could trust. Spell it F-l-y-n-n, sir, if you will, and don't go labeling me no roundsman. Full sergeant. Come on, we'll head up together. Mind you behave, young Stevie, or I'll have you back on Randalls Island faster'n spit!” no less! Well, Mr. Moore, I've just arrived myself. Urgent call, apparently no other man they could trust. Spell it F-l-y-n-n, sir, if you will, and don't go labeling me no roundsman. Full sergeant. Come on, we'll head up together. Mind you behave, young Stevie, or I'll have you back on Randalls Island faster'n spit!”
Stevie turned back to the horse. ”Why don't you go chase yourself,” the boy mumbled, just loud enough for the sergeant to hear. Flynn spun with a look of lethal anger, but, remembering my presence, checked himself. ”Incorrigible, that one, Mr. Moore. Can't imagine what a man like you's doing in his presence. Need him as a contact with the underworld, no doubt. Up we go, sir, and mind, it's dark as the pit in here!”
So it was. I stumbled and tripped my way up a rough flight of stairs, at the top of which I could make out the form of another leatherhead. The cop-a roundsman from the Thirteenth Precinct-turned on our approach and then called to someone else: ”It's Flynn, sir. He's here.”
We came out of the stairs into a small room littered with sawhorses, planks of wood, buckets of rivets, and bits of metal and wiring. Wide windows gave a full view of the horizon in every direction-the city behind us, the river and the partially completed towers of the bridge before us. A doorway led out onto the walkway that ran around the tower. Near the doorway stood a slit-eyed, bearded sergeant of detectives named Patrick Connor, whom I recognized from my visits to Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street. Next to him, looking out over the river with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, was a much more familiar figure: Theodore.
”Sergeant Flynn,” Roosevelt said without turning. ”It's ghastly work that has prompted our call, I'm afraid. Ghastly.”
My discomfort suddenly heightened when Theodore spun to face us. There was nothing unusual in his appearance: an expensive, slightly dandy checked suit of the kind that he fancied in those days; the spectacles that were, like the eyes behind them, too small for his tough, square head; the broad mustache bristling below the wide nose. Yet his visage was excessively odd, nonetheless. Then it occurred to me: his teeth. His numerous, usually snapping teeth-they were nowhere in sight. His jaws were clamped shut in what seemed pa.s.sionate anger, or remorse. Something had shaken Roosevelt badly.
His dismay seemed to grow when he saw me. ”What-Moore! What in thunder are you doing here?”
”I'm glad to see you, too, Roosevelt,” I managed through my nervousness, extending a hand.
He accepted it, though for once he didn't loosen my arm from its socket. ”What-oh, I am sorry, Moore. I-delighted to see you, of course, delighted. But who told you-?”
”Told me what? I was abducted and brought here by Kreizler's boy. On his orders, without so much as a word of explanation.”
”Kreizler!” Theodore murmured in soft urgency, glancing out the window with a confounded and even fearful look that was not at all typical of him. ”Yes, Kreizler's been here.”
”Been? Do you mean he's gone?”
”Before I arrived. He left a note. And a report.” Theodore revealed a piece of paper clutched in his left hand. ”A preliminary one, at any rate. He was the first doctor they could find. Although it was quite hopeless...”
I took the man by the shoulder. ”Roosevelt. What is it?”
”To be sure, Commissioner, I wouldn't mind knowing meself,” Sergeant Flynn added, with quaint obsequiousness that was repellant. ”We get little enough sleep at the Fifteenth, and I'd just as soon-”
”Very well,” Theodore said, steeling himself. ”How are your stomachs, gentlemen?”
I said nothing, and Flynn made some absurd joke about the wide range of grisly sights he'd encountered in his life; but Theodore's eyes were all hard business. He indicated the door to the outer walkway. Detective Sergeant Connor stepped aside and then Flynn led the way out.
My first thought on emerging, despite my apprehension, was that the view from the walkway was even more extraordinary than that from the tower windows. Across the water lay Williamsburg, once a peaceful country town but now rapidly becoming a bustling part of the metropolis that was destined, within months, to officially evolve into Greater New York. To the south, again, the Brooklyn Bridge; in the southwestern distance the new towers of Printing House Square, and below us the churning, black waters of the river- And then I saw it.
CHAPTER 3.
Odd, how long it took my mind to make any sense of the image. Or perhaps not; there was so much so very wrong, so very out of place, so...distorted. How could I have expected myself to grasp it quickly?
On the walkway was the body of a young person. I say ”person” because, though the physical attributes were those of an adolescent boy, the clothes (little more than a chemise that was missing a sleeve) and facial paint were those of a girl. Or, rather, of a woman, and a woman of dubious repute at that. The unfortunate creature's wrists were trussed behind the back, and the legs were bent in a kneeling position that pressed the face to the steel of the walkway. There was no sign of any pants or shoes, just one sock hanging pathetically from a foot. But what had been done to the body...
The face did not seem heavily beaten or bruised-the paint and powder were still intact-but where once there had been eyes there were now only b.l.o.o.d.y, cavernous sockets. A puzzling piece of flesh protruded from the mouth. A wide gash stretched across the throat, though there was little blood near the opening. Large cuts crisscrossed the abdomen, revealing the ma.s.s of the inner organs. The right hand had been chopped neatly off. At the groin there was another gaping wound, one that explained the mouth-the genitals had been cut away and stuffed between the jaws. The b.u.t.tocks, too, had been shorn off, in what appeared large...one could only call them carving strokes.
In the minute or two that it took me to note all these details the vista around me faded into a sea of indistinguishable blackness, and what I thought was the churning progress of a s.h.i.+p turned out to be my own blood in my ears. With the sudden realization that I might be sick, I spun to grasp the railing of the walkway and hung my head out over the water.
”Commissioner!” Connor called, stepping out of the watchtower. But it was Theodore who got to me first, in a quick bound.
”Easy, now, John,” I heard him say, as he supported me with that wiry yet remarkably strong boxer's frame of his. ”Breathe deeply.”
As I followed his instructions I heard a long, trailing whistle from Flynn, who continued to stare at the body. ”Well, now,” he said, addressing the corpse without sounding particularly concerned. ”Somebody has done for you, young Giorgio-called-Gloria, haven't they? You're a h.e.l.l of a mess.”
”Then you do know the child, Flynn?” Theodore said, leaning me against the wall of the watchtower. Steadiness was returning to my head.
”That I do, Commissioner.” Flynn seemed in the dim light to be smiling. ”Though it was no child, this one, not if childhood be judged by behavior. Family name Santorelli. Must've been, oh, thirteen years old, or thereabouts. Giorgio, it was called originally, and since it began working out of Paresis Hall, it called itself Gloria.”
”'It'?” I said, wiping cold sweat from my forehead with the cuff of my coat. ”Why do you call him 'it'?”
Flynn's smile became a grin. ”Sure, and what would you call it, Mr. Moore? It warn't no male, not to judge by its antics-but G.o.d didn't create it female, teither. They're all its to me, that breed.”
Theodore's hands went forcefully to his hips, the fingers curling up into fists-he'd taken the measure of Flynn. ”I'm not interested in your philosophical a.n.a.lysis of the situation, Sergeant. Whatever else, the boy was a child and the child has been murdered.”
Flynn chuckled and glanced again at the body. ”No arguing that, that, sir!” sir!”
”Sergeant!” Theodore's voice, always a little too rasping and shrill for his appearance, scratched a little more than usual as he barked at Flynn, who stood up straight. ”Not another word out of you, sir, unless it's to answer my questions! Understood?”
Flynn nodded; but the cynical, amused resentment that all longtime officers in the department felt for the commissioner who in just one year had stood Police Headquarters and the whole chain of departmental command on its ear remained evident in the slightest curl of his upper lip. Theodore could not have missed it.