Alexander C. Irvine (9 page)

Bennett looked vagu
ely
irritated as he invited Archie into his office. He sat and indicated Archie should do the same.

“You and I both have plenty to do, Archie,” he said. “What was it you wanted to say?”

“Mr. Bennett,” Archie said, “I noticed this article in the paper today.” He flipped open a copy of the day’s
Herald
that lay on Bennett’s desk and pointed at the article that bore his byline.

Bennett leaned back in his chair and pulled at his bushy red sideburns. Through the window behind him, Archie watched traffic streaming up and down Broadway. “Seven years ago you used that byline once,” Bennett said. “It’s a clever one, but you can hardly be proprietary about it, can you?”

He picked up an editing pencil as he spoke, doodling a succession of arrowheads across the blotter that covered the desk. “If all you’ve come to do is complain about trivia, Archie, I don’t have time,” he said, glancing pointedly at the grandfather clock in the corner near the door.

Archie bristled at the cavalier disrespect in Bennett’s voice. “Mr. Bennett,” he said tightly, “I don’t think this is at all trivial.”

“I do,” Bennett said without looking up from his doodling. “Come, Archie, what’s the point?”

“The Dead Rabbits are the damned point!” Archie shouted. “You’ve put me squarely in their sights, and right before an election on top of it!”

He shoved the chair back and stood. “You put a piece out there that named people and accused them of vote fraud and graft, and then you put my name on it. What do you think is going to happen?”

Archie stopped short when he saw that Bennett was smiling at him. He felt suddenly foolish, as if he was about to be the butt of some cruel joke.

“You want to be a correspondent, Prescott?” Bennett’s grin was predatory as he leaned forward. The question hung in the air.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then don’t come whining to me about rubbish like who pinched your little pen-name. Of course it wasn’t an accident. If you’d walked out of here without mentioning your dance with the Rabbits, I’d have fired you tomorrow.” Bennett pointed his pencil at Archie. “You’ve been here too long to be just a disgruntled typesetter. I’ll be frank with you, Prescott; you’re never going to amount to anything if you live your life trying to flee your memory.” Bennett paused, waiting for Archie to say something. He nodded after a moment and continued.

“What’s important in this situation, Archie, your pen-name or the fact that the Dead Rabbits might stomp you flat?” Bennett gestured for Archie to sit. “Rhetorical question. Listen, here’s my offer: Bring me something new on those Tammany bastards and the job is yours. Salaried correspondent. And I don’t want innuendo or hearsay, I can make that up myself. I expect names, dates, places. Murder, graft, whatever; I want front-page sixty-point revelations. You live in the right place, you’ve known the right people in the past; the opportunity is yours to take. And the Dead Rabbits and the Tammany sachems will be keeping an eye on you now. That’s useful. You watch who’s watching you and they’ll lead you to what you want to know.”

Bennett stood and offered Archie his hand. “Truth be told, Prescott, I’ve done you a favor. It’s up to you now to capitalize. But you’ll do it on your own time, and right now you’re due on the floor.”

Rosetta Peer’s, Archie
thought as he cut from Houston Street over to the Bowery and turned south. If anyone knew anything, it would be the wharf rats who went to ground there, and Rosie’s brew is cheap. He walked fast to keep the cold away, covering the length of the Bowery to East Broadway in a few short minutes and turning down Oliver to pick up Water and follow it down to the dockside slums.

Archie checked his watch, disguising the motion as an elaborate itch to avoid being accosted; he was due at the
Herald
right then. If nothing came of his prowling tonight, he would no longer need to worry about finding a story or anything else for James Gordon Bennett. After two months of obsessive looking over his Shoulder at every footstep and equally obsessive searching the Whiskey Wards for people willing to name names about Tammany corruption, he’d reached some sort of threshold. One way or another, he’d resolve things tonight. Either he would have a story for Bennett, and thus a career, or he wouldn’t be working for Bennett at all. The second scenario had its drawbacks, but at least it meant the Rabbits wouldn’t be stalking him any more.

“Archie, fancy meeting you here.” The voice floated from an overhung breezeway on his right. Archie took a step toward the street, suddenly very aware of the knife pressing into the small of his back. Fearing reprisals by the Rabbits or other Tammany thugs, he’d begun carrying it around, and even though nothing had happened since Water Celebration Day, it had become a habit. The feeling the knife gave him of being watched had not abated, but Archie had gotten used to that as well; the vague presence was now comforting by virtue of its familiarity, and he caught himself sometimes in a fit of jealous worry that it was the knife that was being watched instead of him.

It had been weeks since he had stopped to wonder what it was that might be watching, or why it was that the knife made him vulnerable to nervous delusion, but he found himself wondering both as he watched a gaunt shape amble out of the alley shadow. In the clear moonlight, Archie recognized the man.

“Mike Dunn, by Jesus,” he said, astonished. “It’s been … well, years.”

“Since the fire, you mean to say,” Mike said. He was thinner than when Archie had last seen him, the stubble on his chin graying and patchy, sweat running down his face despite the dry cold. “Aye, seven years. Near impossible to believe it’s a coincidence after all this time, isn’t it?”

Archie noticed then that Mike’s legs and feet were bare under his long coat, and he took an involuntary step back. Footprints led back into the alley, melted through the inch of packed snow covering the ground, and gentle wisps of steam curled away from the soles of the man’s feet. “Mikey—”

“Never mind, Archie, you needn’t ask. You’re searching, and you’ll find out soon enough. Got a nip for an old friend?”

Archie dug the bottle out from under his coat and handed it to him. “How do you mean that? Who’s heard I’m searching?”

Mike didn’t answer until he had drained the entire bottle of whiskey, his Adam’s apple bobbing metronomically until he flipped the bottle over his shoulder and wiped a trickle from his chin.

“Ohhhh,” he sighed. “Some things a man misses.”

Archie kept his voice down with an effort. “Dammit, Mike, who’s heard I’m searching?”

“Them as needs to know, does,” Mike said, and chuckled, his breath streaming out in a dense cloud that hung in the still air. Archie could feel heat radiating off the man. Mike looked up at the sky, peering at the moon with first one eye closed and then the other. Whatever he saw pleased him, for when he looked back to Archie he was grinning.

“Quite a fire we had that night,” he said. “You know, there’s some say fire’s a living thing, because it breathes, eats, breeds. I could show them a thing or two.” He squinted at the sky a moment longer, saying, “Living fire. Damn these city lights.”

“Mike, what do you mean about this not being a coincidence?” Archie was desperate to keep the conversation on a footing he could at least pretend to understand. If Mike knew something about Tammany, Archie needed to know it too.

Sweat dripped off Mike’s chin as he laughed hoarsely, wreathing his face in thick vapor. His eyes shone through the mist, far too bright to be explained by ordinary fever. “Pardon me, Archie; sometimes I get wrapped up in other things. Forget matters at hand.”

He beckoned Archie into the alley, then stood close enough to him that the heat of his body made sweat break out on Archie’s forehead.
A
fever like this will kill him by morning,
Archie thought.
And he doesn’t even notice.

“Midnight tonight,” Mike whispered. “When the Rabbit’s out and the stars you can’t see are the highest. You go down toward the back of the Tammany Hotel and you’ll see something that might interest Mr. Bennett.”

He wheezed a laugh again, and Archie flinched at the heat of his breath. Something struck him as unusual, standing out even in the strange circumstances, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“Might be of interest to a great many people,” Mike added. “But I think you in particular.”

Again the wheezing laugh, and it struck Archie: Mike’s breath had absolutely no odor whatsoever, not even a hint of the quart of whiskey he’d put down.

“See you later, Archie.” Mike lifted a hand and wandered away down the alley, leaving a perfect trail of melted footprints in the dirty snow.

Back out on the street, Archie looked up at the sky. The moon was fat, not quite full, and the sky was clustered with stars.
When the stars you can’t see are the highest;
he wished he knew what Mike was talking about, but he’d never learned constellations beyond being able to recognize Orion, and he’d never heard of any Rabbit. Had Mike meant the Dead Rabbits?

Archie checked his watch again, then stared back into the alley in blank amazement. Nearly an hour had passed while he exchanged a few words with an obviously very ill Mike Dunn. An hour when he should have been walking down to the
Herald
s offices on Fulton.

He would have to hurry to be in place behind Tammany Hall at midnight; it would be impossible to simply walk right up to the back door off Frankfort Street. He would have to circle around to the south, use the crooked network of breezeways and accidental spaces between buildings that meandered between New York’s named streets. Perhaps that way he could get close enough to observe.

Well, an hour late was the same as absent for Bennett; if Archie showed up now with no story, he might as well not show up at all. He glanced up at the moon again before starting off for Tammany Hall; for a moment there, particularly right after Mike drank off the bottle of whiskey, one of the shadows on its face had looked startlingly like a rabbit. Oh, Jane, he thought, and turned up his collar against the wind.

T
he
imposing steeple
of Trinity Church loomed on Archie’s left as he turned off Broadway and found an alley that cut north parallel to the main avenue. He crossed Fulton, looking nervously around, but this part of the city was almost entirely legitimate businesses; all of the merchants had long since closed up and gone to bed. Tammany Hall was three blocks ahead. This was the cautious part; he had to get close enough to get names and faces without revealing his own.

He slowed when he heard voices ahead, stepping under the shadow of a fire escape behind the milliner’s shop that adjoined Barnum’s American Museum. The spotlight Barnum had recently installed on the museum’s roof swept across Broadway and cast dizzying reflections from every church steeple within a half mile.

Inching forward, Archie saw three figures step into the alley from Ann Street, rustling loudly as they walked. In the moment before they stepped out of the spotlight’s glow, Archie glimpsed red piping on the trousers of all three.

Best not to run into the Rabbits right now, he thought, and stepped deeper into the shadows. If they were posting sentries in the alleyways, there were probably other scouts out along Broadway. And the police couldn’t be counted on to roust them; most of them had worn the red stripe at one time themselves. He would have to skirt the edge of City Hall Park and approach from the north.

The wind shifted and the rustling grew more agitated. “Christ,” one of the Rabbits snorted, “aren’t we a lot of idiots, luggin’ dead corn down alleys in the middle of bloody winter?”

“Shut it,” snapped another voice, and Archie froze, trying to place where he’d heard it before. “Steen says it’ll work. And he’s bringing something else as well.”

Archie remembered the sun shining in his eyes and placed the voice. It belonged to Royce McDougall.

Two months isn’t nearly enough for him to have forgotten me, Archie thought. He imagined crawling home in the snow with broken ribs.

The three Rabbits spread themselves fifteen feet apart, unfurling a woven line of wizened cornstalks between them. Royce stood in the center, at the base of the short stair that led to the rear door of the American Museum. The Rabbit to his right was a hunchbacked dwarf, his bare head bald over an explosion of dark beard. The wind picked up, and the snapping of the banners hung from the museum’s facade marked a strange counterpoint to the dry whispering of the strung corn.

“Royce.” The dwarf spoke impatiently, his voice reedy and nasal. “How come we just don’t go in and get it?”

Royce barked a short, humorless laugh. “Charlie, my friend, if it knew we were coming, we wouldn’t even be able to see it if it didn’t want us to.”

Charlie seemed dissatisfied with that answer. He leaned against the wall, not twelve feet from where Archie crouched.
Steen,
Archie thought furiously.
Where have I seen that name before? Or have I heard it recently’?

“Yeah, well, what if it can’t get out?”

“Steen’s had the night man unlock the door,” Royce answered impatiently. “Now will you shut up?”

“Night man?” Charlie seemed unwilling to let the subject drop. The third Rabbit had been watching the conversation disinterestedly, but at the mention of a guard, he frowned into his heavy scarf and looked at Royce.

“Goddamn it!” Royce spat. “I’ve told you already, he won’t be any trouble one way or the other.”

“One way or the other,” the third Rabbit repeated. He laughed, obviously hoping Royce would join in, but just then a shadow fell across the alley as a garishly decorated yellow wagon turned into it, creaking slowly to a halt next to Royce. The driver surveyed the situation briefly, his face hidden under a broad-brimmed hat.

“Never a moment to spare, Steen,” Royce said. Archie saw him sneak a glance at the moon. “Everything set out front?”

“Everything was set before either of us was born,” the wagoner said mildly.

He clicked open a pocket watch, glanced at it, and slipped it back into his coat. “What remains to be seen is whether I’ve deciphered it correctly. If I haven’t, then Phineas gets to keep his exhibit.”

Archie tried to flatten himself even further into the wall. He remembered where he’d seen the name Riley Steen; he’d set it to type nearly every day for the last seven years, in the advertisements that took up nearly two-thirds of the
Herald.
What was’ a dentist and snake-oil man doing here? And why had Mike, who had obviously known something was going to happen, told him to go to the back of Tammany Hall? The main event of the evening was evidently happening right here.

“Look here, Steen,” Charlie said petulantly. “Royce says we’re to wrap it in these cornstalks when it comes out. You mind telling me why we can’t just use a rope?”

Steen set the reins down and slid off the wagon’s bench to stand next to Royce. “Rope shirts were something of a fashion then,” he said absently, his eyes fixed on the museum door.

The dwarf seemed at a loss for a response to that. “Not in this weather, they wouldn’t be,” he finally muttered.

Archie had to physically fight down the urge to ask the dwarf what was going to come out of the museum’s rear door. He had been expecting a meeting of some sort, New York’s leading citizens and Tammany sachems gathered to plot some nefarious scheme, not some queer ambush for an animal to be flushed out of Barnum’s Museum. He was going to have to do some fast thinking to keep his job.

“You have everyone posted?” Steen asked. “The Pathfinders, if any live, will certainly be out on this night.”

Royce’s exasperation grew visibly, and his voice took on an aggrieved tone. “Yeah, Steen—”

“Right here,” growled a voice from behind Archie. A forearm clamped around his neck and he was jerked out from under the fire escape. “And I’ve caught something already.” The three Rabbits started toward Archie.

“Don’t drop the coil!” Steen barked. All three halted and watched Archie as his unseen captor walked him forward. The arm dropped from around his neck and a knife was pressed into the small of his back.

“You might have picked a more harmless show to watch, my friend,” Steen said.

He looked closely at Archie, then glanced at the moon and covered his left eye. “Oh, I
see,”
he said slowly. After another appraising look, he spoke over Archie’s shoulder. “Put him in the wagon. Don’t kill him if you can avoid it.”

Archie saw Royce grinning at him, the boisterous grin of a young man on the giving end of a practical joke. “I told you to stay away from things as didn’t concern you, Mr. Archie Prescott. You should take a hint.”

Archie didn’t answer.

Knife behind me, wagon in front,
he thought.
Only one place to go; I hope the night man really did take care of it.
He let his shoulders slump and shuffled a step toward the wagon, then dove to his left, under the cornstalks between Charlie and Royce. Skidding on the packed snow, he scrambled to his feet and gained the low porch in two steps. Before the Rabbits could react, Archie slammed the door behind him and disappeared into the American Museum.

He took the main stairway three steps at a time, hearing boots thump on the stairs outside. The door slammed again as Archie ran the length of the main hall and ducked into a corner alcove at the front of the gallery.

His pursuers banged through the door and pounded up the stairs, halting under a sign that read
to the egress.

“Why’d you stop?” The spotlight swept away, and Archie could only see shadows, but he recognized the voice of the man who’d captured him. He drew the kitchen knife from his waistband, thinking
God knows he’s likely better with his than I am with this thing.

“Place only has two doors,” Royce answered. “Steen’ll have us skinned if we let
it
go because we’re chasing after him.”

He raised his voice and called out, “Evening there, Archie. I’ve some more advice for you, if you’ve a mind to listen this time. Here it is: Stay in there too long and you’re going to wish you’d come with us.” His words echoed slightly in the domed hall. “Hear me, Mister Paperman? I tell you this as an act of human kindness.”

If you knew how far I was from being a newspaperman,
Archie thought,
you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble in the first place. Perhaps I should have explained that.

“Go down front and tell the boys there to watch for him and the booger,” Royce said to the other Rabbit. “I’ve got to go hold the damned rope.” He paused. “Archie? Last chance.”

After a pause, Royce snapped his fingers. “All right then. Good luck, my friend.”

Archie relaxed a fraction as they went back downstairs. He wouldn’t be able to get out until they caught whatever it was they were looking for, but he could safely hide until then and hope to escape afterward. He looked around, searching for possible escape routes even though he knew as well as Royce did that the museum had only two doors.

The sweeping spotlight reflected in through the leaded windows along the front of the massive building, revealing various pictures and cases, some with banners strung above them. Archie was squatting in an alcove between a glass-topped display case and a window seat. Over his head hung a sign reading
aztec cave mummy
in bold print, with indistinguishable smaller lettering below. Not a case then; a sarcophagus, laid on top of a gilt-painted wooden frame. Archie stood and looked through the glass, tilting his head to see past the reflections.

The mummy had papery black skin drawn tightly over broad, heavy bones. Its eyes were closed and its hands folded over its chest in an attitude of quiet repose. A crazily patterned cloak of beads and feathers lay over one shoulder and its sunken chest, covering it completely below the waist.

The knife jumped in Archie’s hand, and he set it down. Things were bad enough without him stabbing himself in the bargain.

He bent to take a closer look at the long, curling green feathers, catching a brief glimpse of an odd pattern worked into the beads before the spotlight dimmed and went out, its last flicker making the mummy appear to twitch.
Must be midnight,
Archie thought.
Long past time for me to be away from here.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, coming across the main hall in his direction. Archie’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the dimness, but he didn’t think it was the Rabbits. There would be more than one of them. The night watch, then; under the circumstances, a stroke of good fortune. “Right here,” Archie stage-whispered.

“Who’s there?” The footsteps quickened. “Come out or I’ll call the police!”

“No, the Dead Rabbits have chased me in here, I can’t—” The display cover heaved under Archie’s hands. He stumbled back, kicking the knife across the floor as the glass shattered against the wall. The mummy
had moved,
had thrown the cover off; it crouched now in the sarcophagus, turning its face to the moon as Archie’s senses flooded with the smell and sound of falling rain.

“A vandal, are you, you bastard?” The watchman hadn’t seen the mummy. He grabbed Archie’s collar and hauled him back another step as it lunged from the case. Archie lost his balance, toppling backward as the mummy landed on him. Its hand thrust inside Archie’s coat and he felt its fingers lengthen, fingernails sharpening into claws.

Dry tendons creaked and a rattling noise came from the creature’s throat as it scratched furrows in the skin of Archie’s chest. He planted both hands in its midriff, his heels scrabbling on the polished wood floor as he tried to push it off.

“Off him, damn you!” The watchman’s truncheon cracked into the side of the mummy’s head, leaving a dent visible even in the faint moonlight. Is the watchman blind? Archie thought. He thinks it’s just a burglar.

Claws grated along Archie’s ribs as the beast let go of him and turned to face the guard. Gasping from the pain of the gashes, Archie scrabbled backward, seeing with a shock that it was
changing.

The mummy’s skull flattened, nose and mouth protruding into a blunt snout, patchy ringed fur sprouting across its face and exposed shoulder. Its legs thickened and grew shorter, crooking backward at the knees. The watchman saw it too; his face paled as he drew back for another blow.

Its whispering deepened into a murky growl as the creature ducked under the watchman’s second swing and sprang on him, hooking suddenly clawed feet into his belt. Its weight bore him to the floor. He shrieked as it slashed the side of his face open and locked its clawed fingers onto his collarbone, the effort splitting the brittle skin over one stringy bicep. The bones in the guard’s wrist crunched as the mummy bit into them, sawing his hand off and flinging it away with a jerk of its skeletal head. Hand and truncheon landed separately against the wall.

Blood spattered thickly to the floor as the mummy crouched over the man and dug its claws into the soft flesh under his ribcage. He flailed weakly at it with the spurting stump, his mouth working silently, then freezing in a perfect O as the beast ripped a gaping hole in his chest. His ribs and sternum cracked like twigs as it tore his heart free.

“Yollotl, eztli,”
it grated in a voice like dry leaves, holding the heart above its head. Moonlight through the grand windows caught a puff of steam rising off the organ. It pulsed twice, blood pumping Onto the watchman’s face, and the creature spoke again.
“Ompa onquiza’n tlalticpac.”
Archie realized with a shock that he understood what it had said:
The heart, the blood; the world spills out.

It flicked a forked tongue over the twitching heart, then gulped it whole. It shuddered, and a spotted tail snaked out from under the feathered cloak. The ringed fur on its muzzle and paws thickened and grew more lustrous as it swung its skeletal head toward Archie. Its tongue flicked out again, twice.

Archie felt behind him, unreasonably comforted when his hand fell on the hilt of Helen’s kitchen knife. The cloaked monster gazed intently at him and Archie stared back, paralyzed like a rabbit under the force of its steady hooded gaze. He hardly noticed the pain from his gashed chest, or the thin trickle of blood running down his stomach and under his hip.

It’s memorizing me,
Archie thought, and the mummy blinked under feathered eyebrows and looked from him to the knife.
It knows me. It re
c
ognizes me.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

Royce and the squat dwarf Charlie stood at the head of the stairway, the braided cornstalks bunched between them as if they were about to throw a net. Royce’s eyes were huge, and Charlie was making some kind of whining noise deep in his throat. The creature turned its attention to the two Dead Rabbits, and Archie found that he could move again. He scuttled backward, away from the werewolf or werecat or whatever it was. It stood erect and he saw how wasted its frame still was, naked tendon and bone showing where desiccated skin had flaked away.