The Empire of Shadows (10 page)

“Oh, it's you,” Bess said, peering out over the barrels of her shotgun through the half-open door.

“Yeah, it's me. Put up that damn thing an' let me in,” Chowder said.

Bess huffed. “Let me in is it? Not so much as a ‘by your leave'?”

The door opened and Chowder heard another door slam at the front of the house. “Not disturbing anything, am I, Bessie? Not that I give a shit, mind.”

Bess looked around. “Nah. Just one o' the boys. They like ta be scarce when cops're 'round.”

Chowder nodded. “Bright young lads they are. Enterprising too,” Chowder said as he stepped into the cluttered hallway. He looked around in the gloom. “Jesus, Bess them boys've been busy. They empty out a shop or something?”

Bess laughed, a low, rumbling deep in her chest. “Nah. Just a rash o' poor, unfortunate souls sellin' the last o' their worldly goods for a crust o' bread.”

Chowder grinned. “Sure it was now.”

There had been a series of fires in the area over the last few months, talk of things going out the back doors while the firemen fought over their hydrants. So far nobody had been killed, but it was only a matter of time before that would happen. Chowder wasn't particularly opposed to plunder, but arson and people getting themselves burnt up, well that was a touchier thing.

“I'd advise you to lighten your inventory, Bess. Who knows where some o' them poor folk got this stuff.” He looked at her like a school-teacher would an undisciplined student.

“You'd be wise to clear it out before my boys come round.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake! You see how much I got 'ere? Take me a month o' Sundays ta move it all. You get yer cut, what d'you care how it comes to ya.”

Chowder frowned as he craned to look into the room that opened on the hallway. It was stacked to the ceiling.

“I like my cut, Bessie. Trouble is, your boys've been a bit too ambitious. Just lighten the load is all I'm sayin'. Hey, if I wasn't a friend, would I be tellin' you this? No! You'd find my lads breakin' down that old door o' yours an' haulin' your fat ass off to the Tombs! So be a good lass an' tidy up a bit, eh?”

Bess coughed and brought up a wad of thick phlegm, spitting it on the floor at Chowder's feet. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and turned a bloodshot eye on Chowder. “Not in the best o' health at the moment,” she said. “Give me a few days; a week, maybe.”

“Sure, Bess. Sure. No sense ruining your health. An' tell them lads o' yours not ta play with matches, eh?”

Bess gave Chowder a disgusted frown and a shrug of a shoulder. “So what brings ya here, Chowder? Yer lookin' for that Injun ain't ya, the one's in the papers. C'mon in then,” she said, turning to rumble down the hall. “What'll ya have, a shot or a beer?”

Chowder had hoped to get Bess's aid in finding the escaped Indian, have her send her gang of boys to comb the streets. He'd used them like that many a time before and was always pleased at how quickly they could come back with information. Her gang paid tribute to the Whyos and fenced for them, too. As a result, Fat Bess had a network of gang contacts that spread over the West Side, from Greenwich Street to the waterfront, and from the Battery to Canal Street.

“I'll have a beer if you don't mind, Bessie,” Chowder said as he followed her broad back. In spots she had to turn sideways to fit between the crates and boxes, piles of clothes, bags of rice, and a thousand other things. The old building shook as she went, and dust sifted down from the floor above.

Chowder wondered when the place would simply collapse. The house had been a substantial residence, once upon a time. Chowder could recall when it was still respectable. But as the well-to-do moved uptown, the place had been sold to a speculator, and rented to prostitutes who could afford to pay the highest rents in the city.

The place had become a dive, catering to out-of-town merchants and the dock trade. Bess had gotten her start there and had never left. She owned the house now and used its cavernous interior as a warehouse for stolen merchandise. It was a profitable business, relatively risk-free if she paid the cops on time—which she did, and the gangs, which she made doubly sure of.

“Hear anything about this escaped fella? Busted out of a Black Maria with a bunch of others. Name's Tupper,” Chowder said to her back. They went into the kitchen, which was surprisingly neat and clean, though great sacks of produce were stacked in one corner.

“What's so interestin' about 'im? Not the first one to escape, I reckon. What'd 'e do?”

“Gutted a foreman on a site up around Madison Square. Trouble is, this foreman was a Tammany boy, you know, keepin' tabs on who gets the jobs, pays their share, that sort o' thing. Got the bosses in an uproar, so they go to the chief, the chief goes to the captains, an' before you know it we're all runnin' about like ducks in a Chinaman's basement, bouncin' off the walls for fear o' the hatchet.”

He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. It was stifling in the kitchen. Bess kept the windows nailed shut for security. She handed Chowder a bottle of beer. He flipped the porcelain stopper off and took a long pull.

“Thanks.”

“Sure. No idea where this Injun is?” Bess said, not looking at Chowder but listening intently. She popped open a beer and took a long gulp, setting her chins quivering.

“Nothing yet. He's probably still in the city. No reports of him at any of the terminals or docks,” Chowder said, leaning against a hutch filled with expensive china.

“What's 'e worth to ya?” Bess said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Chowder gave her a long look. “Kinda depends on who's asking,” he said. “If it's you, then we can make all sorts of arrangements. For example, I might be able to keep the captain o' your precinct from getting too curious about your inventory situation. Or maybe I could talk to a friend or two in the Wigwam and convince them to sell you that warehouse you've been wantin' on Broome Street.”

Bess's eyes narrowed. “You could, eh?”

“Can't promise for sure, but yeah, I can get that done, I think,” Chowder said.

“Deal,” Bess said, sticking out the neck of her beer bottle. Chowder clinked his bottle against hers with a curious frown. “So, whadaya know?”

Bess told Chowder how the Indian had found his way to her the day before, and how he'd changed his appearance and left within an hour. “Paid me for it proper, too,” Bess said.

Chowder was writing it all down. “Bought a knife, a bayonet, you said, some clothes and ammunition for his pistol? Must be the pistol he stole from the patrolman.”

“I guess. I didn't see it. He was real polite for a savage.”

Chowder chuckled. “Yeah, except when he gutted that foreman. What kind of bayonet did he buy? I don't get what he'd need a bayonet for.”

“I got another,” Bess said, pushing off from her rest against a table. “C'mon.” They squeezed their way through the jumbled hall and into a front room that she apparently reserved for weapons and ammunition.

“Jesus, Bess! You got a fuckin' arsenal here.”

She just shrugged and reached into a barrel, pulling out a long blade with a bone handle.

“Hmm. I've seen stuff like this. During the war. Damned wicked weapon,” he said, fingering the sharp spike. “And you say he bought one o' these?”

“Yup. Still got his clothes, too.”

Chowder nearly jumped. “No shit? Lead on, darlin'.” He followed her to the stairs, letting her go up first. He found himself on eye level with her tremendous ass as it shifted and trembled up the darkened stairway. “Don't tell me,” Chowder said. “Third step, right?” Bess just giggled, rumbled was more like it.

As Chowder went up he thought about the first time he'd seen Fat Bess. He'd arrested her in one of the periodic crackdowns. Her madam hadn't been keeping up with her payments. Bess had been in mid-hump, on her hands and knees with a Brooklyn alderman, when Chowder burst into her room.

Even at sixteen she'd gone well over two hundred. She did have a pretty face back then and a total lack of shame. He remembered how she shook her immense ass at him once the alderman jumped off and asked him if he'd like seconds. In all the years since, the vision of that vast, rounded expanse of white flesh had never left him. And now it seemed to float before him as he clumped up the darkened stairs, a white moon in the benighted house.

Another hall went back to front through the second floor. There wasn't quite as much swag clogging this one, but it was cluttered by any standard. Chowder looked in each of the rooms as they went by. They were much like the ones below, jammed to the ceiling with dark masses of things beyond counting.

They worked their way toward the back of the house, a window at the end of the hallway casting the only light. At the doorway to the third room, a bedroom by the look of it, they stopped. On the floor was a pile of clothes. Even from the doorway Chowder could see they were filthy and stained with dried blood. Long black hair lay in clumps on the floor and on the bureau near a large bowl and pitcher.

“Haven't had a chance ta clean up,” Bess said. “Was kinda thinkin' one o' you boys might pop by. I know how you like to keep yer evidence fresh and all.”

Chowder stood for a moment taking this in. Bess pointed to the pile with her shotgun, which she hadn't put down for a moment. Even when drinking her beer, she'd tucked it into the broad, leather belt she wore about her middle. Chowder bent to examine the clothes.

“Oh shit, they stink!” he said, pulling his hand back before touching them. He pulled out his daystick and poked through the pile. “Looks like his stuff, from the description I have,” he said. Looking at the pile of hair, he added, “And that'd be about the right length hair, too.”

“You say he didn't tell you where he was going?” he asked, turning to look at Bess.

“Sorry. Just said he was a Mohawk or somethin' and how 'e had to get outa town.”

A short while later they went back down the groaning stairs, Bess leading. Chowder carried the clothes and hair in a sack to bring back to the detective bureau.

“When am I gonna hear 'bout that warehouse?” Bess asked over her shoulder. “Sure as hell I need a good place to move all this shit. Goddamn house is about to fall down, I got so much in here.” As she said this, one of the steps groaned louder than usual and wood splintered with a shriek. What happened next was so fast Chowder didn't really know what happened until it was over.

Bess's foot had gone through one of the treads, pitching her forward. Her leg, massive though it was, snapped like kindling. Bess's scream was cut short, though, obliterated by the roar of her shotgun as she crashed down the stairs.

Chowder, who had reached out to try to catch her from falling, was splattered and at first didn't understand why he was wet. It was so dark in the stairway it was hard to see the blood.

Bess lay face down on the stairs, motionless, her leg at an impossible angle. A huge, red hole gaped where her shoulder met her neck. Chowder scrambled down to her, but all he could do was watch as blood fountained from her neck and spilled down the broken stairs.

It was some hours later before Fat Bess's body was carried out of the house. Two men from the coroner's and three roundsmen finally worked her free. She lay on a steel table in the morgue at Bellevue. The lights hanging from the ceiling made her pasty flesh appear almost translucent, except where the blood had pooled down her front.

“Here, I want you to see this,” the coroner said. Chowder wasn't all that anxious to get a closer look. Fat Bess was not an appealing sight. He leaned closer anyway.

“Been tellin' Bess for years she'd end up this way if she wasn't careful,” Chowder said with a shake of his head. “Merciful quick though. Always supposed it'd come from one o' the Whyos, or somesuch, not at her own hand.”

The coroner looked at Chowder and said, “Not her, man. It's no mystery how
she
died.

“But I want you to take a look at that skull over there on the shelf,” the doctor said, pointing to a yellowed, dusty skull. When Chowder picked it up the doctor said, “See the hole in that one? See how it's round and broken at the edges, cracks radiating from the wound?”

“Uh-huh,” Chowder agreed, paying more attention to the skull than the doctor.

“Notice, too, how on the inside there are pieces of bone broken away? That is the sort of wound consistent with a bullet.”

“No argument there, boyo,” Chowder said as he swirled a finger around inside the skull. “What's this got to do with Bess?”

“Nothing, detective. I'm onto something else entirely. Just stay with me on this,” the doctor said like a weary headmaster. “The bullet basically blows the bone back into the brain, carrying shards from the edges of the wound away as well.”

“Now take a look at this.” He pointed to the body of a man lying on a table a few feet away. “Harbor police fished him out this morning,” the coroner said. “Been in the water about a day, day and a half.” He pulled back a sheet to reveal the pasty white body, which had huge, deep, diagonal slashes from torso to mid-thigh.

“Whoa,” Chowder exclaimed. “Looks like somebody tried to cut him in half!”

“Not what killed him. That was after he went in the water. Propeller, I think. Probably got run over while he was floating.”

“Plenty of screw steamers on the river,” Chowder said. “Makes sense. Never seen cuts like that before. Why are you so sure it wasn't this that killed him?”

“No water in the lungs. This man was dead before he hit the water. What's interesting is that he's got a hole in his head, but it's not like that one at all,” the coroner said, pointing to the skull in Chowder's hands.

“That's something you don't pick up swimming,” Chowder mumbled. He put the skull down and turned back toward the body. The coroner had peeled the skin back from a wound in the man's head and swabbed it clean so the bone showed. “You can really see the difference,” he went on.