Canine Christmas (11 page)

I tried to take my mind off all my trouble by unwrapping the bone I'd brought. I hadn't seen the stray since we'd first met Lena in the alleyway.

Or maybe I had seen him, but just hadn't noticed, because I hadn't bothered to really look.

I thought on how many strays I'd seen in my five years as a copper, and how many mad ones I'd shot dead. Starved, ragged creatures—a whole society of them coursing through the streets and back alleys. You saw the miserable things so often you tended to ignore them. They became invisible, shadows flitting on the edge of the city.

It was easy to ignore creatures like them. They merely had to be contained, in a place like the Seventh Ward, a prison of sorts. I knew what it was like to be imprisoned for being nothing more than what I was. I'd been a prisoner of war in Andersonville. I became acquainted with misery there. And evil. And the bitter sting of knowing that the rest of the world didn't care if we lived or died.

The irony of my position now was not lost on me. Here I was in the Seventh Ward, sent by the city not so much to protect the population there as to contain them. My club was supposed to be like the pine walls of Andersonville, hedging them in, where they couldn't hurt respectable society. Let the swells prey on them in any way they could, but the moment they returned the favor, they were dealt with mercilessly.

That was the way our modern, nineteenth-century world worked. But I still took notice of the strays, just the same. I didn't feel the need to pretend they were invisible.

As dawn broke across the sky, I spotted the dog. He was curled up beneath a parked wagon. When he saw me, he got stiffly to his feet and clambered over. For a few moments we stared at each other. I held the bone out to him, urging him to take it in my gentlest, most soothing voice.

The dog thrust his tail between his legs and backed away from me.

Annoyed at being rejected by the stupid beast yet again, I threw the bone at him, aiming for his snout. It hit him dead-on.

Then the stray did a curious thing. Instead of fleeing from me, he stood his ground. With his eyes on me the whole time, he took the bone into his mouth, gingerly, and went back under the wagon. His eyes followed me as I walked away.

The next day, Christmas Eve, I went for her. On my way over there the murdered child's face was staring at me from the storefront windows.

Get her. Get Lena.
That was what she was telling me to do. There was only one way to get her voice out of my head.

The Chestnut/Walnut car left me off at Eighth. I walked the rest of the way to Sansom, probably retracing Lena's own route.

The house was a three-story, redbrick row house with a dormer poking out of the slate shingled roof.

It had to be that one. A blue belly across the street had his gleems on it. He hadn't seen me yet. He looked like a reserve officer, one of Sergeant Duffy's thugs.

Circling the square, out of the guard's sight, I came to a rear court in back of the house.

The back door was locked, of course. Ash barrels and milk bottles were piled up around it, like a barrier. Some crates were thrown beside the neighboring door. I stood very still for a moment. No noise came from the house that I could hear.

The handle of my revolver broke a pane of glass right above the doorknob. I reached in and unfastened the lock.

I took a deep breath, hoping she wasn't at home.

Inside, there were smells of chicken broth. I was in the kitchen. Milk bottles were piled everywhere. The stovepipe leaked a little smoke. It hung in the air like mist on a pond.

The place seemed empty.

I went through the hall and into the parlor. It was furnished tastefully but not extravagantly. Yellowed lace curtains trailed to some threadbare Turkish carpets scattered on the floor. A few prints from Currier and Ives hung framed, all on the same level. Above a mirror was a motto. It said: “Safe in the arms of Jesus.” A crude figure cuddled an infant in one arm and held a shep-herd's staff in the other. I almost laughed at the irony. It made a good impression on her callers, I suppose.

A clock ticked on a false mantel draped with a dusty valance. The parlor's center table was decorated with a miniature cedar tree. Interspersed in the branches were tiny wax candles, resting in tin holders to prevent them from igniting the tree. Dangling from the branches were pieces of colored glass in the shapes of stars, fruits, and flowers. At the base of the table were a number of boxes, wrapped in white paper.

It looked like a typical Christmas scene. The only thing needed to top it off would be a warm, glowing hearth. As it was, the fireplace was cold and drafty.

She had certainly outdone herself in making her parlor cheery and festive. But there was something artificial about the whole scene. As if everything were arranged out of a sense of habit, almost perfunctorily.

Picking up one of the presents, I shook the box. There was nothing in it. It was the same with all the others. They were empty decorations.

Through the curtains I could see the copper across the street with his eyes on the front door. Nobody was coming yet.

For a moment I thought of walking out the way I came. What was I going to do to her anyway? How could I possibly prove that she killed the infant? She certainly wouldn't confess to me.

But if she were paying “rent” to the police that meant she was dirty, somehow. All I needed to do was find out what her game was.

I took another peep out the window. A figure walked past the copper on the other side of the street, crossed, and headed for the front door. A veil covered her face. Her body was draped in layers of dull black crinoline. Lena was coming home.

As I turned back to the parlor, wondering what I should do, where I should go, I heard a baby crying. It sounded like it came from upstairs.

By the time I heard the key turn in the lock I'd made it to the second floor. The narrow hallway had one door closed at the end.

From behind it, I heard wailing from many infants.

There were sounds from downstairs, kitchen noises. Lena was making her luncheon.

I got closer to the door, moving quietly. I opened it.

The room inside was a little larger than a closet, but not much. Paint was peeling off the walls. On the wooden floor were piles of mouse droppings. There was barely any light. Heavy drapes covered the small window. It was frigidly cold inside.

The draft did nothing to alleviate the putrid stench.

In that room were six cribs, with a total of nine infants in them. All of the babies were naked. A few were crying. Eight of them were white. The other looked mulatto. Two seemed asleep. I nudged them just to make sure. The first one swiped at my finger with her tiny hand. The other one right next to her didn't move. His chest rose slowly, as if he were struggling for breath. I rocked him back and forth on the soiled linen. The child's flesh was covered with bedsores.

It reminded me of the kennel at the pound, where they toss strays for a while until they kill them all to make room for the next batch.

I'd heard about these places, knew they existed. But respectable people didn't talk about things like this. It was better to ignore them.

A baby farm.

To me, it seemed more like a fencing crib, where sneak thieves go to get rid of the goods they've stolen.

Here the daughters of society got rid of their mistakes and saved themselves from shame. Instead of giving them cash like a fence would, Lena gave them the chance to be respectable again.

If a young lady got in trouble, she could solve that trouble here. First the mother-to-be suddenly got sick. She was quarantined until she delivered. Then they dumped the newborn at a place like this. The masher or parent paid for the child's upkeep for a few months, just long enough to assuage the conscience. Once they were gone, the children could be easily forgotten, left to rot in their own peculiar prison. When the weekly payments of three dollars stopped, the child got sick and died. There was no sense in keeping it when it was worth nothing.

The baby farm was a nice game. I figured these bastard children were sons and daughters of some of Phila-delphia's biggest bugs, the ones with reputations that couldn't be tarnished, theirs or their daughters'. That would explain why the police were in on it. I bet Lena was pulling in the pieces.

The door opened behind me.

I turned to meet Lena's gaze.

“You!”

She remembered me.

“How'd you get in here? How'd you get past …”

“Not important now, Lena. What you should be asking is how are you going to get out of this fix you're in.”

You could barely hear us over the noise from the cribs.

“I done nothing wrong. I swear.”

“Sure you have. You smothered a little girl to death and stuck her in a hay pile. You're letting another one die right here. Didn't the girl's father pay up last week?”

“You can't prove nothin'.”

Her sallow face was twitching now. A tear glistened on her cheek. I wasn't moved.

I took a look at the nine bawling infants, half-buried in their own filth. All of them became the little one in the bundle, staring at me. They were saying:
Get her.

“That's murder, Lena. Infanticide. Not to mention popping your derringer off at me. You're gonna love Cherry Hill. You might get a cage all to yourself.”

Then she held back her head and laughed.

“All right! Go ahead. Take me to the station house. See what happens.”

“I'll do just that, you heartless bitch.”

I was aching to put a blue pill right through her neck. I settled for prodding her out the door, the revolver trained on her back. I planned on sending someone back to take care of the children once we got to the station house.

We walked right out the front door, past the reserve thug across the street. I was careful to stroke my mustache, making sure my hand obscured my face. He must have wondered how I got in the house without him seeing me. He must have thought about it for a good ten seconds before his brain got overtaxed. A square away I saw him still standing there.

Lena was a good girl. She walked by me nice and steady, like she was my lady and we were out for a stroll.

I decided to take her on the streetcar to the central station house. We walked back up Eighth toward the stop. Before we reached it, she said to me, “You don't know who I am, do you?”

“A killer.”

She snorted and said, “A lady in business. And I got some friends. You'd be surprised, the friends I got.”

“I'm sure I would be.”

“You think they're gonna let you put me in the hatch? Uh-uh.‘Cause I'm not going down without taking them with me. They know that. They don't want the names of their little girls in the paper. They'd do just about anything to stop that from happening. That means keeping me out of the chokey.”

“Back home at your fencing crib? Getting rid of the goods?”

“I provide a service, that's all. For which I am paid. When payment ceases, so does the service.”

We were on Chestnut, two squares from the stop. I could see the horses pulling the green streetcar through the slush. They were just turning the corner. For a moment, we halted.

“What's the point of taking me in? You know I'll get off. You know the captain's one of my friends. And others above him. They can step on you like a roach. And they will. I hope I'm there to watch.”

The car was getting closer. I could hear the gong ringing for the stop. The harness jingled against the horses' hide.

She was right. There was no point in it. They would see to it that she wasn't charged. Too many reputations were at stake. No one cared about bastard children. Children died all the time. I was the only witness. They could rig it to swing her way. I'd seen them do it before.

I felt weak and small. I felt like nothing.

I closed my eyes and saw the little child's face, staring at me.

I heard the horses' hooves clattering, just a couple rods away.

Then I opened my eyes. I looked to the left. Lena was smirking at me. I looked to the right. The streetcar was about to rush by.

A crowd of people were running to catch it. They ran around us, shielding us from view for a brief second. I could hear the prattle of the passengers, the horses snorting.

I did what I did.

Lena fell out into the street, right in the path of the oncoming car. She was pulled under the horses and whiffletree and dragged for a square until the brakes kicked in. By the time the car came to a stop there wasn't much of her left intact.

People screamed in horror. Someone shouted for the police as I went off in the opposite direction.

I wasn't worried about what would happen to me. I have friends, too. You'd be surprised, the friends I have.

On the beat that night I met up with the stray again. I heard him before I saw him. When I turned around he was there, poised on the pavement, waiting expectantly.

He accepted a steak I'd purchased for him. But this time I didn't have to toss it into the street. The dog walked over to me slowly and snatched the meat from my hand.

As he devoured his Christmas feast, I ran my hand over his back, feeling the gangly bones underneath. His hunger was palpable. Now I understood the varieties of that hunger. He craved my touch as much as the steak. The stray's tail started flitting back and forth.

While the dog licked his chops, I patted his mangled ears and thanked him for saving my life. My words were meant for something beyond him and myself.

That night I watched the fires at the oil works again. I sniffed the kerosene fumes and they were like perfume to me. When I closed my eyes I saw darkness. Just darkness.

Red Shirt and Black Jacket

Virginia Lanier

VIRGINIA LANIER lives in southeast Georgia with her husband, Hoss. Her first novel, Death in Bloodhound Red (marking the debut of Jo Beth Sidden), was nominated for an Agatha and a Macavity—and won the Anthony. Ms. Lanier has completed another novel about Jo Beth and her bloodhounds—and she is planning a new series.

I stepped from the van into a penetrating cold wind. It was an unseasonably chilly day in southeast Georgia. We usually had a few days like this in late January and early February, but not a week before Christmas with carols reverberating in our ears and a Santa in every mall. A northeaster was blowing between eighteen and twenty-five mph.