The Blackest Bird (14 page)

W
hile Tommy Coleman watched from his cell, the harelipped keeper keys the entry door, permitting a colored waiter, wheeling a silver cart, to pass into the corridor. The waiter stops in front of John Colt’s cell and calls through the curtain, “Suh, your luncheon is arrived,” waiting dutifully to be acknowledged and summoned inside, Colt having just returned from his period of exercise in the yard.

The guard lifts a couple of the silver covers, gives the food underneath the once-over.

He winks at Tommy. “Smells good enough to eat,” he grunts, and laughs, pleased with his wit.

A man, hefty, cross-eyed, with bushy auburn muttonchops, materializes in front of Colt’s cell.

“My time,” he announces to nobody in particular, then shouts, “Dillback, you going to let me in?”

“Not now,” Colt’s manservant replies from within. “Find it in yourself, sir, to return after lunch.”

“After lunch?”

“After Mr. Colt eats.”

For a brief moment, the hefty, cross-eyed man stands silent. But then he shrugs and backs off to Tommy Coleman’s cell.

“Won’t you be having your meals sent in from Delmonico’s eating emporium, Master Coleman?” he quips, a hard gleam in his crossed eyes.

“What makes you think I give a fig what a ponce does?”

“Let me introduce myself, young man. I’m Bennett, editor of the
Herald
. Besides making specialty of the crime story, I pride myself on a keen nose for human interest. So said, do you, Tommy Coleman, have anything to say for yourself, humanwise?”

Tommy spits on the floor through the bars. The sputum splatters Bennett’s black leather shoes.

“Just tell your fellow citizens how it feels, Tommy,” Bennett persists, unfazed by the expectorant. “Don’t hold back, laddie.”

“Hold back what?”

“Killed your wife, killed your daughter, didn’t we?”

Tommy merely glowers, does not answer.

Bennett has his notebook out. He steps forward. “Who represents you?”

“Represents me?”

“Your black box. Your lawyer.”

“What do you care?”

“Don’t be so downhearted,” Bennett scolds. “You can’t give up now. Seduce me; get me interested in your case, Tommy, the reading public. I may very well come to your defense, tell your story for you. If there’s something in it for me. My news rag, that is.”

“What could be in it for you?”

“Sales. Circulation. Think about it, man.”

“Think about what?”

“I’m telling you. Your story.”

“My story?”

“How you were taken up by society, taken advantage of, a poor Irish ‘yout ” from ‘the P’ernts.’ Ordinarily, no one gives a damn about a rapscallion like you. I don’t have to tell you that, young man. But I wield the power to change everything. That’s what they mean by power of the press. And that’s what’s meant by human interest. In human interest
is the power to change the world.” He glances over at Colt. “It’s the great equalizer. More powerful than Sam Colt’s revolver. Everything can change.”

Tommy looks across the corridor at Colt too. “How?”

“I’m telling you. Don’t you listen? The power of the press. How many times do I have to say it? The written word. You can only imagine. Do you read?”

Tommy is distracted. In Colt’s cell, Dillback is helping his master into a burnt umber lounging jacket and deerskin slippers.

“Listen, man, you’ve got to excuse me, I have an appointment to interview Mr. Colt there. Ah, the condemned, what sadness he brings. Over there he sits to his meal. It’s his time now.”

“They say I murdered my wife,” Tommy halfway ventures, somehow nervous at the prospect of being abandoned. “I ask you, why would I murder my wife?”

Tommy sees Bennett is distracted himself now. “Yes, isn’t that the way of it?”

“You want me to confess?”

“Not right now, young man. Later.”

Bennett recrosses to Colt’s cell, but as he does, Colt’s servant draws the curtain closed in Bennett’s face, announcing luncheon served, and Master John not to be disturbed.

Throughout the day and every day, with the fateful date of execution so quickly approaching, long lines of journalists and gazetteers have waited their turn for audience with the condemned.

Bennett turns back slowly from John Colt’s cell to stand once again in front of Tommy Coleman, shrugs, and says, “So, did you do the deed of which you are accused, Tommy-b’hoyo?”

Meanwhile, cross corridor, behind the privacy of the curtain, Tommy can hear the Negro waiter proffering entrée to Colt.

Tommy’s voice rises, indignant, in response to Bennett’s question. “No, I didn’t do what I am accused. I loved my wife, I tell ya.”

In each cell, on each tier, heads turn, strain to hear, strain to see.

“They say I murdered my poor little daughter.” Tommy’s voice, resounding down the cell block, assumes a higher timbre as he continues. “Why would I murder my poor little daughter? I loved her. I’ll tell you who I did murder, if you want to know. I murdered the native blackheart who did murder my wife and child. That butcher Ruby Pearl. When I came upon them he was standing over their poor dead bodies with a bloody cudgel. What was I suppose to do? I struck him down! By God, you’re right about that. I struck him down. I smote the bastard where he stood, and for that I’m not afraid to die. Let them take me out!”

“Silence!” the voice of Old Hays cuts through the corridor. “Remember, we practice the silence system here.”

Tommy looks from Bennett, to Hays, standing in his office door, constable’s staff in hand, to Colt’s cell.

Bennett glances over to see if the condemned has finished with his luncheon. He apparently has not. The curtains remain drawn. Once more Bennett ambles over, stands outside the cell, calls Colt’s name.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a moment more, sir.” Dillback sticks his pale face through the curtain. “Master John is just having his aperitif.”

“Aperitif, that’s good.” Bennett smiles cordially at the manservant, does not insist.

Tommy watches as Bennett returns again to his cell.

“Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” Bennett sidles close to the bars, peers through where Tommy stands on his cot looking out the small raised barred window at the courtyard, at the scaffold reflecting in the thin, cool sunlight. Bennett speaks through the bars in a soft voice. “Don’t despair, Tommy. I’m here to help. Lend voice to your anguish. It’s my duty as a man of the press, a newspaperman of conscience. I’m an editor on public duty. All my reporting is dedicated to serving the legitimate interests of the people. My readers are entitled to know every last fact and conjecture connected with your case, and only I can provide them.”

Without turning to look at him, Tommy makes a noise that isn’t particularly pleasant or even human.

Across the way, the curtains are finally thrown open. Bennett turns. Master Colt and his servant’s eyes rise in unison, meeting Bennett’s before looking away.

“Don’t worry, Tommy,” Bennett says, peering back cross-eyed into his cell. “I won’t let you escape God’s green earth without your due. There’s no justice in the world,” he adds, speaking loud enough for all on the row to hear without strain, “and that’s the truth.”

Old Hays takes two or three steps down the corridor, cracks his staff on the stones, catches Bennett’s eye before turning back to his office.

Bennett speaks more quietly now, more discreetly. “Men like you, Tommy,” he says, “you make your own justice.”

“I expect nothing from nobody, and get it,” Tommy answers.

“Remarkable how we just accept our lot in life, eh? I take my hat off to you, Tommy. I really do. You’re the real hero. And here’s the headline: Yours is the true saga of the underclass! Admirable! Admirable! The gangs of New York, the bleak morts. I am going to make a note of it right here in my notebook for future reference.”

Tommy watches the pinch-faced fellow’s lead scratch paper.

“Wish we had more time this go-round, Thomas,” Bennett speaks cheerfully. “I really truly do,” looking behind him at Colt. “But like I said, it’s Master John’s time which has come. You’ll get your chance, eh? We all do. Remind me, when’s your exact date?”

“I don’t know. Not till next month, I think.”

“Next month? Dear dark December. So soon. How time flies.” Bennett laughs unpleasantly. “Still, plenty of time left for us to do our work. No?” He squints his turned eyes.

Excusing himself, Bennett steps once more to Colt’s cell.

This time the curtains part fully, opening into the inner sanctum and remaining open for audience. The view Tommy has through this barred portal is, to his mind, as if attending Bowery theater, Colt’s cell the illuminated stage.

Tommy imagines himself the audience, captive witness to all that transpires in front of him. He watches Bennett flash his broadest
smile as the ponce rises to greet him. Bennett offers his hand, says something that passes for pleasantry.

Sadly for Tommy, because the drama is just beginning, his interest kindling, nearly as soon as Bennett departs, another scribbler takes his place in front of his cell, making demand for Tommy’s attention, another in the long line of eager scribes awaiting their turn at Colt’s cell, to have a last word with him before he passes to that better place.

This one is lean, very young, not much older than Tommy himself, with cropped beard and clever, clear eyes. He situates himself—to Tommy’s annoyance—directly in his line of sight, says his name is “Whitman, Walter,” used to write for the
Argus
, but now employed by the
Brooklyn Eagle
.

“Hoopla! Huzzah!” Tommy is not impressed.

“You interest me,” this Whitman says, ignoring the mockery. “You’re Tommy Coleman, aren’t you, brother to Edward Coleman?”

Tommy grunts. He does not particularly care for the looks of this Jack Sprat, and would have been perfectly content to be left alone so he could get back to his watching the bit of performance drama unfolding in front of him across the way.

Colt and Bennett are busy spitting and cussing. Colt is having none of Bennett and won’t answer his questions, which he blasts as impertinent.

“The newspapers!” Colt cries. “You are the true mischief-breeders. You are the unprincipled and remorseless murderers!”

“The man’s a reptile,” Whitman says.

Tommy looks at him. “Who?”

“Citizen Bennett. He makes his path with slime wherever he goes. He is a midnight ghoul, preying on rottenness and everything repulsive.”

“Is that so?”

Tommy turns back, watches as Bennett, grabbing for his notebook, leaves in a fury. His final words to John C. Colt under his breath, unintelligible, decried in venom.

L
ater that evening, after his master’s bath, Dillback draws the green velvet curtains back and helps his handsome charge into formal dinner wear.

Shortly, Mr. Colt’s meal arrives on a silver cart, the same black man from Delmonico’s pushing it, a white napkin draped over his arm. Silver serving dishes cradle sliced steak, cream of tartar dressing, and asparagus hollandaise.

While Colt eats, the door opens leading down from the Bridge of Sighs. Footsteps approach. Tombs warden Monmouth Hart hurries onto the cell block, head down, a packet of newspapers neatly folded under his arm.

He drops one on Old Hays’ desk, continues on to stop in front of Colt’s cell.

“I don’t know your offense, but whatever you did to this gent, you got his dander up. This was sent over a few minutes ago from the
Herald
offices with a special note it be delivered directly to you, Mr. James Gordon Bennett’s signature. Wants you to have first gander straight off the press. Story about you it is.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

“Can’t say that I blame you. Not particularly a flattering portrait. I’ll leave it just the same.”

The warden pushes the newspaper through the bars, where Dillback stoops to pick it up off the cold, damp floor.

In his cell Tommy Coleman is napping, the soft, steady hum of his peaceful snoring audible.

Colt is back with his dinner. He picks up the public print from where Dillback has left it on his dinner tray, cannot help it, peruses the headline, set in glaring 48-point type.

it asks, the byline beneath Bennett’s.

Colt throws down the paper in disgust. The nerve of him! He knew Bennett could not be trusted. The man is shunned by all society. He shouts for the manservant Dillback, pushing away what is left of his dinner in a fury, his appetite gone. Following which angry exertion he sits quietly in the gloom.

All is silent, all is still. His mind is so beheated, so besotted with rage, it is not functioning clearly. Everything seems a fog.

In the courtyard a horse whinnies. The hammering on the gallows has begun anew despite the late hour and lengthening shadows. A priest is standing staring at the carpenters in the waning vestiges of oil light.

“They don’t want no screwups like the way they did my brother.”

The voice startles. Tommy Coleman speaks to John Colt as they both peer into the half-light. “They already had enough screwups. That’s what’s on the damn warden’s mind.”

“Silence! How many times do you have to be told?”

“Nobody gets out of life alive, boyo. You, me, nobody.”

Colt can’t help himself, he shudders. He carefully gets down from his perch on his cot, where he could peer out the high barred window, collapses into his reclining chair, and closes his eyes.

This has been a strenuous day for him. For most of the afternoon he has been either talking to newspaper hacks, eating, drinking, or smoking. Now, with the diffuse light of the lamps shining in the high window of his cell, he is feeling the fatigue.

He packs his pipe with Anderson cut tobacco and calls for his servant, loudly requesting reading material.

Dillback responds almost at once.

“The latest effort of Mr. Poe,” the manservant announces. “I thought you might like it, sir. A second tale of ratiocination, following the magnificent ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ And I know how much you admired that. This one you may find of even greater interest, sir. It’s the Mary Rogers case, thinly disguised.”

Colt sits up. “You can’t be serious?”

“I am.”

“Mary Rogers!” He scratches his face, coughs. “He mentioned he thought to work on something of the kind, but I gleaned it just a lark. What has he to say?”

“He claims he will unmask the killer. This is but the first installment of three.”

“Let me see it! Where is the man anyway? Wasn’t he supposed to be here already?”

“Mr. Poe is late. As you well know, Mr. Poe is often late, and cannot be trusted, among other things, to be on time. Especially if he’s on one of his sprees.”

Colt stared down at the magazine:
Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion.
He thumbs to the story, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and reads and rereads nonstop for some forty-five minutes, all the while puffing away on his pipe in great fury, impervious to all interruption, until, quite late, a man is led down the corridor and admitted to his cell.

He is a rather elegantly attired gentleman, dark mustache, with a full expanse of forehead, but his apparel threadbare and darned, his overcoat a veritable Joseph robe of discreet reweavings and patches. He is slightly stooped in physique, not standing to his full height, as if life has taken its toll, pressing its heavy weight down on his narrow shoulders.

“Mr. Colt …” The man has a southern accent, quite charming in its way.

“Poe! How nice to see you again! How nice of you to come!”

“I told you before, sir, I would not, for the life of me, pass up the opportunity,” Poe is saying. “I remain intrigued. To be beckoned, sir, by one in such distress, under such duress.”

“Distress? Duress?” Colt laughs with pleasure. “You speak poetry, monsieur.” He grins sharply. “You know, that’s not how it is, sir, we are friends. Need I remind you, for men like us, as we both know, all is puzzle, all is enigma. I am a writer
comme vous
. Still I take pride that I am a fatalist. I hope full well that I can take anything the cosmos
offers. After all, what is my death to me, but my life? You flatter me, Poe. You flatter,” and Colt once more laughs at himself richly.

A bottle of spirits appears in the hands of the manservant, and a foil of powder, laudanum, from the fob pocket of Colt’s smoking jacket.

Colt shows the foil, taking the bottle, holding it out for Poe to admire, a last word, “Armagnac,” hanging in the still air across the expanse of cell block.