Sons of an Ancient Glory (50 page)

Suddenly it struck him, with the force of a blow, what he had almost forgotten in the shock of the afternoon:
Billy Hogan!
He still had to go back to the Five Points to continue his search for the boy.

He gave a soft groan of dismay. He
couldn't
! He simply could not go back to that terrible place, to face that awful man. Not today.

Torn between the urgent need to be with Nora and his burden for the sad-eyed little boy, Evan pressed his fingers to his forehead, trying to think. Guilt stabbed at him as he realized that what he was feeling at this moment was a kind of resentment—resentment for Billy Hogan, and the boy's interference in his life at a time when Nora so desperately needed him. And yet he knew, beyond all doubt, that his burden for Billy was none of his own doing, but had been given by God. He couldn't simply turn his back on the boy.

Didn't God know he couldn't handle another responsibility right now? Surely the Lord wouldn't expect him to deal with yet another crisis or involve himself in anything that might take his time or attention away from Nora.

At the least, another day wouldn't matter. It would soon be dark, after all, and it was altogether foolish to think of going into Five Points alone after dark. He would go tomorrow or the next day at the latest.

But somehow Evan knew he could not wait. He must go today. If he didn't, it might be too late for Billy Hogan.

If it wasn't too late already.

The clack of horse's hooves as a hackney cab passed jarred him into action. He straightened, took a deep breath in defiance of his wheezing lungs, and started for the buggy.

He drove to Five Points in a near frenzy, praying all the way he wouldn't be too late for Billy Hogan.

Quinn O'Shea walked out of the Chatham Charity Women's Shelter at five o'clock, putting only half an hour between Ethelda Crane's departure and her own.

She left by way of the fire escape, just as she had planned, immediately after locking Mrs. Cunnington in the pantry with her bottle. The astonished cook started hollering as soon as Quinn turned the key in the lock—the key she had earlier snitched out of the woman's apron pocket. But with nothing to slow her progress except the clothes on her back, Quinn was down the iron steps in a shake and well on her way to freedom before anyone even thought to look outside.

After months of feeling like a prisoner, she welcomed the gray, gloomy evening with mounting exhilaration, her parched spirit drinking in the freshness of her newly gained freedom. She wished she could have had her own dress for the occasion; she hadn't seen it since the night she first arrived at the Shelter. But even the ugly brown dress and baggy sweater—the Shelter “uniform”—couldn't dim her elation.

Pulling the thin sweater more tightly about her, she lifted her face to the wind and headed for the Five Points and freedom.

There's nothing so bad that it could not be worse.

I
RISH
P
ROVERB

I
t was almost dark, and Sergeant Denny Price was about to call it a day—a
long
day, he reflected wearily as he headed toward Paradise Square. More knifings than he could count, two prostitutes beaten and left for dead, a gang attack on a little newsboy—some of Rynders' worthless thugs, more than likely—and a demented drunk who had gone after Denny with a broken bottle.

Two things Denny disliked even more than the pigs running wild along the filth of Five Points: drunks and opium eaters. Get enough of their poison into either of them, and wouldn't they break your head open or slit your throat at the slightest chance?

Not to mention the lives destroyed. In his years on the force, he had seen any number of families torn apart, wives and children abused and beaten, and otherwise good men gone bad from their weakness.

The writer fellow—Poe—came to mind, the one who'd written for the papers that passing strange poem about the crow. Of course, some said he'd never been a hard drinker or an opium eater at all, claiming it was his critics who had slurred his name, that in fact he'd died of some sort of trouble with his brain. Others, though, insisted it had been the combination of the drink and laudanum that had done him in. They had found him sprawled out senseless, over in Baltimore.

Denny shook his head at the waste. A clever man like that, well-educated and all, dying like a pauper! Something must have obsessed him, sure.

Denny himself, and his da before him, God rest his soul, had taken the pledge before ever coming across. And after close on six years of patrolling places like Five Points, he could only be thankful that the good Lord had so moved him.

The shoulder he'd wrenched tossing the drunk with the broken bottle had begun to ache like a rotten tooth. Days like this, Denny felt twice again his twenty-six years. Rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, he gave a weary sigh and turned onto Mulberry.

He would have one more look about, just on the chance of spying the little Hogan lad. It was worrisome, this situation with the missing boy. The lad's pal, Tom Breen, had finally admitted to Denny that he “wouldn't be a'tall surprised if Billy's uncle didn't thrash him now and then.”

But young Tom hadn't been able to offer even a clue as to where his friend might be. So Denny was right back where he had started the night before, he and Mr. Whittaker: in the middle of the Five Points, without a thought as to where to try next.

Still, he would have himself another look. In fact, he decided abruptly, he might just pay a call to Billy's family. With any luck at all, Sorley Dolan wouldn't be at home. When he wasn't too drunk, he usually worked at one of the gambling dens in the Bowery. Perhaps he could pry something out of the two wee boys, or Nell herself, if Sorley wasn't there to scare them dumb.

Picking up his pace, he slid his hand to the butt of his pistol for reassurance. In the Five Points, a policeman might carry no real authority. But he always—
always
—carried a loaded gun.

It took Quinn less than five minutes in Five Points to know she had made a mistake. Not in fleeing the Shelter, she quickly assured herself, but in coming to this place, which must surely be the devil's den—right here, in New York City.

She walked into the midst of a square in which most of the garbage barrels of the city appeared to have been dumped. In equal numbers, pigs and small raggedy children ran wild among the rubbish, animal waste, and broken bottles. The pigs were fat, the children were bones.

Quinn stifled a gag at the putrid odors assailing her. The farther she walked, the worse the stench!

Even in the gloom of gathering darkness, there was no mistaking the squalid ugliness of the place. A number of streets intersected with narrow lanes and alleys diverging every which way—and all of them seemed to be lined with nothing but taverns and bawdy houses!

The noise spilling out onto the streets was unimaginable. Rough, bloated faces—both men's and women's—hurled curses and laughter from broken upstairs windows. From the taverns, loud, tinny music pumped a kind of savage hilarity into the air, competing with the crashing of bottles and the wailing of infants.

There were people everywhere, faces mirroring a multitude of nations and races—but mostly black faces and Irish faces, lined with despair and gaunt with tragedy. Drunks with black eyes stumbled over one another. Hard-looking women stared at Quinn with open hatred. A cacophony of Irish brogue and black prattle warred with the strangely out-of-place merriment of fiddles and tambourines.

Quinn felt as if she had been picked up and plopped down in the midst of a lunatic's nightmare.

Suddenly a hand gripped the back of her neck, jarring her out of her thoughts. Whirling about, she yanked herself free and lashed out with one hand to club her assailant.

The drunk, filthy beyond belief, with not a tooth in his head, stood leering at her. “Eh, lassie, I've got money for a good time, don't I, now? Lookie here!”

As he attempted to turn his pockets inside out, Quinn backed away, then veered and bolted across the square.

At the sight of a dark, cavernous old building, so far gone in decay it appeared diseased, she reversed directions. To her right, outside the wooden paling surrounding the square, hovered a row of taverns—mean in appearance but at least lighted.

She had just reached the wooden fence when a deep, commanding shout stopped her in her tracks.

“Here! Just a minute, now—hold up!”

He was on her in a shake, one huge hand seizing her shoulder and whipping her about. “What—” He reared back, staring at her. “Why, it's the lass from the Bowery!”

Quinn blinked, gaping first at the copper star on the stalwart chest, then at the familiar face illuminated by the lights from the taverns.

He stared at her. “'Tis! I thought so! Quinn O'Shea, isn't it, now?”

The foolish man actually appeared happy to see her! He grinned—the wide, canny grin of the old Celtic sin-eater himself. And after what he had brought on her!

Quinn stared at his copper badge, her insides burning with fury.
Blast!
It was him, all right, the copper who had saved her hide in the Bowery that night back in July. An age ago, it seemed.

Sergeant Price.
He had rescued her from the two drunken dandies bent on having their way with her, but then he had turned and undone his good deed by sending her off with the sanctimonious Ethelda Crane.

Didn't he have the gall, though? Standing there with his hands on her shoulders, grinning like the village eejit! And himself the cause of her misery all these months!

Quinn shook off his grasp and backed away, scowling at him.

The leprechaun glint in his eyes dimmed. “Whatever would you be doin' in the Five Points, lass? This is a terrible place altogether!”

Quinn merely glared at him, saying nothing. If he found out she had run off from the Shelter, wouldn't he be taking her back?

“Don't you remember me, now? Sergeant Price? Didn't I help you out of a bad spot some months back, in the Bowery?”

“I don't recall,” Quinn snapped. She'd not give him the satisfaction of admitting she remembered him at all!

He went on beaming happily, as if he were genuinely pleased to have run onto her. Policeman or not, Quinn speculated, the man might be a bit simple.