July 3
Jasper was just finishing his morning routine when there was a loud rapping on the door.
He smiled; that wouldn’t be Paisley, who made the softest of scratching noises, if he knocked at all.
He picked up a towel from the fresh stack his valet had left for him. “Come in.”
John opened the door, his eyes going wide when he took in Jasper’s shirtless dishabille. “Oh! S-S-Sorry.”
“It’s quite all right. D-Did you need something?” Jasper wiped his face.
John was wearing pressed black trousers, a shirt, vest, tie, and a crisp apron tied around his waist. He looked like a miniature Paisley. He glanced around the room, clearly perplexed by it. Jasper supposed he would never have seen a gymnasium in Five Points.
“What is it, J-John?”
“Uh, Mr. P-P-P-P—bugger!” He grimaced. “Er, s-s-s-sorry. Um, he w-w-w-w-wants to know where y-y-y-you want your b-b-b-breakfast.”
Ah, so Paisley was still miffed after Jasper had eaten in the kitchen. “I’ll eat on the t-terrace.”
John nodded, dropped an awkward bow, and left, closing the door with a jarring thud.
Jasper went to the bar Paisley had installed for him; it was just out of reach and he had to jump to grab it. He always saved lifts until last, as they left him boneless. He aimed for thirty but was usually satisfied if he could make twenty-five.
He counted silently as he maintained his form and pulled his chin up to the bar. By fifteen, he was sweating profusely, his biceps and shoulders shaking. He dropped to the floor and walked a few circuits of the room, shaking out his arms.
He’d rowed with the OUBC but had no memory at all of the activity. The only way he knew that he’d participated were a few rowing trophies that Paisley kept in the library whatnot, shiny and polished.
Although he had very little recollection of it, he’d first developed an appreciation for the effect of exercise on his body and mind when he’d lived in Paris in the late forties. Like many other young men at the time, he’d joined Hippolyte Triat’s revolutionary gymnasium.
In the decade since, he’d developed his own regime: sparring—only with bags after his head injury—push-ups, sit-ups, and lifts, and two sessions a week with dumbbells.
Given the nature of his job, and the frequent confrontations he found himself engaged in, he was serious about maintaining his general fitness.
He went back to the bar and resumed his exercise, his mind on the day ahead.
In addition to his appointment here at three o’clock with Mrs. Vogel, he wanted to call on Miss Anita Fowler and then meet Law over at Frumkin’s house, hopefully to open the safe.
His breathing deepened and his muscles trembled as he completed the last six lifts. His mind went blank, no room for anything but the oddly pleasurable burn in his upper body. When he dropped to the floor, he had to brace himself, hands on his thighs, to catch his breath.
This morning was proving more grueling than usual because last night had been later than he was accustomed to; he’d not returned until after three, even though he’d left the Astor party at a quarter past midnight.
He’d decided to walk back to Union Square, which was just around a mile from 350 Fifth Avenue.
The last thing he remembered was pausing at a street corner and waiting for a carriage to pass.
The next memory he had after that was of being shaken awake. He’d been sprawled on the steps of a large house on West Nineteenth Street.
The manservant who’d found him had looked terrified, clearly aware—by Jasper’s clothing—that he was no vagrant or beggar.
“Were you knocked unconscious, sir?” the older man asked, his expression pensive as he glanced around the silent, well-lighted street. “Do you think you’ve been robbed?” he asked, when the first question failed to get Jasper moving.
Jasper had glanced at the ruby signet on his right hand and then felt for his watch and wallet before shaking his head. “No.” When he pushed to his feet, the world tipped and tilted.
“Careful, there—steady on.” The man held Jasper’s elbow. “A bit bosky, sir?”
Jasper gave a weak chuckle, his vision settling as the dizziness fled. “B-Bosky is more enjoyable than this.” He glanced down at the anxious man and gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ve just b-b-been a bit under the weather of late,” he lied.
The servant didn’t look convinced, but he bent and picked up Jasper’s cane, the Russian silver Venus de Milo, which had slid down the steps to the sidewalk.
“Thank you.”
“Will you let me fetch you a hackney, sir?”
“No, thank you. I sh-sh-shall walk.” He smiled. “Really, I am f-fine and it isn’t f-far to Union Square.” The older man nodded. “But I am g-grateful you found me.”
Jasper realized he was standing and staring blankly and shook himself out of his fugue, toweling himself dry as he considered his brief loss of time the evening before.
He had been very, very lucky last night. It was the first time that he’d lost track of himself in almost two years. After he’d returned from the Crimea, he’d spent three out of every four days at least partially lost. Time had slipped almost drunkenly, a day feeling like a minute; minutes sometimes feeling like hours.
He’d been experiencing more headaches of late but attributed that to the rather thorough beating he’d endured at the hands of a man named Devlin McCarthy several weeks earlier.
The metal plate in his head never responded well to either heat or agitation, and McCarthy possessed fists like blocks of granite.
In any case, he had evidentially sustained a bit more damage than merely getting his bell rung. He supposed that he should make an appointment with the doctor his London physician had referred him to.
He couldn’t use Paisley to make the appointment, as he normally would, because his valet would sniff out the truth like a bloodhound and then he would worry and nag. And then worry some more.
And then he would drive Jasper to distraction.
Jasper tossed the towel onto the bench and then pulled on his robe. He would just have to make sure that Paisley didn’t find out.
Hy pounded on the door for the fourth time. “Mr. Hett!” he yelled. He stepped back and glanced up at the windows—just in time to see one of the drapes move and the sash window slowly lift.
“Christ almighty,” a nightshirt-clad man shouted. “What bloody time is it?”
“Eight o’clock.”
Eight had been as late as Hy could stand to wait. He had to get over to the Tombs to get Wilfred Trimble out and then take the old safecracker over to Sullivan Street by noon. Hy had a feeling that dealing with the jailer at the Tombs—where he’d until recently been a resident—would be a time-consuming event.
“What do you want?”
“Are you Mr. Hett?” Hy asked, even though he recognized him from the drawing on the theater playbill.
“Who wants to know?”
Hy took his badge from his pocket and held it up.
Hett groaned. “Oh, Christ.” His head dropped and Hy could hear him sigh all the way down at the front door. “Hold on a minute and I’ll be down.” The window slammed shut.
Hy glanced around at the street as he waited. He rarely came to what New Yorkers called Kleindeutschland if he could help it. Something about the almost exclusively German area made him feel anxious. He figured that was because of his past associations.
Hy had once been a resident of Kleindeutschland many years ago, when he’d lived in a one-room shack behind Eldridge with his Groβmutti Law.
After his grandmother died, he’d become an orphan at seven, and a ward of the streets until Saint Patrick’s Asylum for Homeless Children—or St. Pat’s Ass, as its youthful denizens had disrespectfully deemed it—took him in after six months of starvation and terror.
Or maybe the area made him anxious because it was crowded, deafening, and full of industrial workshops where immigrants toiled for a pittance.
Whatever the reason, if Rene Hett was living here then he must have done something very, very wrong.
Hy was just about ready to start pounding again when the door opened. Hett was still dressed in his nightshirt, but with a ratty silk robe over it and scuffed, filthy slippers on his feet.
“Come in,” he croaked, turning away and heading back into the dim, sweltering, onion-smelling building.
Hy followed him up rickety stairs to the second floor, his skin prickling with heat.
Hett’s lodging was a big room with a small kitchen off to one side. One part of the room had been partitioned with screens, and he assumed it was Hett’s toilet area.
“I need some coffee,” Hett muttered as he shuffled to the tiny coal stove that was already radiating an unbearable heat. He opened the door, tossed in a handful of fuel, and then straightened up with a pained grunt.
Sweat trickled between Hy’s shoulders, and he breathed through his mouth. The odor of unwashed bodies and stale piss was oppressive.
He saw there were windows on the north- and west-facing walls—Hett had a corner room—so why the bloody hell were they all closed?
“I’m opening a window,” Hy said, worried he might pass out if he didn’t.
Hett gave a dismissive wave without turning around.
Hy had to kneel on the bed to get to the sash.
The bedding moved beneath him.
“Jaysus!” he yelped, staggering back.
A head covered with tangled, unnaturally blond hair poked out from beneath the covers. The woman’s face was smeared with face paint, black streaks around her eyes and down her cheeks.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded in a flat nasal voice that said she came from across the river.
“Never you mind, Nora.” Hett shoved Hy aside and then opened the window with a jerk. He motioned for Hy to follow him back to the kitchen, where he opened a third, far smaller, window—an unheard-of luxury—and then slumped against the counter. “Now, what do you want?”
“Do you know Albert Beauchamp?”
“Who?” Hett asked, his bloodshot eyes wide.
Hy had seen Hett act in a play once—years ago, back when Castle Garden was still open. Hett had overacted that night; he was still overacting now.
Hy just stared at the other man.
Hett had been one of the names with an item beside it: Shakespeare quarto. Lightner had said they were valuable—worth a few hundred dollars, even.
Hett’s eyes slid away. And then came back. He heaved a sigh. “Fine, I know him. Why?”
“Tell me why he’s blackmailing you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“How do you know him?” Hy countered.
“How else—he’s one of my devoted followers.”
Hy laughed.
The other man bristled. “You’re offensive—and unless you tell me why you’re here, you can get the hell out.”
“Why was he blackmailing you?” Hy repeated.
Hett opened his mouth—probably to lie again—but then his lips twisted into a sneer. “Was blackmailing me? The bastard still is. Every bloody month.” He shoved a hand through his hair in a dramatic gesture Hy didn’t think he was even conscious of making. “I need something other than coffee,” he muttered, yanking open the cupboard door and pulling out a bottle of Old Tub. He lifted the bottle in Hy’s direction.
“No.”
Not only was it eight in the morning, but Old Tub was about the nastiest rotgut whiskey around; Hy would rather drink out of a mud puddle.
Hett tilted back his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down three times before he removed the bottle from his lips, grimaced, and then sighed, smacking the bung back in before putting it away.
He blinked up at Hy. “So, where were we—oh, that’s right, that bastard and his squeezing.”
“You said you were still paying him—how?”
“Twenty dollars a month, every month, to that bloodsucker of his.”
Twenty dollars a month was a fortune—at least to a regular working man: Hy made nine dollars a week. Maybe some actors made more, but he doubted Hett was one of those.
“Bloodsucker?” Hy repeated.
“A lawyer—Gideon Richards.”
Hy jotted down the name.
“Hey—you’re not going to tell him I told you that?”
He saw real fear in Hett’s eyes. Interesting. “Why is he blackmailing you?”
Hett’s mouth screwed up so tight it looked like a cat’s arsehole. “Why should I tell you anything?”
“Would you like to come down to the station with me? Maybe somebody there could explain why.”
Hett groaned and threw back his head. “Fuck,” he whispered, before bringing his chin back down. “How do I know you won’t use what I tell you to have me thrown in jail anyhow?”
It really was a shame how little faith people had in the police.
“Did you kill somebody?” Hy asked.
Hett flinched back. “No!”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Hy lied. “What did you do?”
Hett squirmed and huffed and sighed. “Fine. It was a while back—February of last year, and I needed money. Bad. Things had been—” He paused, chewed his lower lip, and then shook his head. “I helped a mate of mine get into a rich bird’s house while I—well, you know.”
Yeah, Hy knew.
“So your friend burgled the place while you gave her a buttocking?”
Hett nodded. “Afterward, she knew it was me, but she could hardly say anything since she was married. Anyhow, me and this other bloke split everything and went our separate ways. I took most of my haul to a pawnbroker over off Bowery. But there was one item he didn’t know how to sell—didn’t know anything about.”
“A Shakespeare quarto?”
Hett’s jaw sagged “How the fuck do you know that?”
“Finish your story.”
He could see that Hett wanted to argue, but one look at Hy’s face should have told the man that Hy wouldn’t leave without getting all of it out of him. One way or another.
“The broker told me about a fancy store that sold shit like old books, old furniture, vases. The place was at Laurens and Bleecker.”
“Name?”
“Harry Martin’s. But it ain’t there anymore. I went over there to sell some stuff about six months ago.” Hett had the grace to blush. “But it had closed.”
“Finish what you were saying, Mr. Hett—you took the book to the shop on Bleecker.”
“Have you seen it—the book?” he asked.
“Yes.” Hy hadn’t thought much of it, but he kept that to himself.
“I mean, can you believe the shop owner offered me over a thousand dollars?”
It was Hy’s turn to look bumfuzzled. “A thousand dollars?”
“Yeah, a thousand.”
Hy shook his head, not sure he believed the man. He knew Lightner thought it was valuable, but a thousand? It was nothing but a skinny old book without any pictures.
“So you sold it to him?” Hy said.
Hett looked at him like he was crazy. “Hell no! I figured he was trying to pull one over on me. If he offered a thousand, it had to be worth at least five times that amount. I told him I had other offers, that his wasn’t the only one.” He shook his head, his expression one of amazement and disgust. “And then the bastard accused me of stealing it, if you can believe it.”
“You did steal it,” Hy said.
Hett sputtered. “That’s beside the point. I was there to do honest business with the man and he turns around and threatens me?” He made a snorting sound that showed what he thought of that. “When I picked up my book and tried to leave, he came after me.” He gave Hy a guilty look. “He left me no choice other than to give him a bit of a dusting. I didn’t hurt him—just knocked him down. And then I grabbed the book and ran. I figured that was the end of that. A few days later I was still figuring out what I was going to do with the damned thing when Beauchamp showed up on my doorstep.” He laughed bitterly. “Back then—before he started bleeding me—I lived at a nice place up off West Fourteenth and Fifth. Anyhow, the bastard had been in the shop when we’d had the argument. Said he recognized me. Said he chatted with the owner after I left—helped him clean up his cuts and bruises—said the man talked about the book and told him that he knew where I’d stolen it from.” He shrugged. “So that was that.”
“So you just handed over this thousand-dollar book to Beauchamp?” Hy didn’t bother to keep the disbelief from his voice.
Hett sneered. “Yeah, I did. What else was I supposed to do? It wasn’t just that I had the book, but now this shopkeeper could identify me as trying to sell it. And then there was the wife. Jesus. I went to her—you know, thinking maybe we could sell the thing and share the proceeds—”
Hy laughed. “You thought you’d make a deal with the same person you stole it from?”
“There’s no love lost between her and her husband. And he keeps her on a short leash when it comes to money—she told me that. Anyhow, when I offered her the chance to buy the book back for an extremely reasonable amount, she started yelling at me.”
“Imagine that.”
Hett ignored him. “She told me she didn’t want it—she told me that I’d better get rid of it because her husband had private detectives looking for the damned thing. She said she’d told her husband—and the police—that she’d seen the thieves and could recognize at least one of them—my friend. She said she’d lie if either of us told her husband what had really happened. And she said my friend would roll over on me in a minute.” Hett shrugged. “She was right, I barely knew the guy and he’d already sold most of what he’d taken. There’d be nothing to prove I was telling the truth. Anyhow, Beauchamp had me in a corner.” He made a frustrated noise. “The book is so damned expensive it was like I’d stolen the crown jewels, and selling it would be impossible. So when he told me he wanted it or he’d rat me out, I gave it to him,” he said, his gaze straying to the cupboard with the whiskey.
Hy could smell the lie. “That’s it?”
“Jesus, what else do you need?”
“I need to know why you’re lying.”
“What?”
“If all he wanted was the book and you gave it to him, why are you still paying him?”
Hett ground his teeth. “Look, this wasn’t the only thing he had on me.”
“What else?”
“If I tell you, you’re not going to—”
Hy cocked his head.
“Fine. He somehow found out that me and two other actors robbed the box office at Castle Garden. It should have been an easy score, but one of the guys insisted we disguise ourselves.” Hett snorted. “The arrogant bastard figured he was too well known and might be recognized. So we took some of the costumes from our last production.”
“Was that the one about the evil bankers?” Hy asked.
Hett looked delighted. “You saw that?”
“Uh-huh.”
The play had been a very unfunny comedy in which Hett had played dual roles—an old man and an old woman. The show had been the theater’s last gasp, when it could no longer lure any famous acts and when people brought rotted vegetables, which they enjoyed hurling at the actors more than they liked watching the play.
Hy knew the other man was waiting for him to flatter him about his acting. If Lightner were there, he’d probably soothe Hett’s ruffled feathers. But there was just something about the little prick that rubbed Hy the wrong way. “Go on,” Hy urged. “You dressed up like a banker, robbed your employer, and then Beauchamp learned about it. What else?”
“Hey,” Hett said, fear turning to belligerence. “Don’t act all high and mighty with me. We hadn’t been paid for two months by the end of our run at the Garden. We were owed that money.”
Hy kept his opinion about that to himself.
“And for your information,” Hett added with a sneer, “we dressed up like bankers’ wives.” He paused, a nostalgic gleam in his eyes. “In a way, I consider that one of my greatest performances. It’s a shame—”
“I don’t care, Mr. Hett. What I do care about is how Beauchamp found out about that.”
Hett flung up his hands. “Jesus, I don’t know. It’s like the guy has a nose for this kind of shit. I’m pretty sure that’s how he spends his days, snooping through every corner of the damned city.”
Hy thought he might be right about that. “Tell me about paying this lawyer.”
“What’s there to tell? I bring the money in, give it to the young man who sits at a desk in front of his office, and that’s it.” His mouth pulled into a nasty smile. “I’m not the only one, either. I always have to pay on the eighth of the month. I’ve never talked to any of the other people, but if you do something that often, on that regular a basis, you’re bound to recognize people.”
“Any names?”
“No, nothing like that. Besides, none of us exactly want anyone to know why we’re there.”
Hy nodded and then asked—as if it were an afterthought, “Any memory of where you were December seventeenth?”
Hett’s forehead wrinkled. “You mean, last year?”
Hy nodded.
“Not off the top of my head. Why?”
Hy ignored the question. “It would have been a Friday in December.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy, then—I perform every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.”
“And is there somebody who could confirm this?”
“Yes,” Hett said, his brow creasing with confusion. “But why do—”
“Who?”
Hett looked like he wanted to argue, but he heaved a put-upon sigh instead. “Talk to the stage manager at the Broadway.”
“I thought that dump was closed?”
“It closes in three months.” Hett forced the words through clenched teeth.
Hy jotted down Broadway Theater and glanced up. “Where’s the lawyer’s office—this Richards?”
Hett bit his lower lip, looking like he might start bawling. Hy briefly wondered if he was really that scared or just acting.
But he didn’t think Hett was that good of an actor.
“Don’t worry,” Hy said. “I’m not going to say anything to the lawyer about you.”
“It’s at Seventh Avenue and East Twenty-Eighth, third floor. The entire bloody building is infested with lawyers.”
Something else occurred to Hy. “How long are you supposed to keep paying?”
Hett gave him a hopeless look, his gaze as lifeless as a burnt-out ember. “I dunno—until I die.” A spark of spite ignited, briefly bringing his eyes to life. “Unless I get lucky and that bastard dies before me.”