Touched by Angels (21 page)

After changing some pounds into dollars, they found a clothes store that was gloomy in the extreme, with a high ceiling the colour of burned umber. It was strewn with ancient cobwebs, and the odour of mothballs filled the air. A huge wire cage stood in one corner, containing a mynah bird. In boredom, it had pecked out all its own feathers, save those from the neck up.

The man who greeted them was thin and elderly, with a black skullcap. He reminded Robert of the corpse in Rice Lane, from whom he had tried to take the pennies.

He looked at them through drooping spaniel eyes, and to Robert’s amazement, the bird suddenly cackled out, “Hey brother, can you spare a dime?”

“Mum, it talked!” he said, pointing at the bird in shock.

“Yes, I know darling.”

The shop keeper asked, in a soft voice, “Can I assist you, ma’am?”

She pulled out four ten-dollar bills and asked, “Can you attire and feed us for this?”

The man shook his head from side to side, smiling regretfully, so she produced another note.

He spent the next half hour plying his tape measure, as Jack Quint, who had been sitting in a saloon for the last hour, suddenly had a glimmer of inspiration.

***

Quint had almost resigned himself to the impossibility of ever finding the woman and her brat, when he remembered the suitcase. It was quite a distinctive one, with a stripy pattern, that he remembered thinking unusual.

Since she would never be able to board another ship immediately, she would be forced to stay in New York, at least for a few days, and would therefore need food and accommodation. He guessed that, being unfamiliar with her surroundings, she was not likely to stray too far from the harbour. Even if they had the sense to buy new clothes, he guessed they would still be lugging that thing around.

The field was narrowing considerably.

He grinned to himself as he drained his glass, and dropped the stub of his cigar to the floorboards.

An idea was taking shape in his head, but he needed help to make it work. He knew exactly where to get it.

Fifty-two

Lil and Robert sat at a scrubbed table above the tailor’s, where the man’s stout wife, Mrs Frank, ladled lamb stew onto plates.

Her eyes, clouded with cataracts, darted to and from them suspiciously. She hadn’t spoken yet, though they had already guessed her husband, who was literally half her size, lived his life in abject terror.

She was a huge boned, big bosomed woman, with abundant grey hair tied back in a bun. Her hands were as large as those of any man. She sawed through a loaf, while they listened to the whirr and clack of the sewing machine downstairs, as her husband effected minor alterations to the garments they had bought.

Every so often, the door bell tinged and the mynah bird spoke.

After they had eaten, they would have a bath and don their new clothes. By now, Lil had discarded the idea of stowing away as being utterly ridiculous. They would lay low for a few days, to give the impression they had slipped town, before booking passage to England.

Half an hour later, she lay back in a cast iron tub and closed her eyes, as Mrs Frank, who had still not uttered a single word, trickled a kettle of scalding water into the far end.

***

Robert was in the parlour, looking after the suitcase, gazing at a green and red parrot in a cage even bigger than himself. It hung from a fixture on the ceiling and the floor beneath was smothered in discarded seed husks and feathers.

It in turn, watched him through eyes of polished jet, while membranes flicked over them occasionally.

The room contained several other cages, holding birds of differing sizes, types and colours, but they were boring compared to the parrot, because he knew they couldn’t talk.

The parrot stood on a swing, staring at him stupidly, with its beak half open, wing tops raised, as a green and white dropping fell from its rear end.

It had made a few semi-intelligible sounds while Robert had stood there; syllables and half-words.

“Go on,” he finally taunted, losing patience. “Talk! Say something.”

It blinked again, and stepped from side to side, wondering what was afoot.

“Go on,” he pushed. “Betcha can’t.”

Nothing happened.

Then inspiration gripped him, as he said in a low voice, “Tell you what, say… shit.”

It raised the tops of its wings, as if questioning what, ‘shit’ meant, squawked and carried on watching.

“All right then.”

He looked around, to be sure the lady who had been making him nervous wasn’t there, before adding in a whisper, “Say… fuck!”

Nothing happened for a few moments, but then the bird mimicked him with such suddenness and volume, he couldn’t stop laughing even after seeing Mrs Frank looming up behind.

She whacked his ear so hard, he nearly fell over. She slapped him again and again, as he stumbled backwards, trying to get away.

Her face was a hideous red grimace, her eyes standing out, white and mad. Her teeth were clenched into rows of endless small dirty teeth.

He fetched up against a footstool.

She grabbed him by the neck as he fell and frogmarched him to a large open Bible on a stand, while his eyes streamed from the pain of his cuffed ears.

With her massive fingers digging cruelly into the flesh of his neck, she shoved his face so far into the pages, his nose was pressed into a bulb. He tried to scream, but couldn’t.

She was ranting about the sins of vulgarity and cruelty, when he managed to squirm out of her grasp.

He darted around to the other side of the varnished stand the gilded book rested upon, heart-skittering, as he gasped for air.

She darted after him, with murder on her face. The parrot danced from side to side, bleating words of encouragement. She snatched a thick leather strap from atop an upright piano, knocking over a vase of dried-out flowers in her rush.

The glass shattered over the keys, making a tinkling sound.

She was chasing him around in circles and lashing him all over, as Jack Quint leaned lazily against a wall, half a mile away, in the most densely populated place on earth, the Lower East Side.

Fifty-three

Quint struck a match on the wall and lit a cigar. The tip glowed like a coal in the shadows, as push carts passed by from all directions, selling absolutely anything.

There was a fistfight underway in the apartment above, while across the street, a consumptive retched up pieces of lung and spat them into the gutter. A dog barked out the misery of mange. From another window came the screams of childbirth, and in another, the tinny sound of a gramophone. Terrible singing bleated from somewhere else.

Quint grinned as he heard the clang of what might be a frying pan. The singing stopped abruptly. Gunshots punctuated it all, some near, some far, but Quint knew what he wanted to hear.

It came towards noon, as he was tossing a quarter to a woman breastfeeding her baby. The coin glinted in the sunlight as it flew, then tinkled and spun as it struck the ground beside her. Her hand crawled out like a dying spider to take it.

He drew hard on his cigar, and moved on, his ears focusing in on the source of the noise.

It was a running of many feet in an alleyway, youthful shouts, a yell of triumph, and a cry of, “Get the bastard! He can’t get away.” A gun banged.

Quint drew his own piece, as he stood at the corner of the wall, peering around gingerly.

A boy of about fifteen, in brown corduroys and with blond hair, was cornered at the far end by six others, three of whom looked Italian. He held a gun at his hip.

One of his tormentors hissed, “You’re outa bullets,” and another said, “Tell us where it is or you’re dead.”

“It’s mine. Fuck off!”

They were advancing on him, slowly, two of them holding lengths of wood, another a knife.

The boy looked terrified, as he turned and started jumping up, to grab the top of the wall. It was too high. Then, as they were about to rush him, a shot rang out.

One of the boys went down, screaming, his hand over a cut in his thigh, where Quint’s well-aimed shot had torn it open. Blood started pumping down his leg.

He made his way towards them casually, pulling back the hammer on his gun with his thumb. He took his cigar from his mouth with his other hand and cast it away.

The youths fanned out, as he aimed at each of them, arm outstretched. They ran, with the bleeding one hobbling behind, shouting they would get him next time.

“You can lower your piece,” Quint told him, seeing it shaking in the boy’s hand.

As he did, Quint could see him fighting back the tears.

“They nearly got me,” he said miserably. “They would have killed me.”

He whispered, “Thanks,” as he swung the cylinder out and six empty cartridges fell to the dust.

“What do they want?”

“My money.”

“What money?”

“The two hundred bucks I’ve saved. I’ve got it hidden away. I’m saving up to go to South Africa. If I don’t, I’ll die here.”

He wiped his nose and eyes with a tatty sleeve.

“You’re not wrong there,” Quint assured him, seeing rats tucking into a dead cat nearby. “But why South Africa?”

“Cos there’s fortunes to be made.”

“So I’ve heard.”

He glanced around again and said pushing back his hat, “Well, they’re gone. They can’t get you now.”

He slipped his gun back into its holster.

“No but they will.”

“What’s your name?”

“Billy Tweed.”

“Jack Quint. Come on, let’s get a drink. Then you can tell me all about it.”

***

They were sitting in a smoky saloon five minutes later, where Quint listened to Billy’s tale above a piano being hammered at the far end by a little pink man in a bowler hat.

Several women lounged around with wanton looks in their eyes. Quint knew that for a dollar, a room was free upstairs. Their make up was so thick, it was impossible to tell the age of any of them. Beneath the paint of some, he was sure, were syphilitic sores.

It seemed the boy was living in a sort of makeshift orphanage on Mott Street, run by a fat Irishman called ‘Porky’ Warren.

“He is a pig too,” Billy grated. He spat.

“Doesn’t like us bettering ourselves. I’ve even taught myself how to read and write… well nearly, and he laughs and says we’re all the sons of whores. He says we’re shit and shit don’t read nuthin.”

He rambled on bitterly for some time, about how food and lodging were free, as long as they spent their days relieving the unsuspecting of the contents of their pockets; not here of course, because there was nothing to be had, but mostly in rich lower Manhattan and sometimes beyond. They were paid a small cut to keep their mouths shut.

Quint started sketching on a piece of paper, thinking that, where the other kids had quickly frittered their money away, Billy had had the sense to put some by.

“So how much do you think you need?”

“Five hundred, to book passage, and set me up when I get there.” His eyes took on a dreamy look. “Then I can go prospectin’ for diamonds.”

“Diamonds?”

“Yeah, like the Cullinan they found in ’05. It’s as big as an apple, worth millions and they cut it up… I reckon if a nigger can find one,
I
can, and then…”

Quint eyed the boy’s face, covered in tick and lice bites, briefly. He held his hand up, and said, “You can dream all you like, but how long has it taken you to save this two hundred bucks?”

“Nearly two years.”

He looked down at the stain covered table, feeling more dejected than ever.

“How would you like to earn the three hundred you need?”

Billy looked up so suddenly, he knocked his drink over. The glass rolled off the table and shattered.

“All you have to do,” Quint told him, “is go to every tailor and hotel you can find, in and around the harbour and ask if an attractive, well-spoken Englishwoman and a boy of about ten have entered their establishment, carrying this.”

He handed him the sketch of a suitcase.

“And if they have, where they might be now. They stole it from me and I must have it back, understand?”

Billy nodded.

“She might be going by the name of Lady Emma DeVere, but by now she could be using another. Start as close to the docks as you can and work your way out. If you find them, I’ll give you the money.”

Billy felt his mouth drop and whispered, as he gazed at the sketch, “I’ll find them. I promise you. I’ll find them.”

Quint grinned as he drained his glass.

Fifty-four

He wouldn’t find them above the tailor’s though. When Lil had dressed and seen the cause of the commotion coming from the parlour, she did the only thing she could think of at such short notice.

She broke a pot over the woman’s head, shouting, “Leave my boy alone, you crazy bitch!” before staggering back towards the parrot cage, unsure what might happen next.

Robert had darted behind her and was peeking around nervously, as Mrs Frank sat up and shook the shards from her hair. Her face was grazed above the left eye and her lip was cut, but even that didn’t deter her. She was up in an instant. She snatched up the strap and flew at both of them, screaming and lashing out blindly.

Lil parried her blows and sent her flying headlong into a jardinière, which crashed to the floor, where she lay dazed among the wreckage. Her thick stockings and skirts were rucked up, while dried out petals festooned her head and shoulders.

As the parrot squawked in delight, Lil grabbed the suitcase and they bolted out the room before she could recover. As they were charging down the stairs, they collided with Mr Frank who was about to investigate, nearly knocking him flying.

It wasn’t till they had run through the throng, as storm clouds were gathering, that they collapsed into each other’s arms. It seemed hilarious and surreal now they were safe.

As they felt the patter of drops around them though, Robert asked, “Where should we go now?”