IT WAS EARLY SPRING OF THE PRIOR YEAR, RIGHT BEFORE HIS TIME in reform school, when Charles met Bess for the first time. She had long been a fixture down by the waterfront, as long as any prostitute lasted before succumbing to violence or disease or just becoming used up. Bess’s most marketable attributes were her long golden hair and her impressive bosom, which made up for a face that, in repose, was hard and hatchet-like, with beady eyes and a straight, grim line for a mouth.
In her neighborhood, those who could not command much of a rate used public places to ply their trade. Almost everyone else in the business was associated with a brothel, but a few, such as Bess, ran their own business out of their tenements with select repeat customers.
Bess was smarter than the average whore, so it came as a surprise when she found herself in a delicate situation against which she had taken every precaution. Despite her preventive measures—the insertion of both a copper penny and a sponge soaked in tansy oil prior to every work night—her predicament was undeniable.
One night not long after Bess’s discovery, Charles darted into the backyard of a tenement to evade an older boy trying to establish some ground rules about thieving territory. He went rooting around near the fence for something to hide behind and found a pile of clothes that he could drape over himself, but when he went to shake them out to eject any resident vermin, he found that there was a woman’s body still wearing them. A faint groan emanated from the heap of fabric.
While he was trying to decide what to do next, he heard a thin and steely command: “Help me up.”
Had she asked him rather than told him, had she sounded pathetic and weak, Charles might have responded differently, but he found himself bending to grab her arm and pull her up before he could even consider any other response. As she stood and leaned on Charles, a putrid smell wafted up from her body, and Charles gagged.
Following her directions, he helped her up the one flight of stairs to her tenement and settled her on her bed. Given the grimy neighborhood, this room was decorated in a surprisingly fine style. Sheer fabric was strung from the tops of the four-poster bed, and a stuffed chair was covered with a fancy brocade. There was color everywhere, from the garnet bed covering to the saffron chair to the woman’s deep violet skirts. He felt sure he had never seen fabrics in these colors. Even in the limited lamplight of the room, the effect was dazzling.
“What’s your name?” asked the woman, although it sounded more like a statement than a question.
Charles looked over at her and was unsettled to see a beautiful head of golden hair piled above a face that could have belonged to a drill sergeant.
“Charles,” he answered, unconsciously straightening his posture.
“Well, Charles, it was lucky for me that you come along when you did. And now I’m gonna ask you to do somethin’ else for me.” She paused to take a couple of breaths, and her eyelids fluttered with pain. “I got a situation that old Doc Pearson helped me out with, or so he told me, but seems he made things precious worse. The stink of these bloody rags got so close as I had to put ’em out in the yard barrel, which is where you found me. Guess as I overestimated my ability to haul my arse back up the stairs.” She reached for a silver flask on the table next to the bed and took a sip with a trembling hand, but to Charles she seemed as sober as a judge, and he thought whatever was in the flask wasn’t doing much to numb her pain.
“So I need you to run me a little errand, Charles, and I’m prepared to pay you somewhat generous. I need you to track down that bastard Pearson and bring ’im here, irregardless of how drunk he is.” She fumbled for her purse in the night table drawer. “There’s two grog shops on Richmond where he parks his arse, one’s the Lion Arms, and two doors down is the Wheel and Rudder. Always with the top hat, likes to fancy himself a bit of a dandy, and carries his black bag with him, advertisin’ his callin’.” She took a five- and a ten-dollar bill out of her purse and closed it.
“This fiver will be right here waitin’ for you, free ’n clear. But Pearson ain’t gonna come unless I pay him up front, so I gotta trust you with this sawbuck.” She handed him the ten-dollar bill. “Now, I ain’t got no fancy education, but even I can figger that sawbuck is worth more’n that fiver. So I send you outta here, most would keep walkin’. You might be the type that’d sell your granny for less. But Charles, I wouldn’t send for that bastard Pearson unless I had one foot in the grave. So if you keep walkin’, you might as well put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.” She held out the ten-dollar bill for him to take.
He looked into her face, set like stone against the pain. As he approached her bed, he could smell the stench he’d encountered when he first helped her up. He could see the blond tendrils that had escaped from her piled hair and were now plastered darkly to her sweating temples. He took the money from her without looking away from her eyes.
“I’m Bess,” she said.
Once Charles was out in the street, he looked at the bill in the yellow gaslight. It was the biggest denomination he had ever held. For how long could this feed him?
Charles was disoriented after his zigzag escape from the boy chasing him, so he randomly chose a direction that he hoped would lead him to a place he would recognize. In a few blocks, he came upon Richmond Street, where he paused. When he left Bess’s building, he could have walked the other way and never have encountered Richmond Street. And yet he had walked in this direction.
He headed uphill and soon came upon the Wheel and Rudder.
The bartender pointed out Doc Pearson when Charles asked for him, a portly man with watery eyes sitting with two other men, and indeed Charles could now see his black bag parked next to his chair.
“Doc Pearson?”
“Yes, my boy, how can I be of assistance?” he inquired without looking at Charles as he took a sip of whiskey from a smudged glass.
“Bess needs ya. Says you gotta come. I got your pay up front she gave me.”
“Bess . . . yes. Treated her recently for some female complaints. I hear, by the by, however, that there are few complaints about her from the male populace!” Pearson and his companions found this uproarious.
By the time their laughter had died back, Pearson seemed to have forgotten that Charles was standing beside him. “Bess is poorly,” Charles stated, “and you gotta come now.” He pulled out the ten-dollar bill and waved it in front of Pearson’s face.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Pearson after he downed the last of his whiskey in one gulp, “it appears that duty calls.” He went to snatch the bill suspended before him, but he grabbed thin air as Charles pulled it just out of his reach. “Bess said to pay you when we get there,” Charles improvised.
Pearson donned his top hat and followed Charles out of the saloon, weaving slightly.
Bess had fallen asleep while they were gone, but she roused as they entered her rooms. Pearson approached her bed. She stared at him with malice.
“Young Bess, it would appear you have not been taking care of yourself,” he said as he placed his bag at the foot of her bed and fumbled with the clasp.
“Pearson, you bastard, this is your doing, and don’t pretend it ain’t,” she said through clenched teeth.
“That is a matter of opinion, but what is a matter of pure fact is that you will receive no further treatment without further payment, and your young squire here refused to hand over my fee until we were standing before you. He’s a mistrusting sort.” Charles handed over the bill, and Pearson looked at it tenderly before pocketing it. Addressing Charles as he swayed, he said, “All right, young street Arab, it’s time you crawled back into the hole whence you came. Be off.”
Bess reached under her pillow and drew out the five-dollar bill. When Charles went to take the money, she didn’t release her grip on it right away, and Charles looked up to find her locking eyes with him. She held on to the bill for a heartbeat and then let it go.
One night a week or two later, Charles saw Bess on the street.
“Well if it ain’t my young squire,” she said as she folded her arms in front of her.
“Doc Pearson fixed you up, I can see.”
“Lucky he didn’t finish me off. I ain’t exactly sure what he done, and he let me know I was too ignorant for him to bother explainin’, but at least he give me some laudanum for the pain. But the hell with him. I’m back to work, and it’s you I owe.”
“You don’t owe me nothin’—you paid me a fiver, remember?”
“I’d like to think my life’s worth a little more’n a fiver, Charles.” She started to walk away, but after a step, she turned back. “You come see me if you need some help. I know some people in this town,” she said a little cryptically, and the flat line that was her mouth curled up on one side in what might have been a smile.
When Aidan woke up the day after that bloody night with the beautiful knife, at first he didn’t remember anything, and it seemed like any other morning. But as he lay on his mattress, it came back to him in a rush, and his stomach started to hurt. He told Maeve he must’ve eaten some bad oysters last night and stayed curled up in bed for most of the morning, listening to the light rain hitting the windows. He tortured himself by replaying last night’s events over and over in his mind. Of particular agony was the image of his hand pulling the knife out of the man’s belly, how there was some initial resistance but then it slid out with ease, as if it were greased, and of all the blood that flowed out after it. How could he have thought that removing the knife would give the man relief, make his wound better in some way? But he hadn’t been thinking straight. How stupid it seemed now. He might as well have slit the man’s throat while he was at it.
The rain stopped sometime in the afternoon, and after an eternity, the hour to meet Charles arrived.
When Bess answered the door, she looked at Aidan skeptically. “Your note didn’t say nothin’ about bringin’ ’round your friend here.”
“We’re in the fix together. This here’s Aidan,” said Charles as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“Well. Come on.” She moved away from the doorway to admit them.
Now that the rain had passed, the sun streamed in through Bess’s windows. The raindrops on the windows glittered like crystal, and all of Bess’s colorful fabrics were glowing. Aidan was struck stupid by the sight. The only other place he’d seen colors like this was the stained glass in St. Joseph’s with the morning sun behind it, back when Maeve was well and would take him and Ella to church.
Charles stood with his cap in his hands, looking down as he fiddled with the brim, rubbing the edge where it had started to fray.
“So let me speed this up ’fore I grow old,” Bess said as she settled herself in the saffron-colored chair. “You two are in some trouble. I trust it ain’t that the truant officer pinched ya.”
“We rolled some swell and ended up killin’ him,” Charles said in a rush.
She stared at them, and for a moment it looked as if she were going to laugh, but if that had been her impulse, it died in her before it came to fruition. “How the hell did you two kill a man?” she asked incredulously.
“He had a knife,” Charles mumbled.
“He pulled a knife on ya? Why, that’s self-defense, a nasty mug pullin’ a knife on two innocent little pups. Ain’t no judge—”
“Bess,” Charles stopped her. “He was out cold, and I took his knife outta his pocket and splayed it to show Aidan, and I fell on him.”
Bess considered this for a moment. “You said he was a swell—you sure ’bout that?”
“He was dressed pretty fine and had this knife like I ain’t never seen, plus he had this.” Charles took the money clip out of his pocket and held it out to Bess.
From the moment they entered Bess’s rooms, Aidan had been distracted by the surroundings. The vibrant colors, the smell of perfume, and just the idea of being in a prostitute’s bedroom—the very room where she earned her living, that very bed!—not to mention the association with St. Joseph’s—it all made his head spin. To add to the distraction, in the afternoon August heat, Bess was wearing only a lace-trimmed chemise and satin corset on top, and just her under-petticoat below. He could neither look at her sizable bosom nor avert his gaze very far from it. All these elements caused Aidan to only half-hear the conversation between Bess and Charles, despite its importance to his future, but when Charles produced the money clip, he snapped out of his fog.
He stared at Charles. “You didn’t say nothin’ about no money.”
“Yeah, well, I was too busy worrying about the bloody handprints on your shirt. Jesus, Sully,” Charles huffed.
Bess took the money clip and said, “Christ, you two are like an old married couple.” She turned the clip over in her hand, and Aidan could see some sort of encrusted jewels winking in the sunlight. She tossed it back to Charles. “That clip weren’t bought at no five-and-dime. D’ja count it?”
“Ninety-seven,” said Charles without emotion.
Aidan was dumfounded. “You couldn’t remember to tell me about ninety-seven dollars?”
“Sully, for the love of Christ, shut yer clam hole.”
Bess picked up a fan from the side table and began to fan herself languidly. “So the bad news is that I don’t know nobody that can get you off for murder. You grab a loaf of bread, even steal a lady’s pocketbook, maybe I know somebody could get you probation, keep you outta reform school. But killing a mug, even a tramp, I don’t got no favors to call in like that, and if I did, I’d save ’em for myself. And your mug weren’t no tramp. The good news is that you got some scratch, which is gonna help you get outta town.”
“Outta town?” Aidan repeated. “We gotta leave?”
Charles turned to Aidan. “What did you think? Do you think we’re gonna wait around and hope that lady that spotted you ain’t gonna tell the cops?”
“Someone spotted ya?” interjected Bess. “This story just keeps gettin’ better, don’t it? Aidan, Sully, whatever they call ya, you’d do good to face the fact that you’re gonna be leavin’ city limits. Question is, are you goin’ to Westboro, or someplace where they don’t use the strap?”
Aidan walked over to the window to press his forehead against the pane. This was just too much to fit in his head. He looked down on the street and saw the ash man and his horse-drawn cart. The man emptied two ash barrels into the cart, neither the man nor the horse seeming to mind the billowing cloud that plumed up with these deposits. They were both coated with a fine layer of ash. The man spoke into the horse’s ear, and the horse moved a few yards to the entrance of the next building, where there were three more ash cans. Aidan admired how the man didn’t need to touch the horse to get it to move along. He wanted to be that man, to trade places with him, so that he could be an old ash-covered worker with a steady job and a horse that would listen to him, and the old man would have to be an eleven-year-old boy who had killed a rich swell.
“I know we gotta leave,” Charles said to Bess earnestly. “I been to Westboro, and I’ll drown myself in the harbor before I go back there. But I don’t know where to go. That’s where I was hopin’ you could help out.”
Bess thought for a moment as she fanned herself. “How old are the pair of ya?”
“I’m twelve, and he’s almost.”
After a pause, Bess walked into her tiny kitchen and faced its window. Arms crossed, she looked out at the brick wall of the tenement next door. The boys fidgeted in the main room, unsure of how much time Bess would need in the kitchen to devise what they hoped would be their salvation.
After a while, she came out of the kitchen. “I think I got an idea. I ain’t sure it’s gonna work, but I’ll wager that you ain’t got a better plan.” She resettled herself on the saffron chair. “It’s gonna require that you two are brothers, I’ll say that.” The boys looked at each other. Aidan shrugged. They looked back at Bess, ready to go forward.
“And his name,” she said, turning her gaze to Aidan, “ain’t gonna do. Don’t know how he ended up with that one anyway—don’t look like there’s a drop of Irish blood in ’im.”
Charles said, “He’s already got his cover name for when he wants to pass—it’s Arthur.”
“That’ll do. Charles and Arthur . . . it’s Wheeler, right?”
“Yep,” Charles said with a look of fledgling hope on his face.
“But you spent time up in Westboro. They got a record of you up there, can’t be connected to that. We’ll change Wheeler to . . . Weston. Charles and Arthur Weston.”
Aidan heard all this as if he were in a dream, the kind where events are happening all around you that you can’t influence, where you reach out to grab someone’s shoulder and your hand goes right through.
Bess said, “I need a little time to think about it. You two clear out of here for a little while. Leave that clip somewhere somebody’s gonna find it. Then use some of that wad—not too much—to go get yourselves some cheap clothes, something that looks different than whatcha got on, or really whatcha had on last night. Looks like anything clean and new will be a damn good disguise. Come back half past five.” Bess stood up from her chair.
“We can’t pawn the clip?” asked Aidan.
“Well, you can if you’re keen on tipping off the police,” she said humorlessly. She looked at him as if he were a friendly dog that was proving too stupid to train.
Charles grabbed Aidan by the arm and pulled him toward the door. “Half five, Bess, we’ll be back,” and they were gone.
When they reached the sidewalk, Aidan turned on Charles. “You know, you coulda told me your plan included me leavin’ home. Leavin’ my sick ma and my baby sister.”
“Yeah, and how would that have made anything any better?” Charles shot back.
Aidan kicked a bottle on the sidewalk, but it just spun in a circle, refusing to smash against the base of the gaslight as he had intended. “Easy for you—what are you leavin’, your favorite alley? You say that we gotta leave like it’s nothin’!”
Charles stopped in his tracks, and Aidan stopped alongside him. “Fine. I’ll go. You stay. Let me know if they dust off the Sweatbox up in Westboro.” Charles resumed walking.
In a flash, Aidan’s anger ebbed away, replaced by the reality of the trouble they were in and the fear that Charles would leave him to fend for himself. “No, wait,” he said as he caught up to Charles. “All right, you’re right, we need to leave. But for how long? And what am I gonna tell my ma?”
“I don’t got them answers yet. Let’s just wait to hear Bess’s plan. Then we’ll figger it out.”
Charles ducked into the next alley and left the clip on top of a barrel. When he emerged, they looked around for a place that sold ready-made clothing. By the time they walked out of the shop, it was time to head back to Bess’s.
She let them in and handed Charles a note in an envelope. “Bring this to Reverend Stryker at the Old South Church. Don’t give it to anyone but him. You.” She pointed to Aidan. “You got an address?”
“Chambers Street, Number 47,” he said.
“I’ll send a note when it’s all set up. In the meantime, wash your faces, for Chrissake, and get a haircut, short. And stay out of trouble, and out of sight.” She stood there, stonefaced, and said nothing more, and the boys realized that they were being dismissed.
As the boys began the long walk to Back Bay, Charles realized the envelope Bess had given him was not sealed, and he showed Aidan.
“Read it,” urged Aidan, and Charles read aloud as they walked. It began without a greeting:
For as long as we have been acquainted, I have not once asked for a favor, but I find myself now in need of one. Two brothers, ages eleven and twelve, have recently become orphans—
“Orphans, huh?” interrupted Aidan.
“You’ll get used to it,” said Charles, and he continued:
and without strong guidance from the home, they have fallen into some trouble. In this matter, I need your help before they fall farther. If you would come to my home this evening, I should like to discuss this in detail and, I hope, convince you of the worthiness of my cause.
B.
“Don’t tell us much, do it?” Charles said as he folded the note and put it back in the envelope. “Other than wherever we’re goin’, we’re brothers, and we got no parents.”
“She ain’t lyin’ about the fallin’ into trouble part,” Aidan observed.
“You know what?” asked Charles. “That’s some pretty fine writin’ for one of her kind, don’t you think? Bet most of these whores down here can’t spell more’n their name.” The penmanship was a little shaky, with some blobs of ink at the end of a few words, but there were no spelling mistakes, and the hand was fine and feminine.
“Maybe one day she could be something else, get outta here,” said Aidan.
“Nah. Once you start working down on the waterfront, you’re tainted. Ain’t no one gonna take ya.”